How Are Women Politicians Treated in the Press? The Case of Spain, France and the United Kingdom

Cristina Fernández-Rovira,Santiago Giraldo-Luque

doi:10.3390/journalmedia2040043

Cristina Fernández-Rovira, Santiago Giraldo-Luque

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia2040043

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Abstract

Women politicians have been discriminated against or negatively valued under stereotypes in media coverage and have been given a secondary role compared to male politicians. The article proposes an analysis of the treatment given by digital media to women political leaders. They are from different parties in three countries and the aim is to identify the polarity (positive, neutral or negative) of the information published about them in the media. The text focuses on the cases of Anne Hidalgo and Marine Le Pen, from France, Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May, from the United Kingdom and Ada Colau and Inés Arrimadas, from Spain. The study develops a computerised sentiment analysis of the information published in two leading digital newspapers in each country, during the month of November 2019. The research, with the analysis of 1100 journalistic pieces, shows that the polarity or valence of the women analysed is predominantly neutral and positive and that the journalistic genres do not determine the media representation of the women studied. On the contrary, the country of study does have a predominant incidence on the way in which women politicians are represented, while the relationship of affinity or antipathy of the Spanish media with the women politicians studied is significant.

Highlights

Women holding public office or participating in political processes at all levels have been treated differently from their male counterparts
The study on the media tone used in news or articles about women politicians is developed through an exploratory methodology that is operationalised in natural language processing (NLP) (Eisenstein 2019; Sun et al 2019; Wolf et al 2019; Chowdhary 2020)
The data obtained in the execution of the sentiment analysis indicate that women politicians have a fewer negative media treatment than is usually thought

Summary

Introduction

Women holding public office or participating in political processes at all levels have been treated differently from their male counterparts. Women who have a high level of public responsibility have been questioned because of their gender and criticised for aspects that go beyond their political management. These elements have characterised a coverage with a predominantly negative tone that has, at the same time, contributed to the construction of an additional obstacle for women’s access to politics on equal terms with men (Bystrom and Dimitrova 2014; Johnstonbaugh 2018; Quevedo and Berrocal 2018). Women in different European countries have positioned themselves as important cases of political leadership and have assumed the highest positions of responsibility as prime ministers, mayors of major European capitals or leaders of political parties. The trend towards the elimination of barriers to women’s entry into politics and positions of responsibility has been driven by more equal coverage in the media (Hayes and Lawless 2016)

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