Judith WOODS
Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Apologies to Beyoncé, but technically it’s middleaged women. She was just an early adopter.
Let us consider the evidence: we make the best spies (we’re invisible), the best pies (ask Nigella) and above all else we are wise (to human nature, financial scams and husbands claiming they are just going to the pub “for one”).
What we may lack in collagen we more than make up for in moral fibre and tensile strength, which is why outgoing Woman’s Hour presenter Jane Garvey is quite right to urge that her replacement be a fifty-or sixtysomething woman with a few miles on the clock.
This isn’t to impugn Emma Barnett, formerly of this parish, who has taken over from Dame Jenni Murray; she is an excellent, energetic broadcaster. But aged 35, she is simply at a different stage of life and the programme needs a balance.
OK yes, it might sound patronising but that is one of the few consolations of maturity, as is an increasingly wicked sense of humour that means most of us have been no-platformed by our own teenaged children. Here’s an example; not so long ago I went with two girlfriends to Mayfair early one Sunday morning to buy a takeaway coffee and have a socially-distanced wander around the empty streets, admiring the architecture and revelling in the unprecedented silence.
Young people all dress alike, not so women over 50. We do our own thing. Hell, yeah. Which is why all three of us looked as though we were on entirely different outings.
One of us, , chic in black and statement jewellery, was surely heading to (poss (possibly from) an Italian nightclub.
The other other, in leisurewear, resembled a walking Lululemon class. Me, I w was in a polka dot wrap dress and a cowboy boots; think Zooey Deschanel’s godmother, off to the farmer’s market for a named gourd. As we p passed by some scaffold scaffolding, a builder whistle whistled. We stopped dead in our tracks. Furious? Ha. As if. B Being over 50, we were fl fluttering like overexcited bantams in a ruddy h henhouse. “Tha “Thanks very much!” I cried up, up quite the lady. “But whi which one of us was that for?”
I know, I know, but I only asked on th the grounds that nobody – –c certainly nobody qualified to replace guttering without a ag guide dog – could have possibly found us all attractive, all at once.
And in th the booming silence that followed, my nightclub friend nodded across the way, at two twentysomething striplings in identical jeans, trainers and ugly puffa jackets. “It’s them. The builders are whistling at them.”
And after we doubled over almost weeping with laughter at our collective hubris, we indignantly agreed that it was “entirely inappropriate” and “absolutely outrageous” for them to catcall women. Young women, at any rate.
I like to think the Woman’s Hour audience – at least the over 50s – would understand. Women of my vintage (oh all right then, 54) and older have done some serious living – which is precisely why we refuse to take very many things seriously.
Injustice, bullying in all its shapeshifting forms, cruelty and oppression make us livid. We will stick up for those in need and defend our offspring to outsiders even if they are being a complete pain in the proverbial.
But we know that most other teacup storms, micro-aggressions and “what-about-me-isms” can be weathered with a shrug, a smile and (depending on the company) a mildly off-colour remark.
Which is probably just one reason why I will not be replacing the inestimable Jane Garvey.
I don’t mind, not really. But like a great many listeners, I feel fiercely protective of a radio programme I have tuned in to, on and off, for more than three decades. In my defence, I started listening to The Archers when I was 14, so I do have form.
The show has 3.7 million listeners per week (second only to the goings-on in Ambridge) and 17 per cent of them are men; a quarter of its audience are under 35.
I’m not sure how many of them are transgender, non-binary or pansexual – an extraordinary number judging by the frequency these are touched (can I even say that?) upon.
“It is genuinely a very, very difficult area,” said Garvey. “I’d also say from a purely practical perspective: is this the issue that vexes our audience more than any other?
“Do they think of it as the most controversial or the most important thing we could be talking about? No, I honestly don’t think they do.”
Commonsensical as ever, she is simply saying what the rest of us are thinking. But tellingly, she kept her powder dry until she was heading out the door.
Truthfully, women’s rights matter so much because if the majority –
51 per cent of the population – is not treated equally, what hope for any minority?
Women carry the emotional and practical burdens of home and hearth, and as the years go by they are the sandwich generation, looking after little ones and caring for their elderly.
In the workplace men become more valued as they get older. Women feel under overt and covert pressure not to look their age when they, too, are a precious resource. They need representation.
So let’s hear it for an outspoken quinquagenarian to take up residence on Woman’s Hour, be their voice and genuinely empathise with their stories. I’d put myself forward but I fear I’d be hoist by my own politically incorrect petard the moment we went on air…
What we may lack in collagen we more than make up for in moral fibre