The (Under)representation of Women Politicians in Italian Talkshows during COVID-19

The next speakers in this ANZCA 2023 session are Carlotta Antonelli and Mauro Bomba, whose interest is in the dynamics of the political discourse around the COVID-19 pandemic in the main talkshows on Italian TV, with particular focus on the positioning of women with political roles in such discourse. In such contexts, media serve in a function as representatives of public views and responses to the issues they themselves cover.

The present study took a mixed-methods approach, analysing the content of seven daytime talkshows from seven Italian TV stations. Women represented only about one quarter of the nearly 150 political figures featured in such shows; this is an underrepresentation compared to the 40% of Italian parliamentarians who are women. Local politicians featured on these shows were even less likely to be women: only one eighth of all local politicians on the shows were women. A weighted count (capturing multiple appearances) further exacerbates these imbalances – on average, male politicians were likely to appear twice on these shows, with one politician even appearing a total of 35 times, while the most frequent female guest appeared only 6 times.

Featured women politicians usually held prominent institutional roles (as national ministers or regional and local leaders); the bar for appearances for such women therefore seemed considerably higher than that for male politicians – this represents a considerable gap in the expertise required to appear. The nature of the women’s roles (mostly in fields of care, health, and social services) also reinforces conventional gender stereotypes. What emerges from this analysis is a question of whether such inequalities should be addressed through interventions, such as representative quotas for guests in such talkshows.