The Gender of TV Expertise: A Combined Quantitative/Qualitative Analysis of Israeli TV Talk Shows

This combined quantitative/qualitative study is based on a content analysis of 238 hours of Israeli talk shows from 2012 and semiotic analysis of selected programs to map the gender distribution of TV experts and explore potential differences in the way men and women are treated in the programs.. All in all, 495 experts were coded. Men experts outnumbered women experts in a 1.7 to 1 ratio. These men were signifi cantly older than the women and tended to have a higher academic rank, but they were not treated more favorably during the program. In fact, experts of both genders were criticized or disagreed with in just less than 4% of the cases. The topics on which the experts commentated refl ect familiar gender stereotypes with men more likely to talk about security, politics and economy and women more often talk about body grooming and child care. The results, which partly accord with feminist criticisms of the popular media, are analyzed in relation to the theoretical concepts of symbolic annihilation and “fast thinking” and the fi ndings of studies that looked at the gender of scientists and scholars in other TV genres.