Panel shows are notoriously male-dominated environments and TV executives have long been criticised for failing to put enough talented women on screen. Back in 2014, the BBC announced a quota for women on panel shows, with the corporation vowing to include at least one woman in each episode.
While the situation may have improved slightly in the interim four years, the gender split on the vast majority of comedy panel shows is still far from equal. Why? According to the team captain's of the BBC's long-running Have I Got News For You, women are too self-effacing to put themselves forward. The implication being that it's women's own fault or failings, rather than a failing of TV producers to reach out to– and create a culture in which women feel welcome and equal.
Talking about the small number of women who have presented the show in its 28-year history (and 55 series) in an interview with the Radio Times, Ian Hislop said: “There was a period when people said: ‘Why haven’t you had French and Saunders on? Why haven’t you had the following people?’ And you say, well, it’s not compulsory. And on the whole, women are slightly more reticent and think, maybe modestly: ‘I can’t do that.’ Maybe more men in public life say: ‘Yes I can do that.’”
Meanwhile, Merton said "the producers always ask more women than men. More women say no," adding that it's been this way since the show's early days, the Guardian reported. To which Hislop chimed in: “And everyone you think should have been asked has been. Really, they really have.”
As you can imagine, many took issue with the claim that women are too "modest" to take up the challenge, as well as the suggestion that every suitable women had already turned down the job. Many on Twitter rubbished the idea that it was women's own timidity that was stopping them from taking part, as opposed to comedy's misogynistic culture.
This is the same logic which is harnessed by senior management in universities to blame women for not putting themselves forward enough e.g. for promotion. It conveniently apportions responsibility for representation and #equality issues elsewhere https://t.co/ljNfVDHxlq
— Katherine Brickell (@K_Brickell) April 3, 2018
I wonder why SO many funny women go on @frankieboyle 's New World Order, as an example. Could it be because they are actually allowed to be funny on it?
— Marina Hyde (@MarinaHyde) April 3, 2018
One of my least favourite TV tropes is when shows invite male comedians as guests and make their opposite number on the other team a female reality tv star, then spend the entire show revelling in how thick she is. 8 out of 10 cats was criminal for it. https://t.co/wIqTzTbwT5
— Rebecca Reid (@RebeccaCNReid) April 3, 2018
Are people of colour also too modest to host #HIGNFY?
— Hanna Ines Flint (@HannaFlint) April 3, 2018
From my count, there have only been six non-white presenters out of 110.
Out of that list, only one woman of colour has hosted, that being Moira Stuart. pic.twitter.com/IXxv0ybNEV
Sorta related - last time I got a quasi-death threat, (doesn't happen often) one of the aspects of the rant was that I wasn't "modest", that I boasted of my achievements too much.
— sianushka (@sianushka) April 3, 2018
Modesty is gendered.
Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who appeared on the show in 2012, said the show is "too vicious" for most female guests, and does not "lend itself to women feeling comfortable", adding that she had turned down later offers to take part, reported the BBC. "It's all about banter - women don't banter in that way, or very rarely. You might get the odd woman who would, but most women don't banter in that way, don't have that degree of aggression."
Meanwhile Catherine Mayer, co-founder of the Women's Equality Party, criticised the show's "sniggering-schoolboy ethos" in an impassioned thread.
I often came to #HIGNFY recordings. I sat in the green room watching another close friend, Paula Yates, attacked for “plastic breasts”, for supposedly courting publicity, for her personal life https://t.co/dKMyiEJFNR
— Catherine Mayer (@catherine_mayer) April 3, 2018
#HIGNFY is like any institution. Its lack of diversity means nobody challenges the culture. As a result it is stale and myopic. Of course because it exists in a media and comedy ecosystem largely devoid of diversity, hardly anyone with the power to change it seems to notice
— Catherine Mayer (@catherine_mayer) April 3, 2018
Much less progress for women of colour... How many women of colour have you recently seen on comedy panel shows or on your screens at all?
— Catherine Mayer (@catherine_mayer) April 3, 2018
But I also want to know whether the #HIGNFY producers recognise the deeper problems of recruiting women to the show. I'd like to see a debate around how this relates to current topics such as, oh, let's say the #genderpaygap in broadcasting & pay discrimination
— Catherine Mayer (@catherine_mayer) April 3, 2018
And how all of this relates to wider inequality, as it does. The smirking schoolboy culture of #HIGNFY isn't just bad telly. It's bad for all of us
— Catherine Mayer (@catherine_mayer) April 3, 2018
Many prominent women, including politicians and journalists, even put themselves forward, giving the show's producers no excuse for a lack of diversity on future panels.
I’ll do it Ian!! #HIGNFY @haveigotnews https://t.co/ha7gbkNjjV
— Amelia Womack (@Amelia_Womack) April 3, 2018
Well, I’d be absolutely brilliant at it.
— Elizabeth Day (@elizabday) April 3, 2018
Women too modest to host Have I Got News For You, Hislop claims https://t.co/nV7ojtOBix
Ask me. I’ll do it. https://t.co/0Yy71eug80
— amanda abbington (@CHIMPSINSOCKS) April 3, 2018
Sure I speak for my fellow female historians/commentators in saying we'd absolutely love to come on #HIGNFY https://t.co/PzBZGyLm34
— Kate Williams (@KateWilliamsme) April 3, 2018
Luckily I am not too modest for anything and would do this, and be brilliant at it, in a heartbeathttps://t.co/lcmw7U2LjP
— Rosie Fletcher (@rosieatlarge) April 3, 2018
It's not the first time HIGNFY has been criticised for failing to adequately represent and support women. In a clip from the show that went viral in November, comedian and host Jo Brand famously had to explain to an all-male panel why society should take accusations of sexual assault seriously, after Hislop suggested that some of the allegations coming out of Westminster weren't “high-level crime."
“If I can just say, as the only representative of the female gender here today – I know it’s not high-level, but it doesn’t have to be high-level for women to feel under siege in somewhere like the House of Commons," Brand said. "Actually, for women if you’re constantly being harassed, even in a small way, that builds up and that wears you down.” Will powerful men ever get the message?
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