Vox's Amanda Taub highlighted new studies and Media Matters research showing that women are widely underrepresented as experts in print and TV news coverage.

In her March 16 article, Taub highlighted research from Media Matters demonstrating the glaring lack of gender parity on prime-time cable news programs and Sunday political talk shows during segments focused on national security and foreign affairs. The research, which was presented at the New America Foundation in recognition of International Women's Day on March 8, found that just 21 percent of guests during such segments last year were women -- echoing prior Media Matters analysis of gender disparity during discussions of foreign policy, and the economy.

Additionally, Taub points to research noting “80% of the political scientists quoted” in The New York Times' presidential primary coverage were men. Taub also noted that the underrepresentation of women in in the media, “often mirrors their underrepresentation among university faculty, think tank scholars, and business leaders”:

Recently, a group of female scholars analyzed the New York Times's coverage of the presidential primary, looking at every article from March 2015 through January 2016. They found something striking: 80 percent of the political scientists quoted in those articles were men.

And it's not just the Times: Male experts dominate media coverage. On primetime cable and Sunday news shows, for another example, 75 percent of national security and foreign affairs commentators have been men, according to a Media Matters for America study.

These sorts of things look bad, but they also are bad: Prioritizing male experts devalues women's work, depriving them of the recognition and public acclaim they might get if they were male. It also reinforces a general impression that men are the experts worth listening to, and women's roles, if anything, are just to assist men in their important work.

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The core problem isn't journalists forgetting to quote more women, even though that does happen and should be corrected. Rather, like so many issues of inequality, the underrepresentation of women in media is the result of vast cultural and institutional biases that hold women back every step of the way.

After all, it's not as if women in academia and other “expert” institutions existed in a state of pure gender equality that was undisturbed until panel organizers or journalists declined to call them. No, as these women will often tell you, they face countless forms of gender bias long before they reach the point in their professional development where they become quotable, panel-ready experts.

The sad fact is that women's underrepresentation in the media often mirrors their underrepresentation among university faculty, think tank scholars, and business leaders. That's not to say that journalists are blameless -- we're not. But women's underrepresentation in media is just the expression of a much deeper problem.

*This post has been updated.