In summer 2014 as the incoming Head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, was putting his team of Commissions together he urged member states to nominate more women as Commissioners, stating that a Commission without strong female representation would be ‘neither legitimate nor credible’ (BBC 2014). In the end, the team he submitted for approval comprised eight women of 27, or 30 per cent (European Voice 2014). This contribution draws on innovative theoretical insights from feminist institutionalist scholarship and executive recruitment (Annesley and Gains 2010, Franceschet and Thomas 2013, Annesley et al 2014) to address the key issue of gender and executive political recruitment in the European Union. The paper asks: what are the dominant formal and informal rules which determine the process of recruitment to key executive posts in the European institutions, and how are these rules gendered? Also: what can be done to improve the representation of women in senior political roles within the European institutions?
