Media Coverage of Female and Male Candidates

Lindsey Meeks (2013b) highlights that the 2008 presidential election
was a significant milestone for women. The New York Times gave male
candidates more coverage than female candidates. Hillary Clinton won a
presidential primary, and Sarah Palin was the first woman nominated as
vice-president by the Republican Party. However, the New York Times
focused more on Clinton and Palin’s attire and personal matters, such
as their family orientation, rather than substantive issues. In
contrast, male candidates were covered more on substantive issues
unrelated to their appearance or family matters. Meeks (2013a)
suggests that the Times treated and framed these women candidates
based on gender stereotypes, which may have affected how voters
perceived them.

James Devitt (2002, p.446-447) claims that how candidates are “framed”
is determinant in the coverage; therefore, men’s coverage did not
include attire, personality, and marital status as much as women’s
coverage did. Differences in women’s coverage also emerged when
comparing races for offices that had or had not been previously held
by a woman. According to the Center for American Women and Politics,
the number of women serving in the 114th United States Congress has
increased, with women representing 19.4% of the 535 members; 20 women
(20%) serve in the United States Senate, and 84 women (19.3%) serve in
the United States House of Representatives (2015). Neither party has
achieved gender parity among its elected officials, and the imbalance
in the proportion of elected women from the two major parties remains
a challenge in American politics. Nevertheless, Democrats have
increased their percentage of women among representatives at the
federal and state levels, while the number remains low among
Republicans compared to the Democratic and Republican Delegation.

Many scholars have focused their studies on female candidates in
public offices at the state and federal levels and how their coverage
differs from their male counterparts. Researchers have documented how
media outlets often disregard the occupation, experience, or
accomplishments of women. Contrary to male candidates, women have been
found to be less likely to announce their positions on public policy
issues (Devitt, 2002). Gender discrepancies in elections could cause
professional barriers because gender stereotypes affect candidates
during campaigns and elections (Meeks, 2012). Researchers have found
that voters are willing to vote for women candidates when they
emphasize their female characteristic traits. Stereotypes about gender
differences can deter women from entering politics due to the pressure
to meet high standards during the campaign (Sternadori, 2013).

Meeks (2013b) argues that historically, politics and journalism have
been considered masculine fields due to the lack of admission and
representation of women. Women working in journalism tend to adopt
masculinized attributes to achieve gender equity in the workforce.
Studies have found that female reporters are more inclined to use
female sources, write about women, and incorporate women’s positions
in their pieces. Male journalists do the same for their gender,
indicating that a journalist’s gender affects coverage. Focusing on
gendered stereotypes when covering different candidates is one way the
media contributes to candidates’ electability. The creation of sex
roles in society linked with stereotypes has generated gender areas
that can be seen during the coverage of mixed-gender campaigns.
Traditional outlets link certain policies and issues to women running
for office and different ones to men. The media tends to attribute
education, health care, and poverty to female candidates, while male
candidates are linked to policies dealing with the economy, foreign
affairs, and defense (Meeks, 2013b). There is a tendency to cover only
the trends related to female candidates, even if the expertise of the
women contender is more related to masculine issues. In the case of
male candidates, there is no problem moving from masculine to feminine
issues. For women, there is a barrier preventing them from moving
easily between both trends.

The media’s propensity to label or characterize women based on their
attitude and behavior creates a prejudice against female candidates
based on their character and appearance rather than their professional
experience (Carlin & Winfrey, 2009). Gender discrepancies between male
and female candidates emphasize the barriers that make men and women’s
experiences different. When the news media categorize or label events
or persons as abnormal, they create “norm breakers.” As a result,
media coverage is different for men and women, with men receiving more
attention in mixed-gender elections, influencing how women are viewed
(Meeks, 2012). Carlin and Winfrey (2009) suggest that journalist
organizations should be more careful in avoiding sexist attacks on
women candidates, as they weaken their viability. Female candidates
and staff should denounce sexism at the beginning of the campaign to
stop it. To stop stereotypes and sexist language, it is necessary to
see public positions as gender-neutral.

The stereotype patterns described have been changing, at least in the
coverage of women and men for Congress, where gender discrepancies
have decreased. However, bias persists in female candidates for
president. New data suggest that gender stereotyping is limited by
voters’ reliance on party influence. Moreover, Americans no longer
believe that men are more suitable for politics than women. On the
contrary, the U.S. population expresses their willingness to support
qualified female candidates for public office positions. Most research
related to gender stereotyping has focused more on presidential and
vice-presidential women candidates’ races, as the executive office is
considered the most masculine elected position in the country.
Scholars have assumed that the press treatment for female
congressional candidates is less prevalent (Hayes and Lawless, 2015).

Hitchon, Chang, and Harris (1997, p. 49-50) argue that voters’
attitudes toward candidates depend on the information obtained from
media outlets, not based on their gender but on their standpoints on
“masculine issues” like crime and defense. The authors believe that
advertisement is the best way for women candidates to convey their
message and promote themselves to the electorate. To succeed, voters
must perceive that the candidate has a significant opportunity to win.
Thus, female candidates must project a willingness to win to attract
voters. The use of local media in election season coverage of
candidates suggests a non-gender lens because local news outlets are
relatively familiar with the background and experience of those
candidates. Local media emphasizes issues and trait coverage across
gender stereotyping. Coverage at a local level appears much different
than at the national level. Local newspapers will cover the candidates
within a local issue framework to satisfy the local audience or
electors (Meeks, 2012, p.189).

Analysis

This paper seeks to identify potential differences in media coverage
for female and male candidates, focusing specifically on the media
coverage of a female congressional candidate. The focus will be on
Kelly Ayotte, who currently serves in the 114th Congress of the United
States. She is one of the 14 Republican senators representing a small
sample overall of the Congress in the United States. The media
coverage of her will offer a glimpse of whether media coverage is
openly different for female senators. Biographical and other basic
information about the congresswoman is collected from the Center for
American Women and Politics and newspaper coverage from the Lexis
Nexis database. A search is done, and then the word “gender” was
searched for within those results. Articles that had gender, sex, or
sexism in the title were identified. The results that come up in the
search for her plus gender are skimmed to determine what the articles
are about. Articles were considered irrelevant to the content analysis
if they only identified the congresswoman as a woman or if they only
offered basic biographical information about her. The sample used was
from September 1, 2010, to November 30, 2010, based on the fact that
September 2, 2010, was the date Ayotte won the Republican nomination,
and November 2, 2010, was the midterm congressional election. To allow
for some comparison, Lexis-Nexis searches were also done for the male
opponent, Paul Hodes, in the same way that it was done for the
congresswoman as discussed above. The results from the Lexis-Nexis
searches for the male candidate were analyzed to see if there were
trends with stereotyped coverage.

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