HEARTFELT thanks to Brian Beacom for drawing our attention to the dangers of promoting women radio presenters beyond their talent ("BBC's obsession with female presenters will backfire", The Herald, September 20). Janice Forsyth, Edith Bowman, Aasmah Mir, Hayley Millar, Shereen Nanjiani, Kaye Adams, Kirsty Wark, Kirsty Young, Susan Calman, Isabel Fraser – to name a few of the enviably accomplished Scotswomen who enliven our airwaves – would do well to take note.
According to Mr Beacom, speculation that Zoe Ball is leading an all-female shortlist to take over the Radio 2 breakfast show is conclusive proof that the BBC is so shackled by the demands of equality that it is “making a mockery of the entire concept of meritocracy”.
He conveniently bypasses the fact that hard work and talent are no match for structural inequalities like those experienced by women in many workplaces. In the media, it’s not just pay that’s recently been shown to be woefully unequal for men and women in the same roles. Our own research shockingly found one in 10 women in Scottish journalism said they’d actually been sexually assaulted at work.
Mr Beacom asks if Zoe Ball is “anything more than a mother of two who lives in a picturesque village in East Sussex”. It has clearly never occurred to him that any of the vast array of overpaid male radio presenters got there on anything less than merit or have something more thrilling to offer than simply being nice chaps who talk a lot.
As fellow journalists, we defend to the hilt any colleague’s right to express opinions we find crass, ill-informed, and pointlessly provocative. But publishing this article points to an editorial assumption that sexist content merits equal prominence to feminist opinion, as though one were simply the equal and opposite viewpoint of the other. Surely this argument was won around a century ago when women gained the right to vote? Most of us have managed to catch up since then.
As the organisation that represents women journalists in Scotland, we’re delighted to see talented and qualified women like Zoe Ball finally being considered for top jobs that were once male preserves. How sad that some men, who may have been promoted beyond their own talents, cannot understand that this is what progress looks like.
Libby Brooks and Shelley Jofre,
Co-chairs, Women in Journalism Scotland,
c/o Scottish Parliament media tower, Holyrood, Edinburgh.
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