Abstract
This study interrogates the relationship of gender and power in the journalistic coverage of leading politicians. As an exemplar, we compare the coverage of German chancellor Angela Merkel and her (then) male counterpart, the social-democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier. In a qualitative textual analysis of news and entertainment print media, we explain how politics is inscribed as a male field while its constitutive Other remains female. Acknowledging the importance of Merkel’s position as chancellor, journalists confer authority to the incumbent as much as to her competitor. However, a closer analysis of personal labels, descriptions of the body, and explanations of political actions reveals that gendering continues to be a constitutive aspect of political reporting, but in other ways than previously explained: the coverage constructs a disconnect between person and action, that is, between the gender of the politician and her or his political maneuvering. For example, the political model of the ‘fighter’ (and related constructions of masculine action) is employed in journalistic reporting for both men and women. At times, it evokes criticism toward hegemonic masculinity even when embodied by a woman. This analysis offers opportunities for deconstructing the gendered system of politics – regardless of whether performed by women or men.
Introduction
During the last few years, an increasing number of female politicians all over the world has come into power, for example, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, the Argentinian President Christina Fernándos de Kirchner, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, or South Korea’s new President Park Geun-Hye. In Germany, conservative party candidate Angela Merkel was first elected as Chancellor in 2005; during her three terms in office so far, a significant number of other women have reached high positions in the German government. Despite being often expected to act as a role model, most conservative female politicians have neither explicitly advocated feminism nor encouraged specific strategies for equal opportunities for women. Nevertheless, the media seem to highlight gender aspects when reporting on these female politicians, often emphasizing their unique positions as ‘being first’ (Carter et al., 1998). In a democracy where politics are primarily communicated via mass media, Merkel’s first election triggered an intensive academic debate about media constructions of gender and their relevance for the political and public sphere. The now ‘normalized’ visibility of women in politics requires new modes of media analysis. We need to ask, ‘how are concepts of femininity and masculinity in relation to political action produced in the media?’ Our focus is on how gender is discursively constructed by the print media and how these representations relate to dimensions of political power.
Based on a qualitative textual analysis of German print media, we examine how the media construct the relationship of political power and gender. In particular, we interrogate how the press employs traditional and new representations of femininity/masculinity or challenges hegemonic gender constructions in the political arena. In addition, we position the German case in the context of other national and international research on gender and media to explain its relevance for the public sphere and the mediated identity of political actors in relation to other modes of gender performance. We thus argue that media analysis needs to go beyond the identification of dominant masculinity and/or trivialized femininity, but evaluate how the media organize the public sphere essentially as a gendered space regardless of whether there are men or women in decision-making positions.
Literature review: the representation of female and male politicians in the media
The election of Angela Merkel in 2005 as the first female head of government in Germany triggered several examinations of media representations that generated different results. Some of those projects were qualitative case studies (e.g. Gnändiger, 2007; Pfannes, 2004; Scholz, 2007), others added specific qualitative components to quantitative studies on the election coverage (Koch, 2007; Koch and Holtz-Bacha, 2008; Semetko and Boomgaarden, 2007). These studies came to the conclusion that compared to that of her male competitor (Gerhard Schröder), the election coverage on Merkel was not specifically gendered and that both candidates received equivalent media attention. Similarly, the stereotypical binary woman/private versus man/public seemed to fade. In the coverage on Merkel and Schröder, descriptions of their private lives played an equally minor role. These results challenged previous findings and demonstrated a reduction of gender-stereotypical coverage under specific circumstances (see also Maier and Lünenborg, 2012). But located in the area of political communication, these studies often failed to give an adequate explanation of their underlying concept of gender constructions and gender identities. Mostly, they understood sex/gender as a demographic data point to be understood as an independent variable, measuring media content as the dependent one.
These approaches lack a symbolic and discursive dimension. Understanding media as a symbolic mode of constructing social reality allows the identification of dominant and emerging gender scripts and hierarchies in the coverage. Several recent studies that took this approach presented a more complex media discourse. Lundell and Ekström (2008), for example, investigated how gendering was accomplished in press visuals. They identified three relevant factors that influence the gendering of women in politics: ‘a male-dominated press culture, women’s alleged abilities to conform to conventional standards of attractiveness and their respective previous relations with the media’ (Lundell and Ekström, 2008: 906). Garcia-Blanco and Wahl-Jorgensen (2012) analyzed the media coverage on the mostly female Spanish cabinet in four European newspapers. The authors found that in some articles, women ministers were celebrated for their (symbolic) emancipatory value while in others they were judged by their physical appearance or their performance as wives, mothers, and mothers-to-be (Garcia-Blanco and Wahl-Jorgensen, 2012: 422). Moreover, Cantrell and Bachmann (2008) examined how national and international newspapers framed new female government leaders during their first 200 days in office in Germany, Liberia, and Chile. They described gender-mediated differences across national boundaries and media, but the results also suggested a ‘[…] routinization and normalization of news presentation, regardless of cultural, social and political contexts’ (Cantrell and Bachmann, 2008: 429).
