Gender, Competitiveness, and Candidate Visibility in Newspaper Coverage of Canadian Party Leadership Contests

Abstract

Are women politicians who mount competitive campaigns for high political office as visible and prominent in news coverage of their candidacies as their male competitors? Few studies have systematically or longitudinally investigated the relationship between candidate gender, competitiveness, and media visibility during election or party leadership campaigns. Moreover, studies of media visibility tend to focus exclusively on the presence of candidates in news stories, as measured by one or more mentions per story. Examining six textual and visual elements in Globe and Mail reporting of eleven Canadian national leadership campaigns held between 1975 and 2012, we discover that it is candidate competitiveness and novelty and not candidate gender that influences the media visibility of party leadership hopefuls. Canada provides a useful case study when exploring the relationship between gender and media visibility because many women have sought, and four have won, the leadership of national parties.