key: cord-0057556-va7p6uuk
authors: Miller, Cherry M.
title: The House Service: ‘Servants’ and ‘Stewards’
date: 2020-11-08
journal: Gendering the Everyday in the UK House of Commons
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-64239-6_6
sha: 637663c20796c98e179d632643768a8750235d87
doc_id: 57556
cord_uid: va7p6uuk

This chapter explores the parliamentary administration of the UK House of Commons. Comparative literature stresses that different types of parliaments emphasise different staffing structures in accordance with the varying importance attached to different parliamentary functions. Therefore, the arrangement of the UK House of Commons parliamentary administration is at the very heart of parliamentary democracy. The effective work environment of parliamentary staff not only contributes to parliamentary strengthening but also makes parliaments more gender-just workplaces. To date though, analyses of gendering in parliamentary administrations, beyond self-reporting, are few and far between. The chapter fills gaps by exploring how changes to MPs’ work can have knock-on effects for parliamentary staff. It explores how staff are rotated through different departments and how gender was rendered (in)visible in a high-profile recruitment process. It then explores Workplace Equality Networks that were going through a process of institutionalisation at the time of research and may be critical actors for gender equality in the parliamentary workplace. Finally, the chapter explores how members of the parliamentary administration negotiate discourses of service and stewardship in public engagement and in how they navigate inadequate bullying and harassment arrangements.

The career cycle takes on a specificity for members of the House Service, because arguably, they have the longest career trajectory out of all the actors on the estate. I begin by discussing rules with gendered effectsthat is the perception of a hierarchical arrangement of the House Administration in favour of procedural careers, over other careers-specifically, the decision in the Governance Committee's report, 2 to subordinate the Director General to the Clerk of the House-the highest official of the House Administration. I explore how gendered actors worked with the rules to change the governance structures and the subject positions involved.

The second section explores a rule with a gendered effect: clerks' circulation. I explore this rule, because it reflects a broader move in international parliamentary administrations (European Parliament 2020) to rotate staff to different departments.

This chapter places emphasis on this formal episode of institutional change because it speaks to the central themes of the book. These are that (1) MPs have the possibility to interfere in high-profile recruitment and appointment processes, breaking the invisibility of parliamentary workers, which several members of the House Service value as a preference (Geddes 2019); (2) everyday cultures of institutions are linked to its governance structures; (3) theoretically, it highlights, quite vividly, Butler's concept of regulations and sanctions discussed in Chapter 2, particularly how affects such as embarrassment could be a form of sanction; (4) it draws attention to broader questions in parliamentary studies about the functions of parliaments (Abels 2020 ) and the partiality of any reform arrangement (Kelso 2009 ). Although this episode has been discussed in (auto)biographical and academic sources (Crewe 2015; Petit and Yong 2018; Yong 2018; Geddes 2019; Bercow 2020; Meakin and Geddes 2020; Whale 2020), this book makes an attempt at applying a gender lens to make sense of power in the episode. More specifically, I draw attention to the role of gender performances in conveying meaning about the House of Commons as a workplace. To be sure, this chapter does not make a claim on the merits of the applicant outcome of Carol Mills. Instead, it employs gender as an analytical category (Beckwith 2005; Bacchi 2017 ) combined with Butler's performativity (2011) and Lowndes' gendered/gendering rules (2019) to highlight the complexity of gendering in this debate and how inequality is 'done' by actors working with these rules. In doing so, it shows the ambiguities and contradictions of how gender was simultaneously rendered silent in notions of common-sense arrangements, but also present in more proximate personifications of gendered actors. FDI unbounds the political (Kulawik 2009, p. 265 ). This means that it recognises that 'the political' is more than the legislative functions of parliaments and highlights the exercise of power and agency by broader categories of staff.

Gendered actors worked with the governance structures and spoke from gendered subject positions. Power was de-gendered-that is, gender was not treated as a category of analysis in three articulations: (1) a hierarchy between procedural expertise and services; (2) organising out discussions of c/glass ceilings; (3) a proxy war couched in gendered 'old war' discourses (Kaldor 2012) ; whilst the applicant was gendered in two articulations: (1) gendered and xenophobic language constructing Mills as 'stranger'; and (2) Burkean discourses that reiteratively reconsolidated both UK political traditions, and Mills as monstrous outsider.

Firstly, this chapter draws attention to how functions of parliaments are debated through meanings conveyed and fought over in gendered performances and which were prioritised in this debate. There is a large literature on the functions of parliaments (Abels 2020; Kreppel 2014;  Bagehot 1862). The first set of ostensibly unchallengeable statements was around the prioritisation of procedure over administration. Observers suggest that 'it is procedure that distinguishes parliaments from other political assemblies' (Palonen 2016, p. 12) . Procedure is not objective but is subject to interpretation. Indeed, parliamentary staff are powerful interlocutors (Norton 2001) , though may rarely be over-ridden. Resistances to decentring expertise beyond the parliamentary chamber suggests much about the institutionalisation of procedure. Parliamentary procedure attracts affective investments if the UK Parliament is respected worldwide as a 'debating parliament'. The distinctness of procedure is embodied in dress, such as Table clerks wearing gowns.

Procedure sets out the rules for debate, to control time and agenda. The nod towards objectivity feeds into a chain of hierarchical binaries such as objectivity/subjectivity, rationality/irrationality; mind/body; public/private; transcendence/immanence, which feminist theorists have critiqued (Ferguson 1984; Stivers 1993) . In terms of the objectiveness of procedure, any solution is ideational and will privilege representations of problems and solutions.

Speaker John Bercow and another member of the recruitment panel, the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge MP, tried to re-centre expertise needed for broader functions of parliaments and to reconfigure the career pathway around wider expertise in the parliamentary administration to facilitate this. They cited vast resources being put into non-legislative activities such as the then upcoming Restoration and Renewal programme-a major refurbishment of the House of Commons in order to value broader expertise. There had been an increasing pressure for more professionalised outreach, visitor services 3 and agility towards re-prioritisations of business, security threats, constitutional changes and digital engagement. Bercow invoked professionalisation discourses to recite the norm of 'expertise': 'there is another discipline and that discipline is management'. 4 The sitting Serjeant at Arms also said: 'Outside of the House, it would be almost universally recognised that the age of the gentleman amateur is past. Just as the House deserves to have a top procedural expert as its Clerk, so it needs to be managed by a trained professional'. 5 The attention to dailiness-that is, the broader institutional caretaking within parliament in the evidencewas notable. A less charitable reading is that an angst was shown of the political losing its referent, in this case, law-making, to catering and facilities. The everyday is devalued as inconsequential, routine, unexceptional, devoid of decision-making and seemingly pre-political (Enloe 2011, p. 447) . The everyday highlights an abundance of political relationships, re-territorialising agency to a plurality of parliamentary activity. In sum, 'the everyday' makes political life 'common' (Guillaume and Huysmans 2019, p. 282). My interpretation was that skills regimes were put into discussion-if not open struggle with each other quite openly in a hierarchicalised way.

The second discourse was around the formal division of competencies and hierarchy between the two posts of Clerk and what was to become the Director General. This debate played on a longer attempt by Bercow to split the post into two positions, and he had failed to convince the Leader of the House Andrew Lansley and the outgoing clerk, Sir Robert Rogers. Indeed, a former Deputy Speaker suggested that the split needed to be managed in a way to keep the importance of the senior clerk of the House of Commons (in Whale 2020). The desire to rationalise and streamline parliament's structures was understandably in part due to 'Parliament's sluggish nature [through] the lack of an accepted hierarchy or an identifiable, active leadership' (Yong 2018, p. 101) .

However, an ambivalence is that parliaments have been conceptualised by those who take a more traditional outlook, as inimical to bureaucratic thinking (Palonen 2018a) . Parliaments are simultaneously state institutions and opposed to the state's bureaucratic core. In particular, the Director General Ian Ailles, former CEO of Thomas Cook, has discussed the constraints in decision-making in a public sector body (Doherty, 5 May 2018) . Collective decision-making is fraught in the House Service if MPs can overturn decisions quite publicly on the floor of the House (Petit and Yong 2018, p. 31) . Another ambivalence is that despite the articulation of democratic practices in the 2010-2015 Parliament, such as elections to departmental Select Committees, the Chair of this ad hoc select committee-that is, a committee that dissolves after completing its designated task, Rt Hon Jack Straw-was appointed rather than elected, not echoing the democratic practices of other committees and the desire to expand elections further.

Formally, although the terms of reference of the Governance of the House Review have been interpreted as broad (Yong 2018 p. 86), they only mentioned precisely an allocation of responsibilities:

to consider the governance of the House of Commons, including the future allocation of the responsibilities for House services currently exercised by the Clerk of the House and Chief Executive. 6 The outcome, as constructed by some MPs, was an institutional arrangement whereby the Clerk remains head of the House Service and the Director General is subordinated to the Clerk as his/her 'Line Manager'. The sequencing in appointments was a reflection of that: 'there is a very clear arrangement. The Clerk is 'top dog'. The Director General reports to the Clerk'. 7 The outcome could have been a coequal leadership model but seems to have produced a 'marzipan layer' just below the summit. On reflecting on the process and her own treatment in Canberra, Mills says: 'I did learn one lesson: clerks have much more influence than chief executives' (in Whale 2020). Whilst this book does not make a claim on the empirical 'fact' of formal influence, it is interesting that this was a discourse that was articulated to make sense of the episode.

Parliamentary reform is partial and subjective-some perspectives are organised in and others are organised out. The discursive connection between the administration of the House and parliamentary reform was a departure from the traditional reform: electoral reform, committee organisation, devolution, the upper chamber and the assertion of backbench independence. The Serjeant at Arms also stated that a 'clerk-centric' 8 leadership structure weakened ambition in other departments. A former Deputy Leader of the House, Barbara Keeley suggested that there seemed to be 'glass ceilings' 9 for women in the House Service. Indeed, clerks' own disciplinary-specific trainings meant that members of staff elsewhere in the House Service had felt excluded (Crewe 2017, p. 48) .

