Lack of women on Irish radio is an intentional bias

Last week the shortlist for the annual Irish radio awards, the PPIs, was published. Of the six main categories in the PPI Radio Awards, the People Awards most directly commends individual broadcasters, and has 40 nominees across eight sub-categories. Of those 40 nominees in the shortlist released last week, just three are women: Louise Duffy of Today FM in the Radio DJ category, Sandy Harsch of RTÉ Radio 1 in the Specialist Music Broadcaster category and Shona Murray of Newstalk in the News Reporter of the Year category. Forty nominees, three women, 37 men. It's as blunt a declaration of the gender imbalance on Irish radio as you can get.

The PPIs can only judge what’s put in front of them. Eighty-one judges collate a shortlist across several categories without necessarily considering gender balance. And it’s not like everything is up for appraisal. Stations submit entries at a cost. If you’re not in, you can’t win. Even if stations wanted to make a concerted gender balanced effort with entries, how could they? This isn’t about women being excluded from awards, because the PPI categories are the end result of the widespread exclusion of women across Irish radio.

Opinions and personalities

More than four years ago I wrote an article in the

Sunday Tribune

that crunched the gender numbers on Irish radio, and found that across all radio schedules, 80-90 per cent of presenters were male, and when women did appear, they tended to broadcast outside of prime time hours. In addition, female presenters were far less likely to express opinions or present personality-led programmes.

When we examine the biggest stations in the land nationally, there are no female equivalents to George Hook, Ray D’Arcy, Ryan Tubridy, Sean Moncrieff. There are basically no opinionated – not to mention even vaguely adversarial – women presenting primetime weekday shows.

That article I wrote led Margaret E Ward to establish the organisation Women On Air to advocate for and train female broadcasters, and she's been doing great work ever since. But at this stage, stations need to get on board.

Their gender imbalance is pathetic. On weekdays on Today FM there are no women presenting between 7am and 10pm. On Newstalk there are no women presenting on weekdays at all. From 6.30am until 10pm, you have Chris Donoghue, Ivan Yates, Pat Kenny, Jonathan Healy, Sean Moncrieff, George Hook, Ger Gilroy and the Off The Ball team.

They let some birds into Marconi House at the weekend. Susan Cahill presents a book show on Saturday mornings, Sarah Carey is on in the afternoon, and on Saturday evening Dil Wickremasinghe and Orla Barry present programmes. For an hour on Sunday mornings (8am until 9am) Shona Murray presents World In Motion.

On Today FM at the weekends, Alison Curtis, Paula MacSweeney and Kelly-Anne Byrne present programmes. These women are all great broadcasters, more than competent, knowledgeable, engaging, smart, with eclectic points of view. But it must really grate to be so sidelined in the schedule.

Anyone familiar with Marconi House on Digges Lane in Dublin, which houses Newstalk, Today FM, and TXFM, will notice that one of its design features is an actual glass ceiling – perhaps a message to women looking to get on air? Today FM solidified its frat-house image with a new advertisement for the show Dermot and Dave, featuring the presenters' faces superimposed across a bra – a visual representation that even the Carry On film franchise would find crass.

RTÉ Radio 1 does fare a little better in the presenting stakes, and there are of plenty women behind the scenes too – fantastic producers and researchers. But it is not enough. It is not nearly enough. Tune into RTÉ Radio 1 – Ireland's highest-rating station – on a weekday from 5.30am and you will hear Shay Byrne, a gender-balanced Morning Ireland, followed by John Murray, Sean O'Rourke, Ronan Collins, a gender-balanced News at One, Joe Duffy, Derek Mooney, Mary Wilson on Drivetime, Seán Rocks on Arena, and John Creedon before 10 o'clock. It's worth pointing out that the women presenting shows on RTÉ Radio 1 are doing so in the genre of current affairs – impartial and un-opinionated.

Co-presenters

On 2fm Jennifer Maguire sits next to two male presenters on

Breakfast Republic

. Nicky Byrne’s co-presenter Jenny Greene doesn’t feature in the title of the show, which is very much “his”, although Greene is excellent. Elsewhere, Ruth Scott and Ciara King co-present programmes. Only Louise McSharry has her standalone name in a show’s title.

It is clear that Irish radio is doing its listeners a disservice. It is also doing nothing to encourage female presenters to come through the ranks. Not one station manager or programmer has ever offered even a vaguely plausible or non-lazy excuse for this massive discrepancy. Women’s voices are sidelined, and it’s not enough to ask why any more. One can only come to the conclusion that it’s an intentional, sexist bias.