QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY

Electile Dysfunction
The Use of Gender Frames and
Sexualization in Canadian Political
Media Coverage
Amanda Judd
4/29/2011

A thesis submitted to the Department of Political Studies in conformity with the requirements for
the degree Bachelor of Arts Honours.
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Abstract
Women’s levels of representation in Canadian Parliament has plateaued since the 1990s.

One of the possible causes identified has been that women are subject to gender frames

more often than men, negatively affecting their electoral success. My thesis uses a study

of Canadian politicians during the 2008 election and the same time period in 2009 to

analyze the frequency of gendered news frames and sexualization in newspapers to

determine if women are actually subjected to these phenomena more often than men. I

hypothesized that women are not actually subject to gendered news frames more often

than men, but that masculinity is so permeated in politics that it is less noticed and has

fewer negative effects. My study found that women were subject to gender frames more

often than men, and the analysis supported the idea that this stems from the masculine

nature of politics. Other observations included incredibly low levels of sexualization, an

increase in gendered news frames during the election, a tendency for more powerful

politicians to be framed using their gender more often, and a tendency for opinion pieces

to be gendered more often than news reporting. I conclude with the prospects these

results hold for the future of women’s electoral prospects in Canada.

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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor, Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, for her patience

throughout this process. Additionally, thank you to my family and friends for their

assistance in research and motivation. Finally, thank you to Kieran Slobodin for the

inspiration for the awesome title.

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Table of Contents
1 – Abstract
2 – Acknowledgments
3 – Table of Contents
4 – List of Tables
5 – List of Figures
6 – Introduction
17 – Methodology
20 – Results
43 – Conclusion
54 – Bibliography
58 – Appendices
60 – Vita
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List of Tables
19 – Table 1 – Information on Members of Parliament sampled
24 – Table 2 – Percentages of occurrences of cues, frames and sexualization by gender
32 - Table 3 – Percentages of occurrences of cues, frames and sexualization by time
frame
37 - Table 4 – Percentages of occurrences of cues and frames by types of articles
39 - Table 5 – The dispersion of occurrences of cues and frames by content of articles
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List of Figures
51 - Figure 1 – Photo of Dion used repeatedly by the Conservatives during the 2008
election
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Introduction
Canada’s national government has one of the lowest levels of representation of

women in the world, and since approximately 1997 that level of representation has

plateaued at around 20% of the seats in Parliament (Library of Parliament, 2010). If one

defines a basic norm of democracy as “empowered inclusion of those affected in

collective decisions and actions,” [italics original] (Castiglione and Warren, 2006: 4), the

implications that this carries for representative democracy are immense. Bashevkin

dramatically refers to Canada as an “unfinished democracy,” citing the work of Hanna

Pitkin on descriptive democracy to justify her characterization (2009: 13). Quite simply,

“women’s presence as public actors confirms, while their absence weakens, the

legitimacy of basic democratic practices” (Baskevkin, 2009: 13). The implications for

democracy are immense both for policy development and symbolic representation: fewer

women involved in the democratic process could result in policies that do not consider

the unique interests or needs of women, and under-representation of women can reinforce

cultural perceptions and stereotypes that may be preventing women from becoming

involved or succeeding in politics in the first place. Additionally, research has shown that

higher proportions of women in government institutions are associated with “lower levels

of political conflict, greater emphasis on collective consensus-building, and higher

standards of interpersonal respect” (Bashevkin, 2009: 15). Finally, arguments from

political justice maintain that the right of all citizens to participate without barriers is a

basic requirement for democracy, and the under-representation of women in Canada

clearly shows that some kind of barriers do exist.

Accordingly, it is troubling that scholars such as Bashevkin believe that prospects

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for the success of women candidates have not only stalled, but they seem to be getting

worse (2009: 3). Numerous ‘suspects’ have been named as the cause of this: lack of

female role models, ‘failure’ of women leaders throughout the 1990s and 2000s ‘scaring’

viable candidates away and causing a lack of faith in the political prowess of women,

dual pressures of home and public life, and more. One of the most prominent

explanations is the prevalent use of gender frames of female candidates and politicians in

news media. Numerous studies have shown not only that female politicians are subject to

gender frames and gendered scrutiny by the media more often than their male

counterparts, but studies have also shown that this gendered media coverage can have

significant negative effects. In addition to the explanations offered above, when all

things are equal between male and female politicians, the media can be another barrier to

success. Women already face significant socialization barriers from breaking into

politics, such as being implicitly or explicitly taught from a young age that the political

realm is not a place for women, or that ‘aggressive’ behaviour associated with politics is

not suitable for women (Conway et al., 1997: 21-22). Women may feel further exclusion

from disproportionately negative media coverage or from media coverage that focuses on

their gender before anything else (such as their qualifications). Overall, when women are

subject to gender frames more often than men, the media reinforces the cultural model of

the politician as male, where “the image and language of mediated politics supports the

status quo (male as norm) and regards women politicians as novelties, or as “others””

(European Federation of Journalists, 2006).

However, my concern with the literature is the lack of attention it has paid to

gendered portrayals of male politicians. If the status quo is that politicians are male, one
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would expect to find that the political arena itself is gendered. While the portrayal of

female politicians is troubling in that it isolates women as ‘others’ and unwelcome, the

gendered portrayal of male politicians is theoretically equally as troubling because it also

establishes and reinforces the status quo. This may not have negative consequences for

the male politicians themselves unless they fall out of the gender norm (Raphael, 2010:

2), but it potentially has negative consequences for all female politicians. My attention

was turned to this issue particularly in 2008 because of two cases during the 40th Federal

Election: Stéphane Dion and Justin Trudeau. It has been noted that throughout the

campaign, questions of Dion’s leadership capabilities were often linked to questions of

his masculinity (Raphael, 2010). The Liberal Party responded in turn with attempts to

bolster his masculine image, such as ThisIsDion.ca portraying him as a “rugged family

man who loves fishing, spending time with his wife and his dog” (Raphael, 2010: 1). I

thought that the opposite framing occurred with Liberal star rookie candidate Justin

Trudeau, although this has been examined considerably less by academia. My

observation throughout the election was that every article I read of Trudeau made

reference to him as a family man, a proud father of a son with another on the way, a

husband with a beautiful wife, and the handsome son of a late handsome and charismatic

Prime Minister. Based on these anecdotal observations of media portrayals of male

politicians in the 2008 election, I actually hypothesized that male politicians are framed

in a gendered way by the media more often than women, but that this framing is less

problematic for male politicians and is therefore less noticed and commented on.

Before continuing, it is important to define some key terms. Frames in the context of

the media are “interpretive structures that give meaning and order to the news” (Norris
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1997: 7). Frames expose the way news stories work as stories, they “generate a narrative

with protagonists, whose motives and actions assign causation and responsibility” (Street,

2001: 37). In order to determine how a frame is being employed in a story, the

investigator must first determine “who is viewed as the key political actor and what

motives drive them” (Street, 2001: 52). A gender frame is a very specific kind of frame,

which to discuss we must first define gender. Gender is sociological construction (for

example, identifying as a man or woman), as opposed to sex, which is a biological label.

“Gender is used to denote a social construction founded on cultural expectations about

what constitutes the masculine versus the feminine, whereas sex emphasizes biological

differences between males and females” (Chang and Hitchon, 1997: 30). Gender and sex

are often conflated, however. The male sex is associated with the gender identity of a

man, whereas the female sex is associated with the gender identity of a woman. Because

this conflation is so common, even within literature on gender, I will use “male” and

“female” when referring to men and women respectively for ease of reading. A gender

frame is a frame that is biased towards either men or women (Acker, 1992: 569). When

determining whether or not a news frame is gendered, the investigator would need to

determine if the story portrays its key political actor as being motivated by his or her

gender identity; basically, if the story uses gender as the primary descriptor, whether

implicitly or explicitly, to describe the politician. Gendering can be subtle and therefore

difficult to determine, since “hegemonic masculinity in political life ensures the gender

is, in and of itself, a frame, with news coverage of female politicians typically making

explicit references to their sex” (Trimble, 2004:7). The literature has identified several

common narratives that are often used when the media employs gender frames on female
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politicians. Women are often portrayed as outsiders or breakthrough candidates, or as

agents of change to clean up dirty politics (Norris, 1997); articles that use this narrative

will often highlight the candidate’s lack of conventional qualifications and lack of prior

political experience, or undervalue the candidate’s leadership capabilities by portraying

‘appropriate’ qualifications in terms of the (masculine) characteristics of past leaders

(Gidengil and Everitt, 1999). Gender frames that focus on a women’s home and private

life are also popular, and with the media using narratives based on the politician’s marital

and motherhood status, as well as their appearance. In these narratives, sex-based

stereotypes will often be employed, such as portraying women as spinsters, home-

wreckers, superwomen, one of the boys, witches, Cinderellas or Barbies (European

Federation of Journalists, 2006).

This is not to say that gender frames of male politicians do not exist. Certain

narratives are different, for instance, a man will be not be portrayed as an agent of change

simply for being male since the political world is predominantly male. However, the

media may use a narrative that portrays the candidate as strong and forceful, someone

who will take ‘tough’ stances, who has courage, and so forth (Gidengil and Everitt,

1999). Male gender frames may also employ discussions of their appearance or family

life, but the conclusions in the literature are that this does not happen nearly as often as it

does to women and that, when it does, it less often has a negative connotation (European

Federation of Journalists, 2006).

