Manterrupting in the German Bundestag: Gendered Opposition to Female Members of Parliament?

Abstract

The problem of manterrupting, i.e. men interrupting women to take control of a conversation, claiming superior knowledge, or discrediting women's arguments, has garnered major attention in social and traditional media. Yet scholarly accounts of gendered speech interruption patterns in parliamentary debates are less common. In this article, I argue that manterrupting can be considered a form of resistance against women in politics and, in its worst iteration, prevent female representatives from representing women's interests. This article will analyze the problem of ‘manterrupting’ regarding parliamentary debates in Germany by investigating the nature and extent of male interruptions during parliamentary debates in the 17th legislative period. Drawing on insights from social psychology and masculinity studies, this article finds that in the case of Germany, manterruptions are neither systemic and frequent enough to constitute a form of resistance against women in politics nor do they prevent female representatives from engaging in the substantive representation of women.

Unpacking the politics of legislative debates

“…Moving on to the output stage, in times of increasing political polarization, due to left-and right-wing populist parties' parliamentary presence, measuring the quality of legislative debates, for example by counting how often a legislator is interrupted by other legislators or how often the president of the parliament has to implement disciplinary actions (Erikson & Josefsson 2019;Dietrich et al 2019;Och 2020), is ever more critical. Legislative debates offer a critical tool to analyse intra-party politics (Laver 2021).…”

Gênero e Construcionismo Social: Os Desafios das Mulheres na Tecnologia da Informação

“…Koc-Michalska et al (2019) definem o termo como um momento na comunicação em que um homem com menos conhecimento explica fatos ou ideias para uma mulher, como se ela não soubesse, por ter mais conhecimento que o homem no assunto. Outro fenômeno que se aproxima do mainsplaining é o manterrupting, que consiste na interrupção contínua da fala de uma mulher por um homem, porque ele desacredita dos argumentos dela ou acredita ter mais conhecimento (Och, 2019). Desse modo, a voz feminina tem pouca atenção, porque se presume que a mulher tem pouco conhecimento, conforme foi identificado nos relatos.…”

Women Leading the Opposition: Gender and Rhetoric in the European Parliament

“…Studies suggest that female legislators take the floor less often than men (Bäck & Debus, 2019;Bäck et al, 2014) and that their speeches focus less often on issues of "hard" politics. Moreover, the literature indicates that female legislators are more likely to address gender-related issues (Bäck et al, 2014) and are more frequently interrupted than their male counterparts (Och, 2020;Pearson & Dancey, 2011a). Brescoll (2011) finds that powerful women speak less (long) than powerful men in the US Senate, suggesting that volubility negatively affects the perception and evaluation of women's competence.…”