Adding a discursive element to the analysis of gender scripts for explaining broader changes in political communication opens the field to new questions and insights. A feminist media studies approach prompts the inclusion of popular journalism. Ongoing structural changes in journalism, associated with an increased tabloidization, have fundamental consequences for gender portrayal (Klaus and Lünenborg, 2000; Lünenborg, 2005). While traditional journalism researchers considered tabloidization mainly skeptical as a decline of quality journalism, gender studies researchers arrived at a more cautious assessment (Van Zoonen, 2005). Tabloidization has at least the potential to ease access of ordinary people to the media arena – beyond the political and economic elites – and to reduce the gender gap in media coverage (Lünenborg, 2009). However, as several studies demonstrated, the increased presence of women in popular media does not happen in political or economic coverage, but mainly in coverage on the arts, society, or in human interest stories. Moreover, these studies found that the higher frequency of women in tabloid media was often connected to trivializations or negative overtones in the coverage, aspects that were less explicit in the quality press (e.g. in the bestselling German tabloid Bild; see Semetko and Boomgaarden, 2007). Overall, while tabloidization adds to the frequency of coverage for women, it also increases ambiguous and problematic representations of women.
Strikingly, all research cited above focused on women politicians to identify or challenge gendered representations in news coverage. Communication research runs the risk of reestablishing the gender order criticized before: the media coverage of male politicians remained the normalized default position, while the coverage of women politicians was analyzed as exceptional and unusual. Some recent research breaks this mold. A comparative study of daily newspapers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland by Magin and Stark (2010) not only provided results on the representation of female politicians, but also on mediated gender stereotypes in general. In this study, Magin and Stark chose two key players from different professional arenas. Based on a content analysis of a constructed week in 2008, their searchers focused on the questions of whether attributions to women and men continued to carry stereotypical associations. Yet the authors’ conclusion remained unresolved, finding empirical evidence for gender stereotyping as much as moments that counter clichés: ‘All in all, the results are ambiguous’ (Magin and Stark, 2010: 399).
Our study aims at clarifying some of these equivocal results by concurrently analyzing the coverage of a leading female and male politician in different types of print media (news and entertainment). As an exemplar, we analyze the coverage of chancellor Angela Merkel and her main counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a time when both received ample media attention. We ask how the personalities and leadership qualities of Merkel and Steinmeier were staged and judged in the media discourse. We also investigate how descriptions of power of top-level staff were linked to discourses of gender.
Method and research design
This study is part of a larger research project on the production, portrayal, and reception of leaders in politics, business, and science in the media. The project combined an inquiry into media production with quantitative and qualitative content analyses and audience interviews (Lünenborg and Röser, 2012). In a 6-month analysis of 13 German print outlets (covering current events and entertainment) in 2008, we found only a slight increase of women politicians’ total visibility in the media, while Merkel as Chancellor was omnipresent as much as her male predecessors had been (Lünenborg et al., 2011; Röser and Müller, 2012). Here we draw on a selection of material from a more extensive textual analysis comparing the gendered representations of top politicians, managers, and scholars in the German mass media. In the political arena, we examined the coverage on six leading German politicians (Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, Gesine Schwan, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Kurt Beck, Horst Köhler). The analysis was based on all 78 articles that concentrated on these persons as opposed to political events or issues, that is, portraits, features, and interviews. For this article, we especially examined the coverage of two leading German politicians: Angela Merkel, who is the first female chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice-Chancellor at that time. While echoing the wider context of our larger project, this article is mainly based on an in-depths analysis of those articles that focused exclusively on Merkel or Steinmeier. The examined media content was selected from leading newspapers with various political orientations and high-circulation magazines with diverse target audiences. To cover a wide spectrum of the print coverage on top politicians, we included broadsheets as well as tabloids, business magazines as well as women’s journals and general interest magazines. The media sample included the agenda-setting newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and die tageszeitung; the news magazines Der Spiegel and Focus and the weekly newspaper Die Zeit; the business magazines Capital and Manager Magazin; the glossies Stern, Bunte, and SuperIllu; the women’s magazine Brigitte; and the top-selling tabloid Bild. The material we examined was published over a period of 6 months (from 1 April to 30 September) in 2008. Most studies on the coverage of Merkel had concentrated on her first election campaign. Our intention was to extend this research to coverage that was generated under more routine circumstances. We used this timeframe because it was not a campaign year and the newness factor of a ‘female chancellor’ had declined (at that time, Merkel had been 3 years in office).
