Shocking, stunning, horrifying, unmissable. Guardian report on female invisibility.

Thank you for posting this. I don't agree with Xenia on everything, but on this she is spot on. Women keep removing themselves from public life. Our society makes it easy for them to do that, by continuing to place all responsibility for parenting on their shoulders, so their 'choice' to work part-time, or get the children to school at inconvenient times, looks obvious for each individual family. Many people prefer that lifestyle, but equally, many do not. I have so many immensely frustrated women friends, some with PhD's and some with just GCSE's but what they all have in common is that they are working several levels below their educational grade in terms of what their jobs require. So, the PhD's are working as administrators, and the ones with GCSE's are working as mealtime assistants. Both respectable jobs, but hardly fulfilling their educational potential. Men, in general, do not do this.

In my own area, women start out as 50% of researchers after PhD. 20 years on, only 15% are professors.

I don't know what you can do to change it, I find myself exhausted and tempted by the individual needs of my family to give up at times, but (due to a good Xenia verbal kicking) I remind myself that if every single woman retreats, stops working full-time, stops public speaking, stops their political ambition, we will just disappear from public life.

Kritiq I never read that Natasha Walter book but I had exactly that experience reading Naomi Wolf's 'Fire With Fire' which claimed the battles had been won and all women had to do was to reach out and take power.

Hackmum, I saw that documentary on Life photojournalists while visiting ILs (don't have a tv myself.) I did notice that it featured the "token woman" photographer (Margaret Bourke-White), and included the quite salacious comments from Ralph Graves (who was a "cub" when she was at the height of her profession.) It also noticeably included the "token Black," photographer John Shearer, focussing only on his coverage of the civil rights movement and Black gangs in New York. Stereotypes? Gee, not much.

I enjoyed the documentary as someone who both likes photography and enjoyed the retrospective of images from the magazine. It was, however, depressing to be reminded that an institution that made its reputation on being edgy and progressive was still as conservative and regressive in it's employment and promotion of anyone who didn't fit the white, male photo-hack model. It was even more depressing that the makers of the documentary were probably slapping each other on the back about managing to find a woman photographer and a non-white photographer to feature in the programme to give the appearance of "representation." But, that their "awareness" didn't stretch as far as recognising that the way they were depicted actually reinforced deep, negative stereotypes about both women and Black people.

Sorry if that seems a bit of a diversion.

Hackmum, I hear what you are saying about that feeling in the 70's and 80's that things were at least moving in the right direction. On reflection, I genuinely believe attitudes, representation, etc. WERE moving that way, even into the 1990's. But, somewhere in there, it started to level off, or actually kick into reverse - slowly, insidiously, but definitely perceptible.

I keep thinking of when I tried to read Natasha Walters' first book, and seeing her interviewed on some programme, asserting that the battle for equality was over bar the shouting, and thinking no, no that's not right at all. I was relieved that in her more recent book, she admits that she was a bit premature in her assumptions (to say the least.)

Thanks for posting the link Bidisha. It's only on seeing the numbers that I realise how normal it seems for men to make up 75-100% of people on the radio/ TV. I am constantly on the lookout for older, successful, female role models and this explains why I have only found a handful!

I've emailed the Today programme too. If the number of letters received on an issue represents how much of an issue it is felt to be, then I feel it's my responsibility to make my views known.

I am afraid I am continously appalled by women including on mumsnet who choose ot be home cleaning up the house and wiping babies; b ottoms and leaving their husbands to advance to positions of power. Women will never never get very far at all as long as so very very many husbands have low or no earning wife at home or in part time pin money work and husband putting his all into a career. You need to take action on a personal basis today and aim to out earn your man

Also get much better at demanding more pay.

Self promote better.

I think I'm one of the best at what I do in the UK and I don't mind saying that. I might be expensive but I'm very good. Far too many women don't think like that.

People say to me on here well it's a personal feminist choice that I adore to clean floors and iron my husband's shirts and mind his children 2/47 rather than do his job but it's not a personal choice. It's a choice which has led to a position where women will lose gains they have made.

It is not hopeless. Many women encourage their daughters into well paid careers and to aim for the top rather than yes dear you'd make a nice hairdresser or care home worker but still not enough.

There is a good movement to ensure we have 30% of women on boards. We must keep up the pressure. When women are not unusual they make greater gains. I looked at a media board recently for some work thing and I tweeted to the MD why is there not a woman on your board (which is pretty appalling in that female type sector). Just keep making the points again and again.

Also put yourself forward. Since I was about 12 I've been writing to the press, wrote 30 books, I speak may be 50 days a year and even in my field you do find a lot of men speaking and not so many women, why? I am not feeling as hopeless as others on the thread. Every day I see good progress. On an individual basis women shoudl do their bit - ditch the cakes and get yourself on a board, hand the mop to the husband and get off out into Parliament (f you can afford to live on its low pay, I couldn't).

A good piece of research and a good article.

