Between Presence and Parenthood: Reforming Maternity Provisions in the European Parliament

The European Parliament (EP) presents itself as a champion of gender equality and a protector of mothers in society, however it remains an institution in which elected representatives still have no access to a true maternity leave. Over the past decade, multiple reform attempts to address this contradiction have failed, revealing deep institutional resistance and strong traditional parliamentary norms. The current reform proposal, advocated by EP President Metsola, including the introduction of proxy voting for mothers, marks the most promising effort to date to reconcile the Parliament’s gender commitments with its procedural rules. This paper investigates why this reform emerged now, how actors inside the Parliament understand and negotiate its meaning, and what the initiative reveals about broader tensions within contemporary parliamentarism—particularly the friction between the foundational norm of the personal mandate and growing pressures for inclusive, gender-sensitive representation. Drawing on interviews with MEPs across party groups and parliamentary administrators involved in drafting and steering the proposal, complemented by documentary analysis, the paper shows that maternity-related proxy voting is far from a straightforward modernization effort. Instead, it is a site of normative contestation. Reform advocates present the initiative as a narrowly tailored correction to structural gender exclusion and as an overdue step toward a more representative Parliament. The few critics and sceptics, however, invoke the symbolic and constitutional weight of the personal mandate, warning of precedent effects and the potential erosion of core parliamentary principles. While centered on internal EP dynamics, the findings also offer insights into how the reform may fare in the Council and Member States: the same tension between procedural purity and inclusive representation that animates debate within the EP is likely to shape national reactions, filtered through diverse parliamentary traditions. The reform thus helps anticipate the challenges ahead in the international negotiation process.