Since the 1960-s, when gender media studies originated, a special attention of gender media scholars has been paid to the different aspects of political communication. “Gendered mediation” (Gidengil and Everitt 1999), or “gendering”, of politicians and politics is considered to have a crucial influence both on the voter recognition of female and male candidates, and political participation of women and men. Scholars have provided potential reasons, which can explain the way women and men politicians, as well as the problem of the gender imbalance in political sphere are covered in political journalism (e.g. Braden 1996, Ross 2002, Falk 2008). Despite the media institution (its logic, organization, and individual characteristics of the media producers) being defined as the key “guilty party” of the patterns revealed by the scholars, journalists have remained silent producers of the assumed “gendered mediation”.

This paper turns to the political journalists’ vision of the (gendered) media portrayal of politicians and politics. Its aim is to explore the reasons of gendering in quality press, as they are conceptualized by political journalists. The study focuses on journalists working in two different cultural and political contexts – in Russia and in Sweden. The choice of the cases is driven by the wish to define the similar and different elements in the journalists’ conceptions of the reasons of gendering in different political and cultural contexts, where the two cases work as an illustration of the global tendency of mediatization of politics.

Based on the analytical framework suggested by Hanitzsch (2007), the paper turns to the journalists’ conceptions of gendering in relation to their concern of the professional norms and ethical standards, institutional roles, and epistemological beliefs. The concluding discussion links gendering as a component of the national culture of political journalism and the global tendency of mediatization of politics.