Gender and Digital Politics 2011

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DIGITAL PAPERSIssue 5| July 2011 | www.hansardsociety.org.uk

GENDER AND DIGITAL POLITICSFreddy Fallon, Andy Williamson & Mark Pack

The majority o the population and theelectorate is emale. There are emalemajorities in some areas o politics, including

two out o the three audiences or TV debates inthe 2010 general election (54.5% on ITV and 52.5%on the BBC).1 However, at the elected oce level,politics is male dominated and comments have otenbeen made about intermediate levels o politicalinvolvement, such as political blogging, being male

dominated.This paper looks to bring together some o the existingevidence, along with providing some new evidencespecically related to blogging and commenting onblogs. We rst review overall levels o internet accessand activity, nding generally similar levels across thegenders. When it comes to discussing politics, thereis some evidence o male predominance, though thismay partly be down to how politics is dened andwhere politics is considered to take place.When it comes to more active online politicalparticipation, such as writing blog posts orcommenting on blogs, the gures are usually maledominated. However, this mirrors other ofine andnon-political activities such as the gender o thosewho write letters to newspapers or publication.Overall the evidence or online politics suggeststhat the more an activity involves sel-promotion,

1 D. Wring, R. Mortimer & S. Atkinson (2011). Political Communication

in Britain: The Leaders Debates, the Campaign and the Media in the2010 General Election (Basingstoke: Macmillan).

expounding your views to others or the risk o confictthen the more likely there is to be a male dominance.

The Gender Balance Online

Broadly speaking, access to the internet is wellbalanced between genders; the Oce or NationalStatistics reports2 that 84% o men had used theinternet compared with 79% o women. Eighty-oneper cent o men say that they use the internet every

day or almost every day, and so do 76% o women. Andin terms o how we use the internet on a regular basis,there is little dierence reported between genderseither. When it comes to blogs and social networks,44% o men and 42% o women said that they hadposted messages on chat sites, social networks orblogs. Looking at content consumption, 56% o menhave read or downloaded online news, newspapersor magazines compared to 46% o women but thetrend is reversed when it comes to content creation;40% o women uploaded sel-created content to beshared compared with 36% o men. A recent study oFacebook users in the US showed that 61.1% werewomen and 38.9% male.3

Online Political Activity

There is also evidence to suggest that womenare discussing politics online in places that wouldtraditionally have been perceived as non-political.Mumsnet, which is dedicated to sharing inormation2 ONS (2010). Statistical Bulletin: Internet Access 2010 (London: Ofce

or National Statistics).3 S.C. Watkins & H.E. Lee (2010). Got Facebook?: Investigating WhatsSocial About Social Media (Austin: University o Texas).


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and tips on parenting, has a campaigning ocus,lobbying government and private companies ona variety o issues. This site has blogs rom emalecontributors, and eatures a talk section, where usersare able to discuss issues such as childcare, childrens

ood and education, liestyle issues, health andpolitics. As o July 2011, Mumsnet has a number oactive discussions around the public sector pensions,the NHS, EU and Margaret Thatchers reusal to meetSarah Palin, all political issues.

When it comes to politics, data rom the 2010 BritishElection Study shows that 73% o men had usedthe internet a air amount or a great deal to viewnews, political material or discussion during the 2010general election campaign. This compared to 64%o women.4 Other data supports the argument that

4 British Election Study (2010). CSES Internet Survey. Retrieved 09-Nov-2010 rom bes.utdallas.edu/2009/bes-data.php

online political activity is largely skewed towards men.We looked at contributions to the Liberal DemocratsLib Dem Voice blog up to the end o November 2010and this shows that 79% o blog posts were writtenby men. O the 11,696 comments analysed on Lib

Dem Voice, just 10% (1,157) were written by women.More passively, the Lib Dem Voice Facebook anpage had 4,268 ans, o which 37% were identiableas women and 60% men.

So, when it comes to general online activity, we see

that men and women are airly evenly balanced;men are slightly more likely to download or readnewspapers online, women more likely to createcontent. This ollows the general patterns that wewould expect to see refecting that women are morelikely to network and men more likely to consume.

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Conservative

LibDem

Labour

Media

MPs

Councillors Male

Female

Figure 1: Total Politics Blog Awards 2010 entrants by gender

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Conservative

LibDem

Labour

Overall

Female

Male

Figure 2: MPs on Twitter by party and gender


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We start to see a slight dierence creeping in arounddigital media use at the last general election and thisis a trend that starts to accelerate as we go urtherinto the world o digital politics. Eighty-ve per cento individual blogs eaturing in Total Politics PoliticalBlog Awards or 20105 were written by men, just 15%

by women (see gure 1). Any way you slice this data,its male-dominated; 80% o MPs blogs are by men,as are 85% rom the political media and 93% romcouncillors. O the parties, only 9% o Conservativebloggers are women, gures that rise slightly to 13%or the Liberal Democrats and 17% or Labour. Fairingslightly better, Lords o the Blog6, a project that werun with the House o Lords, has a blogging ratio oabout 2:1. Looking now at MPs, when we analysedhow they used the internet two years ago we ound

that it was a business as usual tool and we ound asignicant uptake in social media applications andlittle gender dierence other than in two areas; rst,

men were ar more likely to blog (refecting the trendabove) and women were more likely to use socialnetworking tools (echoed in the general nding aboveabout content uploading).7 When we conducted thisresearch, only one MP was using Twitter, in two yearsthis situation has changed quite dramatically.

