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22 July 2014updated 21 Sep 2021 5:09am

Surprise! White men are over-represented on Question Time

White men disproportionately dominate most fields, but even the BBC's flagship political panel show seems incapable of gender (or ethnic) balance. Then again, Westminster is far worse.

By Harry Lambert

A May 2015 analysis of Question Time guests in 2014 has uncovered what many could have probably predicted – white men are over-represented by the flagship political panel show.

The programme, which has recently stopped for the summer, markets itself as one of “debate in which guests from the worlds of politics and the media answer questions posed by members of the public“.

But does a poor job of portraying the world of the members of the public who form the show’s audience – it over-represents white men, and under-represents white women and men from ethnic minorities.

… on the other hand, it does a far better job of representing women than parliament does.

Correction: An earlier version of this article wrongly labelled the statistics for minority men as those for minority women, and vice-versa. This has since been corrected.

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