“Most voted women” – representations of gender in the Portuguese media coverage of the 2021 presidential elections

This study examines how media discourse represented the two women candi‑ dates in the coverage of the 2021 Presidential elections in Portugal. Resorting to Van Leeuwen’s Social Actor Network model (Van Leeuwen, 2008, 1996), the methodology is of a qualitative nature, incorporating elements of corpus linguistics. The main findings are that gender was not the main motivation for the representation of the different candidates but it was a central facet in the media coverage of the elections. The fact that women tended to be more func‑ tionalised than men and that the male far-right candidate was more appraised than others point to a need to further explore how gender intersects with other factors (ideology, class) in the discourse of public affairs.