The study of gender and political parties most often focuses on national parties in specific countries or comparatively. The unique contribution of this paper is to study gender and political parties in the transnational context, namely in the European Parliament (EP), and to evaluate the potential that it offers for gender politics. Key for the functioning of the EP are its political party groups. They remain highly understudied in feminist research into politics. We argue that a focus on transnational party politics sheds light on both the gendered continuities and new patterns in the formal and informal institutions of party politics as well as the possibilities and challenges that there are to advance gender equality in transnational European politics.
We analyze the gendered and gendering practices and structures of the EP as an institution by mapping out the vertical and horizontal gender composition of the EP, its parliamentary committees and political groups as well as their transnational party federations. We analyze the organizational structures of these ‘transnational parties’ as well as their gendered norms and practices and focus on issues such as institutional structures for women. In doing this, we build towards a theory about gender, political parties and transnational organizing and explore the particularities of this transnational venue of gender and politics as party organizations and political institutions differ significantly from their national counterparts. The analysis is based on interviews with political actors (national politicians, members of the EP and of the transnational party federations) and key policy documents.
