Fatuma Muhumed arrived for an interview with DW glowing just hours before being sworn in as a municipal councilor in Apeldoorn — her first elected office alongside work as a lawyer. Her election was far from guaranteed: she was 15th on the GroenLinks–PvdA list and captured one of the party’s six seats after a surge of preferential votes. Her breakthrough came through Stem op een Vrouw’s “smart voting” campaign, which urges supporters to give preference to women listed just below the expected seat cutoff.
In the Netherlands voters can pick a specific candidate on a party list rather than only voting for the party. Parties set those lists and often rank men higher; many voters default to top-listed names. Stem op een Vrouw exploits that dynamic by steering votes to women who sit just under projected thresholds. That tactic helped Muhumed and roughly 503 other women win seats in the most recent municipal elections.
Nationally, women hold 43.3% of seats in the Dutch parliament — well above last year’s EU average of 33.6% and the highest proportion since the first female Dutch MP in 1918. Locally, however, the picture is weaker: women won 36.9% of municipal seats in March. Stem op een Vrouw estimates that without strategic preferential voting the share would have been 32.7%. Zahra Runderkamp, the group’s lead researcher, calls the result a record for the decade-long campaign but stresses that full parity remains distant.
Gender balance also varies sharply by party. The left-wing Party for the Animals was the only party with a majority of women candidates. At the other extreme, the conservative Reformed Political Party (SGP) listed just 2% women candidates; the party barred women from standing until 2013. Across parties, women made up only 32% of candidates overall. Runderkamp argues that while voters “hacking” the list can make a difference, parties themselves must produce more balanced slates.
Barriers run beyond list placement. Research shows girls increasingly view politics as a male domain as they grow older, reducing interest and producing fewer visible role models. With fewer women in office, policies are less likely to reflect women’s realities, reinforcing alienation and depressing future candidacies.
Stem op een Vrouw also pairs aspiring candidates with experienced politicians and offers training on applying for roles and campaigning; Muhumed took part in those sessions. But practical obstacles persist: local councilors usually meet in evenings and weekends while holding paid jobs, and women still shoulder disproportionate unpaid care responsibilities, making sustained political participation difficult. A 2024 Ipsos I&O report for the Dutch Interior Ministry found 55% of women politicians have faced aggression, compared with 37% of men. Muhumed says she received racist insults during her TikTok campaign.
Across Europe many women politicians report threats, smear campaigns and abuse, and some studies link such attacks to higher dropout rates. Runderkamp cautions that evidence is not conclusive that aggression alone forces people out, but she warns that hostile behavior accumulates and deters women from running or staying in office.
On the day she was sworn in, Muhumed said she was determined to complete her term and to bridge gaps between citizens and politicians. “I’m really happy that I can now represent more people of color, but also young women,” she said, noting the role will not be 9-to-5 but that she plans to keep Sundays for rest.
Edited by R. Casey.