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A minute of inspiration on International Women’s Day

2018-03-08T12:35:00+00:00

Four inspiring women from across the BBC have taken part in 60-second quickfire video interviews for International Women’s Day - discussing their own inspirations and tips for the next generation wanting to follow in their footsteps.

The videos feature television presenter and journalist, Stacey Dooley, BBC Radio 1 DJ and presenter, Clara Amfo, a producer on Blue Planet II, Orla Doherty, and Newsbeat Editor, Debbie Ramsay.

In each one minute clip, the women also discuss their career highlights to date, their most challenging moments and their most valuable advice on how to succeed in their line of work.

Known for her intrepid and tenacious reporting style, television presenter and journalist, Stacey Dooley, has become a household name with a string of gritty and hard-hitting BBC Three documentaries under her belt. In her interview, Stacey reveals the scariest moment of her career so far, the biggest influence in her life and gives her professional advice to aspiring reporters: “Pick projects that you’re passionate about, and don’t feel like you’ve got to conform or behave a certain way.”

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BBC Radio 1 DJ and presenter Clara Amfo has had a glittering career in the music industry. With a voice that can be recognised across the nation, Clara has a regular presenting slot on the Radio 1 weekday schedule, she has interviewed the biggest names in the music industry, and presented from some of the most prestigious music festivals and awards ceremonies. Watch the clip to discover Clara’s scariest interview, the DJ who inspires her the most, and, most importantly, her top advice for aspiring music presenters and DJs: “Keep creating your own content, don’t wait for the door to knock.”

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Fearless, adventurous, and with a lifetime pursuit to unearth and explore the undiscovered secrets of the ocean, Orla Doherty is one of the producers behind the breath-taking Blue Planet II on BBC One. In her interview, Orla shares what inspires her, the best and worst thing about travelling in a submarine, and gives her advice to aspiring film and nature enthusiasts - including why all you need is a smartphone to hone in on your skills.

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One of the BBC’s most experienced multi-platform editors, Debbie Ramsay is currently the editor of BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra’s Newsbeat. In her one minute clip, Debbie gives an insight into her job, reveals who inspires her, and offers her top three tips to aspiring editors who have a drive to succeed in the media industry.

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And if you are in search of further inspiration look no further than the BBC:

BBC Somali: For the first time, BBC Somali hosts an all-female discussion and tells the stories of women across the region as part of a week of special content to coincide with International Women’s day. Running from the 3-8 March 2018, special content can be heard and seen on BBC Somali TV, Radio and BBCSomali.com.
BBC Radio 6 Music: On BBC Radio 6 Music, in her show this Friday night (midnight-2am), Nemone interviews with The Black Madonna - DJ Marea Stamper - who picks her five favourite tracks by female artists. Singer-songwriter and composer Mary Epworth will be the guest Resident sound-tracking the show. Plus, all the music played during the whole show will be tracks by female artists including: Sounds of Blackness – the pressure (Frankie Knuckles mix), The Black Madonna – He is the Voice I Hear; Robyn – Indestructable (the Black Madonna remix) and Loleata Holloway – We’re Getting Stronger.
More on BBC Radio 6 Music: From Time’s Up to "Step Up?!” - An International Women’s Day Investigation. In recent months the conversation about inequality in the music business has been louder than ever. To mark International Women’s Day, 6 Music’s Georgie Rogers takes a look at representation of females in music: Shirley Manson, Wolf Alice, Royal Blood, Jessie Ware, music writer Jessica Hopper (Pitchfork, Spin, Guardian) and many more chat about the changes afoot in the music business.
Even more of BBC Radio 6 Music: This weekend, 6 Music is celebrating three of Mary Anne’s favourite new female artists as part of a post-International Women’s Day show. There's profiles of Anna Von Hausswolff, Flohio and Aldous Harding, and also a look at an exhibition in Manchester, ‘Suffragette City’, which champions the continued role of influential females in making Manchester world-renowned for melody.

BBC Radio 5 Live: Three young women with cancer are launching a brand new podcast with BBC Radio 5 live. You, Me and The Big C explores life with cancer through the eyes of three friends who are too busy living to worry about dying. Presenters, Rachael Bland, Deborah James and Lauren Mahon are the powerhouses behind the pod, talking about how they all juggle jobs, parenting, and busy social lives with The Big C. You, Me and The Big C is available to download for free via the BBC Radio 5 live website or your usual podcast store.
Technology and Creativity blog: Meanwhile, over on the Technology and Creativity blog Angela Stevenson, Senior Technologist, BBC Design & Engineering describes some of the inspirations for her career choices to mark International Women's Day in Inspiring the next generation.
BBC Radio 4 Extra: R4 Extra presenters introduce the voices of inspirational women from the BBC archives in International Women's Day: Voices of Inspirational Women.

Mary Adams and other BBC female pioneers who inspired my love for Natural History

2017-03-08T12:59:21+00:00

If you ask someone to describe what a wildlife filmmaker looks like, I suspect they’d paint a portrait of a man with a beard and a big camera wearing camouflage gear. But I’m a wildlife filmmaker - I’m a petite, 38-year old woman, and there are plenty of others like me.

I’ve worked as a wildlife filmmaker for the BBC Natural History Unit for the last 13 years, most recently producing and directing a film about Islands that opened the recent David Attenborough series Planet Earth II. In the three and a half years of making the episode, I camped in the world’s largest penguin colony, watched racer snakes hunting down baby marine iguanas on a remote beach in Galapagos and got eaten alive by mosquitos in the Seychelles (it was not an island paradise experience).

Inhabitants of Zavodovksi Island, the world's largest penguin colony

When it broadcast in November last year, Planet Earth II - Islands became the most-watched wildlife show for more than 15 years, attracting more than 12 million viewers, and was the most requested programme on iPlayer for the whole of 2016. Something many people commented on, was how “nice” it was that it was produced/directed by a woman.

I guess it’s easy to assume that natural history filmmaking is a very male-dominated world. Sir David Attenborough is the face of natural history broadcasting in Britain, and we get very used to seeing male cameramen struggling in filming hides as part of ‘making-of’ segments. But the story behind the scenes is a very different one, for wildlife filmmaking – and indeed documentary filmmaking in general – is an environment that is rich in women and has been for many years.

