Gender Stereotypes in the Portrayal of Female Politicians in American Online Newspapers

Flaka Jonuzi

MA of Applied Linguistics with TESOL, English Studies Department, The University of Sheffield

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51244/IJRSI.2024.1105058

Received: 27 April 2024; Accepted: 11 May 2024; Published: 15 June 2024

ABSTRACT

This study aims to examine the presence of gender stereotypes towards female politicians in American online newspapers. The focus is on gender stereotypes expressed through language use. The method used to investigate this phenomenon is a content analysis of 90 articles from three newspapers, namely The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Guardian US, posted from January 2019 to August 2020, towards three American politicians, namely: Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The results have shown that women in politics are portrayed with a strong stereotypical language as the three newspapers contained a substantial body of gender stereotypes towards them. Moreover, the results have revealed that females in politics are mainly depicted through descriptive words related to their personal lives, such as marital status, appearance, and family, rather than other career-related information which could be relevant to the context of the articles. As such, this research could easily find an application in many fields, including media studies, sociolinguistics, cultural studies, politics studies, and gender studies. Nevertheless, a larger scale study and further research on American newspapers and the inclusion of more female politicians is needed, in order to confirm that female politicians are portrayed stereotypically by media.

Keywords: American media; Female politicians; Gender stereotypes; Online newspapers

INTRODUCTION

Stereotypical depiction of different groups of people is something quite common, and as a matter of fact, this affects the way people think and react towards the others. According to Hilton and Hippel (1996, p.237), “stereotypes are more than just beliefs about groups; they are also theories about how and why certain attributes go together”. These beliefs consistently attempt to create an image of how particular groups of people are supposed to look and behave, creating a universal image of them. As such, they affect the way that community thinks, judges and reacts, and this has undoubtably been an area predominantly debated over the last decades.

Stereotypes have been continuously prejudging women concerning their appearance and traits. Even though the traditional attitude and behavior towards females has started to better in the last few decades, gender role expectations are deeply imprinted in our everyday life. It is true that the last decades have seen drastic changes in the increased education of women, positive employment experiences and a better position for them in society; yet, gender roles are still present in society (Budhwaret el. 2010). Women receive an abundance of messages every day, which try to define gender norms and roles, and their traditional images are highly depended on inappropriate terminology and ideologies. Thus, everything that goes beyond that image deviates from the norm. These stereotypes regarding women have the tendency to present all of them in the same way of behaving, looking, feeling and reacting. With relevance to women, these beliefs often position them as people with emotions, compassion, and sensitivity, as opposite to males, who are associated with competition, aggressiveness, and assertiveness (Moraru and Zetes 2015). Even when there are portrayed as professionals, they are mainly seen as good teachers and nurses, and not capable of having other successful careers such as leaders, managers, politicians, or having other high-status jobs that would position them as superior. Having considered this, the focus of this study is going to be on women who have political careers.

Theoretical Background

The existence of gender stereotypes during the past years has been demonstrated by various communication sources, and undeniably, media has played a crucial role on this matter. It is known that media also contribute to the acknowledgement of gender norms and values that females ‘are supposed to possess’ (Râpeanu 2014). In addition, the role of media in establishing some gender norms has been affecting the female politicians worldwide as well. Turska- Kawa (2018) claims that voters set a number of characteristics that a politician should have, and these characteristics include competitiveness, strength and manipulation. However, women in politics are rarely given these characteristics. Instead, they tend to be portrayed negatively, such as incapable, inexperienced, and too sensitive (Scharrer 2002). Similarly, Gindegil and Everit(2003) state that different features of ‘femininity’ are given to female politicians around the world and they are oftentimes perceived as unsuccessful. Moreover, Turska-Kawa (2018) believes that female politicians are perceived as more sensitive and compassionate, and the language towards them tends to be more focused on their deficits rather than strengths.

It was also often argued that the focus of media is on the appearance of female politicians rather than their professional qualities (Devere and Graham, 2006; Scharrer 2002). Given this, women in politics have oftentimes had conflicts and disagreements with the attributes given to them. The most important aspect of these stereotypes is that these abilities and characteristics ascribed to women may serve as a basis for voters to reject them in elections (Dolan 2014).

Having said this, it is of paramount importance to highlight the fact that the different women stereotypes in politics might have a negative effect on their image, which will consequently affect voters. Therefore, this research is going to examine whether gender stereotypes are prevalent in the depiction of female politicians in online newspapers through the use of language. Its central argument remains that the representation of female politicians is more focused on personal characteristics and their appearance, rather than their professional career, qualifications, ambitions and other leadership qualities that they might possess. Even in the cases when their professional career is mentioned, the attributes given to them tend to be negative.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

As was seen from the examination of the relevant literature, gender stereotypes are oftentimes considered as prevalent in the depiction of women by different newspapers worldwide. Moreover, it is argued that most of newspapers use language associated with their appearance and they do not pay attention to their professional career as politician (Aday and Devitt 2001; Devere and Graham 2006; Scharrer 2002). Considering the above, the research questions this study aims to answer are the following:

RQ1: Are gender stereotypes prevalent in the depiction of female politicians, namely Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The Guardian US, The Washington Post and The New York Times, through the use of language?

