Jan Patience: When women get together, there is no stopping them.

Our 2021 AGM will be held on Wednesday 28 July. Jan Patience is standing down from her role as co-chair. Here she reflects on the work carried out by Women in Journalism Scotland, and the work left to do.

Interested in joining the committee? Email wijscotland@gmail.com by 28 July.

Jan Patience | Photo by James Williamson

It might surprise some Women in Journalism Scotland (WiJS) members but there was a pre-digital version of this organisation in the 1990s, run with élan by the marvellous Jean Rafferty.

I was a member then and I remember enjoying the social gatherings run by Jean and the committee before I headed off to London to jump on the weekly consumer magazine bandwagon for a few years.

These get-togethers were both raucous and reassuring. It was good to meet other women in the industry and discover they were not as scary as their bylines – or as terrifying as male colleagues made them out to be.

If you think journalism is male-dominated in the 2020s, you ain’t seen nothing. I started out in journalism in the late 1980s and even although I have good memories of supportive male colleagues, women journalists were expected to be either ball-breakers or simpering yes-gals while being constantly played off against one another; probably because we were the minority and it suited the power dynamic in work hard/play hard newsrooms.

When BBC Scotland’s Investigations Editor Shelley Jofre and Guardian Scotland Correspondent, Libby Brooks, fired up Women in Journalism Scotland again in 2016, encouraged by colleagues from WiJ UK, there was a can-do feeling in the air at its first ‘sell-out’ event, attended by First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.

As a freelance, who had embraced the digital age, but was feeling a wee bit out-of-the-loop at my 'kitchen sync', it felt like a breath of fresh air.

I met old work friends outside of social media and was introduced to new colleagues I knew only by their byline. We drank wine, laughed, reminisced, gossiped… three of us even went to Rogano afterwards for an old-school session complete with killer hangover.

I decided to attend committee meetings and ended up offering my services on the social media side. Along the way, I attended the first WiJS Branch into Broadcasting event, held between BBC Scotland and STV and vowed never to say no again to requests by television or radio producers for interview (because I thought I wasn’t ‘expert’ enough).

Attending the Scottish Press Awards with WIJS

I also helped set up the Nicola Barry Award for women journalists in an attempt to help redress the balance of award-winning journalists. All this while getting to know a bunch of great women. In an industry which is based on relationships, this is what I’d been missing.

I quickly realised there was still a lot of work to be done in the media to make it a level and diverse playing field. I often joke that now that women have been discovered, WiJS has been in demand. Then #MeToo, having not previously had a name, reared its head. The work goes on.

Two years ago, when Shelley stepped down as co-chair, I stepped up and joined Libby Brooks until she decided to take a break too. For the last year, Catriona MacPhee and I have worked together remotely as co-chairs, taking the organisation of WiJS entirely online as the pandemic played out in the background.

I can’t tell you how good it was to meet up with Cat – and her new baby – in an actual room, as opposed to a Zoom room but operating remotely has worked well for us as in organisation, making us more geographically inclusive and nimble.

In the last 18 months, we held committee meetings which saw members joining in from Shetland to Stranraer and even launched our inaugural WiJS mentoring scheme, overseen by the mighty Gabriella Bennett.

Gabriella also organised a Think Like a Boss online event featuring broadcaster Kirsty Wark, journalist Anna Burnside and the BBC's Head of Output Operations, Suzanne Lord. We all emerged from that Zoom room two feet taller. And with a smile on our faces.

Our WiJS Book Salon, with Anna Burnside in the chair, has also seen lively online events featuring the likes of journalists-turned-authors Ajay Close and Kirsten Innes

Now, two years on, the time has come to hand over the baton to a new co-chair to work alongside Cat. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure. Occasionally it’s been an emotional and logistical rollercoaster. When women get together though, there is no stopping them.