The first female television producer at the BBC was Mary Adams who joined the corporation in 1936. She was a 30-year old former research scientist, married (at a time when most professions barred married women from work) and she had a rich and successful career as a documentary producer and commissioner in the field of science. It was Mary Adams who spotted a young David Attenborough in 1952, and later commissioned Zoo Quest, a series he proposed in conjunction with London Zoo, which first brought Attenborough to the television screens.

Mary Adams

In my 13 years at the BBC, there have been many highly talented female wildlife film producers to draw inspiration from, including Martha Holmes (The Blue Planet) and Vanessa Berlowitz (Frozen Planet, Planet Earth). Many among the commissioning team and controllers for science and natural history have been female – indeed the current head of BBC content is a woman, Charlotte Moore.

Granted, the presence of women on-screen in science and natural history seems somewhat less common than seeing male presenters but when they do appear, they can be hugely inspirational. Watching Martha Holmes don a bubble helmet for the series Sea Trek in the early 1990s was a major factor in me wanting to learn to scuba dive and ultimately do a PhD in fish biology.

On Planet Earth II, more than half the production team were female, including all the production co-ordinators and many of the researchers and directors on location. For our penguin filming on Zavodovksi Island (the most remote and ‘committed’ shoot of the series) it was a woman who advised on field/camp safety, and one of the three boat captains that sailed us 8 days through the volatile Southern Ocean, was a female. This is something that would have been incomprehensible 40 years ago, as women were actively discouraged from working in Antarctica - women didn’t over-winter on British science bases until the 1990s.

There are still areas where women are very under-represented in documentary filmmaking. For example, you see relatively few female wildlife camera operators in broadcasting, and there is no doubt in my mind women often have to work harder to ‘prove themselves’ in the field, compared with men. But women can be excellent team leaders, and highly creative storytellers. I’m hopeful that, one day, the stereotype of ‘producer/director’ may just as easily be female.

Elizabeth White is producer/director of 'Planet Earth II: Islands'.

100 Women - Immersed in Maria's story

2016-12-09T18:45:00+00:00

As part of the BBC's 100 Women season a new virtual reality programme, Trafficked has been developed by Owain Rich and Charlie Newland. It uses testimony from Maria, a single mother trafficked from Nicaragua to Mexico. She spoke to journalist Lourdes Heredia and that interview formed the basis of Trafficked.

Hannah Khalil donned the headset to experience Trafficked and shares her thoughts.

I felt a tinge of nerves as the headpiece was tightened around my eyes shutting out the light, and the headphones placed over my ears blocking out the sound: I’d never done VR before. And I’m a bit claustrophobic – was I going to have to stop before the end?

I was about to watch – is that the right term for VR? Be immersed in? – the world of Maria, a young woman who has been trafficked from Nicaragua to Mexico. To be clear we – me – the headset wearer isn’t watching, we ARE Maria: spoken to, looked at, in her body. We hear her voice too narrating bits of her story from time to time. But to everyone else in the virtual world I was Maria.

This made the whole thing completely engrossing – no danger of claustrophobia for me, I was too busy looking around at this world, this sad life. But it was also at times frustrating, because despite being Maria and being talked to and looked at, I couldn’t respond to those around me.

As a woman you are trained to be alert and careful. So this – Maria’s story, a story that we learn at the end if horrifyingly common in Mexico, really tapped into my own primal fears – for myself and the people I love.

It’s an unnerving and transporting eight minutes, quite unlike anything else I’ve experienced before. I know VR is often used for computer games, but in this context as an educational, informative drama tool it offers so much. A cousin to theatre, film and radio drama, the difference is that VR is truly immersive in a way those relatives are not. It’s not possible for your audience member to opt out or switch off or look at Twitter. It demands your full attention. And I wonder if that key difference will give VR an important role to play in the future drama as well as in the world of gaming.

Watch a non-VR, 360 video version of the story Trafficked on YouTube (please note: scenes of threatened and actual violence mean this is only suitable for people over 18)
Read Experiencing BBC World Service's Virtual Reality 'Trafficked'
Find out more about 100 Women

Mary Adams, first woman television producer at the BBC

2016-11-02T10:00:00+00:00

As BBC History launches an archive to mark 80 years of Television, Dr Kate Murphy blogs about the BBC's first female producer, Mary Adams.

I don’t know whether you have seen the television screen or whether its problems interest you, but I should very much like you to come up to Alexandra Palace and discuss with us the possibilities of this new medium”, so wrote Mary Adams to John Betjamen in May 1937. The BBC television service was then six months old, and Adams had been a television producer since January that year. In every way this was unprecedented. Not only was she a woman, but she was nearing 40 and married with a young baby. She also earned far more than most of the thrusting young male producers she worked alongside. So how had this unlikely situation arisen?

Mary Adams had first come to the attention of the BBC 10 years earlier, in 1927, when she gave a radio talk on ‘Heredity’. The fledgling BBC was always on the lookout for potential speakers for its Talks programmes and Adams’ expertise and experience suggested she would be a good choice. She was a biologist by training who, after four years of post-graduate research at Cambridge, had become an adult education tutor. Her broadcast was deemed such a success that she was invited back to the BBC the following year; her six-part series ‘The Problems of Heredity’ provoking much correspondence and debate. Two years later, in 1930, the now 32-year-old Adams applied for a full-time post with the BBC as an Adult Education Officer for the Home Counties.

Her appointment reflected the modernity of the Corporation. Not only was it unusual to recruit older women, 30 was then considered middle-aged, but she was married; her husband of five years was the maverick Conservative MP Vyvyan Adams. At a time when many professions, such as teaching, banking and the Civil Service, enforced marriage bars, the BBC openly employed married women. In fact, one of its most senior women, Mary Somerville, who headed the School Broadcasting department was not only married but, in 1930, had a year-old son. The BBC also ostensibly offered equal pay and Adams negotiated a generous salary. The usual starting pay for salaried staff at the BBC was £260 a year, accepted as the basic rate for a middle-class lifestyle. Adams agreed £650 (she had asked for £800), reflecting both her status and her verve. By 1939, she would earn £900 a year.

