Is sexism still rife in TV?

“This show-off has set up a webcam in her front room. But where’s her pussy?” Camera shows female legs and buttocks in tight yoga pants. Suddenly a cat pops up in front of the screen. (Compilation show, summer 2015.)

Funny? Ironic? Or an example of the kind of casual sexism prevalent in popular culture?

Such questions were asked by Channel 4 last week at its Diverse event, where it unveiled a ground-breaking study of on-screen sexism. Commissioned by diversity executive Oona King, this was C4’s bid to forensically examine gender on screen, with little pan-industry work having been done to date. Her conclusion? “Television is awash with low-level sexism.”

Being overlooked
The report reveals an average of five incidents of sexism per hour across major channels in primetime, 72% of which are directed towards women; 28% towards men.

The study also shows that men outnumber women on screen by a ratio of 2:1. “It means that women are written off our screens,” King says. “And they are fi ve times more likely than men to suffer sexist incidents.”

The report examines more than 500 hours of primetime TV (7-11pm) across BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4, Channel 5 and Sky 1, providing an analysis of gender representation; the nature and frequency of sexism; the relative number of incidents directed at men versus women; and the differing levels of sexism by genre.

Of course, the industry has made huge progress, as evidenced by the clips of yester year played at last week’s event, including one showing women perched on podiums and compared to cars – “This one’s high-maintenance; can be a cold start” – and even an episode of Blue Peter in which a segment showing women dressed in Victorian lingerie ended with the male presenter taking snaps for his ‘personal’ collection.

And yet in this three-month study of 2015’s output, some 4,324 acts of sexism were captured. It was prevalent across all types of programming, with comedy the worst offender, registering an average of 12 sexist incidents per hour.

That compares with one incident per hour in news, five in drama, seven in light entertainment and eight in soaps. Only 0.5 incidents were recorded in sport, but far from the genre being the perfect model of equality, the reason is that women were practically non-existent. Just 2% of sports presenters, pundits or guests were women. “The really insidious thing about it is that it’s so ingrained,” says King. “You might call it ‘low-level’ but it’s the accumulation of all this low-level sexism that creates the culture that permits, and in some instances encourages, much more overt and serious sexism.”

She adds: “It’s this habit we have of undermining women, suggesting they are just there for decoration. It’s obviously bad for girls, but it’s also bad for boys – it distorts things for both sexes.”

There are countless examples of this in the study. One comes from a panel show in which the host interviewed male and female guests, both elite athletes. The man was asked about his sporting career and achievements, whereas the woman athlete was asked about her love interest.

King says: “The research highlights this ‘iceberg effect’ and I do think it’s shocking that we don’t really notice it – and people making TV programmes don’t really think about it. We’ve become immune to it and that’s the reason why C4 did this research: we need to raise awareness and then I think it will slowly dissipate – in the same way that low-level racism that used to be awash on our screens in the 70s has largely disappeared.”

The lack of gender parity on screen – an issue of considerable debate in recent years – is also covered in the report. News and soaps were the only genres in which women had the majority of major parts: 59% and 55% respectively. Meanwhile, comedy showed a marked male domination with a ratio of 73:27, which, coupled with the statistic of 12 sexist incidents per hour, is no laughing matter. So what’s behind comedy’s poor performance?

“It’s really simple, yet kind of complicated,” says writer, comedian and presenter Sandi Toksvig, who last year co-founded the Women’s Equality Party.

“The place where you train to be a comic is late-night clubs. It’s a tough crowd: people have been drinking and there tend to be more men coming through as it’s easier for them than it is for women.

“Unless we get more young women on to the shows where we can help to train them and they haven’t got to come up through that system, we’re never going to get more female comedians.”

The problem extends to behind the scenes too. Toksvig says: “A lot of club owners won’t put more than one woman on a bill. It’s the same in TV – although people are trying to do better. In the past, it’s been the thing that if you’ve got one woman on a panel show, you’ve done your job.”

There’s also the well-charted debate about panel shows being too combative and too macho for women to really thrive and that many shy away from taking part, which the BBC has tried to resolve in recent years with a mandate to feature at least one woman in each edition.

“The answer is to put more women in charge and it all settles down,” laughs Toksvig, who has hosted Radio 4’s The News Quiz and is taking over from Stephen Fry on BBC2’s QI.

The Communication Research Group study employed academics to measure on-screen sexism across four categories: ‘sexual/physical objectification’; ‘lack of agency’ (there to serve); ‘discounted’ (considered inferior) and ‘other’ (including gender-specific derogatory terms or trivialisation).

However, the authors acknowledge that while such definitions are clear for academics and philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum and Rae Langton – from whose work the study draws – “there is less agreement in the real world about when they constitute sexism”.

Complimentary or sexist?
Even sexual objectification, which accounts for 67% of all incidents, can be a grey area, illustrated in the study by the example of a presenter telling a contestant: “Don’t you look beautiful. They’re all at home thinking ‘she’s a bit of all right’. You look gorgeous.”

Say the authors: “In popular culture, using ‘beautiful’ as the only adjective to describe a gameshow contestant may be viewed as complimentary rather than sexist.”

The study also looks at the response to the sexist incident by other characters/contributors on screen. In two-thirds (66%) of incidents, there was no response to the sexism, but it was more likely to be reinforced (21%) than challenged (12%).

Ageism, another hot topic, is also revealed to be an issue. The report shows that while 36% of women in the UK are over 50, on TV it’s just 23%. And far from suffering a mid-life crisis, men hit their TV peak in their 40s: the study reveals that the ratio of males to females on screen in the 40-49 age bracket is 70:30.

“This is our industry. It helps shape our country, and then our cultural export goes out and changes the world,” says King, who last week organised Idris Elba’s Houses of Parliament speech on diversity. She adds: “I’m determined to build on the collaborative work of the broadcasters. It’s about diversity of thought. I feel passionately about it and I’ve been working on it for seven years with Channel 4 and the CDN. The creative industry really is serious about changing the face of British TV.”