THERE are few things that sink the heart of an ageing feminist more than seeing youngsters going though the same old discrimination.
 
Girls and young women are keen to try journalism as a career. Good. They’re getting places on college and university courses. Good. Apprenticeships are not available, as they were in my day (Oh, heck, I’m only a few sentences in, and I’ve said ‘in my day.’ I’d hoped to avoid that.) Not so good. But girls see media work as worthwhile and exciting. Very good.
 
But too many women do not stay in the trade. Many are leaving, and there’s insufficient data to tell us why. Some would leap to the conclusion that women take time off from their careers, to make babies. 

Well, yes, in some cases, naturally. That’s not the all-embracing answer, though. There are other reasons; they’re deeper, darker, and we need to understand them.
 
I asked a lot of female journos how they felt about their chosen profession. The responses varied, according to generation, area of work and personal experience.
 
Main comments: some had bad experiences when they’d gone on maternity leave. It hadn’t been easy, returning to work, and some had found their responsibilities — or their place in the pecking order of commissions and bylines — had been lost.
 
Some had suffered sexual harassment, and been through the whole ragbag of emotions and reactions, with many being unaware that this could, or should, be reported.
 
Ageism loomed large. Women with decades in the job spoke of their experience as having less currency than men’s. 

Personally, I’ve lost count of the times it’s been assumed that I’m returning to work after raising a family. The truth, of a child-free 40 years of work, re-learning my trade through every gift and curse of technology, seems to come as a shock.
 
A few young female students at a local university made an interesting point, that they were ignored when challenging male colleagues on news values. 

“If there’s a piece on the economy, or Brexit, then they’ll find men to comment. If it’s childcare, or anything to do with children — schools, or something like sex education — then they always go for women to comment. Why?”
 
Women in Journalism has found that, in UK national papers, 78 per cent of front page bylines were male. That study was in 2012, and they surveyed again in 2017 — the bylines had increased by 2 per cent.
 
So, there aren’t many reasons to be cheerful, for females getting into journalism. The male gaze is everywhere, from the Daily Mail’s online pics of celebrities (known as the “sidebar of shame”) to the endless blather about female politicians’ hair and fashion.
 
A charity PR colleague told me of an editor who’d asked her for some images, to illustrate a piece on her work with the bereaved wives of armed forces personnel; they wanted “photogenic” widows.
 
Photojournalist Jess Hurd tells of a fellow snapper who wanted a pic of a quirky placard at a march, but asked the young woman holding it to pass it to her “more attractive” friend.
 
It’s this section of the trade that comes under the spotlight this week, with a motion from the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) going to the TUC women’s conference. It addresses the pitiful state of photojournalism, where only 15 per cent are women. That’s according to the founder of Womenphotograph.com, Daniella Zalcman.
 
The motion says: “Women disproportionately drop out of the photography industry, even though photography degrees usually have more female than male students. The work of women photographers is under-represented in galleries and within news publications.”
 
It seems that, in 2017 when the Times Review looked at the photographs in many major publications’ collections of “the most significant images of 2016”, these overwhelmingly carried male photographers’ credits — ranging between 80 and 100 per cent.
 
So, when editors measure the work of females, deciding whether they’re the right stuff, they’re comparing that against a canon of work mainly produced by males.
 
The motion calls on the TUC to “work with the NUJ Women’s Network to support the development of opportunities for women in photography, and to promote mentoring, grants and scholarships and proactively address gender imbalance.”
 
That seems a decent move, and networks can have other benefits. It’s noticeable to me, speaking to young journalists regularly, that staffers can be sometimes more isolated than freelancers. The latter seek out or create our networks, even if some are only on social media.
 
It’s essential to glean some benefits from the online world. God knows, women get enough abuse and spite via cyberspace. 

A freelancer in her fifties, writing for an ezine, told me last year: “I used to look forward to seeing my pieces running. Now all I can think is: don’t let it go up on a Friday — that’ll ruin my weekend.”
 
The fairly depressing chat with young female journos ended on an uplifting note. One had tried setting up a group in south-west London, but faced a backlash tantrum from male students who felt excluded. 

I suggested that this was exactly the point, that the Equality Act provided the legal clout for this, because your sex is a protected characteristic, and that the young ’uns should dig their heels in.
 
The best advice to females working in the media has to be: persist, join a union, set up a women’s group, report sexual harassment, resist the “stories” about babies and shopping. And to the male media workers: if you can’t help, don’t hinder.
 
For more information visit www.nuj.org.uk and womeninjournalism.co.uk.