The Shocking Portrayal of Women in Radio
And why nobody is talking about it.
I used to be a delivery driver, which means I have listened to a lot of radio in the last few years. Despite it being 2019, I still cannot believe the number of times I have had to change radio stations because of the portrayal of a female radio host. I just can’t stand to listen to smart, well-educated women who are essentially ‘dumbing themselves down’ in order to seem likeable. If you have never noticed this before, I implore you to really listen to this shocking trend the next time you’re stuck in peak-hour traffic.
Sick of this constant portrayal, I decided to do a bit of investigation into why this trend even exists. It was very clear during my research that prejudice against women speaking their mind dates back to ancient times when Greek philosopher Aristotle famously wrote that ‘silence is a women’s glory.’
Karpf, in her book The Human Voice: The Story of Remarkable Talent, considers how in seventeenth-century colonial America, women who were categorised as a ‘scold’ and ‘nag’, or ‘just plain unquiet’, would have to choose between being drowned by dominant males or keeping silent.
Since the introduction of wireless radio systems in the early 1920s, women worked as pioneers, directors and writers of radio, but were never allowed to speak on air. In 1927, radio manufacturer Bell Laboratories reasoned this behaviour by stating:
“The speech characteristics of women, when changed to electrical impulses, do not blend with the electrical characteristics of our present-day radio equipment.”
Karpf also discusses how the female voice has historically been deemed ‘too high pitch’ and ‘emotional’ and therefore unsuitable for radio transmission. Of course, this fault does not lie with the company who manufacture the equipment, but rather the women who use it.
While it is all well and good to look at the history of women (and be thankful that I’m not living in the 17th century), I was much more intrigued to know why these women feel the need to portray themselves on the radio in a certain way. Is it because they are worried about being continually ‘nagging’ or ‘scolding’? Is it because if they call out their male co-host for making fun of them, they’ll be deemed too ‘emotional’? Why is it that in the 21st century, women are still silencing their opinions in order to be considered ‘likable’?
As a delivery driver, my hours generally fell during school pick-up time, which meant that I listened to a lot of the Carrie and Tommy Show, broadcast on the HIT Network. What I noticed almost immediately was that Carrie Bickmore was portrayed very differently on radio than she was as a host on the TV show The Project, for which she was seen as an influential, credible, and respected journalist.
In her 2015 Logie acceptance speech for ‘Most Popular TV Presenter’, Carrie spoke from the heart about the death of her late husband Greg, who passed away in 2010 from a 10-year battle with brain cancer. It was a powerful and vulnerable moment in which she used her spotlight to launch #beaniesforbraincancer and help raise awareness of how prevalent the disease is in Australia.
If you only know Carrie Bickmore from her radio presence, you may be quite shocked to see a credible and respected journalist now nothing more than someone to giggle at her co-host’s jokes. Carrie has always been open on social media about her motherhood struggles and made tremendous strides as a working mother. Yet, only recently, her son Ollie was made fun of by a fellow radio host, David Hughes, who publicly called him an ‘A-Hole’ on-air. While David then offered a very public apology to Ollie (which Carrie had to accept gracefully), the damage had still been done. Click here to view her response.
A stark contrast to this portrayal is that of former Olympic swimmer, Susie O’Neill, who recently took a permanent radio job at Nova co-hosting their Breakfast Show Ash, Kip, Luttsy & Susie O’Neill. Joining an already established radio show comprised of three males might seem intimidating, but I noticed almost instantly that they treat her with nothing but respect. I have even noticed that while Susie is more than happy to make fun of herself on-air, none of her co-hosts would dare.
They even introduced a segment called ‘Smarter than Suse’ where listeners can call up and challenge Susie to a quiz-style trivia game. This newfound respect for Susie as a woman on Australian radio is refreshing to listen to and I believe this is one of the main reasons why Ash, Kip, Luttsy & Susie O’Neill is Brisbane’s most listened to Breakfast Show.
Overall, I am not surprised that female radio hosts in 2019 still feel an overwhelming pressure to seem ‘likeable’ given the disappointing and oppressing history of women in radio. Society and technologies have come so far since the 1920s but we still have a long way to go. I’m sure many of you reading this may not have noticed how women are constantly being portrayed on the radio and I hope this article can spark some conversation about how we, as a society, can actively take steps to fix it.
