Style Over Substance -- Reaction

Newspaper Coverage of Female Candidates: Spotlight on Elizabeth Dole
- Sean Aday and James Devitt

Reserve Reading

The entire time I was reading this, I was thinking about what would happen in a similar study of the Democratic race during this year. Even just glancing through articles it's obvious that Hillary Clinton's personal traits were emphasized, but I have no way of comparing that. It's truly unfair and demonstrates how wide-spread sexual discrimination is. The fact that men cover women differently and the inequality in the press arena just shows that women are fighting in every field. Even if we managed to reach political equality, it would have to be accompanied in equality with almost every other field of work.

The fact that all of these fields reflect each other and that there is a fight in each of them offers an explanation for why equality is trudging along such a slow path. It would be interesting to examine a female dominated newspaper, if there are any ones, that is at the same height of importance as a male dominated one, and see how it's read and reacted too. In even more connections, newspapers tend to cater to their readers, so it depends on whether men or women read the newspaper more. The connections just keep going. But hopefully, that also means that offsetting one would start a chain reaction.

Reading this has inspired me to go research Elizabeth Dole, who I knew nothing about until reading these articles. What she's doing now, and what her policies were. I also had no idea that McCain had run before, and event hen the press were after him, although they were after everyone.