Back in 1930, it had quickly become apparent that Adams was not cut out to be an Adult Education Officer. The job was heavily dependent on organisational skills whereas Mary Adams’ strength was her creativity. She was an ideas person, with an impressive contacts book, so was far better suited to a production role. Her manager, Charles Siepmann, was quick to realise this, and Adams was soon making programmes, mostly science programmes, in the form of talks. This was in the days before recording, when all spoken-word output on the BBC was live talks, a format championed and perfected by the brilliant Hilda Matheson, the BBC’s first Talks Director from January 1927 until early 1932. Much of Matheson’s success lay in her ability to entice the great and the good to broadcast. Adams was similarly adept, drawing on her a wide network of friends and acquaintances, from Beatrice Webb and John Hilton to Norman Angell and Margery Fry.

From the start Mary Adams had made the BBC jittery. Her husband might be a Tory MP, but she was very left wing in her views. Her annual reports hint that she was also impulsive and difficult to control, with a tendency to act without reference to her seniors. As Siepmann noted in 1932, “her enthusiasm is apt to outrun her discretion”. At a time when the Corporation was coming under increasing scrutiny for being ‘Red’, this was not a good combination. Indeed, in March 1934 she took much of the blame for the notorious ‘Ferrie Incident’ when William Ferrie, a representative of the National Union of Vehicle Builders, claimed live on air that his script for the series ‘The National Character’ had been censored and abruptly walked out of the studio, to leave silence. It may be no coincidence that at this point in her BBC career Adams, who had produced the talk, agreed to a part-time post although it is also certain that her health was poor, she was due for an operation and was undoubtedly over-worked. But after almost two years of working virtually full-time for half-time pay, she became convinced that her continuing part-time status was because she was held to be “a wild, unruly, Bolshevik sort of person”. In April 1936, having finally persuaded her BBC bosses otherwise, and just at the point that it was agreed she could return full-time, there was another twist; she announced that she was pregnant.

There is a remarkable letter amongst Mary Adams’ papers, written to Sir John Reith, the Director General of the BBC, on 28 September 1936. Thanking him for the flowers and lovely welcome they gave to her daughter Sally (born four weeks earlier), she enthused about motherhood and the new sense of ardour and responsibility it had given her. It was for this reason, she informed him, that she wished to apply for the position of Director of Talks that has just been advertised. Although, in his response, Reith raised the question about whether Adam’s was “wise or right” in her wish to lead the “double life”, he agreed to her application going forward. There was never any likelihood of Adams getting such a lofty promotion, her gender, the fact of her young child and her political views would have militated against her. But the appointment of the right-wing Sir Richard Maconachie was possibly the reason why, in January 1937, Mary Adams returned to work not in the Talks Department for Radio, but to a new position, overseeing Talks for Television.

On 2 November 1936, when the BBC began transmitting its television service from Alexandra Palace in North London, staff numbers would have been around 100, about half of whom were women. Most were employed in low-paid secretarial and clerical positions, but that didn’t necessarily mean that their work wasn’t highly calibre. Joan Gilbert, for instance, a clerk who worked on ‘Picture Page’, included amongst her duties researching guests, writing scripts, sub-editing, and working as a talent scout for the programme. The Television Make-up and Wardrobe team was headed by Mary Allan, one of whose key roles was to ensure that Jasmine Bligh and Elizabeth Cowell, the two female announcers, always looked their best under the harsh studio conditions. It’s not clear how often Mary Adams appeared on camera. Although Radio Times lists her as responsible for the ‘presentation’ of more than 50 programmes in the years before television closed down in September 1939 for the duration of the Second World War, it is likely that it was her voice, rather than her face, that introduced her various contributors.

The range of Mary Adams output is astonishing. As a producer of radio talks, Adams’ focus had predominantly been social affairs or science. In television, she learnt quickly that television talks worked best with a visual element. Her first programmes differed little from her radio work: the intellectual giant Professor Walter Gropius in discussion with Maxwell Fry about ‘Architecture Today’ or the MP Robert Hudson, from the Ministry of Health, in conversation with John Hilton about ‘Food and Health’. But soon fresh ideas were apparent. A talk on ‘Heraldry of Yesterday and Today’ included demonstrations.

‘London Galleries: Young Artists and their Work’ saw John Piper in the studio with young art students, showing their work. ‘The World of Women: Illustrating Verse’ paired the spoken-out-loud writings of Olga Katzin with the illustrations of the artist Pearl Binder. Adams also acquired some TV regulars producing, for instance, the zoologist David Seth-Smith’s ‘Friends from the Zoo’; the gardening expert CH Middleton’s ‘In Your Garden’ and the chef Marcel Boulestin’s ‘Cook’s Night Out’.

Her approach to John Betjeman in May 1937 is typical of her dynamism. Betjeman was becoming well-known as the creator of the Shell Guides to Britain. Once his interest in appearing on television was substantiated she suggested a talk that included maps and photographs as well as objects - physical props that would bring the programme to life. When ‘How to Write a Guide Book’, was transmitted ‘live’ on 21 September 1937, Betjeman arrived at the studio with a hotchpotch of items including a milking stool, a weathercock, wild flowers and a piece of Cotswold stone. The portrait painter Edward Halliday was similarly impressed by Adam’s production values. They worked together on the short series ‘Masterpieces on your Walls’, broadcast in September 1938. This was about the easy availability of good quality reproductions for the home and provided an excuse to interject popular works of art by the likes of Paul Nash, Laura Knight and Eric Ravilious as well as Picasso, Van Gogh and Cezanne, into Halliday’s lively commentary.

Pearl Binder would become an Adams regular. Following her appearance on ‘The World of Women’, the two friends worked together on a number of programmes, with Binder contributing the ‘live’ illustrations. The six-part series’ Clothes-Line’, broadcast from October 1937, as well as using Binder’s drawings, utilised the versed commentary of James Laver of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the historic costume collection of Cecil Willett Cunnington and live mannequins to tell the story of fashion through the ages. Binder was heavily pregnant during the series, her daughter Josephine born within weeks of the final show. ‘Looking for a House’, in May 1939, was Binder’s illustrated take on the trials and tribulations of house-hunting while ‘Rough Island Stories’ broadcast from June 1939, was a history of the British Isles told through maps, pictures (provided by Binder) and film, presented by Harold Nicolson and James Horrabin. Adams developed a raft of other extravaganzas including ‘Guest Night’, which brought together an array of well-known contributors for topical chat; ‘Columnists and their Victims’ a sort of news quiz and ‘Salute to America’, which profiled the contemporary US scene in speech and images.

