The Stage

BBC accused of failing to follow equal opportunity guidelines for TV drama

Published Tuesday 30 June 2009 at 16:00 by Matthew Hemley

Equal opportunity campaigners have criticised the BBC for failing to properly implement legislation they believe requires the Corporation to better represent women on screen.

Under the Gender Equality Duty, which came into force in 2007, public bodies are required to promote equal opportunities between women and men in all “policy-making, service provision and employment matters”.

In interpreting the duty, the BBC insists the term ‘service provision’ does not include its programming output. However, critics argue it does and claim the Corporation has a responsibility to improve the representation of female roles in its TV dramas.

Katherine Rake, director of the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality between women and men, told The Stage she had met with BBC director general Mark Thompson to discuss the matter and described his attitude to the duty as “grudging”.

She called on the BBC to look at its output to ensure it is “positively promoting images of women and girls” and not “falling into easy stereotypes”. Rake raised particular concerns about the BBC’s children’s programming, claiming it tended to portray women in passive roles or in “fluffy pink”.

“You have to look at the messages going out to future generations as well. As adults, we have a way of processing and resisting. So we can say, ‘It’s not right there are no older women here’. But a child just absorbs and as far as they are concerned, if CBeebies shows a girl as passive, then girls are passive. There is no processing potential there,” she said.

Her concerns were backed by Sue Parrish, artistic director of Sphinx Theatre Company, which last month hosted a conference based around the Gender Equality Duty and what can be done to improve representation of women in the arts.

She said the BBC had a responsibility to apply the duty to its television output and accused the Corporation of having a “fifties mindset”.

A representative from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which oversees the Gender Equality Duty, said that, while the duty is “open to interpretation”, the commission was currently in discussions with the BBC as to the “extent to which the Gender Equality Duty applies to its services and functions”.

A spokesman for the BBC said: “The BBC takes its gender equality duties seriously, but our position is that while the duties apply to a number of our functions, they don’t apply to our programme content. Positive female role models can, however, be found throughout the BBC’s output, from comedy and drama to news and documentaries, as well as in our children’s television.”