Just 14% – fewer than one in five – of politicians featured in election coverage so far have been female, despite three parties being led by women, according to new research.
The analysis of general election coverage in TV and national newspapers by Loughborough University found that more attention was paid to leaders’ wives than politicians over the campaign. So Samantha Cameron received more attention in the first week of the campaign than Plaid Cymru chief Leanne Wood or Natalie Bennett, leader of the Greens.
The figures suggest that the media cover a lower percentage of female political leaders than their presence in the Commons would allow with 23% of all 650 MPs women.
Dr Emily Harmer from the University’s Communication Research Centre said: “Despite there being three female party leaders, a female deputy leader and several senior female MPs, coverage of women in the election remains markedly below that of their male counterparts.
“There has been a slight improvement on previous election coverage where the percentage representation of women was even lower, but considering the significant role of women in this election it is still a major issue.”
The research echoes previous research by Women in Journalism about the gender bias in the media which found that men were far more likely to be quoted and pictured in the press.
The Loughborough research found a “quotation gap” in TV coverage, with Conservatives receiving 35.3% of speaking time to Labour’s 28.7%, even though representatives of the two parties appeared the same number of times between 30 March and 15 April. There was an even wider gap in coverage by the national press, with Tory quotes taking 41.6% of the column inches to Labour’s 30.9%.
The CRC news audit for 2015 is concentrating on the main news bulletins/programmes on BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky, BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4 and all the main daily national newspapers. Coverage is analysed from Monday to Friday each week.
