THE BBC inclination to employ ever more women in jobs that were once male territory has evoked not even a hum of male irritation.
Gary Lineker is to be replaced by two women and a man on Match of the Day . . .
Reaction: So what!
Whether or not three-for-one presenter ratio will work is to become clear after the trio start next season, even if the company’s accountants approve the division of Lineker’s £1.3million salary.
Money well earnt and deserved in my opinion.
The fact I like this increasing number of women commentators should be no surprise, for when I moved into football 32 years ago women were rarer than a hen’s dentist.
Such a short time later women are acknowledged as players both on the pitch and in the offices.
Only with the whistle or in men’s football management are they rare.
But in press boxes, behind microphones and contributing knowledgeably on television, they are as commonplace as they are in boardrooms, politics and executive positions.
In several aspects BBC can be very proud to have led the charge away from attitudes that once were summed up in the insult “monstrous regiment of women”.
Kelly Cates and Gabby Logan are both outstanding broadcasters.
They will work on the show in rotation with Mark Chapman, already a BBC stalwart.
They are a capable front line to follow the former England striker who will have fronted the show for 25 years. He has been witty and fearless.
Criticisms only began seriously after he was revealed to be the corporation’s highest earner.
Both Cates and Logan are daughters of league and international footballers, Kenny Dalglish, one of Scotland’s greatest, and Terry Yorath of Wales.
Critics will approve their background and wait upon their merits.
Logan is probably best known. She ousted male presenters at several Olympic Games and remains a brisk and skilled regular at big events, and deservedly so.
Cates has worked on BBC radio and TV, mainly on Sky, for many years and is as slick and personable as you would expect in a skilled presenter.
If theirs is a semi-takeover then even more striking was the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year, which on Tuesday featured three women, Clare Balding, Alex Scott and (of course) Gabby Logan.
As Olympic 800 metres gold medallist Keely Hodgkinson became the fourth consecutive female winner of the top prize and, on the night, beat any competition for the most daring dress.
Men could only hope their duties did not include the washing up afterwards.
The battle for equality is not won yet but the tide is sweeping us forward.
It won’t be too long, I suspect, before the US has a female president.
After all, even the Garrick Club which defined itself as a club for “men of refinement” has just opened the door to women.
It may take some while for one of us to become Pope, Russia’s leader, or to chuck away forced hijabs in Iran but most of the West is now wide open to the new order.
And what a shocking waste of human resources the past has been.
As long ago as the Second World War, women showed they could shoulder martial discipline as well as intellectual pursuits.
The days when us women were nurses but not doctors, are over.
We might not have as much muscle but we have proved that we carry so much else . . . the ability to organise, to lead, to plan and to have children and give birth to every tax payer on the planet.
Quite some contribution.
