2026-03-09
29 分钟This is The Guardian.
The Women Behind the Sex Discrimination Act by Susanna Rustin.
Read by Carlise Peer.
Celia Brayfield was at her desk in the female section of the Daily Mail's Fleet Street office when an editor called her over.
It was July and Wimbledon had started.
He said,
we want you to go down and get into the women's changing rooms and report on lesbian behaviour.
One didn't normally swear at that time, but I declined.
That was the attitude then, she told me.
From the late 1960s until the early 70s,
Rayfield was one of a small group of female journalists working on women's pages in newspapers.
We were dealing with everyday sexism on an unbelievable scale, she said.
You learn to wear trousers or take the lift because
if you took the stairs someone would try to look up your skirt.
But then you couldn't go to a lot of press conference venues in trousers.
In the Savoy, for example, women in trousers weren't allowed.
Today, Brayfield is an author and lecturer living in Dorset.
She started aged 19 as an assistant to Shirley Conran, then Women's Editor of The Observer.
When Conran moved to the Daily Mail, Brayfield went too.
The Daily Mail was a very sexist organisation, she told me.