Women’s representation in the European Parliament after the 2019 elections

Abstract :

What do four decades of direct elections to the European Parliament (EP) have to tell us about women’s representation in Europe’s supranational legislature? Scholars and commentators generally agree that the EP has been a success story in this respect: while, in 1979, 16 per cent of the newly elected Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were women, a preliminary estimate of the proportion of women MEPs after the 2019 elections is closer to 40 per cent.

Furthermore, the proportion of women MEPs has increased in every election since 1979, in many cases well beyond the levels found in some national legislatures. At this rate, the EP is fast approaching gender parity, perhaps to be attained within the next two or three election cycles. This progress notwithstanding, a closer look at the 2019 elections to the EP reveals a much more nuanced picture than the broad-brush sketch suggests. Overall, there is significant variation in terms of women’s representation among the 28 member states of the European Union (EU), between the EP’s party groups and between parties of different ideological orientation. Let us address each of these sources of variation in turn.