Women should accept that workplaces are “politically and sexually treacherous” and choose between continuing to complain about inappropriate behaviour or ensuring it does not happen to them, according to the broadcaster Anne Robinson.
Her comments come ahead of the screening of a BBC documentary billed as an exploration of her “provocative view” that women may have become “too fragile” in the light the #MeToo movement and recent revelations about the gender pay gap.
“I’m still not sure that younger women have worked out what they want,” Robinson said in an interview for the latest edition of the Radio Times.
“Having passed on the warrior baton that enabled women to become prime ministers and heads of city institutions, it transpires they we’re still having to put up with inappropriate behaviour from men while not doing anything about it. I’m starting to feel like it’s going to take another 100 years to get true equality.”
Robinson – who speaks in the documentary to a range of women about the sexism they face and is shown meeting women including “grid girls” at the Brands Hatch racing circuit – said she was angry at the way inappropriate behaviour had been allowed to go on for so long and shocked that women in senior positions were not doing more to curtail it.
She added: “But workplaces are politically and sexually treacherous and I’m afraid women do have to accept that. You have a choice. Do I get off the train and spend my life complaining and making a fuss or do I stay on the train and make sure it never happens to me again? I always chose the latter but maybe I’m just a different sort of warrior.”
The 73-year-old, who began her career in journalism as the only female trainee reporter at the Daily Mail in the late 1960s, also spoke of her own experience of sexual harassment, describing it as rife at the political conferences she covered and recalling trade union leaders chasing her up the stairs at Brighton’s Grand Hotel.
“It sounds ghastly but I just thought it terribly funny. The same powerful guys who could call the country to a halt were the ones pathetically trying to get into my hotel bedroom,” she said.
Speaking of the way she handled unwanted attention at the time, she said she never clouted a man if he tried to pat her bottom because she never attached that much importance to it.
She said: “I certainly didn’t run crying to the loo. I just thought the quicker I got to the top, the sooner I wouldn’t have to put up with this nonsense.”
The Trouble With Women airs on 14 June at 9pm.