Survivor Gabon, Episode 4: Ladies First

The gender gap on Survivor: Gabon is glaring.

Women were dismissed at each of the first four Tribal Councils – and have received 30 out of 33 total votes cast at Tribal Councils thus far.

In the first episode, the contestants picked their own tribes without regard to gender. Men on average were picked before women, but not by a big margin. Out of 16 contestants picked, ala gym class, the men were chosen a tad more quickly – although three of the first four picked were women, the next four were all men; three of the last four not picked were women.

Then on tonight’s episode, all the members of each tribe ranked themselves from most to least valuable. On Kota, amazingly, the four men were ranked first through fourth (with the gay male in fourth). The four women were fifth through eighth – and they were 50 percent of the vote!

Fang was little better. They’ve already voted out two of their women, leaving only two. Crystal, who is very strong and secretly an Olympic champion, could do no better than fourth. I’m guessing she preferred the medal stand in Athens to the podium she was stuck on tonight.

All in all, out of eight placements on each tribe, the men had an average ranking of 3.0, the women 6.2. Ouch. Another schoolyard pick ‘em followed, with the rankings influencing the order of selection somewhat. Players could again choose whomever they wanted. Four of the first five picked were men.

So, what’s going on? Sexism? With such a small sample and selective editing, there’s no real way to tell. From the perspective that you want as physically strong a tribe as possible, and stereotypically men are more physically strong than women, perhaps it makes sense, unfair as that may be. And by my count, the history of Survivor shows that woman are indeed more vulnerable than men early on. Here’s the gendered breakdown of the first four Tribal Council victims each season:

• Four women, zero men: This has happened three times now. Oddly it's all been pretty recent seasons -- this season and on Survivor: Fiji and Panama Exile Island.

• Three women, one man: This has happened four times, including the show’s premiere season.

• Two women, two men: This has happened seven times, including the two seasons featuring all-male and all-female tribes, which conveniently cancels those groupings out.

• One woman, three men: This has happened three times, all since Season 8, All-Stars.

• Zero women, four men: This has not yet happened.

This isn’t cut and dried, since Jenna wasn't voted out but rather quit on Episode 3 of All-Stars (I didn’t count her). Nor did I count Gary on Fiji, who left after getting ill.

Others, such as the injured Jeff on Palau, ostensibly quit (asking people to vote for him) but didn’t outright do so (so I did count him). In addition, people are voted out for all sorts of reasons, often as much social as physical (for instance, Nicole on Pearl Islands wasn't the weakest on her tribe, but annoyed her fellow castaways by trying to strategize too early). And picking the "first four" as a cutoff is rather arbitrary, admittedly.

But the upshot is clear: If you look at the 68 people who were among the first four voted out in their respective seasons, 41 of them – or 60 percent – were women.