The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday June 18 2005
Wendy Henry was mistakenly awarded the title of Fleet Street's first woman editor in 1987 in the article below. Mary Delariviere Manley succeeded Jonathan Swift as editor of the Examiner in 1711, Rachel Beer simultaneously edited the Observer and the Times from 1891 to 1904, and Mary Howarth was the launch editor of the Daily Mirror in November 1903.
If one had a weakness for symbolism, Fleet Street offered up some rather lovely fodder yesterday afternoon. Less than 24 hours after it was announced that the deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sarah Sands, was to take over as the first female editor of the Sunday Telegraph, the stodgiest, most conservative, most blustering-old-duffer-of-the-shires of British newspapers, the glorious and the glorified scions of the press shuffled in from the rain to the atrium of St Bride's, the journalists' church, to mourn the end of Fleet Street, replete with an obituary read by Rupert Murdoch himself. Admittedly the two events were not directly connected (rather, it was an acknowledgement that Reuters, the last news agency to have an office on the famous street, was moving to Canary Wharf) but there was certainly some wry pleasure to be derived from the timing.
True, Sands won't be the only female national newspaper editor around: there is also Rebekah Wade (the Sun) and Tina Weaver (Sunday Mirror). But they remain in the minority, and for not very surprising reasons. Despite the number of prominent women in journalism today, the cliched masculine image of newspapers still sticks - unshaven men in grubby macs shouting down the phones, women banished to the softer lifestyle sections. And as with many cliches, there is a small grain of truth amid the more revolting slurry.
The fact is, high-profile jobs in journalism, like any jobs involving long hours, high pressure and heavy deadlines, are not particularly amenable to anyone who has to worry about childcare or other familial planning which, even in the 21st century, still tends to be women's responsibility. "As a newspaper editor, the newspaper becomes your family. Your own family gets a little short-shrifted," says Rosie Boycott, who has edited the Independent on Sunday, the Independent and Sunday Express.
And even if family duties aren't a concern, women have to overcome prejudices from newspaper proprietors and owners that they might be one day: a friend of mine once applied for a high-profile job at a newspaper only to be turned down because she was about to get married and "would probably soon be spitting out babies".
Moreover, journalism, like many industries, does not tend to reward simple, quiet diligence but requires a certain amount of schmoozing and self-promotion in order to get ahead - and women still seem to find this more difficult than men.
The best way to improve the situation is by having more women work in journalism: as Boycott says, "the more one can change the culture from within, the more one can change without. When a woman editor is in charge, it is reflected in the paper about how women are discussed, how women are seen and how much they are used as selling-tools in stories."
Incredibly, it was not until 1987, when Wendy Henry took over at the News of the World, that Fleet Street got its first woman editor. This was a full eight years after a woman took up residence in Downing Street. Since then, we have had Bridget Rowe (the People, Sunday Mirror), Patsy Chap man (News of the World), Sue Douglas (Sunday Express), Eve Pollard (Sunday Mirror, Sunday Express), Boycott, Janet Street-Porter (Independent on Sunday), and Amanda Platell (Sunday Express).
These first female editors, particularly the last three, tended to be of a certain type: namely bold, opinionated and with a good line in quotable lippiness. This is no longer quite the case: just as women in the City no longer wear the quasi-masculine paraphernalia of the 80s, such as pinstripes and shoulderpads, the new generation of editors, the three Ws - Wade, Weaver and Wadley (Veronica, London's Evening Standard) - tend to keep lower profiles, possibly reflecting women's greater confidence in high positions. If these early women tended towards the mouthy, then that is simply because they occasionally needed to shout to be heard over the shockingly, if hilariously, sexist grumblings. "When I became editor, one older male journalist went around all the pubs in Fleet Street saying he wouldn't be able to deal with me," recalls Pollard. "So I said to him, 'Would you prefer to communicate by memo?' and he said yes. But, of course, when I started handing out trips to New York and Paris, I couldn't be bothered to write memos, so the trips went to other journalists and he missed out on them. It was about then that he decided he could face talking to me. When a woman editor is tough, she's seen as hardnosed; when it's a man, it's acceptable."
Boycott says that, in the main, such feelings tend to be more subtle "No one is stupid enough nowadays to be overtly sexist. But there are a lot of men who don't take women totally seriously in certain subjects, such as in political arenas, and I would be surprised if Sarah doesn't find that." Plus, Pollard adds, "People still have a go at us about the way we look in a way you don't see with male editors."
It is intriguing that Sands is only the third female editor of a broadsheet whereas tabloids, which, on the surface, would seem to have far more, shall we say, traditional views of the sexes, have had far more. Perhaps this is because broadsheets are, in fact, more old-fashioned and conservative in their ways; perhaps it's because tabloids are seen as so lifestyle and entertainment-oriented that women are seen as a boon. More likely, it's a combination of both somewhat unpalatable reasons.
There are plenty of theses about how women write differently from men (usually involving theories such as "uses longer sentences" and "more descriptive") or work differently from men (less tyrannical and more open to ideas), and some of them even sound almost credible. But do women edit newspapers differently? Certainly they haven't greatly altered the gender politics of the tabloids they've edited: Wade has not only kept but played up the Sun's page 3 "stunnas", replete with oh-so-ironic "news in briefs", in which the topless models give their opinion on the news items of the day. And sometimes, certain "feminine qualities" are seen as helpful in an editor: journalists at the Daily Telegraph yesterday were full of praise about Sands' focus on lifestyle and human interest stories on the news pages. "Sarah is a very fashionable woman with a great knowledge of style and other things that our readers love. I think she'll really liven up the Sunday Telegraph's news pages which can be a bit dry," said one journalist.
But opinion among women editors is divided as to whether generalisations can really be drawn about the way men and women edit. Boycott believes that women editors "look more at the human interest element of stories behind the policy nitty-gritty. I think there are lots of advantages to having a woman editor: women know that it takes all sorts of things to make a life and so it takes all sorts of things to make a newspaper. The worst types of editors are the ones only interested in high politics and high finance and who don't know what people read a newspaper for. Women editors tend to have more patience for the soft stuff, from human interest stories to crosswords and these are the things that are important for sales."
Pollard, however, riles against the suggestion, pointing out that "a newspaper changes under every editor, male or female. Yes, when women started editing newspapers in the 1980s they gave greater coverage to stories about childcare and equal pay. But when you are an editor, you behave like an editor, gender is irrelevant."
And perhaps this is increasingly becoming the way. At the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, journalists were "pretty unbothered" about the prospect of working under a woman for the first time. "Don't forget the Conservative party was the first to have a female leader, so we're not too concerned about working under a woman editor," said another. Perhaps a certain Fleet Street era really has passed away and a new one begun.