Abstract
This book professes to have two aims, the first to provide a gendered analysis of contemporary leadership and in particular to analyse the way that news media reinforce gender stereotypes about leadership, and second, to explore the implications of current transformations in political communications for the popular perception of women leaders. The book is organised into seven chapters which address these fundamental aims.
The first chapter outlines the idea that leadership has historically been associated with males and that the characteristics which are considered to be desirable for exercising power continue to be stereotypically masculine. Campus then brings in literature from management and organisational studies to help explain the persistence of the elision of masculine characteristics and leadership which confirms the ‘think leader-think male’ bias. The chapter goes on to examine whether there really are feminine leadership styles and also outlines the concept of transformational leadership which suggests a way forward for de-gendering models of leadership. This chapter is particularly interesting because by engaging with the literature from organisational and management studies, it takes an inter-disciplinary look at the relationship between gender and leadership which is lacking in the current literature analysing the relationship between women and politics.
Chapter 2 addresses the extent to which current trends in political communication mean that leadership has become increasingly mediated. Campus argues that television is particularly crucial for female leaders as women are not as likely as male leaders to exploit TV as a means of communicating with voters. This is because television promotes ‘visual leadership’ which as we know has particular risks for women who receive more scrutiny of their appearance than male counterparts. The author goes on to suggest that in theory television ought to be women-friendly as it is a more intimate medium than print (which allegedly suits women) and moreover argues that the Internet might be particularly useful for women leaders as it is less visual. Campus uses the example of Ségolene Royal’s Internet campaign to support argument.
The third chapter specifically tackles the media coverage of women leaders and rehearses the literature in this area in an accessible fashion. Issues which are covered include the extent to which women leaders receive media attention, what aspects of the campaign receive most coverage and whether they are presented as viable candidates for leadership. This chapter incorporates an impressive number of examples from a variety of countries worldwide which effectively broaden the familiar picture of female leaders beyond the much studied United States. This is one of the main strengths of this chapter (and indeed the whole book). Overall, this chapter offers a good summary of the literature in this area, but it is difficult to escape the feeling that apart from focusing specifically on leaders, it is not breaking any new ground.
Chapter 4, on the other hand, offers a very illuminating discussion of Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s double-bind shows, which is used to discuss the drawbacks of being a woman leader, such as the femininity–competence bind that positions women as either too feminine for leadership or too strong to be a real woman, which makes it difficult for them to be perceived as a viable leader. These difficulties for women leaders are neatly illustrated by Campus through an interesting comparison between France’s Ségolene Royal who was stereotyped as too feminine and consequently not possessing the traditional qualities of leadership, and Hillary Clinton who was conversely portrayed as being too strong (and so too cold) and not displaying sufficient femininity.
This chapter is extremely informative, but it would have been helpful if some differentiation between political systems was made as most of the examples take for granted that female leaders are directly elected and therefore need to appeal to voters on this basis which is obviously not the case with parliamentary systems. Therefore, although it is definitely an advantage that the book looks systematically at women leaders rather than offering national case studies which a lot of literature in this area ordinarily does, it might have been helpful to include some discussion of the importance of the national political context of women leaders as this must have some bearing on how they would be treated by media.
The fifth chapter focuses upon the way in which women political leaders are portrayed in media coverage which places too much emphasis on their physical appearance. Campus acknowledges that current trends in political communications have also forced male leaders to consider their images more carefully but skilfully demonstrates that such coverage poses different risks for female leaders who tend to be more sexualised or trivialised by excessive focus on their appearance. Once again, numerous relevant examples are used effectively to support the argument that too much attention is given to women leaders at the expense of other aspects of their political performance.
Chapter 6 examines the visibility of the private lives of women leaders, especially their families and in particular their roles within those families. The chapter highlights that while the identities of male leaders are rarely bound up with their roles as husbands and fathers, women are frequently defined by their relationships to men and children. Although being a wife and mother is generally considered reassuring since it reinforces traditional feminine behaviour, it can also lead to their commitment to public life and their families being questioned since working women are always perceived as balancing work and family life in a way that male leaders are not required to, whether this is actually the case or not.
The book concludes with a chapter which suggests that recent years have seen the increased disillusionment with formal political actors and institutions on the part of citizens. Campus argues somewhat convincingly that part of the solution to this problem is to redefine political leadership so that it is no longer synonymous with masculine personality traits as such stereotyping is also disadvantageous to male candidates. Conceiving of leadership characteristics as part of the political office rather than as inherent traits possessed or not by individual candidates might help women to gain more acceptance as viable political actors in the public sphere, but might also help to re-engage citizens who are dissatisfied with the performance of political leaders by demonstrating that there is more than one way of doing politics.
The book provides a much-needed exploration of how gender stereotypes affect perceptions of leadership in contemporary political contexts. The most original aspect of the work is the way in which literature from management studies is incorporated into the discussion in order to unpick the way in which leadership and masculine characteristics are usually intertwined. The book also makes a considerable contribution to the body of work which has already been done about women leaders and their portrayal in media texts by offering a systematic approach to these important questions rather than focusing upon individual leaders in the form of case studies which is what has mainly been done before. Furthermore, the work draws on examples of women leaders from a wide variety of countries throughout the world which avoids the trap of focusing on western leaders who have already been well studied. The book would be further enhanced if it found space to address the extent to which differences in national political cultures and differences in media environments might impact on the mediation of women leaders.