Gender, Language, and Leadership in High-Level European Politics: A Comparative Analysis Across EU Institutions

Over the past five years, there has been an unprecedented increase in women’s representation in top-level positions across the institutions of the European Union (EU), whether in administrative, political, or expert offices. Nonetheless, despite this recent trend, women’s representation in EU leadership remains overall low, unevenly distributed, and often contested, with those in high-profile roles frequently experiencing adverse treatment. Previous research on the nexus between gender, language, and leadership indicates that the multifold constraints impel women leaders to become highly skilled rhetors, applying diverse and nuanced rhetoric. This paper seeks to uncover how language is gendered in high-level EU politics and whether and to what extent women and men leaders employ gender-balanced rhetoric. Concurrently, we ask (1) To what extent do women leaders and their male counterparts across different EU institutions employ “masculine” and “feminine” words in their speeches?; (2) Can we identify any gender hierarchy within the speeches across individuals and genders, where, e.g., “masculine” and “feminine” themes are ghettoized in specific passages or topics of speeches; (3) Are there significant differences concerning individual, female and male speech patterns across different EU institutions?; and, (4) Are there noticeable trends over time, e.g., is gender-balanced language becoming more common, and if so, are women leaders more significantly employing it than their male counterparts? To answer the research questions, the paper focuses on the speeches of the first three female presidents of the European Union serving in office simultaneously: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (2019-2024), European Parliament (EP) President Roberta Metsola (2022-2024), and European Central Bank (ECB) President Christina Lagarde (2019-2024). Furthermore, the paper compares von der Leyen, Metsola, and Lagarde to their two most recent male predecessors (for von der Leyen: Barroso and Juncker; for Metsola: Tajani and Sassoli; for Lagarde: Trichet and Draghi). Employing a dictionary-based approach, the empirical analysis draws on software-assisted content analysis of the full corpus of speeches for the respective case studies between 2003 and 2024 (N = 2,294).