Podcasting is a man's game, judging by a study from the USC
Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
Among the top 100 podcasts, only 35.9% are hosted by women. But it depends on genre. That falls to 33.2% across al 562
podcasts.
In the top 100 ranking, females host only 7.7% of business & tech posts, at a ratio of 12 to 1. Similarly, only 18.9% of sports & fitness podcasts
feature women as hosts.
Oddly, the only category that women lead in is true crime is true crime (53% to 47%). And while the margins are tighter than in some categories, women are behind in
comedy (76% to 23.6%), education (60% to 40%), news (58.8% to 41.2%) and arts, society and culture (56.7 to 43.3%)
In contrast, females are the film lead or co-lead in 50.4%
of productions and 44.9% in regular TV series. But they are at only 37.7% as popular music artists.
Race also figures into this. The Top 100 podcasts feature
22.3% of underrepresented hosts, while 77.2% are white. And for all 292 podcasts, 20.8% are non-white.
The study was authored by Stacy L. Smith.
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