Bureaucratic discourse has been critiqued as gendered (Ferguson 1984) . Bureaucratic language arguably eclipsed other key governance issues. Bullying and harassment within and towards members of the House Service were reiterated in Dame Laura Cox's QC Report (2018). She described the House of Commons as a 'particularly serious case' of bullying (2018, p. 3) and argued that the bullying and poor responses from management had 'an obvious gendered dimension' (2018, p. 68). She cited paternalism and reiterated that the UK House of Commons was a workplace. Furthermore, the House's policies Valuing Others and Respect Policy had serious shortcomings in both coverage and permanence at the time of research. Crucially, the Clerk and Director General were charged with implementing the recommendations of Dame Laura Cox's report. I argue that broader discourses of (career) equalities and harassment were organised out. This had the effect of rhetorically degendering-that is, removing gender as a category of analysis from the career structures of the House of Commons.

A third set of statements was around the politicisation of the post, giving primary reference to men who would assumedly benefit from the proposed power arrangement. Indeed, that the Speaker chaired the recruitment panel, rather than an external person, was a departure from practice elsewhere, such as high appointments to the civil service (Riddell 2014) and so this fuelled accusations of politicisation and also has consequences for senior members of staff who may feel at the whim of a personal relationship with the Speaker (Whale 2020). Two former governance reports, the Ibbs (1990) and Braithwaite (1999) , were, arguably, driven by Member dissatisfaction (Rush 2005, p. 46) , whereas the Governance of the House report was driven, in part, by personality conflict. The discourse of a personality conflict that preluded the Governance of the House report presents Mills as without agency, caught between several 'battles' between traditionalists and modernisers, executive and parliament relations, and partisan relations. This hides the assumption that males are primary reference figures. Moments of decision-making were reduced to a proxy war between individuals who (ostensibly) remained classless, genderless and raceless. Indeed, government aides telephoned individuals in Australia to ask questions about her suitability and drawing on a football metaphor 'played a very long game of dribbling it out and making Bercow's life as uncomfortable as possible' (aide in Whale 2020). These performances actually convey gendered meanings that show this was understood through a sporting fight, rather than showing any regard for Mills or for other aspirants for future posts.

Feminist discursive institutionalism pays attention to the constructions of interests. The politicisation of the post with men as primary reference points featured in reductionist attributions of what it means to maximise power, interests and tactics in a given situation. A 'powergrab' was constructed that bolstered the Speaker's office and contained an assumption that Mills would be a pliable actor. Gender performancethat is, the conveying of meanings-is performed in several different acts and discourses. The identity-building practices of the Speaker as a change agent-a muscular moderniser who was dragging parliament 'kicking and screaming' into the twenty-first century-were foregrounded and he had been elected on a reforming mandate in 2019. Antagonism extends to Bercow's inter-institutional fights defending backbenchers' rights and making parliament more visible, preventing parliament's 'emasculation'. 10 Bercow invokes the discourses of the everyday to perform Speaker activism by stressing his quasi-private leadership preference and implied subjectivity of intergenerational justice, by insisting on chairing the Youth Parliament. To perhaps disarm some of these masculine performances, Bercow has been described as prioritising public relations in competing devalued feminine discourse of narcissism, hypertrophying the self as the absolute end (De Beauvoir 2010, p. 683).

This politicisation was augmented by old war discourses which shored up UK military tradition and emphasised imaginaries of the (near) decisive encounter. This episode was highlighted by media analysts as one marked by the anticipation of conflict through 'manifold references of controversy and clashes of opinion' (Bednarek and Caple 2017, p. 88) . Actors were hailed into iterations of a 'realpolitik'. This included World War II 'Dunkirk' beach evacuations 11 ; 'firing a majestic broadside' 12 ; references to the Royal Air Force 13 ; 'two camps': 'the chief executive-ites and the Clerk-ites' 14 and also a 'Trojan horse to pursue a personal vendetta'. 15 The war discourse performed in this episode provided a striking insight into the affective life of some groups in the UK Parliament. Fineman notes that the language of battles tells us about the 'emotional cultures' of organisations and I would add iterability-this was one of the rounds of battles: 'In casting competitors as enemies, it follows that they can be derided and "crushed," and their defeat celebrated. Conversely, losing a battle is to be attended by feelings of humiliation and resentmentand then aggression to fuel a further round in the competitive "war"' (2008, p. 3). Indeed, Bercow's modest pause in the recruitment process was considered as a 'climbdown' and was seized upon in the chamber.

Overall then, the prioritisation of procedure over service, the prioritisation of bureaucratic competences over equality and the politicisation of the post rendered gender invisible as a category of analysis from the debate. This is performative, since the absence of these considerations brings about material institutional arrangements. I now turn to discourses that gendered Carol Mills that acted as 'regulations', disciplining Mills and quite potentially future onlookers from applying for a job in the House Service. Mills was a subject who personified the discourses, but I claim that another candidate may well have in some senses been positioned similarly to Mills. The episode indicates that a duty of care as a corporate body during recruitment may be an aspect of gender-sensitivity. As Whale notes, 'Mills was subject to attack in both hemispheres' (2020). Mills was placed in a relationship of inequality by her auditors through her lack of expertise, and in her positioning as an 'excessive outsider' against a Burkean backdrop of gradualist institutional change. Indeed, the aforementioned procedural framing gave legitimacy to self-selected job auditors as claim makers on procedure at the parliamentary-administrative interface.

Firstly, a key discourse was around Mills' 'lack' of expertise. This was ostensibly her procedural expertise, but it also seeped into the denigration of her administrative expertise as an end in itself. Mills herself conveyed three times to the recruiters and then reiterated in the recruitment panel that she did not have a background as a clerk and was not a procedural expert, but was capable of learning on the job: 'I was really clear about what I did do and what I didn't do' (in Whale 2020). Mills did have expertise in change management, which she had been in her previous position as Secretary of Parliamentary services in Canberra, such as better access to the parliamentary building, more transparency and more civil service type management (Whale 2020), and she met Bercow at the World e-Parliament Conference in South Korea. The recruiters said they had been tasked with looking beyond the traditional narrow scope of candidates.

Developments in the MP's world as discussed in the last chapter bear relevance for members of the parliamentary administration. Expertise of Mills requires an auditor who is positioned as an informed subject to actively engage themselves in the recruitment process and make claims at this parliamentary-administrative interface. There had been six (maleauthored) reports of the House of Commons Service, by Compton (1974) , Bottomley (1975) , House of Commons (1990), Braithwaite (1999), House of Commons (2007) and Jablonowski (2010) . In terms of bodies and expertise in parliaments, there is a performative politics of discursive visibility on who comments on what topics and presence and absence may be gendered (Zimmerman 2020) . The propensity for more MPs to act as experts in the debate was weakened by institutional factors such as the House of Commons Commission's 16 lack of visibility and leadership; the high turnover, absenteeism and an overrepresentation of men on domestic committees 17 (Yong 2018) ; and competing parliamentary activities. The procedure committee has only received its first female chair, Karen Bradley MP, in 2020, who oversaw scrutinising of parliamentary procedure amidst the coronavirus and indeed had a narrow election win, with just nineteen votes more than her male opponent. In 2014, it was self-appointed experts who audited Mills' expertise. Subject positions empower subjects to speak. However, sometimes subjects can have an ambivalent relationship to invited positions and they may retire oneself from discursive visibility: In this context then, self-selection 19 as experts of parliamentary administration who were hailed into the subject positions of 'job auditors' was important. Subsequent to the recruitment process, the newly recruited Director General's inexperience of the public sector (Doherty, Economia, 5 June 2018) was not something that was subsequently debated in public. Mills' 'lack' of expertise was also iterated by a second set of auditors. These were unsupportive media, some of who were in the parliamentary press lobby and endogenous to the institution. On 29 June 2014, the Mail on Sunday reported her candidacy. This was information that had been leaked and she was unhappy about it (in Whale 2020). The episode indicates that a duty of care as a corporate body during recruitment may be an aspect of gender-sensitivity. As Whale notes, 'Mills was subject to attack in both hemispheres' (2020). Indeed, over the summer months, Mills' professional identity was represented in gendered terms, such as a In addition to the male journalists cited above, Mills' 'lack' also articulated by female parliamentary actors. Betty Boothroyd, a former speaker of the Commons, claimed on BBC Parliament's Book Talk that Mills was 'out of her depth', 20 whilst the Clerk of the Australian Senate, Rosemary Laing, sent an email intervening in the appointment, saying it was 'bizarrre', 'embarrassing' and 'an affront'. The identity of senior learned women was counterpoised to the inexperienced Mills, facilitating an infantilising construction of Mills and her capabilities. Gender was also discussed in this episode by another senior female, the chair of the Backbench Business Committee who constructed feminist interests: I am a feminist, and I would like nothing more than to see a woman take on one of the most senior positions in this country, but if the job is given to someone who is not qualified for it, it will strengthen the hand of people who think that women cannot succeed. They will say, "You see? They're not up to it." It will give the equalities agenda a bad name. 21 Gendering discourse then is performed by both male and female actors who make claims around legitimate 'knowledge' and also articulate claims about feminist interests. Eventually, recruitment exercises may inject more heterogeneous meanings into women who assume leadership roles and feminist interests.

A second discourse constituted Mills in the subject position of an excessive 'outsider'. For the first time, headhunters Saxton Bampfylde were used to seek the possibility of recruiting from a pool outside those in the House Service. They located Mills in Australia. There are indeed trade union debates to be had about the fairness of recruiting from outside an organisation and bypassing its internal applicants. Who is constructed as an 'outsider' matters since 'insiders' have the power to name or misname the meaning of struggles and what this was about. As mentioned, because the problem was presented as a procedural problem, Burkean thought 22 played a significant role in the identity narrative of the MP who put forward the motion to get the House's input on the appointment process. Burke was Irish and Catholic, but widely regarded as a founder of British Conservatism and a proponent of continuity, tradition and rank. Feminist historians have lucidly illustrated that Burkean discourses of reform and their contestations have gendered subtexts (Wallach Scott 1986; O'Donnell 2019). Less sympathetic readers of Burke critique his constructions of femininity during times of transition:

Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution is built around a contrast between ugly, murderous sans culottes hags ("the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women") and the soft femininity of Marie-Antoinette who escaped the crowd to "seek refuge at the feet of a King. (Wallach Scott 1986 Scott , p. 1071 In the debate on the floor of the House of Commons, Mills is presented as an excessive and aural outsider: 'there is no objection in principle to an Australian -because when a point of order is raised, the Speaker is quickly whispered advice by the Clerk'. 23 The nod to Mill's nationality is important since the UK Parliament's procedure as an 'ideal type' globally and is 'tightly interconnected with the aristocratic English gentleman ideal' (Palonen 2018b, p. 509 ). This may matter symbolically also for (aspirant) employees of the House Service who are not UK nationals.

