Ms Pat Coyle:

Ms Duffy has made a very good point. That is exactly the case that I have found with women in any area of the expertise they have. All the women whom I have worked with have plenty to say but their confidence level is much lower when it comes to media. They say they need to work this out and to do more research. Without being stereotypical, a man will wing it more. I have been told by people in business, academia or whatever organisation if there are a lot of men there that the men tend to say the man will do that and they promote the man. It is a very good question because that is the kind of thing we want to look at if we are going to respond to this in the round. It is not just a case of increasing the quotas, we must look at what issues Traveller women face when they come on air or they are asked to do something. There are issues we do not even think about like transport or whatever else. We just assume people can do certain things but they might not be able to do it that way. That is what surprised me a lot when I started listening to women – it is the issue of who promotes them or who pushes them, which happens very little. If someone gives a talk and there are men and women in the audience. When they call for questions, how many men's hand will go up for questions before a woman's? It will be a good while. This bring me back to the point from the 30% Club, which is very important. It is that the more woman we can get on air, modelling, the more that will break down as well because people think they can do it too. "If she did that, I can do it." There is a knock-on effect, in particular in the whole area of the sciences and science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, but also across the board.

It was said that women get criticised for what they wear or sound like. I produced radio and TV programmes myself. I remember that it was important for a woman to lower her voice because it was said that people did not want to hear a squeaky voice. That was almost accepted. Some people, including me, in the media got training to lower their voices. I love the fact that there are one or two women on air – I am sure members know them – whose voices are higher, younger and more vibrant. It is great. It now means we do not have to go with the lowering our voice thing, but even something as simple as that is important. The unconscious level of bias and sexism is there and even women themselves do not realise that they are suffering from it until they come together, sit down and talk. That is why it is important to take a multi-strata approach to doing this and to get all the information so that we can respond to it on many different levels.