For the study, we used a method that combined elements of both qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis (Keller, 2012; see also Fürsich, 2009). This combination offered us the opportunity to achieve two goals: to systematically describe how top-level politicians are constructed as powerful and authoritative human beings on the manifest level of the text, and to analyze in depth the discursive strategies and implicit connotations of gendered constructions of social reality in media content. The research presented here focused on three dimensions of the coverage developed from, and expanding on, previous research:
Personal descriptions. Language and terminology used in the media to name and label Merkel and Steinmeier.
The (political) body. The way the politicians’ bodies, clothing, and styling were portrayed.
Political maneuvering. The way political decision making, actions, and performances were characterized.
Media analysis: the construction of power and gender
Angela Merkel is a German politician, member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and former physicist. She has been the chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany since 2005 and the chair of the CDU since 2000. Frank-Walter Steinmeier is a politician of the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD)) and formerly a lawyer. He was a Chief of Staff to the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (1999–2005) and served as Minister of Foreign Affairs (2005–2009) and Vice-Chancellor (2007–2009) in the cabinet of Merkel’s Grand Coalition (that included both parties). During the timeframe of the study, he surprised the media by declaring his candidacy to run against Merkel in the next election. The examined news coverage is dominated by the forthcoming election campaign to the German Bundestag in 2009 (e.g. staff decisions, chances in election, or public appearances of Merkel and Steinmeier). The parallel positioning of these two politicians at that time provided a unique opportunity to compare a female and male politician simultaneously as competing top-level decision makers.
Personal descriptions of Angela Merkel and Frank-Walter Steinmeier
In the coverage, a wide range of personal descriptions is used repeatedly. Most research in this area has investigated how specific labels trivialize or stereotype women. The following section explores how in our material, personal descriptions are gendered for the male and the female politician and how these labels negotiate power (Table 1).
Personal descriptions of Angela Merkel and Frank Walter Steinmeier (selection).
CDU: Christian Democratic Union; SPD: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands.
In the analyzed coverage, gender is made visible by the use of suffixes (the German -in for the female form) as well as male and female articles (der/die) in personal descriptions (e.g. die Kanzlerin; der Kanzler). As general descriptors related to family and ancestry, we also find explicitly gendered labels such as ‘Frau Merkel’ or ‘daughter of a priest’. Among personal characteristics and evaluations of persons in top-level positions, professional and function-related designations are most common for Merkel. For example, she is often labeled ‘Chancellor’ or ‘CDU-chairwoman’. The language used to describe Merkel also emphasizes her rationality, as ‘scientist’ or ‘physicist’. Moreover, there are many labels that describe the political style of Merkel, like ‘Reform Chancellor (f)’ or ‘Economic chancellor (f)’. Professional or political status is conveyed through expressions with positively connotations such as ‘Star’, ‘CDU-Chairwoman’, ‘head of government’, ‘great European (f)’, or ‘front-runner (f)’. These labels clearly express professional status and power; trivializing descriptors are very rare.
However, Merkel is also explicitly marked as a female. Typical descriptions are ‘First woman chancellor’, ‘Ms Merkel’ (despite the fact that it is standard journalistic practice in Germany to refer to politicians by last name only: Steinmeier) or ‘Woman of vision and courage’. References to sex/gender, her social status as a woman, or her token status remain common in the coverage of Merkel. In this context, we find a striking use of neologisms or special word compositions connected to Frau (woman), ‘Vorfrau’ or ‘Vorderfrau/Leading woman’, ‘Führungsfrau/lead woman’. Although these labels convey the power of the politician Merkel, they also illustrate that Merkel represents ‘the second sex’ in the political sphere. She is marked as different in the media whereas her male colleagues continue to be the normalized default.
Some personal labels used directly reproduce gender stereotypes: Merkel is characterized as ‘fashion expert’ and ‘trendsetter’. Moreover, the media coverage turns Merkel into the ‘mother of the nation’ or a ‘Mum’. This attribution does not designate an actual position (Merkel does not have children) but it marks her political style as caring and motherly, but also bossy. This is remarkable because Merkel herself rarely uses emotional language or outright compassionate statements (Holtz-Bacha, 2008). The metaphoric repertoire available to journalists for describing women in such powerful positions still seems to be limited to the stock imagery of home and family life. By tying these gendered labels to Merkel’s political style, this coverage uses concepts of maternal, nurturing femininity as patterns of interpretation for Merkel’s political work.
When comparing the terms used for Merkel to those for Steinmeier (see Table 1), we find that many discursive attributions of power aligned. Professional and function-related designations such as ‘chancellor and party chairwoman’ or ‘Minister of Foreign Affairs’ are dominant for Steinmeier and Merkel.
