Gender in Spanish Daily Newspapers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the portrayal of women and men in a Spanish daily newspaper and to find whether there were gender differences among the authors of the articles in said newspaper. A content analysis was conducted of 4,060 articles and advertisements from 24 issues of a randomly selected, large-circulation, Spanish newspaper. Men were found to be more commonly featured in the articles, photographs, and advertisements than women, and they would usually be soldiers, athletes or high-rank businessmen much more often than women were. Furthermore, we determined that the reporters writing the articles were more likely to be men than women. And, in addition, men were more likely to be cited as sources than women.

Portrayal of women and men in the Spanish press

“…The under-representation of women in the media has been found in studies conducted in Spain and other countries (Cf. Calvo and Gutiérrez, 2016;Collins, 2011;Mateos de Cabo, Gimeno, Martínez and López, 2014;Matud et al, 2011;Stanley, 2012;WACC, 2015). It has also been confirmed that, similar to what these studies found, the representation of women and men is informed by gender stereotypes that attribute the power and authority to men.…”

“…Coding was performed based on the system developed by Matud et al (2011) for the analysis of newspaper contents, as it has shown high reliability levels. These codes have been reviewed and some of their categories have expanded to collect all the information.…”

“…This study is inspired by the previous works published this decade by the authors of this article, including Gender in Spanish Daily Newspapers (Matud, Rodríguez and Espinosa, 2011), which is based on the content analysis of El Mundo newspaper. This article is a breakthrough since, in addition to analysing the content of published by the aforementioned newspaper five years later, examines the content of El País newspaper, which increases the generalisability of the results, enables the comparison of the representations of both newspapers, and improves the previously used methods.…”

“…There is evidence that it is more likely for men to be cited as sources than women (Freedman and Fico, 2005;Matud et al, 2011;Ross, 2007), especially when it comes to expert sources, although this tendency appears to decrease when the writers of the news are women. Although the evidence is not conclusive (Ross, 2007), some studies have found that women journalists use women as sources to a greater extent than their male colleagues (Freedman and Fico, 2005;WACC, 2015).…”

Diferencias de género en el contenido icónico de los periódicos

“…Los resultados relativos a la mayor representación de los hombres frente a las mujeres tanto en la parcela informativa de los medios de comunicación como en la publicidad coinciden con los de otros estudios españoles (cfrs., Crolley y Teso, 2007;Fagoaga y Secanella, 1984;Gallego, Altés, Melús, Soriano y Canton, 2002;Matud, Rodríguez y Espinosa, 2011;Rodríguez et al, 2008) y con los realizados en otros entornos geográficos y culturales (véase, por ejemplo, Collins, 2011;Jolliffe, 1998;Len-Ríos et al, 2005).…”