These programmes would be Adams’ final pre-Second World War offerings. With television suspended for the duration of hostilities she was transferred, in December 1939, to the Ministry of Information as Director of Home Intelligence, a post she would hold for two years. Returning to the BBC in 1941, she worked for the North American service, producing programmes such as ‘Answering You’ and ‘Transatlantic Quiz’. When the television service reopened in 1946, Adams returned in a Senior Producer role. One of the areas she pioneered was programming for children. In 1937, she had developed ‘For the Children’, the first such show. In 1946, it was reintroduced, this time fronted by Annette Wells with her accomplice, Muffin the Mule. Adams was also intrinsic to the development of television programmes for women. Following the success of Woman’s Hour, introduced onto the Light Service in October 1946, it was seen as judicious to do the same for the small screen. ‘Designed for Women’, first broadcast in October 1947, was intended to be a “magazine programme of special interest to women”. It would lead to a dedicated strand of women’s programming that endured until 1964.

Mary Adams versatility and creativity is evident in the vast array of output she continued to oversee. In 1952 she spotted the potential of a young David Attenborough and ‘Zoo Quest’; she introduced the science quiz ‘Animal Vegetable Mineral?’ and initiated the first highly controversial medical series ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ and ‘Your Life in their Hands’. She also nurtured the talents of another soon-to-be doyenne of television, Grace Wyndham Goldie. Mary Adams’ abilities did not go unrewarded. In 1948 she had been promoted to Head of Television Talks, and in 1952, gained autonomy from Mary Somerville, then Talks Controller, whose empire had encompassed both radio and TV. The following year, Adams was again promoted, this time to be Assistant to the Controller of TV, working to Cecil McGivern. On her retirement in 1958, the now 60-year-old Mary Adams was feted by McGivern, his valediction, published in the staff journal Ariel, neatly summarising her achievements.

Mary Adams, one of its pioneers, is very jealous of the reputation of the BBC Television Service and her standards are extraordinarily high. She flayed lapses of taste, refused to allow television to become simply escapist, and her ideas were vivid, bold and far-sighted. And while Mrs Adams could be brilliant she was at the same time completely determined to achieve her purpose. She has frequently left technical staff and programme staff exhausted, exasperated, but after the event, admiring. I regard Mrs Adams as one of the few real architects of the television service and it owes a great deal to her… Her breadth of mind, her vision, her ideas have been a constant education. Her range of friends, acquaintances and contacts in the intelligent world is also extraordinarily large and is itself a tribute to her great ability”.

Read also The 80th Anniversary of BBC TV
Discover more clips documenting The Birth Of TV on the BBC History website

Seventy years of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour

2016-10-07T09:00:00+00:00

Olive Shapley interviews Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt for Woman's Hour, 1951

Seventy years ago today a great British institution was established. At 2pm on 7 October 1946 the first edition of Woman’s Hour graced the airwaves on the BBC’s Light Programme, 2pm being the hour it was deemed women would have finished the majority of their housework, and therefore have a moment for a cuppa before the kids got home.

The originally-billed programme "that offers a female perspective on the world” was originally presented by a man - Alan Ivimey - listed in the Radio Times as a specialist "in writing for and talking to women."

Early segments like "how to hang your husband’s suit" didn't go down well with listeners who found the programme at times patronising. But, the programme still addressed serious issues. When the word “vagina” was used in the programme's first year in a talk about women’s health there was an outcry from the public. Birth canal was the favoured term for a number of years afterwards.

The programme became part of the Radio 4 schedule in 1973. Following Ivimey’s tenure as presented, the programme has been fronted by women including Violet Carson, Olive Sharpley, Jean Metcalfe and Marjorie Anderson. In 1990 the time slot was changed to its current morning slot (10-11am on weekdays) and the drama serial feature was added.

Sue MacGregor interviews Margaret Thatcher for Woman's Hour, 1985

The 'magazine' format of Woman's Hour has, right from the outset, featured cooking segments. Currently titled “Cook the Perfect…” chefs including Gordon Ramsay, Angela Hartnett and Rick Stein have featured. Political guests have also been a staple part of the line-up including Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Astor, Vera Brittain, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Cherie Blair, Tony Blair, Michael Howard, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

Martha Kearney interviews Hilary Clinton for Woman's Hour, 2003

The Woman’s Hour Power List which started in 2013 as a list of the 100 most powerful women in the UK - has since evolved into a list of Game Changers in 2014 and Influencers in 2015.

The show’s current presenters are Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey. Today the programme has six shows a week, Monday to Friday from 10-11am and Saturdays from 5-5pm, and attracts 3.7m listeners weekly. And it's not just men listening either. Many of the subjects featured on the programme have universal appeal. Currently, the gender split of listeners is 40/60 male/female. What’s more, 25% under the age of 35, which is higher than average for Radio 4.

The Woman's Hour podcast has 1m downloads per month making it the second most popular daily podcast across all BBC radio after The Archers.

We spoke to presenter Jenni Murray for a blog Radio, Power and Woman's Hour last year. In it she revealed what keeps her excited about the show – which she has been presenting for 29 years:

"I grew up with Woman’s Hour. My mother used to have very strict feeding routines for me, and they coincided with Woman’s Hour. So we would listen to it together. If there were any parts that included a health warning she’d send me into the kitchen – to put on the kettle or get something. So it’s always been a part of my life.

"My first time in the studio presenting it was incredible because I’d heard over the years 'Woman’s Hour presented by Sue MacGregor'. So the first time they said 'Woman’s Hour presented by Jenni Murray' I got very excited. And people will think I’m silly but I still get that same excited feeling every time I hear those words. It’s a wonderful job, I’ve always loved broadcasting, I’ve presented some TV programmes and written books, but I feel most at home in a radio studio so I feel very, very lucky.”

