Women Leading the Opposition: Gender and Rhetoric in the European Parliament

Abstract

The European Parliament (EP) is an intriguing arena to study the nexus between gender, speech-making, and leadership performance, as it simultaneously challenges and confirms gender-based hierarchies in legislative contexts. While the EP has a higher level of women’s representation than national parliaments, women’s access to top-level positions nonetheless remains limited. Yet the EP is a special case of a legislature. Lacking a right of initiative, it often acts collectively as an inter-institutional opposition to the EU core institutions. In this article, through a software-assisted analysis of EP debates following the president’s State of the Union Address, we investigate party group leaders’ evaluations of the Commission’s proposals and their charismatic rhetoric from a gender angle. Focusing on the three most recent legislatures (2009–2021), our analysis shows that while collective inter-institutional opposition is present in the EP, women leaders generally show higher levels of rhetorical skillfulness and voice either approval or opposition toward the Commission more emphatically than their male counterparts.

Women Opposition Leaders: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Agendas

“…Specifically, there are no parliament-driven changes of personnel and power in the European Commission, and top political executives at the EU level are not normally recruited from amongst the parliamentary party group leaders in the European Parliament. Still, there are obviously chief representatives of the different party groups in the European Parliament that can be meaningfully referred to as parliamentary leaders, and some of them are indeed committed to challenging and opposing the Commission in a more than purely situational manner (Carlotti, 2020;Müller & Pansardi, 2023;Salvati, 2021).…”

Tested by the Polycrisis: Reforming or Transforming the EU?

“…Finally, Müller (2023) takes a diachronic perspective asking if the crises trigger specific demands for institutional reform by the EP. In May 2022, the EP launched a procedure for changing the EU Treaties, framing it (also) as a response to the crises.…”