Bridget Jones is famous for many things. Writing Christmas cards whilst drunk, being drunk, eating Milk Tray by the boxful, mooning after both unsuitable and suitable men and being single. She’s also known for being fictional.
This has not stopped her, and not her creator Helen Fielding, making this year’s Woman’s Hour Power List. Seven people were picked for the Power List to mark the show’s 70th birthday. The judges were chaired by broadcaster Emma Barnett, who admitted Bridget Jones has been a divisive choice for the panel. However the list was for women who had “actually had impact in real women’s lives”, adding that “impact doesn’t have to be good, bad, serious or funny”. Which perhaps for some explains the presence of the first woman British prime minister.
Bridget was picked because the character: “gave permission for our own imperfections… we still have huge image issues in this country.”
Helen Fielding said it was a “tremendous honour for Bridget and, of course, for me. I hope it doesn’t mean everyone’s going to binge drink and eat Milk Tray late at night.
“I also hope there was something rather more profound going on, there’s something in Bridget’s nature which is very British which is ultimately quite decent, quite kind, quite resilient, not judgemental.”
Woman’s Hour presenter Jane Garvey tweeted: “I did not have a vote, nor did [co-presenter Jenni Murray]. Our panel of judges decided. Would I have picked Bridget Jones? No.”
Comedian David Baddiel also tweeted that: “The fact that one of the women on the Women’s Hour Power List is *not real* suggests perhaps that that old glass ceiling remains reinforced.”
The Power List was topped by Margaret Thatcher who was followed (in no particular order) by Helen Brook, founder of the Brook Advisory Centres in 1964 offering contraceptive advice to unmarried women, Beyonce, Germaine Greer, Barbara Castle, the Labour MP who brought in the Equal Pay Act in 1970, and Jayaben Desai, who campaigned against low pay and poor conditions for women workers.
The panel was made up of business leader and Apprentice star Baroness Brady, former Labour adviser and commentator Ayesha Hazarika, award-winning screenwriter Abi Morgan, former Woman’s Hour editor Jill Burridge and networking expert and author Julia Hobsbawm.
