Women voters are underrepresented as local elections returned only women councillors from a total of 239 elected on Saturday.

Only 18 per cent of councillors in the 35 localities where elections were held are women, including two new mayors – in Qormi and Mosta.

However, those elected represent almost half of the 89 women candidates.

This seems to suggest that the biggest hurdle for more women to be elected is the fact that women put their names on the ballot paper in the first place.

Suffice to say that in – three localities – Attard, Balzan and Marsaxlokk – no women candidates contested.

It is an argument supported by John C. Lane from Buffalo University in the US, who has studied Maltese elections and extensively documented the results in his website maltadata.com.

In a paper written 17 years ago, Prof. Lane argued that a detailed analysis of voting data showed the lack of women legislators in Malta resulted from “the unwillingness or inability of party elites to recruit a substantial number of women candidates”.

On Saturday, the Labour Party had 200 candidates on its ticket but only 37 women as opposed to the Nationalist Party’s 198 candidates of whom 48 were women.

Yet, although Labour fielded fewer women candidates than the PN, it still managed to elect more.

Labour elected 25 women councillors – 68 per cent of its female candidature – including new Qormi mayor Rosianne Cutajar, who was also the most successful Labour woman candidate obtaining 1,445 first count votes.

The PN elected 19 women councillors – 40 per cent of its women candidature – including new Mosta mayor Shirley Farrugia, who obtained 1,367 first count votes.

Dr Farrugia was not the PN’s most successful woman candidate though as Ħamrun councillor Paula Mifsud Bonnici, the PN executive president, obtained 1,396 first count votes.

Alternattiva Demokratika only contested 10 localities, presenting one candidate in each, including two women and there were two women independent candidates. None of these were elected.

No women contested in Attard, Balzan and Marsaxlokk

Women candidates scooped up 19 per cent of the votes cast on Saturday, collecting 20,754 first count votes from a total of 110,907 valid votes cast. The strongest female candidature was in Mosta where eight women contested and four got elected. The PN had six candidates and elected two while Labour had two women candidates who were both elected.

St Paul’s Bay was second in line with six women candidates of whom four were elected councillors. The two major parties fielded three women candidates each and elected two female councillors each.

Of particular interest was the PN’s candidature in Senglea, which was made up completely of women. The PN here elected one councillor.

How the women fared