The Serjeant at Arms noted that it was unprecedented that someone from a non-traditional background had occupied the position. This echoed class discussions in the interviews and a discursive practice of 'pedigree networking' by discussing shared university boating teams 24 over lunch, a practice which universalises middle-class experience (Maycock 2016, p. 72) . In-group similarities and out-group differences discursively bring about an outcome of institutional blocking (Puwar 2004 ). Gendering works through many addresses-or interpellations including framed organograms in the Palace of Westminster at the time of research: 'The organogram that's around the House framed with lots of old white men is just really dangerous messaging, they should take it down'. 25 Mills claimed that she sensed pushback from the Commons human resources department about her candidacy (in Whale 2020). She herself anticipated that appointing someone from outside Westminster would attract attention, but 'did not anticipate the full extent of the backlash' (in Whale 2020).

As mentioned in Chapter 2, bodies forcibly cite norms. Ordered bodily routines and comportment were articulated such as the clerk's 'constitutionally correct beard' 26 and 'countenance at the Table…of a granite detachment, unmoved by the funniest of jokes or by the most tedious misbehavior' 27 ; 'a walking "Erskine May" 28 made flesh'. 29 Informally, this gave cues to tacit understandings of professional identities in parliament and physical embodiment that compel and constrain embodied performances. It is harder for some bodies to approximate, even if the 'somatic norm' is seemingly disembodied (Puwar 2004 ). The following quote is interesting since it suggests that a collective identity was mobilised: the show of power by the clerkly race in their response to Carol Mills' appointment was very interesting. So that establishment bastion still exists and is still very powerful…There has been some really interesting messaging from within the House and from within the media about who's worthy of taking on this role…it's a bit of a macrocosm of what's happening here…she's not of a sufficient class, she's not the right gender. She's an outsider, she's not part of the club"…there's still feeling of the Oxbridge, male pale heterosexual person who talks in Latin and whose hobbies include history and bird-watching. It's just a very, it's a certain type. 30 Inequality through sanctions is further reinforced through dramatised affects. Mills' application became an object of embarrassment, governance and intervention. Furthermore, formally, the UK Parliament formally consists of the crown, the executive and the legislature. There was an effort to intervene dramatically on a letter to the Queen by the Cabinet Secretary, so not to embarrass the Queen. The position is a crown appointment so that the government cannot remove a Clerk of the House capriciously.

The former clerk had been spoken about affectionately in cricket metaphors and the sharing of whiskey in the Retirement debate. Affect circulated in the regret that the former clerk Sir Robert Rogers had decided to retire after a fraught relationship with the Speaker. In the Retirement of the Clerk debate of July 2014, war discourse was circulated affectionately in anecdotes of Roberts' career biography chairing the Defense Committee in the mid-1980s. This may also be an indicator that clerking committees of high-spending government departments such as defence may lead to senior positions. Laudations of protecting 'front line' house services in the savings programme-a programme of savings in the administration of the House, after the expenses and financial crises-accompanied quantifications of staff couched in military terms: '2,000-the size of three infantry battalions'. 31 Overall then, Mills entered an unfavourable discursive context where she was constructed affectively in a relation of inequality to UK parliamentary 'insiders' and shared institutional stories.

This section has offered novel insights and a perspective on the debate on parliaments as gendered workplaces based on the discursive interplay between de-gendering and gendering. The performing of subject positions of embodied 'insider' and 'outsider' at a time of institutional change reflects Lovenduski's observation: the shaping of gender by public institutions privileges certain kinds of masculinity and operates to maintain its dominance during periods of change, implementing a kind of insulation process. (2005, p. 51) This section has discussed recruitment, but what are the arrangements for careers for employees in the House Service? The next section explores this further.

This section discusses circulation, which is a system of job rotation in the House of Commons. Three participants discussed, and an equality audit investigated this rule-in-form. The symbolic representation of women clerks has included gendered miscellany of the past such as the need for women to wear white gloves as a pre-requisite in interviews (Sharpe 2015) and low numbers of women clerks having a group identity when meeting as a self-described 'coven' (Crewe 2017, p. 47). Although women have made significant inroads into the Department for Chamber and Committee Services, they are lacking in the higher pay grades. Development opportunities for clerks included ' Table Associate Clerks' sitting at the Table of the House on a rotation basis. This is important since the Table is part of the visibly performative notion of parliaments. The rotation breaks seniority gaps and produces images of women at the Table, although at the time of fieldwork only two out of eight Table  Associate Clerks were women. One participant suggested: it's not been massively useful in terms of personal development, but it has had the desired symbolic effect of seeing women sitting at the Table. 32 The role of a clerk is changing from more judicial-focused to being more service, delivery and advice-focused. Because clerks have three broad roles: managing committees, clerking the parliamentary chambers and administering parliament, they are required to be generalists: the Jack of all Trades. The rule-in-form of circulation in the Committee Office, Chamber Business Directorate and Overseas Office governs the movement of staff from grades D to Senior Commons Structure 1A. At the time of research, there were two types of circulation: bi-annual circulation twice a year and ad hoc circulation to meet a staffing change. The circulation at the time of study was picked at the Principal Clerk level and head of team. The Liaison Committee, that is the committee of select committee chairs, suggested that they wanted more transparency in this arrangement:

We want to see more stability in committee staffing, and greater involvement by chairs in staff appraisal and appointments. We would like to see more inward secondments to the Committee Office, and recommend that it should be possible for committee clerks to be directly appointed by open competition. ( The aims of the managed moves are to ensure business continuity; to meet flexibility, by creating a broad repertoire of skills; and to increase organisational commitment and engagement. Because there is no externally taught qualification in clerking unlike for Hansard Reporters where City University offers a postgraduate diploma in parliamentary reporting; specialist knowledge, skills and examinations for clerks are learnt on the job, so rotation through the House is important. This also allows the individual to build a profile in different work settings and so identity-building practices are important.

Having briefly outlined the circulation policy, I will now discuss how this organisational arrangement allowed some women to be the Jacqui 33 of most trades. To be subjected to rules differs by institutional identity. An equality analysis investigated the perceived impact on gender relations and found 'substantial evidence' that members of the House Service felt disadvantaged on the return from parental leave. Circulation also correlated with auditing others' progression:

They are competing for promotions so are continually looking around at their colleagues' progress. I would not want to overstate it, but people are looking at where they are in the pecking order. Seniority in terms of time served is very important there. 34 A second rule-in-use is homo-sociality. Circulation has been criticised for not being transparent. Whilst teams have ended up harmonious, the rulein-use places iterative pressure to 'be around' and to 'look circulatable' in different settings-including bars, training events and the canteen:

It's kind of "that face would fit, I could work with that person, he or she would fit well within the team"…It militates against people who are quiet, lower profile but just as hard-working and maybe tuck themselves away and get on with the job. Again we know that women disproportionately are the ones who are dashing off at 5 o'clock, working part-time, not propping up the bars, not coming to every training event that's offered, not just, to be honest, being able to sit around the canteen having a high profile and looking 'circulatable'…I think it also perpetuates this kind of 'in the club' mentality of -there are people who are "good to work with" and are "hot property" circulation-wise and there are people who are just like 'nah' circulation-wise. It's a bit of a "being picked last in the team" school mentality. 35 The 'descriptive' marks of 'looking circulatable' are again embodied, having a face 'that fits', 'propping up bars' and being visible; or otherwise building homo-social capital (Bjarnegard 2013) . In terms of being read as 'circulatable', maternity also militated against women. A former clerk was reported as using negative language such as dividing and classifying female members of staff through a 'fertile list' of those in a 'red zone'-that is, those women who might 'pop off' at any moment and might not be considered for promotion: I think that it is changing, but at the moment as a woman, senior management see you as a bit of a risk if you are of a child-bearing age and less of a "dead cert" in terms of promotional capacity. Less able just to give that kind of wraparound commitment -that the perception is that Members want and need, so less of a "sure bet" than a man…People coming back from maternity leave are still routinely told things like: "well, we're going to have to give you a bit of a non-job because you're a part-timer so that really limits what you can do". 36 Furthermore, beneath this rule was another discursive struggle. Dame Laura Cox cited an 'obvious gender dimension' to bullying and harassment claims (2018, p. 69). She noted the bullying on select committees and stated that the majority of allegations were made by women. Circulation became 'reduced to two posts' for female candidates due to a history of harassment by a committee member: I've known examples of women being told "well you can't come to that committee because it has a male chair who we don't think he should be around women and we don't think that he works well with women so we'll give it to a man. 37 The practice of informally managing harassment placed iterative pressure on senior male clerks who arranged the circulation and are constrained by neutrality norms, to occupy a subject position of avuncular 'protectors'. Responses to the circulation rule in the equality analysis cited age and gender also an intersection for non-elected members. Participants reported a reluctance to bestow authority on younger women. Younger seconders into the Commons were given the impression: 'not to worry your pretty little head' in meetings, and one participant felt that she was 'taken more seriously' in meetings if she wore makeup. 38 These findings were supported in the equality analysis:

[there is] a tendency of senior managers to view women as young, regardless of experience and actual age, and that this may count against them in circulation (Equality Analysis, 2015, p. 5; Cox 2018, p. 70) Opportunities at the time of the research were arguably reduced for female clerks who were discursively positioned as inexperienced or in need of protecting by avuncular men who adopted the subject position of job auditors, adjudicating in some cases that it was 'not their turn' (Cox 2018, p. 70 ). Therefore, some women could be the Jacqui of most trades. This section has therefore explored both changes in the governance structure and a rule around staff circulation to explore gendering everyday in this working world.

This section discusses how citizenship routinely situates members of the House Service. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Gherardi takes a more holistic notion of citizenship to incorporate a fuller notion of the person into the organisation. The section discusses the Workplace Equality Networks (hereafter 'WENs') that have been introduced since 2010 to make the culture of the House Service more inclusive and to convey norms of 'diversity and inclusion'. Whilst the WENs have many advantages-namely, breaking down silos, agenda-setting and institutionalised critique-some structural, cultural and philosophical challenges still remain. In particular, I pick up upon the dominant discourse that was used at the time 'bringing the whole self to work', and have situated this within the parliamentary workplace.