Particular attention has been given to the media focus on the martial status of female

candidates. Female politicians have often reported that they feel they are more likely to

be identified by their marital status while their male counterparts are more likely to be
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identified by the occupation. This focus “reflects the double standards still in place in

society when evaluating their ability to balance professional and family rules... evident in

many occasions when journalists are lamenting about female politicians’ “neglected

children” (Brikse, 2004: 24). Whereas the family is constructed as problematic for

female politicians, when the same narrative is used to describe male politicians it is more

likely that their absence from their family and any subsequent strain that may cause will

be constructed as “heroic” on the part of the family and to support the father’s political

career (Lawless and Fox, 2005: 61). Gendered speech has also been identified; quotes

from male politicians are more likely to use neutral descriptors (for example, he said),

compared to female politicians (for example, she blasted, she screeched, and so forth)

(Gidengil and Everitt, 1999, 2000, 2003).

Overall, this gendered focus on women can have negative effects. Female politicians

often feel that they have to “prove themselves more than men, have to work harder than

their male counterparts to succeed, and have to make more of an effort in order to be

acknowledged for their political work by the media” (European Federation of Journalists,

2006; Ross and Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1997). As mentioned above, a woman’s family

will often be portrayed as problematic for their political career, whereas it will be

portrayed as neutral or a positive support for a man. In general, when the media focus on

gender-based evaluations of the style, appearance and private lives of female politicians

more than male politicians it happens at the expense of reporting what they actually have

to say and “such preoccupations could lead to women and their achievements being

trivialized” (European Federation of Journalists, 2006; Ross, 2000).

It is important to keep in mind that media coverage should be considered both a

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potential cause of these gender discrepancies, but also a consequence of greater factors

contributing to gender differences in political success. There are also certain instances

where a gender frames are used because the issue at hand is gendered or the debate

surrounding it is gendered. Within the last couple of years there have been at least two

instances where heated debate in the House of Commons has sparked gendered media

coverage. The first was in October 2009 when Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, a physician

and the former public health minister, brought to the House’s attention that there was

considerable confusion surrounding whether flu vaccinations should be administered to

pregnant women (Delacourt, 2009). She was “shouted down” and “initially couldn’t

finish her question, overcome by roars of derision and mockery from the Conservative

backbenches (Delacourt, 2009). The second example I came across was during the debate

over the long gun registry during the summer and fall of 2010. In this instance, Public

Safety Minister Vic Toews made controversial remarks to Niki Ashton, the youngest

woman in the House of Commons and the daughter of Manitoba MLA and cabinet

minister Steve Ashton. His remark, “I would call upon the member for Churchill to stand

in this House and represent her constituents in rural Manitoba, like her father does in the

Manitoba legislature, where he has consistently spoken against the long-gun registry...”

was interpreted as patronizing by other members of the House (Taber, 2010). Winnipeg

Liberal MP Anita Neville responded, “The gall of him telling ‘Daddy’s little girl’ what to

do is beyond reproach” (Taber, 2010). The coverage that these events received were

certainly examples of gendered mediation, however it can be argued that any sort of

‘blame’ cannot be placed on the media since they were covering a gendered event.

Removing the media of blame for their coverage of a gendered event is also problematic,
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as the may be responsible for amplifying the use of a gender bias. For instance, the article

above on Niki Ashton ran with the headline, ‘Daddy’s little girl’ takes worst gun-registry

shrapnel, which made it clear from the first word that this issue was meant to be

interpreted with a gendered lens (Taber, 2010).

The effect of the media, and therefore the importance of the issue of gender framing,

has certainly been called into question. As mentioned above, the media to a certain extent

is a representation of the values held by society. However, the media plays an important

role in the process of challenging the values held by society and disseminating

information and values to the public. This is particularly true in Western liberal

democracies such as Canada where John Street argues that “the mass media have claimed

the right to represent the people and to uphold democracy, and the consumers of

newspapers and television have come to treat these media sources as the basis on which

to think and act in the world” (2001: 7). In the context of an election, gender biases

disseminated by the media can have serious electoral consequences. The relationship

between politics and the media is so close that the political process can be described as

thoroughly mediated, and “voters respond to candidates largely in accordance with

information (and entertainment) received by the media” (European Federation of

Journalists, 2006; Corner, 2003: 75). Even the most informed voter will be unlikely to

meet their local candidates or the party leaders throughout the campaign and will have to

rely on the media or communications from the candidates themselves (such as flyers or

websites). As well, significant studies have shown how important perceptions of the

personalities of candidates are to voter choice (Bittner, 2010), and the media has become

the way in which that personality is created, it is where “the identity of the politician as a
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“person of qualities” is constructed” (Corner, 2003: 75).

Furthermore, gender frames are problematic because studies have shown that “voters

respond more positively to candidates who, regardless of their gender, received the type

of coverage usually accorded to male candidates” (European Federation of Journalists,

2006; Kahn, 1992). This can either be through coverage on their positions of “hard” or

“masculine” issues (for example, crime, defence) or by using masculine imagery of war

or sports (Gidengil and Everitt, 2003). However, studies have also shown that women

who portray masculine features are not necessarily more likely to get elected either!

Female candidates who portray ‘masculine’ personalities appear aggressive and

unfeminine (and therefore unacceptable), but feminine women are deemed ineffective

(and therefore unacceptable). Lawless and Fox refer to this as a “double bind”: “if they

achieve professional success, they have likely neglected their “womanly” duties; if they

fail professionally, then they were wrong to attempt entering the public domain in the

first place” (2005: 59-60).

This brings us to wonder what the literature says about gendered mediation in

Canada. In the Canadian context, Bashevkin refers to the double bind phenomenon as the

women plus power equals discomfort, or the discomfort equation (2009: 2). Bashevkin

argues that the discomfort associated with female politicians is directly related to a

common association of female politicians with bad election results. She argues that the

issue of gendered mediation is particularly worrisome in Canada because “women’s

political status in Canada is arguably on a rocky path, and likely jolting backward in

reverse gear” (2009: 3). When Agnes MacPhail, Canada’s first woman MP, entered the

House of Commons in 1921 she was described as a “humourless spinster who wore not
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very fashionable clothes” (Shane, 2010), and almost a century later that sort of media

commentary is still common. Gidengil and Everitt have noted that the actions and views

of female Canadian leaders are more likely to be ‘filtered’ by the media (2000, 2003).

That is, journalists are more likely to paraphrase a women’s statement than a man’s and

female politicians’ speech is more likely to reported in negatively charged or aggressive

language than a man’s. In a study of the coverage of the Canadian leaders’ television

debates during the 1993, 1997 and 2000 Canadian elections, “female leaders were

portrayed as attacking more frequently than their male counterparts, and more frequently

than their actual behaviour in the debates” (European Federation of Journalists, 2006;

Gidengil and Everitt, 2000). Subtle differences in wording made all the difference in the

coverage of the 1993 and 1997 debates. In the television coverage of the elections, the

speech of the female leaders was “less likely to be reported using neutral speech verbs

(say, tell, talk about)” than the male leaders and words like blast, slam, attack and accuse

were used exclusively to describe the speech of the female leaders’ and never the male

leaders (European Federation of Journalists, 2006; Gidengil and Everitt, 2000). One of

the most cited and most infamous recent examples of gendered mediation was the

portrayal of Belinda Stronach’s career. Bashevkin uses Stronach as an example of how

the media tends to belittle and infantilize female politicians because of the tendency to

refer to her as ‘Belinda’ (2009). When journalists refer to female politicians using their

first name instead of their last they, whether they intend to or not, trivialize and

familiarize that politician by implying a lack of power and legitimacy (Bashevkin, 2009:

34). While Stronach has yet to escape the media referring to her as merely “Belinda”, she

no longer faces the harsh gendered mediation that she faced during the Conservative
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Party of Canada leadership race of 2004. Content analysis from the Globe and Mail and

the National Post during the race showed considerable differences in how Stronach was

framed in comparison to her male competitors. Stronach’s coverage “scrutinized her

looks, wardrobe, sexual availability and personal background while mocking her

leadership aspirations and deriding her qualifications for public office” (Trimble, 2005:

4). The statistics are particularly telling: Stephen Harper’s appearance was mentioned in

2 stories (1 percent of stories), Tony Clement’s appearance was mentioned in 5 stories (3

percent of stories), and Stronach’s appearance was mentioned in 77 stories (33 percent of

stories).

“Her hair, wardrobe, body and sexual attractiveness were scrutinized and
analyzed. Stronach was called young, attractive, beautiful, a “hot babe” with
“bodacious good looks.” Many references were made to her hair, including
“great blonde hope,” “dishy blonde,” “Bubba’s blonde pal,” “young blond
looker,” and “Parliament Hill Barbie.” Stronach was cited as the candidate
with sex appeal, called sexy outright, and most outrageously, labeled “better
than Viagra” (Trimble, 2005: 15).
Stronach’s marital status was also a popular discussion item. Stronach’s martial status

was mentioned in 28 news stories (12 percent of coverage), which was four times as often

as Harper’s marital status. “Belinda Stronach was called a “single mom millionaire”, the

“young mother who would be prime minister”, and, less flatteringly, “a woman with two

failed marriages” (Trimble, 2005: 17).

