Tag Archives: women MPs

A woman’s place is in the House: reclaiming civility, tolerance and respect in political life

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Dame Laura Cox, author of a 2018 report into the bullying and harassment of House of Commons staff, argues that the behaviour of too many parliamentarians is misogynistic and a cause of capable women MPs leaving parliament, or having to accept behaviour that would not be permitted in any other workplace. She says that this is in part an institutional problem, and calls for a more open, tolerant, respectful and conciliatory politics.

We are living currently in a very angry world. Our parliament, the central institution of our representative democracy, should be setting an example of tolerance and civility, but instead, civility and willingness to compromise seem to have faded. Political discourse generally has been impoverished by antagonism and extremism. Those more constructive qualities of reflection, cooperation, collaboration and consensus seem to have fallen by the wayside.

In addition to bitter, adversarial politics, there has been an upsurge in reports of abuse, intimidation and assault. In recent years, independent inquiries into events at Westminster – including my own report into the bullying and harassment of Commons staff – have recorded a disturbing number of acts of bullying, harassment and sexual harassment alleged by members of staff and MPs against other MPs, as well as among staff and members of the House of Lords.

The macho behaviour and posturing so frequently displayed in our political debates have disproportionately and adversely affected women in public life. The women affected are not only politicians. Women journalists, academics, campaigners and political activists have all reported instances of intimidation, abuse and even physical violence. In June 2016 a serving MP, Jo Cox, was brutally killed on the street in broad daylight.

Why has our politics become so misogynistic? There are, in my view, a number of contributing factors, including the still unacceptably low numbers of women politicians; the rules and customs of the parliament where they serve; and the resistance to change of parliament as an institution.

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Parliaments and COVID-19: principles and practice; challenges and opportunities

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Unit Director Meg Russell analyses the challenges and opportunities for reform facing parliaments during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has raised complex questions about how to balance the different functions of parliaments and their need to operate effectively.

In the UK and around the world parliaments have had to adjust their practices to the unexpected new environment of COVID-19. This has brought major challenges but, some suggest, also opportunities in terms of suggesting future means for parliaments to adapt. This post starts from the core principles of parliamentary functioning, briefly reviews practice under COVID-19, and considers the primary opportunities and challenges presented. It concludes that the future lessons from this unique period reinforce some familiar themes; but they also raise significant conundrums and trade-offs between the different essential principles of what parliaments are there to do.

Principles

Stripping back to the basics, what are parliaments for? Legislative studies scholars have suggested various overlapping lists of functions. For example in the Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies, Amie Kreppel provides a list of four, which I will boil down to three: 

  • Representation takes many forms, often including – as is central to the UK House of Commons – geographic representation. Numerous, diverse, individuals participate in the legislature, underpinned by a crucial democratic principle of equality, where each ultimately has an equal vote.
  • Linkage is closely connected to this – as parliamentarians provide a voice in parliament to their voters, and remain accountable to them.
  • Policy-making – for example through approving bills – is perhaps what parliaments are best known for. Connectedly, they have a control function in holding executives to account. For simplicity, I treat these two functions together.

Other terms often mentioned in such classifications include deliberation –much of which takes place publicly – and legitimation, meaning all of parliaments’ functions help them generate broad public support for policy.

Practice

It is easy to see how the circumstances of COVID-19 have challenged some of these principles.

The threats to representation were pretty immediate and obvious. With limits on travel, requirements for social distancing, and heightened risks for people with certain health conditions, parliamentarians gathering from all over the country immediately became a problem. Some legislatures responded by limiting the number who could participate – with those decisions often taken by leaders and whips. Others moved their proceedings online. The UK House of Commons initially did the latter, but then rolled this back in a quite problematic way which breached principles of equal participation.

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The 2019 election campaign shows that abuse, harassment and intimidation of candidates is getting worse, especially for women

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The 2019 general election saw more women run for (and win) seats in the House of Commons than ever before. However the level of abuse those women received was also higher than ever, and affected them disproportionately compared with men. Sofia Collignon explains what we can learn from the data about the experience of female candidates.