But the table also illustrates how descriptions fall back on stereotypes and a two-gender dichotomy. For example, Steinmeier was repeatedly called a ‘ladies’ man’. The coverage relied on heteronormative language, in effect sexualizing the politician and positioning him as an object of heteronormative desire. Other times, Steinmeier was dubbed a ‘soccer fan’ or a ‘mountain hiker’. The political coverage positions Steinmeier in the context of sports, a central site for the production of masculinity (see Wahl-Jorgensen, 2000: 58) (more details below). Moreover, the descriptions of Steinmeier also demonstrate that media coverage of male politicians tends to use more explicit attributions of power and dominance. He is characterized as a ‘Messiah with briefcase’, ‘fighter’, or ‘radiant hero’. Steinmeier also ranks as ‘lion’ or ‘alpha wolf’. In this case, animal characteristics (roar like a lion) and behavior (the most experienced and highest ranking male in a pack) serve as a pattern of interpretation for the political actions and the political position of Steinmeier. The media vocabulary is also based on the idea of the male politician as professional and career-oriented, as ‘statesman’, ‘technocrat’, or ‘bureaucrat’. The main attributes of male hegemony are continuously reproduced: male politicians are associated with power, strength, professionalism, and competition.
In sum, journalistic descriptors of political personalities remain tied to gendered role models (fighter, mother, etc.). To describe to a wider audience the intricacies of political work – power, influence, political maneuvering – the media fall back on tried-and-true notions of gender. Gender stereotypes form an interpretive repertoire that journalists can use to examine the political work and actions of Merkel and Steinmeier.
The (political) body
Since the 1970s, feminist communication researchers have diagnosed modes of trivialization in the media coverage of women linked to description of their bodies and outfits (Tuchman, 1978). In the same vein, the German media reported on Merkel’s alleged fashion faux-pas even before she ran for chancellor in 2005; they also rated her hairstyle or physiognomy negatively (e.g. Koch, 2007). However, Merkel’s political rise to chancellor was accompanied by a significant reduction of direct references to her appearance (see Eitner, 2007; Koch, 2007). It took a unique occasion to generate once more media coverage on her body and dress code: when Angela Merkel wore a low-cut gown to the opening of the national opera in Oslo on 12 April 2008, numerous media in Germany and abroad commented on the unusual appearance of the chancellor who otherwise prefers high-necked clothes. The media discussion shows that the coexistence of power and femininity is still not accepted and causes irritation in the media discourse (Lünenborg et al., 2009).
Beyond this event, Merkel’s appearance and style continue to be only a minor topic in the investigated media coverage. In one article in a glossy lifestyle magazine, she is represented as a fashion expert at another opera opening night: ‘Angela Merkel and her chic necklaces. That’s what people whisper to each other in Bayreuth. Would you have guessed that? Angela Merkel is a trendsetter when it comes to necklaces’ (SuperIllu, 2008). Merkel’s clothing is referenced in the context of fashion and consumption. The descriptions of her appearance are related to questions of traditional femininity and attractiveness; however, they do not tend to be linked to her professional abilities and status. In the media coverage, we do not find a direct link between female clothing and attributions of political power and authority. Surprisingly, this link is more direct for her male counterpart.
The media focus significant attention on Steinmeier’s body and outfit. The descriptions of the politician’s appearance include statements about his body, clothing, and hairstyle as well as body language. The coverage weighs in on the aesthetic and sexual dimensions of his body, but also marks political power on it. Especially lifestyle and women’s magazines present Steinmeier’s male body as an object of desire for presumably female readers. A conceivable feminizing connotation and a possibly homoerotic subtext are undercut by the frequent emphasis on the heterosexuality and masculinity of the politician. For example, one article is headlined, ‘Who me, a women’s man?’ (Bunte, 2008). Accordingly, in the same interview, Steinmeier is questioned about his sexual attractiveness to women and also directly asked if he thought the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be ‘sexy’. At the same time, the article portrays in detail his private life in a heteronormative family with wife and a daughter.
Other descriptions of his appearance are connected to political performance. The professional status and professional persona of Steinmeier are inscribed onto his body. In one exemplary article, masculine clothing and personal demeanor play an important role:
Then Steinmeier briefly speaks wearing a white shirt with short sleeves. He is short, shorter than you expect him to be, if you only know him from TV. And he is somewhat round. His face is round, his glasses are; his entire appearance lacks a square-cut shape and fast-paced movement. […] Steinmeier always appears to be calm. Sometimes, when he gets nervous, he twists his thumbs. Otherwise, his body language always signals: Don’t panic. I can handle this. (Die tageszeitung, 2008)
This media coverage constructs the body and body practices as male ones and relates them positively to questions of power and status. The male body and male clothing become inscribed with professional status and power. At the same time, it is uncommon that the media express political power and status of female politicians through physical descriptions of the body. Moreover, the reversal of mediated body constructions remains unfulfilled. In the analyzed reporting, we do not find a female politician banging her fist on the table or roaring loudly across the room.
