2022.Feb.25

REPORTS

Report on the MeDi Workshop “Considering the House of Representatives Election Coverage and Its Gender Representation”

On Sunday, December 5, 2021, Media and Diversity Forum (MeDi), the B’AI Global Forum-based industry-university cooperative research group, held a closed online workshop on the theme of “Considering the House of Representatives Election Coverage and Its Gender Representation.”

The 49th House of Representatives election was held on October 31, 2021. While the Act on Promotion of Gender Equality in the Political Field had been enacted in 2018, and gender issue emerged as a major social agenda in 2021, with “gender equality (Jendā byōdō)” becoming one of the Top 10 Japan’s Buzzwords-of-the-year 2021, the percentage of women elected to the House of Representatives was a disappointing 9.7%, lower than before the election. After seeing  these results, this workshop examined the reasons for no increase in the number of women in Japanese politics in relation to the challenges of election coverage, and discussed what the media can do to close the gender gap in the future. The workshop was attended by members of MeDi and the B’AI Global Forum, as well as about 30 media practitioners working on gender issues in the field of news reporting, and essayist Keiko Kojima, one of the members of MeDi, served as facilitator.

In the opening remarks, Professor Kaori Hayashi (MeDi chairperson, Professor at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies and currently Executive Vice President of the University of Tokyo, and Director of the B’AI Global Forum) explained the reason why the election coverage was selected as the theme of the workshop. Election coverage is the most lacking in diversity among all of the political news and, if the current situation continues, it would become increasingly detached from our daily lives, which could lead to low voter turnout. How can we improve diversity in election coverage, and how can the media contribute to ensuring gender balance in the political field? Prior to the discussion on these questions by all participants, Professor Mari Miura at Sophia University’s Faculty of Law, who specializes in the relationship between politics and gender, gave a lecture.

 

Lecture by Professor Mari Miura (Sophia University’s Faculty of Law) “House of Representatives Election Coverage and Gender”

 

Firstly, Professor Miura introduced several researches conducted in the US, in which political news is more gendered than Japan, on how female politicians are represented in coverage. According to an article, the US media have a tendency when reporting on female politicians as follows: focusing on women’s domestic life, attaching them to more powerful men like their fathers or husbands, saying they get “emotional,” discussing their looks, and commenting negative on their voices[i].  These representations leads to the creation of the message that women are emotional, that their appearance is more important than their ability as politicians, and that they are unfit to lead, said Professor Miura. She also introduced another study which analyzed how women in positions of power, including business executives as well as politicians, are treated in coverage and identified four common stereotypes: sex objects, mothers, pets and children, and iron maidens[ii].

Next, Professor Miura reviewed recent election coverage in Japan in terms of dealing with gender issues. According to her, since the enactment of the Act on Promotion of Gender Equality in the Political Field in 2018, there has been a considerable increase in coverage addressing the low number of female members of parliament and the barriers they face. However, there are still many issues to be addressed, she pointed out, for example that it is necessary to examine whether the media had played a sufficient role in urging political parties to hold accountable for the reasons why the number of female candidates and lawmakers does not increase. She added that the media have to shed more lights on the structural problems of the electoral system, which is one of the reasons for the lack of diversity in election coverage.

Looking back the 49th House of Representatives election based on the contexts above, Professor Miura said that the most outstanding feature was that the number of calls for votes on social media by voters had greatly increased and that this had led to a diversification of policy issues. Regarding the question whether gender equality was properly addressed as an important issue, however, she pointed out that due to the vertical sectioning system of the mass media, gender-related issues such as “the impact of the pandemic on women,” which were usually covered by the Social Affairs Division, were not connected to the election coverage by the Political Affairs Division, and in the end were not brought to the foreground. On the other hand, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Japanese Communist Party, which had taken up gender issues to a certain extent, lost seats in the Diet, which led to the emergence of the cynical view that “gender-related election pledges do not help to win votes.” Against this view, Professor Miura pointed out that, in Japan, structural reasons such as the Single-Member District made it difficult to have a policy-driven election campaign in the first place. Voter rate has clearly fallen since the electoral system was changed to the Single-Member District, and in such a structure, even though the issues have become more diverse, the result of election is still dominated by two factors: “party” and “economy.” Professor Miura stressed that this is why the role of the media is so important, and that in order to change the overall structure, there needs to be more coverage that reflects the unique characteristics of the Single-Member District and that makes people realize the value of a vote.

 

Presentations by media practitioners

 

After then, MeDi members Keiko Yamamoto (Senior Manager at News Division of Nagoya Station NHK) and Keiko Hamada (Journalist) raised the issues concerning election coverage and gender from practitioners’ perspectives.

The first raised issue was the limits of “fair and neutral reporting.” Fairness and neutrality have been the main principles of the mass media’s coverage of the election, but what was often said this time was that the media were so sensitive to “fair and neutral reporting” that they gave only uncontroversial coverage, and in the case of television in particular, the amount of coverage itself was small. As a result, Ms. Yamamoto said, there was no in-depth analysis of the issues, and she was concerned about whether the media could provide voters with really useful information.

