age and sex discrimination in the BBC

The customer is in conflict with the regulator, simple as that.

The government quite rightly wants discrimination against women and older people to stop. They don't care about discrimination against men, but that's another story. In the BBC, women occupy a great many senior posts (even to the point that men are complaining that they are now under-represented), but the discrimination hasn't stopped now that women are in charge. Now, we have numerous older women complaining that the best jpbs are going to pretty young things instead of wiser maturer women.

In the search for ratings, pretty women have an obvious advantage in pursuing customer facing roles, such as newsreading or presenting. Less attractive or older women have little chance. If the BBC does what customers appear to want, and put the most attractive women on the screen, then the customer is happy, and the regulator isn't. If they behave in a non-discriminatory fashion and represent average people and older people in the proportions that they figure in wider society, then viewers can simply switch over to another channel that is easier on the eye. So they can't win, unless everyone plays fair, and then the customer has no choice but to watch less attractive people.

It isn't just on TV that such discrimination occurs, but throughout industry. In male dominated areas, with mostly men at the top, attractive women will be favoured at interview time, and will then tend to dominate senior posts, so that women quotas can be filled but men get to choose which women fill them. In airlines, it is hard not to notice if you fly frequently, that the most attractive stewardesses end up in first and business class, with the less attractive and older ones serving the economy cabin. And on a front reception desk, bar, sales jobs, and PR, attractive women have an obvious advantage too.

It isn't just women who are treated such. Taller men earn more than shorter ones on average, and tend to get promoted higher and faster, and tend to get elected to government more often.

I wonder if we are fighting human nature too hard to try to regulate such tendencies away. People can always easily pretend that they promoted someone on merit rather than looks, or it is entirely coincidence that this particular role has a more attractive woman in it. And it is obvious never likely to be feasible to regulate people's viewing habits, or which pub they choose to go to, so while marketers know that people will always prefer attractive people to ugly ones, attractive people will always tend to win.

Life isn't fair, but trying to regulate against human nature or against customers in a free market will never work.