Miriam O'Reilly has won on age discrimination but not on sex discrimination

[sethstarkaddersmum]

completely unbiased BBC link here

surely age discriminating against women but not men is sex discrimination?!

when people say things like 'it's natural that men want to look at a young pretty face on tv, it's just the way the world works' that is pretty much what they are saying.

I am fantasising about big demos against the BBC, 70s-Miss-World-protest style BUT involving lots of middle aged and elderly Disgusted-Of-Tunbridge-Wells type as well as us hairy legged feminists.

It's quite amusing reading the Daily Mail comments on this one - your typical DM reader is wholly pro-Miriam so they are green-arrowing all the 'Misogynists!' type comments.

this DM comment is sobering:

'Excellent new and about time. The only women that have a "secure" job at the BBC are the secretaries. Those of us with degrees who were producers and made the great programmes all find their one year contracts unrenewed due to lack or work when you get to an age where you have any obligations. This has been going on for years. Try googling the fabulous women producers from any series of the 1990's and see how many got sloughed off in favour of older retirement aged men. I'm not bitter - I still work but I don't see this story being told anywhere. The BBC should take a good look at itself. When we have the time, the women of the Natural History Unit will revolt. Print this if you dare - or maybe find a real story and investgigate it yourself?'

I just heard them talking about this on the radio. It sounded like they acknowledged that it was mainly a problem faced by women, not men. But the specific instance they were talking about couldn't be proven to be related to her sex rather than her age. I guess if all four women had filed together the tribunal would have been able to see a pattern and found sexism as well?

V good news though, and will hopefully change things. And make others braver about coming forward.

it would be marvellous if it opened the floodgates, wouldn't it?

I'm amazed she's only getting a 250k payout. Surely her career was worth more than that?

The Guardian 's take on it doesn't question the failure of the tribunal to recognise that this is a sex discrimination issue either, sadly.

Feminism is important part 173947352:

At the moment I am youthful and gorgeous (sort of, relatively) and am able to use this to my advantage in the workplace. In the future, I will have young whippersnappers use their wiles against me, or at least against men who will then pay less attention to me.

Esther Rantzen has just been on the BBC news with regards this case and was asked whether she thought it was a gender issue. She smiled and agreed that there seemed to be a remarkable coincidence that ageism seems to happen to women rather than men and that she couldn't actually think of a grey-haired mainstream female television presenter. She also mentioned the fact that it isn't just in front of the screen that this discrimination occurs but behind the camera too.

It's not just age though is it? Nearly all female presenters are slim and attractive, but alot of the men are overweight and ugly. It really winds me up.

Quite suprised and disgusted that this also happens behind the camera, is this just a media thing or do older women get cast aside in other industries to?

yes indeed, I am frequently to be heard muttering at the tv 'They'd NEVER have let him on tv if he was a woman!'

not just at Adrian Chiles I mean - whenever any old/ugly/overweight/badly dressed man comes on, which is quite a lot of the time.

not that I care in the least how they look if they have something interesting to say, it would just be nice if there wasn't a double standard.

One of the dimmer comments on the DM story said basically 'well women like a bit of beefcake too and there's nothing wrong with that' which completely misses the point that men on tv are hardly ever chosen for their looks.

Yes well, women do like a bit of beefcake, so why are we offered Bruce Forsythe, Jeremy Paxman and Adrian Chiles? Chris Evans, Chris Moyles, Terry Wogan?

Etc. etc. ad nauseum (cannot be arsed to do a long list of sexually unattractive men on the telly).

Apparently had Nick Ross on C4 news saying how hard it is for the young men. Much harder for them to find jobs, because everyone's employing older men & younger women apparently. The word "diddums" springs to mind. Nice that they'll have a 50+ year career to look forward to after spending their twenties in the wilderness. Also, did he not think to wonder WHY that was? God I have said I'd like to see more 20-30 year old male presenters I don't know how many times. It would be nice to see some men of my own age, fgs, and maybe some women who look like my older friends, or my mother, or grandmother.

Oh absolutely.

If men were confronted by images of themselves where 9% of them looked like David Beckham, Enrique Iglesias, the Take That shaggers and other assorted gorgeous looking blokes, their self-esteem would soon drop to levels almost as low as women's...

90%

Nick Ross also said that men like younger women and women like older men . Really?

No. Not really. And, if he considered his success rate with the local female youth, he would realise this in his heart of hearts.

Call me a weirdo, but I like hearing from people of all ages/appearances. And if I want to perv (and, funnily enough, that isn't every time I turn on the TV), I'd rather have someone I would fuck in real life without feeling like some kind of gerontophile.

I quite like seeing old men on telly but I also like seeing old women - why should my taste in presenters of the opposite sex be any more important than my taste in the same sex?
I'm not likely to shag any of them.

All women like older men?? lol, like he's qualified to make that statement.

That is a myth put forward by older men.

Exactly the same myth put forward by ugly/ unattractive men, which says that women aren't visual.

Wishful thinking, I think.

I have to disagree that most decisions at the Beeb are made by men.

There have been a lot of women at the top at the BBC - senior managers like Jana Bennett, Jay Hunt, Lorraine Heggessey and Janice Hadlow.

Jay Hunt was instrumental in the removal of the four women from Countryfile.

The problem is more that TV channel heads and producers (male or female) have been able to make snap arbitrary and highly subjective decisions on presenters.

Miriam's case will change that quite radically, I think, and TV managers will have to demonstrate much fairer and open selection processes.