Strictly fans call out Shirley Ballas for “favouring” male contestants

Viewers have noticed a pattern in Shirley's scoring.

Fans of Strictly Come Dancing have taken issue with the scoring of judge Shirley Ballas, with many viewers convinced that she is tougher on the female contestants, and more praising of the men. One TikToker, Katie Payne, broke down the numbers behind Shirley's scoring in a video, and suggested that it proves she has a "bias" towards the male celebrity contestants. Katie explained that Shirley talks to the men differently, and this ends up being reflected in her scores. She then showed a spreadsheet in which she calculated the scoring patterns of each judge for the past five seasons and determined whether or not they give more generous scores to the men or the women. In series 16, Shirley is the judge who favours the men the most, and in the next season, she comes in second place, with Craig Revel Horwood scoring the men more generously.  

@katiehptheatre the maths doesn't lie Shirley #strictlycomedancing #strictly #strictlycomedancing2022 #shirleyballas #scd2022 #fleureast ♬ original sound - Katie Payne

In the subsequent series, Shirley remains at the top of Katie's calculations as the judge who consistently scores the men higher than the women. The TikToker points out that the other judges' scoring varies, while Shirley remains in the number one spot, indicating that she may have a bias towards men. Elsewhere on Twitter, many fans suggested that Shirley favours the men. https://twitter.com/Ms_Mannion/status/1579190417597157378 In Sunday's elimination episode, Shirley was the only judge to vote to save Richie Anderson and Giovanni Pernice over Fleur East and Vito Coppola. Many fans took to social media to call Shirley "sexist", and some even called for her to be removed from the show. While Shirley has not acknowledged the criticism directly, she tweeted yesterday that many fans have apologised to her for sending "hurtful" messages. https://twitter.com/ShirleyBallas/status/1579440173888450561 "All apologies now accepted and from now on let’s all respect each other and enjoy the show. Love to you all."