Political maneuvering
The female power politician: ‘Love’ as a semantic pattern of political action
In the analysis of the coverage on the political actions and maneuverings of these two top leading political positions, a complex discourse emerges. It is no longer possible to diagnose textual manifestations of mediated gender inequalities – such as the typical stereotype of women as soft, incompetent, or otherwise ‘lacking’ political leaders. Instead, the media coverage mostly represents Merkel as an active, competent, and powerful individual. Discrimination, sexist devaluations, or belittlements referring to gender are rare exceptions. In contrast to earlier studies, we find a shift in how the media describe the professional power of this top politician. The coverage does not create an obvious link between sex/gender and her ability to do the job as chancellor. In the coverage, Merkel is often described as more powerful in relation to Steinmeier, as is appropriate given her position. The political power of the chancellor who has been governing for some years is not disqualified. While her hairstyle and outfits were topics for criticism during her candidacy, these types of comments disappear completely after she takes office. Journalism follows a hegemonic logic by indexing the given power structure. Angela Merkel is mainly represented as a coequal competitor in the (male) struggles for power. In this context, her specific political style draws critical attention. Merkel is often described as a power politician; the media problematize her power-political interests and strategic skills: ‘The only election campaign she is interested in, is her own’, writes the newsweekly Der Spiegel (2008b). Another political magazine complains that she creates an election campaign solely around her person while ignoring the interests of her party (as the otherwise central organization in a parliamentary system) (Focus, 2008). A business magazine blames Merkel for pursuing primarily power-political interests; she showcases a ‘presidential leadership style’ that lacks ‘intellectual leadership’: ‘Her only political goal is to assert her own power’ (Capital, 2008). The feature describes Merkel as a person who places her individual pursuit of power before carrying out policy initiatives or representing the interests of her party.
Given the associations of power and masculinity, Merkel’s description as a power politician seems to be based on her masculinization. Yet the general tenor of this criticism not necessarily suggests a traditional gender positioning or the denigration of a female politician. Instead, the German media criticize the male connoted political style of power politics on other occasions as well, not only when it is employed by a woman. As Scholz (2007) demonstrated, as early as 2005, her predecessor Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was equally and harshly criticized for this type of political leadership. We would argue that the consistent critique on personalized power as a predominant political style hints at a change in the political culture in Germany, which is accompanied by a critical negotiation of masculinity. In our analyzed texts, Merkel as a person is used to articulate a more general critique on political leadership styles. In this case, hegemonic masculinity (as a symbolic structure that fosters power politics) is no longer tied to a male body. The journalistic comments on the power-conscious maneuvers of the politician Angela Merkel possibly enunciate a more general criticism of (male) power-driven leadership styles.
Yet at the same time, we also find statements in the coverage on Merkel as well as on Steinmeier that can be read as a (re)masculinization of political culture. There is a noticeable uneasiness about the fact that Merkel can enforce her will against men. For example, a political magazine expresses the fear that the chancellor could displace ‘the men’ from the very centers of political power (Focus, 2008). Another article comments, ‘The CDU is now not only a party without economic policy experts. Even more dangerous: It is a party without alpha male. The Chancellor is “alone at home” in her party’ (Capital, 2008). Some articles explicitly express the fear of emasculation of (political) masculinity. In an ambiguous zero-sum statement, the conquest of a powerful position by a woman is judged more positively than the loss of power for men. Using a list of formerly important but now mostly deceased politicians, the tabloid Bild (2008) writes,
There are no more men like Adenauer, Brandt, Heuss, Strauß, Wehner, Schmidt. There are only men like [the celebrity hairdresser] Udo Walz, who gave the Chancellor a new hairstyle. If we don’t have any strong men anymore, then the women will rise. This is [a] logical [consequence].
This quotation exemplifies threatened masculinity. Worried about the established female power (of Merkel), the tabloid denigrates supportive masculinity with homosexual connotations as a forfeiture of power.
