In the mid-1990s, Arizona State University political scientist Kim Fridkin dubbed U.S. press coverage of male and female candidates vying for state office a “distorted mirror” marked by gender bias that failed to accurately reflect the political landscape.
“In senatorial races, women receive less campaign coverage than their male counterparts and the coverage they receive is more negative — emphasizing their unlikely chances of victory,” Fridkin wrote in 1994 in The Journal of Politics, based on her analysis of news stories about 47 statewide campaigns from 1982 to 1988. “In both senatorial and gubernatorial races, women receive consistently less issue attention than their male counterparts.”
When the paper was published, 6% of U.S. senators were women, while women made up about 11% of members of Congress, according to a 2023 report on women leaders in U.S. politics by the Pew Research Center. About 21% of state legislators were women in the mid-1990s, as were 6% of governors, according to the Pew report.
By 2023, 25% of U.S. senators, 29% of Congress, 33% of state legislators and 24% of governors were women.
As women have occupied more positions of political power, so has news framing and language used in media coverage become more scrutinized.
How researchers explore gender bias in political news coverage
In the last few years, academic researchers have used a variety of technology, including text processing and image recognition software, to assess potential gender bias in media coverage. They have analyzed potential bias such as an outsized focus on female politicians’ looks, displays of emotion, and the overall amount of coverage they receive relative to their male counterparts.
Hillary Clinton has been among the most covered female politicians in the news in recent decades — and media scholars have dissected much of that coverage.
In 2008, for example, Clinton ran against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama had won Iowa, and the race was tight in the next state to vote, New Hampshire. At a campaign stop in early January that year, an apparent supporter asked Clinton, “How do you do it? How do you keep upbeat, and so wonderful?”
It was an intimate room, with Clinton seated at a table with about a dozen other people and roughly the same number of news cameras surrounding them. Clinton answered the question over the next two minutes, speaking quietly at times and welling up at others. The next day, New Hampshire voters chose Clinton by less than 3 percentage points.
In examining 37 transcripts of major national newscasts from Jan. 7 to 9, 2008, the authors of a 2014 peer-reviewed paper find 21 of the news reports framed Clinton’s response as strategic, questioning whether it was genuine. An anchor on ABC noted that the “emotional moment” came just as political analysts were suggesting she needed to be “more human.” Several reports referred to the event as “humanizing” and suggested it had affected the outcome of the election.
“[W]ithin three days, Clinton was framed as a winner and loser, a broken-down ice queen and victorious strategist, someone who was unfeminine and yet could only appeal to women,” write communication scholars Rebecca Curnalia and Dorian Mermer in the 2014 paper. “She had set back feminism and inspired women.”
Also in 2008, television and print media covered a bevy of factors relating to Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, including her voice, looks and sex appeal, which had little-to-no bearing on policy.
In 2013, Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis filibustered on the floor of that state’s legislature for 11 hours, in order to block a bill that would have restricted abortion access. Much of the subsequent coverage of the filibuster focused on what Davis wore — pink shoes — rather than the substance of the legislation or Davis’ opposition to it, research has found.
In analyzing 117 news stories from local and national newspapers in the week around the filibuster, the authors of an April 2016 peer-reviewed paper found those outlets devoted disproportionate space to Davis’ personal life and sartorial choices.
“Rather than debating about women’s issues and reproductive rights, or the arguments used to both support and oppose the bill, or even the testimonies that Davis mentioned during her filibuster, the attention was mostly on the theatrical aspects of the event, with the Texas capitol becoming a stage and Wendy Davis, the single-mother-at-19, pink-shoes-wearing performer as the main act,” write communication and journalism professors Dustin Harp, Jaime Loke and Ingrid Bachmann.
In 2016, Clinton, this time as the Democratic Party nominee for president, cable news pundits repeatedly went on air advising her to “smile.” In late 2018, Democratic Party presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren was met with questions from the media about her “likeability” less than a day after she announced her candidacy.
The “likability trap,” as it’s known, refers to women in positions of power having to be both highly qualified and broadly likable to colleagues and clients in the corporate world, and to voters in the political realm. It’s similar in concept to the “gender double bind,” in which women in leadership positions are expected to be both competent and warm, according to research out of the University of Michigan.
