EU Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman: Politics of Women's Representation in the EU Parliament

Riccardo Di Leo
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EU Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman: Politics of Women's Representation in the EU Parliament

Riccardo Di Leo (European University Institute) 

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ABSTRACT:

Since its inception, the European Parliament (EP) has experienced an almost parallel rise in the share of elected women and in the number of member states mandating gender quotas at the party list level. Building upon the "critical mass" framework and combining several data sources, we provide a comprehensive assessment of the effect of quotas on women's descriptive and substantive representation in the EP. We find that, despite (mechanically) raising the number of female candidates to the EP, quotas left the share of elected women unaffected. While failing to boost voters' likelihood to vote for women, the policy made, in fact, party selectorates more likely to relegate female candidates to the bottom of the electoral lists. Nevertheless, quotas appear to have raised the average discipline of male MEPs in Roll Call Votes. We show that this side effect of the policy is driven by a reduction in the re-electability perspectives of male incumbents, due to the lower number of slots “available” to men in party lists.

BIO:

Riccardo Di Leo is a Research Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. He is part of the ERC-funded Project POSTNORM ("Post-Authoritarian Norms and the Ideological Legacy of. Dictatorships"). His research focuses on the study of public opinion, with applications to the civil-military gap, terrorism in Western countries, and historical legacies. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Warwick.