The Year of the Woman

The Year of the Woman

Reporters portray female and male candidates differently when covering campaigns for political office. In order to counteract the biased coverage in the papers the women of the 1992 Senate race used 30-second advertising spots to assert their key issue stances and strengths. Though this was not the sole purpose of their ads, they were very much geared toward compensating for the lack of fair coverage they were receiving in the news. Ultimately they persevered. Through verbal and nonverbal content, as defined by Lynda Lee Kaid, women designed their ads to portray a high level of competence. 1992 is widely known as 'The Year of the Woman,' when 5 women won Senate seats and 24 new women were elected to the House. "All male Senate races received more press coverage than races which included female candidates,' but despite male biased journalistic media coverage, 'women of the 1992 election succeeded with strong campaign spots," that helped them redefine themselves to the public and win constituent votes.

Though women and men receive an equal amount of coverage by newspapers, "the content of the coverage that women receive as opposed to men, during an election is extremely different and male biased." Newspaper readers are more likely to read about a female candidate's personal life, appearance, or personality while reading about a male's stance on governmental issues. This gives the man more credibility as a candidate. Compared to coverage of male candidates, coverage of a female candidate is, "more personal, less issue based, and less likely to include evidence or reasoning to support quoted remarks". Ultimately women are portrayed as less informed on issues and instead as icons rather than educated citize...

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...er women in this study won representation of their state. Each woman focused her ad on something different. It is clear that Braun's ad is heavily laden with endorsements, legislative achievements and highlights of power and leadership while at the same time concentrating a huge portion of the ad on family values. Boxer's theme was to fight for change and Dianne Fienstein highlighted her achievements in the face of undue hardship. Seargant and Ferraro took their ads and focused on highlighting power and leadership. Ultimately all of the women had feminine ad campaigns that were positive outlooks on women rather than weak, negative and superficially concerned. Though men started out with an unfair advantage of positive journalistic media coverage in 1992, women created ad campaigns that overcame the unbalance and won more seats in the House and Senate than ever before.