Female Political Candidates and Media Coverage The anti-female bias in the media

Media Coverage: Why is it important? The amount and quality of information voters have about women running for office. Incumbency alone does not explain the failure of qualified challengers to win. – : 49 women ran for US Senate, only 14 won –1990: 8 women ran, one won. Qualified Republican candidates were regularly defeated.

Other factors explaining mixed electoral success? Women lack sufficient political resources Certain political resources may benefit men more powerfully than women. BUT Women do have money, frequently more than men and this has helped them more than it has helped men. Are women victims of sex stereotyping by voters? Voters use stereotypes but the mix applied to women includes beneficial stereotypes such as “outsider” and “honesty”.

News media coverage impact on elections? Quality of information voters have about candidates Campaign side – this is impacted by money spent Voter side – time spent reading/watching plus attitudes Media connect the two: –Voter needs name recognition plus positive perception.

New media coverage impacts: Name recognition. Ability of voter to identify something positive about the candidate. Overall favorability rating by voter

Evidence? Sex specific news coverage works to the advantage of male candidates in both print and television news. Media coverage systematically increases voters ability to identify male candidates more than female candidates. Better candidate quality provides recognition benefits for men but not for women. Positive cognition is associated with television coverage. Again women are less likely to benefit positively from television news coverage whereas men are benefited by television coverage. Overall favorability measures whether respondents have positive or negative information about candidates. Television relates to the overall favorability rating for men but has no impact for women candidates. Newspaper exposure shows no impact for either men or women.

The effect on the Vote The ability of a candidate to become known in a positive manner is key to winning voter support. Elizabeth Dole pulled out of the 2000 presidential race before the primary season began. She was a qualified candidate. The question for scholars is what happened and is there a systematic problem that women uniquely face compared to men.

House Press Secretaries Perception of News Media coverage Niven and Zilber surveyed press secretaries for incumbents Press secretaries of female incumbents systematically feel that their representative is stereotyped by gender and in the cases of minority office holder by both gender and race. Press secretaries of men complain not of stereotyping but of issue specific problems with media coverage.

Previous research findings on media coverage of women Women candidates and legislators taken less seriously and receive less general coverage. Receive more attention on “women’s issues” while ignored on most other substantive issues. News coverage of women more frequently mentions their families and superficial matters such as appearance, personality, and fashion decisions. Men receive greater media attention to their achievements, positions on issues.

Where does this originate? Is the media creating superficial image of women candidates and officeholders or are the women, via their actions and words, feeding the pattern of coverage? Media – do they cover and report the range of what politicians do and say, not what media members think? OR are media generally willing to be influenced by stereotypes in political coverage? –Do they develop spokespersons on various issues to simplify their reporting tasks (giving certain members the reputation of being associated with a particular issue)?

Gender composition of media Nationwide – male reporters outnumber females 2 to NYT articles by men appeared five times more frequently than articles by women.

Press Secretary Perceptions Press secretaries for men complained about issue coverage – gave specific examples of single, non-recurrent problems with media. No responses indicated a pattern of media bias against their officeholder. Press secretaries for women more likely to cite a general lack of coverage for their representative and more likely to cite a general bias in which the member was treated as a specialist on women’s issues or minority issues instead of working for economic development.