This section discusses the functions, potentials of and resistances to the Workplace Equality Networks in the House of Commons. There is a broader literature on gender-focused bodies in parliaments (Grace and Sawer 2016). These gender-focused bodies include standing committees in parliaments (Ahrens 2016); cross-party and intra-party caucuses (Allen and Childs 2019); and issue-based parliamentary groups (Freidenvall and Erikson 2020) . There is less literature about staff networks in parliaments. WENs work to improve the working conditions in parliament; raise consciousness about inequalities; and provide performative supports to staff members. The WENs were set up by some critical actors, the Speaker and Clerk of Parliament, and were supported by a former Serjeant at Arms, and a former Head of Diversity and Inclusion, though they are separate from the House Management. The outgoing Head of Diversity and Inclusion suggested that institutionalising these had been one of her proudest achievements and so this suggests that this institutional innovation was affectively charged as being positive. The fact that they were set up by senior staff suggest that they have legitimacy.

The workplace equality networks have been essential to the House of Commons' Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, are supported by a legal framework of the Equalities Act 2010; and symbolises the UK Parliament as a champion for changes in society. These are: ParliOUT, 39 ParliGENDER, 40 ParliREACH, 41 ParliABLE, 42 and ParliON. 43 Key initiatives that the WENs have introduced are: reverse mentoring 44 ; holding events on substantive issues; publishing reports; panel discussions; campaigns; and AGMs. There are role models and diversity awards. The main infrastructure of WENs is staff volunteers. In the 2013/2014, 2014/2015, 2015/2016, 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 financial years, the total budget for the funding of the WENs has been £20,000 per annum. This is split evenly between each WEN. Staff are given time out to administer the WENs. Having set out the background of the WENs, I outline four benefits of the WENs for allowing more capacious gender performances, but three challenges and everyday resistances towards WENs as well.

A primary benefit of WENs is that WEN activity could foster a politics of self-assertion by bringing 'your whole self to work and having an embodied space to 'talk about difference'. This recognises all staff and brings them into visibility. Butler asked how we can 'shatter the epistemic blindness' of gender inequality, by naming inequalities and making them visible (Butler 2011, p. 178) . Furthermore, by bringing more of themselves to work, it avoids being 'undone' by their institutional position. The WENs provide a forum where subjugated knowledge can be heard. This exercises citizenship since it enacts performative tensions within workplace citizenship by showing that citizenship is not equal or accessible to all, if left to the status quo. They engage in a number of citizenship acts of group-assertion such as flying flags, joining marches, declarations and email signatures. Diversity awards provide positive feedback to people who have tried to make the parliamentary workplace an inclusive environment. It is also notable from the House of Commons' social media activity that statements are being made on behalf of the 'parliamentary community', for example, in response to the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Secondly, in the light of formal organisational complexity, the WENs have the potential to break down silos in the House Service, highlighted by Geddes (2019, p. 78) and for groups to share and learn about expertise. The notion of boundaries has been traditionally characterised as masculine for encouraging turf wars between departments. This institution may break down pedigree networking as discussed in the previous section by coalescing discourse around other activities. Invites are displayed around the parliamentary estate such as 'What's On in Parliament' noticeboards, since some staff, perhaps in catering and security, might not have daily access to a computer. Equality issues can theoretically be a site of alliance for different workers since the WENs provide a coalitional framework for employees across the House to appear together and for cultural translation to occur between members (Butler 2015, p. 27). The 'institutionalisation of participation' (Kanter 1996, p. 198 ) could in theory have a subversive effect on silos-but only if all staff feel welcome to join. The Governance Committee argued for 'more and better ways for staff and Members to get to know and understand each other' (2014, p. 63). Two WEN members' responses coalesced around the benefit of being in a WEN as the opportunity for contact and community:

[it's] quite selfishly, just a really good way to meet some really engaged, switched on people from around the organisation and to also appreciate the work that goes on, on the Members' side. We don't often get to see what Members of Parliament and their staff, especially what their work looks like so professionally, it's very useful for me to understand the 'Member world' slightly better.

Knowledge is shared within departments…Between departments, knowledge isn't shared so effectively, we're quite siloed…I'm now aware of a wider working world through being a member of a Workplace Equality Network that's more cross-cutting and a more corporate experience from other departments. 45 Intersectional practices in the Workplace Equality Networks are important for giving recognition to multiple inequalities and to allow for mutuality, co-operation, and identification. The WENs meet in an 'omni WEN' once a year, which may allow for coalitional organising, but collaborations also include sharing stalls together, for example at UK Black Pride. Collaborations also include partnerships and panel discussions with community groups. Since the fieldwork was conducted, a ParliREACH intersectionality forum has been set up.

Thirdly, the WENs have informally developed an agenda-setting capacity. The WENs have a positive role in data-gathering, contributing to inquiries, requesting equality audits, and campaigning on equalities issues. They may provide a space for parliamentary actors to organise and politicise rules-in-use about gender such as the 'reduced to two post' rule discussed in Sect. 6.1.2. In this sense, given the 'insider' knowledge of how the UK House of Commons works, physical presence on the estate and networks they have they can conceivably mobilise around inequalities (see Berthet (2019) for a discussion of staff mobilisation in the European Parliament). They have also campaigned for changes to the workplace, such as a trial distributing free period products on the estate, in some toilets. ParliGENDER members contributed to the Gender-Sensitive Parliament Audit through focus groups. The influence of the WENs has spread beyond the House of Commons precinct into research synergies (Childs and Challender 2019). This challenges norms of institutional authorship whereby men have been over-represented as 'chroniclers and interpreters' and 'agents of consciousness' of parliamentarism and power (see also Shore 2000, p. 26) . WENs have legitimacy and have been instrumental in pursuing gender-equal change. They also share opportunities to participate in scrutiny, such as inquiries from the Women and Equalities Select Committee, All Party Parliamentary Groups, and MPs who have organised backbench business debates on relevant topics.

Fourthly, the WENs also show how Parliament can be responsive to and lead on changes in the norms of society, such as the acceptance of LGBTQI rights and anti-racism as norms. ParliOUT has gained external recognition for its work and a recent innovation was buying and flying a rainbow and then progress pride flag over Portcullis House during Pride celebrations. The networks have been highly commended, and attention that the WENs receive from other Civil Society Actors, such as Stonewall, shows that they may be institutionalised and difficult to revoke.

Fifthly, the networks provide space for expertise beyond management rationalities:

we are contractually apolitical and to actually have a political outlet in some form -that is not only allowed but is supported by the organisation, is a great and wonderful thing to be involved in, I think. We spend all of our time ordinarily being professional bureaucrats and thinking "well what's expensive and what's cheap, what's efficient and what isn't" and we never actually get to think about what's right and wrong or what's good or bad and in a moral sense very often. 46 Because the House Service is apolitical, making political suggestions to MPs is discouraged and so the WENs provide a forum to discuss gender equality.

However, challenges to the WENs remain. The first challenge is formal and structural and around capacity-building. Institutions require 'active maintenance' (Streeck and Thelen 2005, p. 30) and succession planning to ensure longevity and effectiveness (Albert, 16 September 2016) . Although the WENs were prioritised at the highest level and so had legitimacy, sanctioned from the 'top-down' by Sir Robert Rogers, who was a Diversity champion, 47 and Speaker Bercow asked to free up time, at the time of the fieldwork, WENs were not always well resourced and are seen as 'additional' to everyday workplace tasks: CM : What's the biggest challenges for the Workplace Equality networks? P: Making the largest possible difference with finite resources and finite time. I think that's the main challenge. We don't-collectively as a group of individuals on the committee and by the wider membership… there's not that much time to go around and do an everyday job, they're all doing this over and above. The challenge is to make sure that we put our efforts into things which actually pay off and that make a difference, rather than making it the talking shop where this kind of thing is often seen as and can so often become as well 48 (emphasis added). P: The challenges are that everyone is busy and they need more time to commit. We also want to make sure that they remain as a structure outside of the House structure. 49 Furthermore, a field member felt that it was staff facilities, rather than MP facilities that were the most vulnerable to make space for equalities initiatives, rather than Member facilities such as the rifle range. She lamented: '[t]hey've turned a staff bar into an Officer's crèche'. 50 WENs then may benefit from redistributive resources in addition to being supported for their role in increasing recognition. Secondly, whilst 73% 51 of participants to a House Service survey had heard of the WENs and 20% were WEN members, Members (Staff) were less informed. Parties have their own equalities sections. At the time, the awareness levels were low in the interviews and one MP thought that it was something for IPSA to promote. When discussing how much influence the WENs had to the Members' world, one MP said: This interview excerpt suggests that there are less institutionalisation and sustained engagement with the WENs from MPs and their staff. Although equalities networks have been set up, the engagement with them at the time of fieldwork was mostly by the House Service. For example, a senior BAME parliamentary researcher at the time of the research had not heard of ParliREACH. 53 The third challenge for institutionalising the WENs is cultural and bottom-up. Badge acquisition such as Investors in People Status, whilst reviewed in a rolling system, can produce cultural problems. Many feminists have been sceptical about the non-performativity of a diversity 'boom' and the deployment of 'difference' as a discursive resource by businesses, since it may overlook broader structural power relations (Puwar 2004; Ahmed 2006) . Such awards are texts in themselves (Shore 2000, pp. 60-62) since they may place emphasis on individual minority success in workplaces. A working-class member of the House Service suggested: 'I'm a very lucky boy to do this job', again the indirect rule reminder about how people are supposed to feel, similar to the rule reminder discussed in Chapter 7. Silences within this discourse can overlook the pain and thick contingency that comes with reaching these posts. However, 'passionate attachments' to professional values can 'undo' us if they override other (gendered) contingencies.