To be fair, some news outlets have devoted space to covering likability questions surrounding male politicians, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The issue also came up in the 2012 presidential race, with Republican nominee Mitt Romney facing a “deep likability gap” against Obama.
Likability is important to both men and women voters, according to a 2016 research memo from the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that aims to increase the number of women holding public office. It’s one of few studies in the past decade, academic or otherwise, to analyze the likability trap. The researchers conducted seven focus groups with voters from a range of demographic backgrounds, along with a survey of 1,000 likely voters.
“Likeability seems like a quality that would be desirable in any candidate or officeholder — male or female,” the authors write. “And it is. But it is more important for women.”
What the research says about gender bias in political coverage
Those are just a few of the notable, fairly recent examples of what researchers describe as gender bias in political news coverage. In 2024, the Democratic Party again chose a woman, Kamala Harris, as its standard bearer.
To help news outlets avoid blundering into biased coverage in the weeks before the Nov. 5 election, we’re taking a close look at five recent studies assessing the state of gender bias in political reporting.
These studies focus on print and online media — there is scant recent research on gender bias broadcast media political coverage — and they mostly analyze coverage of politicians vying for or holding office from 2010 to 2020. Here are a few takeaways:
- Women holding prominent government offices are less likely than men holding similar positions to garner coverage of issues related to national security and the economy. But over the past decade, most presidential cabinet members in charge of those areas have been men.
- There is no apparent bias in the amount of coverage female and male politicians get when it comes to health care and education, and there has been an uptick in coverage for women involved with civil rights and federal legislation.
- There is little difference in coverage focus between professional and personal qualifications in political races pitting a woman against a man. When a woman faces a man, national and local news outlets may, in fact, be more likely to cover the political qualifications of the female candidate.
- When a woman faces a woman, coverage is more likely to focus on “feminine” qualifications, such as family relationships.
- At local newspapers, female reporters are more likely than male reporters to cover the political qualifications of women.
- When it comes to the images editors and reporters use alongside their stories, both male and female candidates are most likely to be portrayed online and in print with neutral facial expressions. Images of women, however, were more likely than men to be shown conveying happiness and slightly more likely to be shown conveying anger.
Research roundup
Still Facing the ‘Paper Ceiling’? Exploring Gender Differences in Political News Coverage of the Last Decade
Aliya Andrich and Emese Domahidi. Journalism, November 2023.
The study: The authors note that many earlier studies on gender bias in political coverage are based on news articles from decades ago. They seek to update the literature by analyzing more than 500,000 articles published by major news outlets from 2010 to 2020 about nearly 1,100 politicians.
Citing past research, the authors write that the “paper ceiling” refers to “certain institutional or ideological factors prevent[ing] an individual, typically a woman, from rising to a top position.” The authors also note that existing research often focuses on female politicians who are prominent at the national level, which might not provide much insight on female politicians who are better known on the state or local levels.
Of the 1,070 politicians in the sample, 214 were women. The politicians served in Congress or as members of a presidential cabinet during the period studied. The media organizations included newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today; magazines, such as the National Review, The Christian Science Monitor and The Atlantic; and online outlets, such as Politico and Business Insider.
The findings: Looking across 12 news topics, the amount of news coverage of male politicians steadily increased over the decade studied. Female politicians saw small increases in coverage related to civil rights, federal legislation, the economy and national security. News reports didn’t favor women over men when it came to stories about health care and education. But women holding prominent, powerful government offices garner less media coverage on the topics of national security and the economy than male politicians in similar positions. The authors suggest that this finding may not be due to media bias, but realities of the national political situation during the time of their study.
The authors write: “We suggest that a more likely explanation for our results is that the increasing number of domestic right-wing extremism (e.g., violence at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville) and international security threats (e.g., Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election) in the past few years may have led to the heightened media attention to Donald Trump and his top officials. And since national security and defense agencies are almost exclusively led by men, the coverage of national security issues of the past decade was dominated by male leaders.”
