Conference Agenda

How does shared knowledge and understanding of one another on a personal level help to bridge differences in other aspects of life? One way that we can relate is through empathy and mutual understanding from shared identity traits. I focus on the example of gender and sexual identity among LGBTQIA+ politicians, as expressed through legislative political affinity groups. Many legislatures permit affinity groups outside of committees to allow like-minded politicians to connect on areas of mutual interest, whether geographic, policy, or leisure. Using an intersectional understanding of identity (i.e., Crenshaw 1997), I explore how LGBTQIA+ groups facilitate bonds between politicians with divergent political opinions in a way that can help to overcome the rampant polarisation observed in contemporary political life.

The political science literature has shown that the presence of LGBTQIA+ politicians in office can lead to advances in pro-LGBTQIA+ policies. However, we know less about how participation in professional LGBTQIA+ spaces might activate ties of shared understanding among members. The paper explores new data from four prominent LGBTQ+ cross-party affinity groups in four legislative settings. I focus on affinity groups related to LGBTQIA+ issues that have been recently active in each parliament. These include the French National Assembly’s Study Group on Discriminations and LGBTphobias, the UK House of Commons’ All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global LGBT+ Rights, the Scottish Parliament’s LGBTI+ cross-party group, and the European Parliament’s LGBTI Intergroup. Not only are these legislatures unique for their elevated number of LGBTQIA+ politicians, but they have also been notable for the cross-party mix of ‘out’ LGBTQIA+ politicians.

By exploring how identity-based connections are made between sexual minorities in cross-party settings, I am able to trace spillover effects for further cross-party action in more formalised parliamentary settings (e.g., voting behaviour, co-sponsorship work). I take inspiration from scholarship on ethnic and gender identity’s effects on political behaviour that has been less explored for sexuality. I argue that identities that divide us in one setting might bind us in another.

The gender equality dimension of the European Union's post-pandemic recovery plan, particularly the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), presents a compelling area for analysis. The COVID-19 pandemic had a widely documented negative impact on gender equality, raising pressing questions about how this issue was addressed in the recovery process. At the same time, the EU recovery plan marked an unprecedented policy response in terms of the scale of funds mobilized, prompting broader inquiries into the long-term changes it may bring across Member States. Despite these dynamics, the European Commission's initial draft of the RRF Regulation made no reference to gender equality, a notable omission given the EU’s prior commitments to advancing gender equality. This gap was subsequently addressed through advocacy and interventions by the European Parliament, civil society organizations, and later adjustments by the Commission itself. This paper examines the evolving integration of gender equality within the RRF Regulation, situating it within the broader narrative of the pandemic’s gendered impact as constructed by EU institutions. It identifies the key institutional actors and tools that contributed to this process, analysing how feminist governance shaped the European Union's post-pandemic recovery efforts. Three key findings emerge from this analysis. First, the inclusion of a gender perspective in the RRF was not the outcome of a coherent or systematic strategy but rather the result of fragmented and partially coordinated efforts by feminist actors and institutions at different stages of the policy process. This ad hoc approach ultimately limited the development of a comprehensive framework to address gender equality challenges. Second, the absence of binding instruments in the RRF led to significant variation among Member States in how gender considerations were integrated into recovery plans, reflecting the differing roles and influence of national feminist actors. Finally, the role of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, stands out as pivotal. Her leadership was instrumental in pushing for the integration of a gender perspective into the RRF, underscoring the importance of high-level political will in shaping policy outcomes. By tracing the processes and outcomes of feminist governance within the RRF, this paper sheds light on the extent to which the EU's post-pandemic recovery plan addresses gender inequalities. It highlights the crucial contributions of feminist actors at both EU and Member State levels in keeping gender equality on the policy agenda and explores the broader implications for feminist governance within the EU's policymaking framework.

Pathways to women’s leadership in European institutions have been widely investigated (Müller and Tömmel 2022). However, women’s presence as inter-parliamentary delegation leaders – formal actors for the external relations of the European Parliament (EP) – has so far been neglected (cf Miller and Santini 2024). EP delegations are simultaneously permanent actors and infrastructures of parliamentary diplomacy. This paper examines the gendered composition of the EP’s inter-parliamentary delegation bureaus; the gendered pathways to these leaderships; and the exercise of leadership therein. The paper is structured into two parts. First, we analyze gendered positional leadership, defined as occupying positions of authority in delegation bureaus. We look at how formal rules of procedure and informal practices structure parliamentary career pathways, such as political group membership and seniority. Second, we explore gendered behavioral leadership – referring to the performance of functions associated with the office, agency, and authority. We explore the policy implications for gender equality promotion of both positional and behavioral leadership. The paper utilizes a mixed-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative data. Our analysis is informed by an original quantitative dataset – totaling 282 datapoints on the composition of delegation Bureaus at the end of the ninth (EP9, 2019-2024) and constitutive tenth legislature (EP10, 2024-2029). We also draw upon a qualitative dataset of over 30 semi-structured qualitative interviews with EP Members (MEPs)‚ administration and group staff, observational and ethnographic data collected between 2023-2025. Regarding positional leadership, we find that the EP has introduced formal initiatives to improve women’s representation in leadership positions stipulating that delegations’ chairs and first vice-chairs must be of different genders, met with contestations by the right wing. However, informal practices and norms meant that the share of women delegation leaders has fallen from 36% in EP9 to 22% in EP10, while women are over-represented in the secondary position of first vice-chairs. Data on women’s leadership presence by delegation type reveals that women are better represented in bilateral delegations, whilst men are mostly leading delegations to joint parliamentary committees and assemblies. Overall, we argue delegation leaders are well-positioned to project feminist ideas both inwards – shaping internal institutional arrangements – and outwards – in external diplomatic engagements, yet acting within institutional constraints. Looking at inter-parliamentary delegation leaders in the EP nables a more comprehensive study of women’s access to and performance of parliamentary leadership positions. These findings might be somewhat generalizable to occupants of such positions in other parliaments.

Parliamentary diplomacy (PD), an essential activity of modern parliamentary institutions, consists in the international contacts and exchanges performed by parliamentarians bilaterally, regionally or within international parliamentary institutions. The European Parliament (EP) represents an intensive global pivot of PD activities, with its 48 standing delegations allegedly serving as international moral tribunes (Stavridis, 2021) where its Members (MEPs) interact with parliamentary, executive and civil society actors. While contemporary scholarship has only recently established a research agenda connecting gender and PD (Jancic et al., 2021; Dibateza, 2023; Miller, 2023; Miller & Santini, 2024), this dissertation investigates how PD is intersectionally gendered in the EP. Informed by feminist discursive institutionalism (FDI), the dissertation theoretically argues that gendered PD is performed by EP diplomatic actors (MEPs, Committees, Delegations, political groups, administrators, and Presidency), through discourses and ideas on gender, that intersect with race and LGBTI+ identities to shape internal institutional arrangementsand external gender equality projection. Drawing upon documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews and a parliamentary ethnography conducted at the EP Secretariat in Brussels in 2025, the analysis focuses on four cases of EP relations with the United States, Canada, the OACPS-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly between the ninth (2019-2024) and the early tenth (2024-2029) legislatures. The dissertation offers theoretical and empirical contributions to the development of feminist approaches to PD. Theoretically, it advances an intersectional conceptualization of gendered PD and whether a feminist PD is possible. Moreover, ‘thick’ ethnographical insights reveal the gendered operations of PD in the fields of development, security and defense policy, traditionally male-dominated.