US cable and the contraception debate. Male guests dominate the airwaves 2 to 1 over females.

Last week, at the height of the kerfuffle over Obama’s regulation to include free birth control in health insurance plans, cable news networks featured an overwhelming number of males.

Out of a total of 146 guests who discussed contraception, the cables invited 91 men compared to 55 women as commentators. In other words, males comprised 62 percent of the total guests who commented on contraception. Fox was the most gender stratified network – on the Business network, 10 of 11 guests were male; on the News side, male pundits took up 65 percent of the guest lineup (28 men vs. 15 women). Sixty percent of MSNBC’s lineup was male (44 men vs. 31 women). And while CNN was more evenly balanced, it was still slightly tilted in favor of male perspectives (9 men vs. 8 women).

Since I’ve pretty much stopped watching Canadian news shows, I have no idea if that percentage applies also to our networks. I bet it’s awfully close. One thing conservative males love to do is to tell women how to act and how to think. Because conservative men know so much about contraception and sex. And they are so intimate with women’s rights. After all, these guys are also the experts on abortion, aren’t they?