RQ2: What are the most common stereotypes used in the representation of the three female politicians in these three online American newspapers?

Following the research questions, the study has formulated the following research hypotheses:

H1: The representation of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The Guardian US, The Washington Post and The New York Times contains elements of gender stereotypes (Morris 2006; Rudman and Glick 2001; Aramendia-Muneta et al. 2000; Eagly and Steffen 1984).

H2: The representation of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The Guardian US, The Washington Post and The New York Times is more focused on personal characteristics, appearance, family, and their inferiority compared to males, rather than their professional career, qualifications, leadership qualities and ambitions (Burke and Mazzarella 2008; Devere and Graham 2006; Scharrer 2002).

METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents all the methodological decisions taken in order to answer the research questions of the study. It contains the approach to be used for data collection and analysis, the selected newspaper to be analyzed, the types of articles, and the selected politicians who are going to be used as case studies.

Sample Identity

This research is going to examine the stereotypes towards three female politicians in America, namely Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez. The solo reason for choosing them is the great popularity that they have, and the fact that that they are some of the most influential women in the US(Gardetto 1997; Rosenthal and Peters 2008; Lewinstein 2019).

Having the focus on the three above-mentioned politicians, the texts to be analyzed are taken from American online newspapers, more specifically from The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian US.  These newspapers were chosen as the data source of this study since they are considered as the most popular online newspapers in USA with influential nature and they also represent a wide-ranging chronicle of events (Gardetto 1997; Eyck and Williment 2003; Xu2013). Also, this study has chosen the online version of newspapers for they have the potential to include a diversity of contents (Yun et al. 2007) and they reach a bigger number of audiences compared to printed newspapers (De Cabo et al. 2014).

Data Collection

The articles’ genre selected was opinion pieces only, as this genre better depicts potential stereotypes attributed to female politicians. The articles selected were those that appeared first after using the filters of dates and genres. This method was also used by Tang (2012) in his content analysis of newspapers, where he analyzed their attitude towards corporate social responsibility.

Due to the limitations, the total number of articles from this newspaper was 30, 10 articles for each politician.

Data Analysis

This study employs a mixed method, qualitative and quantitative. Moreover, the texts will be subject of content analysis, as a tool for analyzing gender stereotypes. Content analysis is defined as a method which uses an objective and systematic description on the content of various types of communication (Berelson 1952).

The coders of the study include: a) Irrelevant personal information, such as their marital status, relationship or age; b) Personality characteristics such as family oriented, trustworthy, conservative, and so forth; c) Analogies and/or metaphors regarding women; d) Gendered language, such as descriptive words used instead of gender-neutral words; e) Status and power identifiers, when they either place women as inferior and not sufficient for politics.

RESULTS

Findings of this study show that the three politicians, namely Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria- Ocasio Cortez are portrayed with a considerable number of stereotypes by The Guardian US, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. However, only some indicative examples will be examined in the sections that follow for reasons of economy.

The Portrayal of Hillary Clinton in The Guardian US

The findings have shown a big number of stereotypes towards Hillary Clinton in The Guardian US. The tables reveal that her marital status and relationship was mentioned 15 times, her position in family was mentioned three times and her age only once. Other irrelevant information towards her was shown seven times throughout the texts. As far as personality traits are concerned, Clinton received seven positive and 17 negative comments in this newspaper. Moreover, she was described with gendered nouns 13 times and metaphors were used12 times in her description. Lastly, power and status identifiers were shown 19 times throughout the text.

The study has found various stereotypical phrases, such as “how Hillary’s career might have unfolded had she not married Bill” (May 2020), “her husband’s public affairs” (January 2020) ,“Hillary wouldn’t just have been leaving Bill, she’d have been leaving a political super-brand” (October 2020), and so forth. As far as her appearance is concerned, Hillary Clinton received comments that mentioned “her thick ankles” (January 2020), “her masculine pantsuits “(January 2020) and that “she’s pretty” (May 2020).

Findings also show many negative comments that place her in an inferior position with substantial criticism, such as: “Her political career was long, and over her three decades of activity in national politics she was frequently on the wrong side of history” (January 2020), “Her long career was punctuated with humiliations” (January 2020), “Many of her positions seemed motivated more by political convenience than by principle” (January 2020).

Table 1: Stereotypes Frequency – Hillary Clinton in The Guardian US

The Portrayal of Nancy Pelosi in The Guardian US

Findings show that Nancy Pelosi was also a subject of a stereotypical language. The articles reveal that her age was mentioned two times, her position in the family four times, irrelevant information about her appearance 15 times and metaphors ten times. Moreover, she was given gendered nouns 12 times, and she has been mentioned about her status and power 23 times.

There were several sentences that provided information regarding her clothes and the way she looked, such as: “woman with brown hair” (January 2019), “she was photographed wearing sunglasses and a rust-colored coat on her way out of a contentious meeting with the president” (February 2020), and “an outfit which some interpreted, to my mind inexplicably, as a symbol of her power” (February 2020).

