The European Parliament's political groups have traditionally been studied using quantitative methods and roll call votes. This article expands such research agendas by applying qualitative methods and interview data to expose existing power relations not just on macro level but within and between political groups. This generates insights on the ways in which radical right populism impacts on democratic practices and their erosion in parliamentary politics. The article examines intergroup and intragroup activities as fundamental, under-researched areas of the functioning of political group. The research material consists of 123 interviews with members of the European Parliament and staff and ethnographic field notes all gathered in Brussels and Strasbourg between 2018 and 2020. The findings show that the impact of radical right populism on political group dynamics cannot be understood by focusing on formal institutions only but has to be analysed at the level of informal institutions.

The chapter analyzes how leadership continues to be gendered in the European Parliament (EP), failing to provide a level playing field for MEPs. It focuses on the leadership positions provided by the political groups of the Parliament. Political groups have grown in importance alongside the institutional development of the EP, and leadership positions within them encompass those responsible for political, policy, and administrative leadership. This chapter analyzes political leadership in terms of political group leaders and national party delegation leaders; policy leadership in terms of nominations to the key positions of committee chairs and coordinators; and administrative leadership in terms of political groups’ secretaries general. We use extensive interview material (n=123), which covers MEPs and staff and includes responses to questions about political, policy, and administrative leadership within the political groups in the 8th (2014–2019) and 9th legislatures (2019–2024). Key findings show how men continue to dominate political leadership despite the gender-equal reputation of the EP. A particular hidden gendered structure is the leadership of national party delegations, where women are significantly in the minority. Policy leadership, in contrast, is the most gender-balanced area, though the conservative European People’s Party (EPP)—the biggest political group—is a notable exception in this regard. Finally, women are underrepresented in administrative leadership of the political groups. Gendered norms and practices continue to shape the scope of action within these leadership positions and underpin the challenges involved in making the EP a gender-equal arena.

We present data on the proportions and seniority of female and male political scientists working in the UK. Comparing the results with previous research from 2011, we find that progress has been made. However, progress has been incremental and we find no qualitative changes in the status of female political scientists: they continue to be outnumbered by their male counterparts; they are overrepresented in the least senior job groups and underrepresented in the most senior; and the average female political scientist occupies a less senior position than the average male counterpart. We also run regression analyses to explore the impact of broader contextual factors on the proportion of female political scientists within a unit and that unit’s ‘gender seniority gap’. We find evidence that gender equality kitemarks, university mission group membership, the gender of the Head of Unit and Vice-Chancellor and the proportion of female members of university governance bodies appear to matter for one or both of these measures but not always in the direction that might be expected. These results, then, raise questions about what strategies might be pursued by those who wish to improve the status of women in the profession.

Feminist political scientists are internationally developing conceptual and methodological tools and are making deep empirical excavations, in order to build knowledge about parliaments as gendered workplaces. It is not surprising that this endeavour is growing. Parliaments reproduce the contemporary gender order in their policies, practices, symbols, and leadership. This book focuses on the fascinating institutional arena of the UK House of Commons, drawing on extensive field research conducted in the 2010–2015 parliament. This introductory chapter outlines the book’s contribution to studying the operation of gender in parliaments and situates it amongst contemporary gender and legislative studies approaches. The chapter sets out parliamentary ethnography as a promising approach to explore parliaments as gendered workplaces. This is because parliamentary ethnography can thicken explorations of inequalities and how power is exercised at the capillaries of parliaments. Parliamentary ethnography also reduces the risk of over-generalisation when identifying possibilities for agency in institutional arenas. The chapter finally introduces the structure and chapters that comprise the book and combine to produce a thick analysis of the operation of gender ‘beneath the spectacle’ in the UK House of Commons.

Gender and politics scholars are conceptualising parliaments as workplaces, drawing on feminist institutionalist frameworks. Ethnography is a promising methodology that can be used to capture how gender is repeated over time. Ethnography offers scholars opportunities to explore heterogeneity by analysing actors as multiply positioned – with and through institutional rules – and affords attention to ambiguity and contradictions by examining everyday ambivalences. Furthermore, it can nuance conceptions of agency, treating agency as in process rather than as static. Despite these potentials, this article finds that the pairing between ethnography and institutionalism has been problematised and considers these concerns in depth. The diversity of feminist institutionalism across epistemological leanings makes for an important reflexive exercise about what ethnography can offer and how it can be practised. More specifically, the article argues that feminist institutionalism can be thickened with ethnography and by drawing on Butler’s concepts of interpellations, undoing and iterability.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Ethnography is not a homogeneous methodology and there are several approaches that can be chosen from across epistemological divides.</li><br /><li>Feminist institutionalists have made important contributions to integrating heterogeneity, agency and contradictions in their research practices, and feminist institutionalism may be a powerful pairing with ethnographic methodology.</li><br /><li>If we think through agency, heterogeneity and contradictions even further with/through Judith Butler’s concepts, this can add value to feminist institutionalism and deepen our understanding of ‘how’ gender is reproduced in parliaments.</li></ul>