Jean Winder

Florence "Jean" May Winder (1909-2006) was the first woman to hold a permanent post as a parliamentary reporter for Hansard, the official record of debate in the Houses of Parliament in the UK. Appointed in 1944, she pushed for equal pay for women reporters and achieved this in 1953. She then became the first woman to make a speech at a Press Gallery dinner.

Early life Florence May Hayward, known as "Jean", was born in Stockwell, London on 23 April 1907. Her parents managed pubs around south London until her father's death in 1913. Hayward trained as a secretary at Hettie Craig-Kelly's secretarial college in Moorgate, London. Craig-Kelly picked Hayward to accompany her as official verbatim reporters on the Royal Commission to the West Indies with the Moyne Commission in 1938–9.

Hayward married Lieutenant Ralph Spearing Winder on 4 October 1940 in London but was widowed when he died on active service in 1941. Charles Pannell also mentioned a woman Hansard reporter 'doing exactly the same work, who does not receive the rate for the job' in the House of Commons during an equal pay debate in 1952.

The Treasury, who set the pay scales, finally equalised Winder's pay with the men in 1953.

Later life On 14 May 1960, Winder married Jack Hawke, the parliamentary correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and chairman of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. On Hawke's retirement, the couple moved to Devon. Hawke died in 1998, and Winder died of old age on 26 December 2005 in Dawlish.