Gendered News by Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

In the last fifty years, many of the institutional and societal barriers that kept Canadian women from public office have disappeared. Today, women are well-educated and well-connected, and enjoy generally equal treatment from political parties and voters. Why, then, do women constitute only a quarter of Canada’s representatives in the House of Commons - a proportion that rose by just seven percentage points between 1993 and 2011?In this illuminating study, Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant examines a significant barrier still facing women in political life: gendered media coverage. News stories are more likely to investigate the personal lives of female politicians or question their aptitude for public life, implicitly suggesting that women in public life are still marginal, or even unwelcome. These inequities in media representation undermine a politician’s credentials and call into question her fitness for office. They also lead female politicians to expect a focus on the non-professional aspects of their lives, and to censor themselves accordingly. Based on interviews with MPs and party leaders, and an analysis of print and television media in the 2000 and 2006 federal elections, Gendered News reveals an unsettling climate that affects the success and career longevity of women in office and could deter them from running at all. | Gendered News by Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters