Woman’s Hour won’t be missed for a second by women like me
How do I hate Woman’s Hour? Let me count the ways. It’s in the news because both presenters, Dame Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey, are leaving. And it is dreadful for contrary reasons. The liberal case against Woman’s Hour is that it designates issues about families and health and relationships as women’s stuff, which isn’t really where we’re at nowadays.
The last programme I almost listened to had a feature about “how to be assertive”, though it wasn’t long before I couldn’t bear it any more and switched off. Well, are there no shy and unassertive men who need help? (In fact, about a third of its listeners are men.)
Garvey suggested that listeners engaged with Woman’s Hour “because the programme still talks about the subjects and challenges no one else goes near”. What I think she means by this is its socio-emotional talk about relationships, as well as substantive things like female genital mutilation. The Guardian got rid of its celebrated women’s page, probably because it took over the entire paper; the BBC is curiously old fashioned in still making the personal feminine.
The other reason I loathe it is the opposite: that it has a narrow view of the Woman in its Hour. Socially conservative women don’t get much of a look in. Here, BBC impartiality, such as it is, doesn’t apply. You will look in vain for a contrary view about abortion, for instance, and the bias is all the more complete for being unconscious.
Once Dame Jenni and Jane depart, the kindest thing to do is to see off Woman’s Hour altogether. Dame Jenni is a class act, mind you ... just give her a better home.
The Civil Service is
thinking of going on strike. It is objecting to the idea that 80 per cent of staff should be getting back to the office. Dave Penman, general secretary of the First Division Association, the Civil Service union, said the proposal was an outrage: “There is no evidence to suggest that people are working inefficiently – people are spending less time commuting, they’re finding it works for them.”
Yes, I’m sure lots of civil servants do find that dealing with emails on kitchen counters in their pyjamas works really well. But it is a dangerous way to go.
The reason many people have worked well remotely is that they are dealing with colleagues that they have worked with in real life. You are living off what you might call your Social Working Capital built up in normal times. But eventually new people join; they will find it harder to bond without office chat, eye contact, jokes and meetings in the loo. We need to get back to work – in masks if need be – if we are not to lose the sense of community which makes work human.
There’s nothing like a
sister for fighting her brother’s corner, and Christine Forster has taken no prisoners in coming to the rescue of hers, Tony Abbott, former Australian PM and now Britain’s new trade adviser. She is a feisty woman in a same-sex marriage, and has swung ferociously to defend her brother against charges of misogyny and homophobia. She says that he is entitled to hold conservative views about marriage. It would have been bad news if his appointment had been cancelled. Any conservative might be barred from public service on this basis. Real diversity includes differences of opinion.