The women and equalities minister has dismissed concerns over the number of female ministers leading the daily Downing Street coronavirus press conference as “tokenism”. Liz Truss said “excessive focus on what gender” the politician helming the televised briefing was “does a disservice to women”. The afternoon press conference has only once been taken by a woman – the home secretary, Priti Patel – since it began five weeks ago. As well the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, the first secretary, Dominic Raab, and the health secretary, Matt Hancock, more junior cabinet members such as the business secretary, Alok Sharma, the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, and the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove, have also fronted the briefing. “The home secretary has already made an appearance at the daily press conference and there has also been appearances from senior medical professionals such as Dr Jenny Harries,” said Truss, defending the gender imbalance. “Women are playing a key role in the response – [work and pensions secretary] Thérèse Coffey ... she’s done a number of media appearances and I think she’s doing an absolutely brilliant job in dealing with the number of universal credit claims.” Giving evidence to the virtual women and equalities committee on Wednesday, Truss was asked by the chairwoman, Caroline Nokes, if she would be appearing at any of the media briefings. “I don’t like tokenism,” said Truss. “I don’t like the idea that someone should just appear at a press conference or in a media interview because they are a woman. They should be doing that, and the work internally, because of the merits of what they are capable of.” Nokes responded: “So they shouldn’t be there just because they are a women, but you have a remit for elderly people, for the disabled, for those from a BAME background, for the LGBTQ community – a massive group of people who will be impacted by Covid-19 – and you think it would be tokenism to appear at one of those press conferences.” “I’m not saying that at all,” said Truss. “What I’m saying is the excessive focus on what gender somebody is rather than what they do does a disservice to women … I believe that women are equally as capable as men, that we need more women in politics … but I think we should be focusing on the right people to present at the press conference. “The major issue at the moment is health so I think it’s right that the health secretary is doing a lot of the press conferences. I think excessive focus on who is appearing at a press conference is the wrong focus.” Asked about the evidence that more men were dying from coronavirus than women, and that BAME people were also disproportionately affected, Truss said: “Across the board we are trying to find out more about Covid-19, but it’s a relatively new disease and a lot more needs to be done … We’re looking at getting data in a useable format at the moment.”