Gender and the political interview in an Australian context

Abstract

Research in the area of gender/sex differences of women's and men's language has been characterised by typologies of pairs of antonymous adjectives (e.g. public/private; assertive/ passive etc.). These descriptions, while preferable to pairs of marked and unmarked terms (e.g. male/not male), contribute to the persistence of static stereotypes for women and men, e.g. ‘women are more comfortable in private forms and contexts of discourse owing to their cooperative, facilitative nature, etc’. The context for the investigation reported here is the public arena, i.e. televised media interviews, a setting in which a growing number of Australian women participate as journalists and interviewers. The question for this investigation is not centred upon access to the public context but rather on the nature and diversity of participation within a gendered situation. In this paper, investigation of the turn-taking and questioning strategies of two prominent media personalities (a woman and a man) reveal differing outcomes according to the gendered context. The constraints and freedoms that impinge on the interviewer's style are, however, distinct in the construction of information exchange and image creation processes of the political interviews. Thus women's participation in the Australian media today involves a delicate balance of individuality and compliance.