Dec. 13, 2025, 7:52 p.m.
(PHOTO: https://50vidsotkiv.org.ua/)
Ukraine's path to democratic consolidation, which has been underway for more than 30 years, has been invariably accompanied by discussions about the quality of political representation and the degree to which the government matches the demographic profile of society. When it comes to gender equality, the number of women in the Verkhovna Rada or local councils is often referred to, creating the illusion of gradual progress through the introduction of quotas.
However, there is a level of power where patriarchal structures and clan models have proven to be surprisingly resilient, and social elevators for women are almost non-existent. We are talking about the positions of city mayors, which are key positions in the local government system that provide for direct control over executive bodies, budgetary flows, and community resources.
The Odesa region, with its specific political culture, powerful regional elites, and strategic importance, is an illustrative case study for these processes, as it is here that the gender imbalance in the executive branch has reached critical levels. The analysis of the data for the period of independence is striking in its unambiguity: for more than thirty years, only one woman has held the position of mayor in nineteen cities of Odesa Oblast. This fact is not a statistical anomaly, but rather a symptom of a deeply entrenched system that requires not just a statement, but a thorough analysis of the informal "rules of the game" and institutional barriers that have effectively blocked women's access to mayoralty in this key region.
It should be noted that local self-government is traditionally defined as the right guaranteed by the state and the real ability of a territorial community to independently resolve local issues, but the key aspect is not only the formal right to elect and be elected, but also the "real ability" to acquire power, which, as practice shows, is extremely unevenly distributed. In political science, gender representation is considered in two dimensions. The first one - descriptive or descriptive - captures the quantitative presence of women in government, answering the question "how many". The second - substantive or substantive - is a qualitative indicator and analyzes whether elected representatives act in the interests of women and promote policies that meet specific gender-based needs. Modern research emphasizes that simply increasing the number of women in politics does not automatically guarantee a transition to substantive representation, as women are often forced to assimilate and accept established "masculine" rules of the game in order to survive in a highly competitive and often hostile political environment. This distinction is fundamentally important for understanding why even isolated cases of women being elected to leadership positions do not always lead to systemic changes in approaches to governance.
To assess the scale of the problem in the Odesa region, it is necessary to consider it in the national context, which demonstrates a slow but still noticeable evolution of the gender balance, achieved mainly through coercive mechanisms. Ukrainian politics in the first decades of independence was deeply androcentric, as the dynamics of women's representation in the Verkhovna Rada vividly illustrates. Until 2012, this representation never reached even 10%.
Representation of women in the Verkhovna Rada. IMAGE: https://50vidsotkiv.org.ua/
Women functioned mainly at lower levels of government, and political parties showed no interest in promoting gender equality. The situation began to change only under pressure from civil society and international commitments. Fundamental changes were brought about by the 2020 Electoral Code, which introduced a mandatory 40/60 quota in party lists as a condition for registration. The results of the 2020 local elections immediately revealed the so-called "quota paradox." Where the quota was in place - in the elections to councils on party lists - it yielded tangible results, increasing women's representation to an unprecedented 27-41%, depending on the type of council. However, the positions of community heads are elected under the majority system, which is not subject to quotas. As a result, women have entered the local legislature in large numbers, but the executive branch - the position of mayor - has remained almost entirely male. The national rate of women leading communities after 2020 was only 16.6%. This figure is a critical benchmark for assessing the situation in individual regions.
Against the backdrop of this all-Ukrainian benchmark, the situation in Odesa region looks like a glaring regional anomaly. A comprehensive analysis of the data on mayors of nineteen cities in the region - from Odesa to Vilkovo and from Kodyma to Reni - since 1991 allows us to draw unambiguous conclusions. During this time, more than a hundred mayoral cadences have taken place, and only in one case did a woman win - Alla Hynak, who headed Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi in 2015-2019. The quantitative indicator of women's representation among mayors by cadence is less than one percent. The results of the last local elections in 2020 are even more revealing: zero percent of women among the elected mayors of Odesa region compared to 16.6 percent on average in Ukraine. This indicates that there is a steady trend in the region towards the complete exclusion of women from the struggle for the highest positions in the executive branch of the community. This regional anomaly raises questions about the specifics of the local political culture and mechanisms of elite formation, which have proven to be much more resistant to national trends of gender egalitarianism than in other regions of Ukraine.
