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The paper investigates womens representation in the European Parliament delegations of the new member states by bringing together three distinct strands of scholarship: the second-order elections model, feminist theories of candidate recruitment and the literature on party positions on European integration. It tests three hypotheses explaining womens selection as candidates in European elections: the impact of electoral systems; the impact of political parties' left-right placement and the impact of party positions on European integration. The key finding is that gendered patterns of candidate recruitment in the new member states are best explained as a function of political parties' positions on European integration, with electoral systems and left-right placement having only a limited impact on the selection of women candidates.