Also, there were many cases when the articles gave redundant information about her feelings such as: “it is also true that the anger and contempt for the president that Pelosi displayed when she ripped up his speech on national television are appropriate” (February 2020), “she has seemed weary and anxious” (December 2019). It is worth mentioning that all data come from opinion pieces which are supposed to cover political issues only, and all other information regarding looks, appearance, and feelings are completely out of context and very stereotypical in portraying women.

Table 2: Stereotypes Frequency- Nancy Pelosi in The Guardian US

The Portrayal of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The Guardian US

The articles regarding Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez have shown a considerable number of stereotypical phrases too. In the analyzed articles, her age was mentioned once, her marital status three times, her status and power 11 times, other important information six times and other gendered nouns eight times.

Findings show thatthe biggest attention was given to Ocasio-Cortez’s status and relationship with her boyfriend, as in the following cases: “the internet seems to have become obsessed with Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez’s boyfriend” (May 2020), “Behind every successful congresswoman is a strong, ‘bin raccoon’ boyfriend” (May 2019). She was also commented about feelings or the private actions, such as: “AOC posted an Instagram clip of Roberts showing off a new haircut” (May 2019)”, “Ocasio-Cortez is pretty quiet about her private life” (May 2019), and so forth. These stereotypes have portrayed this politician as a future wife and as family-oriented, implying that in addition to being a politician, she also needs to be married.

To summarize the data on the three politicians, findings show that The Guardian US holds a strong stereotypical attitude towards Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and this attitude is shown in numerous ways throughout the articles. Many articles provided irrelevant information about them, highlighting their weaknesses, flaws and mistakes, rather than focus on their professional career.

Table 3: Stereotypes Frequency- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The Guardian US

Table 4: Irrelevant personal information in The Guardian US

Table 5: Personality Traits in The Guardian US

Table 6: Gendered Language in The Guardian US

Table 7: Metaphors and Analogies in The Guardian US

Table 8: Status and Power Identifiers in The Guardian US

The Portrayal of Hillary Clinton in The Washington Post

Findings in Hillary Clinton’s articles show that there is not such a big difference in the categories of words that both newspapers The Guardian US and The Washington Post use in order to portray her. Even though smaller in number compared to The Guardian US, 14 expressions and sentences related to her age, marital status, position in family, and other irrelevant information are present in The Washington Post. When it comes to her marital status, her marriage with Bill was central in the analyzed texts. E.g., “the bravest thing she’d ever done was to stay in her marriage” (November 2019), “She drives away from the most relationship she’s ever had”(May 2020).  Comments of the same nature were quite frequent in The Guardian US as well, as her marriage with Bill Clinton was criticized on numerous occasions. While The Washington Postaddressed her marriage as “the bravest thing she’d ever done”, The Guardian US centered the focus on “her cheating husband” (October 2019), and her “suffering more for her husband’s betrayals” (October 2019). Either way, she was the center of attention regarding her marriage life.

In addition, other relevant information outside of context, including appearance, feelings, and other things about her private life was detected, including: “Clinton has not been shy about deriding president Trump’s response to the pandemic (April 2020)”, and “She has a temper (July 2020)”. Both of these comments come as a result of Clinton challenging gender stereotypes, which tend to portray women as shy, sensitive and calm. Thus, they have been emphasized as some unusual features of a woman.

Even though to a smaller degree compared to The Guardian US, gendered nouns are present when it comes to the description of Hillary Clinton in The Washington Post. There are some gendered nouns that refer to her as a “former first lady” (April 2020) instead of referring to her as a politician. Obviously, she is presented as a wife here and not as a politician and her political position as a former Secretary of States and a former candidate for President was simply ignored. This confirms the stereotype that women are family-oriented and they are initially seen as somebody’s wife or daughter.

Table 9: Stereotypes Frequency- Hillary Clinton in The Washington Post

The Portrayal of Nancy Pelosi in The Washington Post

Findings regarding Nancy Pelosi show similar results to Hillary Clinton. This holds that metaphors, position in the family, irrelevant private information, appearance, status, power, and so forth, were often part of the description about her. The Washington Post provided some irrelevant information regarding her marital status and relationship, including sentences as: “She met and fell in love with a Georgetown University student names Paul Pelosi” (March 2020), “Baltimore Country Executive Ted Venetoulis, who had been Pelosi’s high school boyfriend” (May 2020), and “She raised those children in San Francisco—her husband Paul is a financier and developer” (May 2020). Additionally, some information was provided about her role or position in her family, such as “mother of five daughters” (May 2020) or the case when the writer claimed that “Pelosi loved being a mother” (May 2020). All this irrelevant information confirms the stereotypes that women always put family at the center and they are supposed to have a family. Moreover, instead of being presented as a well-known politician, this newspaper was presenting her as a mother and a wife—which consequently leaves aside the relevant information that the community needs to know about her.

