ABSTRACT
Much has been written about the under-representation of women holding elected office around the world. Despite an increasing number of women gaining entry into this domain over recent decades, feminist scholars contend that it remains a distinctively masculine culture. Many feminist scholars have argued that politics is a masculine culture in the sense that the characteristics associated with effective political leadership are also those associated with hegemonic masculinity. Corpus linguistics is particularly valuable in investigating the role that lexical choice plays in constructing ideological representations. The fact that female and male members of the devolved parliaments display similarly combative behaviour in political debates is evidence, according to Shaw, that a degree of equality has been reached in these devolved political institutions due to, among other things, the status of women as founding members and their increased numbers relative to the House of Commons.
