From Presence to Impact: Assessing the Substantive Impact of Female Representation in the European Parliament’s Committees

Abstract Over the past decades, the number of female representatives in the European Parliament has significantly increased. With a higher proportion of women than most of its member states’ parliaments, the European Parliament is often seen as a leader in gender representation. This development is particularly noteworthy given the commitment that the parliament has made to gender mainstreaming. Since the European Parliament’s committees perform the bulk of the legislative work, examining the impact of female representation within these committees is essential for understanding the inclusion of the gender perspective in broader legislative outcomes. This study seeks to identify whether descriptive representation of women in the European Parliament leads to higher substantive representation of gender equality values and principles in legislation. Despite the increase in female representation, the effect of descriptive representation (share of women) on substantive representation (policy outcomes) has hardly been studied from the perspective of the European Parliament’s committees. Therefore, a qualitative, comparative co-variational analysis, comparing the Committee on Human Rights (under the Committee of Foreign Affairs) and the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, was conducted. Various policy documents, covering the entire process from initial amendments to committee’s opinions, and final law, are systematically coded and analysed through a content analysis. The empirical findings show that while female representatives exert considerable influence in advocating for the gender perspective in the initial stages of proposing amendments, this influence diminishes at higher levels of the legislative process. The findings challenge the traditional explanations of a straightforward relation between descriptive and substantive representation, but do not completely dismiss the relation between the two. Rather, it indicates that there are various levels of substantive representation during the policy process. To enhance substantive representation and align with the European Union’s commitment to gender mainstreaming, measures should be taken to ensure that the gender perspective better sustains throughout the policy making process. Future research should focus on identifying and addressing the constraints that prevent these amendments from being adopted in law.