Content area
Full Text
Barbara Young was last week appointed vice-chair of the BBC. The names of the better known candidates had been bandied about for a number of months, including the film director David Puttnam and the high-profile publisher Gail Rebuck. Many will have been left wondering who exactly Lady Young is (a newly created baroness and the former chief executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, actually). But headline- grabbing women are few and far between, especially when starlets such as the Spice and It Girls are taken out of the equation. The likes of Anita Roddick, Nicola Horlick, Cherie Booth and Helena Kennedy are among a handful who have the burden of representing the entire female side of their industries thrust upon them. Witness the fuss about last week's interview with Anna Ford: once your profile is raised, anything you say can make headlines. But there are plenty of women at the top of their fields who don't court the limelight - movers and shakers for whom the soundbite is an irrelevance. Important, yes; famous, no. Here we profile a selection
JENNY BARRACLOUGH
TV producer
Age: 61
Married with four children
Educated: Oxford
FORMERLY executive producer of BBC1 documentaries, she left the BBC to set up Barraclough Carey Productions in the early Nineties. She has won numerous awards for her work, including Baftas and Emmys, as well as the Royal Television Society award for best documentary with her two- parter on the history of Aids, broadcast by Channel 4 in 1994. An update of the programme is being produced this year. Last year Barraclough Carey merged with Mentorn Films to form Mentorn Barraclough Carey, the country's largest privately owned television company. She is currently head of documentaries at MBC. Her most recently aired production, Cancer Wars, was broadcast by Channel 4 earlier this year to great critical acclaim. Critics have described her as "immensely gifted".
ELSPETH HOWE
Lady Howe of Aberavon
Age: 66
Married with three children
Educated: Bath High School; degree from London School of Economics in 1985
A JP, Lady Howe has been chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission since 1997 (formerly chair of Broadcasting Standards Council, 1993-97). She studied at the London School of Economics and has served on...