The portrayal of female leaders in the media: Framing Theory, agenda setting and gatekeeping

Author: Jodi O'Callaghan


As Australia emerges in to a new era of leadership with its first ever female Prime Minister, the Australian media is for the first time also reporting on a woman in this position of power.

Ironically there has been an abundance of media coverage recently on the inequality of salaries paid to men compared to salaries paid to women in the same job. According to a 2009 survey by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, on average women are paid 17% less than men in an identical role. The survey also found that in some cases a degree educated and qualified female can be perceived as a hindrance to an organisation, where conversely a male is rewarded with higher remuneration for the same education and degree! For a more in depth look at this subject check out the 1 May 2010 issue The Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend.

Even economic commentator Ross Gittins couldn’t resist having a dig at the gender pay gap, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald that “Forgive me, but I'm tickled by the latest joke: the good thing about having a woman as prime minister is we don't have to pay her as much.”!

For a first world developed country, Australia falls significantly behind the rest of the developed world and even the developing world in various aspects of gender equality, from equal pay and paid maternity leave to the representation of senior women in business. Interestingly Germany, Britain, New Zealand and even India have all experienced female leadership in their Prime Ministers, and Sweden has even developed legislation around paternity leave providing more equality and opportunity for fathers to raise their children, and as a result, the country is supposedly seeing a dramatic, more balanced change to society for the better.

Additionally Australia has an under-representation of women in senior positions and on boards, so much so that a working group of Australian business heavyweights has been established by current Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, to promote the benefits to corporate Australia of having women in senior positions and on boards.

With such a disappointing proportion of senior women in business, and the fact they’re not being paid equally to their male counterparts, never has there been a more interesting time to observe the portrayal of a senior woman in the media, in the ultimate leadership role of Prime Minister.

Some media academics refer to Framing Theory, otherwise known as ‘framing bias’ and ‘news slant’ in the reporting of news, one aspect of which is distortion bias or falsification of reality, while others refer to the motivation and mindset of the journalist framing the information as decision-making bias. In this way, framing can be considered the first part to agenda setting in which journalists and gatekeepers define what issues are not only newsworthy for discussion in the public sphere, but what the slant will be on a certain issue.

More critical members of the public may question not only what is in that framed message or image but also what is missing from it, thus considering alternatives to the message or image being communicated to them. By selecting to run certain stories with a certain news slant, news editors not only limit debate around an issue but also omit enough information about an issue to the point that an alternative frame does not exist, especially for less discerning members of the public.

Ultimately, there are a number of gatekeepers to get through before an issue is made news, and what is considered news, is open to interpretation.

One aspect of interpretation is based on the individual journalist and their own values, attitudes, worldview, their construction of reality - not least their gender and the experiences they’ve had in their own lives as a female or male. Another aspect of interpretation is the external factors within the wider social, political and economic environment - all of which influence the interpretation of the message.

So the final product of news reported has undoubtedly been influenced by many factors, including the journalist reporting the issue through to the news slant taken by media print or broadcast organisation presenting it for discussion in the public sphere. This leaves very little room for objectivity in the presentation of news and indeed the selection of what is considered to be newsworthy.

The 20-26 May 2010 cover of BRW magazine featured the tagline ‘Why business men need women: how diversity can boost the bottom line’. The image on the cover that ran with this tagline featured a super high heeled patent leather red stiletto. What is this construct of words and image really communicating? That the word ‘good’ is partnered with an image that represents a ‘bad’ (or sexually questionable or promiscuous) woman are incongruous and negate the principle of everything Elizabeth Broderick is aiming to achieve. The article went on to be a valuable piece of writing highlighting Australia’s poor record of women in senior positions compared to the rest of the world, and profiled a number of senior women in business in Australia. So … why the need for such a sexual image?

The day after Julia Gillard overturned the Prime Ministership of one of Australia’s most popular Prime Ministers to become the first female Prime Minister of Australia, a somewhat questionable image appeared on page 26 of The Australian Financial Review. A caricatured Julia Gillard is standing three times the size above the mining fellows beneath her, which so far seems harmless enough. That she is sketched wearing a Marilyn Munroe style dress over a grate with wind blowing her skirt up and the mining men standing sedately under her skirt commenting ‘Ooh that’s fresh’ to me portrays exactly the sort of challenge women face when they reach a position of power. The image is communicating a political issue – the mining tax – through her gender as a senior female politician, and by her role as a woman in a world that is dominated by men. That the same message could have been portrayed in numerous other ways depicts the interpretation of how the artist views a woman in a senior role – regardless of whether the artist is male or female.

While all journalists and artists will usually claim they are in the search for the truth and seek to portray society’s issues objectively, there really can be no true objectivity – a journalist is still seeing the world through their own experiences and construction of reality, and the news editor is still the gatekeeper setting the agenda, basing their decision on what will ‘make the cut’ as news in their news publication or broadcast. As a result of ‘instantaneous technology’, the pressures of producing news content with very limited timeframes are heightened by the insatiable need for timely and attention-grabbing news. The more controversial the message, image or text accompanying the image, the more likely it is it will receive coverage so as to capture the very short attention span of society.

I hope that by reading this post, you become a more discerning and critical audience member when you read and interpret news messages and images of women in the media — Julia Gillard makes for a great study in this regard and is certainly no exception when it comes to the media portraying her in the written and visual form as ‘Australia’s female Prime Minister’ vs simply ‘Australia’s Prime Minister’.