Why do we always see right-wing women in leadership positions in Europe? And more importantly, why is the left having so many difficulties nominating a woman leader?
Costanza Hermanin / Euronews
Now that three out of five key European leadership positions are held by women, the EU can finally claim that gender equality in its decision-making roles is improving.
However, one question arises after Roberta Metsola’s nomination as President of the European Parliament: why is it that most women leaders in Europe come from conservative parties?
Women and the European Right
Roberta Metsola comes from a right-wing Maltese party and is known to gender equality advocates for her anti-abortion declarations. The European Central Bank’s Christine Lagarde is the past finance minister of a right-wing government in France.
Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman to become President of the Commission, was a defense minister from the Christian Democratic Union for Angela Merkel (yet another conservative woman leader) in Germany.
In other words, at the European level, all woman leaders belong to the same group: the European People’s Party, a ‘moderate’ right-wing entity today, but one that used to include parties with thorough reactionary positions on gender equality, such as Viktor Orban’s Fidesz.
Besides Merkel’s fifteen-year rule, and except for a handful Scandinavian or Baltic socialist prime ministers, the vast majority of women who have held true executive power in Europe – as party or government leaders – come from the right, starting with Margaret Thatcher.
Looking at the past and present, the list goes on for the conservatives, including Theresa May and one of three past female Polish prime ministers.
In Poland, the other two came from the reactionary Law and Justice Party. They belong to Europe’s extreme right wing, as do Marine Le Pen (France), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), and Frauke Petry and Alice Weidel, respectively Alternative fur Deutschland’s founder and leader in the Bundestag.
Why all these women on the right, then? And more importantly, why is the part of the political spectrum that’s allegedly more attentive to gender equality – the left – having so many difficulties expressing a woman leader?
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