Like parallel findings of resistance from managers in the Swedish parliamentary administration (Freidenvall and Erikson 2020 pp. 7-8), informally, indirect resistance to the WENs came from some line managers who were not entirely convinced of WENs because of the need for resources and personnel, and also given the formal seals of equality in certifications, the attitude was 'aren't we there already', 54 and some individuals saw WENs as a 'distraction from work'. 55 Whilst departments have been instructed to release time for WEN members, informally, for some WEN members, it was 'the first thing to be bumped' from their diary 56 if a 'more important' meeting came up. Equality was culpable of being seen as a 'wishy-washy' feminised 'soft' activity, a less valued institutional space. These acts served as informal resistances to a consciously gender-citizenship: It's been quite often seen here as a wishy-washy nice thing that is going on and probably conforms with what a lot of people that work in this kind of area full time would say. You come up against things. As well as there being a dismissiveness of it, I think that there's a large embrace of it that's all lip service. I think that everyone's happy to trumpet and fly the flag of diversity and inclusion and gender equality until it gets difficult. Until it is inconvenient or causes tension with either individual self-interests or collective interests. It will generally be the first thing that falls away. 57 The excerpt infers that there is also a danger of a corporate identity of the 'happy institution' (Ahmed 2012, p. 10) and the discursive profiling of 'model minorities' in the workplace. A tension was of moving away from diversity 'initiatives' to mainstreaming.

The fourth challenge is around the philosophy of WENs-that is with regard to narrative coherence, when there are spectral parts of identities that are difficult to narrativise outside of dominant discourses (Butler 2005) . The formal discourse promulgated at the time of research was to 'bring your whole self to work'. This incitement might alienate some actors, though may empower others, since in ParliREACH's survey, only 56% respondents stated that they felt comfortable being themselves in the workplace and that there was a 'need to be invisible' resulting in a 'death to self' whilst at work (ParliREACH 2019, p. 2). Furthermore, it may be argued that people do not have ownership over their bodies, which they then bring to the public world (Beasley and Bacchi 2000, p. 343). Indeed, these networks might be the place where parliamentary actors might develop coherence and it might be that that incoherence is the most fruitful place (Tyler 2019, p. 113). Some individuals have a weak sense of self. Bringing an 'authentic' identity to work negates how identity is a fragmented institutional effect and many people inhabit split subjectivities.

A final challenge is around visibility. Whilst benefits of visibility were discussed, Fraser considers: 'those who choose not to be (made) seeable and who may therefore be excluded from a politics that lends itself to visibility' (1999, p. 124). One parliamentary researcher avoided a WEN because he had 'heard talk' about getting an email signature and was concerned that the name 'ParliOUT' favoured members who are 'out'. Another MP cited risks of engaging with ParliOUT. He suggested that he had stopped engaging with ParliOUT because newspapers intimated that he had a sexual interest in the group. 58 Therefore, the potential for media interest in these Workplace Equality Networks makes them specific unlike staff networks in other professional fields. The particular construction of his sexual identity by a negative press mediated his ability to engage with the network and shows that identity matters in the ability to engage in workplace citizenship on the estate.

Overall then, as gendered actors working with the rules, WENs provide a space where members can bring more facets of themselves to work and to display solidarity with traditionally under-represented groups in the parliament. Their existence is a form of institutional stewardshipmaking the parliament more open and accessible to work in. However, these WENs will have to adapt to change to new settings such as a post-COVID work environment, and with changing parliamentary actors, such as different Speakers, Clerks of the House, Leaders of the House and Commissions. The next section analyses the performance of public service for members of the House Service.

Why do members of the House Service work in parliament, rather than the private sector? Public service is important since institutions are held together through everyday acts of professional integrity, justice and democratic linkage. Public service is a key way through which members of the House Service interpret their role in parliaments (Geddes 2019, p. 83). These actors have been identified as important actors who make claims on behalf of parliamentary democracy (Judge and Leston-Bandeira 2018) and are indeed its stewards. Most employees in the House Service have a proud identification with the House and felt fortunate to work amidst both the ceremony and the dailiness of the parliamentary process. To ensure that the confidence of MPs is gained, the House Service is integrated based on a public service ethos, professionalism, impartiality and expertise. This was not perceived to be a gendered construct:

There is strict impartiality. That is a common core commitment. There has been strong pressure put on Members of the House Service. We are sitting in private meetings and have to be very clinical, poker-faced. 59 It's not gender based, it's a professional qualification for the job. Some people are better or worse at it, male and female. Whether they are different in private with their views -that's a different matter. 60 When performing public service, a discursive struggle encapsulating two subject positions of 'servants' and 'stewards' 61 was reported. This section discusses how members of the House Service occupied and re-worked these subject positions. The first section examines discourses of deference and how rules partially about gender, 62 the Respect Policy and Valuing Others Policy were ineffective and fell into disuse. The second subsection explores 'stewardship' and how gendered actors working with the rules in the House are reciting this norm towards gender equality.

Formally, power in the House of Commons is skewered towards MPs because MPs are elected and so the House of Commons is memberled. There is a greater ratio of staff to MPs and there has been a greater emphasis on service. Whilst a 'good will element', a high pressure environment and a fluctuating business schedule are not dissimilar to other workplaces, a segmentalist employment structure, the high ratio of staff in supportive roles to MPs, an environment of ruling and party competition, a representative function, a law-making function and a UNESCO heritage site combine to produce the House of Commons as a unique workplace. The House Service facilitates parliamentary functions for MPs through providing both 'hard' and 'soft' infrastructure (Erikson and Joseffson 2020). Its existence relies on MPs' usage. This constitutes a structural power relationship. Informally, the organisation of the relationship between the House Service and MPs had produced a discourse and subject positions of members of the House Service as servants rather than stewards:

MPs can tend to forget that this is a workplace for staff, because it's their club if you like. 63 If this were a hotel, services might be withheld from a particularly obstreperous MP, but that would be going against everything that the House Service exists to do. It has never, ever been contemplated. 64 Some participants suggested that interactions with MPs and the House Service are contemporarily more egalitarian. 1997 was cited by two respondents as a turning point, when: 'people would hold the doors open for you rather than letting them close in your face'. 65 Part of everyday service is performing localised acts of intuition-that is, knowing about committee members' interests, needs, motivations and preferences, or knowing in the catering department that an MP likes chips rather than French fries. 66 The likelihood of rude behaviour sat on a continuum by the degree and context of how 'member-facing' employees were and at what time of day. Incidences of illicit acts or rude behaviour towards the House Service were reported by five participants, two 67 had experienced comments or an approach and three knew a colleague who had, one of which was on a select committee visit. 68 One participant had received 'a couple of little comments here and there by older men' in his early twenties, but was reluctant to say he felt 'harassed'. However, he pointed to an environment where there was a ' permissiveness of people in power'. 69 Allegations of such behaviour, were put more firmly on the agenda, following a Newsnight inquiry (Cook and Day 2018) , and raise questions about whether House staff are respected.

A rule-in-form potentially about gender: the formal harassment policy: the Respect Policy agreed in 2011, was proven to be ineffective and had fallen into disuse. It had a formal and informal section. The formal part was removed in November 2012 because Members had no appeal. MPs felt 'under siege' 70 post-expenses scandal and feared further reputational damage. For 18 months, there was no formal policy. A formal process of accountability was reassuring to participants:

actually MPs knowing that they can be held to account for their behaviour. I think that it would be helpful. 71 we had a situation on our team and were just told: "well look there's nothing really in place at the moment and you'll have to wait until one has developed". 72 Furthermore, the Respect Policy had issues of coverage and did not cover Members' Staff, contractors or Lords staff. It has also not been devised specifically for sexual harassment, although arguably this did need its own policy. This coincided with a 'mend your own fence first' fragmented approach where due to time pressures, individual departments dealt with their own issues. The House Service has different trade unions from Members' Staff. A rule-in-use prior to the formal policy was having a 'quiet word' with the Whips, but referring to Whips, a participant suggested: 'they are essentially the same people'. A participant said:

They've been terribly defensive about the recording of incidences and near misses …There's lots and lots of small instances, lots of people upsetting a little bit all over the place and it's not being recorded… it's got to be incumbent on managers…to report and to record it rather than leaving it to someone's wishes. 73 Cumulatively, this led to the institutional minimising of complaints (Cox 2018) . Institutional silences are performative. There was stigma around invoking the policy as a sign that employees could not handle MPs. A complainant in the House Service discussed how inequalities were sustained by feeling rules: Throughout my career, I've been trained to be resilient and 'fine', so when I made the complaint, colleagues would ask me all the time "how are you?" And I would say "I'm fine" because that was a way of proving that I wasn't weak and submitting to being treated badly because I was a bit of a failure. (Staff member, Newsnight, 23 March 2018) Furthermore, not all MPs had been formally briefed about the revised Respect Policy. Non-reporting and negative language around reporting 74 is also an iterative act (Butler) that brings about an effect of a gendered organisation. Furthermore, demeaning acts might exceed formal definitions of harassment and lay on a spectrum. A female clerk lamented: 'a lot of micro-management: "have you done this"'. 75 This suggests a lack of trust and under-estimating of abilities.

Members of the House Service operate in a subject position as ruleenforcers. Sometimes this has to be done in public; for example, staff had to handle the MPs who protested when Speaker Bercow was due to leave his chair after the proroguing of parliament. A participant described performances of respecting feelings and emotional labour when imposing rules:

if you impose rules… it always has to be quite sensitively done because they will build up relationships with the Members quite quickly: "I'm with so and so"…and they can be quite sneaky. You would only do it if you realised something iffy was going on but they can be very hot-headed. 76 For members of the parliamentary administration as gendered actors working with the rules, there is a balance between recognition and unwanted publicity. Geddes notes that being 'hidden' (2019) is a preference for members of the House Service since their advice does not become politicised. A female clerk regretted that a female colleague who had received overbearing and undermining behaviour in select committee meetings was named in a newspaper as an 'attractive clerk' and had become disengaged and less effective on the committee. A duty of care may have prevented this being circulated in newspapers. The clerk had been 'girled' by receiving inappropriate questions about her private life.

