No Longer Conforming to Stereotypes? Gender, Political Style and Parliamentary Debate in the UK

Abstract Research on political style suggests that where women make arguments are more emotional, empathetic and positive, men use language is analytical, aggressive complex. However, existing work does not consider how gendered patterns of vary over time. Focusing the UK, we argue pressures for female politicians to conform stereotypically ‘feminine’ styles have diminished in recent years. To test this argument, describe novel quantitative text-analysis approaches measuring a diverse set at scale speech data. Analysing UK parliamentary debates between 1997 2019, show debating MPs changed substantially time, as Parliament increasingly adopted stylistic traits typically associated with ‘masculine’ stereotypes communication. Our findings imply prominent gender-based politicians' behaviour significantly worse descriptors empirical reality now than they were past.