A Feminized Language of Democracy? The Representation of Women at Westminster since 1945
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12239552 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Luke Blaxill (0000-0002-5006-8367, University of Toronto, corresponding author), Kaspar Beelen (0000-0001-7331-1174, University of Toronto) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 412-449 |
| Publication date | 2016-07-06 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Twentieth Century British History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0955-2359 • E-ISSN: 1477-4674 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/tcbh/hww028 |
| OpenAlex | W2465129261 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
In 1919, Nancy Astor took her seat in the House of Commons as Britain’s first ever female MP. In the 1945 election, the number of women in the house nearly trebled to twenty-four, and remained around this level for the next four decades. In Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997, 120 female MPs were returned, and women have since comprised around 20 per cent of the Commons. The 2015 election saw 191 elected: the most ever. But to what extent has the increasing presence of women in Parliament made more than a symbolic difference? For example, have female MPs represented a hitherto marginalized ‘women’s interest’, placed ‘women’s issues’ on the agenda, or added a feminine perspective to existing discussion? Using 677 million words of digitized parliamentary speech, and drawing upon the outputs of the Digging into Linked Parliamentary Data (‘Dilipad’) project, we perform a wide-ranging empirical analysis of the role of gender in Commons debates from 1945 using computerized text mining. We make three major discoveries. The first is that there is strong evidence to support the central feminist claim that women’s contributions to debates over these eight decades have been substantively different to those of male colleagues in ways that stretch beyond a greater attentiveness to gender itself. The second is that this effect has been weakening as the number of women in Parliament increased, most notably from the landmark 1997 election. Finally, we question the oft-made claim by scholars and politicians that, since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the Labour party has more consistently focussed on representing women in Parliament than the Conservatives
Commons · Democracy · General election · House of Commons · Parliament · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics · Sociology · Victory · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Law
Parliamentary face and the limits of sanctioned verbal aggression in the British House of Commons
Welsh Women MPs
Opportunities and influence
It's the party that counts’? The Rise of Labour and the Image of the Woman Politician at English Elections, c .1929–1950
Is Anyone Representing Non-resident Finnish Citizens in the Legislative Process of Finland
Representing women, women representing
Do ministers’ occupational and social class backgrounds influence social spending
Structural reading
Labour Women MPs and Housewifery in the House of Commons, 1945–1951
Understanding Female Legislators’ Substantive Representation in the Australian Parliament
Partisanship, Independence, and the Constitutive Representation of Women in the Canadian Senate
Investigating colloquialization in the British parliamentary record in the late 19th and early 20th century
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,71 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 12 |