Paper short abstract:

Visibility of Women politicians in the media contests male norm of politics and encourages more women into politics.Yet, media coverage show gender biases depicting low visibility and mainly negative portrayals.How do women politicians contribute to their own media representations in the news?

Paper long abstract:

Women politicians have long been marginalised in the political arena, aided in part by gender roles which prescribe what a woman can and cannot do, and patriarchal systems which establish, reinforce and sustain these roles. Increasing the visibility of women politicians is therefore a form of contestation against these socio-cultural structures. It breaks the male norm of politics while serving as a reference point to encourage more women into politics. However, studies on media coverage of women politicians point to gender biases that favour men politicians in both quantity and quality of coverage. Media visibility thus seem to be proving to be yet another space in which women politicians are marginalised.

Using feminist media theory and the Hierarchy of Influence model (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996; 2014), the paper takes a critical look at the production process of news coverage on women politicians. It asks: what factors shape political news selection, coverage and content production, and what contributions do women politicians make to this process? Focusing on Ghana and Nigeria, the paper analyses interviews with both news workers and women politicians. It argues that while the media are partly complicit in biases against women politicians in the news, women politicians themselves, by their actions and inactions also contribute to their near invisibility and negative portrayal in the media. The paper also reveals strategies adopted by some women politicians to gain media presence and offers insights on how women politicians can push through the boundaries of media biases to establish themselves as strong political contenders in the media space.