Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Media Interpretation Of A Leading Woman Politician’S Performances And Dress Code Challenges, Mercedes Bengoechea

Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought

Based on a corpus of 63 press columns and reports, the paper analyzes how the media construct the identities of Carme Chacón, the first Spanish woman defence minister. It focuses on two salient pictures of her which represent the roles she successfully performed during her first eleven months in office (from April 2008 to March 2009): minister mother, and hybridly-gendered military officer/minister. The study reveals how Chacón’s success as a politician seems to be proportionate to her closeness to the socially sanctioned feminine role of mother, or to the powerful social roles of minister and military officer, performed from hybridly-gendered …