A Non-Gendered Lens? Media, Voters, and Female Candidates in Contemporary Congressional Elections

Abstract

Much research in the study of U.S. politics has argued that female candidates for elected office are treated differently-and often worse-than male candidates in the press and by the public. Although these patterns do not doom women to electoral failure, they raise a formidable series of obstacles that often complicate women's path to elective office, slowing the move toward gender parity in representation. Broad changes to the American political landscape, as well as methodological limitations of previous work, however, suggest the need for an updated assessment. We rely on a detailed content analysis of local newspaper coverage from nearly 350 U.S. House districts and nationally representative survey data from the 2010 midterms to provide a comprehensive evaluation of whether women experience a more hostile campaign environment than do men. We find that candidate sex does not affect journalists' coverage of, or voters' attitudes toward, the women and men running for office in their districts. Rather, reporters' portrayals and citizens' assessments of candidates stem primarily from partisanship, ideology, and incumbency, not the sex of the candidate. Although our results differ from much of the existing literature, we regard them as a valuable point of departure for answering pressing questions about gender and representation in contemporary politics, both in an American and comparative context.

Terrorist Threat, Male Stereotypes, and Candidate Evaluations

“…These findings comport with a growing body of work that shows that the partisanship of a particular leader trumps gender during normal electoral circumstances (Dolan 2014a(Dolan , 2014bHayes 2011;Hayes and Lawless 2015). However, rather than assuming uniformity in how gender stereotypes either do or do not affect evaluations of female leaders, our study shows how political context alters the influence of male stereotypes on candidate evaluations.…”

Gender bias in media representation of political actors: Examples from Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election

“…The implication is that this biased media coverage naturally puts the female aspirants at the disadvantaged position during electoral contests. It should be noted, however, that the fi ndings in our current study present a scenario contrary to what Hayes and Lawless (2015) found from their a study of newspaper coverage of the 2010 US House of Representative mid-term election. Their study established that male and female candidates received almost equal mention in the newspapers.…”

“…In studies in the Western context, however, male and female candidates received almost equal attention from newspapers (Hayes, Lawless & Baitinger, 2014;Hayes & Lawless, 2015). The authors, however, fail to clarify if there are gender-biased tones in media coverage of the candidates.…”

Gender biases and linguistic sexism in political communication: A comparison of press news about men and women Italian ministers

“…In general, in the past, the results underlined a major coverage advantage for men over women (Carroll & Schreiber, 1997;Kahn, 1992Kahn, , 1994Kahn & Goldenberg, 1991), whereas recently, ambiguous tendencies have emerged. In fact, at the diachronic level, the coverage shows a trend towards a partial overcoming of the gap -favorable to the men -with more balancing (Bystrom, 2004;Bystrom, Robertson, & Banwart, 2001;Hayes & Lawless, 2015;Heldman, Carroll, & Olson, 2005;Jalalzai, 2006;Smith, 1997), and sometimes even covering the women more (Sensales et al, 2016b;Wiliarty, 2010). Such a trend, if confirmed in the present survey, could provide hope for the media to take an increasingly positive role in overcoming gender discrimination, as advocated by the IPU.…”