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Press response to women politicians: a comparative study of suffragettes and contemporary Scottish Parliament leaders.

Pedersen, Sarah

Authors



Abstract

Celebrity culture and the personalisation of both politics and the media in the last few decades has exacerbated the media's focus on the appearance of women politicians. However, this article argues that we can see a similar approach to women politicians when they first appeared in newspapers over a hundred years ago. Using evidence from Scottish newspapers' coverage of the suffragettes in the early twentieth century and comparing it to coverage of contemporary Scottish women politicians, this article demonstrates that the reporting of these early women politicians had the same focus on body and appearance, the same concerns about clothing choices and the same discussion of their domestic lives. However, it is also suggested that, to a certain extent, the construction of the woman politician as different or other and the focus on appearance, bodies and even their maternal role was part of a discourse promoted by the suffragettes themselves in their campaign for the vote. Women needed to be presented as different from men, as supplying a necessary feminine touch to politics, and this needed to be clearly exemplified in their physical appearance. However, this has left an unwanted legacy for contemporary women politicians.

Citation

PEDERSEN, S. 2018. Press response to women politicians: a comparative study of suffragettes and contemporary Scottish Parliament leaders. Journalism studies [online], 19(5), pages 709-725. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1200953

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 29, 2016
Online Publication Date Jun 29, 2016
Publication Date Apr 4, 2018
Deposit Date Aug 3, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Journalism studies
Print ISSN 1461-670X
Electronic ISSN 1469-9699
Publisher Taylor and Francis
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 19
Issue 5
Pages 709-725
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1200953
Keywords Feminine; Media; Newspapers; Scottish; Suffragettes; Women politicians
Public URL http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1553
Related Public URLs http://hdl.handle.net/10059/2187
http://hdl.handle.net/10059/2386
http://hdl.handle.net/10059/141
http://hdl.handle.net/10059/628
http://hdl.handle.net/10059/2588
https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/363089
https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/392183
http://hdl.handle.net/10059/293
http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1177

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