It’s just possible, you know, that the announcement of an all male shortlist for the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year is an entirely good thing.
Before the hate mail starts, I should add that ever since I heard this news, I’ve been spitting feathers about it. It’s a clearly ridiculous state of affairs — you could easily put together a list of 10 British women who could make up the list all on their own. In fact, somebody already has.
But on reflection there is a silver lining. Because it exposes the institutionalised sexism of the whole process.
It’s not just that it seems, as Clare Balding tweeted yesterday, that every single person asked to nominate people for the shortlist was male.
It’s the fact that in a conference room in the bowels of the BBC, a group of executives decided that they should invite the editors of Nuts and Zoo magazines to weigh in with their opinions.
Just picture the misguided thought process by which this decision was arrived at. Lads mags are read by men. Being men, they must like sport. Therefore we shall ask the editors of those august journals to contribute their thoughts. Conversely, the readers of Cosmo and Marie Claire are women — their heads are full of shopping and knitting, so we shan’t trouble them on sporting matters.
Gobsmacking.
This in-built sexist thinking — or rather, not-thinking — needs to be highlighted whenever it happens. Helen Lewis-Hasteley picked up Michael White on it the other day in the Guardian (!!!) when he referred to #womanontheleft in the Leveson inquiry as a “woman lawyer”. No she isn’t. She’s a lawyer. Just like all the male ones.
And presumably this bias has been in the nominations system ever since the BBC started asking “experts” to throw in their opinions. It’s just that the odd inclusion of the Queen’s granddaughter on the list has rather masked it. Not any more.
I’d like to bet that the BBC will make sure that next year there’s a wide range of women consulted on the SPOTY shortlist, with equal representation for male and female contributors.
And if it wasn’t for this year’s debacle, that would never happen.
Richard Morris blogs at A View From Ham Common which was named Best New Blog at the 2011 Lib Dem Conference
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