Women and Leadership in the European Union

This volume is the first comprehensive analysis of women's ascendance to leadership positions in the European Union as well as their performance in such positions. It provides a new theoretical and analytical framework capturing both positional and behavioural leadership and the specific hurdles that women encounter on their path to and when exercising leadership. The volume encompasses a detailed set of single and comparative case studies, analyzing women's representation and performance in the core EU institutions and their individual pathways to and exercise of power in top-level functions, as well as comparative analyses regarding the position and behaviour of women in relation to men. Based on these individual studies, the volume draws overarching conclusions about women's leadership in the EU. Regarding positional leadership, women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions, they more often hold less prestigious portfolios in such positions, and manifold structural hurdles hamper their access to power. Furthermore, huge variations exist across EU institutions, with the intergovernmental bodies being the hardest to access. Regarding behavioural leadership, women acting in powerful EU positions generally perform excellently. They successfully exercise a combined leadership style that integrates attributes of leadership considered to be 'masculine' and 'feminine'. This is not to argue that women per se are the better leaders. Yet more often than men they are exposed to stronger selection processes and their prevalent practice of a combined leadership style tends to best meet the requirements of modern democratic systems and particularly those of the highly fragmented EU.

Introduction: The State of Women's Leadership in the European Union, Henriette Müller and Ingeborg Tömmel
Part I: Conceptual Approaches to Women and Leadership in the EU
1:Women and Leadership in the European Union: A Framework for Analysis, Henriette Müller and Ingeborg Tömmel
2:Searching for Agency: Gendering Leadership in European Integration Theory, Gabriele Abels and Heather MacRae
Part II: Accessing Positional Leadership in EU Institutions
3:Women's Positional Leadership in the European Commission: When, Where, and How?, Miriam Hartlapp and Agnes Blome
4:Women's Leadership in the European Parliament: A Long-Term Perspective, Sarah C. Dingler and Jessica Fortin-Rittberger
Part III: Exercising Political Leadership
5:Women and Leadership across the EU Institutions: The Case of Viviane Reding, Michelle Cini
6:Women on Mars: The Two Post-Lisbon High Representatives and EU Foreign Policy on Libya, Maria Giulia Amadio Viceré and Giulia Tercovich
7:Rhetoric and Leadership: A Comparison of Female Vice-Presidents of the European Commission (1999-2019), Henriette Müller and Pamela Pansardi
8:Gendered Leadership in the European Parliament's Political Groups, Johanna Kantola and Cherry Miller
Part IV: National Leaders in European Arenas
9:Becoming Prime Minister: Women and Executive Power in EU Member States, Karen Beckwith
10:Winning by Spending Leadership Capital? Angela Merkel's Approach to the Refugee and COVID-19 Crises, Femke A. W. J. van Esch and Christoph Erasmy
11:Theresa May's Leadership in Brexit Negotiations: Self-Representation and Media Evaluations, Sandra Eckert and Charlotte Galpin
Part V: Exercising Administrative Leadership
12:A Tightrope Walk? Catherine Day and the Interplay of Political and Administrative Leadership in the European Commission, Ingeborg Tömmel
13:Women EU Multilevel Administration: The Europeanization of Member State Bureaucracies, Eva G. Heidbreder
Part VI: Exercising Expert Leadership
14:The Court of Justice of the European Union, Gender, and Leadership, Jessica Guth
15:Women's Leadership in the European Central Bank, Amy Verdun
Part VII: Looking Ahead: The Future of Women's Leadership in the EU
16:Strategic Leadership: Ursula von der Leyen as President of the European Commission, Henriette Müller and Ingeborg Tömmel
Appendix: Women and Leadership in the European Union