ABSTRACT
The main question to be asked at the end of a report of this kind is whether women have done as well in the BBC as might be expected, considering the fact that many able women leave when they get married or have babies. The question must be underlined by the fact that most of the very senior women in the BBC are going to retire fairly soon, and that there are no obvious female successors to their posts. There is also very strong evidence to show that women are reaching positions of less responsibility than they were even fifteen years ago, when Mary Somerville had Controller rank. There is certainly no reason to imagine that anything like the situation in the early 1930s, when almost half the departmental heads in the BBC were women, could be repeated in the near future.
