Image of
« Back

JOHANNA KANTOLA

Image of DO.RE.MEE
Tempere University

The impact of radical right populism on gender equality in the European Parliament


Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/95024764081


Abstract
An increasingly polarized European Parliament (EP) has become an important site of radical right populist opposition to gender equality. In this presentation, I draw upon the research of the European Research Council (ERC) funded research project EUGenDem (Gender, party politics and democracy in Europe: A study of European Parliament’s party groups, 2018-2023) to analyse anti-gender discourses, strategies and practices and their impact in the European Parliament. The research material gathered in the project consists of 130 interviews with MEPs and staff and fieldnotes of parliamentary ethnography all gathered in Brussels and Strasbourg between 2018-2020. The findings show that radical right populist strategies include not only indirect but also direct opposition to gender equality and draw on old and traditional gender imaginaries packaged in novel populist ways. The impact of radical right populism cannot be understood by focusing on formal institutions only but has to be analysed at the level of informal institutions.


Bio
Johanna Kantola is Professor of Gender Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University. She obtained her PhD in Politics at the University of Bristol in 2004 and became Docent in Politics at the University of Helsinki in 2007. She is the director of the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant project EUGenDem (2018-2023), which studies European Parliament’s political groups. Her books include Gender and Political Analysis (with Emanuela Lombardo, Palgrave, 2017), Gender and the European Union (Palgrave, 2010). She has co-edited The Oxford Handbook on Gender and Politics (Oxford University Press, 2013, with Georgina Waylen, Karen Celis and Laurel Weldon) and Gender and the Economic Crisis in Europe: Politics, Institutions and Intersectionality (Palgrave 2017, with Emanuela Lombardo). Her articles have been published for instance in European Journal of Political Research; International Political Science Review; Journal of Common Market Studies; Social Politics; Politics & Gender; International Feminist Journal of Politics. She is the Editor of Palgrave Macmillan’s Gender and Politics Book Series with Professor Sarah Childs.