Abstract
Do the media cover men and women politicians and candidates differently? This article performs a systematic analysis of 90 studies covering over 25,000 politicians in over 750,000 media stories, and presents the accumulated knowledge in a comprehensive theoretical framework. The paper shows that there is a gender bias in the amount of coverage of politicians in proportional electoral systems, where women politicians lag behind men in media attention, but that, surprisingly, this gender bias is absent in majoritarian electoral systems. In addition, we systematically review gender differences in the content of media reports on political candidates, such as differences in attention to private life and family, viability and horse-race coverage, issue coverage, and gender stereotypes. Overall, women politicians receive more attention to their appearance and personal life, more negative viability coverage, and, to some extent, stereotypical issue and trait coverage. We conclude by pointing out promising avenues for future research.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 114-143 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| Journal | Journal of Communication |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 27 Feb 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 2020 |
Funding
Daphne Van der Pas was supported by a grant from Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Grant 451-17-025). The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editor for providing constructive comments, and to all the authors that provided information and data. In addition, the authors would like to thank Susan Banducci, Angela Bos, Mirya Holman, Monica Schneider, Angela Wagner, the Political Communication research group at the University of Vienna, the Challenges research group at the University of Amsterdam, participants at the MPSA and EPSA Conferences in 2018, and the Gender and Media ICA-Postconference in 2019 for their feedback.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 451-17-025 |
