Mary Beard with her OBE medal in June 2013

The 59-year-old Cambridge academic added that quotas "do not get to the root of the problem".

"The fact is that even now authority still seems to reside with the men in suits, and their deep voices; and those are the types we still assume we'll see when we're looking for words of wisdom on TV," she said.

"If viewers want to change this, the power lies partly in their hands. We all need to think a bit harder about our assumptions about whose face fits the TV screen."

Beard, who was awarded an OBE in 2013 for services to classical scholarship, also commented on the way that older women on-screen were singled out for their "glaring eccentricity and deficient grooming".

The classicist was caught up in a storm of protest last year after Sunday Times journalist AA Gill declared her too unattractive for TV when reviewing Meet The Romans, the BBC Two programme she wrote and presented.

Mary Beard: "I dread any idea of a fixed quota of women on TV"