A prized possession: a photograph from shortly after the First World War of a group of young people, in an architect practice clearly relaxed and friendly. The only woman in the photo is neatly but fashionably dressed. Her name is Chrissie Millar and she is stenographer. Both parents are dead and with her elder brother in Australia, she is supporting herself and younger sister Peggy by working. Chrissie has learnt shorthand and typing and landed this respectable position. We can assume, despite her skills, she would not be as well paid as the men. She also did not have the vote. Yet women like Chrissie were central to supporting commercial and telecommunications boom taking place at that time. Keyboard and shorthand skills, not known to many men outside journalism, were, and continued to be regarded, as women’s skills. Stenographer became typist, became secretary, became PA.
While the computer and the new digital age transformed the way we work and communicate, the QWERTY keyboard from which I am writing this, would be recognisable to Chrissie. So why is it, if women, for most of the 20th century understood and worked with typewriter keyboards, telecommunications, codes like shorthand, the organisation and retrieval of information (i.e. filing), the digital revolution has become so male dominated? My own, theory is that girls sold the pass when they allowed men to learn to type, in the mistaken assumption that this might raise the status of what had been, up until then, women’s work.
The male dominance in the digital world was spotted by women working with technology and the marvellous Girl Geek dinners was set up five years ago. http://girlgeekdinners.com/. This network covers all aspects of technology, and provides support, advice and networking opportunities for women from all over the UK and indeed other parts of the world too. A key reason for such support is to make sure women have access to jobs as much as the men.
For us in ICE the issue has an added complexity in the creative industries. There is a widely held perception that women do well in our cultural life and indeed there are high-profile examples. However overall the picture is shocking with women artists under represented in every category from the Proms to TV drama. http://www.ukfeminista.org.uk/news/592-womeninarts.html
The issues of jobs women in the creative industries is underlined with another report just published by Skill set on Women in the Creative Industries, which focuses on the mainly digital-based sectors film and broadcasting, computer games and animation, publishing, libraries and archives . According to this report, women in these industries tend to be younger, and fewer have dependant relatives than their male counterparts– suggesting that many women leave the industry as a consequence of starting a family. But most shocking of all is that men earn substantially more than women — £34,669 compared with £29,015 (excluding photo imaging and publishing) even after adjustment for a lower average age. http://www.skillset.org/uploads/pdf/asset_15343.pdf?3
None of this is new– I was writing about the lack of women in senior roles in the cultural sector back on the 1980s. What is shocking is that in a whole new area of technologically-focussed work where women have always had the skills, we find the same patterns. Clearly this has not got anything to do with talent or with skills, it is down to institutionalised sexism.
Then as in the 80s, the issue is if the voices which are heard through our media outlets, our games, our movies our TV programmes, are only male, then how much more impoverished is our culture? This is more than fairness and about equal opportunities. This goes to the heart of who we are. And we search in vain to identify any government-level creative industries policy which addresses this.
Christine Hamilton, Director ICE
Postscript: Chrissie went on to marry a joiner and help him run his business using her shorthand skills to take messages. She had two sons and saw them both off to war and both return. One of them was my father.
