Podcasting Remains Overwhelmingly White And Male, Study Finds.

Despite gains in podcasting’s diversity, the medium continues to reflect gender and racial inequalities found across other entertainment media. A new USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report concludes podcasting remains dominated by white male voices despite its reputation for accessibility and creative freedom.

The study analyzed 592 of the most popular U.S.-based English-language podcasts on Spotify between January and September 2024, along with 6,413 guests from the top 100 shows. The results show that men vastly outnumber women as podcast hosts, with 64.1% male and 35.9% female in the top 100 shows.

“Female hosts are outnumbered by roughly 2 to 1 across popular podcasts,” the report states. “The only space where women reach 50% of hosts is in true crime — where stories focus on grisly acts often committed against women.”

Genre Gender Gaps Run Deep

The gender imbalance is not uniform across podcast categories. The report found that male hosts dominate every genre except True Crime, where women slightly edge out men (53% to 47%).

“Business & Tech, Sports & Fitness and Comedy were almost solely the genres male hosts worked in,” the report says. Business and Technology podcasts were the most male-dominated, with 92.3% of hosts being men, a ratio of 12 to 1. In Sports & Fitness, men made up 81.1% of hosts (4.3 to 1 ratio), and in Comedy, 76.4% of hosts were male (3.2 to 1).

The report also highlights a technological divide. It says more than three-fifths (62.3%) of podcasts with all-male hosts included video, whereas 46.7% of the podcasts with at least one female host featured video. Across the broader 592-show sample, that pattern persisted — 61.4% of all-male podcasts used video vs. 49.6% of those with female hosts.

The study argues that such differences matter because “podcasts with video components are often more visible to algorithms, promoted more heavily on platforms, and more likely to attract sponsorships,” reinforcing male dominance in audience reach and monetization.

When race and ethnicity were examined, the study found that 77.1% of hosts across the top 100 podcasts were white vs. 22.3% from underrepresented groups — finding about 3.5 white podcast hosts to every one underrepresented host.

The pattern held across the full 592-show dataset, where 79.2% of hosts were white and 20.8% were underrepresented. That is roughly half the 41.6% of Americans who identify with nonwhite racial/ethnic groups.

True Crime had the lowest representation of nonwhite hosts (9.8%), while News (27.1%) had the highest. “Nonwhite podcast hosts were more likely to appear on News podcasts, Arts, Society & Culture shows,” the report notes.

Podcasts with underrepresented hosts were also more likely to include video — 59% of such shows used video components vs. 53% among podcasts with only white hosts.

The intersection of gender and race revealed the most striking disparity. The study says when gender and underrepresented status were examined simultaneously, it became clear the group least likely to serve as a podcast host are women of color. Across the top 100 podcasts, just 6.6% were women of color.

Guests Mirror Host Disparities

The same race and gender skews appear among guests, according to the study. Of 6,413 guests identified across the top 100 podcasts, 72.8% were male and 27.2% female — a ratio of 2.7 men to every one woman. More than three-fifths of episodes (62.6%) featured no female guests at all.

The imbalance was especially severe in Business & Technology (16% female guests) and Sports & Fitness (15.4%). By contrast, True Crime and Arts/Society/Culture were close to parity, with nearly half of guests being women.

“Having a female host increases the likelihood that a female guest will take part in a podcast,” the authors conclude. On female-hosted shows, 45.3% of guests were women vs. only 17.9% on male-hosted programs. “For women, the percentage of female guests approximates equality (45%),” the report notes.

The authors call for more research into algorithmic bias and discoverability, warning that popularity-based recommendations may amplify male-hosted shows. They also urge studies on barriers for women and people of color — from marketing support to behind-the-scenes roles like producers and bookers — to uncover structural causes of inequality.

Read the full USC Annenberg report HERE.