Women are still absent from top roles in politics and public life, accounting for less than a third of local councillors - a report claims.
Research suggests only 32.7% of local councillors in the UK are women, alongside only 13.1% of council leaders. On top of this, over 81% of elected mayors are men.
Campaign group Counting Women In said the level of women councillors remains 'stubbornly stuck', only rising by 0.7% since 2013.
Figures suggest women predominate in local public service, with over three quarters of both full and part-time local government officers being female.
Yet according to Sex and Power 2014, the representation of women in English local government has been 'stagnant' for more than a decade.
'This is despite the (more or less) sustained use of positive action by the Labour Party and the fielding of relatively high numbers of women candidates at this level by the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party', the report said.
Further findings from the report reveal just over 22% of MPs and the UK Cabinet are women.
'All political parties (including those with representation in the devolved bodies) should take immediate action (or continue to take action) to increase the number of women candidates at all levels of election, and to draw those candidates from as wide a variety of backgrounds and communities as possible,' the report said.
'All organisations - public, private and third sector - should take steps to ensure that, both before and during the election campaign, at meetings and events, both women and men appear on platforms as speakers.'
Nan Sloane, director of the centre for women and democracy, said the report ‘shows a shocking absence of women from powerful roles in Britain, with very little improvement since last year’.
‘Along with other excluded groups women have already waited for generations for equal access to power, and we’re still being asked to wait decades to achieve it. That’s not good enough; we need real change now.’
