Gendered News

In the last fifty years, many of the institutional and societal barriers that kept Canadian women from public office have disappeared. Today, women are well-educated and well-connected, and enjoy generally equal treatment from political parties and voters. Why, then, do they hold only a quarter of the seats in the House of Commons -- a proportion that rose by just seven percentage points between 1993 and 2011? In this illuminating study, Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant examines a significant obstacle still facing women in political life: gendered media coverage. News stories are more likely to investigate the personal lives of female politicians or question their aptitude for public life, implicitly suggesting that women in politics are marginal or even unwelcome. Based on interviews with MPs and party leaders and an analysis of print and television media in the 2000 and 2006 federal elections, Gendered News reveals an unsettling climate that affects the success of women in office and could deter them from running at all.