Theoretical Perspectives on the News Visibility Gender Gap

Extensive research over several decades leaves little doubt that politicians with influential positions (e.g., ministers, senior politicians, incumbents, committee leaders) receive more media attention (see Vos Reference Vos2014 for an overview). Focusing specifically on the role of gender in news visibility, Kahn’s groundbreaking studies (e.g., Reference Kahn1994) from the early 1990s uncovered how women in politics in the United States were underrepresented in news coverage.Footnote ² Her findings inspired numerous studies of gender inequality in political news in the following decades. Most of the explanations put forward in this body of research can largely be characterized as demand-side perspectives, focusing on how news production is infused by the same gender imbalances as the rest of society, which in turn leads to a lower demand for female voices in political news. There are also potential supply-side explanations underlying the news visibility gap, but these have received little attention in the literature. They are nevertheless important because they allow us to address how, for instance, negative experiences could depress efforts to gain news access more among women politicians than among their male counterparts.

Examining the demand-side arguments first, the two dominant narratives regarding gender inequality in political news emphasize different aspects of the news production process. The first stresses the importance of informal, same-gender networks in a context where a majority of journalists (and politicians) are still male (Aalberg and Strömbäck Reference Aalberg and Strömbäck2011, 170–1; Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross Reference Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ross1996; Van der Pas and Aaldering Reference Van der Pas and Aaldering2020, 117). In very simple terms, the point is that male journalists tend to favor male sources in their networks. Thus, in a world where men have dominated political journalism (Byerly Reference Byerly2016; Van Dalen Reference Van Dalen2012), women in politics lag behind their male counterparts in establishing close ties with journalists. In sum, the outcome would be that “the male majority of journalists reach out more easily to a male politician as a source for an article, resulting in men politicians being more visible in the news” (Van der Pas and Aaldering Reference Van der Pas and Aaldering2020, 117). However, the same-gender aspect should not necessarily be interpreted on the level of the individual journalist; female journalists have also been shown to prioritize male sources (Ross et al. Reference Ross, Evans, Harrison, Shears and Wadia2013, 13), indicating that this mechanism can be understood on an aggregate, professional level. Although there are more women political journalists than in the past, the practices of the male majority will likely continue to influence how women journalists establish networks.

The second narrative on gender inequality in news reporting builds on theories of cognitive processes that are believed to influence whom journalists pay attention to. Van der Pas and Aaldering (Reference Van der Pas and Aaldering2020, 117) explain this as resulting from stereotypes, the main idea being that stereotypical representations of men are more closely linked to stereotypical representations of politics. Men are associated with public (as opposed to private) life (O’Neill, Savigny, and Cann Reference O’Neill, Savigny and Cann2016) and with qualities often deemed important to politics and political positions such as leadership, ambition, aggression, independence, and self-confidence (Brescoll Reference Brescoll2016; Eagly and Karau Reference Eagly and Karau2002; Lawless Reference Lawless2004). Consequently, the argument is that journalists are programmed to think more often (and differently) of male politicians when reporting on politics. Gendered networks and stereotypes likely reinforce each other, lowering the demand for female voices in political news: Traditional stereotypes induce journalists to build and maintain male-dominated networks, and male-dominated networks serve to reinforce stereotypical conceptions of men, women, and politics.

Supply-side perspectives have been less visible in the academic debate. Consequently, the argument below builds on a theoretical reasoning for which we have only limited empirical inspiration. Although the demand-side perspective is firmly rooted in the literature and could stand on its own, we choose to include supply-side considerations because we believe they deserve more scholarly attention. Our starting assumption is that women and men in politics have similar levels of media motivation. Therefore, their supply of input to political news should be comparable. However, as is clearly evident from research on the demand-side mechanisms, women politicians face greater obstacles in relation to media work. They seek access to networks that are male dominated and less open to women, and they experience gendered stereotyping of politics and power. Furthermore, women in politics are subject to more negativity following their public performances (Rheault, Rayment, and Musulan Reference Rheault, Rayment and Musulan2019). We argue that these obstacles, caused by a combination of gendered journalistic practices and gendered patterns of public harassment, cannot be assumed to be independent of supply-side mechanisms. In other words, we find it reasonable to assume that negative experiences could depress the motivation for media work or the value attached to media work among women in politics. Relevant empirical examples are scarce in this literature, but a study of parliamentarians in Norway and Sweden did find that men MPs value media coverage more highly than their women colleagues do (Aalberg and Strömbäck Reference Aalberg and Strömbäck2011, 179). Still, to the extent that media access is vital for their job and career, we contend that women politicians continue to seek media access on the same level as do their male colleagues despite a larger share of negative experiences.

