Joanna Everitt

Filtering the female: Television news coverage of the 1993 Canadian leaders' debates

This article uses televised news reports of the 1993 Canadian leaders’ debates to examine gendered mediation in the coverage of women politicians. By assessing the preponderance of interpretive versus descriptive coverage for the male and female debate participants we show that coverage of female political leaders is more filtered than men’s. A comparison of actual debate behavior and sound bite coverage also reveals that political coverage tends to marginalize women when they fail to conform to traditional masculine norms of political behavior but will over-emphasize the behavior counter to traditional feminine stereotypes when they do behave combatively. As a result, the women’s soundbites focused disproportionately on aggressive verbal behavior and gestures. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: Website: ]

Public Opinion and Social Movements: The Women's Movement and the Gender Gap in Canada

Little research provides concrete evidence of relationships between socialization by the womens movement and support for feminism and equality. Support for these issues has increased in Canada since the early 1970s, and using cohort analysis this study demonstrates clear generational differences in this support. The greatest support appears among womens movement and post-womens-movement cohorts. Furthermore, this article identifies gender differences on feminism and equality not appearing in the aggregate data. These differences increase with added controls for education and employment, suggesting links between womens attitudes and the development of a gender consciousness.

Candidate Gender, Behavioral Style, and Willingness to Vote: Support for Female Candidates Depends on Conformity to Gender Norms

This article explores the impact that women’s and men’s nonverbal forms of communication have on voters’ evaluations of political figures. The results indicate that nonverbal cues employed by female and male politicians during political speeches trigger both leadership and gender stereotypes. Furthermore, these behaviors produce different reactions among male and female viewers. Our results indicate that while female politicians are not generally stereotyped as being less agentic (strong leaders, aggressive, tough, confident, or decisive) than men, when they are observed using agonic (assertive, expressive, or choppy) hand movements, their assessments drop. Men demonstrating the same behavior see their leadership assessments improve. Nonverbal cues have little effect on gender-based stereotypes linked to communal qualities such as being caring, sociable, emotional, sensitive, and family oriented, but do impact willingness to vote for a candidate. Women are more likely to receive votes particularly from male respondents if they are calm and contained. Male candidates are more likely to be supported by both women and men when they communicate using assertive nonverbal behaviors.