Another article in a business magazine openly laments the now missing political male bonding rituals. Since Merkel came into power, the former buddy-like style of policy making is disparaged:
Unlike [former chancellor] Gerhard Schröder, who used to have a laid-back attitude to [German] top executives, Merkel holds the men at a distance. Meanwhile unthinkable: Scenes like that on a flight to Latin America, when Schröder’s economic advisor Jürgen Grossmann (now CEO of [energy giant] RWE) and Heinrich von Pierer (former CEO of Siemens) played cards while drinking bottles of red wine stuffed in a sports bag that Grossmann had managed to get on board. These are questions of style, maybe? Nevertheless, many are irritated by the new distance of politics to industry. (Manager Magazin, 2008)
An unquestioned assumption of this article is that male bonding such as the described group dissolves class boundaries and even differences between economic interests and public policy. This example demonstrates how the entrance of a powerful woman in the field of politics can successfully upset homosociality as a requirement for the reproduction of hegemonic masculinity (see Heilmann, 2011: 320; see also Sedgwick, 1990). Beyond lamenting missing homosocial structures, the article also articulates the conflict between politics and industry by describing a gender dualism. Employing heteronormative logic, Merkel’s political style toward the male business elite is interpreted as love deprivation:
Hardly any boss dares to defy the Chancellor or even criticize her publicly. For the time being, word has spread: Merkel reacts to dissent with the deprivation of love. Those who do not show unconditional loyalty are regarded as enemies. (Manager Magazin, 2008)
For describing the relationship of the politician Merkel to the business executives, the media evoke the discursive pattern ‘politics as love’.
Bureaucrat and fighter: sports as a semantic pattern of political action
In the coverage on Steinmeier, the politician is often described as a ‘bureaucrat’ and ‘technocrat’ who has either already developed ‘fighter’ qualities, or is challenged to prove that he is up to the fight of his candidacy and campaign for chancellor. Accordingly, his political style is criticized because he ‘does not understand politics as a struggle’ and may have to be ‘carried to the Chancellery, so that he at least tentatively knocks on the door’ (Stern, 2008). Later in the same article, the journalist complements Steinmeier on his newfound strength and political personality since declaring his candidacy after having led an internal party competitor’s ‘coup from office and now ready to target the Chancellor’ (Stern, 2008). Another article in a news magazine taps into similar bellicose vocabulary. The article explains metaphorically that Steinmeier, unlike the ambitious predecessor Gerhard Schröder, has not ‘shaken at the fence of the Chancellery’. Moreover, he never had to ‘fight for a position in political battles’ and he avoided ‘the painstaking slog through the party hierarchy that steeled politicians like Gerhard Schröder […]’ (Der Spiegel, 2008a).
The article continues to praise Steinmeier as someone who is meticulous and leaves nothing to chance, and the fact that even before his decision for candidacy he had practiced campaigning. Now he is seen at speeches roaring ‘like a lion’ and dancing ‘like a dervish behind the lectern’ (Der Spiegel, 2008a). The assumption here is that politicians have to fight for success; it cannot happen by chance. Physical effort and mental dedication described in language that borrows from semantic repertoires of war and fighting are a precondition of political achievement.
Only in rare cases do journalists criticize this (implicitly) masculine policy style or political maneuvering in general. Among our analyzed material is one article in a women’s magazine that commends Steinmeier as a politician who does not ‘aggressively spread his testosterone like Sarkozy or Berlusconi’ (Brigitte, 2008). A similar critique on masculinity is found in a weekly newspaper that comments: ‘In the evolutionary history of power, Steinmeier is even a good deal more advanced than his mentor. While [former chancellor] Schröder tended to look for fights with other alpha males, Steinmeier has been creating a network of relationships that will first quietly hoist him up, before securing his position on all sides’ (Die Zeit, 2008). This rare critical reflection of hegemonic masculinity in politics, declares the less contentious political style of Steinmeier as attractive and progressive.