Although Stronach presents a prominent and problematic example of gendered

mediation, my non-academic observations of gendered mediation since Stronach has left

politics has led me to question the claim that gendered mediation happens more often to

women. My impression was that gender frames are also frequently applied to men. To

examine these issues I designed a study to test my hypotheses: The first that, within
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Canada, male politicians are subject to gender frames as often as female politicians, and

the second that, male gender frames are more compatible with understandings of

“power” and therefore less likely to be noticed or considered problematic.

Methodology
My research covered two time periods: the 2008 federal election, and the same

time period in 2009 (September 7-October 15). This allowed me to include a competitive

atmosphere as a variable in my analysis of gender frames. I selected the politicians I

would study using a stratified sample from the 40th Parliament. By reducing my candidate

analysis in the election to only those who were actually elected and therefore have

demonstrated viability as a candidate, I have removed instances where gender frames are

used to trivialize unviable candidates who happen to be female. Even though I eliminated

unsuccessful candidates, I certainly found evidence of this trivialization of female

(unsuccessful) opponent candidates using gender frames. For instance, in an article on

Patrick Brown, Conservative Party MP for Barrie, ON, the author includes a gendered

description of the Marxist-Leninist candidate Christine Nugent who was “wearing red

shoes and a red button which read ‘Denying Rights is Wrong’” (Romphf, 2008).

The sample also did not include party leaders (since there was no elected female

party leader to compare the male coverage to, and since there would be too much content

to handle), and it did not include the Finance Minister (since the 2008 election occurred

during a recession, there would have simply been too many articles to handle). I made my

stratified sample by taking sitting Members of Parliament and dividing them up based on

their relative levels of power within the House, which I decided based on their relation to

the Government and Cabinet. I came up with five groups: Government Party (Cabinet),
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other Government Party, Official Opposition Party (Critic), other Official Opposition

Party, and other Opposition Parties. In this case, the “Government Party” is the

Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), “Official Opposition Party” refers to the party

whose leader is the Official Leader of the Opposition, so the Liberal Party of Canada

(LPC), and “other Opposition Parties” includes the Bloc Quebecois (BQ) and the New

Democratic Party (NDP). I then divided each of these groups into two subgroups based

on the genders of the MPs. I then assigned numbers to each politician alphabetically and

used a random number generator to randomly select two MPs from each group. Six of the

MPs I drew had to be redrawn because they did not have enough coverage to be studied,

ten had to be redrawn because their riding’s local newspaper did not keep accessible

archives, and four had to be redrawn because their newspaper coverage was only in

French. The MPs used were from eight out of ten provinces, with only representatives

from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Territories missing. See Table 1 for a full list

of MPs selected for analysis.

After having chosen the MPs that I would study, I chose the daily newspapers

from their ridings to use in my analysis. If the riding was rural, this was usually quite

simple as there was often only one daily newspaper, but when this was not the case I

would choose the newspaper with the largest circulation (which was usually the

newspaper from the largest town/community in the riding). In cases where the MP was

from an urban riding, I would choose the paper with the largest circulation (whose

Table 1
Category Party and position Name Gender Riding Number of
articles
sampled
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Government Party CPC – Justice Rob Nicholson Male Niagara Falls, 37

(Cabinet) Minister ON

Government Party CPC – Agriculture Gerry Ritz Male Battlefords- 13

(Cabinet) Minister Lloydminster,
SK

Government Party CPC – Minister of Gail Shea Female Egmont, PEI 7

(Cabinet) Fisheries and
Oceans

Government Party CPC – Minister of Diane Finley Female Haldimand- 26

(Cabinet) Human Resources Norfolk, ON
and Skills
Development

Other Government CPC Barry Devolin Male Haliburton- 19

Party Kawartha
Lakes-Brock,
ON

Other Government CPC Patrick Brown Male Barrie, ON 24

Party

Other Government CPC Lois Brown Female Newmarket- 4

Party Aurora, ON

Other Government CPC Shelly Glover Female St. Boniface, 18

Party MB

Official LPC - Finance Shawn Murphy Male Charlottetown, 5

Opposition Party Critic PEI
(Critic)

Official LPC – Critic for Justin Trudeau Male Papineau, QC 4

Opposition Party Youth, Citizenship
(Critic) and Immigration

Official LPC – Veterans Kirsty Duncan Female Etobicoke 8

Opposition Party Affairs Critic North, ON
(Critic)

Official LPC – Seniors and Judy Sgro Female York West, 5

Opposition Party Pensions Critic ON
(Critic)

Other Official LPC Todd Russell Male Labrador, NL 6

Opposition Party

Other Official LPC Frank Valeriote Male Guelph, ON 9

Opposition Party

Other Official LPC Yasmin Ratansi Female Don Valley 4

Opposition Party East, ON

Other Official LPC Bonnie Crombie Female Mississauga- 6

Opposition Party Streetsville,
ON

Other Opposition NDP Nathan Cullen Male Skeena- 5

Parties Bulkley
 21

Valley, BC

Other Opposition NDP Bruce Hyer Male Thunder Bay- 8

Parties Superior
North, ON

Other Opposition NDP Niki Ashton Female Churchill, MB 8

Parties

Other Opposition NDP Linda Duncan Female Edmonton- 5

Parties Strathcona,
AB

archives were accessible) in that city. If the MP was from Toronto or Montreal, I would

supplement this with the Globe and Mail for additional coverage, since these cities are so

large that their dailies tended not to provide very many articles on local MPs. The choice

of newspapers was recorded for as a possible variable, but was found to have no effect.

Each of the articles was analyzed using a standardized coding sheet that recorded

information about the MP, the newspaper, the author and the type of article I was

analyzing (e.g. news article, editorial, column, etc). I also recorded cues for gender

frames (e.g. mentioning personal appearance), and recorded for each article whether

overall I felt the article used the gender of the MP as a primary descriptor and whether or

not the MP was being sexualized or desexualized in the article. For an example of my

coding sheet, see Appendix 1.

Results
The results of my study disproved the first part of my hypothesis that male MPs

are subject to gender frames as often as female MPs, but it did lend weight to second half

of my hypothesis that male gender frames are more compatible with political power and

less likely to be thought of as problematic for the MPs themselves.

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I tracked four cues of gender frames: mention of the MP’s personal appearance;

mention of emotions or personality features; mention of marital status, children, or sexual

orientation; and use of gender-specific narratives, such as a woman as an outsider, a

breakthrough, or an agent of change, and describing men using sport and warfare

analogies. In cases where a gender-specific narrative was applied to someone of the

opposite gender, I still counted this as a cue of a gender frame and made note of the odd

occurrence. I will refer to these cues in shorthand as Appearance, Emotions, Private Life,

and Gender-Specific. These four cues were used in my analysis to help determine

whether a gendered frame was being used to describe the politician, and they were also

used to track the most prevalent forms of gender frames. In addition to these cues, I also

recorded whether or not the article was using a gendered frame and whether or not the

politician was being sexualized in the article.

The use of one cue did not necessarily mean that the article used gender as a

primary descriptor of the candidate/politician, and therefore not all articles containing

these cues were considered to be gendered. Determining whether or not the article used a

gendered frame was related to the cues that I tracked, but primarily this was determined

by gauging an overall impression of the entire article. If I could assess the cues of a

gendered frame and determine that the gender of the politician was one of or the only

primary descriptor used to describe them within the article, I determined the article to

have a gendered frame. For example, in the articles I used to analyze Rob Nicholson,

Conservative MP for Niagara Falls, ON, there were several articles that contained cues,

but that I did not determine to have a gendered news frame. Several articles used sports

or war analogies (“Nicholson blasts Senators for gutting crime bill,” and “Round 1 for
 23

candidates”), but in articles that made no other mention or allusion to gender, or in

articles where this cue was not prominent, the use of sport and war analogies alone were

not enough to say the article was gendered (Sun Media, 2008; Larocque, 2008a). In these

cases, I determined that gender was not a primary descriptor of the politician and thus the

news frame was not gendered.

In order to determine if a politician was being sexualized (or desexualized) in an

article, I would assess if the politician in question was being made out to be sexual in

nature. This was closely related to and often relied upon the use of Appearance and

Private Life cues, but the intent was to analyze the use of these cues to assess if the

author was creating a normative assessment of their level of attractiveness or their sexual

behaviour. Much like how I assessed overall if gender was being used as a primary

descriptor when determining if a gendered news frame was being used, I assessed

sexualization by asking if the article overall frames the reader to think that the politician’s

sexuality is an important feature. If this was the case and the politician was made out to

be attractive or desirable, the politician was considered to be sexualized. If a politician’s

sexuality was made to be an important feature, but was done so in a negative way that

implied they are unattractive or undesirable, the politician was considered to be

desexualized.

Since the presence of possible gender frame cues was not enough in itself to

indicate a gendered news frame, there were instances where certain cues were more

prevalent than gender frames themselves. For instance, the Private Life cue was often

recorded because many candidate profiles used a politician’s marital status or number of

children as standard trivia-like questions in soft, personality-focused articles In these

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cases, even though candidates were specifically asked about this information, the ‘soft’

information was separated from the ‘hard’ information about the candidate. This possible

cue of a gender frame was not actually used in a way that framed gender as a primary

descriptor of the politician in these cases.

