The recent ruling of the employment tribunal in the case of former Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly is a double cause for celebration: not only does it send out a welcome message that the law will support older women who feel they have been thrown on the scrap heap for no good reason, but, at first sight, it also seems to have been a landmark case in terms of wider social attitudes. It has been interesting and gratifying to note that many socially conservative media outlets which usually dismiss campaigns for women’s rights as “political correctness gone mad” have backed O’Reilly to the hilt on this.

O’Reilly is, of course, not the first older female presenter to gain public sympathy and support after being ditched or passed over for promotion by the BBC: the dropping of Arlene Phillips as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, the end of Moira Stewart’s career as a television newsreader and the decision to hire Toby Buckland as the main presenter of Gardener’s World rather than promote Carol Klein after Monty Don’s decision to take time out after

 a stroke all caused widespread public disquiet. In the case of Gardener’s World, viewing figures dropped alarmingly after the BBC’s decision to “refresh” the show by marginalising its older female presenter, so if the BBC really does believe that the public wants its factual programming to be anchored exclusively by young, sexy presenters, then it seems to be mistaken. Nonetheless, the media kerfuffle over the Countryfile case seems to have taken the public indignation at the treatment of older women on screen to a new level.

I’m not sure, though, that the widespread public goodwill to O’Reilly necessarily indicates a new dawn of woman-friendly attitudes in society. Many of the normally reactionary, normally anti-feminist voices who have spoken out in O’Reilly’s favour are doing so because they perceive this primarily as an issue of ageism, not one of sexism (a view apparently shared by the employment tribunal itself, which, while upholding her claim for age discrimination, rejected her accusations of sex discrimination – rather puzzlingly, since they themselves acknowledged that women are more vulnerable to this kind of age discrimination than men). I suspect that, in many cases, the powerful tugs of middle-class and middle-age tribalism have merely temporarily overcome a deeper distrust of the feminist agenda.

Moreover, in many of these cases of age discrimination which have captured the public imagination, it is younger women in the media industry who have been cast as the villain. In the Strictly Come Dancing row, for instance, Alesha Dixon bore the brunt of the public backlash, not the TV executives who chose to hire her or her male co-presenters. It seemed that both her supporters and Phillips’s accepted unquestioningly that there was room for only one token woman on a panel of four judges – they merely disgreed on what type of woman it should be. That perhaps there was a place for both Phillips and Dixon on the judging panel didn’t seem to cross anybody’s mind.

It seems that, increasingly, any woman in factual programming or TV journalism who happens to be under 45 and passably attractive is dismissed as an “autocutie” who can’t possibly have a brain or any relevant experience for the job she is doing. Fiona Bruce, Emily Maitlis and Katie Derham all have Oxbridge degrees, but you wouldn’t know it, from the constant sniping about “sexing up and dumbing down” that female newsreaders face.

The Madonna/Whore dichotomy appears to be alive and well in broadcasting, with audiences apparently believing that a woman can be a young hottie or an authoritative expert, but not both. While the BBC management seems to think that women exist only as eye candy and should be banished from the screen as soon as they fail to set heterosexual men’s pulses racing (and even then they fail to recognise that older women can be “hot”, too), that a woman who is not young and sexy has no right to be on TV, large sections of the audience and media who oppose the BBC’s attitude seem to fall into the opposite error, of believing that a woman who is young and sexy has no right to be on TV.

Why can’t women be treated as people, as subjects, whose sexiness or lack of is purely an incidental factor, as it is for men, rather than a defining feature of their worth?

Nonetheless, I still feel that, as a society, we are making progress, slow though it may be. I remember when Angela Rippon and Anna Ford began their careers as newsreaders in the 70s there was much comment in the press to the effect that no woman could ever have enough “gravitas” to be an appropriate person to present the national news. I don’t think many people would seriously argue that today. And voices like those of Nick Ross (who has commented that O’Reilly’s sacking was justified, because it is “natural” for people to be attracted to older men but younger women) and Cristina Odone (who has brought up that old chestnut about this legal ruling harming women’s employment chances, as it will make media employers more wary of hiring female presenters in the first place if they know they won’t be able to sack them on a whim) seem to be being treated with the ridicule that they deserve.

I know that it is true that the media is a rarefied world and that O’Reilly’s victory does not necessarily improve the lot of ordinary women outside that charmed circle, but O’Reilly winning this verdict is still, in my view, a lot better than O’Reilly not winning that verdict.

I’m going to marry Benedict Cumberbatch.

Admittedly, the star of the BBC’s Sherlock series may not yet be aware of this fact. In fact, strictly speaking, he hasn’t actually ever met me. But that hasn’t stopped me publicising my matrimonial aspirations on Facebook, Twitter and in numerous text messages to my friends this week.

