Media coverage of women in politics: Mexican local politicians on campaign

ABSTRACT

Press coverage of women was expected to increase with their greater political representation in Mexico. What characterises the coverage that print media has given to men and women running for office? Are there any differences in the coverage men and women received? Is the quality of this coverage better than the quantity? The media coverage of candidates running in Mexican local elections is analysed in this exploratory study in order to answer these questions. Attention is first given to visibility, as in the quantity of coverage received. Second, the type of coverage of men compared to women is studied. Third, the paper looks into the ways in which printed media covers stories about women and the issues highlighted in the stories. The findings were mixed. In general, female and male candidates are equally visible. Newspaper coverage does not vary in tone, however, male candidates focus only on ‘female’ issues when more women stand for election.

KEYWORDS:

• Women
• politics
• campaigns
• media coverage
• Mexico

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Fernanda Vidal-Correa Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Universidad Panamericana, Campus México She is currently Dean for Research in the School of Communication. She earned her M.A. and PhD in political science from the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield. Member of the National System of Researchers, Level I. She currently leads the project “Legislative work and political discourses: institutional limits for gender equality”. She is author of Women in Mexican Politics: A Study of Representation in a Renewed Federal and Democratic State (Lexington Books). She has also published articles in journals such as Representation (Federalism and Gender Quotas in Mexico: Analysing Propietario and Suplente Nominations), Cogent Social Sciences, (Gender stereotypes and patronage practices in women’s careers: A study of the Mexican executive branch) Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales (The decentralization candidates’ selection and its impact on women’s nominations to Mexican local congresses), and the Bulletin of Latin American Research (Public Opinion Surveys and USA Foreign Policy Towards Latin America in the Second World War). Her research interests include women and politics, party politics, and media and politics. Her current research focuses on the political participation of women in Latin America, specially the institutional barriers to women’s descriptive and substantive representation.

ORCID

Fernanda Vidal-Correa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6633-2564

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Universidad Panamericana [grant number UP-CI-2017-COM-MX-01].