The BBC is putting forth an effort to have more women scientist.
But – as someone who’s been making science programmes for a long time – I’ve got to confess that there could be another reason: perhaps we programme makers just haven’t tried hard enough…
The increase in younger scientists, both male and female, who are decent communicators – not just in labs and lecture halls, but blogging, tweeting, even doing comedy tours – is a big plus for us. There are more women climbing the ladder: around a third of Stem researchers and a quarter of lecturers are female. However lame the record to date, science is (slowly) changing.
Science on TV has to move with this trend, and as we get better at developing women presenters and interviewees, maybe TV can even encourage a bit of change itself. I welcome and look forward to your thoughts.