4. DESARROLLOS
4.1 PROCESO DE SELECCIÓN DE PROYECTOS
In January 1935, Isabel Mallinson, the BBC’s first Cashier, was due to retire.
However her value to the BBC was such that she was invited to stay on past her sixtieth birthday; she was sixty-three when she retired in 1938.96 The BBC was perceived as a pioneering, youthful organisation and while this was an image it was happy to promote, this belies the fact that many employees were older.
Selina Todd, in her study of the employment of working-class young women during this period, used as her cut-off the age of twenty-four, because this was the average age of first marriage, thus anyone aged twenty-five or over was deemed
‘adult’.97 Using this criterion, many women who came to the BBC were mature.
Amongst the women recruited in the BBC’s first year it is known that Caroline Banks, the Women’s Staff Supervisor was twenty-seven, Cecil Dixon, the
Accompanist, was thirty and Ella Fitzgerald, the producer of Women’s Hour, was thirty-seven. It is difficult to know whether older women were attracted to the BBC because they felt their services would be more valued but it may have provided an opportunity to leave a dead-end job for one that appreciated their skills and offered potentially better pay, more attractive conditions of service and the prospect of promotion. Mature women were also appointed to senior posts, Hilda Matheson was thirty-eight when she was recruited to the BBC and there are other examples of women joining in their thirties who had already held
responsible jobs.98
96 Salary Information Files
97 Selina Todd, Young Women, Work and the Family in England 1918-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) pp.1, 19-20
98 For example the Adult Education Assistant Mary Adams; the Children’s Hour Organiser Christine Orr and the Head of Photographs Kathleen Lines were respectively 32, 38 and 36 when they joined the BBC.
Waged women’s employment in the inter-war years was characterised by youth and statistically young women were by far the largest component of the female labour force.99 The BBC certainly recruited large numbers of young women, however because there was an expectation that they would already have
experience or training, the average age that waged women joined the Corporation was twenty-two with few recruited before the age of eighteen.100 As already noted, even the youngest women had passed the School Certificate and most had worked in a secretarial/clerical capacity before their arrival at the BBC. This was very different to the Civil Service, for example, which recruited Junior Clerks, Writing Assistants and Clerical Assistants by examination, between the ages of 15-18.101
As Chapter Three makes clear, most women left the workforce on marriage, either by choice or enforcement, which meant the majority of older women professionals and office workers in the 1920s and 30s, including those at the BBC, were
spinsters.102 There were also a large number of ‘surplus’ women unable to marry because of the high male casualty rate of the First World War.103 The feminist writer Ray Strachey stressed the potential grimness of the working lives of women aged over thirty who needed to earn their own living, citing low wages, paltry savings for a pension and the constant fear of being replaced by younger workers.104 The BBC, however, took a pragmatic approach towards the
employment of spinsters many of whom had long careers and ultimately retired on a generous pension. At the BBC longevity of service was rewarded with a
99 The 1921 Census showed women aged between 15 and 24 comprised 63% of those in paid employment; in 1931, it was 69%. Many employers preferred young female workers who were prepared to accept lower wages, on routine tasks, in jobs with few promotional prospects. For a discussion on the causes and effects of this see: Lewis, Women in England 1870-1950 ; Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, op.cit.; Gerry Holloway, Women and Work in Britain since 1840 (London: Routledge, 2005)
100 See Chapter Two pp.95-96
101 Strachey, Careers and Openings for Women p.217
102 Many working-class married women continued to work; nearly all the BBC’s charwomen were older married women.
103 It was estimated that there were two million ‘surplus’ women after the war. See Virginia Nicholson, Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived without Men after the First World War (London: Viking, 2007)
104 Ray Strachey, ed., Our Freedom and Its Results by Five Women (London: Hogarth Press, 1936) p.145. Organisations such as the Over-Thirty Association, established in 1934 and the National Spinsters’ Pension Association, established in 1935, campaigned specifically for improved working conditions for older unmarried women.
year bonus and Ariel in April 1937 listed 102 women who had been with the BBC for a decade or more, around 12% of the female staff, most of whom were
spinsters.105 Many women remained with the Corporation for the duration of their working lives for example, in the summer of 1953 Ariel bade farewell to six women recruited in the 1920s and 1930s, five of whom were unmarried.106
There are occasional documents in the archive, however, which suggest concern that the BBC’s image might be adversely affected by the employment of older women. For example, a memo from 1938 shows the Catering Manager’s unease about waitresses where the “inevitable march of time” had caused girls who had originally been selected for their general attractiveness as well as their ability, to become “old and haggard in their appearance” as well as slower in their duties.107 Again, a realisation that the BBC’s marriage bar might create the “compulsory spinster”, caused reflection on the part of Basil Nicolls, the Director of Internal Administration. Was the object of the marriage bar, he pondered, “to avoid having old or oldish women on the staff?” When it came to spinsters, he
continued, “We are virtually faced with their services to the age of retirement.”108 The suggestion here was that older women might be less attractive employees.
While references such as these are rare in BBC documents, they confirm the derogatory way in which spinsters and older women were often viewed during this period.109
There is at least one incident of a BBC woman lying about her age, indicating an anxiety on her part about the treatment of older women. In 1937, Gwen Williams, who had been employed on a contract basis as an Accompanist for many years, was appointed to the permanent staff of the BBC. It was agreed she would be a good Coach, her value to the BBC seen in the salary she was offered; £450 a year was more than that paid to her male colleagues.110 Miss Williams was required to
105 Ariel, April 1937 ‘Ten Years’ Hard’. There were 802 female staff recorded in December 1936
106 Ariel, Summer 1953
107 R49/73/1: Catering Staff, Conditions of Service, Wade to Pym, September 8th 1938
108 R49/372: Staff Policy: Married Women Policy: Tribunals 1934-1937, Nicolls to Carpendale, March 6th 1935
109 Katherine Holden, The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England, 1914-60 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2007) pp.4, 7, 40-41
110 L1/454: Gwendoline Williams Staff File, Dewar to Lubbock, December 4th 1936
fill in a staff record form and wrote her year of birth as 1893, making her forty-four years old. In fact, she was five years older, a detail only revealed in 1953 when she came to retire and her birth certificate was required to verify her
pension. A perfunctory note indicates the embarrassment this caused.111 It is not known why Gwen Williams felt the need to lie about her age. It is doubtful that having offered her a job, the BBC would have rescinded it, if her true age had been known. A more likely explanation is that she believed attitudes towards her might become less positive, and it also had the effect of keeping her in work until she was sixty-five.
The BBC’s appointment of Gwen Williams endorses the view that it took a largely positive approach to the employment of older women, who were seen to benefit the BBC with their maturity and experience. The predominant new recruit, though, was a young woman, trained, experienced and eager to work at the BBC. She would have been well turned-out with neat hair, a hat, stockings and gloves, the clothes she wore defining her as a modern working woman.