Reporting gender/politics in the 2004 European Elections

Abstract

Successive studies of gender portrayal in/and the media over the past decades reveal that images of women in news media are mostly confined to a narrow repertoire of types, with the most frequent representations showing women as victims (usually of male violence), women as possessions (wife, girlfriend, daughter) and women as mothers. When women appear as members of elites and as decision-makers, eg as politicians, business people and experts, their sex is often prefigured and most studies which look at how women and men in the news are differently covered suggest that the ratio of stories featuring women and men are roughly 1:5. The 2004 European Elections provide an excellent opportunity to identify the extent to which these patterns are more than simply national idiosyncrasies but rather the manifestation of a broader cultural politics. The study on which this panel is based aimed to explore the ways in which women featured in European news media coverage of the 2004 European Elections, including stories featuring women MEPs and MEP candidates, stories about ‘gender’ issues such as reproductive rights, women’s health and working mothers, and the way in which ‘ordinary’ members of the public are canvassed in vox pop interviews during opinion polling and related election activities. The primary research questions the study aimed to answer was: in what ways is ‘gender’ inscribed in the news agenda during an election campaign and how do news media in different countries operate different reporting strategies when considering issues of gender? Using the same coding instrument, the study looks at 10 countries (Denmark, Czech Republic, UK, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain) and focuses on a sample of print media from each country. Whilst the analysis has not yet been completed, early indications are that women politicians and candidates received the same scant attention this time around as in previous studies and that ‘gender’ as a thematic strand of the European election agenda was almost invisible.

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France	View Paper Details
Lithuania	View Paper Details
Slovakia	View Paper Details
Poland	View Paper Details
Czech Republic	View Paper Details
Hungary	View Paper Details
Spain	View Paper Details
Slovenia	View Paper Details
UK	View Paper Details