Towards gender balance in the European elections: Electoral quotas

European Parliament - EPRS Policy podcasts

European Parliament Webmaster

Government & Organizations, Non-profit

4.8 • 13 Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2023

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Gender-balanced representation among the decision-makers of the European Union is an important step towards full realisation of the principle of equality between women and men enshrined in the EU Treaties. The Union has made steady and significant progress, starting from a very low presence of women among EU Commissioners and Members of the European Parliament at the time when those institutions were created. The European Parliament is today one of the world's most gender-balanced representative assemblies, but there are still significant divergences between EU countries.

- Original publication on the EP Think Tank website
- Subscription to our RSS feed in case your have your own RSS reader
- Podcast available on Deezer, iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, YouTube

Source: © European Union - EP

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service Podcasts.
0:05.0	In this podcast, we'll talk about gender balance in the European elections
0:09.0	and how electoral quotas could help ensure that there are more women among the EU decision makers.
0:15.0	Want to know more? Stay with us.
0:21.2	Gender equality is a fundamental principle of the EU, and as such it should be reflected in an
0:27.6	equal political representation of women in EU institutions, including the European Parliament.
0:33.6	But achieving this is not so straightforward.
0:37.8	No, it's not. Although there has been progress, the current European Commission is the most
0:43.7	gender-balanced in history and the first one to be led by a woman. As for the European Parliament,
0:50.1	it's one of the world's most gender-balanced representative assemblies, but there are still
0:54.8	large disparities between EU countries.
0:57.4	So while Finland and Sweden have more female than male MEPs, women make up less than a
1:03.1	quarter of members from Romania, Cyprus and Greece.
1:06.6	And this reflects a similar situation at national level.
1:10.5	Now, why is that?
1:11.7	Well, in the end, it's up to European voters to choose who they want as MEPs.
1:16.5	But European elections are based on the principle of proportional electoral representation,
1:22.0	which means that voters most often vote for party lists.
1:25.8	So if there are few women on the party lists or in difficult to
1:29.0	get elected positions, there's not much voters can do about it. But what voters can't do? Could
1:35.2	gender quotas achieve? Gender quotas can be legislative, requiring by law that all parties
1:41.2	nominate a certain proportion of women candidates on their electoral lists,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from European Parliament Webmaster, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of European Parliament Webmaster and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.