Gender, Sexuality, and Inequality in Parliamentary Careers

Abstract

Despite substantial advances in women’s political representation across Europe, political careers remain structured around norms of constant availability and limited care responsibility. This panel examines how care, parenthood, and unpaid work shape gendered political trajectories across European political institutions, asking not only who enters political office, but how political participation is sustained, performed, and constrained over time. Drawing on research from Spanish municipalities, German local government, the Scottish Parliament, the European Parliament, and comparative European media and survey data, the papers demonstrate how care operates as both a material constraint and a symbolic marker of political legitimacy. The contributions show how motherhood and caregiving generate time pressures and institutional penalties that affect political entry, retention, and patterns of activity, even within institutions often described as family friendly. It also highlights how childlessness, informal encouragement, and solidarity in unpaid work shape gendered opportunity structures. Methodologically diverse, the panel combines qualitative interviews, panel and time-use data, discourse analysis, and candidate surveys to challenge the enduring image of the “unencumbered” political actor. By foregrounding care and time as core dimensions of political life, the panel advances feminist debates on political ambition, descriptive representation, and institutional design in Europe.

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