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Women's Representation in Europe — A Comparison Between the National Parliaments and the European Parliament

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Comparative European Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Prior research on women's representation conducted in various areas of the world has emphasized the type of electoral system, quotas, the economic affluence of a country and the timing of women's suffrage, as well as the percentage of women in leadership positions and the political culture. In this comparative study all of these characteristics are first investigated for each country's national parliament. In a second step, the robustness of the model is tested by applying it to the European parliamentary elections. In this sense, this study is novel, as it is the first comparative study to test the robustness of a model in two different settings. This analysis reveals that the model generated for the national level does not provide a good fit for explaining women's representation in the European Parliament. Consequently, it is still impossible to generalize about the state of women's representation in Europe.

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Notes

  1. For the 2007 general election, the law obligates parties to fill the first two places on the list by candidates of different genders.

  2. Under a List Proportional Representation (List PR) system, each party presents a list of candidates for a multi-member electoral district, the voters vote for a party, which receive seats in proportion to its overall share of the vote. In some (closed list) systems the winning candidates are taken from the lists in order of their positions on the lists. If the lists are ‘open’ or ‘free’ the voters can influence the order of the candidates by marking individual preferences (IDEA 2006). The following countries operate under PR: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands. As a mixed system, Germany is also listed under PR because the overall number of seats is allocated by PR.

  3. Mixed systems are constituted by a mixture of two principles of electoral system design: majoritarian systems, which usually have single-seat districts with plurality rule, and proportional systems (IDEA 2006). In the three European examples — Hungary, Italy and Lithuania — the majoritarian element is dominant; that is why they are classified as semi-proportional systems.

  4. Under this system (Ireland and Malta), each county is divided into multi-member constituencies, each of which has three or four representatives. Parties put forward as many candidates as they believe could win in each constituency. Electors indicate their order (1, 2, 3, 4) among all the candidates in his or her electoral division. The total number of votes is counted, and then this total is divided by the number of seats in a constituency to produce a quota. To be elected candidates must reach the minimum quota. If no candidate reaches the quota, when the first preferences are counted, the person with the least votes is eliminated and his or her votes redistributed according to second preferences. This process continues until all seats are filled (Norris, 1997, 303).

  5. In majoritarian electoral systems, winning candidates are those having attracted the most votes in a given electoral district, either by a simple majority of the votes (First Past the Post) or by an absolute majority in a two-ballot system (IDEA 2006). Great Britain operates under the former formula, France under the latter.

  6. In many countries (e.g., Austria and Belgium), which are covered in this study, the questions pertaining to women's role in politics, education and the labor force were not asked in the World Value Survey. Consequently, a more precise measure than the general Value Map could not be established.

  7. Cyprus and Malta are not included in Inglehart's Value Map. For the purpose of this paper, both countries are attributed the score of 1.2. Owing to its close ties to Greece, Cyprus's culture should be similar to Greece's. This justifies attributing for Cyprus the same value as for Greece. For Malta, the score of 1.2 is chosen because as a former English colony, many cultural traits should be similar to those of Great Britain's culture. However, 0.3 points are deducted because Malta, as a southern European country, is supposedly more traditional.

  8. The exact numbers of years during which women have had the right to vote are 85 years for Denmark, 91 years for Finland and 84 years for Sweden (IPU, 2005).

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  1. Department of Political Science, 341 Mansfield Road, Storrs, University of Connecticut, 06269-1024, CT, USA

    Daniel Stockemer

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Stockemer, D. Women's Representation in Europe — A Comparison Between the National Parliaments and the European Parliament. Comp Eur Polit 6, 463–485 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2008.2

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