Goodbye, Gender Stereotypes? Trait Attributions to Politicians in 11 Years of News Coverage
Aliya Andrich, Marko Bachl, and Emese Domahidi. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, February 2023.
The study: The authors build on past research, which they describe as often being focused on a single election year, making it difficult to capture changes in news coverage of female politicians over time. They developed a database of more than 5 million stories from 29 outlets, including newspapers, magazines, online outlets and broadcasters, published from 2010 to 2020. The articles covered a total of 1,081 men and women in Congress or the presidential cabinet. To be included in the study, politicians had to have been referenced 10 or more times per year. There were 216 women in the final sample.
The findings: The authors used text processing software to analyze language in the news stories conveying certain traits of male and female politicians. They identify potential bias when gender-neutral traits, such as “competent,” are near male or female candidate names. If “competent” appears more often in news stories close to “Donald Trump” than “Hillary Clinton,” for example, this implies that “Trump is more strongly associated with competence than Hillary Clinton,” the authors write.
In analyzing the data, the authors find that stereotypical feminine physical traits, such as “beautiful” and “stunning” were strongly associated with female politicians. Words connoting integrity, such as “decent” and “moral” were more strongly associated with male politicians, as were “masculine” cognitive traits, such as “logical” and “analytical.”
Masculine personality traits, such as “driven” and “competitive” were more associated, though weakly, with male politicians, as were masculine physical traits, such as “muscular” and “stocky.”
Feminine cognitive traits, such as “intuitive” and “artsy,” and feminine personality traits, such as “motherly” and “picky,” were not strongly associated with either gender. Neither were competency traits that don’t align with a specific gender, such as “educated” and “diligent,” traits relating to empathy, such as “considerate” and “compassionate,” and leadership traits, such as “inspiring” and “motivating.”
The authors used traits developed in existing literature and added new ones, in part based on a survey of 20 native English speakers, 12 of them women.
The authors write: “Over time, women have become nearly as likely as men to be mentioned in terms of masculine personality traits. This result is in line with social psychology studies’ finding that over time, women, in general, have become more strongly associated with masculine traits.”
Selling them Short? Differences in News Coverage of Female and Male Candidate Qualifications
Nichole Bauer and Tatum Taylor. Political Research Quarterly, April 2022.
The study: The authors explore news framing that “can reinforce feminine stereotypes that make it appear as though women and men receive fair and balanced coverage while still reinforcing masculine notions of political leadership.” They note that reporters are less likely today than in the past to use explicit masculine or feminine stereotypes.
They built a database of almost 9,000 newspaper articles, including wire reports, about U.S. Senate candidates from the 2016 election cycle, to analyze implicit as opposed to explicit gender bias in political news coverage. There were 12 races with a female candidate against a male candidate, two with only women running and 10 with only men running.
Implicit bias can come down to the choices reporters and editors make on what information to include in their coverage, the authors write. Does a story about a female candidate emphasize, for example, her experience as a teacher over her experience in government? Such framing can “create the perception that a female candidate lacks the political experience many voters think is necessary for political office,” they write.
The findings: The articles were hand-coded and organized by political, professional, academic and “feminine” qualifications. An article discussing political qualifications, for example, might include descriptions of a candidate’s previous successes in elected office.
An article noting “feminine” qualifications might include information on the candidate’s family or being the first woman to hold an important professional title or to serve in a particular combat role in the military.
“Framing the woman through professional experiences rather than political experiences allows a reporter to contrast her through a feminine stereotypic lens that contrasts with the political experience coverage her male opponent is more likely to receive,” the authors write.
The results suggest slightly different types of coverage based on who is running — whether races involve candidates of mixed gender or the same gender. In mixed gender and all-male races, the authors find no difference in the likelihood of a reporter writing about candidates’ political, professional or “feminine” qualifications.
But mixed-gender races were more likely to include information about the candidates’ academic qualifications, such as the college degrees they hold. Though there were only two all-female races in the dataset, these races were more likely to garner coverage about the “feminine” qualifications of the candidates.
The authors write: “Moreover, important to note is that our study only recorded whether an article mentioned a qualification item about the candidates, and not the tone of the coverage. The political qualification coverage in mixed-gender races may not be entirely good news for female candidates as they tend to receive more negative coverage than male candidates.”
