Panda women of the year

Panda women of the year

Panda women of the year - Panda named a 'woman of the year', The BBC has put a Chinese panda on its "women of the year" list, drawing fire from those who think the spot should have gone to a human. When it comes to representing females in the media, one has to tread very carefully in order to avoid offending people. This is a lesson the BBC has recently learned after they included a giant panda called Sweetie alongside Pippa Middleton and Adele in its list of the 12 women of the year.

The broadcaster’s Faces of the year 2011 – the women featured the women who made the headlines for each month and included Gabrielle Giffords, the US Congresswoman who recovered after she was shot in the head, as well as Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. But for December, the BBC picked Sweetie the panda, who arrived along with Sunshine in Edinburgh from China. The pandas are on loan to the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

The list sparked a brief outrage on Twitter with users labelling the episode “panda gate” and claiming that this “belittles the achievements of the other women in the list.”

In response to the criticism, the BBC said it selects a male or female animal for the lists every year, with previous recipients including Peppa Pig and Benson the carp.