A confrontational interface with an individual MP was discussed by a member of staff when his department had been criticised in a newspaper for acting on an equalities issue:

[shows a press cutting]. Because I went against an MP's wishes he's then started a massive, great: "have a go at X" campaign… So yes they do bully. 77 Participants felt their formal job descriptions were collapsed into one 'constitutive other' of a more generalised servant relationship: the culture of deference …[is] hard to shift. Members think we're here as a kind of butler or assistant who, they don't really distinguish very well between different jobs…they have in general quite a kind of, a style of summarily calling for you to do whatever is at the top of their list is. 78 a male MP in a cafeteria spills a cup of coffee over his papers when paying and he [perhaps feeling awkward?] groans and walks off, leaving the woman operating the till to mop the floor. 79 The material surroundings of the palace also affected subjective experiences of gender. A participant from the House Service told me that she was positioned amongst decorous 'bling' that made her feel like 'a chambermaid in a posh hotel' 80 when going about her daily work. This corresponds with Puwar's analysis of the 'interpenetration and superimposition of bodily acts from interwoven social spaces' (2004, p. 84). Another participant described her subjectivity through a 'masters and mistresses' 81 discourse. Therefore, heterosexual norms of service to an individual are imposed through cultural interpellations of summoning. Deference is not always hostile and met with conflict. It is not solely: 'cold respect, the formal bow of submission, the distant smile of politeness: it can also have a warm face and offer gestures small and large that show support for the wellbeing and status of others' (Hochschild 2012, p. 168).

A gentleman's club culture is structurally compounded by the social composition of House Staff (see Chapter 3). A participant stressed: 'it is important to see how power is skewered in the House'. 82 A male participant interpreted this through a double structural relationship, a classic binary of dominance, by asking me: 'Who is at the bottom serving, Cherry? Women and staff from minority ethnic backgrounds'. 83 Yet, despite this statistical pattern, the performance of the deferential servant reached the top of the hierarchy, albeit in less informal familial performance. Deference was also observed in white, male, middle-class and formal relationships. A male participant regretted his boss' inability to convey advice as an authority rather than a servant: XXXX was sucking up to XXXX and as our leader… I was thinking "you should hold your head up-you are a member of XXXX, not just a servant of XXXX… it's the reluctance to stand up to the MPs and say "sorry, you're wrong". 84 Bureaucratic hierarchical power feminises staff, by producing submissive impression management strategies (Ferguson 1984, pp. 95-98) . To respond to the servant positioning, House staff use a reverse, coping discourse of 'handlers' or 'minders' for MPs' irrationality and 'foibles. 85 Therefore, their aged, responsible 'selves' are constituted in opposition to foibles-again citing discourses of immaturity mentioned in Chapter 5. But discourses of 'reason' can also be gendered.

Furthermore, in gentleman's club cultures: '[t]he "gentleman" expects women to be "caring and moral" and if they behave appropriately they are rewarded by warmth and concern' (Maddock and Parkin 1993, p. 4). Personalised service was discussed in three interviews. The television documentary 'Inside the Commons' showed how women are integrated within the emotional life of parliament, when an MP described a member of the staff as 'just the most adorable woman' (Wollaston, Guardian, 4 February 15). Coherence then is drawn between, femininity as virtuous and passive, 'men' allowing 'women' in their place of work as 'motherly' and nurturing. 86 At the time of the fieldwork, a member of staff said: they're [MPs] pretty much waited on hand and foot by a nice group of devoted ladies that look like an old, what are they, the old tea-rooms? 87 Service labour and emotional labour were also discussed by a male bartender who worked in one of the bars in the Westminster area. He suggested an informal practice as part of his service is that he attends to guests' feelings and engaged in tactile flirtation. A participant described how he (re)enacted esteem for MPs in flattering performances and also discussed a more playful, postmodern sexuality: If MPs are trying to impress a lobbyist, they do expect a little puffing from you.

You do a quick Google "Oh, that's a fantastic article that you wrote for X magazine… older gay MPs would come in for banter. We looked quite camp in our uniforms so I would always respond by playing the arch-gay stereotype and entertain them because I am not insecure about my sexuality. 88 In Gentleman's club cultures: 'those who have least power have little choice but to collude with cultural norms and are often resentful of other women who rebel' (Maddock and Parkin 1993, p. 3) . Two women MPs regretted that camaraderie could be dampened by restrictive gendered performance. One said: I'm sad to say this, but…women …are much nicer to the men…. they say [puts on a softvoice] "Oh good afternoon Mr so and so, would you like a biscuit with that?" And it's all very motherly whereas for the women it's like "yeh 65p" and you don't feel any camaraderie with them. You don't feel any female-female thing, it's as if they don't think that you should be there. 89 My etic reading of this excerpt is that class politics may still be an issue between women, and that women may bear social mobility in a qualitatively different manner from men. This differs from instances where class structures that threaten to divide men can be healed through gender politics in organisations (Cockburn 1991, p. 158) .

Upon leaving the field, problems of bullying and harassment within and towards members of the House Service were further foregrounded in Dame Laura Cox, an esteemed employment lawyer's Report (2018) where she described the House of Commons as a 'particularly serious case' (2018, p. 3) alongside other workplaces that she had examined. She further argued that the bullying and poor responses from management had 'an obvious gendered dimension' (2018, p. 68). She cited paternalism and women being patronised. She reiterated that the UK House of Commons is a workplace. Furthermore, the House's policies: Valuing Others and Respect Policy had serious shortcomings and it was recommended that they were abolished. Since leaving the field, a behavioural code was introduced for all workers on the parliamentary estate, but this might not specify gendered practices.

The key point of this discussion is to illustrate that governance is also important in terms of leading on issues of stewardship, free from sexual harassment. Crucially, the Clerk and Director General will be in charge for implementing Dame Laura Cox's report, but senior management were criticised in Dame Laura Cox QC's report. The commitment to reform can arguably become unstable in turbulent terms-for example, when discussing replacing the Speaker who had been accused of bullying, Margaret Becket MP suggested that 'Brexit trumps bad behaviour'. 90 The slowness to implement some parts of Cox's report consolidated power relations by showing the House's inertia. Arguably there were also strategic problems with the overall response for bullying and harassment in the House of Commons by it being fragmented into different reviews. Contemporaneous staff in the parliamentary administration wrote open letters to the House of Commons Commission calling on them to implement Laura Cox's recommendations. This act was notable since it eschewed invisibility in spite of invisibility that is a valuable norm.

Parliaments are key points of contact for civil society actors and organisations, and are one source that can provide recognition on political subjects to participate in the political process. Public engagement as a norm positions members of the House Service, across different departments, as key actors in a politics of recognition-they are hailed into helping those who engage with the political process to develop political subjectivities and voice and feel like they are bodies that 'matter'. We know from political systems around the world that this may be particularly important for lower-income groups who have asymmetric access to information to hold their politicians accountable (Taylor-Robinson 2010). As mentioned, members of the House Service are custodians of parliament as 'proactive institutional claims makers' (Judge and Leston-Bandeira 2018, pp. 164-165). Institutions have an educational role (March and Olsen 1989, p. 118 ). Public service can invoke a 'democratic spirit'. Participants were concerned about the corporate image of parliament: the experiences of those who engage with the structures and practices of parliament; the artwork; and creating a more epistemologically diverse parliament-through witness selection on select committees.

Firstly, attempts have been made to open the estate to the public in a variety of facilities, activities and practices. An Education Centre hosts school-children, cultural events and exhibitions. There has been a professionalisation of public engagement (Leston-Bandeira 2016). Beneath this professionalisation, many discretionary public service behaviours made the Commons a welcoming place for visitors, such as cloakroom attendants playing 'bingo' with numbered discs with school-children 91 -a group in high visibility jackets who would inject liveliness into the surroundings. However, at the time of fieldwork, the House did not collect diversity data on who visits parliament 92 so it is likely that our 'democratic gaze', that is, the public presence and 'democratic oversight' of parliament (Housley and Wahl-Jorgensen 2008, p. 733), may be gendered numerically. Additionally, the capacity of committee rooms meant that more forceful 93 guests attended meetings:

There is a crowd around the door when a select committee comes out of its private session. Two teenage girls who have patiently waited, do not get to enter, as they are overtaken to the door by more pushy older, mostly male, guests or women with older male guests and aides. 94 As mentioned in Chapter 5 on the discussion of select committee rooms in Portcullis House, ethnographers of parliamentary spaces have noted the difference between 'conceived space' and lived space (Lewicki 2017, p. 53) drawing on the work of Lefebvre (1991) . Conceived space is space as intended symbolically by the architect. Lived space is how it is lived. Despite the airiness, the piston looking modern architecture, it is perhaps remarkable that the name 'Portcullis' House actually symbolises closure. 95 Incremental adjustments are continuously made to the parliamentary estate to make it more inclusive such as laying carpets and re-designing and repositioning signage to make the environment more accessible, but there is now more potential with the Restoration and Renewal project to be bolder. Even in spaces formally about promoting gender equality, three participants mentioned dissatisfaction with some contributions and it was felt some events could be 'a bit token'. 96 Sometimes implementing rules could be done belligerently. One family had a door shut abruptly on them so they did not cross the Speaker's procession route. 97 The second way that public service was discussed was in the representation of gender in the artwork and commemorative settings around parliament 98 and citing the 'ten year dead rule' which, since the fieldwork, was changed to 'two terms gone' rule, but remains still arguably restrictive. Displays encountered on a daily basis on familiar parliamentary routes were cited in the interviews as 'antiquated' such as individuated, self-referential Toby Jugs of former politicians that were deemed worthy of sustained recognition:

The toby jugs around the estate are completely antiquated. The UK Parliament could learn from the New Zealand Parliament. Each room is designed around a theme such as diversity and there's a 'Women in Parliament' Select Committee room. We have so much amazing women's history around the estate such as the broom cupboard that Emily Wilding Davidson hid in and we don't bring it out enough. 99 Parliamentary power may be 'framed' symbolically in pictures. Women appear in paintings as subsidiary characters. Parliament has a large topographical collection that documents the development of the buildings, since some visitors may find interest in this work. Parliament is a pedagogical setting; artwork could show different modes of political agency in addition to these actors that are connected to the electoral chain. For example, discussion of Emily Wielding Davison could also include discussion of narratives around the dailiness and burn out of those actors behind the scenes of the Suffragette movement (Purvis 1995), to highlight that gender/sex hierarchies still remain. Women's suffrage is a narrative based upon attainment, but democracy is sustained most by its unattainability and ceaseless contestation (Butler and Athanasiou 2013, p. 156). Gendered norms are reproduced by the selective story-telling that emphasises certain features of the artwork: 'you don't have to tell the story that the wall paintings tell you, you can tell the story behind that wall painting and at that point, you can tell an inclusive history…You can add women's history into any of those pictures. 100 Adding photographs 101 or lighter watercolour portraits next to heavy hanging frames and oil paintings of men might make women appear subordinate. Class differences and ethnicity also need to be attended to and the need to have portraiture as a form of artwork. A member of the House Service commented on what they perceived to be difficult in displaying BAME and working-class history in the format of portraiture: Parliament gives you more opportunities to address gender rather than ethnicity because you are more likely to find a portrait of women who were society women and had that level of influence. Working-class history is much harder to do historically because they never sat for portraits. 102 Since the fieldwork, the Works of Art Committee commissioned an exhibition: First Waves in 2019 representing communities and the impact of race relations legislation in the UK and the House is reviewing the 9000 artefacts and how to present the imperial colonial past.

