Fatuma Muhumed arrives for an interview with DW glowing, hours before her inauguration as a municipal councilor in Apeldoorn — her first political office alongside her work as a lawyer. Her election was far from certain: ranked 15th on the GroenLinks–PvdA list, she won one of the party’s six seats after a surge of preferential votes. Her rise came through Stem op een Vrouw’s campaign encouraging “smart voting” — asking supporters to pick women listed just below the projected seat cutoff.
In the Netherlands, voters can choose a specific candidate on a party list rather than only the party itself. Parties set list rankings, often placing men higher. Voters tend to select candidates at the top, so Stem op een Vrouw targets women lower on lists, especially those just below expected thresholds. That approach helped Muhumed and about 503 other women secure seats in the latest municipal elections.
Nationally, women’s representation in the Dutch parliament is 43.3%, well above last year’s EU average of 33.6% and the highest since the first female Dutch MP in 1918. At the local level, however, women won only 36.9% of municipal seats in March. Stem op een Vrouw estimates that without strategic preferential voting, that figure would have been 32.7%. Zahra Runderkamp, the group’s lead researcher, calls the result a record for the organization’s decade of campaigning but says parity remains distant.
Gender balance 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) had only 2% women candidates; until 2013 the SGP barred women from standing. Overall, women made up only 32% of candidates across parties. Runderkamp notes that while voters “hacking” the list helps, parties themselves must do more to produce balanced lists.
Barriers to entry and retention extend beyond lists. Research shows girls increasingly view politics as male-dominated as they grow older, reducing interest and leaving fewer visible role models. With fewer women in office, policies are less likely to reflect women’s realities, reinforcing alienation and lowering future candidacies.
Stem op een Vrouw pairs aspiring candidates with experienced women, offering training on applying for posts and campaigning. Muhumed participated in such sessions. But practical obstacles remain: local councilors typically work evenings and weekends alongside paid jobs. Because women still shoulder more unpaid care, this schedule can be incompatible with long-term political participation. A 2024 Ipsos I&O report for the Dutch Interior Ministry found 55% of women politicians face 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; some studies link such attacks to higher dropout rates. Runderkamp warns that evidence is not conclusive that aggression alone drives exits, but she says hostile behavior accumulates and deters women from running or staying in office.
On the day she is sworn in, Muhumed is resolved to serve 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 says, noting the job will not be 9-to-5 but that she plans to keep Sundays for rest.
Edited by: R. Casey