One of the largest single-day protests in the United States took place on January 21, 2017; the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th U.S. President. An estimated 5 million people, majority women, marched in thousands of cities around the U.S.

The Women’s March had been about sexual assault, body autonomy, and justice; but was minimized and mocked by countless. However, almost in defiance of the belittlers, female-led protests have increased incrementally every year. The U.S. elections in 2016 were a major push for organization within the women’s movement and prompted the Women’s March on Washington in early 2017. There were hundreds of sister marches on every continent, including Antartica, and have continued each year.

The outcome of the 2016 U.S. elections was attributed to every conceivable variable: James Comey, Russian interference, and voter suppression. Although all of the above contributed, many attribute media coverage of Hillary Clinton as an indicator of the gendered lens and President Trump’s victory.

The Media & Politics

Sexism in the media is not new, especially for women. When Hillary Clinton ran for U.S. President in 2016, critics argued the majority of coverage was sexist and hindered her campaign.  Her voice was described as “shrill,” her laugh a “cackle,” and there was a regular reference to her “likeability.” During debates and interviews, she was interrupted and patronized, much of her criticism was based off her husband, and her credibility and leadership was constantly brought into question by the media.

But what has become apparent in the past few years is that many of the male journalists who covered the 2016 elections have recently been accused of sexual harassment and assault by female colleagues. Some of the most prominent journalists are Matt Lauer of ABC, Mark Halperin of MSNBC,  Charlie Rose of CBS, and Glenn Thrush of Politico.

These men created the standard for political discourse, including casting Hillary Clinton as untrustworthy and unlikeable, which was latched onto by President Trump who created the nickname “Crooked Hillary.”

These four men, among many others, have been accused of abhorrent behaviour ranging from sexually explicit comments and indecent exposure to sexual assault by female colleagues. These appalling behaviours call into question their code of ethics and objectivity, especially when displaying profound acts of misogyny and dehumanisation, and they had the privilege of shaping the public perception and discourse about the country’s first female candidate.

As Rebecca Traister wrote in the 2017 article ‘Our National Narratives Are Still Being Shaped by Lecherous, Powerful Men’ for New York Magazine, “we see that the men who have had the power to abuse women’s bodies and psyches throughout their careers are in many cases also the ones in charge of our political and cultural stories.”

Now that several Democratic women have declared their bid for presidency, some of the sexist (and racist) language resurfaced in the media.

Senator Kamala Harris’s dating history was dissected along with her love of the rappers Tupac and Snoop Dogg. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was mocked relentlessly for her fried chicken technique. Senator Elizabeth Warren is consistency referred to as “Pocahontas” after identifying as Native American.

Meanwhile Mark Halperin was given a platform to set political discourse in 2019, even after claiming the sexual assault accusations against President Trump would only help his brand. He appeared on Michael Smerconish’s radio show, a critic of the MeToo movement, and apologized for his behaviour. He then assessed the 2020 Democratic field, however his failure to mention any of the female candidates was apparent.

Ezra Klein, the creator of Vox media, wrote in ‘Political journalism has been profoundly shaped by men like Leon Wieseltier and Mark Halperin,’ in October 2017, “The most influential institutions in America have long had serial sexual abusers and deep misogynists at their apex. Those abusers didn’t just shape their workplaces or their industries; they shaped our politics, our culture, and our country.”

The Media & Photography

Aside from written media, visual representations of women have specific patterns. Photographs are an integral tool of the media to evoke emotions, set narratives, and draw in readers. Harrowing photos, especially during war, can be accredited to swaying public support.

After a photo of a young Syrian boy on a Turkish beach was published, support for refugees swelled. Similarly, the photo of a young Vietnamese girl running naked through the street after a napalm attack emboldened anti-Vietnam War sentiment throughout the U.S.

