Gender Stereotypes In Politics

Women have always been sexualized in the media, which focuses more on the woman’s personality and looks rather than her campaign, platform and speeches. Even in historical times, there was a patriarchal society, where especially politics was seen as a male’s activity. With this historical context in mind, women were always oppressed and even with more women entering the field of politics, we still see predominately white males leading the governments. Within the past couple of years, we have seen developments in Canadian politics, where there was a record of women that were elected to Parliament. This essay will argue that the media can help female candidates in the electoral politics, but women in politics are over-sexualized, under-represented and are viewed in a more …show more content…
Female leaders face more media scrutiny, which only contributes to the media’s faithfulness to gender stereotypes that favour “men over women in positions of power” (McIntosh, 2013). The style of dress, the designer of the clothing and hairstyle, more often than not, over shadow the female politician’s formation of arguments, her opinions and policies and future visions and that, in itself is a problem. (McIntosh, 2013). It’s a problem because this is over-sexualizing and underrepresenting women in the political workplace. Erika Falk, who is the author of “Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns”, examines the campaigns and reports of every female candidate. She learned that female candidates were “subjected to quadruple the amount of appearance-based coverage in comparison to their male counterparts” (Falk, 2010). It is often hard to find the balance between being the stereotypical “soft and friendly” and “strong and charismatic” (Falk, 2010) to enforce their views on