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Article published In: The Mediated Communication of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Politics
Edited by Angela Smith and Michael Higgins
[Journal of Language and Politics 19:1] 2020
► pp. 144–159

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Constructing women’s “different voice”

Gendered mediation in the 2015 UK General Election

ORCiD logo with link | University of Oxford
 | University of Westminster
Published online: 15 January 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19086.cam
Abstract
Since the 1990s, media commentators in the UK and elsewhere have praised women for introducing a “visibly different style of politics”, one symbol of which is the alleged preference of female politicians for a less adversarial and more co-operative style of political speech. Drawing on an analysis of the 2015 UK General Election campaign, we argue that this notion of women’s “different voice” has become increasingly central to the media’s construction of prominent female politicians as public figures, despite the evidence that it does not reflect any clear-cut pattern of differentiation between male and female political speakers of equivalent status and experience. Though it may seem to be an advance on previous negative representations of female politicians, we suggest that it reproduces – albeit in a “modernized” form – the long-established tendency of the media to evaluate women in relation to gendered norms and expectations, while men are judged as individuals.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Gendered mediation and the representation of women’s political speech
  • 3.“It was the women wot won it”: The press coverage of GE2015
  • 4.The gendering of Nicola Sturgeon
  • 5.Conclusion: Dilemmas of difference
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (21)
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Cameron, Deborah
2020. Language, Sexism and Misogyny The Reception of Women’s Political Speech . In Language, Gender and Hate Speech A Multidisciplinary Approach , DOI logo

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