Gendered Political Discussion and Intersectional Construction of Women’s Political Discussion Networks

• In Event: Gender, Media, and Politics

Abstract

This article attempts to critically analyze the naively but widely accepted findings in the field of political communication about gender difference in political discussion based on feminist perspectives. The current study suggests the concept of discussion opportunity structure, which shows the gendered construction of political discussion network. It implies that political discussion takes place based on reciprocal interactions with people, which are inevitably consequences of gender relations, or social structural positions in general. Using this concept, I tries to identify the gendered discussion network as a result of women’s limited positions in the discussion opportunity structure in three ways: gender segregation, social segregation, and ideological segregation. Then, I suggest feminist intersectionality as a promising framework for examining gender difference in research on politics. I conclude that gender differences in political discussion arise not because women are essentially different from men in terms of psychological traits like avoidance of conflict, having more generous attitude toward others’ opinion -as political communication scholars often argue-, but because of the structural, situational, and institutional factors that construct women’s discussion networks, which are inevitably sexually, socially, and ideologically segregated.

Author

• Yangsun Hong, University of Wisconsin-Madison