Woman's Hour - 01/10/2025

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.

Hi, I'm Nula McGovern, and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. While you're here, I wanted to let you know about the Woman's Hour Guide to Life, your toolkit for the juggle, the struggle, and everything in between. Life is complicated and often incredibly busy, so whether you're fixing a problem, at one of life's crossroads, or just looking to shake things up a bit, this is the guide you'll need to help you survive and even thrive. Each episode brings together world-class experts with women

sharing their honest, powerful stories, offering real insight and also practical tips that really work. From work and career to relationships and family issues, the focus is on helping you grow, also adapt and overcome life's curved walls. First up, friendship. How to stay connected with friends when life feels like a never-ending to-do list.

Join us only on BBC Sounds, But now, back to today's Woman's Hour. Hello and welcome to the programme, first day of the month and first day in a new job for Blaze Metroelli as she becomes the first female head of MI6. We're going to hear from women who have met her, even one who rode against her. They will tell us what they know.

Also in the program, the lawyer Gloria Alred. In recent years, she has represented multiple victims of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. How are the headlines and the current debate around releasing the Epstein files affecting victims. Plus, we have the writer Rebecca Solnit. Rebecca reflects on the culture that allowed Epstein and others like him

to sexually exploit teenage girls. She believes it was feminism that exposed and denormalized the abuses. And we'll also hear from Mimi Nation Dixon, the theology graduate, who has written a one-woman play about an accidental female vicar. You can text the program,

the number is 84844 on social media. media, we're at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email us through our website for a WhatsApp message or voice note. That number is 0300-100-444. But let me turn to Afghanistan. Since the Taliban took power in the country in 2021, we know that girls over 12 have been banned from getting an education. Job options have been severely restricted. And more recently, books written by women have been removed from universities. Now, the Taliban government has imposed a nationwide internet shutdown across the country that is set to last indefinitely. Now, this could have particular impact on women who relied on online learning.

Afghan women have told the BBC that the internet was their only hope. Let me bring in Madhuba. Now, Rosie, a senior journalist from the BBC's Afghan service. Welcome back. And Majuba, good to have you with us. So tell us what we know about the internet shutdown. Thanks for having me, Lula. Well, as we all know, Afghanistan has been plunged into a total communications blackout.

Fiber optic internet, mobile data, phone calls, SMS services, and even landlines have been all switched off, disconnecting the countries like more than 40 million people from each other and also from outside world. only radio and terrestrial television remain on air and with the BBC Afghan service emerging as one of the few international voices are still reaching the country. Some Afghans are secretly using satellite connections like Starlink, but these are illegal in Afghanistan and are tightly monitored. So the shutdown was imposed suddenly on the 29th of September with just one hour notice.

So all networks were cut at 5 p.m. local time and by the following morning, connectivity had totally collapsed to less than 1%. The Taliban has offered no official explanation so far. But insiders suggest that the order came directly from the movement's supreme leader in Kandahar, while officials themselves have expressed unease, but the blackout remains in force, as you mentioned, could last indefinitely. It's so hard to imagine just all that communication that has stopped. You paint that picture. And we have, of course, followed very closely here, the story of

women and girls in Afghanistan. How do you think this particularly affects them? Well, among the hardest hit are women and girls in Afghanistan. For many, online education had become the last and only window to learn and after schools and universities were close to them. That lifeline has now vanished. One of the girls that I knew and I had spoken to when I lost, visited Kabul she was a law student and obviously she couldn't after universities shut

down she couldn't continue her education and she wanted to become a makeup artist and then she became a makeup artist and then the Taliban shut down all the beauty salons then she learned how to make handmade handbags and sell them online on social media, but now she cannot run her business. So this is only one example. But it does give that idea of a person trying different paths, trying to create something for themselves and a livelihood, but being shut down no matter what avenue they choose.