Interestingly enough, most of the attention from the newspaper was given to her appearance, feelings and some very private information about her, as there are 12 sentences that belong to this category. Her appearance was commented with expressions like: “a slim woman” (March 2020), or by focusing on her clothes: “The Internet was ignited by an image of her striding triumphantly from the White House in a fire-colored coat” (March 2020) or “Pelosi, who also dressed in suffragist white on Wednesday” (August 2020). Moreover, her feelings were often in the center of articles about her, such as: “But Pelosi looked commanding, not nervous” (February 2020), “She has the courage to tell her fellow female House members face to face, with tears in her eyes, that government…” (May 2020). All these expressions regarding her looks, feelings, relationship and so forth, confirm the strong stereotypical attitude towards her. Such stereotypes show that appearance is a very significant tenet for women and being a politician and having a successful career is not sufficient. All instances from this category are presented in the tables below.

Table 10: Stereotypes Frequency- Nancy Pelosi in The Washington Post

The Portrayal of Alexandria Ocazio-Cortez in The Washington Post

The findings of the articles about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez show that her portrayal includes irrelevant information, such as feelings, appearance, relationship, and other information as shown in the categories above. However, compared to the two above-mentioned politicians, Ocasio-Cortez was less commented, as this study found only ten sentences associated with the specific categories.

The findings indicate three sentences referring to her age, including: “the 29 year-old congresswomen from New York is out to shake up a system blamed for global warning” (April 2019), “the youngest congresswoman in U.S. history” (March 2019).  As far as her relationship and status are concerned, only three sentences have been found, such as: “Ocasio-Cortez made no secret about her relationship with Roberts” (March 2019), “The pair have been dating for nearly four years” (March 2019), and “Wait, she has a boyfriend?” (March 2019). As far as her appearance is concerned, The Washington Post writes: “She enters a room, with her dramatic white coat or her display of a prominent gold pin representing her speakership” (July 2020), confirming the gender stereotypes that women’s look is always important. Moreover, her private life was on the spotlight with comments such as: “becoming the youngest congresswoman in U.S. history, starring in her own viral dance video” (March 2019), which was related to a video in which she was dancing. As can be seen, this sentence states that she is a female politician—a congresswoman, and she dances, which could indirectly imply that this act is inappropriate for a woman in politics. This confirms the gender stereotypes that women, especially those in politics, have restrictions on the actions they can perform and they can also be criticized if they cross the boundaries set by society.

Given all the above- mentioned instances of gender stereotypes, it is clear that numerous language forms of gender stereotypes are present in the portrayal of female politicians in The Washington Post. The findings have shown a considerable number of irrelevant information regarding the marital status, position in the family, appearance, feelings, and other irrelevant information about the three politicians. This suggests that this newspaper tends to provide much redundant information regarding the female politicians, holding a strong stereotypical attitude towards them.

Table 11: Stereotypes Frequency- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The Washington Post

Table 12: Irrelevant personal information in The Washington Post

Table 13: Personality Traits in The Washington Post

Table 14: Gendered Language in The Washington Post

Table 15: Metaphors and Analogies in The Washington Post

Table 16: Status and Power Identifiers in The Washington Post

The Portrayal of Hillary Clinton in The New York Times

Similarly, The New York Times contains many expressions and sentences belonging to the category of gender stereotypes, such as “the young Hillary Rodham” (March 2020), “the campaign she ran, or indeed for running at all, given the decades-old” (July 2020). Even though there were no expressions or sentences regarding her position in the family, marital status and relationship was discussed many times in the selected articles. For example: “Met her future husband at Yale Law School” (March 2020), “She’s a feminist trailblazer who first arrived at stratospheric celebrity because of her husband” (May 2020), and so forth. Given this, it is obvious that the marital status of Hillary Clinton plays a role in her description and portrayal in the three newspapers as all of them give some information on this matter.  This shows that her marriage with Bill Clinton have led newspapers to focus the attention on her married life rather than her political career.

Same as in the other analyzed newspapers, this one provides much irrelevant information, more specifically there are instances concerning her appearance and feelings, such as: “She would be criticized for everything from her job to her hair “(March 2020), “So Sittenfeld had to fill herself into Hillary’s perspective. I felt like I put on a pantsuit and a blond wig” (May 2020), “Her anger at him? Disqualifying (March 2020)”. See Table 20 for more examples in respect to this category.

Power identifiers in the analyzed texts seem to position her as inferior when compared to men. For example, Mrs. Clinton is remarkably popular when she’s not competing with men for power” (March 2020) or by the other one: “What if her professional arc had been entirely her own” (May 2020). Both sentences show a stereotypical attitude towards her, implying that she is powerful as a woman, but she is still less powerful than men. Even in case she has power, there is a man next to her who made this possible. This could possibly mean that her power comes also as a result of her being the first lady and having a male politician by her side.

