Melody House and Karen Boyle
KEY FINDINGS
- Election news and commentary remain heavily male dominated: men had 70.8% of bylines and made up 73.6% of people in the news.
- Women of colour remain very marginal to Scottish political coverage.
- Only 3 opinion pieces focused on the election were written by women of colour across the 4 weeks of election coverage monitored.
- Women of colour made up just 1.6% of people in the news.
A group of researchers from the University of Strathclyde examined election coverage across print and television in Scotland in the four weeks from 10 April to election day on 7 May. A total of 1505 stories were coded: 121 on television and 1384 from newspapers. The study revealed that coverage remains heavily male dominated, with women of colour having a very marginal presence.
Who makes the election news?
Men made up 53.4% of all anchors, journalists and reporters in election stories, with women at 26.1% and in 20.4% gender was unknown (e.g. credited only as a Daily Mail Reporter). When the stories authored by anchors, journalists or reporters whose gender or race is unknown were taken out the mix, white men made up 67% of all recognisable figures.
As in our previous studies, television was more gender-balanced than print media: 50.2% of anchors, journalists and reporters for election stories were women. However, there was just one man of colour (Rahim Cham reporting on STV) and two women of colour (anchors Halla Mohieddeeen on BBC Scotland, Vidushi Tiwari on STV) appearing in these roles in this period. Whilst broadcasters have made significant progress towards their stated goals for gender parity, there is clearly still more work to do around the representation of people of colour.
Print journalism remains heavily male dominated: 54% of journalists writing on the election were men and just 22.2% were women. Removing stories with unknown authors we found that 70.8% of bylines in election stories were men. Women of colour remained an extremely marginal presence, with only 0.7% of bylines. Focusing on commentary and opinion articles specifically, just 3 commentaries relating to the election were written by women of colour across this four-week period. Two of these were by regular National columnist Assa Samaké-Roman, the other was by Pass the Mic founder Talat Yaqoob – also in the National. No papers other than the National carried commentary or opinion by women of colour.
Who appears in election news?
Turning now to who appears in election news, men significantly outnumbered women here too: 73.6% of people coded were men, 24.6% women and 13 people (0.2%) were explicitly identified as trans, non-binary or other – a very similar pattern to the one we identified in the 2024 General Election coverage (74.6%; 23.3%; 0.1%).[i] White men made up 65.6% of all people who could be categorised in relation to gender and race (Figure 1), whilst women of colour made up only 1.6% and men of colour 9.8%.[ii]
Figure 2: People appearing in Scottish election stories
There are a number of ways to situate these findings. We can compare people in the news with census data to see whether the news reflects the population: in relation to gender it clearly does not. It doesn’t even reflect the make up of our Parliament – 45% women before the election, 43.4% after – or the profile of the 1020 candidates standing in 2026 (35.3% of whom were women).
Even if we focus specifically on the politicians appearing in our dataset, the distortion remains: just 23% of politicians appearing were women. This is not an uncommon pattern in studies of election coverage: for instance a Loughborough University study of the 2024 General Election coverage in English-based media found that less than 1 in 5 of politicians in television and print news in the five weeks leading up to that election were women.
The 2021 census found that 92.86% of Scotland’s population identified as white. The overall proportion of people of colour in our dataset is marginally higher than in the Scottish population. However, men of colour are disproportionately represented within that (85.9% of all people of colour). This can largely be accounted for by the high profile accorded to Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour. Sarwar appeared 432 times, accounting for 63.3% of all people of colour. Even accounting for the Sarwar effect, the number of other men of colour appearing in election stories was considerably higher than the number of women of colour: 155 men, compared with 94 women.
As the Sarwar example suggests, not all politicians are equal in media coverage. Studies by colleagues at Loughborough University (going back to 1992) consistently show that party leaders dominate media coverage of elections. Figure 2 shows the relative prominence of each of the seven main party leaders. In the 2026 election, only one woman occupied this role for a Scottish party – Gillian Mackay, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens. During the election, Ross Greer – the male co-leader – stated that in the event of a Green victory, he would serve as Mackay’s deputy. However, the media coverage did not reflect this, with Mackay receiving two mentions for every three received by Greer.[iii]
Figure 1: Prominence of party leaders (Scotland and UK)
Unsurprisingly, UK party leaders also appeared in the Scottish election coverage. There are two things worth highlighting here. Firstly, Kemi Badenoch – as leader of the UK Conservative Party – was one of the women of colour most often mentioned across the election coverage, with 22 appearances. Although Badenoch was a relatively marginal figure overall, her appearances account for 23.4% of all women of colour in the dataset. As a point of comparison, whilst Sir Keir Starmer was a far more prominent figure than Badenoch, his appearances account for just 3.7% of white men in the study, demonstrating the greater range of white men’s representation.
