http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... presenters

Why? Just hire whoever is best for the job, whoever they are. Why politicise a show before it's even began?

Am I missing something here?

I don't see it as a profession that lends itself to one gender more than the other.

Just hire the best person you can find for the role, ffs.

I agree that the best person should be picked, however, overwhelmingly, the person that is picked is white male.
I refer you to this piece of news :
BBC bosses undergo training to counteract unconscious bias

What they should hire is a working class banker mixed race female transgenic Islamic athiest paraplegic and tick off most boxes in one swoop and everyone should be happy.

you do know that women represent 51% of the population?

and

What, so women will only be informed, educated or entertained if it's a woman that's doing it?

Not what I meant. I like to think both men and women are equally capable and therefore, all things being fair, there should be about the same percentage of each on TV.


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JJ Thompson made history when he discovered the electron
Omar Khayyam made history when he found the general solution of the cubic equation
Lise Meitner made history by figuring out a theory of nuclear fission

The only way this TV show could really make history would be if it were presented by Neil, the chainsaw-juggling border collie


Come on - that's surely mathematical rubbish. All things being fair (and both genders being equal), the gender balance of any job should tend to reflect the gender balance of those applying/eligible for the job.

Primary teaching would be predominantly female if most of the entrants to the job were female.
Electronics engineering would be predominantly male if most of the entrants to the job were male.

TV being male-dominated might reflect nothing other than a lack of women joining the TV business.

I don't think that's the case, as there are plenty of women presenters of serious stuff on TV as a whole and there are a handful of female TV historians - Janina Ramirez, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley... However I think the population of academic historians as a whole may possibly trend toward male, therefore the population of candidates who can talk on TV and do so with some authority, rather than just reading a script, may possibly also trend towards male. Unless you want to create a very limited pool of presenting talent by restricting the population to 2 X the number of the smaller gender group, you're going to end up with (in this case) more male than female presenters. I have a feeling the trend may be reversed in zoology TV for example - there do seem to be more female zoologists on TV than male and I have a feeling that may just be because there are just more female academic zoologists than male.

I've got no objection to saying 'we need a pool of presenting talent in which both genders are represented' but the idea that any given pool of talent must by definition conform to demographics to the population as a whole doesn't really strike me as the way to go.

Rusty,

What about Florence Nightingale, Marie Currie, Rosa Parks?

There were a couple of god quotes from Thatcher:
If you need something said, ask a man; if you need something done, ask a woman.

The cock might crow, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.

I would say that in Germany there are at least as many female presenters as male.

What about them?


Except that the first quote is incomplete. Maggie actually said, "In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman." [Emphasis mine]

Furthermore they're not good quotes - they're bigoted crap of the same variety as saying that women should stay at home

Here's something else Maggie said: "I don't think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime."


I would agree with you.

However, that single observation still doesn't shed any light on whether there's any bias in the UK media. It could just as easily be that German women have different ideas about what jobs they're willing to strive or apply for.

So long as she has a good pair of knockers I dont mind who they employ