The second topic they raised was “practice and challenges of making ‘gender’ one of the main issues.” According to Ms. Hamada, in recent elections, questionnaires for candidates and political parties have included some symbolic questions about such as “an optional dual-surname system” and “same-sex marriage,” and in this respect, it seems that gender has become an issue. She pointed out, however, that there are still many areas where gender has not become an issue in relation to the larger social structure, such as the difficulties women faced in the pandemic and the social security system.

On the last topic of “future election coverage,” they emphasize that it is important to continue to report about gender issues not only during elections but also on a regular basis in order to raise voters’ interests and increase the number of female politicians.

 

Discussions in breakout session

 

After the plenary session, there was a 40-minute breakout session in which six to seven members of each of the eight groups discussed the problems in the election coverage this time and ways to resolve them for the future, using examples from the articles and programs they had brought.

To summarize the discussions in each group, a common topic was the difficulty of addressing gender issues in the newsroom. In the case of mass media such as newspaper and television, various factors become barriers when it comes to the extent to which the topic of gender can be conveyed specifically within a limited space and time, said participants. One of the factors they raised was the principle of “fair and neutral reporting,” which was also mentioned by Ms. Yamamoto and Ms. Hamada. Under this principle, priority is inevitably given to quantitative fairness, such as the number of appearances and exposure time between political parties, which makes it difficult to go into each social issue. Amongst them, gender issues are especially easy to be put on the back burner, because there is actually a backlash within the newsroom against taking up gender topics. Participants shared their experiences having faced reactions such as “gender issue is not urgent,” “it’s a topic for those who can afford it,” and “we can’t get ratings with gender issues.” This shows how inadequate the awareness of diversity is within media organizations including the decision-making level.

On the other hand, a keyword “the vertical sectioning system of the mass media” were frequently mentioned as another structural factor that makes it difficult to have diversity in election coverage. Gender issues do not exist in isolation but are connected to a variety of social issues, so if the Political Affairs Division and the Social Affairs Division work together, it would be possible to focus on a wider variety of issues, including gender. However, in the reality of the vertical sectioning system, the Political Affairs Division occupy a high position in the hierarchy and has a strong territoriality within the newsroom, making it difficult for other division to get information from the Political Affairs Division and also to get involved in election coverage. As to the vertical sectioning system, it was further pointed out that it does not have the capacity to deal properly with the recent young people’s concerns such as animal rights, climate change as well as gender, all of which cut across politics, economics and society. This means that the problems of the closed vertical structure of media company have to be resolved in order to encourage young people to participate in politics.

Considering these limitations, participants suggested various solutions for future election coverage. Firstly, as a countermeasure to the difficulties posed by the principle of “fair and neutral reporting,” it was suggested that digital media should be actively used in terms of diversification of communication methods. Digital media has no limitations in terms of time and space, and is relatively free from the influence of the vertical sectioning system. By taking advantage of these strengths of the digital media, it would be possible to deliver information in an interesting and easy-to-understand way, with properly linking social issues with the policies and issues of each political party.

It was also pointed out that in order to provide voters with the information they really need, the period of coverage needs to be reconsidered. Since the election period is very short, it is not possible to provide sufficient information during that period, and sometimes it is too late to report when the candidates have already been decided in terms of some issues such as he reasons why the number of female members of parliament has not increased. Therefore, in order to raise such issues more effectively, it is important to work on them over the medium to long term, not in the context of election reporting but in the context of political reporting. By doing so, the media could try various ways of reporting before the public announcement of election, when the restrictions of “fair and neutral reporting” are not relatively that strict, and also after the election, they would be able to provide analytical reports such as articles analyzing the factors that influenced each voter’s voting behavior.

Finally, while the overall discussion mainly focused on the difficulties of covering gender issues in election coverage, the actual amount of coverage has been increasing recently compared to the past, and the viewership has also been growing, so this positive aspect needs to be properly evaluated. However, it is also true that there are still many people within the media who continue to think that “gender issues don’t help to get ratings,” so it was pointed out that it is important to dispel this sensory discrepancy based on evidence and to assess properly the value of addressing gender issues within the media company. Needless to say, as a prerequisite, the media has to be fully aware of how important this issue is, not just whether or not they can get the viewership.

After the presentations by each group, the workshop concluded with Professor Miura’s comment. She said that each of the participants’ stories made her realize once again that a backlash is really occurring. As a way to fight against the backlash, she suggested that, when reporting on the difficulties individuals face in their lives, the media should also look at the systems that make the difficulties and address the gender issues that lie behind those systems. Furthermore, in response to participants’ concern about how to make the fundamental argument of why we need to increase the number of female Diet members more convincing, Professor Miura said that the argument should not be framed in a way that there are benefits for men as well as women, which is a frame the argument tends to be put in. She stressed that the media practitioners must first of all be aware that gender equality is not a question of benefits, but a question of human rights and democracy.

[i] https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-media-hurts-female-politicians-and-how-journalists-everywhere-can-do-better-70771

[ii] Carlin, D.B. and K. L. Winfrey. 2009. “Have you come a long way baby? Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and sexism in the 2008 campaign coverage.” Communication Studies 60: 326-343.