Cable News Prefers To Ask Men Their Opinions On Birth Control

Birth control has been in the news as of late. President Barack Obama has compromised today by saying his administration will not require religious institutions to provide free contraception to their employees using their health insurance but that employees may still obtain it from their insurance directly. Of course, there have been debates, but something interesting ThinkProgress.org observed? Cable news has been talking to more men than women about the proposal. Which is weird, because I don’t know any men who take birth control to prevent conception… 

Think Progress recently did some research on cable news coverage of President Obama’s new regulation. “From Monday through Thursday evening, the leading cable news channels – Fox, Fox Business, MSNBC, and CNN – invited almost twice as many men as women onto their shows to discuss contraceptive coverage,” they write. “Out of a total of 146 guests who discussed contraception, the cables invited 91 men compared to 55 women as commentators. In other words, males comprised 62 percent of the total guests who commented on contraception.”

I guess women just aren’t as qualified to discuss birth control. After all, if we’re on it, we’re definitely biased. That’s ok, it’s totally cool if men discuss it and make all the decisions for us. I’m sure it will turn out aaaaallllright.

Think Progress broke it down further. “Fox was the most gender stratified network – on the Business network, 10 of 11 guests were male; on the News side, male pundits took up 65 percent of the guest lineup (28 men vs. 15 women). Sixty percent of MSNBC’s lineup was male (44 men vs. 31 women). And while CNN was more evenly balanced, it was still slightly tilted in favor of male perspectives (9 men vs. 8 women).”

This is concerning. I approve of hearing from many different voices when debating politics (or anything really) but having so few women discussing a female issue is a bit ridiculous.

(via Think Progress)

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Jill Pantozzi

Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."

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