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Women Leaders and Gender Stereotyping in the UK Press

A Poststructuralist Approach

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

  • Argues that a strong reason why women leaders are held back is the result of the often negative ways they are represented in the media
  • Presents an updated, FPDA approach which provides a set of strategies to reading and analysing gendered news texts ‘against the grain'
  • Provides readers with a ‘toolkit’ of methods to conduct poststructuralist analysis of written texts
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse (PSDS)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book explores how the UK press constructs and represents women leaders drawn from three professional spheres: politics, business, and the mass media. Despite significant career progress made by women leaders in these professions, many British newspapers continue to portray these women in stereotyped and essentialist ways: the extent to which this occurs tending to correspond with the political affiliation and target readership of the newspaper. The author analyses news media articles through three fresh perspectives: first, Kanter’s women leader stereotypes, second, a feminist agenda spectrum and third, a new ‘reflexive’ approach based on Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis. This book will appeal strongly to students and scholars of discourse analysis and media studies, and anyone with an interest in language, gender, leadership and feminism. 

Reviews

“This is an important and very timely book that is highly relevant for scholars of gender, language, and leadership. Accessibly written and supported by numerous examples from business, politics and entertainment, it illustrates how women leaders are still gendered, sexualised and stereotyped by the British media. Combining semiotic and discourse analytical tools, the various chapters convincingly illustrate the problematic nature of current representations of prominent women, and offer an alternative 'reading against the grain' enabling divergent interpretations.” (Stephanie Schnurr, University of Warwick, UK)

“This is  a refreshing book that does not only examine how selected British newspaper media construct and represent women in senior positions, but also offers strategies for readers and analysts to critically dissect such constructions. Judith Baxter has managed to write about complex analytical questions in a clear and engaging style, with many revealing examples. The book will be a valuable resource to those of us searching for a better understanding of the multiple, paradoxical and competing ways in which gender is 'done' in public discourse.” (Lia Litosseliti, City, University of London, UK)

“Through the analysis of British newspaper media, this compelling book offers empirical substance to the dominant discourses circulating in society about female leaders. As such, it is truly complementary to the study of leadership in real work contexts, as it offers a thorough and multi-faceted insight into the range of available ‘subject positions’ governing many of the identities female leaders construct on a daily basis.” (Dorien van de Mieroop, University of Leuven, Belgium)

“Responding to an increasing concern and need for a deeper and nuanced understanding of gendered leadership issues, this timely and welcome book offers an unprecedented critical scrutiny of various types of stereotypes and biased assumptions underlying the gendered representation of women leaders across a purposefully selected range of UK press. Through an integrated framework of incisive multi-level theoretical approaches, Baxter goes beyond the mere identification and description of gender stereotypes to engage in widening and deepening the scope of the investigation with insightful deconstructions and reconstructions of compelling up-to-date news media examples.” (Cornelia Ilie, Professor of Linguistics and Rhetoric, Malmo University, Sweden)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Judith Baxter

About the author

Judith Baxter is Professor Emerita of Applied Linguistics at Aston University, UK. Her previously published works include Double-Voicing at Work: Power, Gender and Linguistic Expertise (2014); The Language of Female Leadership (2010) and Positioning Gender in Discourse: A Feminist Methodology (2003), all published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Bibliographic Information

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