In the project SOM we use a large media analysis to examine claims-making in the news. I looked at the gender aspect. Since the original data does not record the gender of the claimant, I used the first name of the 200 most common first names and manually assigned the gender.
This gives me 531 claims by women (16%), and 2729 claims by men (84%).
I find significant differences across countries in the proportion of claims made by women (as opposed to men):
| AT | BE | CH | ES | IE | NL | UK | |
| Women | 23.5% | 9.4% | 17.2% | 24.7% | 18.5% | 16.9% | 5.55% |
| Men | 76.5% | 90.6% | 82.8% | 75.3% | 81.5% | 83.1% | 94.5% |
My initial thought was that these differences are just another reflection of the different levels of descriptive representation. This isn’t the case, though (r=0.08):
I also looked at the frames used in political claims; men tend to use identity frames a bit more often, women moral arguments more often and instrumental frames. Instrumental frames are dominant for men and women.
Didier Ruedin 