Political Masculinities in the European Parliament

The numerical gender gap in political representation has steadily closed over the last decades across democracies worldwide. Nonetheless, men are still overrepresented, and especially majority identity men. Crucially, and less often studied, the male-coded norms that historically defined the political arena remain largely intact, with the success of women politicians often depending at least in part on their ability to adhere to traditionally masculine ways of performing in political office. The work of MEPs revolves around changing spaces, from plenary sessions, in which they perform the public-facing democratic rituals, to committees and informal meetings, in which some of the actual decision-making takes place. They operate in a highly disaggregated environment, often have to veer outside their areas of expertise, and usually face a large disconnect between what is expected of them and what they can actually accomplish. In this environment, traditionally male-coded dominant political behaviors like boasting, virtue signaling, stubbornness, an exaggeration are easily reinforced and rewarded—regardless of their gender identity. This paper therefore focuses on systemic privilege and asks why and how masculine norms remain dominant in European Politics. I.e.: we study how men politicians set, reinforce, experience, and sometimes modify and contest political masculinities in the European Parliament. Based on an organizational ethnography in the EP and interviews with MEPs from four European countries (Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland) and across the political spectrum, this paper analyzes how men navigate their job as MEP from a gender/masculinity perspective. We look at what men think is expected of their gender performance, what they expect of other MEPs in the European parliament, and we identity variation between countries and differences related to political affiliation. We then relate these findings to the norms and unspoken rules that define the boundaries of everyday practice in the European Parliament, both for context as well as to analyze how these norms take shape. While acknowledging its shortcomings, we rely on Connell's definition of constellational masculinities as a useful analytic to map out the various ways in which different masculinities are enshrined in everyday political practice, and how they relate to one another.