By Sarah Pedersen, Professor of Communication and Media at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen

If the words “Mumsnet” and “politics” makes you think of biscuits, you are not alone. Whenever the news media reports on a politician’s webchat on the popular online parenting forum, you can be sure that story will lead with the politician’s answer to a question about his or her favourite biscuit. Over 100 politicians have undertaken webchats since David Cameron first appeared on Mumsnet in 2006 to mark his return from paternity leave. And it is clear that each of them have taken some time out from a busy schedule to think carefully about the important topic – of biscuits. SNP politicians always plump for something from Tunnocks, while John McDonell made the careful choice of “broken biscuits” like those his mother used to sell on her counter at British Homes Stores. This both tugged at the heartstrings and served to remind his audience that it was under a Tory government that BHS finally folded.

What the newspapers rarely report, however, is that biscuit choice is not the only – or indeed the most important – question thrown at the politicians by Mumsnetters, who can be both well-researched and forensic in their grilling – Gordon Brown suggested that they asked more difficult questions than Question Time.

It was Gordon Brown who was ultimately responsible for the news media’s obsession with biscuits and Mumsnet. He appeared on the site in 2009 and failed to answer a question about his favourite biscuit, despite being asked twelve times during the webchat. The press immediately dubbed the event ‘Biscuitgate’ and focused on what this failure to name a favourite biscuit told us about both Brown and the trivial biscuit questioners. Why, when they had the opportunity to ask the Prime Minister questions of grave political moment, did Mumsnetters focus on biscuits? This ignored the many questions about policy and party politics that Mumsnetters had fired at Brown.

Mumsnet is 20 years old this year, and claims around 10 million unique visitors per month, clocking up around 100 million page views. In November 2019, its talk boards reached one billion page views. Set up to ‘make parents’ lives easier by pooling knowledge and experience’ the website has become a phenomenon, and is both acclaimed and criticised for its perceived influence with British women and politicians.

Politicians see the website as an easy conduit to the hearts and minds of the female floating voter – a notoriously difficult group to access. Thus party leaders, ministers and shadow cabinet members appear on Mumsnet webchats to push their pet policies and appeal to voters. In exchange, Mumsnet has found a sympathetic ear for campaigns on issues such as better miscarriage care and the sexualisation of the clothing aimed at young girls.

Previous researchers have focused on Mumsnet’s role in the formation of modern motherhood in the UK. However, my book investigates the role of politics on the site – how politicians try to use it as a gateway to that key floating voter demographic, how Mumsnet itself, and its users, campaign for issues relating to their experiences as women, and how Mumsnetters discuss politics. I am using ‘politics’ with a small p here to widen the discussion beyond party politics and to include many issues relating to everyday life. For Mumsnet, that includes a growing discussion of feminism on the site.

While not all approve of what it has become, in recent years Mumsnet has been celebrated by gender-critical feminists and free-speech activists for its refusal to ban discussion of issues such as the proposed reforms of the Gender Recognition Act. The site’s discussion boards have attracted activists and others who have been banned from social media such as Twitter and Reddit, and Mumsnetters have also initiated and become involved in campaigns such as ‘Man Friday’, where women declared themselves to be male for the day in order to gain access to men-only spaces.

In my book I argue that this has led to Mumsnet becoming a crucial and central part of a “co-operative constellation” of the resurgent women’s rights movement in the UK. Stimulated by proposals by the governments in Westminster and Holyrood to reform the Gender Recognition Act, but with little to no consultation with women or consideration of the consequences of such reforms on women and girls, gender-critical women have formed grassroots organisations to raise their concerns and lobby the government and other stakeholders. This movement can also be positioned within a general disillusionment about British politics, politicians and the establishment. Politicians were judged by gender-critical women for refusing to engage seriously with their concerns, leading to a resurgence in feminist activism. There has also been a real sense of homelessness amongst many of these women. Women who were used to the support of, and supporting, organizations such as the BBC, the Labour, SNP or Liberal Democrat parties or The Guardian, have been left to organise their own grassroots movement on this issue as the politicians and media they would automatically go to for support have refused to listen to their concerns.

Mumsnet’s role within this wider movement has been as a safe space. A place where gender-critical women can share information and support and also plan agitational activities either elsewhere online or in real life.

This has created problems for the site. Not all users have been happy with the increasing discussion of women’s versus trans rights on the site’s discussion forum. The questions raised by the government’s plans to reform the GRA have also led to this issue dominating the much-feted politicians’ webchats, which have allowed Mumsnet so much access to politicians and a position of influence. Politicians used to ask to come on the site but some have now started to reject invitations, knowing that they will be harangued for answers to questions that they cannot answer to the satisfaction of their questioners, either because of their own beliefs or for reasons of political exigency. At the same time, trans-rights activists have urged important advertisers to step away from any connection with Mumsnet for fear of a social media pile-on, with accusations of transphobia and hate crime. Mumsnet has been forced to limit the freedom speech on its Feminism topic, rewriting guidelines and removing posts, and sometimes even posters.

The question of Mumsnet’s feminism has been raised by previous researchers, and most have agreed that any feminism to be found on the site is of a neoliberal and individualist type, focused on the needs and wants of middle-class women and their aspirational families. While this is still true, the past five years have demonstrated that Mumsnetters – like all women – should not be viewed as a homogenous whole. Just as there is really no such thing as the “women’s vote”, whatever the politicians who campaign on Mumsnet like to think, there is no such thing as one type of Mumsnet feminism. There is a wide range of feminisms on Mumsnet, from the woman who notes whether a new film release would pass the Bechdel test to women campaigning for better miscarriage care and on to women who will swim topless in Dulwich swimming pool to make a point about the value of women-only safe spaces. All of them find a home on Mumsnet.