The Political Representation of Women in Mass Media Discourse in the Czech Republic 1990-1998

Abstract: In the Czech Republic the issue of the political participation of women has particular significance as the question that has opened up public discussion of the public status of women, perceived by the general public as the most conspicuous area of gender inequality of opportunity since 1989. The absence of discussion of the question under the communists meant that post-1989 debate has had to start ‘from scratch’, and so the article analyses the role of various categories of intelli-gentsia in establishing the terms of public discourse as well as considering specific and general perceptions of the gender dimension of Czech politics and gender stereotypes in the context of politics. The source materials are articles explicitly dealing with the subject in the major Czech dailies and selected magazines, and the article presents a typology of the attitudes embodied in these articles and classifica-tion of their authors in terms of profession, sex, age and political affiliations. This research confirms that media workers are weak in their response to public opinion and use of experts, and are principally aligned with attitudes directly derived from the sphere of politics. In relation to the issue of the political representation o