Women in local politics

Most agree women are underrepresented as local political officeholders and that they are even less likely to hold the most important local political offices. We argue that to a large extent this stems from systematic factors related to the community as an ongoing social system. The community process of recruitment to political office has a built‐in bias in favor of certain types of men. Change agents should accept the challenge and use the opportunity to enhance the participation of women in the political decision making of the community.