Table 17: Stereotypes Frequency- Hillary Clinton in The New York Times

The Portrayal of Nancy Pelosi in The New York Times

Findings regarding Nancy Pelosi show that not much personal information was associated with her age and position in the family. Thus, there were only two sentences belonging to the first category, one regarding her age “she will be nearing her mid-80s when she finishes it” (January 2019), and the other one related to her position and role in her family, such as: “Pelosi’s ability to whip a caucus to the mothering skills that come from having five children and eight grandchildren” (January 2019). However, no information regarding her marital status, appearance or feelings was provided by The New York Times.  In comparison to the other newspapers which provided considerable information associated with these categories, The New York Times seems not to pay much attention to the irrelevant information regarding her personal life, which consequently shows a weaker stereotypical attitude towards her expressed through this form of language.

Despite the fact that a small amount of personal information was written regarding Pelosi, her personality traits were mentioned quite often throughout the texts.  It is worth mentioning that this newspaper has shown both positive and negative personality traits, unlike The Washington Post, which focused only on positive personality characteristics. Two of the sentences portray her with positive characteristics whereas seven sentences portray her more negatively. When it comes to positive traits, she was considered as a person with “formidable talents and a legendary work ethic (back) to the job” (January 2019), but on the other hand, she was also portrayed as “an unabashed advocate, less comfortable as a conciliator finding a middle road” (May 2019).

Moreover, another stereotypical sentence regarding her were: “Ms. Pelosi remains dismissive, in that grandmotherly way of hers” (May 2020), where the word grandmotherly was used purposely only to highlight the gender and the age of Pelosi. This sentence shows a strong stereotypical attitude as Pelosi is not portrayed as politician, but she is referred to as a grandmother although the article was about politics. Consequently, traditional traits of a woman as family-oriented manifest that all women are supposed to be first introduced by their position in the family rather than their job position.

Table 18: Stereotypes Frequency- Nancy Pelosi in The New York Times

The Portrayal of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The New York Times

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was often the central topic of significant media coverage, including The New York Times as well. Findings from the newspaper in question show that her age and other irrelevant information regarding her appearance, feelings and private matters were oftentimes discussed. There are instances in which her age was mentioned, including: “the 29-year-old freshman” (July 2019), “the young lawmaker” (July 2019), and so forth. Also, there are sentences that belong to the category of irrelevant private information, including information about her appearance: “A.O.O’s gleaming white suffragette-inspired suit” (January 2019) or “a young black freshman wearing gold sneakers, slacks, braided hair and a Mickey Mouse watch…” (January 2020).

Gender nouns and expressions were also found in the selected articles, be that directly or indirectly shown in the sentence. “Dancing queen” (January 2019) is considered one of them, which does not explicitly use the word woman but addresses her as a ‘queen’, which refers to a female. However, there are cases when the gender was shown more directly, such as: “Congresswomen dance too!”(January 2019), “Girl from the Bronx”(July 2019) and so forth. These gender stereotypes emphasize the fact that she is a woman in cases when her gender could easily be omitted from the text without affecting the meaning of the sentence. In the first instance, her gender was mentioned in order to emphasize the fact that she can dance too, even though she is a politician. This could also imply an indirect criticism about her behavior. Similarly, the other sentence explicitly mentions that she is a girl, introducing her gender instead of presenting her as a politician.

There were also times when she was criticized and seen as not good enough for her political career, including: “inexperienced woman with little understanding of foreign affairs and diplomacy” (February 2020) and “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for ambassador to the United Nations? Really! What was he thinking?”(February 2020). However, there were cases when she was portrayed as powerful and superior, where she has been referred to as “new progressive voice” (July 2019), or “Republicans’ not-so-secret weapon in 2020” (July 2020).

Having examined The New York Times, it is clear that gender stereotypes are immensely prevalent in the articles regarding female politicians, namely Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The stereotypical attitude towards those females was shown in various forms, associated with all the categories employed for this study. However, it is demonstrated that most of the gender stereotypes are shown through personal information which is irrelevant to the context, including: married life, describing these women as mothers, wives or daughters; descriptive words which tend to focus significantly on their appearance, implying that in order for a woman to be a good politician, she should also pay attention to her clothes and look beautiful; and descriptions on their feelings, portraying them as weak, emotional and with tears in their eyes. However, the findings have also shown a diversity of expressions which also hold a strong stereotypical attitude, such as focus on weaknesses rather than strengths, portraying these females as corrupted, crazy and devils, gendered nouns utilized to refer to them instead of using gender-neutral identifiers about their job position,  metaphors and analogies using strong language, by either comparing them to big boys who are successful or to traditional women who are supposed to be ‘moping’ the floor. It is also worth mentioning that this newspaper contained a considerable number of power and status identifiers; however, a significant number of them were positioning these women as inferior to men or with a strength that could only be seen in other women, such as ‘daughters and granddaughters’—implying that men need to be even stronger than that.

