Face the facts: Female pols suffer from "face-ism"

"Successful female politicians face a number of obstacles that don't burden their male peers. One of these, a new University of Michigan study shows, is 'face-ism'—a tendency to emphasize women's bodies rather than their faces.... The U-M researchers computed 'face-ism' scores for all the politicians by analyzing photos on the same website—www.congress.org. They obtained the scores by measuring the size of the face from the top of the head, including the hair, to the lowest part of the chin, then dividing by the total size of the body image pictured. The result is a ratio expressing the proportion of the person's total image devoted to the face. Overall, the researchers found, the 504 male politicians had higher face-ism scores than the 84 female politicians. The heads of male politicians occupied 78 percent of their images, on average, while the heads of female politicians occupied 75 percent of their images—a statistically significant difference." Source: University of Michigan News Service

Link to Report | Link to .xls chart