Prior research (see Van der Pas and Aaldering Reference Van der Pas and Aaldering2020 for an overview) suggests that the gender inequality mechanisms discussed above might not be present or equally strong across contexts. Therefore, the subsequent section develops our core theoretical argument and explains how electoral systems significantly moderate the effects of both the demand- and supply-side mechanisms of gender bias.

Electoral Systems and the Gender Gap in Political News

The literature on gender bias in news coverage is still lacking in theoretical perspectives addressing the role of political systems. Covering thousands of politicians from several countries, Van der Pas and Aaldering (Reference Van der Pas and Aaldering2020) pick up this challenge in a recent meta-analysis. Of the potential moderators they examine, using the findings of 70 studies on news visibility, only one proves decisive: electoral systems. According to their results, there is no gender gap in countries with plurality voting, whereas the difference between the genders in countries with proportional representation is statistically and substantively significant, averaging approximately 17 percentage points.

Although this conclusion seems robust, its explanations are lacking. The authors’ own expectation was exactly the opposite, on the grounds that personal characteristics would be more important in systems with plurality voting because they tend to produce a personalized electoral connection.Footnote ³ We believe this argument fails to sufficiently integrate knowledge about electoral systems with the study of differences in news coverage of men and women politicians. The broad and ambitious focus of Van der Pas and Aaldering’s (Reference Van der Pas and Aaldering2020) study leaves little room for a more elaborate theoretical discussion of electoral systems. Therefore, our discussion below picks up this thread, elaborating on why electoral systems are likely to affect gender disparities differently in the context of political communication than in terms of political representation. As for the latter, research leaves little doubt that PR systems are better at promoting gender-equal representation (Tremblay Reference Tremblay2012). In terms of the former, however, we argue that an opposite relationship between PR and plurality systems concerning the gender balance in political news is in fact no surprise at all.

Electoral districts play a central role in our explanation. Plurality voting systems usually have SMDs, whereas PR systems are characterized by MMDs. This means that when representatives go to their respective legislative bodies, they do so in two different ways: alone or in groups. This fundamental distinction affects the extent to which both the demand- and supply-side mechanisms of gender bias can affect political news. Starting with the demand-side arguments, MMDs create an opportunity for gendered hierarchies within a group of MPs from the same district. This is an entirely different structure of potential sources for journalists when compared with the SMD context. In each district in a PR-system, there is a list of potential contacts and thus a choice to be made, consciously or not, as to whom one approaches. This is not the case in a plurality system, where the electoral institution produces a much more restricted set of alternatives for journalists. Consequently, the threshold for establishing gendered networks is lower in the PR context, and gendered stereotypes potentially play a larger role because journalists can choose between MP sources in a district.

By this we do not mean that electoral districts dominate other considerations in news source selection or that journalists never have the possibility to choose among sources from different districts. Instead, we merely posit that geography and districts matter to the production of political news. This is neither a controversial nor a demanding assumption. Concrete domestic events reported in the news take place somewhere, and whenever politics is somehow involved, the political representative(s) of this somewhere will be a relevant source. More generally, democratic representation is territorial (with a few exceptions) in the sense that geographical areas hold seats in parliament, and political news reporting should be able to reflect this territorial dimension of politics. Note, for instance, how districts vary in terms of their (actual or perceived) interests: some are considered particularly important for specific industries or businesses; some might be symbolic or substantive strongholds of specific voter segments; and some are considered as dominant in—or representative of—the surrounding region. MPs are thus newsworthy when events take place in their district or when the interests typical of their district are on the agenda. When this is the case, differences between electoral systems become decisive for source selection: a plurality system provides practically no leverage for gendered networks and stereotypes simply because there can be no gendered hierarchy within a single-member district. All else being equal, the likelihood of a woman politician to access the news—relative to a male colleague—should therefore be higher in an SMD system.

