Women in Local Government WA Statistics

At the conclusion of the Extraordinary elections held in October 2020, the WAWA’s compiled a list of all Local Governments to evaluate the gender balance on Councils across WA. The results are represented in the infographic below:

Regional Breakdown

For the purposes of meaningful data analysis, specified targeted areas, and as WA is an exceptionally large area to cover, the results from this research were broken down into regional areas as below:

Findings

Unfortunately there are 3 Councils that are lacking women altogether, and 12 that are at great risk of becoming all male at the next election.

There is also a shortage of Females in Council leadership roles such as Mayor/Shire President. 

The 3 Councils with no women (Dinosaurs) currently elected:

• Shire of Woodanilling
• Shire of Meekatharra
• Shire of Boddington

The 12 Councils (Dozen in Danger) at risk of becoming all male with only 1 woman currently elected are:

• Shire of Beverly
• Shire of Carnamah
• Shire of Carnarvon
• Shire of Christmas Island
• Shire of Coorow
• Shire of Cuballing
• Shire of Cunderdin
• Shire of Gingin
• Shire of Murchison
• Shire of Perenjori
• Shire of Shark Bay
• Shire of Wandering

The Metro Councils with low female representation are:

• City of Canning (20%)
• City of South Perth (22%)
• Town of East Fremantle (22%)
• Shire of Mundaring (25%)
• City of Joondalup (31%)
• City of Nedlands (31%)

Next Steps

The WAWA's seek to improve these statistics through the 'Standing Up' program, empowering women to nominate in the Local Government Elections. To find out more about this program, click on the button below:

Standing Up

Once the 2021 Local Government Elections have concluded, these stats will be reviewed and updated to see what progress towards gender equality has been made in each region.