Women’s Leadership in the European Parliament: A Long-Term Perspective

With its consistently higher levels of women’s representation than the average EU member state’s parliament, the European Parliament is often touted as a role model of gender parity. Longitudinal trends of shares of women elected to the EP have been increasing over time and show no sign of being restricted by a glass ceiling. We know surprisingly little about the reasons why women perform better in EP elections and, more importantly, whether these opportunities have translated into positional leadership opportunities for women. In this chapter, we investigate patterns of descriptive representation between countries and over time and identify current hurdles to women’s access to the EP. Additionally, we examine how presence transfers into leadership positions, thus contributing to the study of women’s positional leadership in parliamentary contexts. Our investigation reveals a paradox: While the EP is an exceptional success story for the access of women to elected office, this ostensible absence of a glass ceiling to representation does not entail unlimited vertical mobility for female MEPs. The proportion of women heading committees has remained lower than that of men and the distribution of women in committees follows a gendered pattern. Female MEPs are more likely to head or participate in committees that can be described as “feminine” in substance, while influential committees are still male dominated.