Note also that once she has gained media access, she is likely to be contacted again. The constant pressure to produce content pushes journalists to lower the costs of source selection (Vos and Wolfgang Reference Vos and Wolfgang2018, 767). Furthermore, the reciprocal nature of journalist–politician relations (Maurer and Beiler Reference Maurer and Beiler2018, 2025), where each in turn provides the other with political information or public attention, is conducive to mutually beneficial exchanges also in the future. Both of these perspectives can explain why journalists work with largely fixed lists of contacts (Hooghe, Jacobs, and Claes Reference Hooghe, Jacobs and Claes2015, 409). The point is that the lower SMD barrier toward gender equality stems from news where districts matter but that it eventually also spills over to source selection in news stories where districts might be irrelevant.

Turning to the supply-side argument, there are also elements of electoral systems that can affect how highly MPs prioritize getting into journalists’ networks and the news. Politicians know that the media is important for their careers and the promotion of their political work (Lengauer, Donges, and Plasser Reference Lengauer, Donges, Plasser and Pfetsch2014). They also know that the interests of their districts can be advanced through news attention. Even though women politicians experience greater obstacles when seeking media attention, they are not likely to reduce their media efforts, unless they can do so at low costs to themselves and their districts. Again, the electoral system acts as an important moderator. There are two main aspects to this argument. First, there is a stronger individualization of reelection chances and campaign strategies in SMDs (André, Freire, and Papp Reference André, Freire, Papp, Deschouwer and Depauw2014), producing stronger incentives to be visible to the electorate compared with MMDs. In the latter context, different campaign tasks can be distributed among party candidates of a district, which also raises the possibility of a gendered division of labor (Van der Pas Reference Van der Pas2022, 1488). Second, the personalized electoral connection of SMDs also entails a stronger district orientation among MPs compared with the MMD context (Pilet, Freire, and Costa Reference Pilet, Freire and Costa2012). Translated to our case, MPs in an SMD system are individually responsible for representing their district and ensuring that interests and concerns are voiced, also in the media. This responsibility is fragmented in a PR system, divided among all the MPs from the district. Media work, then, is a more necessary requirement for MPs who represent a district alone than for those who represent a district together with, say, 10 other MPs.

Recalling our discussion above, we have argued that there is a potential gender gap in the value attached to media work by MPs, stemming from a systematically biased distribution of negative experiences with incivility or harassment, gendered stereotyping, and gendered networks in news production. The theoretical mechanism we propose is that MMDs lower the costs associated with reduced media visibility and that MPs who are more exposed to negative experiences therefore can downgrade their media work. Meanwhile, in an SMD setting, the costs of reduced media visibility are simply higher. Therefore, men and women politicians alike have no choice but to make the required effort regardless of their previous experience with the media.

In summary, the discussion above turns previous theoretical arguments (Van der Pas and Aaldering Reference Van der Pas and Aaldering2020) upside down: a plurality system with a personalized electoral connection makes personal characteristics such as gender less important to the news visibility of politicians. Our argument thus contributes with new perspectives on the important mechanisms connecting electoral systems and gender equality—and should by extension also provide nuances to the debate about what a “good” electoral system is. The barriers to gender equality in formal political representation are fewer and lower in a PR system than in a plurality system (Tremblay Reference Tremblay2012). But those that pass this threshold will experience that the underrepresentation of women in political news is worse in a PR system.

Even if we observe the hypothesized difference between an MMD and SMD context, a causal claim about electoral institutions and the gender gap is still in want of stronger support. The opportunity to manipulate district sizes in our chosen cases would strengthen causal inferences, but this is obviously not possible; we cannot observe the gender gap of an SMD in Norway or the difference between men and women MPs from an MMD in the UK. What we can do, though, is to formulate additional observable implications of our theoretical argument (King, Keohane, and Verba Reference King, Keohane and Verba1994, 24). We will do this by making use of the variation in district features within both the MMD and SMD contexts.

