General Seminar in Politics and Government - Professor Johanna Kantola, University of Helsinki

The general seminar will be held in English.

Title of the talk:

Democracy and Gender in Parliamentary Politics: the Case of Political Groups in the European Parliament

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyse the democratic practices within the political groups in the European Parliament and how they might be gendered. The paper uses the interview material and political group statutes from the seven political groups to focus on the political groups’ internal practices – the so-called intragroup level of politics in the parliament. The paper asks, first, how democratic debate works within the political groups and analyses political group meetings as sites of democratic debate and deliberation. Second, the focus is on how democracy is supported in political groups’ practices and focuses on the interplay between formal and informal institutions.  Third, the paper asks how the democratic practices are lived and experienced at the everyday level in the political groups. Throughout the paper focuses on what work gender does in relation to these: how are the spaces for democracy, its institutions and practices in intragroup politics gendered. Gender provides a critical perspective to the dominance of informal politics at the intragroup level. The paper shows how some of gender inequalities are based on informal institutions, such as the norm of seniority, or that of the primacy of nationality over gender equality in some political groups. The paper also shows how not all of these aspects can be understood as (informal) institutions but it is equally important to focus on everyday lived experiences and practices which also sustain gendered inequalities.