For the first time since 1979, the proportion of women elected to the European Parliament has fallen. According to a report published on Wednesday 16 April by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), women account for 38.8% of MEPs since the June 2024 elections, compared with 40.7% in 2019.
According to the EIGE, this decrease is a good illustration of the difficulty of combating gender imbalances within the political sphere, at all levels of governance.
This is also true at Member State level, where female representation in national parliaments remains limited. 33.1% of seats in lower houses are held by women, despite the existence of quotas in 11 countries. Only Spain, Slovenia, France and Croatia meet or exceed the thresholds set for national or European elections.
The report also shows that, while quotas can have positive effects, to achieve this, they must be accompanied by sanctions and mechanisms to ensure women are placed in ‘winnable’ seats.
With regard to the composition of governments, the EIGE reports that in November 2024, women held only 33.4% of ministerial posts in the European Union. In several Member States, such as Hungary, Croatia, Malta and the Czech Republic, their presence remains marginal, and sometimes even non-existent.
Inequalities are also not diminishing at local level. The proportion of women on municipal councils is 34.8% on average in the EU. This figure falls to 29.2% if France is excluded, since this country alone accounts for 44% of the female councillors recorded. The rate for regional assemblies is slightly higher at 36.3%.
Finally, political parties themselves are also struggling to promote equality in their formation, and only 25.8% of the leaders of the major parties in the EU are women, even though this figure has been slowly rising since 2011, when it stood at 16%.
The EIGE calls for the existing mechanisms to be strengthened by combining binding quotas with effective mechanisms such as ‘zipped lists’, which impose a strict alternation between men and women on electoral lists. It also calls for urgent action at the local and regional levels, without which no progress can be consolidated.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/gh2 (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)