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The Gendered Debate: Do Men and Women Communicate Differently in the House of Commons?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2020

Lotte Hargrave Open the ORCID record for Lotte Hargrave [Opens in a new window]  and
Tone Langengen
Lotte Hargrave
Affiliation:
University College London
Tone Langengen
Affiliation:
University College London
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Abstract

It has long been claimed in the gender and politics literature that male and female legislators have different communication styles. The evidence for this claim has come mostly from interviews with legislators as the key informants on gendered differences. We contribute to this literature in two ways: First, we empirically examine speeches by Members of Parliament to establish whether gendered differences are observable in parliamentary debates. Second, we advance existing measurement approaches by testing for multiple dimensions of communication style, providing a more systematic approach to studying gendered speech behavior. Communication style is examined through a content analysis of almost 200 speeches in three parliamentary sessions of the British House of Commons. We find compelling evidence for differences in communication style: women evidence arguments with personal experience, discuss policies in a concrete way, and are less adversarial than men. Our findings have important implications for how political communication styles might improve public engagement with politicians, offer a different focus to the discussion, and improve democratic legitimacy.

Keywords

genderpolitical communicationlegislative studiesparliamentary behaviorrepresentationpolitical behavior
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 580 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association, 2020

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Footnotes

We thank Jack Blumenau, Jennifer Hudson, Rune Karlsen, Rebecca McKee, Meg Russell, Orlanda Siow, and Katerina Tertytchnaya for helpful conversations and insightful comments on, in some cases, numerous drafts of this article. We also thank attendees of two useful working group seminars held at University College London for their thoughtful comments and feedback, as well as the editors and three anonymous reviewers of Politics & Gender for their constructive comments.

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