Gender, party politics and democracy in Europe: A study of European Parliament's party groups

Project Information

EUGenDem

Grant agreement ID: 771676

DOI

10.3030/771676

Project closed

EC signature date 22 February 2018

Start date 1 August 2018

End date 31 July 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 976 482,00

EU contribution

€ 1 976 482,00

Coordinated by

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - EUGenDem (Gender, party politics and democracy in Europe: A study of European Parliament's party groups)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2023-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project “Gender, party politics and democracy in Europe: A study of European Parliament’s party groups” (EUGenDem) provided a systematic analysis of the gendered policies and practices of European party politics. The research comprised a comparative study of the European Parliament’s (EP) party groups and generated empirical and theoretical findings about the significance of gender in the current party political transformations in Europe.

EUGenDem as a collaborative research project addressed crucial questions about the gendered and gendering policies and practices of European party politics:
• How does gender create lines of contestation and consensus between and within the EP’s party groups and what effects does it have on the democratic functioning of the European Union?
• How does analysing affects and emotions deepen our understanding of the interplay between formal and informal institutions, and discourses in explaining the change and continuity in gendered norms, practices and policies of the party groups?
• How are the EP party groups’ gendered policies and practices shaped by prevailing political projects of populism, neoliberalism, conservatism, authoritarianism, and nationalism?

EUGenDem undertook an empirical analysis of party group policies and formal and informal practices in relation to gender. Focusing on selected party groups’ policies generated knowledge about political contestation about gender equality in relation to economy, social rights, and moral politics. The three selected policy areas covered explicitly gendered issues (gender violence); an issue where the centrality of gender is recognized but easily eclipsed (European Pillar of Social Rights), and an issue where gendered consequences are severe, but linkages to gender are omitted (economic governance).

The key methodological and theoretical innovations of the project linked informal institutions, everyday practices, and discourses to affects and emotions, generating research designs like parliamentary ethnography with which the persistence of gender inequalities can be analysed more thoroughly than current gender and politics research allows. More nuanced conceptualizations, and theories of inclusive representation, gender justice, and democracy at the transnational level, were a consequence of adopting an innovative methodological approach where empirical findings informed the theoretical level. The key outcome of this research project are novel methodologies, concepts and theories about inclusive representation, gender justice and democracy based on a thorough empirical understanding of gender and party politics at the European Parliament.

The project has had a high societal impact as it spoke directly to the current political crises in Europe, and provided an understanding of their gendered underpinnings.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The major success of the EUGenDem project was the publishing of the book with Palgrave Macmillan for the project edited volume ‘European Parliament’s political groups in turbulent times’. The book presents the empirical findings of the project to a broad mainstream audience.

A second major achievement was the creation of a comprehensive and unique dataset. The team interviewed 140 MEPs and staff in the EP; reaching gender parity among the interviewees; covering all 8 political groups and the EP secretariat. Ethnographic fieldwork allowed the team to gain a fine-grained understanding of (in)formal political group dynamics. In total, 9 MEPs were shadowed, and 10 group meetings accessed. During the main data collection period, a 2-month placement at the EP Research Service allowed by-appointment targeted observations in political groups, as well as other activities in the EP. Overall, this amounted to 55 days, 440 hours in the field.

The analysis fed into 59 academic and peer-reviewed publications so far. The results of the analyses also appear in the project publications and blog posts on the project website.

The EUGenDem team organized 5 international workshops to disseminate the findings of the project: in Brussels in January 2019 and February 2023, including European stakeholders, MEPs and academics, and 3 research seminars at Tampere University in December 2018, June 2019, and November 2021. To respond and adapt to Covid-19 restrictions, the EUGenDem team has organized a series of virtual workshops on 'Gender, democracy and polarised politics in Europe' from December 2020-April 2022. The team also organized an international conference with over 170 participants to conclude the project in May 2023 at the University of Helsinki.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

From the beginning, the team collected and systematized data on women’s and men’s representation in the EP, in the different political groups and in different leadership positions, for instance, EP (vice-)presidents, group leadership (chairs, vice-chairs, secretary generals), committee (vice-)chairs, committee coordinators, lead candidates for the EP elections 2019. Data was collected from official EP statistics before and after the EP 2019 elections and in addition cross-checked in interviews with MEPs, EP staff and others. This method was also applied to and substituted with material from secondary sources for core data since 1994 as foreseen in the ERC application. The results of the analyses appear in the project publications.

Simultaneously, the team gathered and scrutinized continuously new research publications to develop a profound account of the current discursive and political context for the EP and its political groups, in particular the role of neoliberalism and populism and occurrences of affects in politics.

The EUGenDem project by design branches mainstream European Union studies with gender research as well as political science insights with ethnographic perspectives. The project has introduced and implemented methodological innovations to make a thorough empirical understanding gender in the EP political groups. The project has developed parliamentary ethnography as a methodological innovation. The ongoing goal of the project is to interact with mainstream EU studies. The project team has successfully integrated the research approach on democratic practices to other, more conventional, approaches to studying political groups and political parties. The aim is to continue speaking to different audiences and branching out between the disciplines.

Regarding societal impact, our team can reliably claim that our interviewees (particularly whose without prior record and knowledge in gender equality) engaged in intensive exchange about possible gendered practices in the EP. Many also signaled that our research is of high interest to the political group and will help initiating debates about how to promote gender equality in the EP.

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