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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 603

Part of Session 196: Discourse, Politics and Women as Global Leaders (Other abstracts in this session)

Women politicians in Finnish papers – almost invisible leaders?

Authors: Mäkelä, Johanna; Isotalus, Pekka
Submitted by: Mäkelä, Johanna (University of Tampere, Finland, Finland)

Politics in Finland is nowadays strongly dominated by women, but they still got very little column space in the papers. In 2008 there were a female president, 13 women (and 10 men) as ministers in Finland. Several parties have also lately chosen women as party leaders. Still gender is an issue in politics (Ross and Sreberny 2000) and women politics are treated differently by the media (Bystrom 2004). Women politicians are always described specifically as women politicians (Ross & Sreberny 2000). Internationally women politicians as leaders are still exceptional (Kuusipalo 2006, van Zoonen 2006). The objective of the study is to explore: What is women´s media coverage compared to that of men? Which political women leaders do the papers wrote about most? What criteria do papers expect from women as party leaders? The study is based on quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data is collected from two quality dailies and two afternoon papers, whole year 2008. Data included 51 politicians, male and female. The data amount to a total of 11,654 articles. Qualitatively it is analyzed papers for 6 months. Focus has been on top politician female leaders: President, 3 party leaders, 13 women ministers. According to the results, women ministers were quite invisible in papers compared to men. The difference between amount of stories and pictures was one third. There were three times less mentions and pictures of women leaders. Only two women got so much publicity that they reached the ten most visible politicians. Most visible women were President Tarja Halonen (4th in the top ten list) and party leader Jutta Urpilainen (6th in the top list). None of the 13 women ministers were among the top ten. Gender seems still to be an issue for politicians in papers. Criteria for men and women party leader do not seem to be equal. The expectations in papers for women politician leaders are high. It seems that women should have right age, enough competence, conveniently experience and good communication skills in order to get the publicity.

References:

Bystrom, G. 2004. Women as political communication sources and audiences. In. L.L.Kaid Handbook of political communication research (pp.435-459).

Kuusipalo, J. 2006. Presidenttipelin sukupuolittuminen. In P. Isotalus & S. Borg (Eds.) Presidentinvaalit 2006 (pp.98-114). Helsinki: WSOY.

Ross, Karen ja Sreberny, Annabelle. 2000. Women in the House: Media Representation of British Politicians. In. Annabelle Sreberny and Liesbet van Zoonen: Gender, Politics and Communication, pp. 79-99.

Zoonen, van Liesbet. 2006. The Personal, the Political and the Popular: A Woman´s Guide to Celebrity Politics. European Journal of Cultural Studies 9: pp. 287-301.