A third area where gendered actors worked with the rules was around select committee hearings. The Liaison Committee introduced public engagement into the core tasks of select committees in 2012 and so therefore envisages select committees as potentially core engines of public engagement. This is important since if committees gain in influence, then it attracts stakeholders to engage with them, so gender is important. This has included a number of innovations such as an increasing social media presence of select committees since 2012; holding UK roadshows; the Northern Ireland Committee holding semi-structured interviews with Northern Irish fishermen; the Health and Social Care committee conducting a citizen's assembly; the Work and Pensions Select Committee using an online forum for Personal Independence Payments recipients to discuss their experiences; and the Science and Technology and the Scottish Affairs committees looked to the public to 'crowdsource' ideas for committee inquiries.

Diversity of select committee witnesses has been formally collected since the 2015-2016 parliamentary session when official records began. Select committees face a number of other constraints in choosing witnesses, such as the overriding importance given to political balance of evidence and calling time-pressured inquiries. Moreover, select committees cannot do anything-on their own and in the short term at least-about the gender balance of non-discretionary witnesses, nor, indeed, about the gender balance of people working and/or researching in the policy areas under the select committee's purview. The Liaison Committee suggested:

Through engaging with diverse voices, listening to experts and those with lived-experience and by gathering public opinion, we are able to engage with the public as well as produce well-evidenced reports. 103 Gendered acts were present in select committees in (1) the call for evidence; (2) selection of witnesses; and (3) the format and experience of witnesses.

In terms of calls for evidence, this in itself is an interpellation: who is constituted and can respond to the hail and thus how particular versions of gender are organised and compelled (Butler 1997) . For example, there was a notable lack of buyer-witnesses in the Home Affairs Select Committee into prostitution (Bennett, Guardian, 11 September 2016). Therefore, at this stage, the committee teams are responsible for the constitutive representation of witnesses. Because we are linguistic as well as material beings, wording is important and subsequently, witness diversity statements on webpages have been presented:

The process begins quite early on. It begins at the very early discussions, the wording in the call for evidence. I think there should be a line in there saying we have a policy of seeking [diverse witnesses] because the call for oral witnesses is built on who submits written evidence and that's where you need to act. 104 The format of evidence may also be interpreted as being gendered. For example, audio-visual evidence cannot be submitted as written evidence. This is fraught from a feminist perspective, since voices are taken out of their embodied locations to convey the whole range of communication. This contrasts to the Citizens' Assemblies on abortion in Ireland, where embodied testimony was played into proceedings.

In terms of witness selection, for discretionary witnesses, whilst MPs can be gatekeepers, by 'inviting chaps' who were their friends to give evidence in inquiries. 105 Committee staff also suggest witnesses. Therefore, indeed, the gender composition of committee membership may be important. A participant regretted that gender tends to be treated as an 'add on' consideration and was overlooked by expediency, 106 and the need for quick turnaround. 107 There are also non-discretional witnesses that they could not control the gender composition for, such as government ministers. A male clerk was concerned about the inclination for organisations to send representative to 'speak for' others and those voices are barred from entering 'the realm of serious speech acts' (Ferguson 1984, pp. 136-137) . Individual members of the House Service have attempted to assist people to engage with the structures and practices of democracy. A participant was concerned about an 'old boys' network' 108 of representation through committee members inviting witnesses. Some teams reported informal peer-reviewing with regard to witness selection. At the time of the research, two female participants agreed that the House Service would be reticent for quotas, but that 'light touch' measures would not work.

A staff member noted contradictions and struggles over the institutional representation of parliament: an email… went round recently that because witness panels are so often televised, we must not leave our coats and bags on the chairs and it "looks bad on the news". And you think… "why don't they realise that it looks bad if they've just got all male panels or all male attendees or all male MPs?" 109 This participant eschews formal managerial designations of bodies 'looking bad' and reconstitutes bodies 'looking bad' to include the lack of female bodies. One witness sometimes felt 'I'm there because I tick their box because I'm a female expert in this area'. 110 In terms of the experience of witnesses, 111 concern was expressed with 'brow-beating' witnesses, such as asking personal questions and getting parliamentary researchers to trawl through witnesses' social media accounts. This may affect: (1) the quality of evidence; (2) the safety of the expert witness, if they are giving evidence on a highly politicised topic and are heavily exposed; and (3) the ability to recruit different witnesses:

What is shown on television may be seen as off-putting, take XXXX's questioning, it may suggest that a male voice carries more weight and that it is a rough and brutal environment 112 Some committee members' interactional style included the tendency to 'bark questions', shutting down discussion, and resisted soft skills training. 113 I spoke with three 114 female select committee witnesses. One felt that 'male academics can get a real pasting' 115 but that there was inequality amongst women who were not regular witnesses and were not familiar with practices around witness support, such as that witnesses could telephone a clerk and ask for likely questions to help with preparation, though MPs can still ask narrow questions that are outside of the specialisms of witnesses. In general, legal and scientific research is treated with reverence, whilst humanities is treated as subjective (Crewe and Sarra 2019, p. 9). Timing of comments and a lack of introductions in some hearings were also noted-a female witness was asked why she had offered her resignation 'before I had even sat down'. 116 A candidate in a pre-appointment hearing was also asked how she managed her work and family. Representatives from the media can attend high-profile sessions. In one, there was standing room only, and so a female journalist was busily stood up and tweeting with her back against the wooden panel.

One witness found that being integrated on the basis of performing with a panel and committee membership of male 'Radio 4' listeners who were versed in 'committee language' was exclusionary 117 (see Charlesworth 2000) . As mentioned in Chapter 1, parliaments are not disembedded from the economic structure and other bureaucracies and so who is admitted into the real, of serious speech acts, matters (Ferguson 1984) . Book recommendations from a chair to an early career female academic had been interpreted by the witness as the chair potentially asserting his dominance. Relative seniority gaps between older male MPs and younger academics also produced gendered scenes. A female clerk was embarrassed when a female academic was integrated into proceedings by being encouraged to 'be assertive'. 118 Her subjectivity was 'girled' since she 'felt like a girl doing a school project'. When asked by myself about discourteous behaviours in committees such as Members talking behind their hands and playing on electrical devices, 119 a clerk found it difficult to instruct MPs about personal conduct, because clerks were seen by some MPs as 'boring old farts' 120 and it was also concerned that discussion of committee etiquette could introduce a more formal dynamic to select committee proceedings.

Because attendance on Select Committees is not whipped, this can also undo the effort of committee teams:

You have a really high profile evidence session with a big name witness who you've worked hard to get and then Members don't turn up. You end up with a Member with really strong views on the subject not being able to come to a meeting where their non-attendance and non-participation affects the outcome in some way. 121 The engagement with the committee can also conflict with the expectations of witnesses who may have travelled far; may have assiduously prepared for the session and have invested time by asking other colleagues for advice who had appeared before; and may have observed a higher attendance in previous sessions when a minister was a witness, which, combined with the division bell and exodus for voting, as well as the observations of many MPs drifting in and out of committee proceedings, gave the impression that their contributions were less valued and in Portcullis House, the committee doors make a squelchy noise. Furthermore, lower numbers of Members allow the session to be hijacked by one sometimes belligerent Member. Discourteous conduct can be performative. This is because: (1) it can bring about an effect to the report, and (2) because committee members did not always liaise with each other, it was incumbent on the Chair or the committee team to phone around to ensure that there was a female member present if there was a panel on a sensitive gender-related topic, which was done with varying levels of success in the parliament.

As well as behavioural performances, descriptive representation was also cited as problematic. Two female clerks suggested that Members' low attendance and the decline of courtesies towards the end of parliaments made them feel uncomfortable as they often embodied the only women on the committee. This demonstrates that multiple gender regimes in the House of Commons interact. A female clerk discussed the limits of her participation that resembled a 'seen but not heard' 122 embodiment whereby she was a spectator to (male) political power: 'I am the only woman sat in the horseshoe at the heart of power and I cannot speak'. 123 She did not critique not being able to speak, but the imagery that this evoked. Collecting evidence can also happen off the parliamentary estate. As Select Committees are purveyors of knowledge claims, another clerk was concerned about the credibility of 'knowledge' during select committee visits and how she was positioned as embarrassed to discuss women's empowerment as a gendered actor working with the rules:

When…meet[ing] women, often to talk about extremely sensitive issues to do with sexuality, violence, oppression, I'm often the only woman in the room and I'm not a Member. It's extremely embarrassing, it sets a bad example, it undermines our credibility when we're spending a lot of money in this area supporting women's empowerment and then we don't have women MPs and an adequate balance of representation in parliament. 124 This shows that stewardship is affectively performed whereby the member of staff is personally embarrassed on behalf of the institution on the disconnect between policy and practice on gender equality.

By speaking with those who work in the parliamentary administration, by observing a window of open struggle around governance arrangements, WENs and discussions over bullying and harassment and public engagement, we can get a richer sense of how members of the parliamentary administration are positioned on a daily basis and we can assess parliament as a gendered institution. Members of the House Service are situated between two categories of service and stewardship that can reproduce sex/gender hierarchies. Service can produce overbearing behaviours towards staff and they are foreclosed and summarily called. Staff find space to enact public service behaviours in stewardship that is being re-signified to take into account outreach work to broaden the lessons about gender that emanate outwardly from the Commons.

