The BBC's Olympics coverage has been a welcome sight for those of us working in the media keen to see the glass ceiling smashed and recycled – perhaps into windows for the offices of new female executives. So many excellent women broadcasters are at the helm, and it's great to have the chance simply to see women's sport, so often all but invisible. But while this is cause to celebrate, a new report reminds us that the pace of change at the BBC is achingly slow.
Using an average day's transmission on Radio 4 as its lens, last week researchers at the recently launched website ourBeeb painted a dismally familiar picture of a BBC dominated by a narrow strata of highly educated white men. All on-air presenters and guests during the chosen 24 hours were quizzed about their backgrounds. Only a fraction of the voices heard were non-white, and the majority – apart from notable exceptions such as John Humphrys, who grew up in working-class Cardiff, the son of a hairdresser and a french polisher, left grammar school at 15 and didn't go to university – were from solidly middle class backgrounds. Most tellingly, only a third of voices belonged to women – none of them over 60.
Outside of the Olympics fortnight, the absence of women from huge swathes of airtime continues to be a hallmark of the industry. Of course, the media is no different to many other areas – sport, technology, politics – in its gross under-representation of women and ethnic minorities. But because the BBC is funded by the public, and suffers from none of the disadvantages smaller employers complain of when attempting to modernise working practices, we are right to expect more.
However, few such investigations delve into what happens on the other side of the studio glass. Radio production offices, like publishing houses and many other cultural organisations, are crammed full of women demonstrating enormous verve and creative flair. Yet a staggering number – in comparison with their male colleagues – fail to make it to the higher rungs of the career ladder. The result is that countless teams comprised mainly of women still, by and large, answer to a man.
The lobby group Sound Women, founded last year to raise the profile of women in the radio industry, estimates that just 17% of board-level executives in radio are women, far fewer than in TV. Radio has an astonishingly high rate of mid-career female drop-outs, who leave after the age of 35. Out of those who stay, fewer than a quarter have dependent children.
The BBC tries, with deadly seriousness, to embrace a 21st-century attitude to equality. But this clashes with a deeply ingrained culture of long hours and, most importantly, an institutional bias – at times unconscious – against part-time working. These factors, along with a substantial pay gap – on average, women earn £2,000 less per year than their male counterparts – conspire to make broadcasting an uncomfortable prospect for working mothers.
The award-winning Fi Glover left her high-profile job as presenter of Radio 4's Saturday Live last year, choosing to spend more time with her young children. She expressed anxiety about her own career path and those of fellow working parents, as she wondered what chance, if any, there would be to re-enter the industry in years to come.
My own experience has given me the same cause for concern. After 16 years as a BBC radio producer, I left the corporation, with mixed emotions, to take voluntary redundancy this year. In my department four people chose to leave in the recent round of cuts – three of us were part-time working women. We had all been tipped as potential execs and editors of the future, but found, to our dismay, our careers on pause mode once we'd had children. In contrast, many of our male peers – including our juniors – sailed past us on uninterrupted upward career trajectories.
The BBC's lack of creative vision in dealing with part-time workers is a shameful black mark on its record. Generations of working mothers have come and gone, and yet the infrastructure surrounding their career development remains in its infancy. Meanwhile, private-sector organisations such as Google, Innocent Drinks and even taxi company Addison Lee – which recently piloted a babies-at-work scheme – seem freer to innovate. With career breaks out of reach, little mentoring and an internal promotion system that favours an antiquated interview system – more akin to sitting a Tripos exam than a reflection of modern corporate practice – it's no wonder so many male, Oxbridge-educated journalists and broadcasters walk into positions of power with surprising ease.
And let's not forget those sectors of society still truly on the BBC's margins – those from ethnic minorities and working-class backgrounds. To this day, not one flagship speech radio programme has an iconic association with a black or Asian presenter – not Today, Woman's Hour, You and Yours, Desert Island Discs, Gardener's Question Time, Front Row or In Our Time. Not one black or Asian person has been considered good enough to be a channel or station controller. As former BBC non-executive director Samir Shah described it, the situation is "absolutely dire". Throughout my BBC career I was one of the few Asian faces to be found in Broadcasting House. Little changed during the two decades I was there. The top tiers continue to be out of reach for these groups, and it will take nothing short of a quantum leap in the mindsets of senior management for this to change.
Yet since leaving the BBC, I have to admit that, at times, it seems streets ahead. My job-share partner and I were taken aback at some of the responses to our attempts to apply for co-employment in the wider culture sector. Most organisations were open in their scepticism about job-sharing. One even firmly told us not to apply.
Occasionally, there are snippets of good news. In recent weeks a new BBC focus group has finally begun to explore how flexible working might be better supported. And there are individuals such as Gwyneth Williams, current controller of Radio 4, who dropped out after starting a family and tuned in again to fight her way to the top. Two out of her five commissioning editors are now from ethnic minorities, an innovation that deserves due credit. She, along with the rest of the BBC leadership, but above all the new director general George Entwistle, must listen to a cri de coeur from their staff that is growing louder by the day. All – not some – of those they have invested in deserve a truly fair chance to become the editors, controllers and director generals of tomorrow. It's time.