Rhetoric and Leadership: A Comparison of Female Vice-Presidents of the European Commission

The acute lack of women’s leadership throughout the history of the European Commission is best illustrated by contrasting the list of female vice-presidents with the overall number of presidents and vice-presidents that have run the institution to date: Of 89 presidents and vice-presidents between 1958 and 2019, only five have been women (not including the two female High Representatives). Analysing women’s and men’s rhetoric, this paper focuses on the five female politicians who have served as vice-presidents of the European Commission thus far: Loyola di Palacio (1999–2004), Margot Wallström (2004–9), Viviane Reding (2009–14), Neelie Kroes (2009–14) and Kristalina Georgieva (2014–16). The paper studies the leadership performance of these commissioners by systematically comparing their rhetoric throughout their incumbencies. Adopting an explorative approach, it examines what characterizes EU women leaders’ rhetoric, as well as how and in what ways their rhetoric differs from that of their male counterparts. In addition, the paper evaluates to what extent EU female leaders make use of charismatic rhetoric in their speeches, and what trends may be identified over time. Empirically, the analysis is based on software-assisted content analysis (DICTION) of the entire corpus of speeches of the respective female vice-presidents of the European Commission, as well as male and female commissioners, male vice-presidents and presidents between 1999 and 2019.