In contrast to Merkel, the coverage on Steinmeier is suffused with comparisons between sports and the professional maneuverings or the position of the politician. Several articles mention his earlier career aspirations to become a sports reporter or highlight former and current athletic activities (he was an active youth soccer player, he likes to go hiking, etc.). Moreover, articles also rely on sports vocabulary to explain the political maneuvering, status, and style of Steinmeier. The coverage often discursively connects athletic and political actions. For example, the political performance of Steinmeier is illustrated by evoking the situation of playing in a soccer team (e.g. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2008). The tactics of the professional politician are described as sports tactics. The perfect occasion when both worlds coincide is when on a tour in the United States, Steinmeier is invited to throw the first pitch at a Boston Red Sox game (which became a major photo opportunity for German media). One feature article, for example, uses a narrative lead to explain his personality:
He wants to take a risk now. He has never done anything like this. He does not know whether it will turn out well. He stands at the center of ‘Fenway Park’, home of the Boston baseball team. On a Saturday in April, Frank-Walter Steinmeier is expected to open the game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. With a pitch, a throw of the ball. As someone who is afraid to take risks, he had taken all precautions that could be taken before he ventured into the big arena. […] Anyone who knows how much Frank-Walter Steinmeier tends to hesitate and ponder [before any decision] understands how hard the decision must have been for him to grab the candidacy for chancellor in the campaign of 2009. (Der Spiegel, 2008a)
The framework of sports competitions is used for interpreting the political maneuvering of Steinmeier. The parallelism of sports and politics positions Steinmeier sophistically as a powerful athlete but also as a hesitant and reflective decision maker. The classic connection of hegemonic masculinity to sports (Trujillo, 1991) is accompanied by a more fragile image: Steinmeier is shown as ambivalent, but finally eager to take control. As Wahl-Jorgensen (2000) argues, ‘It [the reference to sport] reduces politics to a simple, dichotomous game of win and lose, an activity of well-defined rules, chronology, and space’ (p. 59). The media’s discursive connection of sporty and political maneuvering is a continuation of traditional masculinity. Such staging of competition and conflict, based on the dichotomy of victory and defeat, also allows to reproduce traditional journalistic coverage pattern. At the same time, the framework of sports re-masculates the deliberate and tentative Steinmeier who may have otherwise come across as not strong/masculine enough for politics.
In sum, we find a subtle yet significant gendering of the political media discourse. At first glance, gendered depictions and argumentations appear to play a minor role in the coverage of Angela Merkel and her challenger Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Acknowledging the importance of her position as chancellor, journalists confer status and authority to the incumbent as much as to her male predecessors and her competitor. However, a closer analysis of personal labels, descriptions of physicality, and explanations of political actions reveals an implicitly gendered discourse. This discourse is grounded in and constantly relies on a hierarchical binary system of masculinity/femininity. In the coverage of Merkel and Steinmeier, it becomes visible how journalism utilizes gender attributions to produce a framework of appreciation and depreciation.
Discussion: gender analysis beyond men and women
On one level, there does not seem to be a significant change in the construction of masculinity by the media in the analyzed material. The media representation is often based on an ideal of the male career politicians as ‘rational statesman’, ‘fighter’, or ‘popular sports fan’ or ‘athlete’. In the examined texts, the main attributes of male hegemony seem to reproduce themselves over and over again: male politicians are constantly associated with power, strength, and competition.
On another level, it becomes clear that the coverage on Steinmeier negotiates various forms of masculinity that compete with each other in political arena: the deliberate bureaucrat or technocrat and the affective political fighter. In the field of politics, or more precisely in the election campaign for the office of German chancellor, however, it is the fighter, which is the standard of reference along which political actions are measured. The technocrat has a stronger role to play during times of routine political initiatives. In the examined coverage, different forms of political masculinity are arranged hierarchically with a different emphasis. In the political sphere, the bureaucrat represents a form of masculinity that remains within the hegemonic order, but is discursively subordinated to the power-political fighter.
Evaluating the overall representation of Merkel, we find a strong tendency to cover her as a powerful woman in the political arena. But even a powerful politician like Merkel continues to operate in an ideology that subordinates women to men. As Van Zoonen (2006) has shown, not even celebrity politics necessarily offer an opportunity to reach beyond dichotomist structures. Nevertheless, Merkel’s case demonstrates that simple two-tier arrangements and binary frameworks do not always work: analyses, for example, that contrast the emotional female politician with the rational statesman. Unlike Ségolène Royal who explicitly evokes feminine attributes and descriptors in the French presidential campaign of 2007 (Coulomb-Gully, 2011), Merkel engages in the dominant ideology by relying on a political performance that avoids as much as possible to act and be positioned ‘as a woman’. Moreover, the journalistic coverage continues to engage in gender-based dichotomies: in the media coverage, Merkel as ‘Mum’ is as visible as Merkel as the ‘power politician’. In the journalistic framing of the German Chancellor, male and female connotation patterns are recognizable.
This discourse refers to a hierarchical and dualistic gender structure. In general, gendering continues to be a constitutive aspect of political reporting, but in other ways than previously explained: the political model of the ‘fighter’ (and related constructions of masculine action) is used in journalistic reporting for both men and women as a framework for appropriate behavior and conduct in the field of politics. Engaging in an analytical separation of man/masculinity and woman/femininity, we argue that in the coverage Merkel is attributed with a position of masculinity. Her personal quest for power and her dominance-oriented political style are sometimes classified negatively in reporting. However, this criticism is not connected to a discourse of female deficit. Rather, the masculinity critique on power-oriented political performance that Scholz (2007) already diagnosed in the coverage on Gerhard Schröder is in our material further developed and implemented in the criticism of the political style of Merkel.
