There’s one in Sydney, one in Chile and now Paris has joined the exclusive club of major cities with a woman in charge.
Over the weekend the city made history with the election of Anne Hidalgo as the first female mayor of Paris. Hidalgo has spent the last 13 years as a deputy to outgoing mayor Bertand Delanoe.
The Spanish-born socialist was expected to run extremely close to her centre-right rival during the election, but emerged with 54.5% of the votes in the French capital, beating former government minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.
As the new mayor, Hidalgo will take over the French capital that is home to more than 2 million people. She’ll oversee a $10.5 billion budget and more than 50,000 employees, while also taking the leadership of a city that is facing economic, social and environmental challenges.
Electing the first female mayor to its capital city is a sign that things are progressing for women in French politics. Although the country passed a law in 2000 that requires gender parity among election candidates, it still ranks low on the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Global Gender Gap survey in terms of women’s political empowerment, with more than 80% of parliamentary positions held by men.
Hidalgo will now join the ranks of several other female mayors currently in office in major cities world wide, including Clover Moore, mayor of Sydney, Ana Botella, mayor of Madrid, Corine Mauch, the mayor of Zurich, Cape Town’s Patricia de Lille and Carolina Toha in Santiago.
Meanwhile, Turkey also reached a significant milestone over the weekend with the election of three female mayors across the country.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate for the southeastern province of Gaziantep, Fatma Şahin, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) co-mayoral candidate for the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, Gültan Kışanak, and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate for the Aegean province of Aydın, Özlem Çerçioğlu will take office across the country.