A Progressive Parliament, Really? Party Political Struggles Around Gender in the European Parliament

Abstract

The European Parliament (EP) has been seen as the most gender equal actor of the EU institutions: it has strengthened law proposals, raised new gender equality issues on the agenda, and held the other institutions accountable for the promotion of gender equality. Yet there are big differences between the EP’s political groups’ views on gender equality issues, and the groups construct gender in different ways in relation to different policy fields. Gender has also increasingly become a battlefield between the political groups as well as within them, as calls to men’s and women’s traditional roles in society, opposition to sexual and reproductive rights, and views of gender equality as a dangerous ‘gender ideology’ have been gaining ground in the EP due to conservatism, nationalism and populism. Also neoliberalism has shaped policies and constructions of gender equality at national as well as EU-levels. This panel studies party political dynamics and gendered power struggles in the policy-making of the European Parliament in these turbulent times. More specifically, the panel looks at constructions of gender equality in different policy areas as well as lines of contestations and consensus within and between the groups; discursive strategies used by the groups and MEPs to defend and oppose gender equality; and the effects of formal and informal practices of policy-formation within and between the groups on the EP’s policies. The panel explores political contestations around gender equality in three different policy areas. These cover explicitly gendered issues (gendered violence); issues where the centrality of gender is recognized but easily eclipsed (European Pillar of Social Rights), and issues where gendered consequences are severe, but linkages to gender are often omitted (EU’s post-crisis economic governance). The panel provides a multidimensional understanding of party political contestation around gender and gender equality beneath EP’s progressive surface. Thus it contributes to recent efforts within feminist EU studies to nuance the understanding of the EP as a gender friendly actor and shed light on the complex dynamics around gender in the EP.

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