Meeks (2013) concludes in her analysis of the coverage of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential election that both women are covered ‘strikingly similar across novelty label and character trait coverage’ (p. 532), thus identifying patterns of ‘typical’ female political coverage. In contrast, we argue that it is not the candidate, the political issues, or the character trait which is designated as masculine or feminine. It is the journalistic coverage constructing the binary system – not necessarily connected to the sexual identity of the covered character. Thus, the case of Angela Merkel demonstrates that it is possible for female politicians to gain recognition, but this recognition remains within the logic of a gendered system – emphasizing the possibility of a woman to act successfully as a man.
At the same time, this reporting (re)produces a normative value framework: male and female are distinctive categories; good politics are governed by norms and values that are defined and signified as male; policy issues and models for political action are structured dichotomously and hierarchically along an accepted gender dualism. The case of Merkel, however, is notable for the fact that Angela Merkel does not pursue women’s policy goals, but that as a (female) politician she acts ‘like a man’. In the journalistic interpretation, these masculine claims that are attributed to her are (partly) critically negotiated either as an offense against other men or as oversized masculinity.
The political arena remains a male terrain in much of German journalism, while its constitutive Other/Outside is the female. Various forms of practiced political masculinity are the standard against which successful and unsuccessful women and men in politics are measured and political performance is created. Nevertheless, while the representation of masculinity is semantically and visually updated, we also noticed emerging voices that question the legitimacy of the masculine discursive dominance in the political arena.
The discursive recognition of a powerful leader is often accomplished by distancing leadership from femininity. This strategy applies not only to women in politics, but also to men. In our qualitative analysis of top-level politicians’ media coverage, we diagnosed gendered discursive patterns used as a denigrating discursive strategy: when a well-known male politician loses power and control in a public dispute, not only is he portrayed more negatively but the media also connect his political defeat to a loss of masculinity. Thus attributions of weakness, vulnerability, naivety, or reluctance – traditionally used to devaluate female performance in the field of politics – now become part of the media coverage of a top male politician and symbolize defeat in power plays (Maier and Lünenborg, 2012: 91f).
In our material, we did not find any examples of the reverse mechanism: the attribution of femininity to leadership as a strategy for appreciation. Only this type of journalistic discourse would be able to challenge entrenched gender hierarchies. The fact that these attributions were not found in the analyzed material elucidates cultural specifics of journalistic and social discourses in Germany and manifests a particular dominant gender ideology. Angela Merkel as the first German Chancellor adjusted to this ideology and consciously or unconsciously selected performative strategies that allowed her femininity to fade into the background. The continuing journalistic discourse of politics analyzed here as a ‘naturally’ male terrain renders her strategies as appropriate and effective.
Further studies could analyze if these discursive strategies are a specific problem in Germany that even historically lacks discursive appreciation of femininity at least partly due to specific discourses on motherhood and femininity during Nazi-Germany (Koonz, 1987). A comparison to media coverage of female heads of governments in other countries such as Dilma Rousseff, Christina Fernándos de Kirchner, Hillary Clinton, or Park Geun-Hye would clarify this issue. Analysis could explicate if and what different gender repertoires journalistic coverage taps into in various contexts. For the German discourse, it has become clear that the rise of Angela Merkel was paralleled by the media’s acknowledgement of a top female politician as a powerful and competent head of government. Nevertheless, the underlying ideology of a binary gender order and the political arena as a domain of masculinity was not significantly challenged.
Future analyses should move beyond the representation of women in journalistic reporting. For political communication research and feminist media research it cannot be enough to concentrate only on women in politics and to identify stereotypes, discrimination, and trivializations. Rather, it is important to focus on the discursive constructions of masculinities in politics, as has been done in other areas of cultural media studies for quite some time (e.g. Halberstam, 1998). Thus, it is necessary to turn to the mediated processes that reproduce gender or the heteronormative system of two sexes.
Therefore, the field should ‘open itself up to inquiries into gender from a poststructual perspective, influenced by “queer” theory, where the emphasis is placed on the construction of masculinity and femininity’ (Alvares et al., 2011: 221). This approach can highlight the inscriptions of gender patterns in journalistic discourse as much as the potential for breaking these patterns. Our analysis raises the question of whether in political discourse the otherwise naturalized connection of woman/femininity and man/masculinity can productively dissolve into its components and if new combinations are possible. Following these paths raises the question on who/which groups will profit from these new combinations? What political types will be presented as worthwhile? Which gendered constellations remain confusing or disturbing? To answer these questions, communication research as well as journalistic coverage will need to leave the binary gender system. We see our analysis as a first step in deconstructing the gendered system of politics – regardless of whether performed by women or men.
Footnotes
Funding
Our project is funded by the German Ministry of Science and Research (BMBF) and by the European Social Fund (ESF) (2008-2010).