Minority women in politics

Over the past century progressive leaps have been made in eliminating women’s formal discrimination. Gender equality is now part of the binding catalogue of EU fundamental rights, yet it has been implemented unevenly across the union. Women in the EU make up more than half of the electorate, yet women continue to be under-represented in decision-making positions and processes, despite being highly educated.

Women’s engagement with institutions of power is as varied as the women themselves, and it often reflects their social location. This research uses intersectionality as an analytical tool for recognizing that people experience multiple social systems of oppression and responding to the ways in which gender intersects with other social categories of identity. By using case studies and testimonies, the study shows that discrimination can occur on more than one ground. This is experienced as either multiple disadvantage, cumulative disadvantage, or intersectional discrimination.

According to minority and migrant women themselves, gender hierarchies, discrimination, and violence remain entrenched in different ways across multiple arenas in their lives. Persistent inequalities hinder their more explicitly political activity like running for political office or campaigning with political parties. Women in our study blame a combination of language discrimination, lack of political education, an anti-migrant climate, and gender-based discrimination for inhibiting their political participation. Many do not join existing associations because they view them as unrepresentative to women and express feeling silenced and dismissed as inferior within mainstream political structures.

As this book demonstrates, although progress has not been uniform or uncontested, minority and migrant women have organised to demand their rights, change cultural attitudes, reform laws and policies, build women’s policy institutes, and provide vital social services to women in need where formal institutions have failed to do so. This paper outlines how minority women engage with social movements, political parties, and governmental institutions, while navigating their distinct political environments.

The aim of this study is to identify qualitative and quantitative differences in representation, analyse factors that produce better levels of representation in some places but not in others and describe historical and recent developments in different parts of Europe. It draws conclusions by identifying factors that impact women’s political participation and representation, mapping commonalities and differences across Europe, as well as listing policy recommendations to further women’s effective political equality.

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This publication is financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for the content of the publication or the opinions of the authors.

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Header photo by Ferran Feixas on Unsplash

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