Just one in five presenters on national radio is female, but at least the tide is moving the right way
*The Other Woman* (Amazing Radio) | Listen
*Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow Fonder* (Radio 4) | iPlayer
This week I've mostly been talking lady-radio (laydio?). Sound Women, the pressure group formed last year to raise issues around women in radio, brought out some research (done by Creative Skillset) and it has made a splash. It was a simple concept. Researchers listened to 30 national radio stations during one week in March this year and did some counting. How many male presenters, how many female – not those who read the news, or do the weather or travel, but those actually hosting shows.
The results were stark but not all that startling (at least not for some of us). Only one in five shows was hosted by a woman, and if you consider peak-time – breakfast and drive-time shows – it's one in eight. Most co-hosted shows are male-female (57%), some are male-male (39%) and just 4% are female-female. Given that, at that time, 5 Live had Anita Anand and Sam Walker hosting a show together that is now presented by Anand alone, we can assume that that particular percentage has dropped even lower.
If you're a Radio 4 or 5 Live lover, you can get a false impression of how many women host programmes: both stations have made an effort to employ more female presenters over the past few years, and 4's appointment of Mishal Husain to the Today programme is very welcome. But just look at Radio 2, the nation's most popular radio station. From 7am until 7pm all we hear are male hosts: Chris Evans, Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Steve Wright, Simon Mayo. All big beasts of radio, and all excellent broadcasters. You wouldn't push them out of the window to make way for a woman – at least not if you're a station controller with any sense – but chap after chap does look, you know, weird. Old-fashioned. A bit, you know, Muirfield. And if you think I'm being strange, imagine if the situation were the other way about, and the whole of daytime on Radio 2 was presented by women.
Part of the problem is historical: there are more older men presenting radio because they've got the experience. Evans, Wright and Mayo all came up through Radio 1, which employed its first female presenter, Annie Nightingale, in January 1970, and then didn't bother getting another for almost 13 years (Janice Long, at the end of 1982). Commercial radio has been leery of women presenters too: one highly respected female broadcaster told me that as recently as the 1990s she was informed by a commercial station that "we're not hiring women at the moment". And BBC local radio, where presenters such as Fi Glover and Jane Garvey learned their skills, has some way to go. The last Sound Women piece of research dug up just one woman on BBC local radio with her own breakfast show.
But, courage, mes ear-phoned bravettes! There are signs that things are changing. XFM, which has increased its listeners recently, has deliberately brought in some new women to join the fabulous Jo Good, such as Sunta Templeton and Danielle Perry; Amazing Radio has always had a healthy amount of female presenters: Gill Mills, Shell Zenner, Dani Charlton, Bethan Elfyn. I would very much recommend Ruth Barnes's *The Other Woman* on Amazing on Sunday nights (she also presents mid-morning on weekdays), which plays music by female musicians without fuss or faff. On 1Xtra, which has a tendency to be as boysy as it wants to be, Yasmin Evans is working seven days this week, co-presenting weekday breakfast with Twin B and then sitting in for Marcus Bronzy's weekend breakfast on her own.
One of the easiest ways to up the female quotient is to put a woman as the host of a panel show, or presenter of a documentary: that way, even if everyone else is a man, there's at least one lady representing. And on Radio 4, this week, I enjoyed *Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder*, presented by Michele Roberts. She talked to many chaps, drinkers, entrepreneurs and academics, and one woman, Marie-Claude Delahaye, who runs an absinthe museum in France. The show was pleasant and highfalutin and dreamy. Very, very unlike my own, um, hectic experiences with the green fairy, I must say, but lovely all the same. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 days ago.
*The Other Woman* (Amazing Radio) | Listen
*Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow Fonder* (Radio 4) | iPlayer
This week I've mostly been talking lady-radio (laydio?). Sound Women, the pressure group formed last year to raise issues around women in radio, brought out some research (done by Creative Skillset) and it has made a splash. It was a simple concept. Researchers listened to 30 national radio stations during one week in March this year and did some counting. How many male presenters, how many female – not those who read the news, or do the weather or travel, but those actually hosting shows.
The results were stark but not all that startling (at least not for some of us). Only one in five shows was hosted by a woman, and if you consider peak-time – breakfast and drive-time shows – it's one in eight. Most co-hosted shows are male-female (57%), some are male-male (39%) and just 4% are female-female. Given that, at that time, 5 Live had Anita Anand and Sam Walker hosting a show together that is now presented by Anand alone, we can assume that that particular percentage has dropped even lower.
If you're a Radio 4 or 5 Live lover, you can get a false impression of how many women host programmes: both stations have made an effort to employ more female presenters over the past few years, and 4's appointment of Mishal Husain to the Today programme is very welcome. But just look at Radio 2, the nation's most popular radio station. From 7am until 7pm all we hear are male hosts: Chris Evans, Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Steve Wright, Simon Mayo. All big beasts of radio, and all excellent broadcasters. You wouldn't push them out of the window to make way for a woman – at least not if you're a station controller with any sense – but chap after chap does look, you know, weird. Old-fashioned. A bit, you know, Muirfield. And if you think I'm being strange, imagine if the situation were the other way about, and the whole of daytime on Radio 2 was presented by women.
Part of the problem is historical: there are more older men presenting radio because they've got the experience. Evans, Wright and Mayo all came up through Radio 1, which employed its first female presenter, Annie Nightingale, in January 1970, and then didn't bother getting another for almost 13 years (Janice Long, at the end of 1982). Commercial radio has been leery of women presenters too: one highly respected female broadcaster told me that as recently as the 1990s she was informed by a commercial station that "we're not hiring women at the moment". And BBC local radio, where presenters such as Fi Glover and Jane Garvey learned their skills, has some way to go. The last Sound Women piece of research dug up just one woman on BBC local radio with her own breakfast show.
But, courage, mes ear-phoned bravettes! There are signs that things are changing. XFM, which has increased its listeners recently, has deliberately brought in some new women to join the fabulous Jo Good, such as Sunta Templeton and Danielle Perry; Amazing Radio has always had a healthy amount of female presenters: Gill Mills, Shell Zenner, Dani Charlton, Bethan Elfyn. I would very much recommend Ruth Barnes's *The Other Woman* on Amazing on Sunday nights (she also presents mid-morning on weekdays), which plays music by female musicians without fuss or faff. On 1Xtra, which has a tendency to be as boysy as it wants to be, Yasmin Evans is working seven days this week, co-presenting weekday breakfast with Twin B and then sitting in for Marcus Bronzy's weekend breakfast on her own.
One of the easiest ways to up the female quotient is to put a woman as the host of a panel show, or presenter of a documentary: that way, even if everyone else is a man, there's at least one lady representing. And on Radio 4, this week, I enjoyed *Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder*, presented by Michele Roberts. She talked to many chaps, drinkers, entrepreneurs and academics, and one woman, Marie-Claude Delahaye, who runs an absinthe museum in France. The show was pleasant and highfalutin and dreamy. Very, very unlike my own, um, hectic experiences with the green fairy, I must say, but lovely all the same. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 days ago.