Secondly, research on UK coverage of the election has found that Farage was mentioned in UK media far more than any of the Scottish leaders. This is particularly striking given Farage himself was not running for election. Whilst this was obviously not the case in Scottish media, Farage was still the second most visible UK politician. This coverage was not necessarily positive for Reform (indeed, much was highly critical of the party and its figureheads) but is suggestive of the hold Reform have on current political discourse. Indeed, although immigration is a reserved matter, 5.2% of stories about the Scottish election referred to immigration.
Who speaks in election news?
When we looked at who was quoted in election stories (focusing specifically on print news), the marginalisation of women of colour is even more marked. Only 1.3% of all people quoted in Scottish newspapers’ election coverage were women of colour – that’s just 32 women of colour in 1384 newspaper stories.
Unlike in our analysis of the 2024 General Election, we did hear from some of the 15 women of colour standing for election in 2026.[iv] Kaukab Stewart, the former Minister for Equalities and SNP candidate, was the most cited (in 12 stories), but was not re-elected. Only three other women of colour candidates were heard from directly: Michelle Campbell and Simita Kumar of the SNP (both of whom were elected), and incumbent Pam Gosal of the Conservatives who lost her seat. The other women of colour elected in 2026 – Yi-pei Chou Turvey (Liberal Democrats) and Iris Duane (Greens) – were not quoted in pre-election coverage. Unsurprisingly, the second most quoted woman of colour was Badenoch (quoted 11 times).
The significant number of women standing down from parliament ahead of these elections is important to acknowledge. Analysis by Engender demonstrates that more than 58% of MSPs who stood down in 2026 were women. The number of women MSPs fell after the election, from 58 to 56, although – as noted above – there are now four women of colour MSPs, including the first Black women elected to the Scottish Parliament and the first trans woman. Progress, therefore, remains uneven with likely implications for media coverage given the emphasis often placed on established sources.
We also looked at the function people play in news stories, across television and print. Expertise was the most sharply gendered of all the functions we looked at, with men making up 74.4% of experts. This is consistent with previous studies, including our own, though the male dominance here is marginally more marked than in our previous work. Although experts are a relatively small proportion of those appearing in the news stories in our sample (just 3.9%), their views are often given particular weight and this is a key area in which Pass the Mic has sought to intervene with its database of women of colour experts. This database now has 343 women of colour with wide ranging expertise, including in relation to politics. Depressingly, however, there were only two women of colour experts in election stories (that’s less than 1% of experts), both featuring in the Scottish Daily Mail: Joanna Marchong of the Adam Smith Institute and business owner Poonam Gupta.
Personal experience and popular opinion are also categories over which media organisations exert considerable control. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the election focus, there were far fewer people sharing personal experience (n=71, 1.1% of all people coded) and popular opinion (n=179, 2.9%) in this dataset than in our previous studies. Whilst this makes it difficult to draw conclusions, the findings here remain consistent with previous studies with there being marginally more men than women in both groups. There were no women of colour sharing personal experience and just six (3.4%) offering popular opinions, all in vox poxs given on television. Notably three of these were 16 year-old school children appearing in just one BBC One Reporting Scotland story about first time voters.
In conclusion, the lead up to this Scottish election demonstrated the continued male dominance of political news, with women of colour remaining frustratingly marginal. There is clearly still work to do.
[i] Only people explicitly identified as trans within the context of the story were coded as such. In the days after the election, there was considerable coverage of the Greens’ two new trans MSPs. This study does not include an analysis of post-election coverage but we hope to provide an update focusing on the immediate aftermath of the election soon.
[ii] Race could not be determined for 257 people (4.1% of people in the total sample): the numbers here are higher than those for whom gender could not be identified (116, 1.9%) because of the use of gendered terms such as spokesman.
[iii] This figure is taken from Fiona McKay and Melody House’s article “All right, own up, who let the woman in?” .This analysis draws on the data collected for the current study.
[iv] “15 women of colour candidates”: this figure is based on Talat Yaqoob’s analysis of candidate lists.