Media Portrayal of Female Politicians

Report on the Capstone Course of the same name at the Institute for Political Science Zurich,
Principal Investigator: Lucas Leemann
Authors: Jonas Glatthard, Christopher Huddleston, Eliane Müller, Keto Schumacher,

How does the Swiss media report on male and female politicians? Are female politicians really mentioned less often than their male colleagues? And if they are mentioned, do journalists write about their appearance or about substance? We addressed these questions in a Capstone Course in the Master's program in Political Science at the University of Zurich.

We focussed on:

• All newspapers in German-speaking Switzerland (except NZZ)
• Publication period of the articles: 2012-2018
• All elected parliamentarians at cantonal and federal level

The results show less gender differences than one might expect. The Swiss press reports on women politicians approximately in the proportion of their seats. On a national level, it is clear that differences in terms of articles largely disappear as soon as one checks for special roles. On which topics women politicians are mentioned particularly frequently does not follow any clichéd understanding of roles. Rather, the personal profile of female politicians seems to influence the topics in which they are strongly represented. Although women politicians are associated with slightly more integrity in reporting, the differences in leadership skills are generally not substantial. A similar conclusion can be drawn for the descriptions of the outward appearances. More positive and less emotionally connoted words are used for female politicians than for male politicians. However, these differences seem to be slowly diminishing.

The full report is available here.