Engineering Difference

In: Feminist media histories, Band 4, Heft 4, S. 8-32

Abstract

The experiences of women engineers working in the BBC Television Service at Alexandra Palace, London, during the 1940s and 1950s, give insights into gender discrimination in broadcasting. These women first joined as radio engineers when the BBC was recruiting women during World War II, then transferred to television between 1946 and 1947. In interviews recorded in the 1990s, they talk about incidents of bullying and exclusion by men on crews who were hostile to women doing engineering jobs. Other memories are about being demoted from positions on camera and sound to vision mixing when the BBC Staff Association negotiated new grading for cameramen with BBC management at the expense of its female members. As the Television Service became established, women were eased out of skilled and responsible jobs when men returning from the war regained their positions in broadcast engineering.