Table 19: Stereotypes Frequency- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in The New York Times

Table 20: Irrelevant Personal Information in The New York Times

Table 21: Personality Traits in The New York Times

Table 22: Gendered Language in The New York Times

Table 23: Metaphors and Analogies in The New York Times

Table 24: Status and Power Identifiers in The New York Times

DISCUSSION

The Presence of Gender Stereotypes in the Depiction of Female Politicians in Online Newspapers

Given that media is oftentimes considered as the main source of gender stereotypes (Rapeanu 2014; Morau and Zetes 2015; Steans 2006), the first hypothesis that led this research is that the representation of female politicians in online newspapers contains elements of gender stereotypes. By employing a content analysis on 30 articles from an online newspaper, this study aimed at finding all the potential gender stereotypes which would test the given hypothesis. The results have shown that the articles do contain a stereotypical attitude towards female politicians, by employing different expressions. Overall, the number of gender stereotypes shown through language is 202 in The Guardian US, 122 in The Washington Post and 124 in The New York Times. This suggests that gender stereotypes are highly prevalent in this newspaper. Given this number, it is suggested that stereotypes are very prevalent in American newspapers. As such, this study argues that the first hypothesis is not rejected.

The Employment of Irrelevant Information in Portraying Female Politicians in the Media

The content analysis on the language used by three newspapers, namely The Guardian US, The Washington Post and The New York Times, has confirmed that irrelevant information in the portrayal of female politicians have been used. Having considered a variety of categories that were irrelevant to the context of the articles, this research has found that too many instances regarding marital status, relationships, age, position in family, appearance, and feelings, in the articles which were supposed to be reporting on political matters.

Opinion pieces selected for the purpose of this study, surprisingly enough, have presented many details related to marriage and relationships of the female politicians. This information has continuously presented the female politicians as inferior and vulnerable in relation to their husbands and has given credits to their husbands or partners for their success and career. In one of the articles about Ocasio- Cortez, The Guardian US writes: “Behind every successful congresswoman is a strong, “bin raccoon” boyfriend” (The Guardian US 2019), and in another one regarding Clinton, the newspaper writes: “What if Hillary hadn’t married Bill?”(The Guardian US 2020). Similarly, when commenting on Clinton, The New York Times writes: “She’s a feminist trailblazer who first arrived at stratospheric celebrity because of her husband” (May 2020). These sentences present these female politicians as successful and popular simply because the support they received from their partners. According to them, neither Ocasio-Cortez nor Clinton would have been such successful politicians if they did not have their partners by their side. Similar findings were presented in another study by Scharrer (2002), who examined the language employed in newspapers, having Hillary Clinton as a case study. By analyzing The New York Times and The New York Daily News, the author stated that about one-third of the stories in newspaper focused on personal topics, such as marital status and life of Hillary Clinton. Although these two studies have a decade of time-gap, the results show that Clinton and the other two politicians have been portrayed with the same stereotypical attitude. Another study by Burke and Mazzarella (2008) has also shown similar results. This research has suggested that FOX magazine, CNN and The New York Times provide a considerable amount of information about the marriage of female politicians rather than focusing on career-related issues. Correspondingly, when conducting a content analysis on the language used to describe the Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, Devere and Graham (2006), claimed that the language used was filled with gender stereotypes, containing information regarding her personal life, including marital status and relationship, rather than providing information about her career. Again, it should be mentioned that, even though there is a time gap between these studies, the recent articles in the analyzed newspapers show that this phenomenon is still present today.

Beauty and appearance have often been central to articles regarding the three politicians, including expressions such as: “She’s pretty”(The Guardian US 2020), “sitting at the desk, wearing a fancy caftan and symbolically acknowledging the dumbest whataboutism to emerge from the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton read her emails” (The New York Times 2019). This shows that appearance, beauty and clothing play a significant role in portraying female politicians. Moreover, this suggests that in order for women to be politicians, they should also have a good appearance and be beautiful. The same phenomenon was present in numerous previous studies as well, suggesting that expressions regarding beauty and appearance have always been used in the portrayal of female politicians. Scharrer (2002) has found out that newspapers tend to focus on descriptive words related to female politicians’ appearance rather than focusing on other career-related topics. Similarly, Devere and Graham (2006) revealed that the language used to describe the Minister of New Zealand was also concerned with. The findings of his study reached the same conclusion, implying that even after ten years, articles tend focus on the same matters even today. A similar phenomenon seems to be present in Nigeria as well, as Ette (2017) who conducted a study of three national newspapers in Nigeria, found out that female politicians are in most of the times commented on their appearance and beauty rather than on other relevant matters. Therefore, it is obvious that it is not only the American newspapers that hold this stereotypical attitude towards female politicians.

Findings from the present study have suggested that media tend to focus on feelings and emotions of female politicians as well, which are considered as irrelevant information. These findings portray Clinton, Pelosi, and Ocasio-Cortez, as sensitive, weak and emotional. Expressions such as: “suffering more for her husband’s…” (The Guardian US 2019), “Pelosi seem like a hysterical woman, who is too emotional to lead” (The Guardian US 2019), and “She has the courage to tell her fellow female House members face to face, with tears in her eyes, that government-funded abortions have to be removed from the ACA for it to get through (The Washington Post 2020), clearly demonstrate the strong stereotypical language towards these women. The newspapers portray them as powerless human beings who cannot lead because of their emotions, and by being described as such, these women will probably be perceived as not capable of leading the country and not successful in their career. This stereotypical portrayal of women was argued by many other researchers as well, including Morris (2006), who believes that traditional images of both males and females are very stereotypical, according to which all males are more associated with competiveness, rationality and aggressiveness, while women with compassion, sensitivity, emotionality and passivity.

