Clare Balding has said TV is filled with average over-paid men as she hit out at the inequality in the industry which has left women underrepresented in the middle ranks of broadcasting jobs.
Balding said equality is not about women getting to the top, but being treated equally with men when they are just average rather than exceptional.
She said there are exceptional women in television, but they have to be that just to stay level with average-performing men.
Balding, 52, who currently presents for BBC Sport, Channel 4 and BT Sport, and has her own sports chat show called the Clare Balding show, said: “I’m working on a theory that true equality is actually when we’re all allowed to be average.
“People think equality is about women being offered chances at the top table.
“Exceptional women are still over-performing massively, but when are you allowed to just be average.
“I’m not saying I want to be average, I don’t want to be average.
“I like men and I like working with them, but I’ve worked with enough to know that there are a lot of average men who are in jobs that they get rewarded supremely well for, and it just seems to me that women are either in the exceptional bracket, or they’ve got the menial tasks where they’re being massively underpaid.
“They’re not in the middle section. Why aren’t they?
“I don’t know how one fights for it – the right to be average. It’s not really a slogan that works.”
Clare, who has appeared on Celebrity Gogglebox with her wife Alice Arnold, added on the Walking The Dog podcast: “”It makes sense to be the right to be just good, just be basically good, and most women are over-performing to stay level with the average man.”
