Features > February 25, 2008

Cutting Women Out

The media’s bias against female presidential candidates

By Erika Falk

Victoria Woodhull wore “dainty high-heeled boots,” observed the New York Times in an 1872 editorial on the Equal Rights Party candidate for president. In that editorial, titled “A Lamp Without Oil,” the Times had this to say about the successful stockbroker and women’s rights activist:

Mrs. Victoria C. Woodhull has been married rather more extensively than most American matrons, and hence it might be deemed inappropriate to style her a foolish virgin; yet the characteristics which have made the foolish virgins of the parable famous for nearly 19 centuries were mental rather than physical, and in her inconsequential method of reasoning. Mrs. Woodhull closely resembles them.

More than 130 years later, the Washington Post, in an article about presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), reported, “There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.” Although Clinton was talking about education policy, reporter Robin Givhan noted, “She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.”

Despite striking advances over the last century in women’s social and political rights, and in attitudes about women in politics, press coverage of women candidates is not much better today than it was in 1872. The most significant consequence of this is not that, should a woman run, the press would make it less likely for her to win. Rather, the real problem is that such press coverage may make women less likely to run.

Though the mainstream media tend to frame women who run for president as novelties, they are not. Women have led nations such as Canada, France and the United Kingdom, not to mention Turkey, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and many others. In fact, there have been so many historical and contemporary women heads of state that one has to scroll through pages to get a complete list.

Here at home, women have been running for the presidency since before universal suffrage, as Woodhull’s candidacy demonstrates.

In his comprehensive list of people who have run for president, James Havel, author of U.S. Presidential Candidates and the Elections: A Biographical and Historical Guide, included more than 100 women’s names. Some of these women were serious candidates, qualified for federal primary matching funds, and even received substantial press coverage. Here are a few:

Woodhull ran as the Equal Rights Party candidate in 1872. She owned her own newspaper, was the first woman stockbroker on Wall Street, and presided over and supported her extended family.

The second woman to run for president was Belva Lockwood in 1884. As an attorney and partner in her own firm, and as the first woman to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court, she had a profession consistent with those of other presidential candidates. Lockwood had also campaigned for presidential candidate Horace Greeley, and drafted a piece of legislation making it illegal to take into account a person’s sex in determining pay for civil servants. Congress later passed the bill.

Former Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) sought the presidential nomination of the Republican Party and was the first woman already holding federal office to run. She ran in 1964 after serving nine years in the House and 15 years in the Senate. Smith placed third in popular votes in the Republican primary, but she received only 27 delegate votes at the convention that ultimately nominated Barry Goldwater.

In 1988, former Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), a Harvard-educated attorney who had served in Congress for eight terms, ran for president. At the time, she was a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Twelve years later, Elizabeth Dole sought the Republican nomination. Also a Harvard-educated lawyer, Dole had served in the cabinet of two different presidential administrations (as secretary of transportation and secretary of labor) and had executive experience as president of the American Red Cross. She is currently a U.S. senator from North Carolina.

In 2004, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) ran for president, making her the most recent woman to seek the nomination until Clinton’s 2007 declaration. A Chicago native, Moseley Braun had served six years as an assistant U.S. attorney, 10 years in the Illinois House of Representatives and one term as U.S. senator. She was the ambassador to New Zealand during President Clinton’s administration.

When comparing the press coverage of eight women who sought the Oval Office between 1872 and 2004—Woodhull, Lockwood, Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Lenora Fulani, Schroeder, Dole and Moseley Braun—with the coverage of eight men who ran in their respective races and had similar experience—James Black, Benjamin Butler, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Jackson, Ron Paul, Richard Gephardt, Steve Forbes and Bob Graham—it’s clear women who have run for the Oval Office have not been treated fairly by the press. In fact, this trend became evident after looking at each campaign and the newspaper coverage in each candidate’s home state, as well as looking at the top six circulating newspapers in the United States (USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Denver Post and Chicago Tribune).

Because data from Clinton’s campaign is still too new, much of the information draws on earlier women candidates.

Less coverage, less substance

Based on these eight races, women candidates for president consistently received less press coverage than equivalent men running in the same race. On average, the men candidates earned twice as many articles as the women, and the articles about the men were 7 percent longer.

The available data for the Clinton/Barack Obama (D-Ill.) race was on par with this pattern. In January 2007—the first month of Clinton’s and Obama’s candidacies—the six U.S. newspapers with the highest circulation ran 59 stories that mentioned Obama in the headline and just 36 that mentioned Clinton.

In addition to giving women less overall coverage, the press gave women candidates less substantive coverage. In the eight races, men were likely to have more issues covered than the women.

The average apportionment of paragraphs dedicated to the issues was 16 percent for the women and 27 percent for the men. In other words, the men had 68 percent more paragraphs written about issues than did the women.

In the first month of her campaign, Clinton did better than most women who preceded her: 22 percent of her paragraphs were about issues. However, that still falls short of the average amount of policy coverage afforded male candidates.

Doting on appearance

Not only does the press skimp on important issue coverage, it is also more likely to include extraneous information. Coverage of how women candidates look—while ignoring such observations about men candidates—has been an ongoing problem of mainstream political reporting.

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• Reader Comments

  I want to “talk” about how I was such a Hillary Clinton fan until I saw two acts that caused me to turn away.  First, the crying scene where she said that she was just so emotional because she cares so much about the country.  I saw no men cry in their telling about their qualifications.  I was disgusted that she would cry to show she was overwhelmed about anything.  Other women leaders that were mentioned in the article weren’t depicted as ones who showed their ability to lead their countries by crying.

  The second act that turnd me away from Hillary Clinton was the interview with Katey Couric in which she is asked what is the worst advice she was ever given.  She seemed unprepared for such a question, and she immediately talked about her hair style.  I was waiting to hear about advice in a political event, as was told by her competitors.

  I also thought it unfair that Bill Clinton got coverage as he campaigned for his wife when other candidates’ spouses did not.  Why didn’t we see Michelle Obama on he news each time we saw Bill Clinton?  The other candidates were seen as strong enough to be the focus.  Hillary was using her husband as a crutch.  I think he actually hurt her more than helped her.  But the point is that the extra coverage for the previous president showed media bias for the woman who couldn’t stand on her own.

  Posted by Larraine on Feb 27, 2008 at 11:38 AM

  Your study and your analysis are greatly appreciated and needed. But full disclosure is also important. Such as in the case of the example from Robin Givhan, whose cleavage comments I at first thought had been included in a news story about Hillary Clinton. Why did you not explain that Robin Givhan is a fashion journalist for The Washington Post and has commented on the apparel of many powerful people in politics, including the parka that Dick Cheney wore to an anniversary ceremony for the liberation of Auschwitz that she found screamingly inappropriate? Somehow attention to appearance in a fashion report is less offensive than in a news story or editorial.

  Posted by emmonskaren on Mar 3, 2008 at 9:57 PM

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Also by Erika Falk

• Cutting Women Out
  The media's bias against female presidential candidates