Research commissioned by Channel 4 to mark International Women’s Day has found that men outnumber women on TV two-to-one.
The study also found that only one in ten women on television are aged over 40 compared to six in ten men.
Men take up 65 per cent of all broadcast roles and in serious broadcasting women make up only a third of participants in factual television shows.
In news women represent only 31 per cent of those in the limelight and 69 per cent of the time they are discussing the ‘lighter’ news topics such as health or cooking.
Oona King, former Labour MP and Channel 4’s head of diversity, told The Guardian: ‘This pilot research measures the gap between what we see in the real world, and what we see on TV, and is the first step in developing a comprehensive measurement of how well TV represents and portrays different groups on screen’.
She added: ‘Fundamentally, this is about how we view our world and which groups are hidden from view or significantly under-represented. The gender gap here is quite startling.’
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