Find out more about Woman’s Hour
Read Jenni Murray’s blog Radio, Power and Womans Hour
Listen to an early Woman’s Hour broadcast

Radio 3’s International Women’s Day - Celebrating Women composers

2016-03-04T10:52:22+00:00

Composer Clara Schumann once said “a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?”

This year, Radio 3’s International Women’s Day focus on women in music on 8 March looks at inspiring women of the past and present, and forward to the next generation of women composers, conductors and performers. Until we see gender parity at all levels within the world of classical music, we should take every opportunity to inspire women with the conviction that they can achieve anything they set their minds to. International Women’s Day provides us with an opportunity to do that.

I’ve always wondered what heights Clara Schumann might have scaled had she had the opportunities afforded to her male counterparts. Barbara Strozzi was one of the most important composers of Italian cantatas in the 17th century, and published over 100 vocal works during her lifetime – no mean feat considering the limited opportunities available to women in her day. By exploring her life in Composer of the Week I hope you will all enjoy discovering one of my favourite pieces of music, her cantata Che si può fare. It’s a complaint against the pitiless stars that carry us, inevitably, as the bass repeats, to an imaginary hell - but what a beautiful descent! I find it utterly mesmerising with its descending ground bass.

I am also looking forward to the Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert which comes live from the Royal College of Music’s Women in Music Festival. RCM alumni The Albany Trio, who are committed to bringing new audiences to works by female composers, play pieces by Rebecca Clarke, Judith Weir, and the world premiere of a work they’ve commissioned from Judith Bingham specifically for International Women’s Day, The Orchid and its Hunters.

Part of the challenge of bringing this music to a wider audience is that a lot of it hasn’t been recorded. The BBC's performing groups are all committed to changing that. For International Women’s Day the BBC National Orchestra of Wales has recorded a programme of music by contemporary Welsh composers for Afternoon on 3 showcasing some of the finest orchestral music in recent years, from the heroine’s anguish in Rhian Samuel’s Clytemnestra, based on the Greek Tragedy Agamemnon, to Hilary Tann’s ‘deepest respect’ to the victims of Tiananmen Square in The Open Field, along with broadcast premieres of three new pieces by Welsh composers.

Live in Radio 3 in Concert, the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jessica Cottis and BBC Singers conducted by Grace Rossiter perform several works inspired by natural phenomena. Thea Musgrave's virtuosic Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra, Helios, depicts the circular movements around the world of the ancient Greek sun god, and the BBC Singers and Symphony Orchestra join forces in Judith Weir's delicate piece for orchestra and chorus Moon and Star – an evocation of the vastness of space, with words by 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson.

The BBC Proms Inspire scheme for young composers has spotted the talents of Tansy Davies and Alissa Firsova to name but two, and is an excellent way for young composers to get themselves heard. But there are still more applications from boys than girls, with a worrying drop off from young women in the senior category (17-18 year olds). Do girls think composition isn't for them? A day like this is a way to shout from the rooftops that music is for everyone, and until young women feel empowered to put themselves forward we’re a very long way from parity. The Inspire team have set up a series of workshops for young women composers aged 12-20, led by composer Anna Meredith, musician Jack Ross and percussionist Beth Higham-Edwards, which will culminate in a performance of a piece they’ve created on In Tune – which comes direct from the Royal Festival Hall on the opening day of Southbank Centre’s Women of the World Festival, with Suzy Klein hosting live music from soprano Ruby Hughes and folk star Eliza Carthy.

Suzy will also be joined by Gillian Moore, Southbank Centre's head of classical music, and Jessy McCabe, the teenage student who successfully campaigned for one of Britain's biggest exam boards to include female composers on the A-level music syllabus. Jessy told me that Radio 3’s IWD focus last year gave her the ammunition and confidence: “not to take no for an answer when Edexcel originally replied” claiming that “Given that female composers were not prominent in the Western classical tradition (or others for that matter), there would be very few female composers that could be included.”

Performance poet Hollie McNish has written a book and a series of poems about motherhood. Composer Emily Hall has been commissioned to write a childrens' opera for Hull 2017. Scientist Helen Pearson is an expert on the longest running study of human development. Edwina Attlee is a writer with an interest in launderettes, sleeper trains, fire escapes, greasy spoons, postcards, and the working lives of women. She'll be sharing audio tales from the National Life Stories Archive at the British Library, where women talk about working lives spent on oil rigs, in steel plants, and a host of other places. Ailsa Grant Ferguson has studied Dorothy Leigh's Mother's Blessing, which was the bestselling book by a woman of the 17th century. They join Anne McElvoy on Free Thinking to look at the ways in which every day experiences in the lives of women feed into creativity.

All week The Essay features women telling their own inspirational stories including mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and conductor Alice Farnham. When the composer Nicola LeFanu was growing up it simply didn't occur to her that composition was an unusual thing for a woman to do; it seemed completely natural, surrounded as she was by women who wrote music: her mother, the composer Elizabeth Maconchy, and Maconchy’s friends including Welsh composer Grace Williams and Irish composer Ina Boyle. It was only when Nicola went on to study music herself that she realised how few women had been included in the books which told the history of Western Classical music. Her music and teaching have inspired many young women composers, but she laments the fact that opportunities which might have been available in the Sixties weren’t there in the Eighties. Each generation seems to face different challenges in the pursuit of equality.

If we give it the platform, the music speaks for itself.

Olwen Fisher is a Producer for Radio 3

International Women's Day is on 8 March find out more about Celebrating Women Composers

BBC Women in Technology

2015-09-25T06:00:00+00:00

Today (Friday 25 September) the BBC is hosting a Women in Technology event at Broadcasting House in London. Ahead of the event, we asked a handful of female BBC employees a few questions about their experience of working in the technology sector: What attracted them to the work? How they came to work in technology? What they love most about it? And what advice would they give to young people now who want to work in tech? Here are their responses:

Julia Whitney,
Executive Creative Director, BBC Engineering and General Manager UX&D, BBC Digital

I’ve always liked making things, and I loved that with digital you could make things that responded to you. I did a Graphic Design masters degree in the early 90’s and one of my tutors hired me to practice interaction design at a TV production company that was starting to do educational interactive compact discs and websites.

