To be a woman in politics is to be a woman in a field traditionally dominated by men. But is it more effective to try to make people forget that you’re different, or to heighten the contradictions?

That’s the subject before authors Bruno Castanho Silva, Danielle Pullan, and Jens Wäckerle in their new paper, “Blending in or standing out? Gendered political communication in 24 democracies,” out now in the American Journal of Political Science. The authors set out to consider “how these contradictory incentives” — namely, trying to fit in or stand out among the men — “influence female Members of Parliament (MPs) in 24 democracies between 1987 and 2022, applying machine learning to 6.8 million parliamentary speeches to measure how feminine is their speaking style.”

The authors looked at speech, specifically, because it’s present across politics and because it’s an expression: with language, politicians are telling their peers and would-be voters how they want to be seen.

They looked at countries across Europe, North America, and Oceania. They used a machine learning approach to determine “how feminine or masculine the discourse of each MP is, based on their speeches, which allows us to see if and how female MPs change their speaking style, in relation to its genderedness, as their parliamentary careers progress.”

The authors felt that this was an improvement on previous methods, which relied on deductive ideas about what constitutes masculinity and femininity, explaining, “Rather than applying a set criteria of what constitutes masculinity and femininity in political debate, we observe these concepts and understand them as the expressions of men and women respectively.” To put it another way, this study was based on data about what men and women say and do, not the authors’ own ideas about what it masculine or feminine.

The authors found that, the longer women stay in office, the more they adapt a “masculine” style. Part of this was because, the longer they were in office, the likelier they were to speak on subjects traditionally considered “masculine,” like defense. But it was also the case that much of the change simply came from speaking in a more “masculine” way over time, which is to say that it held across speech subjects. Interestingly, the effect was most clear on women in socially progressive political parties, while women in more conservative parties kept a “feminine” speaking tone, suggesting to the authors that gender norms are held onto more dearly in parties to the right of center.

The authors acknowledge that they have not factored intersectionality into their analysis, and that the literature that exists so far suggests that the theories that they considered may apply differently to different groups of women depending on what other identities they hold. They also suggest that future research considers not only time spent in office, but power acquired, and whether being in more “powerful” positions leads women to adopt still more “masculine” speech.

Lucila Del Aguila Llausas asked whether Mexico’s newly elected next president, Claudia Sheinbaum, can reset relations with the United States. One of her priorities is to improve security cooperation, and that won’t be possible without her northern neighbor. But it’s up to Washington, too: “ [T]he United States will need to decide whether to turn a blind eye to antidemocratic tendencies taking hold in Mexico and focus on narrow parochial issues in a kind of Faustian bargain or to take the relationship as a whole package.” Sheinbaum will need to not only build on pre-existing political capital, but innovate, too.

Rachel A. George warned that negotiations will “flounder” if they do not involve women. “Approaching the 25th anniversary of the Women, Peace and Security agenda at the United Nations, the international community can do better to bring the agenda into the fore of prominent peace attempts,” wrote George. George noted that women are underrepresented in political decision-making processes in conflicts today in places like Sudan and Yemen, even though we know that historians believe womens’ participation in peace processes in places like Northern Ireland were “critical factors enhancing peace outcomes.”

Manuel Rueda looked at how Colombia and its neighbors are reacting to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Rueda explained the ebb and flow of sentiment since Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 of last year: “Latin American nations have traditionally sided with the Palestinian cause. But last year, many countries in the region condemned the Hamas attack on Israel that led to the current war in Gaza. Since then — as thousands of civilians perish in Israeli bombings and the carnage shows up on social media — many people are now actively siding with the Palestinians.” Colombia in particular broke off diplomatic ties and has said it is stopping coal exports — though some worry that, by doing so, Colombia is hurting its own ability to defend itself.

Bad news.

Good guess.

Longing for longer bread?

Three(?) lions(?) on a shirt(!).

Maybe he prefers the sequel.

At long last, meme meaning.