Exactly, exactly. And also I spoke to a woman in Washington, D.C. recently. She works for Eagle Online Academy and she was one of the people outside Afghanistan that provided some sort of academic education like cybersecurity and business management and some other subjects for some girls who could not go to university and they had thousands of students. across Afghanistan that they were learning online and they have lost all sorts of communications with them. So all avenues are shutting down to girls in Afghanistan, unfortunately. I understand you have a BBC colleague in Afghanistan that had gone to a maternity hospital. Tell me what they found. Yes. And what they witnessed in Afghanistan was outside maternity wards or hospitals, there was chaos because, you know, in Afghanistan, men cannot go to inside

hospitals or inside maternity wars they are not allowed in. So because they couldn't contact their wives and their wives couldn't contact them, as I said earlier, SMS messages are down, phones are down. So they didn't know these men waiting for hours on end. outside hospitals not knowing how their wives are doing and whether they had their babies or not so there was total chaos apparently outside and what about you then

because you are back and forth to the country but obviously maintaining very strong links if you're not able to be in touch with the people that you regularly are I'm just wondering how you'll do your job it is going to be very difficult and I mean yesterday I tried probably around 50 people that I've been in touch with to get some sort of reaction or to find out how they are managing their lives

but unfortunately I couldn't get in touch with any of them so it is very difficult and the majority of people living outside Afghanistan I've been trying to contact their relatives and families and they haven't been able to make any sort of contacts. And I'm wondering where it goes from here. You said that the Taliban didn't give any reason or timeline. And of course, they haven't changed any of their actions in relation to women and girls either,

despite pressure from outside of the country. Do you see this changing? Well, there are some sources saying, encoding the Taliban chief spokesperson that saying that the fiber optic cables were decaying. And he sort of denied the ban, but these sources are not reliable. We don't know how accurate this is. And he has been saying that there is no ban and that they were decaying cables and they were being replaced.

But these sources cannot be trusted. We don't know, but the majority of drastic measures taken by the Taliban leader in Kandahar, so far they haven't changed, whether it has been about girls' educations, women's work, and as you mentioned in your intro banning books, they haven't changed. and the or women being banned from gyms and parks and stuff like that. So we don't know. Yes, and even their voices being heard loudly in public, another ban. Majuban Aruzi, thanks so much for joining us, senior journalist from the BBC's Afghan service.

It is a little over four years since the Taliban came back to power. Now, the agency commonly known as MI6, the secret intelligence. service has a new chief. And for the first time in its 116 year history, it is a woman. Her name is Blaise Metroelli. She starts today. So who is she? Well, let's talk to two people who know. I have Helen Worrell, an investigative reporter at the Financial Times, who interviewed Blaise as part of a project talking to female spies. What a cool project. And Leby Air's senior commissioning editor at The Telegraph, who has been rowing competitively against Blaze for several years. Welcome to you both. Helen, great piece. If anybody hasn't caught it yet in the FT on speaking to

female spies. But you interviewed her under an alias. I did, yes. So I spoke to Blaise. Back then, she was head of MI6's Q directorate, which is the part of the organisation that deals with tech and gadgetry. That we know from James Bond movies. Exactly. Made famous in James Bond. And because only the chief of MI6 is publicly named. At that point, you know, she was still under, you know, essentially secrecy. So I interviewed her under an alias, which was Ada. And I talked to her about, you know, her life in the service and, you know, what it was like to be a female spy and how she'd come to have that job.

Did she come to have that alias because of Ada Lovelace? I don't know. It was something that she chose. It was something that she, that she very much wanted to have, but I didn't ask the reason why. Now, when you heard Helen that she had got this job, what was your thoughts? I mean, I wasn't particularly surprised. You know, Blaz is somebody who has a lot of skills that are very relevant to the issues in the world today

that she and the rest of MI6 are going to have to be dealing with. Obviously, as I just mentioned, she's spent part of her career looking specifically at technology and both the challenges and the opportunities that, you know, AI and other sorts of new technology bring to the world of human intelligence. So she has that expertise, which I think makes her knowledge very current and relevant. But she also spent a lot of her earlier career on operations in the Middle East. She was a career spy. She is a career spy. She's been a spy for, I think, around 25 years. And, you know, she did, she also has that on the ground experience of actually recruiting and running agents in a region which has become, you know, no less unstable. And if she were to walk in here right now, what would we see? What's her presence like? I think Blaze does actually have real presence in her room. She's sort of tall and she is confident, but she's, for somebody who is bound by secrecy,

and obviously there's a lot she can't say, she's surprisingly sort of relaxed and informal. I mean, having met quite a lot of spies, you know, spies are very good at getting on with people. I suppose that's part of the job. Part of the job is making connections, you know, finding common themes, putting people at their ease. and you know this is something that she's obviously very practiced at she's good at she's she's friendly she's she's down to earth one of the sort of taglines that my 6 uses in its recruitment campaigns to try and persuade more people that maybe this is a career that could be open to them is secretly just like you and I've always been slightly skeptical of this because I actually I think the job of

being a spy is extremely unusual and would be quite strange to a lot of us but I think if you met Blaise, you think that she was quite down to earth and, you know, maybe, you know, like a friend. Well, let us turn to Leby, who got a bit more of a surprise than you did when she figured out that Blaze had been appointed. Tell me, Leby, how you found out. And we'll also talk about how you know her. Yeah, so I was listening to the Today program, of course, on Monday morning, I think, and then heard it announce that Blaze was the new chief. But I didn't put two and two together until I got to the telegraph offices and looked at our homepage.

