The Northern Ireland local elections May 2019 – a gender analysis…
Elections to 11 local councils took place in Northern Ireland on Thursday 2 May 2019. Parties fielded 819 candidates in all. Since the previous local elections in 2014, public debates had raged over social issues such as marriage equality and abortion rights. Women’s empowerment was a regular theme that focused on the relative absence of women in political, economic and social decision-making. In this election, women comprised just 27.5% of candidates (Table 1). Table 1: Candidates by party, 2019 (Number, …