More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
Today is International Women’s Day. KentOnline reporter Nicola Jordan looks back over her 46-year career and how things have changed for a woman trying to make it in what was traditionally a man’s world….
May 22, 1978. This was the date that heralded the start of my new career – and 46 years later I’m still in the same job.
I was just 20 when I gave up my well-paid position as a translator in the city to work on a local paper.
My salary was slashed overnight, I had to sell the car I’d saved up for and say goodbye to my partying nights up in town.
Despite the lectures from my dad – a former Fleet Street journalist and an editor who warned me at my interview that I’d be on the minimum wage – I was embarking on my dream job.
Working for world-renowned Lloyds insurance brokers in the capital was a whirlwind of long lunch breaks in wine bars, work trips abroad, and a free restaurant/canteen – but it was a man’s world.
Believe it or not, women weren’t even allowed to wear trousers to work and heels were the preferred choice of footwear over flats.
So this was going to be different.
I would be mucking in with the lads, chasing fire engines, filing copy from back street pubs to meet deadlines, and investigating injustices on behalf of the great British public
That’s what I thought anyway.
When I arrived in the cigarette smoke-filled newsroom of what was then known as the Chatham News, apart from one other I soon realised I was the only female – and the only non-graduate.
I come from an age where girls tended to take a secretarial course before getting married and starting a family and the clever boys went on to university or got manual employment to put food on the table.
It proved to be a double whammy.
My father had warned me that the job wasn’t for the faint-hearted – he traumatised me with stories of how he, as a trainee reporter, would have to cover post-mortem examinations in the mortuary.
And just in case I got ill-conceived ideas about my ability, the editor would regularly repeat his mantra – don’t run because you can’t walk yet.
I certainly wasn’t expecting my first assignment to be the “bun run”, picking up a range of treats for my colleagues.
But this was to be my role for many months to come, getting my first real ticking off for getting a sub-editor a custard tart from the Co-op and not her preferred bakery.
Eventually, I was let loose on writing up Women’s Institute minutes and then I moved on to copying up the TV page – a tedious task but a lesson in accuracy.
No computers then. If you made a mistake you would have the paper torn from your clapped-out old typewriter and would have to start again.
Slowly the lads progressed to bigger things with Fleet Street nationals, the Press Association and the BBC among those beckoning.
And having spent what seemed like years shadowing the chief reporter to cover Chatham Magistrates’ Court, I was allowed to go it alone.
This was more like it. Exclusive stories, investigative reports, covering royal visits, hiding behind bushes to grab snatch shots, and then there was meeting Rod Hull of Emu fame.
I went on to be a content editor, community editor, and news editor but my true love has always been as a reporter.
Thankfully today the tide has well and truly turned thanks to the likes of Kate Adie, Anne Robinson, Janet Street-Porter and more recently Stacey Dooley.
It may have taken decades, but women have now firmly stamped their mark on journalism in every field.
International Women’s Day celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women across the globe.
This year’s theme is Inspire Inclusion – for more information about how to get involved, visit the website.
The day was first marked in 1911 and acts as a call to action for accelerating equality.
