Newspapers do not report on female politicians in a stereotyped way
Far from being just about clothes and hairstyles: Swiss newspapers provide balanced coverage of female politicians and do not portray them in a less favorable light than men. Researchers at the University of Zurich have reached this conclusion in an analysis.
The study on the media portrayal of politicians takes into account around 1.8 million German-language media articles from 80 newspapers and magazines from the period 2012 to 2018. It was carried out as part of a student project led by Lucas Leemann from the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich. The Tamedia newspapers reported on the results on Saturday.
The results showed fewer gender-specific differences than one might expect, the researchers wrote. The press reports on female politicians roughly in proportion to the number of seats they hold. This means that women appear in the newspapers about as often as their male colleagues.
Former CVP Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard was mentioned most frequently. The former transport minister received over 62,000 mentions. Among men, former Federal Councillor and SVP patriarch Christoph Blocher topped the hit list with just under 56,000 mentions.
According to the researchers, the topics on which female politicians are mentioned particularly frequently do not follow a clichéd understanding of their role. The search for mentions of leadership skills such as "competent", "intelligent" or "strategic" as well as attributes such as "blonde", "slim" or "charming" revealed that women are even attested more integrity, trustworthiness and honesty than men. However, the difference is insignificant, the authors write.
According to the researchers, it is rather the personal profile of the female politicians that is decisive for the reporting. Appearances such as figure or hair are generally rarely discussed, according to the study. However, there is a certain discrepancy when it comes to clothing, which is mentioned more frequently among female politicians than male politicians. The researchers have a possible explanation for this: the dress code is less restrictive for women and allows for more individuality, Christopher Huddleston from the team of political scientists involved in the study told the newspaper.
Next comes the study concluded that more positive and less emotionally charged words are used for female politicians than for male politicians. However, these differences are slowly becoming smaller. (SDA)
