The difficult game for gender equality in Europe

The difficult game for gender equality in Europe

The atmosphere is not good for gender equality in Europe these days. With the elections last June, the European Parliament went back ten years in terms of female representatives, and the appointments to the Commission do not show an encouraging trend either. This despite the fact that several of the institutions’ top positions are held by women representatives.

Of the 719 MEPs officially installed in Strasbourg, only 277 are women. This is 38.5% of the total, or two and a half percentage points less than in the previous legislature (the ninth), which at its inauguration in 2019 had 41 women for every 100 elected members. It is the first time since the European elections (1979) that this figure has decreased rather than increased: the first time, female legislators in the Chamber were 16% of the total and this percentage continued to grow until the elections last June. The figure closest to today’s 38.5% is that of 2014, when in the eighth legislature 37% of the members of the hemicycle were women.

How are the parliamentary groups doing?

This is the situation at an aggregate level. The composition of the individual political groups, in terms of female presence in their staff, has remained almost unchanged compared to the previous legislature. With the sole exception of the Conservatives and Reformists (Ecr), to which the deputies of Fratelli d’Italia and the Polish PiS belong: five years ago it welcomed 30.5% of women among its ranks, while now this portion has been reduced to 21.8%.

For the other groups, the difference between 2019 and 2024 is negligible, and even the relative order (from the one with the fewest women to the one with the most women in percentage terms) has remained the same. The ECR confirms itself as the group where female legislators are least represented, followed by the non-inscribed, by the Europe of sovereign nations (ESN, the new group created by the AfD, has 32% of female members). Immediately after us we find the other two right-wing formations, namely the Christian Democrats of the People’s Party (EPP) and the far right (first Identity and Democracy, now Patriots for Europe): the former remain just under 37%, the latter almost at 41%, above the average of the Chamber. Finally, the groups ranging from the centre (Renew) to the radical left (The Left) are all above average, with the Greens (Greens/Efa) placing themselves “first” in this ranking with 51.11% in 2019 and 50.9% in 2024.

According to several observers, this development is worrying because it would confirm the hostility of a good part of the political forces of the right (especially the radical one) towards gender equality and women’s rights. The response that regularly comes from this part of the political spectrum usually has to do with questions of presumed meritocracy: we do not look at the gender of the candidates but at the solidity of their profile, or other variations on the theme. In reality, critics point out, the problem would be even further upstream: in the selection of the staff, in the barriers to access, in the political culture that (dis)incentivises women from undertaking a path of representation, and many other things.

In any case, this is certainly not an unknown reality in the European Parliament. Especially when it comes to positions of power. The presidency of the Chamber itself has been in the hands of only three women from 1979 to today – one of whom, the current president Roberta Metsola, has obtained two consecutive mandates.

The committees of the Chamber

And things are no better in the secretariats of parliamentary commissions: in the tenth legislature there are only nine women presidents out of 24, that is, 37.5% of the total. According to data compiled by the newspaper Politicin the previous legislature, it was more common for female legislators to obtain top roles in areas such as gender equality, employment and social affairs, while men had a sort of monopoly on issues such as foreign affairs, constitutional affairs, security and the budget.

An attempt to address the issue by revising the internal rules of the Chamber was made last November. One idea was to introduce a constraint to ensure that the composition of the committees in terms of gender reflected that of the hemicycle as a whole. But, at least for now, gender quotas have not been formally introduced in the European Parliament. And it shows: in 13 of the 24 Strasbourg committees (including subcommittees), the percentage of women is below the average of the Parliament, in six it is equal to or less than 20% and in one (Constitutional Affairs) it is even stuck at 13%. Also in this legislature, the committees with the highest presence of female MEPs are the one on women’s rights and gender equality (Femm, almost 90%), on culture (63.3%) and on social affairs (almost 57%).

In the words of Spanish Socialist MEP Lina Gálvez (newly elected president of Femm), “there is indeed a segregation” between male and female MEPs. Even more so now that, to facilitate the delicate political agreements between the forces that support the “Ursula 2.0” majority, the rules that prohibited filling the secretariats of the commissions with representatives of the same gender have been suspended. And yet, Gálvez claims, if even in the most “segregated” commission (that is, her Femm, where only four out of 39 members are men) they managed to elect a office mixed, there should be hope for all the others too.

The European Commission’s game

As for the EU executive, newly re-elected President Ursula von der Leyen (who broke the Berlaymont glass ceiling in 2019) will also have her work cut out to deliver on her promise to put together another College that respects gender balance. The first von der Leyen Commission had 13 women and 14 men, a record for equality (at least nominally) in the history of the institution. But assembling the team for her second term may require more effort to maintain substantial parity while keeping all Twenty-Seven happy.

For her part, the president in pectore She asked the bloc’s governments to provide her with the names of their candidates for the next Commission by the end of August. Those who do not reappoint the outgoing commissioners will have to provide the names of one woman and one man for their country’s box.

Therefore, considering that there will be some competition to grab the heaviest delegations and portfolios, this request should in theory benefit the chancelleries that will focus on female profiles. This should be the case in Madrid, which has already announced that it wants to focus on the head of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, but also in Stockholm and Helsinki, which will respectively propose Jessika Roswall (Minister for European Affairs) and Henna Virkkunen (MEP in her third term).

Another woman technically already secured in the next EU executive, in addition to the president, should be the Estonian Kaja Kallas, who has been indicated by the leaders of the member states as the next High Representative. Among those reconfirmed, for now, the only woman is the Croatian Dubravka Suica, who in the first von der Leyen Commission had the portfolio of Democracy and demography. In addition to her, five men are presenting themselves for an encore in Brussels: the Latvian Valdis Dombrovskis (former head of the Economy), the Slovakian Maros Sefcovic (outgoing commissioner for Interinstitutional Relations), the Dutch Wopke Hoekstra (who had the delegation for Climate), the Hungarian Olivér Várhelyi (who presided over Enlargement) and the French Thierry Breton (who managed the Internal Market).