Time, gender and parliamentary discourse

The main objective of this chapter is to show the importance of politicians’ time management and its relation to gender. We focus on how men and women manage time through pauses and speech rate. The idea of rhythmic pattern has already been studied (Banon, Arcos and Requena 2012), and pausative pattern has been discussed in relation to the electoral political debate. Our hypothesis is that women and men in positions of responsibility in the Andalusian Parliament handle time management differently, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Therefore, we analysed the interventions of several regional ministers of the Andalusian Government to study whether pauses, length and speed of MPs’ speeches have a strategic persuasive or argumentative value.