“Hearing Women’s Voices” Report published

Published: Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Why are the majority of experts and guests on radio male? And why are women allocated shorter air time than their male counterparts?

These questions and more are addressed in “Hearing Women’s Voices?” a study which explored women’s underrepresentation in current affairs radio programming across national stations at peak listening times in Ireland, results of which will be launched this Tuesday 10th of November. The study by the National Women’s Council of Ireland and Dublin City University was funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) through its Media Research Funding Scheme.

Study Highlights
• The study which took place across three weeks in the second half of 2014 revealed that the overall breakdown of voices was 28% female and 72% male voices across the three radio stations examined breaking down to 63% on RTE Radio, 82% on Newstalk and 70% on Today FM.

• Women also tended to get shorter air time when on and the majority of guests and experts were male across all stations.

• Male voices take up 72% of news and current affairs radio broadcasting time (broken down across the three stations as follows: 63% on RTÉ Radio 1, 82% Newstalk and 70% Today FM). On RTÉ Radio 1 there was an even breakdown of male and female presenters during the week. Newstalk on the other hand has 100% male lead presenters, while Today FM had one male and one female lead presenter on the two programmes monitored. The majority of guests (67%-73%) and experts (79%-85%) were male across all stations.

• The most balanced weekday show (excluding consideration of in-house voices are) Today With Sean O’Rourke (RTÉ Radio 1) with 59% male voices followed by Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1) with 67% male voices. The least gender balanced weekday shows were The Right Hook on Newstalk with 81% male voices and Newstalk Breakfast with 86% male voices.

• Males made-up 75- 80% of news subjects on RTÉ Radio, while male voices also dominated discussions of a range of topics including politics (70% male on RTÉ Radio1), economics (76% male RTÉ Radio 1 and 83% Newstalk), sports (75% male on RTÉ Radio 1 and 95% male on Newstalk). In relation to heath topics there was a clear differentiation between stations with just 42% of voices discussing health on RTÉ being male compared with 66% on Newstalk and 70% on Today FM.

You can read the full report here.