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Article published In:
Democracy and Discriminatory Strategies in Parliamentary Discourse
Edited by Karin Bischof and Cornelia Ilie
[Journal of Language and Politics 17:5] 2018
► pp. 594–616

“Behave yourself, woman!”

Patterns of gender discrimination and sexist stereotyping in parliamentary interaction

ORCID logo | Strömstad Academy, Sweden
After a record number of women were elected to the House of Commons in 1997, many incidents of sexism and abusive behaviour were reported. The aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, to scrutinize the mechanisms and effects of sexist discrimination and stereotyping of women MPs in the House of Commons; on the other, to identify the strategies used by female (and male) MPs to subvert discriminatory representations, and to counteract gender-biased and sexist treatment. The focus of the multi-level analysis is on three recurrent strategies: objectifying women MPs through fixation on personal appearance rather than professional performance (e.g. making trivialising comments about women’s hair and dressing style); patronizing women MPs through the use of derogatory forms of address (e.g. directly addressing them by the terms of endearment “honey”, “dear”, “woman”); and stigmatizing women MPs through abusive and discriminatory labelling (e.g. ascribing to them stereotypically insulting names.
Keywords: parliament, parliamentary, Prime Minister’s Question Time, gender discrimination, sexist, stereotype, abusive language, identity, Master Suppression Techniques
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Approaches to sexist and abusive language/behaviour
  • 3.Exposing gender bias at the private-public interface
  • 4.Discourse-shaped identity framings
  • 5.Parliamentary usage of Master Suppression Techniques
  • 6.Where does the British parliamentary bully tradition come from?
  • 7.Manifestations of British parliamentary sexist discrimination and bullying
    • 7.1Objectifying women MPs through stereotypically sexist remarks
    • 7.2Patronizing women MPs through derogatory forms of address
    • 7.3Stigmatizing women MPs through abusive labeling
  • 8.Reactions to and actions against male MPs’ sexist and demeaning behaviour
    • 8.1Informal reactions and follow-ups
    • 8.2Online feedback (through Twitter, social media)
    • 8.3Institutional initiatives: Constructive proposals and sanctions
  • 9.Concluding remarks
  • References
Published online: 14 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.18015.ili
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