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Part of
Discourse, Politics and Women as Global Leaders
Edited by John Wilson and Diana Boxer
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 63] 2015
► pp. 293–314

Chapter 12. The ball is in the women’s court

The portrayal of Finnish women as political leaders in newspapers

| University of Tampere, Finland
| University of Tampere, Finland
| University of Tampere, Finland

Finnish women have held all the highest positions in politics, and yet their media presence has repeatedly been portrayed as weaker than men’s. This article examines how newspapers ascribe gender to political leaders and what questions this opens in political communication research. In addition to a quantitative analysis, data from the most widely read Finnish newspapers, daily broadsheets and six-day-a-week tabloids, are interpreted and complemented with a qualitative content analysis of the Social Democratic Party of Finland’s first female party leader. This article demonstrates that female and male politicians are not given equal media representation. Moreover, the media evaluates the personalities and actions of political leaders from distinctively gendered perspectives.

Keywords: gender, leading politicians, newspapers, political communication
Published online: 30 October 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.63.13mak
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Cited by (2)

Cited by 2 other publications

Isotalus, Pekka
2022. The Finnish “Famous Five” in Television Interviews: Cultural Characteristics of Party Leaders’ Response Style. In Adversarial Political Interviewing, ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
Cameron, Deborah & Sylvia Shaw
2020. Constructing women’s “different voice”. Journal of Language and Politics 19:1 ► pp. 144 ff. DOI logo

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