Fewer women in the European Parliament
The European Parliament says it stands for gender equality. However, the EU elections in June did not improve the Parliament’s gender equality but made it slightly worse. The share of women elected as MEPs at the European elections in June 2024 was 38.5%, down from 39.8% just before the elections, the Parliament’s data shows.
The percentage of female MEPs has increased compared to the early days of European integration. Only 31 women were members from 1952 until the first elections in 1979. In the first directly-elected European Parliament representation of women stood at 15.9%
The Parliament stresses that, despite the negative outcome of the latest elections, as far as the representation of women in the European Parliament goes, it is above the world average for national parliaments and also above the EU average for national parliaments.
Since January 2022, the Parliament is being presided over by a woman: Maltese MEP Roberta Metsola who now has been re-elected for another two and a half years.
In the 2024-2029 parliamentary term, seven of the 14 vice-presidents are women, more than in the previous term when there were six.In 2019, two EU institutions broke the glass ceiling and got its first ever female president: Ursula von der Leyen became President of the European Commission and Christine Lagarde became President of the European Central Bank.
von der Leyen was this summer re-elected for a second five-year term as Commission President.
Former Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas has been nominated for the post of EU high representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy. As she should be a member of the new European Commission, her appointment is subject to the confirmation process that will see MEPs voting in the autumn to approve or reject the Commission as a whole.
UN Women global data shows that 113 countries have never had a woman at the helm, and only 26 countries are led by a woman today.
Research on the influence of media coverage of women candidates and politicians, both globally and in Europe, shows that under- and misrepresentation of women in media has a negative impact on women’s aspirations and electoral success, but higher media visibility can help to get more women elected, the European Parliament argues in an earlier compilation of gender data.
“Social media platforms can give women candidates and politicians a direct channel to reach the public and avoid gender-biased media coverage, but they can be far from ‘women-friendly”, the Parliament says..
However, an International Parliamentary Union survey of women parliamentarians also shows that ‘social media have become the number one place in which psychological violence – particularly in the form of sexist and misogynistic remarks, humiliating images, mobbing, intimidation and threats – is perpetrated against women parliamentarians.”
The UN Women data shows that as of 1 January 2024, only 23% of ministerial positions are held by women and in 141 countries, women make up less than a third of cabinet ministers. Seven countries have no women represented in their cabinets at all.
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