And there was a picture, the main image, of Blaze in the 1997 Cambridge Women's Blue Boat. So she rode for Cambridge in the women's boat race in the 97. I rode in 94. But in recent years, we've been rowing against each other as Masters race. rowers, say, for the last four years. Well, I have a feeling she's going to be competitive. Well, the thing about being a rower is that you desperately want to win. I mean, you have that will to win.

You have that will to succeed. And that's, I mean, a lot of people often say to me, oh, isn't it really boring going up and down a river all the time? The point is, it's never boring because you are in constant pursuit of perfection of the next stroke. You want to go faster. you want to make the boat go faster. So that gives you a kind of unique skill set, I think.

And, you know, more than that, Blaze will be used to experiencing extreme pain. You know, we put ourselves through awful erg tests, through horrible nights in the gym. We get up at 6 a.m. to get on the river, it would be raining, you know, whatever the weather, you go out in that boat. And you learn how to push yourself, and you learn how to push yourself in extremes. And so all of those skills are just incredibly useful when you get into the working world, especially, I would say, probably a male-dominated one. I was thinking that with rowing, right?

I mean, traditionally male. Yeah. I mean, and back in the 90s, you know, I think it's like it's easy to sort of forget, I think now that the women's boat race, you've got the, you know, you've got the men and you've got the women, they've row on the same day. You know, you forget that back in the 90s, we were in Henley, you know, people hadn't even really, didn't even really know that there was a women's boat race. We were very much the second-class citizens in that case.

You know, we were borrowing the kit from the men who had this massive sponsorship in my time from B-Feed to gin. And, you know, it was really actually kind of fairly early days for women's throwing to be taken seriously, even though the first women's boat race happened in 1927. So it's taken a long time, but we were used. used to fighting against sex sexism and standing up and saying, look, what we do is important to and I think that will have helped her. Yeah, I mean, I'm fascinated that she has the time recently

as you talk about to fit in rowing because you have to make that commitment and turn up as you talk about. But I'm wondering, coming back to you, Helen, and it's fascinating, right, to hear the whole rowing side of blaze as well. Being a female spy, What kind of challenges do you think she faced?

I mean, Levy was talking about being in a male-dominated world there as well on water. I mean, I think there are lots of challenges, not least because sort of culturally we think of spies as being very much a male-dominated area. You know, people like James Bond and George Smiley. I think traditionally, MI6 has not had many women in senior positions, so it's probably been harder to find. role models and, you know, people higher up to aspire to. And I think, you know, being a spy is a very tough life, whether you're a man or a woman. You have to make quite a lot of personal sacrifices. You can't talk to even your closest family members about what you do. You have to pretend to be doing essentially a different kind of job. You may have to go away for long periods

and be completely uncontactable. And I think all of these things make it quite a sort of strange way to live your life, regardless of your gender. She told you about being an agent while pregnant? I mean, I think she did mention at one point in the interview that we did about how when she was pregnant, it was a, you know, it sort of opened up different conversations with people. and, you know, with people she was having discussions with, I think the word she used was, you know, even the toughest negotiators can sort of soften and, you know, they start talking about their hopes for the next generation. So I think it makes, it sort of moves the conversation in a slightly different direction potentially. I was also, she asked for a car seat, a baby car seat to be put into an armoured vehicle that had them stumped for a while, apparently, those that were organising her security because it was something.

They hadn't come up against before. But I was thinking, and you talk about this in your article as well, Helen, that female spies are often seen as femme fatals and that she had that knack with language about saying, oh, I see you like a father, like disarming people so that they wouldn't get any notions. Absolutely. And just to be clear, this is something I asked her about,

not something that she sort of volunteered herself. But I was interested because she'd obviously worked in a lot of conservative cultures where people may not have been used to women in the workplace and I was interested in how you diffuse a situation of people maybe don't understand your interest in them or sort of misinterpret your intentions. And she did have this very good line about how if you say, you know, I see you as my father

or I see you as my brother and you introduce that language of familial relationships, you're not rejecting somebody. You're not sort of telling them off or rebuking them. you're just reframing the conversation in a way that sort of puts you in mind of a different type of bond, a very close and trusting bond, but not a romantic one. Back to you, Leby. How would you describe Blaze? I was saying to Helen, you know, if she walked into the room or maybe how does it feel when she's coming to get into the boat?