After working my way through the coding difficulties above, I found three

substantial patterns: women are more likely to be subject to gendered frames than men;

gendered frames are rare in print media (included in approximately 6 percent of

coverage), no matter the gender of the politician being covered; and gender frames were

more prevalent during the 2008 election than during the non-election period. The first

finding, that women are more likely to be subject to gender frames than men, was

interesting in that it was true overall, but certain cues of gender frames were actually

found more often to be applied to men than to women. Out of the articles that I sampled,

female politicians were subjected to gender frames 7.7 percent of the time and male

politicians were subjected to gender frames 4.6 percent of the time.

One difficulty in coding instances of gender frames that I did not anticipate was

what to do when an article was gendered, but it was not a gendered description of the

politician himself. By this I mean that the politician whose coverage I was analyzing was

not being described in a gendered way, but another politician, a voter, or a volunteer was

described in a gendered way. My coding scheme was written in a way to analyze the

coverage of the politicians themselves, and not necessarily their opponents or other

people mentioned in the articles. I had conceptualized my analysis as being focused on

Table 2
 25

Variable Percentage of Percentage of Overall percentage

occurrence in occurrence in of occurrence
coverage of men coverage of women

Mention of 1.5 2.2 1.8

appearance

Mention of 6.9 4.4 5.9

emotions or
personality

Mention of private 5.4 14.3 9.0

life

Use of gender- 5.4 2.2 4.1

specific narratives

Use of gender frame 4.6 7.7 5.9

Sexualization 1.5 1.1 1.4

the portrayals of the candidates that I drew from the sample and had to determine how to

code these unique cases, knowing that the choice I made had the potential to seriously

change my results. I actually faced this difficulty twice with the first politician I sampled:

Rob Nicholson. An editorial titled “Politicians and Thanksgiving: Too many turkeys,”

took a generally derisive attitude towards all politicians running in Niagara Falls in the

2008 election, but his description of Liberal candidate Joyce Morocco was also gendered,

such as: “Joyce is a decent, classy woman who does a lot for this city, but she just doesn’t

belong in this world” (Law, 2008). The author’s description of Nicholson, the politician

whose coverage I was analyzing, was not gendered, but his description of Morocco

certainly was. Even though my coding scheme was designed to analyze the coverage of

the candidate himself or herself, I included this article as having a gendered news frame.

My reasoning was that even if one of the politicians was portrayed as being the ‘other’
 26

then this would normalize the opposing politician(s). Morocco was singled out as a

woman who did not belong in the political world, and Nicholson by comparison was a

man who fit in to that world. I felt that a gendered view of one politician in an article

would reflect upon other politicians in the article by comparison.

In another example from Nicholson’s samples, the focus was on a visit from the

wife of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Laureen. This article (“Laureen Harper visits

Niagara Falls”) detailed Harper’s visit to Niagara Falls to show support for Rob

Nicholson in her husband’s absence (Pellegrini, 2008). While coverage of Nicholson was

not gendered in this article, the coverage of Harper certainly was. She is first referred to

as “[Stephen Harper’s] wife” before she is named, her first quote is about shopping at

Giant Tiger, and descriptions of her appearance (the “grey business suit” she wore and

her “youthful appearance”) were prominent even though there were no physical

descriptions of Nicholson or anyone else (Pellegrini, 2008). Since Harper is not a

politician herself, I initially faced a different difficulty than above since the reader would

not be comparing Harper to Nicholson as they would Morocco to Nicholson. However,

my thought was that a gendered description of a supporter, whether it had positive or

negative effects, would reflect upon the candidate just as any description of a supporter

would. In this instance I also considered this article to have gendered news frame even

though the politician under study was not actually described in a gendered way. I only

faced this difficulty in articles about male politicians, and only in very rare instances. In

all, only three articles were coded in this manner, but it accounted for half of the total

articles on male politicians that were gendered, 23.1 percent of all gendered articles, and

1.3 percent of all articles. If these articles were not considered gendered, then the
 27

percentage of articles that placed a gendered news frame on male candidates is reduced

from 4.6 percent of total male coverage to 2.6 percent, while instances of gendered news

frames used on women would remain the same at 7.7 percent.

Another finding I made was that male and female politicians were subjected to

different kinds of gender frames. Women were more likely to have the author mention

their appearance (2.2 percent of all articles compared to 1.5 percent of all articles for

men) and their private life (an astonishing 14.3 percent of all articles compared to 5.4

percent of all articles on men). Surprisingly, men were more likely to have the author

mention their emotions or personality features (6.9 of all articles compared to 4.4 percent

of all articles for women), and men were more likely to be subjected to gender-specific

narratives (5.4 percent of all articles compared to 2.2 percent of all article for women).

However, this cannot be taken at face value. Although emotions or personality features of

men were mentioned more often than women, this does not mean that those emotions or

personality features mentioned were necessarily gendered (for instance, being happy is

not gendered). This cue provides a good example for why cues did not automatically

translate to a gendered news frame. For instance, coverage of Gerry Ritz contained plenty

of references to his personality and emotions because this was shortly after the listeriosis

scandal where he made jokes deemed inappropriate. In a conference call only a few

weeks before the beginning of the 2008 election, he joked about the outbreak of

listeriosis in Maple Leaf Food Plants, “This is like a death by a thousand cuts. Or should I

say cold cuts” (MacCharles, 2008). When later in the call they were informed of another

death in PEI, he responded “Please tell me it’s Wayne Easter [the Liberal MP for

Malpeque and the Liberal Party’s Agriculture Critic]” (MacCharles, 2008). As a result of
 28

these comments, many articles spoke of his personality (such as him being “tasteless”) or

his emotions when reacting to demands to resign (MacCharles, 2008), but these

portrayals were not necessarily gendered. The best example of where I used emotion or

personality cues to determine that an article was gendered is Justin Trudeau. In two of the

articles sampled, the authors refer to Trudeau’s charisma, his pride as a father and his

emotional struggles in the spotlight as the son of a very famous and renowned Prime

Minister. In this case, the emotions and personality traits mentioned were used to

describe Trudeau’s masculinity and were therefore an indicator of a gendered news

frame.

As mentioned above, gender-specific narratives were also used more often on

men (5.4 percent) than on women (2.2 percent). This was not surprising, as I began to

suspect from the first politician sampled (Conservative MP Rob Nicholson from Niagara

Falls, ON) that election coverage would likely include numerous sports and war

analogies regardless of the politician being covered. Coverage of Nicholson included him

“blast[ing] Senators for gutting crime bill,” being a strong man who is avid hockey player

and runner, engaging in “Round 1” of a metaphorical boxing match with his opponents,

and later engaging the “final faceoff” (Sun Media, 2008; Larocque, 2008a; Larocque,

2008b). Given the sheer number of gender-specifc narratives regarding strength, sports

and warfare used on Nicholson, I actually expected this to be considerably higher.

Overall, 5.9 percent of the articles sampled used a gender frame. This was lower

than I anticipated given the large literature on gender in the media, as well as given the

tendency of the literature to focus on extraordinary cases. In particular, there is a large

focus within the literature on the tendency to comment on a woman’s appearance more
 29

often than men. This cue was actually the most rare! Only 1.8 percent of all articles

mentioned the politician’s appearance. The appearance of female politicians was

mentioned in 2.2 percent of articles, while the appearance of male politicians was

mentioned in 1.5 percent of articles. I expected this to be considerably higher given the

prevalence of discussions on the fashion choices of Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin and

Michelle Obama in the American Presidential election that occurred around the same

time as the Canadian election I studied (McGinley, 2009). Most instances of the

Appearance cue were actually being used on male politicians’ wives (such as Stephen

Harper’s “youthful” wife Laureen and Justin Trudeau’s “radiant as sunshine” wife Sophie

Grégoire) or on the female opponents of male politicians sampled (Pellegrini, 2008;

Hampson, 2008). Overall, the Appearance cue was the rarest of all cues of gender frames

and was rarely used on the politicians sampled themselves and instead on their family or

opponents. Either way, the use of the Appearance cue tends to suggest trivialization: it is

either used on ‘celebrity’ political figures who are not politicians themselves, or is used

in instances where the politician being covered is not considered a viable or experienced

candidate. The only seemingly outlier article in this instance was an article featuring

Bonnie Crombie, Liberal MP for Mississauga-Streetsville, which described the “election

diet” (Young, 2008). This article detailed the weight loss induced by the hectic nature of

elections (a lot of walking, not much time for eating) of several MPs, including

Crombie’s loss from 125 to 112 pounds (Young, 2008). As this article was actually about

the appearance and health of MPs, I included it as being gendered because its portrayals

of men and women were quite different (“light” women and “buff” men) (Young, 2008).

I considered it to fall into the pattern described above rather than disprove it since it was
 30

in the “Life” section, therefore the media source itself trivialized the article as being non-

political.

While cues such as emotions and gender-specific narratives were about as

prevalent as gender frames (5.9 percent and 4.1 percent of all articles, respectively) and

were generally a part of articles identified as containing a gender frame, the private life

cue was much more prevalent than gender frames themselves. The private lives of MPs

were mentioned in 9 percent of all articles, a third higher than the 5.9 percent of all

articles that used gendered news frames. Again, many of these cues did not necessarily

point to a gendered frame. Many mentions of a politician’s private life were simple

surveys of all candidates, asking all of them their marital status along with their favourite

random thing, i.e. television show. However, this cue was used to form a gendered frame

for women more often than men. The best example of this is Diane Finley, Conservative

MP for Haldimand-Norfolk and Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development.

