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18 April 2016

The outrageous sexism on The Island with Bear Grylls might be what makes it a great show

The strength of this show is that it uses ordinary people to create a microcosm that reveals the cracks and strains in our society.

By Anna Leszkiewicz

The Island with Bear Grylls has been no stranger to sexism controversies since it began in 2014. Its first series, which saw a group of 12 marooned on a desert island for four weeks, was criticised for only testing the survival skills of men: were women simply deemed not up to the challenge?

Channel 4 claimed the show set out “to examine modern masculinity and how traditional skills and ideas of manhood have changed over generations”, but female survival experts insisted that this premise was “inherently sexist”.

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