This chapter investigates the House of Commons at Westminster in a pivotal period for women’s representation: the first Blair government of 1997–2001. Based on archival, historical and ethnographic data (observations and interviews), the House of Commons is identified as a gendered space, in which women are peripheral members. For example, the overall proportion of turns taken in a sample of debates shows that men break the rules by speaking out of turn more than women. Prime Minister’s Question Time events are ‘scored’ according to the degree of adversarial features that they possess. The findings show that women and men can be equally adversarial in the House of Commons (both women and men were responsible for the most adversarial exchanges), but that women contributed proportionally fewer adversarial turns than their male counterparts. Finally, it is found that women are less likely to manipulate the ‘key’ of a speech event by using humour or irony (particularly the practice of filibustering) than men in this context. Women MPs’ avoidance of rule-breaking (or meticulous adherence to the rules) is explained as one of ways in which women MPs make sure they are beyond reproach in a Community of Practice in which they are interlopers.

In this first case study I start by describing Theresa May’s period in office as UK prime minister between 2016 and 2019. Then, an analysis of her performances in Prime Ministers Question Times (PMQs) with Jeremy Corbyn is undertaken, using the adversarial score devised in Chapter 3. The May–Corbyn exchanges are interesting because neither performer is typical in this context – May because she is a woman and Corbyn because he is a man whose stated aim is to make PMQs less adversarial. May’s style in debates is found to be highly evasive with some extremely adversarial elements and Corbyn also uses adversarial language. Next, May’s performances in ‘critical gendered moments’ (where gender or gender relations are explicitly discussed) are scrutinised. May is found to position herself as a feminist, but one who adheres to traditional, conservative gender roles, and she is shown to have some difficulty entering into the homosocial bonding activities of the old boy’s network because of how she is positioned by sexist, collaborative humour. Finally, I consider some gendered media representations of May, particularly in relation to emotion, and identify how she has resisted or exploited them.