Signs of change in media representation of women in Israeli politics: Leading and peripheral women contenders

The study seeks to examine gender portrayal of Israeli women politicians, and specifically that of candidates for Israel's parliament on televised news and in print in the elections of 2013. The study is based on an interpretive analysis of all news items wherein the women candidates are mentioned during the month preceding the elections. This study joins recent studies that point to a change in how women politicians are portrayed in the media. Leading contenders succeed in influencing their coverage, and commensurately usually enjoy nonstereotypically gendered portrayal. Moreover, they occasionally seek to make use of hegemonic cultural norms to benefit what they perceive as structuring their positive gendered portrayal. In contrast, the coverage of peripheral contenders suffers from traditional patterns of sidelining. It emerges that peripheral contenders who gain relatively high exposure are portrayed as exceptional based either on their extraordinary other-ness or on the newsworthiness of their campaigns.