I enjoy seeing how this industry keeps evolving and expanding. There’s simply no end to the opportunities.

My advice would be, just dig in and start making stuff.

Lucie Benjamin,
Senior Technical Project Manager, BBC Digital

When I started in web development it was really starting to change from static websites to dynamic websites and I found this a really exciting time and could see the potential for a long term career. Technology is always changing and the options available for jobs are always expanding.

When I left school I worked for a company offering technical support for service engineers out in the field. I was exposed to some basic programming and found I had a knack for it. My plan was always to go to university but due to my tech esperience, I changed my mind about which course and decided on a computer science degree. There were so few women on my course, around 10% at that time, that we were really encouraged to do well. When I finished my degree I started working for a company that was essentially a start-up where we really embraced agile practices before it became main stream.

Technology changes all the time – keeping abreast of latest developments means you are always learning and challenging yourself. My advice would be, focus on what inspires/interests you – technology is and can be used in so many walks of life, that’s what makes it so exciting.

Lucie McLean,
Head of Product, Children’s Digital

I’ve always been interested in technology and writing. I got my first computer when I was seven (a ZX81) and wanted to be a journalist from a young age. However after ten years in journalism I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enabling me to fully explore my interest in the internet and how digital products got made. I wanted to get under the bonnet and get involved in making them.

I was a journalist at the BBC News website for several years and because of my domain knowledge of the website and how it was published, I was offered an attachment as a mobile product manager. Nine years later I’m now the Head of Product for Children's. The BBC’s product managers come from a wide range of backgrounds - including journalism, engineering and design - and that helps us bring a wide range of skills and knowledge to our product development.

I love being able to make things that people enjoy and use in their everyday lives. Whenever I see someone on a train or tram using an app that our teams developed, it always makes me smile. I also love how the rate of change in digital technology is always creating new opportunities for us to explore new kinds of content and experiences. It never stops changing and it never gets boring.

The key to a successful career in technology is being open to and excited by change. You never stop learning - and you need to be comfortable with that. Whether you love music, gaming or sport and are good at solving problems or talking to people, I’d also recommend looking for a role that helps you combine your passions with what you’re good at. That’ll help you find a job you'll thrive in on a project or product you’ll be able to make a valuable contribution to.

Rosie Campbell,
Technologist, R&D North Lab & North UX Research Group

I like solving puzzles, and there is no shortage of them in the tech industry. It seemed like a place where I could combine my technical skills with creative problem-solving in a very practical way, and contribute to creating the apps and services that I loved using.

During my BSc in Physics, I started learning web development, fell in love with coding and decided to do an MSc in Computer Science. I started looking for web development jobs at the BBC because I was a fan of BBC iPlayer. That’s where I stumbled on the advert for the Trainee Research Technologist scheme at BBC Research & Development, which seemed the perfect mix of technical problem solving and creative thinking. I was lucky enough to be accepted and the rest is history.

Some people lose themselves in art or music, I lose myself in code. A whole day can fly by and I won’t have noticed because I’m ‘in the zone’. I also appreciate the variety - I get to work on lots of completely different projects with all kinds of people. Something that I enjoy specifically about working in BBC R&D is that we are imagining and creating the technology of the future, which at times feels very sci-fi.

Tech moves so fast that it can sometimes feel overwhelming; there is always something new to learn. But remember you’re not alone - most of us (especially women) suffer from imposter syndrome. The tech industry can be very challenging, but that’s also what makes it fun and exciting. Something that has really helped me is following relevant, knowledgeable people on social media who I can learn from.

Sally Morales,
Senior Technical Project Manager - BBC News Visual Journalism

I started with technology back in 1987 with desktop publishing on an Apple Mac. I worked in print design for the next ten years, by which time the internet had appeared. I moved from constructing page layouts for print into coding web pages. I was doing intranet websites during the day and unpaid, private work during my own time to build up a portfolio of websites I had designed and built myself.

There are so many different and complex technologies that all need to work together and really smart people making that happen. I love the cleverness of it all and that it is constantly changing. And that it is all immensely creative. I love code and how it looks like nothing much but can produce the most amazing things when rendered in the browser.

My advice would be to find an aspect of tech that interests you and spend whatever time you need to learn how to do it well. If you are passionate about it, don't expect it to be a 9 to 5 interest. The best techies I know will have spent many a late night working at it.

Keep up to date with highlights from the BBC Women in Technology event on twitter #bbcwit
Visit iWonder's 'Why are there so few women in computing?' page

Women in the early BBC

2015-09-18T08:00:15+00:00

Dr Kate Murphy, former Radio 4 producer and author of 'Behind the Wireless: And Early History of Women at the BBC', spoke at a special ‘Women in Radio’ celebration event yesterday remembering the life of former Woman's Hour editor Sandy Chalmers.

In this post Kate picks out some of the women who have inspired her, giving an insight into an organisation that was remarkably progressive in its attitudes towards women.

Mary Somerville

In 1924, Mary Somerville, an Oxford University student, heard by chance the first BBC broadcast to schools. She was inspired and wrote to John Reith (then Managing Director of the BBC) who arranged to meet her. He was highly impressed, noting in his diary that he had been visited by a ‘very clever and self-confident young lady’.

The following year, Mary Somerville arrived at the BBC. She initially worked as an assistant in the Education Department but within a few years she was Director of School Broadcasting, a position she held until 1947. The interwar years were notorious as a time when married women were discouraged from working outside the home and many organisations and professions enforced marriage bars. Mary Somerville was not only able to continue at the BBC after her marriage in 1927 but when, the following year, she announced she was pregnant, the BBC introduced maternity leave so that she could keep her job.

Hilda Matheson

Hilda Matheson was head-hunted by John Reith, who persuaded her to leave her job as political secretary to Nancy Astor, MP, to come to the BBC. She became the first Director of Talks in 1927, a very important job at a time when all spoken-word programmes were ‘live’- because recording techniques were so rudimentary.

An intellectual, with links to the Bloomsbury set, Hilda Matheson enticed the grandees of the day to the wireless, people like HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf. She was also passionate about enlightening women listeners and started programmes such as The Week in Westminster in 1929. This was originally aimed at women who had just gained the vote (the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 had finally extended the vote to all adult women) and all the speakers on the programme were initially female MPs.

