We leverage and extend insights from framing theory to argue that the media disproportionately focuses on women CEOs in their coverage of a specific kind of newsworthy event – firm scandals. The media frames events to highlight newsworthy characteristics of firm events, such as newsworthy firm leaders, to capture audience attention. We theorize that the minority status of women CEOs drives the news media to create frames of firm scandals that highlight the CEO’s gender, because this stands out to audiences and helps the media frame news on newsworthy people and events. We then examine the boundaries of our theory based on the social orientation of the scandal and the CEO’s tenure. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 293 media reports of firm scandals and find general support for our hypotheses.
