 Let's talk about politics and governance. On this episode, we explored the role of gender in parliamentary attacks and incivility. Are women less likely to attack and be attacked than men due to their stereotypical gender roles? Do different political systems or specific events, political events influence the adherence to gender stereotypes by politicians? To help us clarify these questions, we welcome Zeliko Poljak from the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp. He has recently published his research on this topic in our Open Access Journal, Politics and Governance. Hi Zeliko, welcome to our episode. Hi Rodrigo, thank you for having me. So the first question, of course, after this quick introduction, why is this topic important? Well, it's important because we know that negativity and hostile politics can basically have a bad influence on us as citizens, as voters. So for example, negativity has been shown to demobilize certain parts of the electorate from going out and voting on the election day. It has also been shown to increase polarization in society and so forth. So of course, it's very important to actually know what is this negativity in politics that is taking place and more importantly, who is basically to blame, so to say, for this negativity. Which type of politicians are going to be more negative? And so of course, in this particular study, I was looking more into gender patterns of this negativity that takes place. What were you hoping to find when you launched this research? So what was the research gap here? Yeah, so basically, as I said, we don't know much about this negativity in politics. We know much about negative campaigning, but campaigning is very short. So campaigns last a couple of weeks. And so we don't know that much in literature about regular day to day politics. So when you scroll through social media or your open newspaper, you probably see certain negativity in politics taking place. But yeah, basically, we weren't necessarily, well, we don't have much indication of who are these politicians in this day to day kind of politics that are going negative. So one of the expectations of this particular study was that actually men would be more negative than women. And the reason for that is because female politicians and women in general face certain stereotypical stereotypical norms in politics that men do not necessarily have to endure. So for example, we tend to associate women with kind of norms that they are kind, sympathetic. So of course, if a female politician wants to engage in political conflict and discussion, she is going to face much bigger backlash than their male colleagues, for example. So the expectation was that basically in a day to day politics, it is going to be more men who are going to engage in this negativity in politics, specifically in parliaments in this paper, while women less so. However, we know from other literature that, for example, women sometimes need to be negative if they are in the opposition, they need to be critical of the government. So then the expectation was because women probably have to deviate from the stereotypical norms in these situations. So they need to be hostile, but that doesn't really fit the expectations stereotypical mold that we have in society. Then we expected that they would be more civil in their criticism than men. So men, for example, can be more in civil in their discourse because they are going to face less of a backlash, unlike women, because we see them more kind. So if women goes negative, she's going to be very kind, so we say. Of course. So after these expectations and what the literature told us, so what were the main findings of your research? So we focus specifically on parliaments as a venue, so it's a perfect venue in day to day politics where politicians, of course, engage in deliberation and they clash on policy and so forth. So we focus specifically on UK, Belgium and Croatia as kind of very three different countries in Europe that have different female representation and different political systems and party systems. And so what we found using the full data that we have on parliamentary attacks from these three countries, we actually were able to see that when women participate in parliamentary debates, they are significantly less likely to attack. And they are also significantly less likely to use incivility in case they do attack. Furthermore, we were also able to show that not only are women less likely to go negative, but also that they are actually avoided in any type of conflict. So basically, when politicians attack, they are more prone to target male politicians because again, going back to the theory, the men kind of fit more the mole of someone who is hostile. So it's more easy for politicians to target men rather than women who are, you know, put in this kind of framework of being kind of pathetic. So these were the explanations we were able to show. However, it is important to stress that we also predominantly find this effect in the UK and less so in Belgium and Croatia. And there are several reasons why this might be happening. And one reason that I also offer in this study is that, for example, in Belgium and Croatia, you have gender quotas. So for example, female politicians have a certain level of protection, so to say, in case they would divert from these stereotypical norms, they could still, for example, get reassurance that their party is going to feature them on the ballot and so forth, which is not necessarily the case in the UK where gender quotas do not exist. They are not binding, parties are not binding by law to feature women on the ballots. So it could be that women in UK politics face much more pressure to adhere to, you know, these classical gender norms of being more tamed and not necessarily engaging in attacks as much as their colleagues in other countries where gender quotas, for example, exist. Thank you, Zaliko. And after these findings, what now? Can you indicate to the researchers out there what comes next in this topic? So what doors does it open for future research? Because you mentioned, for example, these geographical differences. Would that be a way? Yes, exactly. So one of the limitations of the study is that we only have three countries, of course, the more the better, especially considering the fact that we find these difference, well, significant difference between UK and Belgium and Croatia. So it would be very good to translate this type of research to other contexts that resemble more UK. So for example, US, Canada, Australia, so all these kind of systems that have two party systems, single member districts, no gender quotas necessarily in place, to basically see if we would see similar patterns. And furthermore, what we didn't really tackle in this particular study was the fact that we didn't really necessarily look into the contents of these attacks. So we did look into instability. So whether they are in civil or civil when they attack, but we didn't necessarily look into issues that are brought up in these attacks. What is the kind of broader discourse that is taking place? So it would be very fruitful to also see furthermore when politicians are attacking, what is exactly the discourse that is taking place? Because we could, we might be able to see that, for example, in Belgium and Croatia women attack more than they do in the UK, but it might be that the discourse and policies that they are talking about are similar, for example. Very interesting findings and still a lot to explore. Can you provide some additional resources about the topic that we discussed today? Any articles or videos, some self-promotion as well, if that's the case? Well, yeah, so I could recommend, so the papers that were kind of the basis for my study and for people that might be interested in gender and parliaments and kind of this negative hostile politics in general. I can recommend a work from Martin Hasselmeyer and colleagues from two years ago on a sentiment of political speech in parliaments where they looked also into differences between female and male MPs in Austrian parliament. And also I can recommend Lotte Hargrave from UK. She recently defended the PhD where she also looked into kind of broader gendered speech in the UK parliament and not only that, but she also looked, for example, how waters differently perceive women and men in politics. So these are definitely, I would say, from the mentals to start from. And maybe for people that look for something more easygoing and more entertainment wise, I would recommend Danish political TV series Borgen. So it's about, it's a fictional story about female prime minister. But I think the show does very well in kind of demonstrating how female politicians need to balance between various aspects just because they are women, just because we expect them to, for example, take care of family, take care of their kids or their husbands and so forth, which is definitely a context that male politicians probably face less and are less expected to take care of simply because they are men. Of course, even Brigitte from Borgen can help us understand this topic. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Zeliko. This episode is available on Let's Talk About Politics and Governance websites on Koji Tatjou's YouTube channel as well as in podcast directories. Zeliko, it was a pleasure. Thank you.