Political Incivility and Gender: Evidence from Austrian Parliamentary Debates

Gender differences in negative campaigning have been studied extensively, but evidence on whether male and female politicians differ in the use of uncivil political language is scant. This paper studies how MPs’ gender and contextual characteristics of parliamentary debates influence the level of incivility observed in plenary speeches. Based on research on gender stereotypes, we argue that female MPs use a more civil tone than male MPs. We undertake a sentiment analysis with word embeddings and measure incivility in 75,000 plenary speeches in the Austrian National Council given by more than 500 MPs over two decades. Our analyses show that speeches by female MPs were indeed more civil on average than the speeches of male MPs. The effect is conditioned by the share of women in parliamentary party groups. A more balanced gender distribution of PPGs decreases gender differences in the level of incivility. Both male and female MPs exhibited a more civil tone when the previous speaker was a female speaker.