Last week I declined an invitation to go on Radio 4’s Today programme. I had good reasons for doing this, as I hope I’ll be able to convince you, but I still felt that I was letting the side down by not seizing the opportunity. Given the low proportion of women who are heard on the programme there was a part of me that thought, whatever the story, whatever my reasons for declining, I should have gritted my teeth and got on with it. I didn’t. And teeth are part of the reason. Gritting them was the last thing I wanted to do as I was living on painkillers due to toothache and had an early morning dentist’s appointment booked for the very morning they wanted me to participate. In principle, if timings had been as they said, it would have been viable if complicated for me to do both. I could have got the broadcast over on one side of Cambridge and nipped across (in the rush hour?\u00a0 Nipping anywhere in Cambridge is pretty optimistic) to the other to get my tooth sorted. In my experience, the BBC’s timings often don’t turn out as they say. No way was I going to miss my appointment and with it the beginning of the end of my toothache. So I declined.<\/p>\n
However, there was another reason for saying no – and it’s hard to know which had greater weight with me: I wasn’t particularly keen on the story I was being asked to speak to. The news had broken that the Bank of England had Jane Austen ‘in reserve’ to put on one of the new banknotes; they wanted to run a story about the importance of recognizing women more generally. That’s fine in principle but I have to admit I cannot get particularly worked up about the ‘women on banknotes’ campaign. That’s not to say I wouldn’t be delighted to see Jane Austen or some other remarkable woman or women appearing on the notes. I am a great Austen fan and have to ration how often I read her novels so that custom does not stale her infinite variety or, at least (in my case) their ability to cheer. Her novels are definite comfort- reading for me.<\/p>\n
The problem for me is that I feel there are many more important battles to win, more female role models to celebrate and promote in many different situations. I don’t believe a young girl will ever aspire to be the face that appears on a banknote, whereas we should want them to aspire to be actual professionals – engineers, physicists, FTSE100 Directors or surgeons, whatever takes their fancy (with the possible exception of aspiring to be a WAG which, realistically, I fear many do). These strike me as more important situations in which it is imperative the imagery reflects those, still disappointingly few, who have risen through the ranks. The campaign for a female Doctor Who<\/a> strikes me as a better battle to fight too. A young girl who aspires to be a female Time Lord (I’m sorry, I baulk at the idea of a Time Lady; it doesn’t convey at all the same sense of mastery, sounding too like a tea lady) is aspiring to power and knowledge. Good things to aim at, much more so than passively sitting on a banknote.<\/p>\n For my generation of young viewers, the women who first appeared on Doctor Who seemed merely to be required to scream, get in the way and look helpless, usually (if memory serves me right) in a white plastic miniskirt. There was, as I recall, always a second side-kick who was male and somewhat more helpful to the Doctor, although ultimately their role was often to rescue that nuisance of a girl. In 50 years some progress has been made, but having a woman take over from Matt Smith<\/a> would complete the progression. So that battle, albeit still a symbolic totem rather than an actual flesh and blood role model, has more support from me.<\/p>\n The second problem for me regarding the banknote issue is that it is clear that over the centuries there are far more famous and influential men for the Bank of England to choose from. I know that there are many women who did amazing things, often barely recognized let alone celebrated, over the centuries, but as household names they are few and far between. The reasons for the campaign are obvious but requiring there to be a woman on one of the banknotes is a form of quota, which I remain ambivalent about. Fighting the battle today for boardroom positions, or getting more women to senior positions in academia or in the High Court is a battle higher up my mental list of priorities. I feel it is more important to tackle changing behaviour at work and changing societal expectations right from birth, than worrying about a face on a banknote. After all, I couldn’t reliably name those who are currently on the notes I frequently handle (which means, not the \u00a350 note!). \u00a0I do know that Elizabeth Fry is on one of them but not which one without checking. I wonder how many people know who’s on which currently.<\/p>\n Now the BBC reporter who contacted me said they wanted to broaden the discussion out from the specifics to the more general, but it would still have necessarily started with a position with which I am not particularly in sympathy. That is not a good point from which to kick off an interview. So I declined. I don’t know if they did indeed cover a broader range of situations than simply the banknotes. Indeed I don’t know if they ran the story at all: after all, I was on my way to the dentist’s\u2026..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week I declined an invitation to go on Radio 4’s Today programme. I had good reasons for doing this, as I hope I’ll be able to convince you, but I still felt that I was letting the side down … Continue reading