Comparative Analysis of Women's Representation in Media: France vs. Spain

Media has the power to shape narratives and influence societal perceptions, especially when it comes to the representation of women. The portrayal of women in news media headlines reveals a lot about societal norms, stereotypes, and even biases that persist in different cultures. In this article, we explore and compare the representation of women in media in France and Spain, focusing specifically on the language used in news headlines.

Summary

Category	Key Observations (France)	Key Observations (Spain)
Female Bias Words	Similar level of stereotypical portrayals as Spain	Slightly more stereotypical portrayal compared to France
Crime and Violence	More negative and sensationalist tone	Less harsh representation of women
Empowerment	Less impactful representation in empowerment contexts	More empowered, progressive representation
People and Places	Neutral portrayal in social/geographical contexts	Higher bias, more stereotypical roles in social/geographical contexts
Race, Ethnicity, Identity	Limited data, but negative bias suggested	Limited data, less emphasis on race-related bias

Table of content

Data Collection
Themes and Stereotypes
Bias Analysis
Understanding Media Portrayal of Women through Cluster Segmentation
Word Analysis
Conclusion

Data Collection

For this analysis, we utilized RapidAPI's Google News API to gather headlines from major news outlets in both France and Spain, specifically focusing on headlines containing keywords related to women. These keywords were selected based on The Pudding's When Women Make Headlines essay, adopting their curated word dictionaries to analyze the language used in the headlines.

Due to the constraints of the free version of the API, we could only retrieve headlines from the past month, which limited the scope of our data collection. Specifically, our analysis period spanned from September 23, 2024, to October 23, 2024.

Themes and Stereotypes

Take a look at these Pudding dictionaries.

The five categories [Female Bias Words, Crime and Violence, Empowerment, People and Places, and Race, Ethnicity, and Identity] were employed to scan the translated (into english) headlines for matching terms.

The category [Female Words] was specifically used to gather relevant headlines.

We collected data on word frequency both at the individual word level and by category, analyzing the frequency distribution for each country.

It's important to note that no headlines mentioning the ongoing Mazan process in France were collected
What sticks out on the bar chart are mainly two categories [Crime] and [Race]

Bias analysis

With our data cleaned and sorted using the appropriate dictionaries, we moved on to calculate the bias scores. Following The Pudding’s methodology, we used word frequency counts in the various themes, coupled with VADER sentiment analysis to measure the polarity of the headlines—whether they conveyed positive, negative, or neutral sentiments.

This combined approach allowed us to gauge how certain topics related to women are framed differently in each country.

Key Observations

Female Bias Words : Spain tends to portray women in a more stereotyped way, though it is not overly pronounced compared to France.
Crime and Violence : France's coverage tends to have a more negative tone, which can contribute to a more sensationalist or damaging portrayal of women. Spain's provids less harsh representation of women.
Empowerment (positive category) : Spain tends to frame women in a more empowered and progressive light. In France, women's representation in empowerment contexts is less impactful, potentially reflecting a weaker emphasis on positive portrayals.
People and Places : This category can be a bit more ambiguous. It tends to cover how women are represented in social or geographical contexts, like their roles in communities, workplaces, or as part of larger societal narratives. The bias score will be better to interpretate later in this analysis.
Race, Ethnicity, and Identity : Interpreting the bias score for this category is challenging due to the limited number of headlines available on the subject.

Understanding Media Portrayal of Women through Cluster Segmentation

This Parallel Coordinates Plot shown below helps in understanding how the variables [female bias, crime and violence, empowerment, etc.] work together in each cluster for both France and Spain.

Key Observations

Cluster 0 (Race and Identity): This pattern hints that when race and identity are part of the conversation, media in France will amplifies certain negative biases in contrast to Spain. While we cannot draw definitive conclusions due to limited data, this cluster suggests that race and identity are likely to provoke strong opinions and framing in French media coverage, contributing to biased portrayals of women who belong to racial or ethnic minorities.
Cluster 2 (Empowerment and Higher Bias): As seen previously, empowerment words in Cluster 2 for both France and Spain show an association with higher bias scores.
Cluster 3 (Crime and Violence): France's higher negative bias suggests an emphasis on crime, potentially leading to more sensationalized coverage of women.
Cluster 4 (People and Places): French media shows a balanced portrayal, whereas Spanish media has a higher bias, indicating stereotypical framing.
Overall, France shows greater variation in sentiment and bias scores, indicating more polarized representations of women, while Spain appears more moderate but still shows biases in certain clusters.

Word Analysis

Now that we have a clear understanding of how each category interrelates and how various attributes influence one another, let’s take a closer look at the words themselves to highlight distinct differences. Below, you’ll find an interactive bar chart that allows you to zoom in and explore the data in detail.

Top ranked words

Below are interactive bubble charts that visualizes the top-ranked words in France's and Spain's media coverage, with bubble size reflecting their rank and frequency details for each word.

Words highlighted in red belong to categories such as [Crime and Violence] and [Female Bias Words.] France's emphasis on crime-related terms contrasts with Spain's focus on relational stereotypes, highlighting different media framing priorities. The sentiment analysis showed that both these categories we accompanied by negatives biases.

France: Words like "government" and "election" are more prominent in French headlines, suggesting that women are covered in political and leadership contexts more frequently than in Spain. We have seen earlier that the sentiment of these headlines appear neutral.

Conclusion

The representation of women in French and Spanish headlines reflects cultural biases about gender roles. In France, the focus is often on violence, portraying women as victims, while Spain emphasizes familial roles, reinforcing domestic stereotypes.

To broaden the study, a comparative sentiment analysis of headlines featuring terms related to men could offer an interesting perspective. This comparison would highlight potential gender biases by contrasting how men and women are portrayed in similar contexts. Furthermore, while sentiment analysis and word frequency are strong starting points, incorporating other NLP techniques, such as topic modeling or named entity recognition, could deepen the findings. Linguistic features like framing devices or euphemistic language could also be explored to uncover more subtle biases. Finally, logistic regression could be used to assess the likelihood that headlines involving women carry a negative tone or focus on specific themes, depending on various contextual characteristics, such as the media outlet, country, or type of topic covered.