As Figure 2 shows, by late 2010, over 230 MPs weresigned up or Twitter with, again, male MPs beingar more prominent than their emale counterparts;79% o Conservatives, 90% o Liberal Democrats and

63% o Labour MPs on Twitter were men.8 It does,however, show a slight positive shit or womenusing this medium compared to blogging, a trendemphasised when we looked at New Zealand MPs,where 53% o MPs who use Twitter are women.9

5 Total Politics Blog Awards (2010). Retrieved 15-Feb-2011 rom www.totalpolitics.com/blog/hub/blog-awards/148272/-total-politics-blog-awards-2010.thtml

6 See: lordsotheblog.net7 A. Williamson (2009). MPs online: Communicating with constituents.

London: Hansard Society8 See: tweetminster.co.uk/mps9 C. Busby & P. Bellamy (2011). Briefng paper: New Zealand

Parliamentarians and Online Social Media (Wellington: New ZealandParliamentary Library).

This points to an interesting pattern that is exploredurther in Table 1. When we break down thecomposition o Parliament by gender we see aroughly similar trend in terms o gender balance aswe see in the world o digital politics. When we drilldown within these numbers what we see is quite

surprising; the balance starts to draw closer to NewZealands Parliament (which traditionally has a closergender balance than the UK). We can see that almosthal o Labours women MPs tweet, slightly more thanthe 45% o their male counterparts, and, at 41%,Conservative women MPs are much more likely to betweeters than men. Only the Liberal Democrats retainthe bias in avour o men, although given that theyhave only seven women MPs the overall numbers arealso a lot lower.

Recent Hansard Society research also suggests that othose in the new intake o MPs, women seem slightlymore active in using social media or their work, with

55% o new emale MPs using Twitter, compared with50% o new male MPs.10

Moving Ofine

So ar we have seen there is a reasonable genderbalance or internet use but that this balance shitsmarkedly when it comes to political activity, withcommenting on political blogs lying at one extremeo the continuum as a male-dominated activity (theopposing end being the uploading o content tosocial media applications). However it is nave at this

point to claim that the internet is a barrier to equalparticipation in politics, indeed the data around theuse o Twitter suggests that, in some orms, it mightin act be a moderate enabler. To see this picture incontext, we need to look at overall participation inofine political activities by gender.

10 R. Fox & M. Korris (2011). Briefng Paper: A year in the lie. (London:Hansard Society).

DIGITAL PAPERSIssue 5 | July 2011 | www.hansardsociety.org.uk

Table 1: MPs on Twitter by Gender, party and representation in Parliament

Women MenMPs On Twitter MPs On Twittern= %age n= %age n= %age n= %age

Conservative 49 16% 20 41% 257 84% 76 30%Liberal Democrat 7 12% 3 43% 50 88% 28 56%Labour 82 32% 40 49% 175 68% 78 45%


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An occasional series from the Hansard Societys Digital Democracy Programme.

The Hansard Society is the UK's leading independent, non-partisan political research and education charity.

We aim to strengthen parliamentary democracy and encourage greater public involvement in politics. Fromthe internet's impact on parliament, to better government engagement with citizens and the potential orcivil society to harness digital media, the Digital Democracy Programmes thought-leading research has beena ormative part o an emergent digital Britain. Today, we undertake research and produce publications andcommentaries with a ocus on online political communication and citizen engagement, exploring the manyaces o digital inclusion, citizen engagement, political campaigning and parliamentary process.

Copyright 2011 Hansard Society.

Published by the Hansard Society40-43 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JA, UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 7438 1222Fax: +44 (0)20 7438 1229Email: [email protected]: www.hansardsociety.org.uk

Only 22% o the MPs elected in May 2010 werewomen (144 out o 650), which is in proportion withthe balance o male and emale MPs on Twitter. It alsorefects the gender balance in terms o candidatesstanding in the 2010 general election, again 22% werewomen. Looking beyond Parliament to the publicsinterest in politics, our most recent Audit o PoliticalEngagement shows 63% o men are interested inpolitics compared with only 53% o women. Forty-seven per cent o men say that they have discussedpolitics in the last two or three years, compared with37% o women.11

Sixty-two per cent o men eel that they areknowledgeable about politics compared with 42% owomen (although an element o this dierence willlie in the respondents sel assessment o their ownknowledge, something we see repeated in other

surveys around political knowledge). Certainty tovote is much more evenly balanced; 59% o womenare certain to vote at the next election comparedwith 57% o men. The same is true or signing apetition, which had been done by 40% o menand 42% o women in the last two or three years. It

11 Hansard Society (2011), Audit o Political Engagement 8 (London:Hansard Society).

seems, thereore, that a actor in the varying levels ogendered online political participation is the natureo that political participation itsel and that this isrefected both online and ofine. Supporting thistheory the Electoral Commissions research showsthat women are as or more likely to participate incause-oriented activities, such as signing petitionsand boycotting products, whilst men are more activein campaign politics across all activities, such as partymembership and contacting politicians.12

Summary

The balance between men and women decreasesas the inherent level o contention or potential orconfict rises; women are marginally more likely tosign a petition (a passive process) but considerablyless likely to stand or Parliament and signicantlyless likely to make comments on a political blog. This

brie study suggests that gender imbalance onlineis the result o wider political exclusion, not digitalexclusion and, where women are active in politics,they are equally as likely as their male counterpartsto be digitally active.

12 Electoral Commission (2004) Gender and political participation(London: Electoral Commission).

About the authors

Freddy Fallon (@reddyallon) is a Researcher in the DigitalDemocracy Programme at the Hansard Society (@hansardsociety).

Dr Andy Williamson (@andy_williamson) is Director, DigitalDemocracy at the Hanasrd Society.

Dr Mark Pack (@markpack) is Head o Digital at MHPCommunications and Co-Editor, Liberal Democrat Voice.

Documents

Gender and Digital Politics 2011