In her memoirs, the Poets and Riddler remarked that the dual working atmosphere is a yuppie in
the 1930s was like life in a monastery without the constellations and religion.
Personal experience coloured this. Her husband had been brutally sacked from the press, but there was little doubt of the maleness of the press.
Indeed, from the start of printing in Oxford in the late 15th century,
until the late 20th century, men dominated the university's publishing and printing activities.
Only one woman has been printed to the university in the 17th century, and Litchfield's took over as printer after her husband died in office.
Although contemptuously dismissed by the dean of Christchurch, John F.L., as having less him than a cat, she held the office for some 20 years.
The relentlessly male character of the press changed after the 80s 90s when the press established a bindery at the great Clarendon Street site.
Since binding involved needles and thread, it was considered women's work and its wages reflected that view.
Women were paid not fixed wages, but piece rates by the First World War.
The bindery employed more than 90 women. Many of these women were wives or daughters of the printing house staff.
And they lived on the doorstep of the press in Jericho. This close family structure with associated social life became a distinguishing
mark about AP and persisted until the end of book printing at the press.
In 1989. The First World War brought new opportunities for women, the press as well as elsewhere.
About 350 men, roughly half the printing workforce, went to active service and in some cases,
women from their family filled enrols in the printing house and on the publishing side of the press.
Finding himself short of male office staff in the war, Charles Cannon,
secretary to the delegates and a rupee's effective chief executive draughted in his three daughters, Dorothea Mae and Joanna, to fill the gap unpaid.
Each of the Kamon sisters left their mark on a UAP.
Mae established the first comprehensive catalogue of press publications in 1916 and recorded her experiences in her memoir, Great Ghosts and Voices.
Joanna depicted Oxford during the war.
In her novel High Table, Dorothea made her mark in a different way by marrying her father's colleague, John Johnson, the university printer.
Further opportunities for women. Women that are yuppy presented themselves at Walter Kootz Mill just north of Oxford, where people was made.
Many women were employed there in sorting or checking jobs. But as casual workers, they were they were said in 1938 by a D.
Clapperton control of the mill from 1916 to regard their work as a source of pin money.
But their own views on this are not recorded. Like the First World War, the second brought new opportunities for women on the manual side.
Women were employed in the traditionally male roles of machine feeders or compositors on the publishing side.
Women worked as proofreaders and similar. Francis Maude Williams, for example, worked as a proofreader throughout the Second World War.
She found the press squalid, class ridden and over laddish, her 1970s memoir.
One of those people stripped all glamour from the press and described it as a dismal factory, particularly uninviting for an educated woman.
Proofreading the wartime admiralty codes proved especially grinding.
I quote, Our day started at seven forty five a.m. and by 11:00 a.m., the women were usually weeping and the men coughing and swearing.
Nonetheless, she records that friends persuaded me to stay on and on balance.
I have not regretted it. After the Second World War, the market for new people books grew and so did opportunities for women.
For example, those of the so-called Wantage contingent of women who joined the press in 1959, mostly to work in the bindery.
It was possible for women to rise to higher status positions in some parts of AUP,
for example, Elizabeth Knight, who joined our UPI London business in 1954 as a secretary.
But in the 1960s, moved into publicity and went on to become head of publicity for the academic division.
Are Peace Children's Books Department, based mainly in London until the 1970s,
was a more general exception in that from around the time of the First World War, women played a significant role on the editorial side.
Women such as Margaret Ashworth, who seems to have edited children's books for the press until 1928,
when on her marriage she left as women were expected to do.
Still more significant.
Was Mabel George, who joined WP in 1946 as a production assistant and two years later it was made production manager for children's books.
She went on to discover some of Europe's most important children's authors and illustrators.
And in 1969 was appointed MBG for her contribution to children's literature.
The demographic of the workforce really began to change in the 1970s on both the printing and publishing sides through though the
proportion of women in senior management managerial positions remained low and the same applied to the top level governance of the press.
Throughout the 1960s, Dame Helen Gardner remained the sole female delegate to the press, being joined by other women early in the 1990s.
This situation was transformed after 1989 when the press ended its Oxford Book printing operations and a professional publishing culture grew.
In the 21st century, as a result of the press's 2000 UK staff, 70 percent of women.