Abstract
The European Parliament is often praised for its gender-equal composition and its high descriptive representation of women. However, there is a remarkable gender gap between the representation of women at the national and European level, and it is debated how these variations can be explained. After discussing theories of representation and reviewing data from the European Parliament on the share of women in national delegations and the political groups in the 9th European Parliament after Brexit, this paper evaluates whether institutional and contextual factors can explain the gender gap between the national and supranational level. It argues that the representation of women cannot be sufficiently explained by the institutional rules. Instead, ambitious national rules in some member states and the parties’ role as gatekeepers can explain the high representation of women. These findings have implications for promoting gender equality in politics in the EU.
Highlights
The European Parliament (EP) is widely considered a role model for the high descriptive representation of women and is described as an “equality champion” (Abels, 2019, p. 407) or a “success story” (Chiva, 2019, p. 419)
This paper considered the descriptive representation of women in the 9th EP and analyzed whether the high percentage of women can be better explained by institutional or contextual factors
It addressed the question of whether the EP lived up to its exemplary status in terms of the descriptive representation of women that it often holds in the research literature
Summary
The European Parliament (EP) is widely considered a role model for the high descriptive representation of women and is described as an “equality champion” (Abels, 2019, p. 407) or a “success story” (Chiva, 2019, p. 419). The analysis of the 9th EP in Section 3 shows that many developments of recent years persist, as women’s representation varies widely by political groups and MS, just like the extent of the gender gap between the national and European level. While this paper relies on the notion of descriptive representation for analytical purposes, one should keep in mind that a high descriptive representation of women not always leads to more feminist policy outcomes This is even more relevant when farright parties increase both their vote share and their share of women (to attract female voters or because of institutional features), since their increased presence might lead to less feminist policies and could have detrimental effects for more marginalized women, like Muslim or immigrant women
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