However, don’t worry, you don’t need to buy your hat just yet. And in the unlikely event of Olivia Poulet reading this, she can breathe a sigh of relief. Because, obviously, I am not really going to marry Le Cumberbatch (he’s not really my type and I don’t even believe in the concept of marriage), it’s just one of those metaphors which women of my age find so easy to trot out about any male actor/musician/writer/sportsperson whose work they admire: “I want to have his babies”, “I love him” etc. It’s a throwback to the days when we used to doodle our favourite pop stars’ names on our pencil cases during the boring bits of Double Maths.

It annoys and embarrasses me that, after years of identifying as a feminist, I still thoughtlessly do this (although I don’t think I’m alone – many of my friends, including those who are already happily married and even some who are lesbians, are equally guilty). Because I’m acutely aware that the romantic ideal of “The Hero I’m Going To Marry” is one of the things that often holds women back, both from aiming to achieve themselves, and from fully appreciating the achievements of other women. While boys of my generation spent their Maths lessons dreaming about being a guitarist/actor/footballer, we girls wasted too much time dreaming about marrying a guitarist/actor/footballer, and that may be one of the reasons why so few of us got round to actually picking up a guitar or kicking a ball around the park. It may also be one of the reasons why so few female pop stars achieved the popularity or financial success of e.g. Duran Duran, Kajagoogoo, Bros, East 17, or even U2, The Police or The Smiths – we might have quite liked Michelle Shocked or Tracy Chapman’s music, but as we couldn’t process down the aisle with them with the sound of Mendelssohn blaring in the background, they were never really going to become an all-consuming passion.

But have things moved on for today’s teenaged and tweenaged girls? Since the rise of the Spice Girls and All Saints in the 90s, it does seem to me that young girls have been far more likely than previous generations to look to female role models as their heroes. I am ambivalent about whether this is a better attitude than that of my generation. There is no doubt that the word “career” has become firmly embedded in girls’ vocabularies in a way it wasn’t when I was eleven, twelve. There’s a pragmatic openness about the capitalist way in which the entertainment industry works, which I don’t remember being the case in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when I was growing up, and female stars seem to be at the forefront of that. In a sense, when I see eleven-year-olds idolising Cheryl Cole or Katie Price or Lady Gaga and I know that they know full well that these are hard-nosed business women who have consciously launched themselves as global brands, carefully charted and controlled their ascent to fame and riches, it does seem that girls today are more attuned to taking control of their lives and having ambitions of their own, shallow and materialistic as those ambitions so often are.

But, quite aside from the narrowly materialistic nature of the “success” and “empowerment” to which these girls aspire, there is, of course, also the body image issues that so often go with it. Girls seem to learn in the cradle that the route to a successful career is being “sexy”, moulding yourself to please the male gaze – primary school children now identify “sexy” as the attribute they most want to have and pre-pubescents dream of having boob jobs. Is there much difference between aspiring to marry a footballer and aspiring to be an independently wealthy pop star or supermodel who marries a footballer? Frankly, I’d almost rather we were back in the days when every female twelve-year-old’s dream was eloping to the Las Vegas Wedding chapel with Adam Ant. At least they were expressing an appreciation for either his art, for what he could do, or for his body and the fact that it pleased their female gaze.

But better, by far, to jettison both the belief that you need a high-octane career that brings you fame and money in order to prove your self-worth and the belief that your self-worth depends on bagging yourself an alpha male. Best to aspire to do things for their intrinsic value and for the pleasure of developing your own skills, the way that the boys in my class did when they tried to play guitar like Johnny Marr or kick a football like Kevin Keegan.

So, actually, no, I don’t want to marry Benedict Cumberbatch, I just really wish I could act like Benedict Cumberbatch. Or even better – act like Josette Simon or Fiona Shaw.

The silent death is cervical cancer. I knew a little about cervical cancer, skipped appointments for the screening because its embarrassing and uncomfortable and occasionally when I did turn up got the ‘abnormal’ diagnosis. I had the abnormal diagnosis three times ,dutifully turned up at the hospital, had an electrode strapped to my thigh in order to power the electric cheese wire that sliced off the abnormal white spots in my cervix. Was I scared?  No- in fact I got quite blase about it- after all I’m young , healthy and I’ve had kids (some doctors I saw when I was younger, claimed that most ‘womens’ problems disappear after having kids!). Then came Jade Goody.

Has Jade Goody done for cervical cancer what Kylie Minogue did for breast cancer? The signs look good-  an average figure for more women going for smear tests is 40%,  so the short life of Goody was not in vain. What is never discussed in the media is one of the real reasons behind why women don’t go for smear tests. Women have that discussion- its embarrasing , sometimes it hurts, you worry about what the doctor or nurse thinks about your pubic hair, does your vagina look ‘normal’? Does it have a funny smell?

