By: Jane Martinson

Are women more likely than men to go to bed early? It seems worth asking after it emerged last week that while broadcast news programmes have improved their gender balance, men still dominate the flagship nightly bulletins.

Research published by City University showed that there were three men for every one woman appearing on the BBC 10pm bulletin and 2.5 men on ITV’s News at Ten. This comes despite a 20% rise in the number of female experts used in all six flagship news programmes studied since April 2016. Much of the lack of improvement in the past year – just 3.8% – was due to the 10pm bulletins, with the BBC show going backwards by 13%.

The reasons for this could hint at why, although the ratio of women to men has improved by 30% since 2016, progress has stalled. Being fronted by anchormen Tom Bradby and Huw Edwards makes a difference, of course – ITV News at Ten is eight times more likely to be led by a man than a woman – but when it comes to experts coming on air, the imbalance is still huge.

So why are there so many men on air appearing just before bedtime? The 10pm bulletin is as significant a show as public service broadcast news gets, and when it comes to the big beasts it seems channels like to send in the boys.

The classic argument for the lack of women on TV or radio is that women are more likely to shun out-of-hours work because of childcare or other family commitments. Yet this doesn’t explain why there are often more female reporters and presenters at weekends, seen as “family time” for most.

Look at what happens when an out-of-hours attack takes broadcasters by surprise. Some 80% of the reporters on the BBC, ITV and al-Jazeera were female during the Paris attacks in 2015, which took place on a Friday night. Research by City University’s Lis Howell found that by noon the next day all the big four broadcasters had flown in white middle-aged men (Mark Austin, Jeremy Thompson, Jon Snow and Ben Brown) to front the story.

Women in the public eye, whether politicians or broadcasters, mention childcare far less than fear of abuse as a reason for refusing an appearance fee. When it comes to the amount of abuse directed at women compared with men online, the 2.5:1 ratio of male to female experts seen as standard in society as a whole (senior academics, politicians, lawyers and court witnesses) seems positively balanced.

The government has made much recently of crimes offline being treated as crimes online but most abuse goes unchecked by anything other than a woman’s ability to ignore it. Witness Jess Phillips call for an end to online anonymity after receiving at least 600 rape threats in one night. It will take more than one action to start treating the need for equality seriously but cracking down on abuse would be a good start.