The reality of life as a female reporter in Westminster

The toxic drinking culture in SW1 may explain why there are so few women at the top. As my colleagues neck eighth pints, I’m preoccupied with questions like: How will I get home? Am I too drunk?

‘Two or three nights a week, I’ll find myself drunkenly stumbling home alone, keys clutched between my knuckles, and horrendous tragedies like Sarah Everard playing in the back of my mind’ (Getty Images)

I recently started my new job as a political reporter in Westminster. It often feels like I’ve won the lottery with the best starting job in the world, but there’s one element of the job I’m still struggling to digest. Westminster’s toxic drinking culture can be a hard pill to swallow and it makes SW1 feel unsurvivable for women.

To clarify, no one has ever forced me to drink or to stay out late. However, it is a fact that salacious scoops, and titillating tales are typically told over a bottle of wine or two. No one wants to bitch about their boss over a latte, but staffers are very loose-lipped in pubs after a couple of pints. I rarely get my stories during office hours, but hear them after hours at The Red Lion or The MOG.

Nighttime drinking is a fundamental requirement of the job. Ultimately, I won’t get the same stories as my male counterparts unless I hang around pubs till the early hours of the AM meeting people.

When I tell most of my non-journalist friends this, they often jokingly retort that I have the best job in the world. And to be honest, in many ways they’re right, who doesn’t enjoy going to the pub every night, meeting amazing people and hearing all the scandalous goings-on in Westminster? But as one of the only women in my office, I often find myself limited in ways my male colleagues are not.

When it comes to these late-night drinking sessions I can’t always enjoy myself. Throughout the night – while my colleagues are happily necking their seventh or eighth pint – I’m preoccupied with questions like: How will I get home? When’s the last train? Am I too drunk?

Two or three nights a week, I’ll find myself drunkenly stumbling home alone, keys clutched between my knuckles, and horrendous tragedies like Sarah Everard playing in the back of my mind. A 15-minute walk between stations is – in the cover of night – a treacherous and anxiety-inducing journey.

More than once I’ve sat on the wrong train, only realising once the doors have shut, and find myself heading to a station I’ve never even heard of miles from my house at 1am. For my male colleagues, the journey home after a wild night of rumour-catching is quite different. Though geography might have a small part to play in why they find it so much easier, their gender means they’re rarely stressed about wandering home alone in the dead of night.

Other female political journalists I’ve spoken to (no matter where they work) are experiencing or have experienced similar problems. Being physically unable to keep up with male colleagues means that they often end up drunker, faster. Whilst new hacks (like myself) haven’t quite learnt our lessons yet and are doing our best to ‘fit in’ and consequently drinking ourselves into oblivion, more experienced female colleagues have developed tricks of the trade to help survive. Never drink before 5pm, order sparkling water with lemon and tell everyone it’s a gin and tonic, and so on and so forth.

Being a political reporter isn’t for everyone, but perhaps the toxicity of Westminster’s drinking culture might explain why there are still so few women able to rise to the top.

I don’t really have a solution to Westminster’s alcohol problem. It’s exclusive (and that’s before you begin to take into account people who don’t or can’t drink at all for various reasons, like faith or addiction). At the same time, I love the lifestyle. What young person doesn’t want to stay out late at night, with crazy people who have even crazier stories, drinking in Westminster’s hedonism.

Journalism is a riot, booze is fun and no one wants to be the person to spoil the party. For the sake of my profession, I hope that drunken gossip-mongering remains a key fixture of the SW1 scene, but at the same time, it’s important to note that fitting into this world is always going to be that much harder for women.