Portrayals of female candidates'femininity and masculinity in the 2008 us presidential campaign cartoons

Unlike all the previous US presidential elections, the 2008 election was more than a race between two major political ideologies- the left and the right. In fact, the Americans had to make more complicate decisions by weighing at least three factors-political ideology, race, and gender of candidates. Similarly, in scholarly fields, these three factors have attracted great attention. This study focuses on the last one-gender of the candidates. Political cartoons were collected to examine depictions of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, first, to find how these depiction reflect gender bias, and also, to uncover cartoonists’ stances on gender used to assess these female candidates. Rhetorically analyzed, these cartoons revealed the presence of gender bias which came in different forms of treatments, from female stereotypes to different evaluations of the same characteristics in men and women. Furthermore, this study revealed a surprising finding that, whether the cartoonists were left-wing or right-wing, they shared the same assumptions of gender-they depicted Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin from conservative views.