Why do women look dumb on telly? Clover and Robyn on Q&A

By Gabrielle Jackson

The two women on the panel of Monday night’s Q&A made about as valuable a contribution to the debate as Posh did to the Spice Girls. Which is to say, you never heard their voices.

I think Ben Pobjie summed it up on Twitter when he said, ‘Clover, Robyn, if you hang around, maybe you can sweep up afterwards.’

I’ve got to say, I agreed with him. Sweeping up would, after all, be more of a contribution to the show than either of them had thus far made.

Q&A is Australia’s version of Question Time. For those not familiar with either show, it’s a format in which politicians, journalists and others in the public eye are invited to sit on a panel to discuss current events. The panel is balanced with people from opposite ends of the political spectrum and the audience puts questions to them, mediated by a 'neutral' presenter.

In the summary round of this week’s Q&A, all the panellists were asked for their final word on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The writer Robyn Davidson declined to comment, saying something like, ‘I couldn’t say it any better than that,’ while not making it 100 per cent clear to which of the previous male speakers she was referring.

When it was Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s turn, her enlightened contribution was, ‘I think we should be looking for a solution.’ Really? I mean, I don’t know what Australia would have done without that kind of insight.

But hang on a minute. These are intelligent, thoughtful women. Clover Moore is a controversial figure in Sydney, but I don’t think there’s any doubt over whether she’s capable of a deeper thought than Israel and Palestine should look for a solution to their conflict. Robyn Davidson has written a best selling book and delivered lectures all over the world.

And yet, on Q&A, they looked like they’d been leased from Madame Tussaud’s. Although I have a sneaking suspicion a wax dummy may have looked more alive.

Which makes me think, maybe there’s a reason. Why do women almost always come across badly on these confrontational TV panel shows? I did wonder this on Twitter. I said:

‘These panels are very confrontational and macho. I’m sure the women aren’t dumb but this is not the natural way women communicate.’

The first response I got was:

‘hang on, I thought men and women were equal? If they want to play lumberjack they got to learn to carry there (sic) end of the log!’

I replied:

‘Equality doesn’t mean we’re the same; just that we should have equal opportunity & I think #qanda is very blokey’

He went on to say that Germaine Greer manages to hold her own when she’s on and that he thought Moore and Davidson were bad choices for the topics covered. Maybe he’s right. The other response I got was perhaps more interesting. It read:

‘did you not see Catherine Deveny last week, maybe they learnt from her how not to be a loudmouth moron like she was’

Me:

‘see, when women try to communicate like men, they get called loud mouths and worse. It’s a no win for women to go on’

He didn’t respond. I’m not the first to have this thought. The debate rages in Britain about the lack of women on TV panel shows, particularly comedy panels. My feminist hero, Caitlin Moran, who writes a column for The Times and wrote the best-selling book How To Be A Woman, flatly refuses to appear on Question Time and other British panel shows. At a reading of hers I went to in London, somebody asked her why. She said it was because these formats were overly confrontational and male dominated. She doesn’t like competing for her voice to be heard and doesn’t like her chances of being given a fair hearing. She later said that these shows were set up to make it look like women don’t understand politics and don’t get political humour. It’s not always overt; sometimes it’s just the way a show is edited, or who gets to answer the question, or how long a mediator allows each guest to speak.

When British comedian Victoria Wood claimed that TV panel shows were ‘male-dominated, testerterone-fuelled and bearpit-ish in the extreme’, fellow comedian Jo Brand explained it to the Guardian.

‘Women don't want to go on panel shows for six reasons: 1) They won't get a word in edgeways. 2) They may be edited to look stupid. 3) They may get the piss taken out of them. 4) They may not be funny. 5) They don't like competing for airtime. 6) They may be patronised, marginalised or dismissed.’

Maybe it’s got something to do with men being more comfortable pushing their views than women tend to be. American author Rebecca Solnit recently updated an excellent article she’d written in 2008 for TomDispatch.com about how men explained things to her without letting facts get in the way. She talks of several instances in which she has been almost or fully silenced by confident men trying to explain something to her that was incorrect in a field in which she is an expert. Sometimes it’s easier just not to argue.

Let me just pick out two paragraphs of her excellent story for you to ponder:

‘Yes, guys like this pick on other men's books too, and people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men.

‘Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.’

When smart women act dumb on TV, isn’t it time we started asking, ‘What’s wrong with this show?’ rather than ‘Why is that woman such an idiot?’