Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Date of Graduation
12-19-2020
Publish
yes
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Department
Department of Political Science
Second Advisor
Melinda Adams
Third Advisor
Jessica R. Adolino
Abstract
Increasing globalization and growing importance of the European Union has facilitated an important discussion about who makes policy decisions within the EU, specifically within the European Parliament. This thesis aims to discuss women’s representation within the EP at the committee level. By compiling a database of MEPs from 1st July 2014 to 18th January 2017, it looks into the question of whether or not committees are gendered. It argues that committees have gendered patterns, with women disproportionately focused within certain committees, that left parties have less gender discrepancies than right parties, and less women have committee leadership positions compared to men. A focused comparison of two committee chairs, Cecilia Wikström from Sweden and Jean Arthuis from France, addresses the argument that women govern differently than men within committees. Applying this research, it becomes evident that committees are gendered with more women on “less prestigious” committees. While it is unclear the effect of parties and differences in legislators between genders, it is proved that committee leadership during this time is almost equally distributed between male and female MEPs.
