Cluster-Seminar Öffentliche Finanzen und Lebenslagen

I present first descriptive evidence on gender differences and stereotypes in newspaper coverage of company board members in Germany through quantitative text analysis. Regularized regression shows that family-related terms are predictive of an article being about a woman. An association of women with family and men with careers is also shown in dictionary-based analyses using the term frequency-inverse document frequency and word embeddings. Additionally, agentic language relating to stereotypically male traits such as success-orientation is more prevalent for men, while communal language relating to female stereotypes such as caregiving is more associated with women. Despite an increasing share of women in board roles, no clear changes in newspaper coverage over time is found. In representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, female managers are less likely to be married or have children than male managers. There is no strong evidence for gender differences in agency among managers and weak evidence for women to be more communal. Thus, the stereotyped representation of board members in newspapers does not appear to reflect correct beliefs about average characteristics of women and men in these positions.