Nominating women for Europe: Exploring the role of political parties' recruitment procedures for European Parliament elections

Abstract

Drawing on an original dataset covering more than 100 political parties in over 20 European Union Member States, this article analyses how political recruitment procedures affect the proportion of women nominated on party lists in the context of the 2009 European Parliament elections. The findings show that the inclusiveness of the selectorates in the early stage of candidate selection processes is a key determinant of the representativeness of lists regarding their gender composition. Moreover, it is found that neither territorial centralisation nor the inclusiveness of the selectorate in the later stage of candidate selection play a significant role. The key to the puzzle, therefore, lies in the composition of the initial pool of potential candidates and those who make initial nominations.

How Party Systems Shape Local–National Gender Gaps

“…Our findings further suggest that whether, and how, parties consider gender-balanced ticketing in their recruitment and nomination process is consequential for women’s candidacies at all levels of government, which is in line with recent studies comparing the European Parliament to national assemblies (Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger 2015; Lühiste and Kenny 2016). Left-wing parties seem to contribute the largest share of women in parliaments and assemblies at all echelons, while minor parties in particular, but also conservative and right-wing parties, often tend to eschew the topic of female candidacies.…”

The Consequences of Quotas: Assessing the Effect of Varied Gender Quotas on Legislator Experience in the European Parliament

“…Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger (2015) examine women's recruitment to the EP during the 2009 elections and find that female MEPs benefit from recruitment strategies that allow for centralized party selection mechanisms at a mix of regional and national levels. In other work, they also find that women are more likely to win election to the EP when they come from countries or parties that employ gender quotas, are nominated to closed lists, and come from districts with greater numbers of MEPs (Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger 2014; Lühiste 2015).…”

Pathways to power: Women's representation in the 2014 European Parliament elections

“…More importantly, while these standard explanations may offer some insights into why women's representation is higher at the aggregate level in the EP, they do not explain cross‐national and cross‐party variations in women's representation at the EU level (for recent exceptions, see especially Fortin‐Rittberger & Rittberger , ; Luhiste ). As Figure highlights, women's representation is not higher in the EP for all EU Member States, and there is considerable variation across countries and parties in terms of the proportion of female politicians that they send to the EP, casting doubt on the assumption that getting elected to the EP is necessarily easier for women than obtaining a seat in a national parliament.…”

“…Yet, this study makes no reference to women or gender, failing to ask, for example, whether career patterns and the ‘costs’ of becoming an MEP may differ between men and women. Meanwhile, those studies that do refer to gender tend to focus on the role of party‐ or country‐level characteristics in shaping descriptive levels of female representation in the EP (see, e.g., Fortin‐Rittberger & Rittberger , ), but have not considered whether gender shapes the routes and pathways men and women take to the EP.…”

“…Yet, while there is a large body of research dedicated to the relationship between gender, candidate recruitment and women's representation at the national level (see, e.g., Norris & Lovenduski ; Caul ; Kittilson ), decidedly less attention has been paid to the recruitment and representation of women in arguably less competitive ‘second‐order’ elections (SOEs), including those to the EP. The research that does exist on women's representation in the EP, meanwhile, provides a more nuanced picture, highlighting cross‐national as well as cross‐party variations in EP election results (see, e.g., Fortin‐Rittberger & Rittberger , ; Luhiste ). Indeed, in 2014, there were significant cross‐national differences in the exact share of women elected to the EP, ranging from over 50 per cent in Malta, Ireland and Finland to less than 20 per cent in Hungary, Cyprus and Lithuania.…”