Elise Sprott

Elise Sprott first came to the attention of the BBC in 1924 when she gave a talk on ‘Continental Fashions in Food’ on an early programme called Women’s Hour (not to be confused with today’s Woman’s Hour). She then joined the BBC as a Talks Assistant and worked with Hilda Matheson for several years, prompting the introduction of important daytime series for women listeners such as Household Talks and Morning Talks.

In 1931 she took on the new job of Women’s Press Representative which was all about getting BBC women into the newspapers and promoting the BBC to women’s groups. An avid motorist, she drove hundreds of miles each year to talk to women about the BBC.

Gweneth Freeman

Most women who worked for the BBC in the 1920s and 30s were in secretarial and clerical roles. At the BBC they were overseen by the Women’s Staff Administrator, from 1932 this was Miss Freeman.

Miss Freeman had a lot of power as, not only did she have responsibility for recruitment, but she also made decisions on starting pay, wage rises, promotions, and which office you were placed in. She also insisted on high levels of decorum. Hats and gloves, for example, were to be worn to work, and always stockings, even on very hot days.

The BBC Club

It was not all hard work at the BBC, there was also a lot of provision for staff welfare including a vibrant BBC Club. By 1929, this included a purpose-built sports ground and Club House with extensive facilities at Motspur Park in Surrey, ‘so complete in every respect – from plunge bath to parquet floor’.

As well as the much anticipated staff dance, a great many regular activities were on offer from netball and motoring to a debating society and chess. The Amateur Dramatics Society was also very popular - this photo is for a production of Dick Whittington in 1930.

The General Office

All female secretarial staff who joined the BBC started in the General Office where their capabilities were assessed. Here they were inducted into the BBC way of doing things, such as of where to use full stops and commas, how type-writer ribbons should be requisitioned and the procedure for posting letters.

The photo above was taken in 1932, just after the BBC had moved into the grandeur of Broadcasting House. Secretarial staff with initiative, who were seen to be loyal and able, could rise through the ranks to the salaried grades, where earnings were far higher and treatment far better.

Doris Arnold

Doris Arnold is the most famous example of a woman who rose through the ranks. She started as a typist in the Stores Department in 1926 when she was twenty two. In 1928, her great skill as a pianist was spotted and she was offered a new position as an Accompanist in the Music Department. She went on to work on many of the BBC’s key variety shows and become a well-known celebrity. By 1938 she was producing and presenting her own gramophone record programme, These you have Loved, which she fronted until the 1960s. This makes Doris Arnold the UK’s first woman radio DJ.

Isa Benzie

Isa Benzie also started at the BBC as a secretary, in the Foreign Department in 1927. Her abilities were quickly spotted and she was soon deputising for her boss, Major Atkinson. When he retired as Foreign Director in 1933, Isa Benzie took on the job, making her the third woman to hold a director-level post at the BBC in the interwar years.

The job was principally about creating and maintaining good foreign relations. One newspaper marvelled at Isa Benzie’s ability ‘to ring up New York, Sydney, Calcutta or Cape Town as casually as you and I call a taxi’ another described her work as ‘a job that would intimidate many a man’. In 1938, she made the decision to leave the BBC when she married, although she would later return and would play a key role in establishing the Today programme.

Olive Shapley

Olive Shapley’s BBC career started in Manchester in 1934, when she was recruited to oversee Children’s Hour for the North Region. In 1937, she became one of the first producers of social documentaries and a pioneer of the Outside Broadcasting van which she used to gather material from ‘real’ people, which was very radical for the times. She made programmes on homelessness, on twenty-four hours in a big hotel in Scarborough, on canal workers, on long-distance lorry drivers all programmes you could imagine on radio or TV today.

She also made a programme on miners’ wives - that’s her on the left in a wonderful photograph with Mrs Emerson, a miner’s wife from the Cragshead colliery in Durham. Olive Shapley had what was then considered to be the extraordinary thought of taking Mrs Emerson to meet her counterpart in a mining village in France where they stayed for a week, and then Mrs Emerson recounted her impressions on-air. So, the idea of comparing lives/ swapping lives which is now taken for granted, has very deep roots.

Charwomen

I love this photo of charwomen leaving the BBC. It was one of many ‘action shots’ that were placed in the press, overseen by the Head of the Photographic Section, Kathleen Lines (who frustratingly never had her photo taken).

The caption in Radio Pictorial in 1934 called them ‘a happy band of cleaners’ and I think they do look happy, and very well turned-out. The BBC was a desirable place to work and offered good wages for the time. It was also touched by glamour. In 1936 more than 2,000 women were on the waiting list to be charwomen.

Dr Kate Murphy is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader, History, Bournemouth University

Barbara Slater: making sure women in sport are seen and heard

2015-08-11T10:00:00+00:00

BBC Head of Sport Barbara Slater has just come top of The Independent on Sunday’s first 50 Most Influential Women in Sport list. In Saturday's Independent (8 August) Barbara was interviewed by Karen Attwood in an article entitled: The 50 most influential women in sport: Meeting Barbara Slater, who is making sure female athletes are seen and heard. An edited version of the article is reproduced below:

It is almost 40 years since Barbara Slater carried the British flag at the 1976 Summer Olympics, but the former gymnast can still do an impressive back somersault.

The BBC’s 56-year-old Director of Sport recently astonished a young man who was showing her around her local gym by getting on the trampoline, dressed in full “business lady attire”, and executing several somersaults.

“He didn’t know what to make of me,” she laughs. “I was on the trampoline before he could say anything. I have never seen anybody so shocked.”

I am chatting to Slater in the gleaming headquarters of BBC North at Media City, Salford. One of her major undertakings after being appointed the BBC’s first female Director of Sport in 2009 was to manage the department’s move up north.

Her other huge task was the 2012 London Olympic Games. Slater was responsible for the BBC’s sports coverage across all its platforms. The Games became the biggest national TV event in UK broadcasting history and led to Slater winning the Inspirational Woman prize at the Women in Film and Television Awards that year. In 2014, she was appointed OBE for services to broadcasting.

