In recent years, top-level women officials have become increasingly prominent in Hong Kong. Media discourses are also largely positive towards them. This study thus analyses how women officials are constructed as ‘perfect women’ in two Hong Kong newspapers. It shows that the newspapers affirm women officials as having both masculine and feminine characteristics, and as having both a successful career and a harmonious family. Yet the potential ideological implication of this seemingly positive image is explored by putting the image back into the larger context of gender relations in Hong Kong. It is argued that the perfect women image fails to problematize, or even trivializes the work–family tension that many women in society face, and thus potentially contributes to the reproduction of gender inequality. This study also discusses the image-construction process in relation to the officials’ public performance in terms of a Bourdieusian conceptual framework.
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