NINETIES
Dee Smith, 36, founder of iMama.tv, lives in London with her husband and two-year-old daughter Lily. She worked for a small news production company, Carte Blanche TV productions, when she began her career in 1995. She says:
"I was 21 when I started at a company of 25 people and we made news and magazine features for the international market. I was a production manager just out of university.
The office was open-plan, informal and a riot. Every week, there would be one renegade in the same clothes as the night before.
One of the directors was female and there were women working at all levels, but it was macho and stressful.
We all worked really hard and everyone had to prove themselves. The men slapped your bum, discussed the size of the work experience girl’s boobs and everything stopped when England were playing any sport. It was hilarious at first, but eventually got irritating.
When I started, there was one computer for the whole office that the accountant used. Eighteen months later, we had one computer between two and, a couple of years later, everyone had one.
I remember the first time I used email in the late Nineties — I kept sending confidential information to the wrong news sources because I didn’t understand ‘reply’, ‘reply all’, ‘forward’ and ‘cc’. My first mobile was a total brick and the first week I used it in 1997, it ate nearly all of my monthly wages.
Now I run a business from home and can be on a conference call while feeding my child. I’m lucky, I’ve managed to make technology work for me and to make work fit around my life — I don’t think it’s as easy for all women in their jobs yet."
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