Women Candidates in the News: An Examination of Gender Differences in U.S. Senate Campaign Coverage

Abstract

By covering male and female candidates differently, the news media may influence the success of female candidates for public office. A content analysis was conducted to assess potentially important differences in the newspaper coverage of a sample of male and female U.S. Senate candidates in the elections of 1982-86. The results of the study show that female candidates for the U.S. Senate are treated differently by the press. Female candidates receive less news coverage and the coverage they do receive concentrates more on their viability and less on their issue positions. Furthermore, female candidates' viability coverage is more negative than that of their male counterparts. Given these gender differences in press treatment, we would expect voters' recognition of male candidates to exceed that of female candidates and we would also expect evaluations of female candidates to be tied more closely to their perceived viability. Because female candidates are often considered noncompetitive by the press, this attention to the horserace may lead voters to develop more negative evaluations of female candidates. These results suggest that current patterns of press coverage may serve as a critical obstacle for women running for the U.S. Senate. Women have always been underrepresented in the U.S. Senate. A total of sixteen women have served in the Senate and only six of these women have served full terms. The representation of women has not improved in recent years: two women serve in the U.S. Senate today, KIM FRIDKIN KAHN iS Assistant Professor at Arizona State University and EDIE N. GOLDENBERG is Dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. The authors would like to thank the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan for support through the Research Partnership Program. The authors would also like to thank Amy Cuzzola, William Wehrle, and Susan Grantham for their help in