Abstract

In the past few years Canadians have witnessed a significant increase in the number of women holding premierships. One CBC journalist even dubbed 2011 “The Year of the Woman” in provincial politics, noting that four out of the thirteen provinces and territories were led by women: Alison Redford in Alberta, Christy Clark in British Columbia, Eva Aariak in Nunavut and Kathy Dunderdale in Newfoundland and Labrador (MacKinnon, 2011). Further to this, in 2012 Pauline Marois became the premier of Quebec, Kathleen Wynne was elected premier of Ontario in 2013, and Rachel Notley became the premier of Alberta in 2015. In light of this change in the political arena, and recent questions about whether, for example, media coverage of Christy Clark has been sexist (Hyslop, 2013; Orr, 2013) this thesis explores the key following question: How are Canadian female politicians running to become leaders of their provincial parties being represented in the news? Two case studies serve as the main focus of this research: Christy Clark’s leadership campaign in British Columbia in 2010/2011; and Alison Redford’s leadership campaign in Alberta in 2011. Using gendered mediation, representation theories, discussions of the public and private spheres, and with a focus on textual and framing analysis, this thesis looks at how the media focuses on gender differences, which may lead to explicit or implicit forms of sexism.