Approximately 20 percent of all of the articles on Diane Finley were gendered, and all of

them used the Private Life cue (although sometimes they used other cues in addition).

Articles on Finley frequently mentioned her husband Doug Finley, a Conservative

fundraiser (currently infamous for being one of the recently appointed Senators

implicated in the “in and out” election funding scandal (Chase, 2011)) or referenced her

as “Mrs. Finley” or “Diane” while referring to other politicians mentioned in the same

article by more formal names, for example, Mayor Trainer. One editorial exploring the

horse race coverage in the riding even referred to her as “a trophy for any opposition

candidate. Her defeat would reverberate in Ottawa because she is the wife of Doug

Finley, Stephen Harper’s most trusted campaign adviser and the brains behind the
 31

Conservative campaign” (Sonnenberg, 2008). The article also mentioned that Finley was

a Cabinet minister, but it was not this position of power that would cause her possible

defeat to have an impact but her husband’s position of power. In this case, Finley’s worth

was valued as the worth of her husband. Marriage and romantic relationships are not the

only subjects that I used to indicate a Private Life cue, however. I also used mentions of

family as a Private Life cue, which may include references to marriage/partnership but

also included references to the children, parents and other relatives of politicians. Again,

this was used much more on female politicians than on male to create a gender frame. A

prominent example was coverage of Niki Ashton, New Democratic MP for Churchill,

MB. Ashton faced similar coverage as Justin Trudeau in that she was frequently (in 37.5

percent of articles) described in reference to her father, Manitoba provinicial New

Democrat cabinet minister (and candidate in the 2009 Manitoba NDP provincial

leadership race) Steve Ashton. Out of all the variables recorded, the Private Life cue was

recorded the most. While many mentions of an MP’s private life seemed off hand or

merely informational, this was also the cue most often used to form a gender frame and it

was most often used on women. Possible reasons for this will be discussed in my

conclusion.

The use of gender frames was much more likely to occur during the election. Out

of the articles I sampled from the 2008 Federal Election, 7.9 percent of articles used

gender frames whereas only 2.5 percent of the articles sampled from the same time non-

election time period in 2009 used gender frames. In addition, every cue of gender frames

was more prevalent during the election. The appearance of MPs were mentioned in 2.9

percent of articles during the election compared to none during the non-election period;
 32

emotions and personality were mentioned in 6.4 percent of election articles compared to

4.9 percent of non-election articles; the private lives of MPs were mentioned in 12.9

percent of election articles compared to only 2.5 percent of non-election articles; and

gender-specific narratives were used in 5.0 percent of election articles compared to 2.5

percent of non-election articles. The use of these cues and frames during an election

period also seemed to be of a different character than those used during the non-election

period. In general, coverage during the elections seemed to be more scathing and critical.

When combined with an increased use of gender frames, election coverage seemed to

confirm the major concerns of the literature: that gender frames are used in a way the

delegitimizes female candidates and normalizes masculinity in politics. For instance,

authors writing on Diane Finley during the election were much more likely to refer to her

as “Mrs. Finley,” or “Diane,” whereas authors during the 2009 non-election period were

more likely to refer to her as “Minister Finley,” “MP Finley,” or “Finley”.

In addition to the main findings, I also recorded a significant number of additional

variables about the newspapers, the kind of article analyzed, the prevalence of the MP in

the article, and whether the MP belonged to minority demographic categories (visible

minority, youth, aboriginal, sexual minority, disabled). These were intended to be

controls on the variables I intended to study most rigorously, but they provided

interesting results as well. One of the most fascinating was comparing the relative power

of the MPs being studied to the occurrence of gender frames and cues. From studies that

have shown a tendency to use gender frames to discredit less viable or differently

qualified candidates, I expected that the use of gender frames would increase as the

power of MPs decreased. However, I found the exact opposite. I tracked the “power” of
 33

Table 3

Variable Percentage of Percentage of Overall percentage

occurrence during occurrence during of occurrence
election non-election period

Mention of 2.9 0.0 1.8

appearance

Mention of 6.4 4.9 5.9

emotions or
personality features

Mention of private 12,9 2.5 9.0

life

Use of gender- 5.0 2.5 4.1

specific narratives

Use of gender frame 7.9 2.5 5.9

Sexualization 2.1 0.0 1.4

candidates by using the categories for my stratified sample based upon relative power

within the House of Commons: the Government Party (and within, Cabinet and the rest

of caucus), the Official Opposition Party (and within, Critics and the rest of caucus), and

other Opposition members. In every almost every instance, the more powerful an MP, the

more likely they were to have articles about them contain gendered cues or a gender

frame. Since there were so few uses of the Appearance cue overall, the results for this cue

was not as significant as others: 1.2 percent of articles on Cabinet members, 3.1 percent

of articles on other Government members, 0 percent of articles on Official Opposition

critics, 4 percent of articles on other Official Opposition party members, and 0 percent of

articles on other Opposition members included descriptions of the MP’s appearance. The

Emotions cue was interesting in that it was only used on Cabinet Members and Official

Opposition Critics: 13.3 percent of articles on Cabinet Members and 9.1 percent of
 34

articles on Official Opposition critics used this cue, but no articles on MPs from other

categories did. This could partially be explained by the impassioned responses that

Cabinet Members and Critics have to proposed policy changes or scandals within their

portfolios. For instance, Gerry Ritz’ comments on the listeria outbreak and his subsequent

response of remorse to the media or Rob Nicholson’s anger that Liberal Senators were

blocking a bill from his portfolio. However, MPs at all levels are (presumably) passionate

about what they do, and those without a specific portfolio would (presumably) be

passionate about their constituent interests instead. We should expect to see emotions

related to this passion at all levels, so this is not an adequate explanation of why the

media would cover the emotions of those politicians who are more powerful more often

than those less powerful. This will be further explored in my conclusion.

The results for the Private Life cue are very similar to the Emotions cue, in that

Cabinet members and Critics had this cue used in their coverage much more often than

other members. The cue was used in 12 percent of coverage of Cabinet members, 1.5

percent of coverage of other Government members, 27.3 percent of coverage of Official

Opposition critics, 12 percent of coverage of other Official Opposition party members,

and none of the coverage of other Opposition members. Although the pattern of

decreasing use of the cue as power decreases is not exactly linear, the pattern is very clear

within each party: members of Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet have this cue used on them

considerably more than their colleagues in the rest of their caucus. The use of Gender-

Specific cues also only occurred at the highest levels of power: the Government Party and

members of the Shadow Cabinet. This cue was used on Cabinet members 7.2 percent of

the time, on other Government party members 3.1 percent of the time, and on Official
 35

Opposition party critics 4.5 percent of the time. Other members of the Official

Opposition Party’s caucus and members of other Opposition Parties recorded no

instances of Gender-Specific cues.

In terms of how these cues were used to build gender frames, the patterns

observed with cues translated as expected into use of gender frames. 10.8 percent of

coverage of Cabinet Members was gendered, as well as 3.1 percent of the coverage of

other Government Party members and 9.1 percent of the coverage of Official Opposition

Party Critics. None of the coverage of other members of the Official Opposition’s caucus

or the members of other Opposition Parties was gendered. Overall, the general pattern

was that the more powerful a person was, the more likely they were to be covered by

media in a way that referenced their gender or presented their gender as being important.

The only exception is the use of sexualization and desexualization.

Throughout this study, sexualization and desexualization were recorded much less

frequently than I had assumed they would. Only two articles, or 0.9 percent of total

coverage, contained descriptions of politicians that I considered to be sexualizing and

there were no articles that contained desexualization. As a result, the sample of articles

that I could use to analyze patterns of sexualization and desexualization as determined by

power was not large enough to draw any strong conclusions. However, the findings on

sexualization and desexualization are still worth commenting on. Given past examples I

have seen in media coverage of politicians, as well as examples from the literature

(particularly some of Belinda Stronach mentioned above), I expected this to be higher. In

particular, during the 2008 American Presidential elections occurring at roughly the same

time as the 2008 Canadian elections there was a flurry of commentary on the
 36

sexualization of female candidates, such as Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah

Palin (who was hopefully promoted as the “Hottest V.P. from the Coolest State” at the

2008 Republican National Convention), and the desexualization of other female

candidates, such as Democratic Preisdential candidate nominee Hilary Clinton (Rosen,

2009; 211) (McGinley, 2009). The stark contrast in coverage of Palin and Clinton was so

pervasive in media coverage that it was the topic of a popular Saturday Night Live skit

that went viral online and permeated pop culture. In this skit, “Palin” requested that

people stop Photoshopping her head onto pitctures of swimsuit models while “Clinton”

requested that people stop calling her a “boner-shrinker” (McGinley, 2009; YouTube). In

my study, I anticipated seeing a pattern of younger women and rookie female candidates

being sexualized while older women and repeat incumbent female candidates would be

desexualized. As well, I expected to see mothers desexualized as studies have shown that

“sexuality and motherhood are mutually exclusive in the perception of women”

(Friedman, et al., 1998: 781). Instead, there were no instances of desexualization and both

of the instances of sexualization occurred on a male rookie and a star candidate of the

Liberal Party: Justin Trudeau. Reasons for this occurrence will be explored in my

conclusion.

Another significant pattern that I noticed was that the author and format of the

piece was important in predicting whether or not gendered cues or frames would be used.

