'Careers for women': BBC women's radio programmes and the 'professional', 1923-1955.

Abstract

In May 1923, the fledgling BBC launched its first daily programme to be aimed at a female audience, the short-lived Women’s Hour. A popular feature was talks on careers: museum curator, almoner, optician, solicitor, athletics organiser were amongst the newly possible professions that were discussed. By the 1930s, female politicians, lawyers and childcare specialists were discussing their work as established experts, while during the Second World War, naval architects, photographers and life insurance underwriters were lauded as novel female jobs. Woman’s Hour, which was launched in 1946, as well as frequently featuring expert female guests, grappled with a post-war landscape where a return to a career was becoming a possibility for women, once children were grown. This article uses the BBC’s early radio programmes for women as a means to explore the ways in which professional women were represented to its listening public, over a period of thirty-two years.