Gender Stereotypes

One of the many ways in which the media treat men and women differently is in the way that the news covers female and male politicians. Female politicians in general receive less coverage than male politicians, and the coverage they do receive is often more focused on their appearance and personal life rather than their policies and positions. When people see female politicians being treated this way by the media, they may begin to value women less in leadership positions. Media can have a huge influence on people’s views and opinions, and seeing women in leadership positions, or running for leadership positions, being belittled trivialized can be very damaging to society’s view of female leaders. This coverage can also have a negative effect
The political realm has always been seen as a more “masculine” role. In politics, some of the main things that seems to be valued are assertiveness and toughness, which are normally believed to be mainly male traits. The “ideal” politician also almost always has some kind of military experience, showing a value for hyper-masculinity and even violence, however it is often explained as showing that the leader has good decision making. All these valued traits seem to automatically discount women from leadership positions in the eyes of society, as women are traditionally seen as more docile and even weak. This existing bias has now led to the news media automatically characterizing women as less qualified for political
If female politicians do not get as much airtime as their male counterparts, they will not have the chance to gain as much name recognition or talk about their policies for potential voters. If people are less aware that female candidates are running or what their policies are, they are less likely to vote for them and male candidates will get elected. This disparity in airtime could be due to the fact that men hold most of the higher positions in the media industry, so they will put out content that they would like to