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Women at the Table: Female Guests and Experts in Current Affairs Television

ABSTRACT While the topic has been on the agenda for decades, women continue to be underrepresented and represented in problematic ways in the media. In news and current affairs programs on TV, female guests and experts are still a minority while they are also often pigeonholed in gender-specific roles and addressed in gender-specific ways. Based on a qualitative analysis of 25 programs made by Flemish public service broadcaster VRT, we aimed to explore good practices as well as lingering problems in order to answer our first research question: How are female guests and experts represented in VRT current affairs programs? To support our analysis, we also conducted two focus group interviews with twelve gender experts, addressing the question: How do gender experts assess the representation of female guests and experts in VRT current affairs programs? Our findings show that many of the critiques identified by previous research are still valid, although we do see clear signs of improvement. However, female guests still constitute a minority, which particularly creates problems when they are part of a male dominated panel. Based on these findings, we formulate a number of recommendations to help journalists in developing more gender sensitivity.