Women’s issues, critical actors and the media: substantive representation of women and gendered media coverage in South Korea

Abstract

The article investigates whether media coverage varies for male and female legislators with regards to their activities in promoting women’s interests. To test this, 30 key women’s-issue-promoting legislators in South Korea are selected, primarily based on their legislative significance within a women’s-issue bill co-sponsorship network between 2004 and 2016, and their various substantive representation efforts are analysed by examining 45 news outlets. Findings reveal that while receiving less media coverage than their male counterparts overall, female legislators have higher odds of receiving a more focused spotlight concerning women’s-issue-promotion efforts. However, the gendered media coverage was only driven by women’s issues with strong stereotypically feminine policy characteristics, for example, abortion, contraception and sexual harassment, and not by those with both feminine and masculine policy characteristics, such as childcare support and maternity leave. The article demonstrates the importance of media-bias conditionality and thus calls for a more nuanced approach to be taken in future research.