Who Covers the Qualifications of Female Candidates? Examining Gender Bias in News Coverage Across National and Local Newspapers
Nichole Bauer. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, June 2022.
The study: The author explores whether national and local news coverage differed for 2016 U.S. Senate candidates from September to November of that year — specifically, differences in coverage of candidate qualifications, such as their background as elected officials and their professional experience. The Washington Post and The New York Times were the national papers analyzed. There were also 139 local newspapers in the analysis, from the Bangor Daily News in Maine to the Marin Independent Journal north of San Francisco.
The findings: Research assistants organized the articles based on whether reporters covered political qualifications, such as time in the Senate as an incumbent, and legislative achievements; and “feminine” stereotypes, such as being a spouse or parent.
The author found that in mixed-gender races, both national and local outlets were more likely to discuss the political qualifications of women compared with men in those races.
For both national and local news outlets, political qualifications were relatively under-covered in races where women faced women. And female journalists at local outlets were more likely to cover the political qualifications of women, though journalist gender was unrelated to coverage that used feminine stereotypes.
The author writes: “Female journalists had the greatest impact at local newspapers where they were more likely than male journalists to write about the political qualifications of women. Diversifying newsrooms at the local level can help change the implicit gender biases that can affect reporting.”
Facing the Competition: Gender Differences in Facial Emotion and Prominence in Visual News Coverage of Democratic Presidential Primary Candidates
Mike Gruszczynski, et. al. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, October 2022.
The study: Visual images of candidates that news outlets publish are the product of a range of decisions made within and outside of the newsroom, the authors write. Political advisors will have curated how a candidate looks, and the setting where they are appearing. A photographer will have decided on how to take the picture — the background and angle, for example. And photo editing, such as cropping and filtering, will have happened in the newsroom.
The authors examine two elements of photo selection that journalists arguably have control over: the facial expression of the candidate and the distance of the picture, meaning how close or far away the candidate is in the frame. They focus on the 2020 Democratic primary contest, which featured a record number of female candidates.
“Happiness and anger are among the most frequently occurring and socially significant facial displays that candidates emote during election contests,” the authors write, citing past research. They note that there is scant research on the relationship between voter expectations and emotions displayed by female and male politicians, perhaps because women have not held politically powerful elected offices until recent decades.
But research in other fields has demonstrated that “emotion has strong gender-based implications for perceptions of competence, trustworthiness, rationality, impartiality, and a host of other dimensions that might affect opinions about political leadership fitness,” the authors write.
Meanwhile, they explain in the paper that close-up shots can make a candidate seem more intelligent and ambitious, citing past research. And, generally, photographs of women tend to be medium- or long-range, with more emphasis on their bodies, the authors write.
The findings: The authors used facial recognition software to identify emotions conveyed in 9,529 published still images of 26 candidates vying for the Democratic nomination across 43 online and print news outlets. Specifically, they examined whether the images conveyed anger, happiness or were neutral in emotional expression.
Both men and women were most likely to be portrayed as neutral in images, followed by happy. Anger was much more uncommonly conveyed in the images. Men were more likely than women to be portrayed as neutral, while women were more likely to be portrayed as happy and slightly more likely to be portrayed as angry.
Candidates experiencing a bump in their poll numbers were portrayed as happy in the images the news organizations published. But being a frontrunner was associated with fewer images conveying happiness.
Focal length — how close or far the shot is — was not associated with either men or women. But men were more likely to be portrayed as happy in longer shots, while women appeared as happier in closer shots, and they were less likely than men to appear neutral in close-ups.
The authors write: “Male anger was shown with more facial prominence whereas women’s anger was typically featured more in longer shots. An optimistic take on this is that there might be growing awareness in newsrooms about negative depictions of female leaders as feisty and cold. Although still over-representing women’s anger compared with men, it is not over-emphasized in close-up view.
This nuance at the intersection of anger and facial proximity also suggests that male anger carries high newsworthiness in the competitive environment of presidential politics, perhaps leading journalists to emphasize it in close-ups.”
Expert Commentary