A timely analysis of gender bias in press coverage of presidential campaigns

When Hillary Clinton announced her 2008 bid for president she was the Democratic front-runner. Despite this, she received less coverage than Barack Obama, who trailed her in the polls. Such a disparity is indicative of the gender bias the media has demonstrated in covering women candidates since the first woman ran for America's highest office in 1872. Tracing the campaigns of eight women who ran for president through 2004--Victoria Woodhull, Belva Lockwood, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Patricia Schroeder, Lenora Fulani, Elizabeth Dole, and Carol Moseley Braun--Erika Falk finds little progress in the fair treatment of women candidates. A thorough comparison of the women's campaigns to those of their male opponents reveals a worrisome trend of sexism in press coverage--a trend that still persists today.

While women have been elected to the highest offices in countries such as England, Germany, and India, the idea that a woman could be president of the United States provokes scoffs and ridicule. The press portrays female candidates as unviable, unnatural, and incompetent, and often ignores or belittles women instead of reporting their ideas and intent. Since voters learn most details about presidential candidates through media outlets, Falk asserts that this prevailing bias calls into question the modern democratic assumption that men and women have comparable access to positions of power.

"With Hillary Clinton a serious contender for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Falk's book is timely."--Publishers Weekly

"The people running Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign probably haven’t made time to leaf through the University of Illinois Press’s most recent catalog. Too bad for them. They could have placed an early bulk order for Erika Falk’s Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns. . . . It seems like a book that Clinton’s staff would find useful – and not just as a projectile to bounce off the heads of members of the press corps." --Inside Higher Ed

"[Falk] does an excellent job job of pointing out what has changed and what has stayed the same in media coverage of women's political participation (why, for example, always the preoccupation with clothes and hair!)."--Library Journal

"For once a book about a media bias that I know exists! Erika Falk offers a powerful evidence-based look at how the media has overlooked and undervalued women presidential candidates since they first ran over 130 years ago. Her book should make us all stand up and demand objective coverage so that the best person runs and wins. This is a must read for political operatives and voters across America."--Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Gore-Lieberman 2000

"Erika Falk's thorough research into how women running for president have been covered (on appearance) or ignored (on substance) is a provocative, cautionary tale for the political press."--Adam Clymer, retired chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times

"Well written and well argued, Women for President is a must read for anyone trying to make sense of Hillary Clinton's bid to become the Democratic Party nominee for president."--Kathleen Hall Jamieson, author of Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Advertising

Erika Falk is the associate program chair for the master's degree program in communications at Johns Hopkins University and the former research director of the Washington office of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

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Subjects:
Communications & Journalism / Political Science / Women's Studies

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