Ultimately its the invasision of privacy-  knickers off , lie on the bed and open your legs to ,sometimes, a complete stranger, and then have a cold instrument inserted in order to take a sample of cells. Ok prevention is better than a cure and early detection is crucial, but in these days of stem cell research , the mode of injecting medicine through the pores rather than injection and keyhole hysterectomies is there any possibility of a non invasive way of detecting cervical cancer?

Browsing the net tonight I found two articles that caught my eye , over on Feministing ,about a lesbian being chased off and effectively banned from x-box live and the other over on the F-word about female I.T workers quitting their jobs because of the industry’s sexism.

To be honest , at first, I thought the headline `Lesbian banned from X-box live!` was a headline straight out of  The Sun in the `Freddie Starr ate my hamster` mould. It was absolutely ridiculous and laughed until I checked  out the whole article. I started to think about the last x-box game I completed (Fable II ), its a role playing game with fighting,magic and relies on interpersonal responses with the game virtual characters in order to fully assess renown.

Did it matter if I was a male or female character? A main unlock achievement in the game is to get married and was it a problem if I chose a member of the same sex? No .So sexuality equality is creeping into some games these days ,so why does it matter if you express your sexuality or just simply experiment? Its the old chestnut `just think about the children!` panic , in other terms ‘I don’t want to explain why some people have different sexualities , it makes me uncomfortable’.

That comment pointed to me over to the furor over a disabled woman presenting kids TV. A women with one able arm is presenting toddler t.v . So what?  most of the rational thinking population may think,but no, during a Radio 2 talk show a listener rang in and complained that this woman would give his kids nightmares. Well Mr phone man ,my kids are 3 and 4 and they didn’t bat an eyelid or comment on it!

Back to the game…upon completing the game I was shown the credits.  How many female programmers were credited? Two ,that’s right two. Out of thirty five! WTF! Why is that I thought to myself? Maybe I’m being naive here but I thought we lived in 2009 , and that technology and jobs within the tech industry were  about merit and not about gender. I’m wrong according to the excellent article over on The F-word. Sexism is rife in the I.T industry , apparently us ‘girls’ should stick to low paying call center jobs and making the tea at gaming studios.

I have now made a conscious decision to learn programming , I’m kind of into finding out what my p.c can do and regular readers know that I’m an advocate of open source software, and I like messing around with Linux operating system.

I used to work in pubs , I know that most men are socialized in a sexist manner but I thought that on-line we as women could be what we wanted to be , be it androgynous, lesbian, bisexual or a spider plankton from Mars. Who cares as long as you find  liberty and kinship which under pins the whole ethic of the World Wide Web or even the supposed male dominated Hacker world :-

“Hackers should be judged by their hacking , not bogus criteria such as degrees,age,race or position”.(Levy,S.Hackers(1994)Penguin.New York.

Whilst trying to get down to some serious study about capitalism the other night Suzi and I veered off the topic and had a discussion about Paula Yates.  We’ ve often talked about feminist icons  and I put it to Suzi that in my eyes Paula Yates was, in fact a feminist icon.

Back in the eighties I used to watch The Tube, I remember seeing this funny, vibrant woman wearing prom dresses and sporting a tattoo. No woman presenter on T.V looked like or interviewed like her. The Tube itself was descibed as shambolic and an alternative Top of the Pops, it was here that Paula Yates could shine

Previous to this she was simply known as Bob Geldofs wife, a groupie who got lucky, no mention was made of her career as a rock journalist, did she just get the presenting job because of her husbands connections? Even if she did, she grabbed the opportunity with both hands and made it so that she was a vital part of the programme and was never ‘replaced’ with a younger model through the years.

Paula raised a family, was not eclipsed by her high profile husband and managed to stay afloat in a very tough industry – is this not a mark of a feminist?

Paula did all this by expressing her femininity and raw sexuality which, in turn, masked her intellect – are feminists not allowed to be sexual? Have you never flirted in order to get better service in shops or get served first in a crowded bar?

Paula wrote two books on childcare which reflected what a great mother she must have been, funny, caring and practical albeit with nannies, but the books reflect that she was ‘hands on’.

Then of course along came Micheal Hutchence starting with the infamous big breakfast interview and ending with the tragic early deaths of both. When Paula left Geldof for Hutchence was it Hutchence who was cast as the home wrecker? No, Paula was cast as the villain in the piece, and,  in the eyes of the media she was back to being a groupie who got lucky and left poor Sir Bob, was she guilty of acting in a male gendered way?

I think it must of taken guts to leave such a (by that time) ‘sainted’ high profile husband and still live her life in public. I think she was unique, clever and a pioneer in reconstructing how a woman should act and I would definitely say that , to me, is what feminism is all about.