Why Today is right about women presenters

Spare a thought for the Editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Ceri Thomas. Not because every day will be election day for the next month - with heightened scrutiny of his presenters' every smirk and cough. No, what I'm thinking about is the cacophony of allegations of misogyny you find if you Google his name, after he allegedly claimed that female journalists do not have a thick enough skin to cope with the demands of presenting Today.

Except he didn't say that - or not in the interview I heard on Radio 4's Feedback. As a fully paid up Today groupie, even I could have come up with a more withering critique than the rather predictable list of complaints from the two listeners featured, including over-aggressive interviewing, not enough time for each item and too few women presenters. 

Ceri Thomas had come prepared for the first two, with figures showing more varied interviewing techniques than ever and packages lasting longer than in the past. On women presenters, he acknowledged that only having one is not ideal, but insisted that Today would only choose presenters based on their ability to do the job and being a woman will never be the over-riding criteria for selection. Quite right too! I have hundreds of women friends who have made it to the top of their chosen profession on merit and the last thing any of us want or need is for employers to start patronising us by promoting women on any other grounds.

Sue MacGregor and Caroline Quinn presented Today for many years; Sarah Montague (left) does it now; and no doubt there will be more women presenters down the line - but Ceri Thomas is telling us that when a woman is appointed it will be because she has the right set of skills to deal with this especially demanding job, not because she wears a skirt.

And nor do I buy the lazy assumption that (alleged) sexism at Today is just an extension of the rampant discrimination infecting the BBC. When I was asked to produce a report on the future of science in the media for the government, I asked my colleague to set up meetings with the BBC's Director of News, the Head of the BBC News Room, the Head of News Gathering, the Head of the Radio Science Unit and the Head of Commissioning for science programmes. You guessed it - it transpires that they are all women - Helen Boaden, Mary Hockaday, Fran Unsworth, Deborah Cohen and Kim Shillinglaw. 

Without being in any way dismissive about presenters, I would suggest that each of these women has more power and influence over what happens on our airwaves than a Today presenter. I also suspect that at least one of them probably has considerable influence over the choice of presenters on Today, though these senior female editors seem to have escaped the cries of misogyny heaped on the Editor himself.

I'm not saying sex discrimination has disappeared - and in fact it's depressing that a manufactured 'row' about sexism on Today has generated more media attention than the very many real examples of sexism in the workplace. Having worked at the Equal Opportunities Commission for seven years, I was staggered to discover how many women still get sacked or sidelined for becoming pregnant, and that many women who return to work part time after maternity leave no longer receive equal pay with men doing the same job full time. The Editor of Today will have a smaller pool of women to choose from with the required skills set because having children still impacts far too disproportionately on women's career choices.

But none of that translates into a case for positive discrimination. It's precisely because women are successfully breaking into the very top jobs in the BBC and elsewhere in the media that the last thing we need now is any hint of positive discrimination. The Editor of Today may have been attacked for misogyny, but in my view he is showing more respect for women than his feminist critics who do us no favours with their caricature of sexism and special pleading.

The far more interesting part of Ceri Thomas' interview on Feedback was his explanation of why Today is devoting much more time to science and the arts as well as traditional politics. The Today programme does science brilliantly these days and that includes many more interviews with women scientists. Now that really has made a difference!