GENDER FACTOR IN PARLIAMENTARY AND ONLINE ACTIVITIES OF UK MPs (2024–2025)

Abstract

Background. Gender issues, gendered patterns of communication in politics, in parliaments, gender-based violence during elections, and steps towards gender parity are monitored by committees, scholars, analyzed within Gender Studies and Critical Discourse Studies. Under-representation of women, gender factor in communication remain sensitive issues in British politics and UK Parliament since the time when women got the right to vote and stand for election as Members of the Parliament (MPs) in 1918. The article analyses the impact of gender factor on the basis of UK parliamentary discourse, in particular, the data on Spoken contributions and Written questions of the Labour and Conservative Parties, Liberal Democrats and Independent MPs, and on the basis of the content of MPs' websites and their social media accounts in 2024–2025.

Methods. Critical Discourse Studies and Political Discourse Analysis were used for the research of parliamentary discourse, Multimodal Discourse Analysis was implemented for the analysis of MPs' online communication.

Results. The UK Parliament website tools reveal that male Cabinet ministers and male Shadow Cabinet members are more active in the Parliament than their female counterparts, both with their spoken contributions and written questions. Gender difference in the performance of parliamentarians elected for the first time in 2024 is negligible. Specific roles and responsibilities in the parliament contribute to MPs' better performance and efficiency. All Cabinet Ministers have websites of the same design with the symbolic red colour of the Labour Party and run their X accounts with regular posts and reposts, thus corporate culture prevails over the gender factor.

Conclusions. Parliamentary gender gap is narrowing. Female MPs still lag behind their male colleagues in the parliamentary discourse but the gender factor impact on social media is insignificant.