In my study, I coded articles based on their editorial content and their author. The

categories that I used were “News Article,” “Staff Editorial,” “Staff Column,” “Guest

editorial/column,” “News in brief/review,” and “Other”. The “Other” category ended up

containing only Letters to the Editor, and as such I will refer to this category as “Letters”
 37

or “Letters to the Editor” instead of “Other” throughout. In my analysis, I found that the

vast majority of cues and gender frames were found in News Articles, followed by

Letters to the Editor, followed by Staff Editorial. Proportionally to the number of articles

analyzed within each category, however, Letters to the Editor usually contained the most

cues and frames, followed by Staff Editorial and then News Article (see Table 4). There

were no instances of cues or frames being used in Staff Columns, News in Brief/Review,

or Guest Column/Editorials. This pattern was so significant that as I was analyzing

articles, I began to anticipate that Letters to the Editor would be gendered and had to

remind myself to not let this expected pattern influence my coding. The Appearance cue,

the least used cue, was used in 1.8 percent of News Articles and 5 percent of Staff

Editorials, but not in any other categories of articles. The Emotions/Personality cue was

used in 4.9 percent of News Articles, 10 percent of Staff Columns and 11.5 percent of

Letters to the Editor. The Private Life cue was used in 8.6 percent of News Articles, 10

percent of Staff Columns and 15.4 percent of Letters to the Editor. Gender-Specific cues

were used in 4.3 percent of News Articles, 5 percent of Staff Columns, and 3.8 percent of

Letters to the Editor. Finally, gender frames were used 3.7 percent of News Articles, 15

percent of Staff Columns and 15.4 percent of Letters to the Editor. Overall, this indicated

two patterns: authors who are not professional journalists were more likely to use

gendered cues and frames, and articles which were meant to be opinion pieces were more

likely to use gendered cues and frames. Reasons for and implications of this will be

explored further in my conclusion.

The content of the article being studied also seemed to influence whether or not

an article would include gender cues and frames. For each article, I coded whether or not
 38

Table 4
Variable Percentage Percentage Percentage Percentage Percentage Percentage
of of of of of of
occurrence occurrence occurrence occurrence occurrence occurrence
in news in staff in staff in guest in news in in letters to
articles editorials columns editorial or brief the ditor
columns /reviews

Mention of 1.8 5 0 0 0 0
appearance

Mention of 4.9 0 10 0 0 11.5

emotions or
personality
features

Mention of 8.6 0 10 0 0 15.4

private life

Use of 4.3 0 5 0 0 3.8

gender-
specific
narratives

Use of 3.7 0 15 0 0 15.4

gender frame

the content indicated that the article was “Issue-based,” “Personality-based,” “Horse

Race,” or “Mixed/Other”. Issue-based articles were those that analyzed or discussed

policy, as opposed to personality-based articles, which were articles that discussed the

life or work of a politician. Horse race articles were those that “emphasiz[ed] who is

ahead or behind, or gaining or losing ground” (Mutz, 1995: 1015). The vast majority of

articles (46.2 percent) were Issue-based articles, followed by Horse Race (23.5 percent),

Personality-based (23.1 percent), then Mixed/Other (7.2 percent). As seen in Table 5,

with the exception of the Gender-Specific cue, articles that were Personality-based were

more likely to contain gender cues or frames. All of the articles mentioning a politician’s

appearance were Personality-based, and they consisted of 7.8 percent of all Personality-

based articles. Unsurprisingly, Personality-based articles made up 53.8 percent of all

 39

articles that used an Emotion/Personality cue, followed by Issue-based articles with 30.8

percent and Mixed/Other articles with 15.4 percent. Personality-based articles also

dominated articles that used the Private Life cue, with 60 percent, followed by Issue-

based and Mixed/Other both with 15 percent each, and Horse Race articles with 10

percent. The pool of articles that used Gender Frames was also dominated by Personality-

based articles (38.5 percent), followed by Issue-based articles (30.8 percent), and Horse

Race and Mixed/Other articles (15.4 percent each). All instances of sexualization also

occurred in Personality-based articles. Gender-specific cues did not follow this pattern,

however. The majority of articles using Gender-specific cues were Issue-based articles

(55.6 percent), followed by Personality-based (22.2 percent), and Horse Race and

Mixed/Other articles (11.1 percent each). I think that this exception to the pattern of

gender cues and frames being predominantly in articles that are Personality-based has a

lot to do with the gendered nature of politics and how that is expressed competitively. I

will explore this in more detail in my conclusion.

One of the variables that I tracked had seemingly no impact on coverage of

politicians. In addition to tracking gender, I also tracked other demographic features that

have been targeted in equity initiatives by the Federal Government under the

Employment Equity Act. My thoughts were that if these demographic groups have been

identified as facing structural disadvantages to entering the workplace then it is possible

that this would be reflected in media coverage of politicians in those demographics. In

addition to tracking the gender of a politician, I also tracked whether or not the politician

was a visible minority, aboriginal, a person with a disability. These categories of

demographics are those outlined in the Employment Equity Act, but I also added “Sexual
 40

Minority” and

Table 5

Variable Percentage of Percentage of Percentage of Percentage of

articles using articles using articles using articles using
cue or frame cue or frame cue or frame cue or frame
that were that were that were horse that were
issue-based personality- race articles mixed/other
articles based articles articles

Appearance 0 100 0 0

Emotions 30.8 53.8 0 15.4

Private Life 15 60 10 15

Gender- 55.6 22.2 11.1 11.1

Specific

Gender frame 30.8 38.5 15.4 15.4

“Youth” (and “Other” in case I came across a demographic feature previously not

thought of). My reasoning for including Youth (as defined by the Federal Government,

which is a person under 30 years old) was that, based upon the average age of MPs, there

is reason to believe that youth might be treated differently by the media because of the

novel quality of young candidates and politicians. In particular, because of societal

standards of beauty that are related to youthfulness, I anticipated that this may affect

sexualization. My reasoning for adding Sexual Minority was three-fold. First, if needed,

it would have allowed me to signify if a person was trans-identified. For the purposes of

creating a stratified sample, I had to divide politicians into a gender binary, but this

would have allowed me to track instances where a politician was known to not identify

within that gender binary. For example, were any of the politicians a male-to-female

transsexual, I would have put them in the “Female” category, but noted that they were a
 41

Sexual Minority. Second, there have been strong arguments for including identifying as

gay, lesbian, or trans as an Employment Equity category ever since “Sexual Orientation”

was read into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada, 2005). Third, I suspected that

the sexual identity of politicians could have a serious impact on their coverage. Certainly

being labelled as a one-issue candidate because of their sexuality can have negative

effects, as Alison Brewer found out in 2006. Brewer, the leader of the New Brunswick

NDP during the 2006 New Brunswick provincial election, was the first openly gay

woman to lead a party in Canada (Camp, 2007). She was extremely unsuccessful in the

2006 election after she was framed by the media as a one-issue candidate, Brewer was

rarely not discussed in her identity as “a woman, a lesbian, an abortion clinic manager, a

human rights activist and an “outspoken” feminist” (Camp, 2007: 1). However, studies in

the United States have also shown gay politicians to be quite successful, considering their

success “a better barometer of societal attitudes than... the high-profile fights over same-

sex marriage” (New York Times, 2009). Sometimes it would certainly make sense for

politicians running in ridings with large gay populations, such as Toronto Centre, to

frame themselves in terms of their sexual orientation if they can. Unfortunately, the

amount of Canadian public opinion research on how voters perceive gay politics is

miniscule (Globe and Mail, 2009). My suspicion was that if I drew an openly gay

politician, such as Libby Davies (New Democrat MP for Vancouver East, BC) or Scott

Brison (Liberal MP for Kings-Hants, NS) that their sexual orientation would impact

whether or not they received gendered coverage. Particularly, I was interested in how

they would be perceived after the election. If they were not framed as a one-issue

candidate, the possibility that prejudices could impact their coverage as they performed
 42

their duties as an elected official. However, I drew no openly gay, lesbian, or otherwise

openly queer-identified politicians in my sample, and thus was unable to analyze the

impact of this demographic feature.

Overall, I found no evidence that any demographic features, besides gender

identity, impacted the instances of gendered coverage. Out of MPs sampled, there were

not enough that fell into any of these categories to compare and draw conclusions

anyhow. I also found no evidence that the MPs that did fit into these demographic

categories were framed in terms of those demographic categories and had to do

background research on all of the MPs to even discover which ones fit into these

categories. Diane Finley was the only MP drawn with a disability, having been diagnosed

with Graves’ Disease in 2005 (Canada, 2006). She is easily recognizable for the tinted

lenses she must wear at all times as result of this disease, and her condition was never

mentioned in any of her coverage. Shelly Glover, Conservative MP for Saint-Boniface,

MB, was the only Aboriginal person I analyzed. Glover’s Métis status was mentioned in

only one article on her; much more prominent in her coverage was her fluency in French

and her experience as a former police officer in Winnipeg. Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal MP

for Don Valley East, ON, was the only MP sampled who is a visible minority (she

emigrated to Canada from Tanzania in 1974). Neither her visible minority nor immigrant

status was mentioned in any of her coverage and it seemed to have no impact on whether

or not her coverage was gendered. Before beginning my study, I was very interested to

see if visible minority status would contribute to gendered coverage and particularly

sexualization because of othering and exoticism. The coverage of Ratansi did not indicate

that this was occurring, but this is too small of a sample to gauge widespread patterns.
 43

The final demographic category, youth, also only had one MP who fit within the

category: Niki Ashton, New Democratic MP for Churchill, MB. Ashton was actually the

youngest MP in the House and the second youngest MP ever elected at the time of

writing. As with the other politicians who fit into the demographic categories that I

studied, Ashton’s status as a youth was not mentioned in her coverage (though, it is

notable that it is very prominent on her website) nor did it seem to impact how gendered

her coverage was.

