  The defect of a function $f:M\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is defined as the
difference between the measure of the positive and negative regions. In this
paper, we begin the analysis of the distribution of defect of random Gaussian
spherical harmonics. By an easy argument, the defect is non-trivial only for
even degree and the expected value always vanishes. Our principal result is
obtaining the asymptotic shape of the defect variance, in the high frequency
limit. As other geometric functionals of random eigenfunctions, the defect may
be used as a tool to probe the statistical properties of spherical random
fields, a topic of great interest for modern Cosmological data analysis.