After parliament voted in November 2019 to trigger an election – which took place in December – a record number of women presented themselves for office, as 37% of candidates were female. This is an improvement of eight percentage points over the number of women standing just two years earlier, in 2017 (29%). Perhaps more relevant is that a record number of female candidates actually went on to become MPs (220), comprising 34% of the total number of members of the House of Commons (+5%) and making up a majority of both Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs. The increase in the number of women standing for office and winning a seat is undeniable progress for the representation of women in the UK. But this positive scenario becomes more pessimistic if the violence experienced by women in politics is considered.  

Drawing on data from the Representative Audit of Britain (RAB) survey of 2019 candidates, this blog post summarises the degree to which women and men candidates suffered harassment and intimidation while campaigning for the 2019 general election in the UK and the nature of the abuse they experienced. It shows that women are distinctly affected by abuse, harassment and intimidation in two ways: the frequency of the abuse and the motivation behind it. 

The frequency of abuse

The analysis of RAB 2019 responses indicates that 49% of candidates reported that they suffered some form of abuse, harassment or intimidation while campaigning. This is an increase of 11 percentage points compared with 2017. The proportion is significantly higher for women (61%) than men (44%). It is particularly worrying to notice that, despite multiple initiatives, the findings of a 2017 inquiry by the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) and frequent media coverage, harassment against women increased by 16 percentage points, almost twice the increase observed among men (see Figure 1). Not only were more women standing for office, but they were also reporting more acts of intimidation, threats, physical and psychological violence. 

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Do men and women communicate differently in the House of Commons?

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Screenshot_20200813.153441_Photos.jpgScreenshot_20200813.153452_Photos.jpgThe evidence supporting the idea that male and female legislators have different communication styles has mostly come from interviews with legislators rather than analysis of speeches given in parliament. Analysing speeches delivered in the UK House of Commons between 1997 and 2016, Lotte Hargrave and Tone Langengen found compelling evidence for differences: women are more likely to evidence arguments with personal experience, discuss policies in a more concrete way, and are less adversarial than men. They argue these 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.

As countries respond to COVID-19, media outlets have widely reported that female leaders seem to have a leadership style that is better suited to responding to the crisis than that of their male counterparts. In academic literature too, the claims that male and female legislators might have different approaches to ‘doing politics’ have long existed. A key dimension upon which men and women are said to differ is with respect to their communication styles. So far however, the evidence base supporting this idea of gender differences in styles is mainly rooted in the testimonies of politicians themselves. In these interviews, women are said to evidence their arguments differently, have more concrete orientations when discussing policies and politics, and to be less adversarial or aggressive. 

In our newly published paper in the journal Politics & Gender, The Gendered Debate: Do Men and Women Communicate Differently in the House of Commons?, we build upon these insights. Specifically, we set about measuring whether there are differences in the communication styles of male and female legislators in the UK House of Commons through analysis of almost 200 parliamentary speeches delivered between 1997 and 2016 on three policy areas: education, immigration, and welfare. 

Speechmaking is an important setting for analysis, as it is one of the most visible elements of a politician’s job, and receives significant media coverage. Speeches therefore have important implications for how policies are discussed and informed, how the public engages with political elites, and how legislators represent their constituents.

In our paper, we measure three distinct indicators of style. First, argumentation captures the strategies men and women use to evidence their arguments. We test the argument that women tend to make greater use of personal and anecdotal experience, whereas men focus more on facts and numbers. Second, orientation captures how men and women focus their discussion of issues and policies. Women are said to be more likely to orient their discussions to concrete and specific groups and people (such as single mothers, low income families or students), whereas men are said to orient their discussion of policies and politics in terms of abstract issues (such as the economy, the system, or the state). Third, adversarial language captures behaviour such as insulting others or engaging in political point-scoring, which men are thought to use more often.  Continue reading →