AT WEEKENDS, this under-representation of women was even more pronounced .

1. WHEN WE SWITCH ON THE TV . . we are likely to see a man on screen on 8 out of 10 occasionsand likely to see a woman on screen on 5 out of 10 occasions. The screen showed ‘only men’ on 196 occasions (54%) and ‘only women’ only on 70 (19%) occasions. Both on together on 94 (27%) occasions. AT WEEKENDS, this under-representation of women was even more pronounced. I found men-only screens on 64% of occasions, and women only screens on 13% of occasions that is over a three fold difference! WHAT WERE MEN AND WOMEN DOING ON SCREEN? Women were portrayed as active much less often than men (36 occasions for women and 87 for men) and only shown as sportswomen on 3 occasions (men’s sport was shown on 33 occasions). WHAT DID I DO? Between 15th October to 2nd November 2008, any time I was at home, I took snapshot hourly ‘readings’ on the five main TV channels. I varied readings between 10, 20, 40 and 50 minutes past the hour. Each reading consisted of me switching on each of the five channels in turn and recording the first person on the screen – whether they were male, female or both - and what they were doing. I ignored adverts, and returned to the channel a few minutes later. This resulted in readings on 74 occasions, collected on 14 days – 23 were at weekends and 51 on weekdays. Forty one readings were daytime (16 between 8-13hrs and 25 between 13-18hrs) and 34 were evening, after 6.0pm. These readings, nearly always including five channels, resulted in 366 individual viewings.