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Sexist slant in media representation of women 'needs to change'

Laura Bates, the founder of Everyday Sexism, says previous male leaders have not been treated in the same way as Theresa May, Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel

Catherine Wylie

Friday 30 December 2016 01:19 GMT

Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a recent meeting in Berlin (Press Association )

Big improvements could be made in the way women are represented by the media following "massive focus" on the looks of famous figures including Theresa May, Hillary Clinton and Meghan Markle in 2016, according to the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project.

Laura Bates said previous male leaders have not been treated in the way Mrs May has, and that coverage of the female Prime Minister has had a "sexist slant".

The author added Mrs Clinton faced criticisms during the US election campaign that would probably not be made of men - such as references to the "Clinton cackle" or post-debate commentary on whether she was "smiling too much or hadn't smiled enough".

A "really important moment" was the strongly-worded statement put out by Prince Harry's communications secretary attacking the media over the "wave of abuse and harassment" his girlfriend Markle had experienced, Ms Bates said.

Reflecting on coverage of Mrs May, she added: "Just generally since Theresa May became Prime Minister we've seen a massive focus on looks, clothes, body, fashion, cooking, domesticity, marriage, in the coverage of her that we just simply don't see in the same way with male politicians and haven't seen with previous male prime ministers.

"As a whole I would definitely see a sexist slant of coverage of Theresa May ever since she became Prime Minister. But also, this is very much something that's impacting on all female politicians and I think we have to think about what the knock-on impact of it is, because we are living in a country where fewer than a third of elected MPs are female, where there are more male MPs now currently serving than there have ever been female MPs.

"And when people going into that voting booth to make a decision about who's representing them it matters if the information that they've been provided by the press about female politicians is about their shoes and their hairstyles and their handbags, and the information that they've heard about male MPs in the news is about their policies and voting records."

Looking back on coverage of Mrs Clinton, she said: "We saw an unwarranted focus on her clothes, on her make-up, on her hairstyle. But we also, with Hillary Clinton I think in particular, saw certain criticisms being made of her that wouldn't necessarily been made of a male opponent."

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Anne Hathaway

The 32-year-old actress said she has already experiences job rejections because of her age. “Now I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, 'Why did that 24-year-old get that part? I was that 24-year-old once. I can't be upset about it, it's the way things are,” she told Glamour.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Helen Mirren

On news that Maggie Gyllenhaal had been turned down for being ‘too old’, aged 37, to play a 55-year-old man’s partner: “It’s f***ing outrageous. It’s ridiculous. Honestly, it’s so annoying. And ’twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It’s so annoying.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Gyllenhaal revealed she was told by a Hollywood producer that she was too old, aged 37, to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. “It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh,” she said at the time.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep has helped fund an all-female screenwriters group called The Writer’s Lab to encourage more women to pen Hollywood scripts. She previously told Vogue in 2011: “Once women pass childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Emma Thompson

The actress said she thought Hollywood is “still completely s***” when it comes to treating women equally to men. ““When I was younger, I really did think we were on our way to a better world. And when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women, and I find that very disturbing and sad.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Elizabeth Banks

Banks said she was driven from acting to directing due to the lack of roles for older women in Hollywood. “"[Industry sexism] drove me to direct for sure. I definitely was feeling that I was unfulfilled and a little bit bored by the things that were coming across my desk. I mean look at Gwyneth Paltrow who has her Oscar [for Shakespeare in Love] and played fifth banana to Iron Man,” she told Deadline.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Viola Davis

“I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualised role in TV or film. I'm a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualised woman. I was the prototype of the ‘mommified’ role,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Liv Tyler

The Lord of the Rings actress said she only get cast in roles where she is treated as a “second class citizen” at the age of 38. “When you’re in your teens or twenties, there is an abundance of ingenue parts which are exciting to play. But at [my age], you’re usually the wife or the girlfriend - a sort of second-class citizen. There are more interesting roles for women when they get a bit older,” she told More magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Cate Blanchett

The actress famously called out sexism on the red carpet at the 2014 Screen Actors Guild Awards. When a camera operator scanned her up and down, she said: “Do you do this to the guys?” In her Oscar acceptance speech for Blue Jasmine, she reminded the film industry that movies with leading women can still be successful. “And thank you to... those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the centre, are niche experiences. They are not -- audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Ellen Page

Asked if she had ever encountered sexism in Hollywood, Page told The Guardian: ‘Oh my God, yeah! It's constant! It's how you're treated, it's how you're looked at, how you're expected to look in a photoshoot, it's how you're expected to shut up and not have an opinion, it's how you... If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Zoe Saldana

The actress says she refuses roles where she has to play the generic girlfriend, wife or sexy bombshell. "It's very hard being a woman in a man's world, and I recognised it was a man's world even when I was a kid. It's an inequality and injustice that drove me crazy, and which I always spoke out against — and I've always been outspoken,” she told Manhattan magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Charlize Theron

The actress spoke to ELLE about negotiating equal pay for the Snow White and the Huntsman sequel: "This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn't mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you're doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way."

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Ms Bates said the coverage of Harry's relationship with Suits actress Markle featured "dog whistle misogyny and racism", adding: "I think the fact that Prince Harry decided to make the unprecedented decision to call that out for what it was was a major positive actually in terms of somebody in a position of enormous privilege pointing out the inequality being faced in press coverage by somebody in a position that he would never be in. I think that was actually a really important moment."

In relation to the coverage of Markle, Ms Bates said she believes there were "really quite deliberate attempts to paint her in a particular light, which we absolutely have not seen with Prince Harry's white blonde-haired previous girlfriends".

Speaking more generally about the representation of women in the media, she said: "I certainly don't think that we're seeing massive strides of improvement I have to say. And I also think it's really important to see this in a broader context of other particular problems in the press coverage of women in particular. For example, the coverage of sexual violence in a way that is often dismissive or titillating."

Ms Bates, author of Girl Up, added: "I think there's a very long way to go. I think that there is a huge amount that can be improved on."

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