Institutional Barriers and Ideological Gatekeepers: How Electoral Rules and Party Ideology Shape Women’s Representation in European Parliament Elections

While women’s descriptive representation in European legislatures has seen a steady increase, cross-national and cross-party variations persist. Past research suggest, for example, that PR systems with closed ballot structure are not only encouraging parties to nominate more female candidates, but also increase women’s chances of viable candidacy and getting elected, than systems that allow for a preference vote. Past research also points to considerable cross-party differences, with more liberal and left-leaning parties having more gender-equal parliamentary delegations. However, we have limited knowledge of how different electoral rules may impact various parties’ incentives for supporting women’s candidacy and – more specifically – how their voters react to that. We address this gap by using a purpose-built multi-layered data set, covering five European Parliament elections (1999-2019) and more than 35,000 individual candidacies. The analysis examines how party ideology and electoral rules affect both the supply – the number of female candidates – as well as the demand – their electoral chances. The initial results suggest that party gatekeeping, rather than voter bias, remains the main barrier for increasing women’s political representation. Furthermore, women candidates face particular difficulties in open list/STV systems and when running for eurosceptic and socially conservative parties.