The symbolic representation of women’s political firsts in editorial cartoons

ABSTRACT

Women’s breakthroughs in public office provide a stage for the symbolic re-enactment of ideas about women’s political presence and about gendered social constructions related to women’s and men’s leadership qualities. Drawing on gendered mediation studies in print media and using content and discourse analysis, we investigate the symbolic representation in editorial cartoons of women occupying for the first time historically male-dominated political offices. Our empirical analysis of the Spanish case finds no systematic symbolic annihilation of these historic firsts. Women’s political breakthroughs are more often acknowledged than omitted but their portrayal is not free from trivialization, particularly by conservative cartoonists, who are also more likely to condemn trailblazers to scandalize gender quotas. In a more positive light, gendered mediation seems to present a decreasing trend, thanks to both the normalization of women’s political presence and the rising public prominence of the feminist movement.

KEYWORDS:

• Women politicians
• symbolic representation
• editorial cartoons
• gendered mediation
• symbolic annihilation

Acknowledgments

We are thankful to Paula Espinar Verdugo, Marlén Miranda, Francisco Manuel Román Jurado and Roxana Emanuela Solcan for their effective support in the data collection and coding processes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Newspaper circulation (daily readers): El País, 1,013,000; La Vanguardia, 549.000, and ABC, 460,000 (Estudio General de Medios, 2019, third wave).

2. Máximo left El País in 2007 to work in ABC.

3. The woman cartoonist Flavita Banana started publishing her work in El País in 2018.

4. Given the relatively small sample of cartoons that portray women’s historic firsts, intercoder reliability was not quantitatively computed. However, double coding by the authors was applied in order to enhance the internal reliability of the data, including a systematic comparison and discussion to clarify conflicting interpretations and refine secondary codes.

5. Each cartoon is referenced as follows: Cartoonist name, media outlet (in Italics), month, day and year of publication. The online appendix can be accessed at Tània Verge’s personal website: https://www.upf.edu/web/tania-verge/publicacions.

6. For example, see article 39 of Act 3/2007 on the effective equality of women and men.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raquel Pastor

Raquel Pastor is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics (Sociology Area), Universidad de Cádiz. Her research centers on the relationship between sex, gender and politics, particularly on women’s descriptive, symbolic and substantive representation. E-mail: [email protected]

Tània Verge

Tània Verge is Full Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Her main areas of research are the gendered formal and informal institutions underpinning political parties and parliaments and the resistance to the adoption and implementation of gender equality policy. E-mail: [email protected]