First, although there is no variation in the number of seats across districts in (most) plurality systems, the SMDs still vary on other dimensions. Our main argument holds that SMDs provide a barrier against gender bias, in part because districts are important at different stages in the news production process. First, important districts should be represented in journalists’ networks or lists of contacts. And second, as a journalist, you cannot choose from a gendered hierarchy of MPs whenever districts matter to a news story. But this also means that if we flip the latter part of our original argument, the theoretical expectation would be that when districts matter less to news production, SMDs will provide a weaker barrier to gender bias. The question then becomes how to proxy situations in which districts are less important from a journalistic perspective.Footnote ⁴ As it happens, research has repeatedly shown that proximity is a key news value (e.g., Shoemaker et al. Reference Shoemaker, Lee, Han, Cohen and Devereux2007), which is why, for instance, geographical proximity to the capital affects news attention in national media (Jones Reference Jones2008). The hypothesized protection against gender bias inherent to SMDs could therefore be expected to wear off when the distance to the capital increases. Put differently, the gendered demand logic kicks in when distance increases: journalists are more likely to establish contacts with and report about the male MP from the remote district X than the female MP from the remote district Y. If this is correct, we should observe a gender gap in news where MPs from remote districts are present, presumably because they are more often selected as sources for reasons other than the district they represent. Any indication of such a pattern will strengthen our belief in the general argument about electoral systems and the gender gap. Note that this first observable implication of our argument relates to the demand-side explanation, emphasizing the role of gendered news practices and the decisions made by journalists and news institutions.

Finally, although we have no SMDs in a PR system, we can make use of the considerable variation in the number of seats across districts in Norway. It follows from our general argument that district size (in seats) could matter beyond the binary SMD–MMD distinction (see also Pilet, Freire, and Costa Reference Pilet, Freire and Costa2012 for a similar argument relating to district orientation among MPs). In contrast to the previous discussion, it is the supply-side logic in particular that is relevant here. The demand-side logic is more strongly aligned with the original argument based on the binary distinction (one seat vs. many) between electoral systems; the possibility of gendered journalistic practices already arises with four seats (lowest number in Norway), as long as MPs are of different genders. But from the supply-side perspective, moving from a binary (one seat vs. many) to a continuous (number of seats) distinction should add relevant nuances. The incentives for a woman MP in a PR system to prioritize media work should be stronger if she represents a district where MPs compete over few seats and where the burden of representing district interests in media debates is shared with a small (as opposed to high) number of colleagues. In terms of our original argument, which holds that PR lowers the costs associated with downgrading media work, the idea is simply that this cost reduction should be weaker in districts with fewer seats. Thus, in a PR context, we should be able to observe a pattern where the gender gap in news visibility varies according to district size.

Describing the Gender Gap in News Visibility

Figure 1 illustrates two very different paths toward more gender-balanced political representation in Norway and the UK. The share of female MPs is below 50% in both countries, but it is considerably higher in Norway. Moreover, it is mostly during the recent decade that women in the UK have started to close the gap in formal representation.

Figure 1. Percentage of Women MPs, Norway and UK, 1997–2020

Source: World Development Indicators.

On an aggregate level, the persistent male dominance in political representation inevitably affects parliamentary activities as well as the content of political news. Table 1 shows the summed counts of news appearances and legislative speeches by gender, which clearly communicates a story about biases.Footnote ^11, Footnote ¹² Men MPs receive 3–5.5 times the coverage of women MPs and give 2–4 times the legislative speeches of women MPs. Of course, these ratios are largely dictated by the graph in Figure 1 above. They nevertheless tell us something about the dominating presence of men in politics and political communication. Although the bias is certainly present in both countries, the PR system appears substantially more balanced than the plurality system when examining aggregate numbers.

Table 1. Summed Counts of News Appearances and Legislative Speeches, Norway and UK

Presenting the same data on the individual MP level as the mean counts of news visibility and legislative speeches, the story communicated in Table 2 is slightly different. The gender gap in legislative speeches largely disappears when accounting for the number of men and women MPs in this manner. Although a large imbalance in news visibility remains, the UK now appears to be the less-biased system. Men MPs in Norway receive 1.8 times their women colleagues’ news attention, and the corresponding ratio in the UK is substantially lower (1.4). We also added here the gender gap in terms of legislative experience to highlight another remarkable difference between the two systems. The slow pace at which women have entered the House of Commons in the UK means that the experience gap in the UK remains considerable, whereas the average man and woman MP in Norway have careers of nearly equal length.

Table 2. Mean News Appearances, Legislative Speeches, and Experience, Norway and UK

Summing up the raw counts, the gender gap can be experienced quite massively by the public each day, considering how the news we consume on the aggregate contains up to more than five times the coverage of male MPs. And it can be experienced by the MPs themselves of course, as woman MPs must accept that their male colleagues receive up to twice their coverage. However, a more nuanced picture of gender differences requires multivariate models, which we present below.

