Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann steps from her campaign bus to greet supporters after winning the Iowa Republican Party’s Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa in August. (Associated Press)

Female politicians are not new to Washington, but women in politics are faced with media challenges unique from their male counterparts.

In the 2008 election it was Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton who made headlines for more then just their politics.

This year it’s congresswoman Michele Bachmann, the only female candidate up for the Republican nomination for the presidency who is facing the media head on.

According to researchers and females in politics, gender stereotypes still exist and the recent media coverage of Bachmann only reinforces this idea.

“Overall when I listen to news coverage I come away from the story knowing very little about achieved characteristics of a female politician,” Professor Sheri Kunovich, the assistant professor of sociology and director of undergraduate studies of sociology at Southern Methodist University, said.

Kunovich has researched the relationship of the media and female politicians and has found the coverage of women in politics is gender stereotyped.

According to Kunovich gender stereotyped coverage focuses on the topics of appearance, parenting status, and policy work that is also stereotypical, like education rather than the military.

Examples abound of coverage of Michelle Bachmann that have nothing to do with her politics. An August New York Daily News article titled “Palin’s hair apparent! Bachmann politics aren’t N.Y.C. fave, but locks are,” by Joanna Molloy was written all about Bachmann’s hairstyle. “It’s redder. It’s fuller. It’s more chic,” Molloy wrote.

According to Dennis Simon, Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor in the department of political science at Southern Methodist University, the reason Bachmann’s hair makes the news is because gender stereotypes still exist.

“The result is a focus on clothing, appearance, family situation and other aspects that are given very little attention when a male candidate is involved,” Simon said.

But according to Kunovich the fact the media focuses on different issues when it comes to females also has to do with voters.

“Research tells us voters evaluate male and female candidates on different characteristics,” she said.

Kunovich said when men are reported to have young children the public views this as humanization, but when a female is shown with small kids the public raises the question, “Who will raise the kids?”

To achieve her goals of winning the Republican nomination Bachmann and her team make sure to pay close attention to her public image.

Although every political candidate must work at his or her image, Bachmann’s team is taking the job seriously.

Recently when New Yorker author Ryan Lizza was reporting on Bachmann’s campaign he was asked by her campaign manager, Alice Stewart, to refrain from using pictures of the candidate in her cargo pants.

In another attempt to control Bachmann’s image the candidate only takes questions from reporters who are on a list compiled by Stewart.

According to New York Times writer Trip Gabriel, controlling the image of any female politician is more difficult than controlling that of a male politician because there is no image of what a female politician should look like.

“There is no voter consensus on what looking ‘presidential’ means for a woman,” Gabriel wrote in his article “In Campaigning, Bachmann Controls Her Image.”

When it comes to the media’s coverage of female politicians at lower levels of government, coverage is limited, said Kunovich.

According to her, this adds to the larger difficulty the media has with covering female politicians.

Because the media doesn’t cover most female candidates running for lower level offices, when females run for high-level offices, she said, “Our understanding is off.”

Roswell, Georgia, City Councilwoman Becky Wynn recently ran for reelection and thought the media coverage was unbiased, but she did notice one difference.

She said, “I think women are more apt to get questions based on how they balance their home and professional lives than their male counterparts.”

Wynn says media scrutiny comes with the job.

She said, “All politicians live in a glass bowl and are scrutinized more closely than any other profession.”

Bachmaan is dealing with the media scrutiny head on, but it may not be working.

Since August the percentage of those who have a favorable impression of the candidate is down, according to pollingreport.com.

The information from a CNN/ORC poll shows the percentage of people who viewed Bachmann favorable has dropped considerably since its highest in June when 37 percent of people polled had a favorable impression of Bachmann. Results from Nov. 11 show that that number is down to 25 percent.

Kunovich believes the problem with coverage of female politicians falls to the media, and it’s their job to change.

“Journalists need to do a better job in highlighting different aspects of candidates,” she said.