BBC is cold-shouldering the older woman

Figures from regulator show the plight of women over 55 as they are given a tiny amount of screen time

OLDER women at the BBC are suffering from “ageism and sexism”, Ofcom has warned, as it revealed that they accounted for only 7 per cent of people who appeared on screen.

An analysis by The Daily Telegraph has found that less than 2 per cent of people who appeared on sports programmes on BBC One and Two were women over 55, rising to just 4 per cent for actors in dramas.

Only 7 per cent of news presenters and interviewees, and 8 per cent of people on factual programmes, were women over 55.

Data provided to this newspaper by Ofcom show that, across all genres, just 708 women over 55 appeared on the BBC out of a pool of 10,000 people.

There were more men of the same age on screen in every genre evaluated by the regulator, and more than twice as many across both channels. The findings were based on 536 programmes, monitored over a four-week period between January and March.

The disclosure comes a year after the BBC faced controversy over the huge disparities in the sums paid to its male and female stars.

A number of high-profile male employees took pay cuts to address the imbalance, whilst Carrie Gracie, who resigned as the BBC’S China editor over the issue, was awarded around £280,000 in back pay.

Chris Evans, one of the corporation’s best-paid presenters, is leaving to join Virgin Radio. Lord Hall, the BBC direc- tor-general, said his move was partly due to the publication of his salary.

Ofcom said that while viewers felt older women were better represented on daytime chat shows, they featured far less often as guests or presenters in the evening.

It highlighted programmes such as Mock the Week, Have I Got News for You and Room 101 as prime-time shows which seem “to feature mainly men”.

Maria Miller MP, who chairs the Commons women and equalities committee, said the Ofcom data showed “the prejudice that women face, but also the way in which older women in the organisation are not being given the opportunity to take on prominent roles”.

“The culture has to be questioned,” she added. “On a practical level, this is what is driving the gender pay gap, because older women do not have access to the well-remunerated jobs that their male counterparts have.

“For a public organisation like the BBC, that is a disgraceful situation.”

Ofcom also found that the BBC is too metropolitan and middle-class, and that viewers complained that much of its content was focused on major cities.

As Youtube and digital streaming giants such as Netflix and Amazon eat into the television market, Ofcom said that the BBC needs to find ways of reengaging younger viewers, who spend half as much time as older people watching its programmes.