Women in urban politics: Constructing the gender display on the example of mayors of Polish cities

The article raises the question of whether the gender of a politician influences his activity on social networks in the context of the personalization of urban politics. As an example, the activity of female mayors of large Polish cities in the last decade is analyzed, namely Warsaw, Lodz and Gdansk, where women held the posts of city leaders several times in a row. An attempt is made to identify typical women’s topics in the topics of posts that women in high political positions choose to discuss. An evaluable hypothesis is that female mayors are more likely than male mayors to focus on traditionally “feminine” issues such as education, health and the environment, while male mayors are more focused on traditionally “masculine” issues, e.g., economics and business. The trajectories of the political careers of Polish women mayors and their activity on social networks are compared. It is concluded that female mayors use social networks both to interact with voters and to express their own position on various political issues, while at the same time preferring to leave private information outside of social networks.