Another piece of analysis that would be fairly easy to do from Hansard is to calculate what percentage of Parliamentary questions and speeches are by women. Obviously, there are less women than men in Parliament, but if when they get there, their voices are also not heard because they are less likely to 'catch the Speaker's eye' or disuaded from speaking then that compounds the issue.

It is just as bad at the top of business and in the business world in general.

Thanks for sharing this article.

The only programme I can think of that regularly has >50% women is the Review Show (on BBC2 on a Friday night). Almost always a woman presenter and almost always at least 2 of the 4 guests are women.

Here's one that made me really angry the other day. I watched a programme presented by Rankin about the photographers who worked for Life magazine. He interviewed several of them - all male. But right at the beginning he mentioned one female photographer. What did he say about her? That she was really attractive and quite promiscuous. Did he talk about any of the men in terms of their sexuality? No prizes for guessing the answer to that one.

thunderboltsandlightning: "It's also worth pointing out that Mumsnet has pretty much driven through that female invisibility thing and got itself a place at the table. That annoys quite a lot of people in the media."

Yup. To the extent that whenever it's mentioned, even (or especially) by female columnists who should know better, it's invariably done in sneering tones, as if everybody on Mumsnet is a well-off SAHM absorbed in obsessing about her own offspring. (Not that there's anything wrong in being a well-off SAHM, btw.) There's no recognition of the rich variety of opinion you get on Mumsnet, or the support it offers to a lot of women who feel isolated and lonely.

I find the female invisibility thing annoys me more and more as I get older. In the 1970s and 80s, it felt as if things were gradually going to get better, with more women on tv and in public life. But it seemed to have reached a plateau (a pretty low one) and stopped. Recently I've got fed up with watching things like QI where the panel is always either 75% or 100% male. And that seems like a trivial example, but imagine if it were the other way round - if the panels on things like QI and Question Time and Mock the Week and all the rest of it were frequently 100% female. I bet there'd be complaints then.

Hey, this is a discussion of the day.

It's also worth pointing out that Mumsnet has pretty much driven through that female invisibility thing and got itself a place at the table. That annoys quite a lot of people in the media.

Thanks Elderberry and C4. Now he's received a whole year's supply of letters just from us. :)

Yes, that Ceri Thomas bit that "no-one ever said anything about it ever before" made me cross too. I sent a 3 sentence email in saying well me-4 then since you think if it's not said, it's not a problem.

Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

Here's a radical plan:

Since women have roughly a 16 percent representation on the BBC, how about we pay 16 percent of the licence fee?

Chibi - ' there is already a quota which has ALWAYS existed for (mainly white establishment) men and it's a bit disingenuous to pretend otherwise'

Exactly. Invisible quotas already exist.

thank you for this!

I thought this was quite telling - Daily Mail 'Women elbow out the men in BBC Olympic coverage.
There will be 6 women and 5 men in the main BBC Olympic presenter line-up. Great. And given that it's only 1 more women than men, you would expect it to happen very frequently if coverage was anything like equal.
And yet it is 1. given a whole article because it is so unusual and 2. framed as if it's nasty aggressive women going too far and trying to make men invisible.

It will take a generation to change this. As soon as they go to school girls learn that the boys take up more of the teacher's time, talk more, interupt more, have more self-confidence. The girls are rewarded for being quite and complicit. It is so normalised that they cant even see it.

By the time women are adults it is often too late to rectify.

Thank you for drawing our attention to this very good article.

Very good article.

One of the best questions in the comment section is why is this filed under Life & Style > Women?

Come on guardian, why is it? It's important to the whole of society, and it's much bigger than a lifestyle question, surely?

Thank you MMMarmite, I have done just that

In the article, Today programme editor Mr Ceri Thomas says that this is something that is being persued actively, but also says "and I'm bound to say to you, it almost never comes up as an issue from the audience... I suppose it might be one or two letters a year, or something of that nature." I've just added my email to that number, contact details are here: news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/contact_today/default.stm

There is no reason why childcare should hold a career back, other than the prejudices of society. There is plenty of time before retirement to fit in both roles.

Asides from which, media is massively oversubscribed in terms of applicants. Most people who want to be journalists, producers and appear on tv shows will never get to. There will easily be enough high quality women candidates applying for journalism jobs to fill half the available places.

As for tv panels, if somebody really wanted to, they could fill a show every week with highly articulate, intelligent women with specialist knowledge, but nobody does want to.

It's not only the view that men are the bread winners, but also the view that childcare is womens' work that holds women back. Woman are as guilty as men of the latter view.

While we carry out the majority of childcare, are the only ones who get a significant amount of maternity/paternity leave, and find our careers have been chopped off at the knees by the time our child-rearing duties are done, we are not going to be free to take an equal role in public life.

I've just been reading Andrea Dworkin's "Our Blood" where she points out that in a patriarchy only a penis makes a person real - phallic reality.

So it's no wonder they can't see us unpenised ones or that we don't appear in their newspapers or media. Without a penis you're not really there.