Experts are prevalent and persuasive in modern media coverage of politics. The perceived competence of experts makes them popular sources in the media, and their statements can in some cases move citizens’ policy opinions substantially. However, men are generally used far more as experts than women are. Because of this predominance of male experts and general biases against women, we theorize that media audiences may find women to be less competent and consequently less persuasive as experts on policy issues. We investigate this through two experiments embedded in a survey with more than 2000 respondents in Denmark. Despite advances in gender equality, women are still in the minority among experts used in the Danish news media. However, despite this current gender imbalance, we find no gender biases against women as policy experts among the Danish news media audience. There are no significant differences in the perceptions of the competence of male and female experts, and the persuasiveness of the experts are also unrelated to the gender of the expert. These results hold across different policy issues, and across practically all demographics within the media audiences. These results are relevant both to the study of gender representation in the mass media, and to the study of gender biases more generally. Furthermore, the results are important for discussions on news media selection of experts.

在现代媒体对政治的报道中，专家普遍且有说服力。专家的能力使他们成为媒体的热门来源，他们的陈述在某些情况下可以极大地影响公民的政策意见。然而，与女性相比，男性通常更多地被用作专家。由于男性专家占主导地位以及对女性的普遍偏见，我们推测媒体受众可能会发现女性在政策问题上的能力较低，因此说服力较低。我们通过嵌入在丹麦 2000 多名受访者的调查中的两个实验来对此进行调查。尽管在性别平等方面取得了进展，但在丹麦新闻媒体使用的专家中，女性仍占少数。然而，尽管目前存在这种性别失衡，我们发现丹麦新闻媒体受众中没有针对女性作为政策专家的性别偏见。男性和女性专家对能力的认知没有显着差异，专家的说服力也与专家的性别无关。这些结果适用于不同的政策问题，并且适用于媒体受众中的几乎所有人口统计数据。这些结果既与大众媒体中的性别代表性研究相关，也与更普遍的性别偏见研究相关。此外，结果对于讨论新闻媒体选择专家很重要。这些结果适用于不同的政策问题，并且适用于媒体受众中的几乎所有人口统计数据。这些结果既与大众媒体中的性别代表性研究相关，也与更普遍的性别偏见研究相关。此外，结果对于讨论新闻媒体选择专家很重要。这些结果适用于不同的政策问题，并且适用于媒体受众中的几乎所有人口统计数据。这些结果既与大众媒体中的性别代表性研究相关，也与更普遍的性别偏见研究相关。此外，结果对于讨论新闻媒体选择专家很重要。