Multivariate Models of the Gender Gap in News Visibility

We report our multivariate models of the visibility gap in Table 3. The stepwise inclusion of variables indicates that neither list position nor legislative speeches and experience can account for the gender gap in Norway. Party, cabinet, and district characteristics matter somewhat though, reducing the coefficient for the gender variable from –0.524 to –0.413. In the UK, stepwise modeling clearly suggests that the individual-level visibility gap from Table 2 is strongly linked to the gender gap in parliamentary experience. When including this in the multivariate models, the gender effect almost disappears.

Table 3. Multilevel Negative Binomial Regression Models of Quarterly News Visibility for MPs, United Kingdom and Norway

Note: Standard errors in parentheses.

^aUK—Margin of votes; NO—List position (inverted).

*p < 0.10, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01.

Given that coefficients from negative binomial regression models do not have intuitive or easy interpretations, we estimate predicted news visibility counts for men and women MPs, with all control variables held constant at their means. The results, based on the full models in both countries, are reported in Table 4.

Table 4. Predicted News Visibility of MPs by Gender, United Kingdom and Norway

Note: *p < 0.10, ^**p < 0.05, ^***p < 0.01.

Overall, when controlling for experience and a range of other confounders, the UK exhibits gender equality in MP news coverage, whereas Norway appears to lag. In fact, the predicted news coverage of men and women MPs in the UK is practically equal. In contrast, male Norwegian MPs receive 6.6 more counts per quarter than do female MPs, a difference equaling a ratio of 1.6. In the UK, the descriptive gender gaps in the raw counts shown above are still relevant: women are less likely to be MPs, and once they are, they are likely to have less experience. But the multivariate models show that for each step taken in terms of bridging the formal gender gap (in representation and experience), gender equality also in aggregate news visibility should come ever closer. In Norway, however, the gap that was apparent in the descriptive statistics does not disappear in our extensive, multivariate models.

Figures 2 and 3 report the results of two additional analyses designed to test the observable implications of our general argument.Footnote ¹³ Looking at Figure 2 first, the UK plot is based on a model in which the gender variable was interacted with district distance from capital. The expected relationship is clearly visible. Predicting the news visibility for MPs from the most remote districts (e.g., northern Scotland), we find that women representatives receive nearly half the attention their male counterparts receive (6.2 vs. 11.7 appearances per quarter). Although the news visibility of men MPs is unaffected by the geographical distance from their district to the capital, women MPs gradually receive less news attention as this distance increases. In other words, journalists report less on MPs from remote districts only when these MPs are women.

Figure 2. The Effect of District Distance to Capital on News Visibility across Gender, UK

Figure 3. The Effect of District Size (in Seats) on News Visibility across Gender, Norway

Figure 3 is based on the Norwegian data, illustrating how district size in seats matters for the gender gap within a PR system. The plot graphs predicted news visibility estimated from a model where district size (in seats) was interacted with gender (see Appendix A, Table A2). The results indicate that although male MPs become more visible as their district size increases, the corresponding trend is weaker for women MPs.Footnote ¹⁴ Thus, when considering the smallest districts, these bear a closer resemblance to the gender balance in the UK, whereas districts with higher numbers of seats exhibit a larger gender gap. In fact, the constituencies with the most seats have a gender gap that is nearly four times as large as the corresponding gap in smaller constituencies.Footnote ¹⁵ Overall, both the main results and the supplementary tests provide support for the idea that electoral systems, and particularly the size of electoral districts, matter to the gender visibility gap in political news.

Several alternative models and data set-ups have been tested to assess the robustness of the findings reported above. The outcome clearly indicates that our conclusions remain the same regardless of model specifications: neither robust standard errors nor the inclusion of a lagged dependent variable influences results (see Appendix A, Table A5). Furthermore, pooling the Norwegian and UK data in one model using only the common variables across systems makes no difference (see Appendix A, Table A6 and A7). The same goes for replacing quarterly data with either monthly or yearly observations (see Appendix A, Table A8).

In a final robustness test, we explore whether separating campaign periods from routine times affects our findings of, respectively, a gender bias (Norway) and a lack of gender bias (the UK). The motivation stems from the idea that mechanisms underlying gender gaps could be different during election campaigns due to stronger incentives to be visible to the public. Additionally, we find it useful to explore this distinction because we rely on data from both routine times and campaign periods, whereas the bulk of previous empirical work rests more strongly on data from campaign periods.Footnote ¹⁶ Table A9 in Appendix A displays the four models (two models for each country), suggesting no substantial differences in the gender coefficient across campaign and routine contexts in either Norway or the UK.