Working the senate from the outside in: The mediated construction of a feminist political campaign

The 1992 campaign year was known as the political Year of the Woman. This phrase was used to denote both the high-profile Senate campaigns of five women, as well as a generalized sense of enthusiasm for female political candidates and, to some extent, for certain feminist beliefs. This is an examination of one aspect of this campaign: the mass-mediated discursive formation used to position these Senate candidates outside of perceived mainstream, cultural beliefs and the ways in which the resulting discourse functioned as a commentary on U.S. feminism writ large.