Something historic happened during the second double eviction of Big Brother 19, but fans probably didn’t realize it. In the DE, Josh won the Power of Veto competition and, in doing so, he set a new record. It marked the eighth consecutive PoV competition of the season that was won by a man, something that has never happened in the history of Big Brother.
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For comparison, the only other time that men won seven PoVs in a row was season 10, and the longest PoV winning streak for women is just five in a row, back in season 8. So does Big Brother have a gender problem when it comes to the PoV competitions? Let’s take a look.
A Brief History of Gender in the PoV
This wasn’t a problem back in the early days of the game. The Power of Veto was introduced in season 3 and for those first two seasons, the PoV winners were evenly split with five men and four women in both seasons 3 and 4. Then Big Brother actually went through a period where women dominated the PoV competitions, winning the majority of them in seasons 5, 6, 7 and 8.
But since then, men have won a majority of the PoV competitions in every single season. Even years with dominant female competitors, like season 13 where women won a record 10 out of 12 HoH competitions, the men dominated the PoV thanks to multiple wins from Jeff Schroeder, Brendon Villegas and Adam Poch.
Since season 8, there has only been one time when women won more than five PoV competitions in one season. That was season 15, when women won six of them, but men won eight.
The Huge Gender Gap in Recent Seasons
This gender gap has been massive in recent years. I looked back at the past six summer seasons (Big Brother 14 to the current Big Brother 19) to collect some data. This information goes through the Top 6 PoV competition of season 19.
In those six seasons, men have won a total of 59 PoV competitions while women have only won 23 of them. That’s nearly 72 percent of wins for the guys. To put that in context, during that same time frame if you look at all of the HGs who actually competed in those PoVs, men comprised about 56 percent of all players. That’s a big margin between the number of guys playing and the number of guys winning.
Big Brother 19 is a perfect example. There have been 12 PoV competitions so far, with men winning 10 and women only winning two of them. And those two are the week 1 PoV won by Alex and Jessica’s win in week 4, both of which were thrown to them by Cody.
Why Do Men Dominate the PoV Competitions?
So what’s the reason for this obvious gender imbalance in the Power of Veto competitions? Maybe it’s simply that the show has veered towards more physically demanding PoV competitions in recent years. Just look at something like OTEV, which has been around for 12 seasons, but has only had four female winners.
Or maybe it’s the casting, with the show shying away from strong, independent women and, instead, casting more girls who seem to be looking for love and a showmance, relying on big strong men to protect them and get them to the end.
It’s hard to understand exactly why this trend seems to be happening, but the numbers don’t lie. Men have been winning the overwhelming majority of Power of Veto competitions for the past decade, with the gap growing larger in recent years. Whether the competition designers need to come up with some new plans or the casting department needs to find more tough, strong, independent women who aren’t looking for love, Big Brother should probably look into fixing this issue.
(Image courtesy of CBS)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