This study has found a few instances in which female politicians were commented about their position in the family and portrayed as family-oriented. Instead of portraying them as politicians or any other career-related noun, these newspapers addressed these politicians as mothers, wives, or daughters. There were phrases such as “the mother of five children (The Guardian US 2020)” referring to Nancy Pelosi and “American wife” (The Guardian US 2020) when referring to Hillary Clinton. Moreover, The Washington Post (2020) has read: “the parade of iron moms speaking at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday”. In all cases, politicians were initially represented by their position in their families, which could possibly mean that they are represented in the traditional role of women. Benze and Declercq (1985) have stated that the traditional role of women  place them as inferior in society, whereas similarly Eagly (1995) has claimed that from a traditional point of view, females are seen as housekeepers. Given this, it is clear that these newspapers tried to portray these politicians as housekeepers rather than successful people, which could consequently affect the way that the voters see them. By providing the traditional perspective only, they could lose their credibility and people might think that they are not capable of leading the country. A similar study was conducted by Gentry and Harrison (2010), who analyzed seven TV channels and their language towards women in general. The study has found that women were mainly portrayed as very caring and as loving sources. They were also represented as housekeepers who are in charge of health and care for the other family members. Moreover, it is of a paramount importance to point out that they were never shown in professional roles. Given this, it is obvious that the portrayal of females in Gentry and Harrison’s study not different from the language towards Clinton, Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez, for they are all presented with this stereotypical attitude.

The Employment of Gendered Nouns and Metaphors in the Portrayal of Female Politicians

Different nouns highlighting gender and a sufficient variety of metaphors were also present in the depiction of female politicians in the three newspapers, namely: The Guardian US, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Findings from these three newspapers have suggested that a considerable number of expressions that fall into these categories are overused.

When it comes to gendered nouns, there is a high number of expressions that explicitly highlight their gender, instead of referring to them simply as politicians. For instance, The Guardian US (2020) addressed Clinton as “the woman who had sat with presidents and prime ministers” and Pelosi as “woman candidate”. In both cases, the word ‘women’ is considered as irrelevant to the context as it could easily be substituted with the gender-neutral word ‘politician’. However, the use of these gendered nouns could possibly mean that people do not expect women to be popular politicians and perform their job successfully. Thus, the mention of their gender could imply that these are exceptions to the rule. Similar findings were provided by Petca et al. (2013), who have investigated the way in which gender and athletes are portrayed in an online newspaper. Even though politicians were not focus of this study, the way that other successful females were portrayed relates to the portrayal of Clinton, Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez. According to Petca et al. (2013), female athletes have often been referred to as ‘girls’ in online newspapers. On the other hand, males were never referred to as ‘boys’ but only as athletes. This holds that the word ‘girls’ was used to highlight the fact that the athlete they are mentioning is a female and not a male. Also, this could possibly mean that the word ‘athletes’ is expected to be associated with males only, and when there is a woman performing that job, their gender needs to be highlighted.

Metaphors have also been a very frequent literary device to describe female politicians. Female politicians were oftentimes compared to other characters or objects, especially in negative terms. Moreover, this study has found many expressions which presented women with their traditional role. In most of the cases, they were presented with a stereotypical attitude implying that their place is in the kitchen doing the housework. Instances such as: “Clinton has evidently spent it (time) cooking up new conspiracy theories” (The Guardian US 2019) and “baked-in political weaknesses” (The New York Times 2020), present the female politicians in a traditional role, that of the housewife. The phrases ‘cooking up’ and ‘baked-in’ do both stand for housework. Correspondingly, other newspapers such as: FOX news, CNN and New York Times were studied by Burke and Mazzerella (2008), and the language towards female politicians was examined. This study has shown the same phenomenon, as the authors have claimed that media incorporate metaphors about women far more frequently compared to men, such as “a slightly new shade of lipstick” (Burke and Mazzarella 2008, p. 406), which would associate women with looks and beauty rather than their professional career. Hence, the findings from both studies suggest that media tend to associate women with beauty and present them as housewives, which consequently portray them as less competent when it comes to their professional career. Having said that, it is clear that these stereotypes were oftentimes shown through different metaphors and analogies.

Personality Traits and Power Identifiers in the Portrayal of Female Politicians

Findings from this study have shown that the female politicians in question have been a subject of different attributions. A substantial number of them represent women in a stereotypical way, be that inferior to men, weak, sensitive, or too emotional to lead.