While the additional variables that I studied added interesting insights to my

conclusions, they did not detract from my original conclusions on my hypothesis. My

hypothesis was incorrect in that I predicted male and female politicians to have similar

levels of gendered coverage. My studies showed instead that women were almost twice

as likely as men to be subjected to gendered coverage. However, my hypothesis also

predicted this on the premise that male gender frames are more compatible with common

conceptions of power, and thus masculinization of news coverage is less likely to be

studied or seen as problematic because politics itself is already masculinized. My

findings were consistent with this second part of my hypothesis, especially when I looked

at which cues were more likely to be used on men and women to form gender frames.

Additional variables that affected the likelihood that a gendered frame would be used

included: the power of the MP; if the coverage occurred during an election; who was

writing the article; and whether the article was personality- or issue-based. Additional

demographic features, such as race, age, or sexual identity, seemed to have no effect.

And overall, gendered frames were quite rare in the print media that I studied.
 44

Conclusion

I designed this study to prove or disprove my hunch that male gender frames were

more prevalent than the literature let on, but that they were more acceptable in media

coverage of politicians. This was not disproven despite my findings that women were

more likely to be subject to gender frames. I certainly found that men were subject to

gender frames, and my interpretation of data leads me to believe that these frames are less

problematic for the success of politicians than gender frames on women tend to be.

However, my hypothesis that men would be subject to gender frames as often as women

was disproven. In addition, I did not expect to find that factors completely unrelated to

gender would impact the prevalence of gender frames.

The first factor I found that affected the prevalence of gender frames was when

the article was written, particularly if the article was written during an election. I found

that gender frames were much more prevalent during elections: 7.9 percent of articles

from the 2008 election contained gender frames compared to 2.5 percent of articles

during the same time period in 2009. The articles I analyzed from the 2008 election made

no indication that the issues of this election were exceptionally gendered; the main

election issues seemed to be the economy, scandals (such as the listeriosis outbreak), the

environment, Afghanistan, the arts, and equalization payments to the provinces (Waddell,

2009). None of the articles I analyzed that were gendered were so because the issue at

hand was gendered (for example, childcare policies, women’s health policies,

reproductive rights). Therefore, this election does not seem to be exceptionally gendered

and I would expect to see similar results if studying other elections.

 45

As for why this was so, I suspect that gender frames are more prevalent during

elections for two reasons. First, there is more demand for political news and more articles

are being produced. In my study, 63.3% of the articles I analyzed were from the 2008

election despite the two time periods I studied being exactly the same length. Since

people are paying more attention to politics, I suspect there will be a greater likelihood of

supplementing ‘hard’ news on political issues with ‘soft’ news on politicians. This soft

news is more likely to be of the kind of articles I found had an increased chance of

containing gender frames (personality-based stories). Second, I suspect that the

competitive aspect of an election is extremely important to the increased use of gender

frames. For one, the ‘fighting’ of an election is often tied to the use of male-specific

frames about sports and warfare. The writ drop is a declaration of war, and every

strategic move afterwards is a punch thrown, an attack blocked, a knife dodged, or a

bomb dropped until someone emerges victorious from the battlefield on election night.

Considering the association of sports and war with masculinity, an increased use of

gender frames is unsurprising given the increased use of these sorts of metaphors, and my

study showed that these sorts of metaphors were twice as likely to be used during an

election than during the non-election period.

The increased use of gender frames during an election may also stem from the

fact that an election is not just any competition, but it is a competition specifically for

power. My study showed that the more power an MP had, the more likely they were to be

subject to gender frames (no matter their gender). As women were more likely to be

subject to gender frames overall, I will focus on why this would be so for women.

Bashevkin theorizes that there is a significant amount of discomfort amongst voters in

 46

Canada when they see women in power or vying for power. She refers to this as the

women plus power equals discomfort hypothesis. Although not a problem unique to

Canada, she thinks it is particularly strong here because of the unfortunate events in

Canadian history that have led the electorate to associate women with losing (2009).

Prime Minister Kim Campbell’s astounding defeat in the 1993 election, when her party

(the Progressive Conservatives) went from having the largest majority in the history of

Canada as dissolution to having two seats after the polls, is perhaps the best example of

this. And it is at this period in our history when Bashevkin notes that the number of

women elected to federal parliament hit a stalemate. Additionally, the NDP was

considerably weaker in Parliament when Audrey McLauglin and Alexa McDonough

were leading the party than it was when Ed Broadbent led before them (Gregg, 2010).

And since Jack Layton has taken over leadership of the party, they have grown in

popularity considerably (Gregg, 2010). So, if the electorate were uncomfortable seeing

women in power, it would make sense that women would be more likely to be subjected

to gender frames when they are specifically competing for power.

My study also showed that men and women were often subjected to different

kinds of gender framing. Women were more likely to be framed using comments on their

appearance or private life, whereas men were more likely to be framed using comments

on their emotions or gender-specific narratives (such as using sport and war metaphors).

These findings are backed up by the literature. As I mentioned in my introduction, female

politicians have reported that the feel they are more likely to be identified by their marital

status while their male counterparts are more likely to be identified by their occupation.

The tendency for men to be framed using their emotions was something that I found
 47

surprising, but there has been a lot of recent research into ‘acceptable emotionality’

amongst men. It has become important for men to prove that they have emotions within a

masculine framework (European Federation of Journalists, 2006). And, as I mentioned

above, the masculine nature of the political world (particularly the competitive aspect)

contributes greatly to the use of gender-specific narratives involving sport and war.

The Private Life cue was recorded most often out of all cues (9 percent of articles)

and more often than gender frames themselves. I noted earlier that this was often as a

result of casual mentions of marital status, mentioning that a politician’s spouse or

children are helping them campaign, and so forth. However, more research needs to be

done into the prevalence of heteronormativity in Canadian politics and media coverage of

politicians. Certainly the ceremonial duties of politicians are “steeped in the symbols of

heterosexual marriage,” for instance, when the prime minister or premiers greet during

summits it is traditionally with their spouses at their sides (Globe and Mail, 2009).

Although the Canadian media is typically discreet about the private lives of politicians,

“there’s no doubt that some spouses, such as Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s wife,

Laureen, do command the public’s attention” (Globe and Mail, 2009). Additionally, the

public does love the titillation of bachelor politician antics. Former Prime Minister Pierre

Trudeau and Conservative Defence Minister Peter MacKay are excellent examples of the

media obsession created over the succession of women they were known (or suspected)

to be dating (Globe and Mail, 2009).

A surprise in my analysis was the results on sexualization. Only one politician

was found to be sexualized while none were subject to desexualization. Given than

women are more likely to be described by their appearance by men, I expected that
 48

women would be more likely to be subjected to sexualization. However, the only MP

who was sexualized in my study was Justin Trudeau. That the only instance of

sexualization occurred with a male MP is not, I think, cause to conclude that men are

more likely to be subject to sexualization. Rather, I think it speaks to the cult of celebrity

that occasionally peeks into Canadian politics. Trudeau was not sexualized merely

because he was attractive, but because he was already famous and attractive. The

announcement of his victory in the Globe and Mail began with “Justin Trudeau, heir to

one of the most famous names in Canadian politics, will succeed his father to Ottawa

after securing a victory in the Montreal riding of Papineau last night” (Peritz, 2008). The

article establishes his fame from the beginning. Although more research needs to be done

on this, I imagine that the sexualization of star candidates is related to the importance of

personality in deciding vote choice. If this study included leaders, the faces and

personalities of their parties during an election, perhaps there would be many more

instances of sexualization and desexualization!

The results of my study were not exactly encouraging in addressing concerns on

the interactions between the media and women in politics. Women were found to be

framed more often and using things arbitrary to political issues (their private lives and

their appearance), agreeing with some of the bleakest conclusions of the literature.

However, there were some encouraging findings concerning the prevalence of gender

frames. The format, author and content of the article were very good predictors of

whether or not gender frames would be used. Letters to the Editor were much more likely

than other formats of coverage to contain gender frames. This is actually really

encouraging, as this tells us that professional journalists are much less likely to use
 49

gender frames than the initial statistics suggest. Perhaps years of media analysis on this

subject has permeated journalism training and standards, or perhaps there truly has been

some progress on this front. However, Staff Editorials were also very likely to contain

gender frames. In this instance, one can find this encouraging still because editorials are

meant to contain opinions and are not meant to be neutral. News articles, by contrast,

were actually fairly gender neutral the vast majority of the time. Further study needs to be

done to see if readers actually see these different sources of information as being more or

less legitimate, more or less important, more or less informative. If they are all held to the

same standards in the eyes of the reader, then the distinctions I have made are arbitrary

and have no effect on perception. If however, the average reader does know the

difference between an editorial, a column, a letter, and a news article, this may show

hope for progress.

