Gender, Ideology, and the Discursive Construction of Political Leadership in Campaign Event Coverage

This paper examines how gendered conceptions of political leadership are discursively constructed in press coverage of campaign events during the first round of the 2022 French presidential election. Building on scholarship on media framing and feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA), this study explores how different campaign event formats activate distinct gendered understandings of political leadership. The analysis draws on a qualitative subsample of 103 news articles selected from a larger corpus of national press coverage. It focuses on three key campaign event types – electoral rallies, campaign visits, and press conferences – and examines two dimensions of gendered framing: (1) the promotion and evaluation of leadership traits or capabilities, and (2) the use of gendered language and metaphors. In addition to candidates’ gender, the analysis considers the ideological leaning of media outlets and candidates’ ideological affiliation, and pays close attention to the interaction between journalistic narratives and candidates’ own self-presentations. Across media outlets and candidate profiles, the findings reveal a strong dominance of stereotypically masculine leadership norms. Campaign rallies are particularly framed through combat- and sport-related metaphors that associate political leadership with strength, confrontation, and virility. Contrary to expectations, campaign visits – despecially those linked to stereotypically feminine policy areas – do not create substantial discursive openings for alternative, more inclusive conceptions of leadership. The analysis further shows that female candidates are disproportionately framed in terms of combativeness and aggressiveness, reinforcing the well-documented double bind faced by women in politics. While such framing is sometimes positive, it suggests that women must perform masculine norms more intensely than men to be deemed electorally viable. An important exception is Marine Le Pen, whose coverage differs markedly from that of mainstream female candidates. The study also highlights ideological variation in media framing, particularly in the coverage of far-right candidates, and demonstrates that the masculinization of political leadership is co-constructed by journalists and political actors. Overall, the findings underscore the persistence of hegemonic masculine norms in political journalism and show how campaign event coverage contributes to their discursive reproduction, thereby continuing to constrain women’s full recognition as legitimate political leaders.