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Men - an endangered species?

21.05.07

A letter from the Publishers Association to its members in 1967 thoughtfully suggested "that the association should arrange a social gathering, at which members and their wives could meet together".

Today, things are rather different. Last week, speakers including Fraser, Virago founder-director Ursula Owen and Professor Hermione Lee gathered at an Oxford Brookes seminar to consider how things have changed over the years. The conference was told that trade publishing has a largely female workforce, with women at the top of some of the UK's largest publishing houses—Helen Fraser at Penguin, Gail Rebuck at Random House and Victoria Barnsley at HarperCollins.

"When I came into publishing 35 years ago, it was a man's world," Fraser told delegates. "I found it very difficult to get into publishing. To a man they were very dismissive."

But Fraser found her way, starting out as a secretary at Methuen before moving on to Collins and then Reed Consumer Books. "Collins in the early 1980s was the first time I came up against threatening male behaviour," she said. "It was run by a group of very aggressive Glaswegian Scots." She "ran foul" of the most aggressive, and was summarily fired. She soon found another job at Reed, where she was told by her bosses that "'the thing about women and men is that men are just more clubbable'. It was the kind of high-testosterone behaviour you could expect on a cricket team touring England—it was quite a difficult place to work."

Over the course of her 35 years in publishing, Fraser has had two daughters and gained two stepdaughters. "When I had my first baby, 25 years ago, I was the first person in living memory at Collins to have a baby and come back to work. Now, at Penguin, babies and maternity leave are the norm; with an 88% female workforce [at the Penguin General division] you have to deal with it."

The Penguin Group as a whole is 75% female, said Fraser. Kate Hyde, senior editor at HarperCollins' Press Books, said the split is very similar at HC: "It's probably about 70% women and 30% men in most sectors across the company, and probably across publishing as a whole."

At Hodder & Stoughton, Sceptre publishing director Carole Welch pointed out that Hachette's c.e.o. is a man [Tim Hely Hutchinson], Hodder Headline's group m.d. is a man [Martin Neild], and the m.d. of Hodder is a man [Jamie Hodder Williams]. "But then every director of each department—production, financial, marketing, sales and publicity—is female, except for the art director." Hodder's editorial team consists of three publishing directors and 13 commissioning editors, four of whom are men. One of the male editors covers sport, the second thrillers, the third popular history, biography and autobiography, and the fourth a mix of humour, popular culture, and upmarket history and non-fiction. "That split is probably broadly true in other houses," said Welch. "I think on the whole these genres suit male editors' tastes, and might also suit male readers' tastes."

Fraser agreed: "On the commercial side of publishing, it's very rare to find women doing SAS thrillers or men doing chick lit. You need boy and girl editors." But on the literary side, Fraser believes that "a really great editor is gender-blind and responds to the words on a page". Lee asked Chatto & Windus editorial director Jenny Uglow and editor Poppy Hampson if women bring any particular skills to editing. "I don't think so," said Hampson. Uglow added: "Men are as alert as women. I don't think there is any particular nurturing from women."

But Hampson told delegates that she has seen men climb the ladder faster than women. "That's partly to do with the fact that managers, both men and women, don't feel comfortable with a male assistant." She also said that she has encountered dismissive attitudes to her job. "Some people have used the word 'hobby' with me—that if I do the job, it's because I love publishing and editorial. It isn't well paid."

Money talks

The general consensus was that publishing needs to increase its starting salaries to attract a wider mix of graduates—particularly men. "What we really fret about is recruiting more young men," Fraser said. "You can only have success as an industry if the people on your staff reflect who you are publishing for."

"Publishing remains a rather invisible industry, which rarely advertises jobs," Owen added. "Many graduate trainees say they aren't aware of the publishing industry. Class and money are still quite significant in getting a job in publishing—there's low pay in the lower ranks and in some of the higher ranks too."

Fraser agreed that pay was crucial: "One of the things publishers have to do is get starting salaries up higher. It can be very discouraging for young men. At Penguin, the starting salary is £18,000, and we are trying to get it higher."

Women in publishing

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