When it comes to personality traits, women in the analyzed newspapers have been continuously given negative traits which tend to focus more on their weaknesses than strengths. Moreover, the language towards them was rather strong and sometimes quite offensive. In one of the articles, The Washington Post reads: “It takes a village to create a demon, and that tireless work has produced the extraordinary boogey woman that is Clinton, the conniving, corrupt, murderous, senile, pedophiliac, money-grubbing, cookie-hating, email-abusing” (May 2020). The use of such strong language towards Clinton highlights many weaknesses and negative traits. They were also presented as: “symbol of corruption, centrism and cynicism” (The Guardian US 2020), “uncontrollable” (The New York Times 2019), “disruptive opportunist” (The Guardian US 2020) and so forth. The same results were shown in another study conducted by Turska-Kawa (2018), who examined gender stereotypes in the media in the portrayal of female politicians in Poland. According to the author of that study, the language towards female politicians is very rich in stereotypes, and as a result, it tends to focus more on their deficits, flaws and weaknesses, rather than their strength, work experience and professionalism. This suggests that it is not only American newspapers that employ a stereotypical language, but this phenomenon has no boundaries and it has touched other societies as well.

As for the power identifiers, they were plenty in number as well. Even though a considerable number of them addressed these women with descriptive words regarding their career, yet some of them presented them as inexperienced, inferior to men, and with lack of professionalism. Sentences such as: “Mrs. Clinton is remarkably popular when she’s not competing with men for power (The New York Times 2020)”, “her ambition was thwarted for the sake of family and her husband (The Guardian US 2020), “inexperienced woman with little understanding of foreign affairs and diplomacy (The New York Times 2020) explicitly demonstrate that these women are perceived as inferior to men. Similar findings were concluded by Burke and Mazzarella (2008) who conducted a content analysis of gendered mediation in the internet, in order to see how newspapers portray females in different professions. The results of both studies have come to the same conclusion that, regardless of their educational background and their achievements in life, many women in politics are regarded as inferior when competing with men and considered lower in status.

Given the above-mentioned forms of gender stereotypes, the second hypothesis which supports that female politicians are portrayed with irrelevant information instead of focusing on career-related language, is not rejected.

CONCLUSION

Gender stereotypes have oftentimes been discussed and debated with respect to women in high-status jobs. Thus, this study aimed to examine the portrayal of women in politics, namely Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and illustrate gender stereotypes encountered in three online American newspapers, namely: The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian US. In order to have a clear view on gender stereotypes today, the articles analyzed were those posted more recently, from January 2019 until August 2020. Given this, the study aimed at answering the following research questions:

1. RQ1: Are gender stereotypes prevalent in the depiction of female politicians in online newspapers through the use of language?
2. RQ2: What are the most common stereotypes used in the representation of female politicians in online newspapers?

The first question hypothesized that gender stereotypes are still prevalent in the depiction of female politicians in online newspapers; the second question hypothesized that the representation of female politicians in online newspapers tend to focus on personal characteristics, such as appearance, family, and inferiority to men, rather than their professional career, qualifications, leadership qualities and ambitions. Based on the findings of the study, none of the hypotheses were rejected. As the results have demonstrated, there is a considerable amount of gender stereotypes found about each politician in each newspaper. Secondly, the data verified that female politicians tend to be discussed in relation to personal attributes, rather than information regarding professional career. The data further suggests that, even in cases when women are addressed with status and power identifiers, a considerable number of them tend to place women in an inferior position to men and portray them as incapable of doing their job.

IMPLICATIONS

The findings of this study are a significant asset to many studies and researchers, in the fields of sociolinguistics, gender studies, media studies and political science.  As far as sociolinguistics is concerned, this study has given an insight on the language used by American newspapers towards female politicians. Thus, this study has shown how cultural norms and society affects language and how gender stereotypes are generated through language. On the other hand, this study will significantly benefit gender studies in relation to gender stereotypes towards female politicians. This is mainly because the findings show how females in politics are consistently given attributions regarding their personal lives rather than their professional career. As a matter of fact, this could directly affect their image and the way that society sees them and could potentially change expectations and the trust that society and voters put in them, since not enough information regarding their ambitions and career is provided in American newspapers. By having these data, gender studies institutions could fight for the fair treatment of women in the media.

This could also serve both journalists and citizens, to be conscious of this phenomenon that is highly present in the media. Moreover, journalists will be more conscious when addressing women in politics; thus, the language towards them would be more professional and relevant. As for the citizens, this study could make them more acquainted with this phenomenon, more critical when reading the news as media does not always provide realistic images of people.

LIMITATIONS

It is worth mentioning that this research was limited in several ways. First and foremost, due to the nature of the study, it was impossible to collect articles from more than three newspapers, in order to reach the conclusion that all American newspapers portray women in a stereotypical way. Secondly, a bigger number of politicians could give a clearer idea on how American female politicians are portrayed in the media. Furthermore, gathering data from only one nation cannot be considered sufficient enough to evaluate the portrayal and attitude of people towards gender roles in the world.

RECOMMENDATION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Given the limitations of this study, further research employing a larger sample of newspapers and politician should be conducted, with the sole purpose of testing the validity of these findings. More specifically, more online American newspapers can be investigated in future studies and examine whether this phenomenon is present in all American newspapers. Also, the use of a larger sample as far as the number of politicians is concerned would show a clear image on how female politicians in America are portrayed. Future research could also focus on other countries in order to investigate whether the same stereotypes are present in other countries too.

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