Abstract
Behind the Wireless is the first comprehensive study of women at the BBC. It is also the first to explore women’s work in a modern interwar organisation. The introduction places the BBC in the context of the times introducing the tensions inherent in a period that witnessed burgeoning career opportunities for women but also the continuation, and deepening, of discriminatory practices in many occupations and professions. It considers how and why the BBC bucked this trend, posing questions about the progressive nature of the institution. It also considers the issues that surround the reconstruction of the working lives of BBC women who have largely been omitted from conventional sources.
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Notes
- 1.
Hull Daily Mail, 31 March 1939.
- 2.
News Chronicle, 29 July 1939.
- 3.
Kate Murphy (2002) Women in the BBC: A History 1922–2002, BBC Internal Report.
- 4.
Everywoman’s, February 1935.
- 5.
BBC WAC: P565: Personal Publicity: Press Cuttings 1924–1939.
- 6.
Asa Briggs (1965) The Golden Age of Broadcasting: The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press) pp. 457–8. The five volumes of Brigg’s History include remarkably few references to women. Seaton has addressed this in her BBC history which includes a chapter on women. Jean Seaton (2015) Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation 1974–1987 (London: Profile) pp. 207–31.
- 7.
Histories have been written of women in early broadcasting in the USA, Germany and Australia. Michele Hilmes (1997) Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press); Kate Lacey (1994) Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio, and the Public Sphere, 1923–1945 (Michigan: University of Michigan Press); Lesley Johnson (1988) The Unseen Voice: A Cultural Study of Early Australian Radio (London: Routledge).
- 8.
As Adrian Bingham has shown, the popular press used the modernity of women as an emblem of post-war progress, both for good and bad, Adrian Bingham (2004) Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
- 9.
See Sally Alexander (2007) ‘A New Civilisation? London Surveyed 1928–1940s’ History Workshop Journal 64, 297–316.
- 10.
See Selina Todd (2005) Young Women, Work and the Family in England 1918–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp. 1–2, 6–7; Sally Alexander (1995) Becoming a Woman and Other Essays in 19th and 20th Century Feminist History (New York: New York University Press) pp. 203–44. See also Teresa Davy ‘Shorthand Typists in London 1900–1939’ and Kay Sanderson ‘Women Civil Service Clerks 1925–1939’ in Leonore Davidoff and Belinda Westover eds. (1986) Our Work, Our Lives, Our Words: Women’s History and Women’s Work (London: Macmillan Education) pp. 124–44, 145–60.
- 11.
Ariel, June 1936.
- 12.
Women in Council (Journal of the National Council of Women), Summer 1962, Sprott Obituary.
- 13.
Krista Cowman and Louise Jackson eds. (2005) Women and Work Culture in Britain c.1850–1950 (Aldershot: Ashgate) pp. 6–7.
- 14.
Alice Head (1939) It Could Never Have Happened (Kingswood: The Windmill Press) p. 194.
- 15.
There are two key studies of professional women in the interwar years that relate most closely to the BBC, Alison Oram on teachers and Helen Glew on women in the GPO. Their focus is predominantly on the discrimination women faced in terms of equal pay, marital status and promotional prospects which led to impassioned political campaigning. Alison Oram (1996) Women Teachers and Feminist Politics 1900–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Helen Glew (2009) Women’s Employment in the General Post Office, 1914–1939 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of London). Carol Dyhouse, in her study of women academics, found similar frustrations, echoed by Kaarin Michaelsen in her investigation of female medics. Carol Dyhouse (1995) No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870–1939 (London: UCL Press); Kaarin Michaelsen (2005) ‘Union Is Strength: The Medical Women’s Federation and the Politics of Professionalism, 1917–30’ in Cowman and Jackson, Women and Work Culture, pp. 161–76.
- 16.
The Heterodyne, June 1930.
- 17.
Hilda Matheson (1933) Broadcasting (London: Thornton Butterworth) pp. 45–8.
- 18.
Ray Strachey (1935) Careers and Openings for Women: A Survey of Women’s Employment and a Guide for Those Seeking Work (London: Faber and Faber); Paul Berry and Alan Bishop eds. (1985) Testament of a Generation: The Journalism of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby (London: Virago).
- 19.
See Ross McKibbin (1998) Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
- 20.
BBC WAC:R49/940: Women Assistants 1926, Reith to All Station Directors, 30 April 1926.
- 21.
Judy Faraday (2009) A Kind of Superior Hobby: Women Managers in the John Lewis Partnership 1918–1950 (Unpublished MPhil dissertation: University of Wolverhampton); Ralf Dahrendorf (1995) A History of the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1895–1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp. 113–14, 235–7.
- 22.
Maggie Andrews (2012) Domesticating the Airwaves: Broadcasting, Domesticity and Femininity (London: Continuum).
- 23.
Michael Carney (1999) Stoker: The Biography of Hilda Matheson OBE, 1888–1940 (Llangynog: Michael Carney).
- 24.
Olive Shapley (1996) Broadcasting: A Life (London: Scarlet Press).
- 25.
This point is also made by Michael Roper and John Tosh, eds. (1991) Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London: Routledge) p. 3.
- 26.
David Hendy (2012) ‘Biography and the Emotions as a Missing “Narrative” in Media History: A Case Study of Lance Sieveking and the Early BBC’ Media History, 18 (3–4), 361–78.
- 27.
‘The End of Savoy Hill’ broadcast 14 May 1932.
- 28.
Mary Agnes Hamilton (1944) Remembering My Good Friends (London: Jonathan Cape) pp. 279–88.
- 29.
There were two issues of The Saveloy, in May 1928 and Easter 1930. The Heterodyne was first published in May 1930 and incorporated the BBC Club Bulletin.
- 30.
See Julia Taylor (2013) ‘From Sound to Print in Pre-War Britain: The Cultural and Commercial Interdependence between Broadcasters and Broadcasting Magazines in the 1930s’ (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of Bournemouth).
- 31.
See Charlotte Higgins for a fresh perspective on Goldie as a drama critic. Charlotte Higgins, This New Noise, pp. 73–5.
- 32.
Penelope Fitzgerald had fun with titles in her novel Human Voices, set in the BBC during the Second World War. Penelope Fitzgerald (1980) Human Voices (London: William Collins).
- 33.
Figures according to Guy Routh (1965) Occupation and Pay in Great Britain, 1906–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 104. According to Routh earnings for 1924 and 1936 were very similar, with perhaps a slightly lower rate in 1936.
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Murphy, K. (2016). Introduction. In: Behind the Wireless. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49173-2_1
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