Selling them Short? Differences in News Coverage of Female and Male Candidate Qualifications

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129221086024
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2023, Vol. 76(1) 308–322

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129221086024

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Selling them Short? Differences in News

Coverage of Female and Male Candidate

Qualif‌ications

Nichole M. Bauer

1

and Tatum Taylor

2

Abstract

We draw on research from gender stereotypes and mass communication to develop and test an innovative theoretical

framework of implicit and explicit gender framing. This framework delineates how and when coverage in newspapers will

report on female candidates differently than male candidates. Implicit gender frames subtly draw on masculine ste-

reotypes to reinforce patriarchal power structures through their coverage of poli tical candidates. Explicit gender frames

are the overtly sexist “hair, hemlines, and husband”coverage women receive more frequently relative to men. We argue

that the print news media will be more likely to rely on implicit gender frames to elucidate differences between women

and men running for political off‌ice. Using an exhaustive content analysis of Senate campaign news coverage, we f‌ind

important differences in the coverage of women and men running against one another. We also f‌ind the use of explicit

gender frames to be especially common in all-female races. These differences in coverage, especially in all-women

contests, can perpetuate stereotypic beliefs that women lack the qualif‌ications needed for political off‌ice among voters,

and stymie women’s progress toward parity in representation.

Keywords

female candidates, gender bias, campaigns, gender stereotypes, media bias, news coverage, political commun ication

In January 2019, Elizabeth Warren became the very f‌irst

person to declare her candidacy for the 2020 Democratic

presidential nomination. The day after Warren declared

her candidacy, Politico, an online news magazine, ran an

article declaring Warren to have a “likeability”problem.

The only evidence presented of Warren having a like-

ability problem was that Warren was a woman. Elizabeth

Warren was just the f‌irst of what would become six

women, a record number, to pursue the presidency at one

time. Other women in the 2020 primary f‌ield generated

headlines about their choice in salad utensils; and still yet,

other candidates with strong qualif‌ications, such as Ka-

mala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, received little cov-

erage at all throughout the primary.

The extent to which news stories reinforce feminine

stereotypes that characterize women negatively is the

subject of considerable scholarly debate (van der Pas and

Aaldering 2020). One set of scholarship f‌inds that female

candidates receive more negative competency coverage

(Meeks 2012;Bligh et al. 2012), more coverage on their

personal qualities (Heldman, Carroll, and Olson 2005;

Conroy 2015a;Dunaway et al. 2013;Falk 2010;Burns,

Eberhardt, and Merolla 2013;Miller and Peake 2013;

Banwart, Bystrom, and Robertson 2003), and more game-

frame coverage relative to their male counter-parts

(Gidengil and Everitt 2003;Lawrence and Rose 2011;

Lawrence and Rose 2010). Another set of scholarship

argues that female and male candidates receive equitable

levels of coverage (Hayes and Lawless 2016). Current

scholarship offers little guidance about whether women

receive biased coverage and what that biased coverage

looks like (van der Pas and Aaldering 2020). We develop

and test a framework of implicit and explicit gender

1

Department of Political Science & Manship School of Mass

Communication, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

2

Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, Baton

Rouge, LA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Nichole M. Bauer, Department of Political Science & Manship School of

Mass Communication, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA

70802, USA.

Email: nbauer4@lsu.edu