Media s Influence On Gendered Differences - 3193 Words

Elena Ash Soc 355 10/15/14 Paper #1 Part A Media’s Influence on Gendered Differences in Politics I chose to write my research paper about a certain type of gender discrimination in the workplace: Gender Inequality in Politics, specifically in the US. Women were given the right to vote in 1920, more then 130 years after our fathers signed the declaration of independence and men were given the right to vote. Even after 1920, women still faced barriers in a political setting, both in getting to the polls and running for office itself. Currently women hold less then 20% of congressional seats, despite making up 51% of the population. At this rate, some have projected that the United States won’t reach equality in government positions for†¦show more content†¦In light of changing technologies that allow the world to continually grow even more interconnected and the rise of social media as a news sources, media has played an even more important role in recent elections and political coverage. Though the United States has made important and significant strides in gende r equality in the last 50 years, given that politics has been an area in which we still struggle, I wonder if stereotypes and cultural assumptions about women are playing an impact. If so, then poor and biased media coverage for female politicians could discourage women from running and play a large factor in prohibiting women who do run from winning political races. Therefore, I hypothesize that media has a negative impact on women getting elected and involved in politics and reinforces gender stereotypes. To evaluate this, I will be looking at how gender impacts the themes of articles and reports written about the candidate. The independent variable of my hypothesis is the gender of the political candidate and the dependent variable is themes covered in media depictions. Measuring my independent variable is as easy as assigning a gender to each candidate. To measure the dependent variable, media coverage, and analyze themes, I would select two news sources, one more liberal and one more conservative, that I felt were representative of mainstream news election coverage and would have the widest reach of the general public. I