Women's Political Leadership and the Party Agenda: The Coverage of Female Politburo Members in the People's Daily

This article focuses on how Chinese female political leaders are represented in media through an examination of the People's Daily's coverage of female Politburo members since 1949. Scholars of gender and media in post-Mao China highlight contemporary media's stereotyping of women and attribute such gender discourse to women being refeminized in the course of reform and the marketization of the economy. This article challenges such dichotomous understandings. Instead, it argues that media representation of female politicians reflects a changing dynamic resulting from the varying agendas of the Chinese Communist Party at different times: dealing with the legitimacy crises of the 1970s, presenting a positive image to the outside world in the first decades of reform, and strengthening centralized rule under Xi Jinping.