Research gives reason to expect that discrimination against women in political news can both increase and decrease women’s interest in entering politics. This study addresses these differing findings by proposing that while benevolent (subtle and positive in feeling tone) media discrimination may lead to passive cognitive processes such as increased role incongruity, hostile (blatant and negative in feeling tone) media discrimination may lead to active cognitive processes that differ depending on cultural factors. In feminine cultures, there are openly shared values of communality and gender equality, while in masculine cultures, values skew towards individualistic achievement and gender roles remain more rigid. As a consequence, it is argued that hostile media discrimination may increase women’s political ambition due to collective action, feminist-motivated reasons in a feminine culture, where such media leads to stronger anger and opposition. In a masculine culture, women’s political ambition may instead increase because hostile media discrimination makes women strategically distance themselves from female gender roles and instead prefer the political domain so as to protect themselves from personally being targeted by discrimination. These theoretical expectations were tested in an online experiment (N=1,573) in Sweden and Italy, two countries with higher than EU-average representation of women but with extreme difference in cultural masculinity. The study not only contributes to understanding how women interpret and respond to media discrimination, but more broadly adds to the empirical studies of political ambition outside of the North American context.