Female journalists working for a leading newspaper publisher have launched a campaign aimed at addressing gender inequality within the company.
The Women Together network has been set up for female members of staff working for Trinity Mirror, with aims including closing the gender pay gap and increasing the number of women in senior positions across the company.
The group is being headed by Alison Phillips, left, the newly-appointed editor of the Daily Mirror, who says the idea for the group came after she had an “awakening” over the imbalance between the sexes at the firm.
The company’s annual report for 2016 showed it employed 3,104 men, representing 58pc of its workforce, and 2,258 women, representing 42pc of staff.
However when it came to senior managers, 187, or 69pc, were men while 85, or 31pc, were women.
In a piece on TM-owned website InYourArea, Alison said: “All we are asking for is that every bright, smart, hard-working woman has the same opportunities to succeed, should she wish, as every bloke, should he wish.”
Talks and events are set to be hosted by the group at newsrooms around the country, and will also be live streamed to staff.
A steering committee will be formed, with a plan to meet in March and write a list of ‘asks’ for the company.
Said Alison: “They might be an ambition for reducing the gender pay gap, increasing the number of women in senior positions, improving gender equality in certain key meetings.
“A lot of people hate quotas and they are the last resort because they terrify people and can make people feel under siege.
“We don’t want it to be a battleground. We want it to be a movement that everyone feels is in the best interests of the company.
“It’s not going to happen overnight. But I think, or I hope, within 10 years it will be much closer to gender balance.”
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I don’t get the impression anyone at TM has an opportunity to succeed, in any meaningful sense, male or female. I’d called it managed decline, but for the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of it being managed.
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I think it’s wrong that there should be gender pay gaps in any industry and I applaud any effort to close it, but one of the biggest issues blighting journalism in the equality stakes is class.
Working class people can simply no longer afford to work in the media, and even if they manage to get in, they can’t afford to stay in. This means most of the people reporting on things like, say, benefits, poverty, government policy, have absolutely zero understanding of any of it.
The BBC is a good example of this. Go to Salford Quays and there’ll be the odd token Brian Coxalike working on the sports desk, but by and large – regardless of gender or race, they’re all middle class, because nobody else can afford to intern for as long as it takes to actually get a job.
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Good on you Alison
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