Rachel Reis Mourao
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Thursday, January 24, 2013
During
the 2012 Presidential election campaign, policies that have a major impact on
women have taken center stage in political discussions. Major media outlets
declared that so-called “women’s issues” played a major role in voter decisions
in both the senate and presidential elections for the first time since 1994 –
the “year of women” (Henderson
& Helderman, 2012; Steinhauer, 2012; Rikleen, 2012). What the media labeled
“women’s issues” refer to key policies that primarily affect females, such as
reproductive rights (abortion and contraception, Planned Parenthood), women’s
rights (the Equal Rights Amendment and pay equality, sexual harassment, child
welfare), and women’s roles (the relationship between career and family, women
as housewives versus household heads) (Daughton, 1994; Schaffner, 2005). However,
these issues affect not only women, but society as a whole. The very label
“women’s issues” is problematic, as it “effectively marks fully half of the
population as a ‘special interest’ group – and, therefore, in political
parlance, as a selfish minority, a group to regard with suspicion, a group that
does not seek the common good” (Daughton, 1994, p. 109).
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Depiction of Gender Gap in News Coverage |
In the context of
the 2012 elections, a non-academic study conducted by 4th State
analyzed 50,000 quotes from print and network news stories published between
November 2011 and April 2012. The results are astonishing: men are much more
likely to be the sources on stories regarding abortion, birth control, Planned
Parenthood and Women’s Rights, all considered “women’s issues”. 79% of the quotes
in print media were from males, and only 16% of the people quoted on television
were females. This reflects a tendency to not only ignore women voices, but to
ignore them even when speaking about issues that disproportionally affect
females.
The 2012 Presidential
election has been labeled the “Twitter Election” (Libit, 2012; Redick, 2012).
According to data from the Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism,
about 17% of Americans used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to learn about the
campaign, a number that doubled since January 2012. Although still limited,
Twitter usage for campaign news has doubled to 4% between January and November
of 2012. However, among those who are on Twitter, 25% report using it for
political and campaign information. Overall, 15% of American adults use
twitter, and the proportion of those who use it on a typical day has quadrupled
from late 2010, from 2% to 8%. Women are also slightly more likely to use
twitter than men (State of the News Media, 2012). According to the Armstrong
and Gao (2011), “news agencies are not taking advantage of social media to
attract an audience that traditionally has not been the focus in news content”
(p.501).
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