Working the senate from the outside in: The mediated construction of a feminist political campaign

Abstract

The 1992 campaign year was known as the political Year of the Woman. This phrase was used to denote both the high‐profile Senate campaigns of five women, as well as a generalized sense of enthusiasm for female political candidates and, to some extent, for certain feminist beliefs. This is an examination of one aspect of this campaign: the mass‐mediated discursive formation used to position these Senate candidates outside of perceived mainstream, cultural beliefs and the ways in which the resulting discourse functioned as a commentary on U.S. feminism writ large.