Given the uniqueness of Alla Hynak's case, it deserves an in-depth analysis, as exceptions often best illuminate the nature of the system that generates them. What made this election possible and does it indicate that gender barriers have been overcome? Alla Hynak was elected mayor in 2015 as a candidate of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc Solidarity party. This fact is crucial, as 2015 was the period of maximum influence of the presidential political force. Her victory was not the result of a grassroots women's movement or the success of an independent candidate who challenged the system - it was a classic case of party co-optation. Hynak's path to power is explained by two key factors: the power of the national "ruling party" brand and the availability of significant personal resources, as she was a well-known big business owner before entering politics. Her case shows not the destruction of patriarchal structures, but successful integration into them, provided she has sufficient financial and political capital. An analysis of her term shows that she acted within the existing masculine system, focusing on traditional "economic" issues and implementing the party line. There is no evidence that she promoted a specific "women's" agenda, which confirms the lack of substantive representation and illustrates the so-called "loyalty trap" when a politician is forced to play by the established rules in order not to look weak.
IMAGE: https://cpi.org.ua/
A further analysis of Alla Hynak's career reveals deeper layers of the functioning of local elites in the Odesa region, where political activity is often a continuation of business interests, creating a specific environment of clan governance. The foundation of her influence is the Belsta shoe factory, one of the largest enterprises in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, where Hynak served as CEO before being elected mayor. The combination of the roles of mayor and de facto owner of a key budget-forming enterprise creates a classic model of a business politician for whom access to administrative levers and budgetary resources is no less important than production capacity. This model of governance, where public office is used as a tool to protect one's own economic interests, creates the ground for chronic corruption risks and conflicts of interest. After her mayoral term ended and she was defeated in the 2020 elections, she continued her political career by becoming a member of the Odesa Regional Council from the For the Future party, which shows a consistent search for a political umbrella to protect her assets and maintain influence at the regional level.
IMAGE: https://cpi.org.ua/
An illustration of such a system is the situation around the financing of work in the Akkerman fortress during Hynak's term, when millions of budget contracts were at risk due to the close intertwining of family business and the executive branch. Although the guilt of a particular person in these cases has not been legally established by the court, the very fact that the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption decided to fully verify her declarations indicates that there are publicly important questions about the efficiency of the use of budget funds. The property portrait of Alla Hynak, based on the analysis of her official declarations, confirms her status as a representative of a large regional business elite. According to the Center for Public Investigations, in 2022, she declared over UAH 23 million in income, mostly from business activities, which made her one of the five richest deputies of the regional council. The scale of her real estate, including a country house near Odesa with an area of more than a thousand square meters, as well as significant foreign currency assets, form a picture of classic "latifundists" on a regional scale who convert their economic capital into political influence and vice versa. Thus, the only example of a female mayor in Odesa region is not a story of a gender breakthrough, but rather an illustration of how a woman can succeed in politics only if she integrates into the existing patriarchal and clan system, accepts its rules of the game and has significant financial resources.
An analysis of the reasons that block women's access to mayoral positions in Odesa region allows us to identify several levels of barriers that form a multi-layered system of exclusion. At the institutional level, the main problem is the absence of gender quotas in the majority elections of mayors. This legislative gap allows parties to nominate predominantly male candidates without being held accountable for this. This is compounded by the system of campaign financing, which requires huge financial resources that women traditionally have much less access to due to structural economic inequality. The election of a mayor of a large city is an extremely expensive campaign that can only be afforded by representatives of big business or candidates backed by powerful financial and industrial groups.
