Interrupting the interruptions. How women transform the parliamentary debate

Abstract

The presence of women in parliament has been linked with substantial changes that may reduce hostility in parliamentary venues. One way to test this notion is to study interactions during parliamentary debates. The goal of this article is two-fold: firstly, we examine whether there is a gender difference in the chance individual politicians are interrupted during parliamentary debates. Secondly, we study whether the increasing presence of women in parliamentary debates can lower the adversarial and hostile nature of parliamentary debates in general. Using longitudinal data on over 108,000 parliamentary speeches from Australia, Croatia, and the UK made in over 1,000 debates, we find that there is no gender difference in the chance individual politicians get interrupted. Yet, there is a possibility that politicians are less likely to be interrupted when more women participate in a debate. These results suggest that the inclusion of women in parliamentary debates could have important implications for how interactions during debates take place.