Madison Shumway

Staff Writer

2016 was not the best year for women’s representation in government.

While a record four women of color were elected to the Senate, and a major party nominated a woman for president for the first time in history, women in Congress made no gains in number.

For years, researchers have studied how traditional media—television, print, and radio—covers women candidates for office. But as social media grows ever more popular and impacts how we receive news, few studies have examined how female candidates are treated online.

“Media coverage about female candidates focuses disproportionately on their appearance and their family background rather than substantive policy proposals,” said Malliga Och, assistant professor of Global Studies and Languages. “This leads to voters seeing female candidates often as less qualified or experienced than male candidates.”

Women are more likely to receive trait coverage, which focuses on their personality or likeability, than issue coverage, which focuses on policy positions. In the past, men have received more coverage overall than women, but quantity of coverage is becoming more equal. While women’s coverage in traditional media seems to be improving somewhat, according to a 2012 study from Claremont Graduate University, “Women politicians may need to be more vigilant than men in monitoring and proactively counterbalancing how the media depicts them.” Social media allows a slew of new sexist possibilities that women running for office must combat.

Take the social media experience of Hillary Clinton during the last presidential election.

“Latent and overt sexism were omnipresent, [in the election], but masquerading under other reasons to oppose Clinton,” said Elizabeth Brunner, assistant professor of Communication, Media, and Persuasion. “We saw multiple well-worn tropes being used including the ’conniving bitch,’ ‘irrational woman,’ ‘leftover woman,’ ‘angry lesbian’ (in fake news) and, of course, the ‘nasty woman.’ These allowed people to discount her experience, policy proposals, and performance.”

While social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter allowed voters to share information and make legitimate criticisms of the candidate, Clinton was also subject to hundreds of sexist messages per day. Tweets directed at Clinton showcased a broad range of sexism, from appearance-related insults to obscene names paired with sexual threats. Users told Clinton to “go back to the kitchen” and suggested that “if she can’t keep her man under control, she can’t keep the country under control.”

The sexism contained in tweets directed at Hillary Clinton during her campaign fits definitions of sexism established in 1996 by researchers Peter Glick and Susan Fiske and used in numerous studies since then. Much of that research suggests that sexism is not harmless.

A 2015 study in the British Journal of Social Psychology asserts that it “serves to justify men’s higher status and power by asserting their superior competence” and “deters women from seeking higher status roles.”

As common as social media sexism was in the 2016 presidential election, it simply hasn’t been studied in detail. While it’s likely that all female candidates on social media receive some form of sexism, more research can clarify how prevalent the problem is and suggest effects on women’s representation.

And while other factors contribute to women’s underrepresentation in government, sexism in media coverage remains an issue to be tackled.

“One way is to increase accountability and to call it out when we see it,” Brunner said. “Another is from the top-down. Social media platforms could consider it ‘hate speech’ and ban it like we ban photos deemed to be pornography. And, of course, we need to educate people about why this kind of hate speech hurts all of us, not just women.”

It’s possible that social media sexism could discourage women, particularly young women, from running in the future.

“It would be hard to keep your head in the game running for office when you have to dodge an additional bullet that your opponent like Trump would never understand,” said Malia Braun, a public relations major.