Cities and towns of Odesa region. PHOTO: https://oda.odessa.gov.ua
At the political and cultural level, closed patronage networks dominate. The Odesa region is known for its clan-based political culture, based on the close intertwining of business, criminal and regional elites. These networks are deeply patriarchal and function like "men's clubs" where decisions are made behind the scenes and loyalty is based on personal connections and shared economic interests. For a woman who is not part of these networks or does not have a powerful patron, it is almost impossible to penetrate this system. Political parties at the regional level often act as gatekeepers, controlling access to political office and favoring male candidates who are seen as more predictable and negotiable.
At the socio-cultural level, persistent gender stereotypes continue to exist among both elites and voters. Executive power, municipal management, and the ability to lead tough are unconsciously associated with masculinity. The image of the "strong businessman" that dominates Ukrainian local politics is deeply gendered. At the same time, women in politics face a higher "personal cost" due to the burden of dual employment - the need to balance career and family responsibilities, which often becomes an additional deterrent. Finally, media and security barriers should not be underestimated. Women politicians are much more likely to face online violence, sexist comments, and attacks on their appearance and private life rather than on their professional qualities or political program. This creates a toxic environment that discourages many potential candidates from participating in public politics. Even in the case of Alla Hynak, media coverage of her activities sometimes shifted from managerial decisions to personal circumstances, such as a car accident, which creates additional psychological pressure.
Are there any factors that facilitate women's involvement in local politics in the region? Paradoxically, the main catalyst is also the main trap: party support. As Hinak's case proves, the only social elevator that works is a nomination from a powerful national party with the necessary resources. However, this creates a "loyalty trap" - the party chooses a loyal candidate who happens to be a woman rather than a leader who will promote gender equality. Another positive factor is the work of international organizations, such as NDI or IRI, which conduct leadership training and educational programs for women. However, these programs provide the necessary skills, but do not provide the main thing - access to closed patronage networks and multimillion-dollar election budgets, which are crucial in the fight for the mayoralty. They create a high-quality talent pool that, however, remains unclaimed at the executive level.
IMAGE: https://web.archive.org/
In the context of a full-scale war and hybrid aggression , gender imbalance and the clan model of governance in a strategic region are turning from a matter of social justice into a matter of national security. Odesa region, especially its southern part - Budzhak, has been repeatedly considered as an area of potential destabilization. In this context, the dominance of closed business groups that control large enterprises, have significant media influence, and combine political positions with economic interests creates additional risks. A separate set of risks is associated with assets and business ties outside the government-controlled territory of Ukraine. Open corporate registers record Alla Hinak's participation as a beneficiary in companies associated with addresses in Yalta, in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The fact of having business interests in the temporarily occupied territory, although it does not automatically mean cooperation with the occupation authorities, creates potential vulnerability and possible leverage on the part of external actors. This is not a statement about the cooperation of a particular person with the enemy, but a cold analysis of the risks inherent in a system where public authorities and big business are so tightly intertwined that any crisis turns such a "clan" into a potential channel of external influence.
Thus, the Odesa region is a unique exclusion zone for women in local government, where the "glass ceiling" has proven to be virtually impenetrable. The analysis demonstrated almost zero descriptive representation of women as mayors over the entire period of independence, which is much worse than the national level. This situation is caused not so much by the lack of qualified candidates as by a deeply rooted clan-based political culture and the dominance of closed patriarchal patronage networks. The only successful case was made possible not by overcoming the system, but by co-opting it through the mechanisms of the "ruling party" and attracting significant personal capital, which only confirms the dominance of the business-oriented model of local elites. The study also clearly confirmed the "national paradox of quotas" - mandatory quotas in party lists led to an increase in the number of women in local councils, but had no impact on mayoral elections, which are held under the majority system. This proves that the existing mechanisms are completely insufficient to achieve gender parity in the executive branch. Without systemic changes, including the expansion of quotas for majoritarian positions, reform of the campaign finance system, and dismantling of clan structures, the situation in Odesa region is unlikely to change, and the executive branch will continue to have an exclusively male face, which creates not only corruption risks but also threats to national security.
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