The Don and Helen New Zealand election 2005: A media a-gender?

Abstract

The media uses the technique of framing to process and package information in order to make sense of the material and present a news ‘story’ which is accessible to the audience. International research reports demonstrate a consistent ‘gendered’ framing of media coverage. ‘Gendering’ refers to the highlighting of a person’s gender, when this is not particularly relevant to the context. Usually gendering involves seeing the male as the norm, and the female as the remarkable. In terms of the media and politics, this gendering includes the under-representation of women politicians, an emphasis on their appearance, marital and maternal status, and personality rather than the policies and issues of debate. More recently, however, there is evidence that in some contexts the media is becoming less overtly biased in its representation of women politicians. While there are still many ways in which women are presented differently from their male counterparts, there is also some evidence that an emphasis on gender is initiated by the party campaigns rather than being a result of media agenda-setting.

‘Nice girls don't carry knives': Constructions of ambition in media coverage of Australia's first female prime minister

“…In this way, women would be free to display ambition, aggression, and other power‐seeking qualities in the same way and to the same extent as men without social penalty, as long as they balanced these characteristics with sufficient displays of self‐effacement, concern for others, and other communal characteristics. Previous research on female politicians and femininity has focused largely on the ways in which appearance, style, and motherhood/domestic duties contribute to the (sufficiently) feminine identities of female politicians, such as Angela Merkel (van Zoonen, 2006), Hillary Clinton (Scharrer, 2002), and Helen Clarke (Devere & Graham Davies, 2006). The emphasis on these features is used to show that even as successful politicians, these women still share the concerns and priorities that enable them to be seen as ‘real’ women.…”

Gendered frontlines: British press coverage of women soldiers killed in Iraq

“…As Åsa Kroon Lundell and Mats Ekström (2008: 892) have noted, women are ‘more easily associated with domestic issues and the emphasis on physical traits, appearance and relationships is central’ in media coverage. This emphasis on gender is central to the concept of gendered mediation, a strategic perspective for the framing of stories about women in androcentric environments (Devere and Graham, 2006; Ette, 2008; Gidengil and Everitt, 1999; Trimble et al, 2007). This journalistic practice projects a perspective that presents the male as the normative in certain areas of public life (Gidengil and Everitt, 2003; Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross, 1996).…”

“…Gidengil and Everitt (1999) have noted how this framing tool shifts the focus from obvious stereotypes to subtle frames that emphasise popular conceptions of differences determined by gender. Gendered mediation entails highlighting a person’s gender irrespective of its relevance to the context of the story (Devere and Graham, 2006). It encapsulates how news frames place undue emphasis on feminine and masculine roles as defined by social and cultural values.…”

Participating in Parliamentary Politics: Experiences of Indonesian Women 1995�2010

“…Another research project explores ways in which Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, was subjected to inquiries about her femininity and her home life during election campaigns. The New Zealand public even demanded assurances that her heterosexual marriage was not just a charade (Devere and Davies, 2006). In Indonesia, however, the model of womanhood is even stricter and it is unlikely that an unmarried woman or a woman without children would be successful in Indonesian politics.…”