Governed by the Rules?: The Female Voice in Parliamentary Debates

Abstract

Speaking out is the business of parliamentary debate. In possibly no profession other than politics does success depend so strongly upon an individual's ability to speak effectively in public and often adversarial contexts. Parliaments have been almost exclusively the realm of male politicians until the latter half of the twentieth century, and as they are governed by rules devised to constrain the debate discourse they provide a unique context within which to examine the relationship between language use, gender and power in public institutions. Here I investigate the female voice in the archetypal parliamentary context: the British House of Commons. This parliament is often characterised as an adversarial 'bear pit' where opposition parties face each other and fight out issues in a confrontational manner. I also consider some of these findings with a comparative analysis of data from a much newer political assembly, the Scottish Parliament.

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