Abstract
‘There's a special place in hell for a woman who doesn't help another woman’ Madeleine Albright
Men have helped each other for centuries: old boys' networks, golf club buddies, corporate hospitality built round boxes at Twickenham and Chelsea, drinks at the club, pints in the bar after work. But women near the top of most professions feel they are too busy to network, too preoccupied with home and family – their other job – to think about helping themselves, or indeed each other.
Journalism is a job that requires passion, energy and total enthusiasm at all levels. Young men and women enter the profession in equal measure, shiny-eyed and optimistic. But 10 or 20 years into those careers, something happens, and the women who have been filing, subbing and reporting the news flee the newsroom. In most cases, it is parenthood that causes the exodus, and it's often the second child that tips a working mother over the edge. News stories don't stick to term times, school hours or weekdays, and newspapers go to press late in the evening. So we give up, kidding ourselves that senior jobs in journalism don't go with being a mother.
But the thing is they do, and they can. A couple of years ago I joined Women in Journalism after bumping into its chair, Eleanor Mills, at a House of Lords session on women and news. It's a networking and lobbying group founded by Eve Pollard more than 20 years ago, and I've met some great women at the top of its tree. Eleanor is editorial director of The Sunday Times and editor of its magazine, Lisa Markwell is editor of the Independent on Sunday and Jane Martinson is media editor at The Guardian. We all have kids, top jobs and lives that are a constant juggle. So why aren't there more of us?
I don't blame the men. They are just doing what they've always done: working hard, creating their networks, appointing their like. It's us women who need to believe in ourselves a bit more and support each other. We are too quick to put ourselves down, to think that we can't do more. Maybe we need to man up. And when we do reach the top, we need to make sure that we are helping each other. I've seen research into management teams at 1,500 companies over a 20-year period that suggested when women were appointed as chief executive, other women were more likely to attain senior positions. But when a woman was appointed to a senior role that was not the top job, the likelihood of other women following them to executive level fell by 50 per cent.
I have been blessed with an amazing 21 years at ITN so far. In that time I've had a huge range of jobs – from producing reports on location with Tom Bradby and James Mates, to editing ITV News at Ten and producing the channel's royal wedding coverage. And I have had two wonderful daughters along the way. Now I am the editor at 5 News. Part of my achievement has been down to the encouragement and support of my wonderful female friends and colleagues. People such as Julie Etchingham, Penny Marshall and my former boss Deborah Turness – now the president of NBC News in the US – have been a sounding board and a shoulder to cry on, as well as fabulous role models. So when I sat down with Eleanor to talk about how we get other women to climb the career ladder, creating a formal mentoring scheme that gave other women the same friendship, encouragement and support that I had seemed a good first step. Sharing experiences, bouncing ideas and just having someone to listen to.
We launched the scheme at a lunch in Dukes Hotel in London a few weeks ago, introducing our 11 mentees to their mentors. Half an hour in, I stopped for a moment to watch as the likes of Eleanor, Lisa and Jane, plus Eve, Alison Phillips and Helen Lewis chatted with the women beside them. If our scheme can help one of those 11 become the editor of a national paper or a television network in a few years' time, then I will have a great sense of achievement. And if it doesn't work, then we will all just have to join a golf club.