Mäktiga män och osynliga kvinnor

The occurrence of male and female principal characters in Swedish and Norwegian economic press was studied. In total 1318 articles from the years 2002 and 2009 were studied through quantitative analysis. The aim was to study whether an increase of the female representation in the economic press can be said to have taken place. Norway has since 2008 adopted a law that obliges all Norwegian public companies registered on the Norwegian stock market to have a female representation of at least 40 percent in their boards. An investigation of its effect on the female representation in the economy press is therefore of interest. The main finding was that women occur as principal characters more frequently in Norwegian and Swedish economy press in 2009 than in 2002. The comparative increase of female principal characters was found to have been more pronounced in the Swedish daily press than the Norwegian.