Alongside these dazzling achievements, Slater has played a key role in making women athletes more visible. Earlier this year, BBC Sport won Media Outlet of the Year in the Women’s Sport Trust’s inaugural #BeAGameChanger Awards for its work in showcasing women; it was noted that the department devoted 32 per cent of its live television output to female athletes in 2014.

You can read this article in full on the Independent website.

The truth about older women and the BBC

2012-02-09T10:10:00+00:00

Let's not mince words: those that say that the BBC has a case to answer about the way it treats older women on the air are right. We do.

We're hardly alone, of course. Look at any other broadcaster, at any advertising hoarding or some newspapers and you're likely to be confronted by an obsession with young women's faces and bodies and an ageism far more pronounced and disturbing than anything you'll ever see or hear on the BBC. You'll find plenty of photographs of older men - politicians, film stars, celebrities of one stripe or another - some handsome, some frankly a little gnarly. But you'll discover that older women are chiefly notable for their absence.

By contrast, if you've been watching BBC drama and comedy in recent weeks, you would have caught Gillian Anderson, not just stealing the show in Great Expectations but rubbing shoulders in prime time with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, Sue Perkins, Penelope Keith as well as many of the best-known characters inEastEnders and our other popular serials. If factual programmes are your thing, you'll have found yourself bumping into the brilliant Mary Beard, not to mention Deborah Meaden, Anne Robinson, Alex Polizzi, Mary Berryand many, many more. Perhaps you think it's the BBC's news and current affairs output where the real dearth lies? Only if you overlook Kirsty Wark, Martha Kearney, Sarah Montague, Fiona Bruce, to name but a few.

A thoughtful critic of the BBC might accept that list. They might even accept that the BBC does a better job in this regard than other British broadcasters. But they might also go on to make two searching points. First, that there is an underlying problem, that - whatever the individual success stories - there are manifestly too few older women broadcasting on the BBC, especially in iconic roles and on iconic topical programmes. Second that, as the national broadcaster and one which is paid for by the public, the BBC is in a different class from everyone else, and that the public have every right to expect it to deliver to a higher standard of fairness and open mindedness in its treatment both of its broadcasters and its audiences. If the BBC isn't prepared to take this issue more seriously, what hope is there that others will start to do so?

I accept both of these arguments in full.

There has been a revolution at the BBC in recent years in the role women play in leadership positions. Of the twelve members of our Executive Board, five are female, all of them (and no, there isn't a completely satisfactory way of saying this) 'older' women. Critical BBC services - including both Radio 4 and BBC Two - are in the hands of exceptional women controllers. BBC News, once an almost entirely male management domain, is largely led by women.

But we've yet to see the same rate or scale of change on the air. In terms of interviewees on current affairs programmes like Question Time or Newsnight, it is a simple fact of life that many aspects of British national life are dominated by men. I believe these programmes do their best to find opportunities for women to appear, but David Dimbleby is right when he says that it would be wrong for the BBC to distort the reality of the distribution of power and influence in this country in the name of artificial gender balance.

What is true, however, is that we have too few women in key news and current affairs presenting roles, especially when it comes to the big political interviews. Stephanie Flanders is doing an outstanding job for us as BBC Economics Editor but, again, too few of the most senior on-air specialist journalists at the BBC are women. That's why we're delighted to have recently appointed Allegra Stratton as Newsnight's Political Editor, though of course we gave her the job not because of her gender but simply because she was the best candidate.

I don't believe for a moment that the BBC is riven by sexism or ageism. As Ann Widdecombe commented last week, it's quite wrong to conclude that any replacement of an older woman by a younger one (or by a man) is automatically proof of prejudice; all sorts of factors come into place in creative and casting decisions. The public would be alarmed if the BBC did anything other than choosing presenters strictly on merit and regardless of sex or age.

Nonetheless, the Miriam O'Reilly case - she won an employment tribunal after being dropped from her presenting role on Countryfile - was an important wake-up for the whole BBC, one which I hope will mark a turning-point on our handling of this issue. Miriam has behaved with remarkable dignity and forbearance throughout, but she was not treated as she should have been by the BBC. We have a duty to ensure that no one has to go through a similar experience in the future. With others, Miriam has now launched a new charity to draw attention to and campaign about the role of women in the media. We will support her work in any way we can.

So what is to be done? First, we have to understand the extent and character of the problem. This is why, as Chairman of the industry body that looks at fairness and representation of every kind, I commissioned the report "Serving All Ages" which looked at British TV as a whole. Interestingly, it showed that issues of age were not front of mind for most members of the audience (quality of output, where the BBC scores very highly, was their top concern), and indeed that, of all age groups, it was the young rather than the old who tend to feel most unfairly and negatively portrayed by the broadcasters. But a significant minority of respondents - and not just older women themselves - did tell us that they felt that older women were 'invisible' on the airwaves. That perception, and the reality behind it, is what we have to change.

We must develop and cherish the many outstanding women broadcasters we already have and make sure they know that, like any employees and freelancers, age will not be a bar to their future employment by the BBC. Where we can, we should bring great female talent back to the BBC, as we're doing so successfully at the moment in Rip Off Britain 2012 with Angela Rippon, Julia Somerville and Gloria Hunniford. I am also pleased to see that Danny Cohen has announced plans today to bring Anneka Rice back to BBC One prime time. We should make sure every BBC editor and producer understands their role in helping us address this challenge.

This is an anomaly which has its roots deep in our national life and which cannot be solved overnight. Ann Widdecombe - who clearly enjoyed herself immensely on Strictly Come Dancing last autumn - is surely right when she warns against a knee-jerk or politically correct response to the issue. We shouldn't turf out other much loved and respected presenters and reporters in an attempt to achieve an instant fix, and no one (not least the older women in our audience) would thank us for doing so.

We need to identify the talent and the opportunities over time. But we are determined to act and already, on the BBC News Channel, on BBC1 and on other services, we're beginning to see a difference. Progress over time by the BBC is important in itself and will, I believe, be welcomed by all our audiences, young as well as old. But I hope that it will also encourage other broadcasters and media players to follow suit.

Mark Thompson is Director General of the BBC