Filtering the Female

Abstract

This article uses televised news reports of the 1993 Canadian leaders' debates to examine gendered mediation in the coverage of women politicians. By assessing the preponderance of interpretive versus descriptive coverage for the male and female debate participants we show that coverage of female political leaders is more filtered than men's. A comparison of actual debate behavior and sound bite coverage also reveals that political coverage tends to marginalize women when they fail to conform to traditional masculine norms of political behavior but will over-emphasize the behavior counter to traditional feminine stereotypes when they do behave combatively. As a result, the women's soundbites focused disproportionately on aggressive verbal behavior and gestures.

Key Words:

• Media
• gender
• sound bites
• Canada
• party leaders