FROM GENDERING TO INTERSECTIONAL LABELLING. RUSSIAN AND SWEDISH POLITICAL JOURNALISTS’ PERSPECTIVE ON DISCRIMINATING AND PROMOTING MECHANISMS IN THE MEDIA CONTENT

Abstract

This paper suggests to study the phenomena of gendering in political journalism from intersectionality perspective (Davis,2008; McCall, 2005) in order to understand gendering in the framework of other discriminatory and promoting mechanisms in political news. Gendering is understood as the perceived imprint of gender on the media portrayal of politics and politicians, as well as the processes whereby gendered media representations materialize (Voronova, 2014). The paper is based on forty semi-structured interviews with political journalists working for the quality press in Russia and Sweden. The choice of the countries is driven by the wish to explore the difficulties and similarities of the journalists’ conceptualizations of gendering and other discriminatory and promoting mechanisms in two very different political and cultural contexts. The paper shows that the journalists in both countries highlight the importance of not only gender mainstreaming, but diversity in the content as a dem