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In her memoirs, the Poets and Riddler remarked that the dual working atmosphere is a yuppie in

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the 1930s was like life in a monastery without the constellations and religion.

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Personal experience coloured this. Her husband had been brutally sacked from the press, but there was little doubt of the maleness of the press.

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Indeed, from the start of printing in Oxford in the late 15th century,

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until the late 20th century, men dominated the university's publishing and printing activities.

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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.

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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.

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The relentlessly male character of the press changed after the 80s 90s when the press established a bindery at the great Clarendon Street site.

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Since binding involved needles and thread, it was considered women's work and its wages reflected that view.

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Women were paid not fixed wages, but piece rates by the First World War.

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The bindery employed more than 90 women. Many of these women were wives or daughters of the printing house staff.

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And they lived on the doorstep of the press in Jericho. This close family structure with associated social life became a distinguishing

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mark about AP and persisted until the end of book printing at the press.

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In 1989. The First World War brought new opportunities for women, the press as well as elsewhere.

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About 350 men, roughly half the printing workforce, went to active service and in some cases,

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women from their family filled enrols in the printing house and on the publishing side of the press.

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Finding himself short of male office staff in the war, Charles Cannon,

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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.

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Each of the Kamon sisters left their mark on a UAP.

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Mae established the first comprehensive catalogue of press publications in 1916 and recorded her experiences in her memoir, Great Ghosts and Voices.

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Joanna depicted Oxford during the war.

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In her novel High Table, Dorothea made her mark in a different way by marrying her father's colleague, John Johnson, the university printer.

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Further opportunities for women. Women that are yuppy presented themselves at Walter Kootz Mill just north of Oxford, where people was made.

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Many women were employed there in sorting or checking jobs. But as casual workers, they were they were said in 1938 by a D.

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Clapperton control of the mill from 1916 to regard their work as a source of pin money.

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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.

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Women were employed in the traditionally male roles of machine feeders or compositors on the publishing side.

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Women worked as proofreaders and similar. Francis Maude Williams, for example, worked as a proofreader throughout the Second World War.

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She found the press squalid, class ridden and over laddish, her 1970s memoir.

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One of those people stripped all glamour from the press and described it as a dismal factory, particularly uninviting for an educated woman.

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Proofreading the wartime admiralty codes proved especially grinding.

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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.

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Nonetheless, she records that friends persuaded me to stay on and on balance.

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I have not regretted it. After the Second World War, the market for new people books grew and so did opportunities for women.

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For example, those of the so-called Wantage contingent of women who joined the press in 1959, mostly to work in the bindery.

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It was possible for women to rise to higher status positions in some parts of AUP,

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for example, Elizabeth Knight, who joined our UPI London business in 1954 as a secretary.

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But in the 1960s, moved into publicity and went on to become head of publicity for the academic division.

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Are Peace Children's Books Department, based mainly in London until the 1970s,

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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.

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Women such as Margaret Ashworth, who seems to have edited children's books for the press until 1928,

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when on her marriage she left as women were expected to do.

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Still more significant.

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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.

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She went on to discover some of Europe's most important children's authors and illustrators.

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And in 1969 was appointed MBG for her contribution to children's literature.

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The demographic of the workforce really began to change in the 1970s on both the printing and publishing sides through though the

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proportion of women in senior management managerial positions remained low and the same applied to the top level governance of the press.

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Throughout the 1960s, Dame Helen Gardner remained the sole female delegate to the press, being joined by other women early in the 1990s.

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This situation was transformed after 1989 when the press ended its Oxford Book printing operations and a professional publishing culture grew.

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In the 21st century, as a result of the press's 2000 UK staff, 70 percent of women.