Additionally, articles that were personality-based (as opposed to issue-based)

were more likely to contain gender frames and sexualization. Issue-based and horse race

articles were far less likely to contain gender frames. Again, if readers are able to make

the distinction the ‘hard’ news of issue-based articles and the ‘soft’ news of personality-

based articles, this may be encouraging. As well, almost no horse race articles contained

gender frames. Given concerns of the prevalence of horse race articles in election time

news reporting and concerns of the influence of horse race articles on informing vote

choice, this is also encouraging. If these articles continue to dominate election reporting

and they contain little to no gender framing, this could be positive news for female

candidates, at the local level at least. It may not, however, be good news for female

leaders of political parties. The horse race model to describe the national race primes
 50

voters to evaluate leaders, and makes the personality of party leaders important in

determining vote choice (Bittner, 2010: 185). Voters assessing the personality of leaders

using print media will need to turn to the sort of articles that I have identified as being

most likely to contain gender frames.

There were several limitations on my study that I would like to acknowledge. The

first is that the study is based on my perceptions. Although I actively tried to be as

objective as possible, the potential remains that someone else analyzing the same articles

may perceive the use of gender frames and their cues differently, giving different results.

Certainly, this study in itself is not conclusive. This study upholds the work of scholars

before me and more studies of this kind need to occur. Nevertheless, this is a limitation

on my work. The second is that this only studied one form of media: newspapers. It

didn’t study campaign materials, television coverage, radio coverage, or online media

such as blogs. I found that gender frames were rare (5.9 percent of total coverage), but

this conclusion can only be applied to newspapers. Furthermore, because of the necessity

to be able to do my study from home, I could only use newspapers whose archives could

be accessed online for free. This eliminated ten of the politicians that I initially drew for

my sample. I did not notice that this seemed to privilege certain geographical areas over

others, so I do not think that it biased my sample, but it certainly did reduce the pool of

politicians from which I could draw. As well, I could only study English-language print

media. Although I am fairly fluent in French, I did not trust that I would be able to pick

up the subtleties the language enough to analyze media coverage accurately. Thus, no

politicians from fully Francophone ridings were analyzed and the Bloc Quebecois was

essentially eliminated from my sample. The only politician from Quebec that I analyzed
 51

was from Montreal and it was still very difficult to find enough articles on them to be

able to include them in my study (I only managed to get 4 articles out of two different

English news sources). This study is therefore better described as an analysis of English-

language newspaper coverage in Canada. Although this certainly does detract from a full

analysis of the media and gender frames in Canada, I would argue that French-Canadian

and English-Canadian media and their effects on politics should be studied separately.

The difference between English and French media coverage is not just language, but

cultural. Patterns found in French-language media should not be applied to English-

language media and vice versa because we cannot assume the difference is just in

language.

It is very possible that an analysis of other news sources would have found

significantly difficult results. The nature of print media is very different than that of other

mediums. Television, for example, might have given significantly different results

because of the need to fill more time. A newspaper need only print once daily, but news

programs need several hours of programming a day. With more time to fill, it’s very

possible that they would do so with personality-based stories and by using the opinions of

hired commentators and guests – the very sort of coverage that I found more likely to use

gender frames in print media. I also did not analyze photographs in my study, but the

addition of images may also be important for creating gender frames. Certainly the one

image of Stéphane Dion used repeatedly by the Conservative campaign during 2008 (see

Image 1) was extremely important to creating his ‘not-a-leader’ image. The images and

video selected by television executives for use could possibly have more of an impact

than any of their verbal commentary. The immense possibilities for analysis meant that
 52

Image 1: The photo of Dion used repeatedly by the Conservatives during the 2008 election
when questioning his leadership ability. Source: notaleader.ca

this was far beyond my capabilities for this particular project, but it certainly merits

further research.

When I originally thought about doing a thesis, I was interested in how media

reflected the personal lives of politicians, particularly their sexual identities and sexual

indiscretions. I found the sample size was far too small in Canada, however. This is a

barrier that I suspect is common to much media analysis in Canada. With only 308

elected officials at the national level, this leaves sample pools for visible minority,

aboriginal, gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans-identified, young, and disabled politicians

extremely small. Furthermore, because of the size of the Canadian media market, there is

a much smaller media pool to sample from than in other countries (not to mention a good

portion of our media market is saturated by American media sources). A more

appropriate study of the impact of gendered media coverage as it intersects with other

identities may be case studies.

 53

Nevertheless, my study did show that women do experience gender framing more

often than men and that this is intensified during elections. Therefore, this may be a

significant barrier for women to face in succeeding in electoral politics. What was

particularly concerning was that my research seemed to confirm (or, at least, did not

disprove) that this is partially a result of the normalization of masculinity in politics. This

means that changing the way politics is reported regarding gender and sexuality is much

more difficult than journalistic training and continued criticism and feedback. Rather, a

societal shift is needed to make politics a realm that women are not only welcomed in,

but valued (and not simply for tokenization). The political world is not unique in the

depth of its patriarchal barriers to success. However, it is particularly concerning when

we consider the goals of democratic representation and how they are affected by the

systematic underrepresentation of women and systematic devaluation of their views,

opinions, and contributions to politics. As well, government programs meant to promote

the values of feminism (“the radical notion that women are people”) have been severely

cut since the 1980s. Perhaps it is not surprising that representation of women in the

federal politics has plateaued over the past 30 years as support for gender equality

programs declined (Bashevkin, 1996). In fact, given the lack of support for organizations

and programs promoting women’s equality, it is remarkable that women’s representation

has not declined in recent years. Perhaps the upcoming election will tell a different story.

After all, within the past few years the Court Challenges Program has been cancelled,

“equality” has been removed from the mandate of Status of Women Canada (SWC), and

all funding has been cut for advocacy, lobbying and independent research projects once

sponsored by SWC (Martin, 2011). These represent significant cuts to the already
 54

dwindling financial support for feminist projects by the federal government. The

indications from my study are that the problem of gender framing and perceiving politics

is not coming from the media itself, but stems from the nature of politics. It is a vicious

circle that media representation of women will likely not improve until politics becomes

less patriarchal; but politics will likely not become less patriarchal until more women are

elected and it is unlikely that more women will be elected until women are treated

equally by the media. Programs aimed at assisting female candidates, fighting for the

rights of women who have been discriminated against, and promoting the values of

feminism could address this at its roots. I suspect that until the federal government makes

women’s equality a priority for funding again, substantial changes will not occur.
 55

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Appendix 1: Coding Sheet (2 pages)

Coding sheet – POLS 590 Honours Thesis – Amanda Judd

Question Answer (write in answer or highlight where appropriate)

Name of MP:
V1 Gender: 01 Male
02 Female
03 Other
 59

V2 Any specific demographic features of 01 Visible minority

MP: 02 Aboriginal
03 Disabled
04 Youth
05 Sexual Minority
06 Other
Details:

V3 Category and name of position in Cabinet 01 Government: Cabinet

or caucus: 02 Government: Other
03 Official Opposition: Critic
04 Official Opposition: Other
05 Other Opposition
Details:

V4 Newspaper (to be coded later)

V5 Author information: 01 News article
02 Staff editorial
03 Staff column
04 Guest editorial/column
05 News in brief/review
06 Other
Name:
Details:

V6 Date: 01 During 2008 election

02 During 2009 non-election period

V7 Is the MP mentioned in the headline or 01 Yes – Headline

byline? 02 Yes – Byline
03 Yes - Both
04 No
V8 How prevalent is the MP in the article? 01 Article about them/their policy
02 Featured in article
03 Mentioned in article
V9 Is the article…? 01 Issue based
02 Personality based
03 Horse race
04 Mixed/other:
Details:

V10 Does the article mention the MP’s 01 Yes

personal appearance? 02 No
Details? Is the reader being led to think this is an important feature of the
politician?:

V11 Does the article mention specific 01 Yes

emotions or personality features of the 02 No
MP? Details? Is the reader being led to think this is an important feature of the
politician?:
 60

V12 Does the article mention the marital 01 Yes

status, children, or sexual orientation of 02 No
the MP? Details? Is the reader being led to think this is an important feature of the
politician?:

V13 Woman specific: woman as outsider, 01 Yes

breakthrough for women, women as 02 No
agents of change Details:
Man specific: analogies using strength,
warfare or sports

V14 Is the news frame gendered? Is the gender 01 Yes, gendered

of the politician the primary descriptor 02 No, not gendered
used to describe them? Details:
If no, what are the primary descriptors?

V15 Is the politician being sexualized in the 01 Yes, being sexualized

article? 02 No, not being sexualized
03 No, and being desexualized
Details? How are they being described? Is the reader being led to think this is
an important feature of the politcian?:

Additional notes and quotes:

Vita
Amanda Lynne Judd was born in Simcoe, Ontario on August 15, 1988, the first daughter of

Theresa Lynne Judd and Leonard James Judd. After completing her high school education at
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both Holy Trinity Catholic High School in Simcoe, Ontario and Lester B. Pearson United World

College of the Pacific in Metchosin, BC, she went on to Queen’s University’s first year abroad

program at the Bader International Study Centre in Herstmonceux, England. She is completing

her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Political Studies and an International Study Certificate with

the intent to graduate in June 2011. She intends to stay at Queen’s University for an additional

year to work as the Communications Officer for the Alma Mater Society (Queen’s University

Student Government) and complete a minor in World Languages.