“Fish wives” in U.K. Parliament: Discursive intersections of (dis)respectability, class, and gender in newspaper representations of Angela Rayner

Abstract

This research develops an intersectional understanding of U.K. newspaper coverage of White, working-class-origin women politicians through a single case analysis of the reporting of Angela Rayner and her supposed attempt to “distract” the U.K. prime minister (PM). A dual process discourse analysis was conducted on 74 U.K. newspaper articles (47,000 words) whose main topic was Rayner and the alleged incident. The two overarching discourses identified—unrespectable “fish wives” and respectable “working-class heroes”— functioned to both confer and revoke gendered and classed notions of the (un)respectable politician to reproduce the “elite male as norm” and class the gendered double bind. The discourses also functioned to restrict working-class women's ability to adopt, reject, or demolish elite, masculine standards, and to caution against working-class women politicians by framing class markers as inherently dangerous (e.g., “inner fishwife”) and unrespectable (e.g., uncouth and hyper-sexualised) compared to White middle-class feminised standards. Finally, discourses reasserted classed and gendered boundaries via portraying working-class women politicians as unworthy and potentially dangerous, and normalising (White) masculinised power and privilege. This technology of governance has implications for voting decisions, our shared understanding of the overall appropriateness of working-class women in positions of power, as well as our treatment towards them.