Newstalk 1010, whose schedule is 96% male, celebrates a “uterus free” executive committee

Late last night, blogger and White Ribbon team member Jeff Perera brought my attention to a ridiculous tweet by the folks at Newstalk 1010. “She ticked off the Fords,” the tweet read. “Now the Executive Committee is uterus free!”

It was a stupid thing to say, and it would be easy to call Newstalk a bunch of misogynists and be done with it. But if we did that, we’d be passing up a chance to learn a fun and important lesson about diversity and representation!

There are a lot of people in this town, many of them women, who think the departure of Jaye Robinson’s uterus from Ford’s executive committee is a bad thing. They be all “representation in government” this and “Ford’s proven ineptitude with women” that. And because women make up something like half of this city, we’ve at least got to hear them out.

Over at Newstalk 1010, it’s a different story. Women don’t make up half of their ongoing discourse. They don’t even make up half of a half of a half of a half of it.

Take a look at their program schedule, and you’ll find only three female hosts. Adrienne Batra hosts three hours on Monday morning, Gail Vaz-Oxlade hosts two hours on Monday night, and the delightful Pay Chen hosts an hour on Sunday. I’d have linked to their shows, but only Vaz-Oxlade’s show has an actual web page.

That’s a total of six hours of airtime each week. That may not seem like a lot, but don’t forget that the mayor and his brother only get two. And I’m pretty sure it’s not because they’re at the office the rest of the time.

Now, I’m assuming each of these women has a uterus. But don’t fret, faithful Newstalk listener! Despite the persistent “contributions” of these three women, Newstalk 1010′s airwaves are still a whopping 96.4% uterus-free.

So it’s no surprise that they would feel free to bellow things like “Take that, Jaye Robinson’s uterus!” whenever they want. I mean, it’s not like they’ve actually got a significant number of female broadcasters. They might want to clean up their act if they want to maintain a significant number of female listeners, but that’s another story.

As for me, if I’ve learned anything from this lesson in representation, it’s that Newstalk 1010 is Toronto’s best source for the real story on the Ford scandal. The Star, the Globe and Gawker can speculate all they like about local mayors with alleged crack problems. But do any of them actually have one on the payroll?

UPDATE: Commenter T minus 3 was kind enough to note that Batra’s not a regular Newstalk 1010 host; she was filling in for Jerry Agar yesterday. So female hosts account for three hours of Newstalk’s content per week, not six, making their schedule 98.2% uterus-free. Agar himself gets five times as much airtime than all – well, both – of Newstalk’s female hosts combined.

Posted in Social Action

Tags: Adrienne Batra, Doug Ford, Gail Vaz-Oxlade, Jaye Robinson, Newstalk 1010, Pay Chen, politics, Rob Ford, Toronto