Women and men tend to be treated very differently by the media, worldwide. Similarly, men and women tend to have vastly different experiences of participating in political processes. Men are more visible and dominant in both media and elections; and gender stereotypes prevail in both. These differences are mutually reinforcing in the sense that less visibility of women in the media impacts their political success; and less women politicians means less news stories focusing on women leaders.

Women’s participation in politics – as voters, candidates, politicians, civil society activists, and in other roles – is important because it allows women to exercise their fundamental civil and political rights. It is also important because it allows countries to draw on the full range of human resources available to it to progress; and helps to ensure that women’s and girl’s needs are adequately met in policy-making processes. Gender stereotypes and discrimination are damaging to both men and women because they constrain individuals and society as a whole.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression acknowledges this problem, saying:

central to the issues of equal access for women to rights, equal opportunities for the enjoyment of rights, and equal treatment in that enjoyment is the actual extent to which women may exercise their rights to opinion, expression and information without discrimination and the degree to which women actually enjoy the right to participation in public life. The Special Rapporteur states again that the problem does not lie in the manner in which international human rights standards have been elaborated but rather in the restrictive and traditional interpretations and applications of human rights law. The Special Rapporteur emphasizes that it is not acceptable for women still to be dependent on men to represent their views and protect their interests nor is it acceptable that women continue to be consistently excluded from decision-making processes that not only affect them but society in general. [i]

Women’s participation in political processes has improved in most countries in recent decades. The percentage of women in parliament increased four-fold in the half-century to 1995.[ii] Nevertheless, in 2012 the percentage of women in parliament even in established democracies is still well below parity (India 11%, United States 17%, Denmark 39%).[iii] Many countries – particularly new democracies - now have policies that directly promote women candidates, often through voluntary or mandatory quota systems. Most democracies now have universal suffrage in which women have the same rights as men (even if there are more barriers to exercising them, in many countries); and civic and voter education usually targets both men and women.

Gender stereotyping and limitations to participation continue to express themselves in many ways in political life. While women’s participation as members of parliaments is growing, women are less likely to hold ministerial positions or the highest office in the country (president, prime minister, etc.). When women do hold ministerial positions, they are more likely to hold stereotypical ‘women’s’ portfolios such as social welfare rather than economics, politics, or security.[iv]

A number of factors continue to contribute to the slow progress of women in politics.  As stated in a media monitoring manual by IDEA and UN Women:

[s]everal studies indicate that the citizens support women candidates, yet the failure to promote their leadership in their own political organizations, the smaller sums of money available for their campaigns, and the cultural conditioning factors that assign them a greater responsibility in family tasks all stand in the way of their full participation.[v]

Gender discrimination is also compounded by the general news media. According to the Global Media Monitoring Project, in 2010 men were 79% of news subjects, and “[n]ews continue to portray a world in which men outnumber women in almost all occupational categories, the highest disparity being in the professions”, with obvious implications for the visibility of women in politics. The media sector has improved in some ways, however, with a growing number of female reporters in all issue areas – including ‘hard’ topics such as security, politics and economics. Women reporters were 6% more likely than male ones to have women as subjects in their stories.[vi]

It is increasingly recognized that media have a key role to play in women’s participation throughout political life. In 1994 the Inter-Parliamentary Union stated that the media can “help to instil among the public the idea that women's participation in political life is an essential part of democracy (and) can also take care to avoid giving negative or minimizing images of women and their determination and capacity to participate in politics, stressing the importance of women's role in economic and social life and in the development process in general.”[vii]

In most countries political competition during elections is played out in the media, and the media thus play a key agenda-setting role.  As emphasized in the media monitoring manual mentioned earlier, media does this by determining “issues and individuals they consider newsworthy day after day…whether a candidate is present or absent, and the type of coverage they get when they are present, all condition their chances of getting elected, since the voters extract the information they need for making their political decisions from the media.”[viii]

A number of studies have been carried out on media coverage of female candidates, revealing that even when there are a reasonable number of women candidates they are often neglected by the media. A study by International IDEA and Asociación Civil Transparencia of Peru’s 2006 elections revealed that:

• 
[e]ven though women accounted for 39 per cent of all candidates for Congress, they obtained only 19 per cent of print media coverage, 22 per cent of television coverage, and 26 per cent of radio coverage.
• Among the programmatic issues, gender equality accounted for a very small percentage of coverage (print media 0.97 per cent, television 1.3 per cent, and radio 1.6 per cent).

The Uruguay elections of 2004 and 2009 revealed similar biases:

• In general, only 3.8 per cent of political figures who featured were women, and 96.3 per cent were men. This is despite the fact that women accounted for 10.6 per cent of all the figures who were taken into account during the monitoring (2004).
• While women accounted for 22.6 per cent of all candidates, they garnered only 13.6 per cent of appearances in the campaign news in the print and broadcast media (2009).
• The issues grouped under the category ‘gender and women’s interests’ accounted for 3.5 per cent of the programmatic issues recorded.[ix]

The media’s multiple contributions to elections can also be applied to addressing gender discrimination and promoting equal participation, for example:

• Media as watchdog: media can include questions of gender discrimination in its accountability remit. Is the EMB properly addressing access for female voters? Are political parties practicing gender stereotyping and discrimination?
• Media as civic educator: media can increase its use of a range of images of women and men in different roles, challenging stereotypes.
• Media as campaign platform: in their interactions with political parties, media can encourage parties to put forward female spokespeople and use a range of images of women and men.
• Media as public voice, analyst and interpreter: media can encourage dialogue that includes a diversity of voices, and provide analysis that uses women as experts and includes a gender lens on a range of topics.

Other action is being taken on a number of fronts to address the compounded problem of women’s lack of visibility in elections-related media:

• Monitoring of media reporting of women candidates by NGOs, EOMs, EMBs, and others, and using monitoring results to raise awareness;
• Incorporating gender training into training of elections- and political-reporters and other media personnel, including “raising the awareness of journalists and media outlets as to their importance as agents of social change for building more equitable societies, and helping them move away from visions of reality that highlight men while failing to portray the presence and contributions of women in the different areas of social life”;[x]
• Hiring more female news and general media staff;
• Incorporating gender issues into capacity building for political party communications departments and spokespeople;
• Improving civic and voter education at all levels to include an understanding of gender equality and participation of women and men.