Distinctive Voices: Political Speech, Rhetoric, and the Substantive Representation of Women in European Parliaments

As the share of women in parliaments rises, increased attention is paid to how they substantively represent women. Meanwhile, the availability of parliamentary speech data has enabled researchers to dissect politicians’ rhetorical patterns. We combine these two literatures to ask whether rhetorical differences between men and women in parliament are connected to style, policy, and preferences of women voters. We apply machine-learning models to speeches from five West European parliaments (2000–18) to measure the femininity of the rhetoric used in each speech. Results show that women and men talk differently in parliament, and that this distinctiveness is due to both style and substance. Combining these results with public opinion surveys, we find that women MPs have the most distinctively “feminine” discourse on issues that are most salient to women in society. These findings showcase the direct connection between descriptive and substantive representation of women in contemporary democracies.