Compare methods

	Feminist Content Analysis	Critical Discourse Analysis
Field	Gender Studies	Qualitative
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1978	Late 1970s–1990s (systematised ~1979–1995)
Originator	Feminist social researchers (Shulamit Reinharz; Gaye Tuchman)	Norman Fairclough; Teun A. van Dijk; Ruth Wodak
Type	Gender-critical qualitative and quantitative text analysis	Qualitative research method
Seminal source	Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist Methods in Social Research. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780195073867	Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Polity Press.
Aliases	Feminist Textual Analysis, Gender-Sensitive Content Analysis, Feminist Media Content Analysis	CDA, Critical Linguistics, Discourse-Historical Approach, Dialectical-Relational Analysis
Related	4	6
Summary	Feminist content analysis is a method for systematically examining texts, media, and documents to reveal how gender is represented, constructed, and reproduced, interpreting those patterns through feminist theory and an explicit concern with power. It adapts the established techniques of content analysis — corpus definition, coding, and counting — but reorients them toward questions of how women, men, and gender relations are portrayed, whose voices are centered or silenced, and how representations sustain or contest gender inequality.	Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a qualitative method that examines how language in texts and talk constructs, sustains, and challenges relations of power, ideology, and social inequality. Drawing on linguistics, social theory, and critical philosophy, CDA treats discourse not merely as communication but as social practice — a site where dominance is reproduced and where resistance can be articulated. Developed in the late twentieth century by Norman Fairclough, Teun van Dijk, and Ruth Wodak, among others, CDA is applied to political speeches, media texts, policy documents, educational materials, and institutional interactions.