For the women’s protest movement, photographs were both a tool and a hindrance. The past media coverage of protests has been studied through the ‘protest paradigm,’ or the way in which the media discredits protestors as violent, unorganized, and unreasonable for challenging the status quo. The media regularly focuses on violent aspects and relies heavily on government and police sources.

The protest paradigm is also apparent in the women’s movement, however, as majority of protests are female-led, there are deviations specific to gender. For one, women are more likely to be the subject when the protest is peaceful; violence is reserved for men.

Furthermore, a study called “Views from the Margins: News coverage of abortion protests” conducted in 2011 by Cory Armstrong and Michael Boyle, found abortion protest coverage relied on male sources as opposed to female sources even though abortion is largely a women’s issue.

When women were the main sources, they were historically trivialised or sexualised. For example, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in the U.K. between 1981 and 1988 protested against the production and use of nuclear weapons. There were two distinct patterns of media coverage:

1) The right-leaning media regularly described the protestors as “ladies in teepees” and relied on military sources who were described as “faintly bemused” and “without reaction.”

2) The left-leaning media was positive, however just as demeaning. The reporters regularly described the protest as a “utopia” and “escape” for women as opposed to a valid protest. Although the Greenham protests and subsequent coverage took place in the 1980s, the pattern of coverage remains relevant to this day.

2018 was a significant year for women’s protests. A 2019 study called “The Gendered Lens: a Semiotic Analysis of Women in Protest,” compared women’s protests in 2018 in three different countries for a cross-cultural comparison. The three countries were Argentina, South Korea, and France; all of which had massive female-led protests for a wide variety of grievances.

In Argentina, the majority of 2018 protests centered on the Senate vote on abortion rights. In South Korea, the MeToo movement were a result of spy cam porn in public bathrooms and changing rooms [molka] and combined with the protests of ‘comfort women,’ or women who were enslaved by the Japanese colonial military.

France also had many female-led marches, especially with MeToo and TimesUp. France is also the headquarters to the originally Ukrainian radical feminist group, Femen. Femen is regularly featured in the media for their spectacles against world leaders such as President Erdogan, Putin, and Trump.

The study analysed 135 photos from AP Photos, Reuters, and Getty Images, 45 from each country, to look for patterns in coverage. According to the study, there are three main categories: sexualization, marginalisation, and trivialisation. Similarly, these categories can and do intersect in many instances.

Sexualization is shown through a focus on a woman’s body or face in a suggestive manner. A news photo which focuses on a person’s eyes is not sexual, but is emotional.

Marginalisation is a focus on authoritative figures as the heroes or subject; protestors as the deviant objects. Trivialisation is seen through a focus on emotions, usually portrayed as disproportional and unwarranted.

The pattern of sexualisation, marginalistaion, and trivilasiton were evident in all three protests, however with disparities. The photos from Argentina had the most evidence of sexualization, France had the most trivialization, and South Korea had a mix of marginalisation and trivialisation.

In Numbers

From politicians to protestors, women in the media are constantly portrayed in misogynistic paradigms. This can be attributed to a number of factors, but one of the most apparent is the makeup of news rooms, which are primarily white and male.

According to a report released by The Women’s Media Center in 2019, “while women outnumber men in journalism programs and in colleges, they represent just 41.7 percent of newsroom employees, according to the 2018 diversity survey by the American Society of News Editors.”

A similar study conducted by Women in Journalism called “Seen But Not Heard: How Women Make Front Page News,” found 78% of all front page bylines of national newspaper in Britain were male in 2012. The study was reanalyzed in 2017, with a 2 percentage point rise in the average number of female bylines on the front pages in the past five years, with 25% of stories being written by women.

Overall, women are covered negatively by the media. One important distinction is there is a positive correlation however slow and small. The women’s movement of the past was ridiculed, brushed aside, and mocked. Although many of those patterns remain prevalent, more women and diverse voices are contributing to the media each year.

One can only hope that future participants in the women’s movement will not be cavalierly asked if they “burned their bras” in the streets when fighting for basic human rights.