Women Voices in Inter-Party Debates during the 2021 Ethiopian General Elections

In Ethiopia, multiparty elections are being organised every five years. For the 2021 general election, 47 parties were registered and more than 9,300 candidates ran for seats, of which, 1, 982 were women candidates. This study explored women candidates’ participation in election debates during the 2021 Ethiopian general elections. Using qualitative approach and content analysis technique, 35 television debates streamed in six stations were watched and analysed. Moreover, media legal documents and election reports are reviewed in gender lens. The findings revealed that the Ethiopia mainstream media cover men and women politicians differently during election campaign. The frequency of parties’ appearance in television debates and their gender representation are found to vary depending on the issues discussed and the media style of coverage. Female politicians were primarily being featured under the theme of gender, health, and education debates. Moreover, women candidates’ role in the election debates was limited in introducing and summarising their party policies while their men counterparts took the modest air time to present the details of the policy alternatives and to criticise the existing policies.