To return to the central theme of the book, gender is performed beneath formal rules, for example, clerk circulation, as well as open struggles around the appointment of the Clerk of the House. The chapter found gendered resistance to the proposal to change the leadership structure of the House to one that would have attributed equal value to other forms of parliamentary expertise in the UK House of Commons. Members of staff are not able to respond to criticism publicly and so therefore this cements a power imbalance. Emotional management is also something that inflects this world to show impartiality in public spaces.

Subversive agency was exercised where members of the House Service deviated the chain of stewardship towards telling broader stories of the institution and to speaking out publicly. The delays in implementing Dame Laura Cox's recommendations further speak towards the institutional minimising of complaints and show the interdependence and power structures between the parliamentary administration and elected members.

House of Commons Governance Committee, House of Commons Governance (HC

House of Commons Commission Annual Report

Attempt to Split Commons Clerk Role Is No 'Power Grab', Financial Times

sitting Serjeant at Arms, in his evidence to the Governance Committee's inquiry into House of Commons Governance

House of Commons Governance Committee, House of Commons Governance

As described by Lawrence Ward, in his evidence to the Governance Committee's inquiry into House of Commons Governance

As described by Barbara Keeley MP, a former Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, in her evidence to the Governance Committee's inquiry into House of Commons Governance

For example, see lecture to the PSA 'Politics in an anti-politics age

The body in charge of the administration and services

The internal committees of the House of Commons and the channels to feed up to senior staff

37 MPs spoke, 7 women, all were Labour women MPs, perhaps because of their longer tenure as MPs or to support Margaret Hodge MP who was on the recruitment panel

Commons Job Frontrunner 'Totally Out of Her Depth, BBC Online

Jesse Norman MP described Burke as 'the Paul Scholes of modern politics' HC Deb, 22 January c442, a UK footballer

c889, c890, c893 c.904 for discussions of subordination to female authority, Blackadder, sailing, shooting and cricket

Erskine May is the UK Parliamentary Rule-Book

Jacqui is a female name in the UK

ParliOUT is the Workplace Equality Network for LGBTIQ people in parliament

ParliGENDER is the Workplace Equality Network for Gender in Parliament

ParliREACH is a Workplace Equality Network (WEN) established to increase awareness and appreciation of race, ethnicity and cultural heritage issues in Parliament

ParliABLE is a Workplace Equality Network (WEN) in support of disabled Members and Peers, their staff, staff of both Houses, and others who work on the Parliamentary Estate

ParliON is the Parliament Opportunity Network, a Workplace Equality Network (WEN) to promote inclusion and equality of opportunity across Parliament, and to raise awareness of issues around socio-economic inclusion

An initiative where staff in a lower pay band mentor a member of staff in a higher pay band. This might be where a BME woman mentors a white male in a higher pay band

One of my respondents suggested that due to a small number of BME staff it was 'uncomfortable' having a white senior clerk as a race champion

Interview 57 Female WEN Member

Review of Diversity Scheme

Interview 13, Male Parliamentary Researcher

Field note, personal conversation with WEN Member

Male MP

The response of 'clinical' was interesting with connotations of precision, sanitisation, formalised languages and goals. When the respondent returned the transcript of our discussion with corrections, I felt like my own vernacular was messy and imprecise in comparison with her very logical and meticulous prose

The rule-in-form is about general harassment, but for exposition here, I will include the Respect Policy as a rule about gender

Male DCCS, 1 May 14, see also Interview 9

Male DfF Member

This was dealt with by the valuing others policy

Male DFF Member

Interview 51 Male DFF Member

Male DFF Member

Male DFF Member

Former Female MP, 4 August 2014 The Westminster Hotel Bartender is not a part of the House Service, but this is a good example to include to show that deference and service are performed by men as well

Whilst the Westminster bar tender is not a member of the House Service, I thought it was useful to include this vignette to demonstrate that deferential behaviours are not just performed by women

Field note

Visitors to the gallery are required to fill out a ticket to sit in the public gallery, so collecting diversity statistics for the gallery could easily be done

This is accentuated because consumption of parliaments can be based upon individualism and improving individual cultural subjectivity

Fieldwork Diary

Department for Human Resources

Women in Parliament APPG Improving Parliament Report

Women in Parliament APPG Improving Parliament

The Effectiveness and Influence of the Select Committee System

Childs has suggested that a more 'diverse rolodex', greater corporation of contacts across departments and getting existing witnesses to identify potential witnesses might ameliorate this issue

Female Expert Select Committee Witness

MPs would not have taken my 'evidence' seriously unless I was seen as authoritative. While claims of knowledge and independence would fortify my position, I worried that anthropology might be misunderstood as frivolous. My gender may have made little difference to them, but I could not shrug off the feeling that as a woman I was an imposter in a man's world

Interview 56, DCCS Male

One belonged to local government, two were academics: one from an organisation and one from a university. I also spoke with Ministers who had appeared before Select Committees

Personal conversation with female select committee witness

Female expert select committee witness

Playing on phones and ipads, although looking rude towards the witness is sometimes because a Member is tweeting about a session or consulting their research briefing. Sometimes this can also involve clerks engaging in prolonged whispering to the Chair behind their hands

This corroborates Sara Ahmed's discussion of what it is like to embody diversity in organisations and to provide those organisations with diversity

The Powers of the European Parliament: Implications for Gender Equality Policy

The Nonperformativity of Antiracism. Meridians

Embodying Diversity: Problems and Paradoxes for Black Feminists. Race

On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life

The Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality in the European Parliament: Taking Advantage of Institutional Power Play

Case Study: House of Commons. The Power of Staff Networks

The Grit in the Oyster? Women's Parliamentary Organisations and the Substantive Representation of Women

Policies as Gendering Practices: Re-Viewing Categorical Distinctions

Citizen Bodies: Embodying citizens -A Feminist analysis

A Common Language of Gender?

The Discourse of News Values: How News Organisations Create Newsworthiness

Report to the House of Commons Management Board on the Findings of the Pilot Interview Study with Members and Their Staff About House Services

Unspeakable: The Autobiography

Mobilization Against Sexual Harassment in the European Parliament: The MeTooEP Campaign. ECPG Conference paper

Gender, Informal Institutions and Political Recruitment: Explaining Male Dominance in Parliamentary Representation

House of Commons (Administration)

Review of Management and Services: Report to the House of Commons Commission

The Psychic Life of Power

Giving an Account of Oneself

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limitations of Sex. London: Routledge. First Published

Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly

A Phenomenology of Working-Class Experience

Re-Gendering the UK House of Commons: The Academic Critical Actor and Her 'Feminist in Residence

Bullying and Harassment at the House of Commons

Commons and Lords: A short anthropology of Parliament

Magi or mandarins? Contemporary Clerkly Culture

Chairing Select Committees: Walking Between Friends and Foes

In the Way of Women: Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organisations

Review of the Administrative Services of the House of Commons

The Bullying and harassment of House of Commons Staff: Independent Inquiry Report. Government of the United Kingdom

The Second Sex (H. M. Parshley, Trans.)

A Day in the Life: Ian Ailles

The Mundane Matters

The Parliament as a Gendered Workplace: How to Research Legislators' (Un)Equal Opportunities to Represent

Mobility Policy. EP Intranet (Internal Document)

Essays on the History of Parliamentary Procedure

The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy

The Emotional Organization: Passions and Power

Classing Queer: Politics in Competition. Theory

The Speaker's Gender Equality Group in the Swedish Parliament-A Toothless Tiger?

Discursive Strategies for Institutional Reform: Gender Quotas in Sweden and France

Dramas at Westminster: Select Committees and the Quest for Accountability

Representing Gender Equality: Specialised Parliamentary Bodies

The Concept of 'the Everyday': Ephemeral Politics and the Abundance of Life

The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling

House of Commons Services: Report to the House of Commons Commission by a team led by Sir Robin Ibbs (Parliamentary Papers

Theorising the Democratic Gaze: Visitor's Experiences of the New Welsh Assembly

House of Commons Services: Report to the House of Commons Commission by a team led by Sir Robin Ibbs. Parliamentary Papers

Report on the Implementation of the Tebbit Review Recommendations. Paper by the external board member

The Politics of Parliamentary Reform

The Institutional Representation of Parliament

New Wars and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era

The Change Masters: Corporate Entrepreneurs at Work

Parliamentary Reform at Westminster

Typologies and Classifications

Staking the Frame of a Feminist Discursive Institutionalism

The Production of Space

Why Symbolic Representation Frames Parliamentary Public Engagement

Unspeakable! Bercow Wants to Hand Vital Jobs in Parliament to an Unknown Aussie-Just Because She's a Woman

Quentin Letts Says This Latest Crass Arrogance Could Finish Him Off. Mail [Accessed 22

Feminizing Politics

Prime Ministers Questions as Masculinity' PSA Political Insight

How Are Political Institutions Gendered? Political Studies

Gender Cultures: Women's Choices and Strategies at Work. Women in Management Review

Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics

Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace

Explaining Change in Legislatures: Dilemmas of Managerial Reform in the UK House of Commons

Managing in the 'Golden Cage': An Ethnographic Study of Work, Management and Gender in Parliamentary Administration

Playing by the Rules: The Constraining Hand of Parliamentary Procedure

Effeminate Edmund Burke and the Masculine Voice of Mary Wollstonecraft

The Politics of Parliamentary Procedure: The Formation of the Westminster Procedure as a Parliamentary Ideal Type

Parliamentary Thinking: Procedure, Rhetoric and Time

Westminster Procedure, Not Mere Games

Stand in My Shoes: Race and Culture in Parliament: A ParliREACH Report

The Administrative Organisation and Governance of Parliament

The New Clerk of the Commons on Transforming Parliament's Culture

Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place

Commons divisions. Institute for Government

Parliament Today

Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?

Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration

Sharpening a Knife Cleverly": The Dilemma of Expertise

Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies

White Gloves and Hats: A Woman Clerk in the House of Commons

Do the Poor Count? Democratic Institutions and Accountability

Judith Butler and Organisation Theory

A Good Place to Work? What Commons Staff Think of House Governance. The Constitution Unit

Women's Political Firsts and Symbolic Representation

An Optimum Model for the Governance of Parliaments?

John Bercow: Call to Order (E-Book)

The Governance of Parliament

Staging Power: Constructing Gender in the Debates of the European Parliament