Yeah, I mean, I think going back to what Helen said, I would use the expression down to earth as well. You know, she is really chatty, open would be an interesting word to use, obviously, given that, you know. She's a spy. Yeah, she's a spy. But I think particularly, so last year when we were racing together, so in opposite cruise, I should say, so we had a dead heat in the race. So it was an incredibly tight race, and it was a dead heat afterwards. and then we had the trophy presentation

and we were all kind of, you know, queuing up and had a glass of chapel down. And so I kind of caught up with her then and had a bit of a chat. And really kind of, you know, I thought she was sort of alluding to looking after elderly parents or, you know, those kind of stresses

that you have in midlife. But she sort of set her up repeatedly, you know, when there's a lot of things going on, you know, then getting on the river is a fantastic escape. and a fantastic way to kind of just to clear your mind. And of course, when I found out earlier on this year, of course, that she was the new chief, it kind of all clicked into pace

and I still realised what she was talking about. But, yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes that there's a bit of rivalry between the old universities, of course. But I would say there's kind of, there's none of that with her. Obviously, on the water, there is. Once you get water, we are midlife women

who are all trying to do something extraordinary and, you know, drag our bodies back out onto the river and try and recreate those kind of glory days of our youth. And, you know, and the fantastic thing is we can do it and she can do it. And, you know, whether she's going to be able to now, of course, is a bit of a, you know, an issue, I think. Which I want to just throw over back to Helen. What is in her intray as new chief? Well, obviously, you know, there's on glowing conflict in Ukraine. So I imagine that she and her colleagues will be working hard to understand, you know, Russia's strategies and

capabilities in that conflict. The instability in the Middle East is obviously ever present, you know, caused by the war between Israel and Hamas. And there's an overspill of that into violence by proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis. Also arising from this, you know, there's always the potential and the discussion about nuclear proliferation and, you know, UN sanctions have just been reimposed on Iran for the first time in a decade. So this is very much part of the current conversation. I mean, one thing I would add is I think because Blaze is a specialist and that sort of has expertise in technology, I think she'll be very much looking to the future of the service

and how a human intelligence agency, which is recruiting human sources, harnesses and uses technology to both sort of give it an advantage over it, the UK's adversaries, but also potentially to sort of try and mitigate the power that that gives adversaries against the UK, exactly. Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating. Thank you both so much, Helen Worrell. You can find Helen's Peace, the Secret Lives of MI6's top female spies. It's on the FT website. And also, Leibiers, keep on rowing.

Thanks very much to both of you. for joining us. Now, if you want to get in touch, anything you're hearing on today's program, you can text us, email us via the website, or find us on socials. And in case you missed it, last week I spoke to the singer, songwriter and global feminist activist Annie Lennox OBE. She told us about her five decades as a musician from her days in the tourists to the arithmetic and of course her highly successful solo career. Here's just a snippet of that interview where she told me about the impact of being diagnosed with ADHD. I'm a major. I'm a magnificent. pie. I observe things. I'm highly sensitive, you know, and I found out that I actually am a bit

neurodivergent, you know. You were tested for ADHD, which you passed with flying colors. I did. And it's explained a great deal to me about how my mind works and how other people with ADHD, how their mind works. And it's not an easy thing to live with, but it's also has a fantastic superpower. And can bring brilliance as we have found. I think it does. I think it does bring brilliance. I'm not saying I am brilliant.

I am. Thank you very much. I'll take that. I'll take that. But you know what, Nula, I, for most of my life, I aspired to brilliance, let's say, not in the sense of, yeah,

and maybe an achievement, but through the medium of music, through the medium of language, lyrical presentation, all of that, All my curiosity has brought me to this place today in 2025 and I'm 70. So retrospective kind of is only a little slice of that journey. It's almost like one of those gattoes. You can hear the whole interview by going to BBC Sounds to search for Tuesday,

the 23rd of September for Women's Hour. Now, I want to go to a story that has been in the news so often recently that we could have talked about it every day here on Women's Hour. are the gradual release of files from the US Department of Justice's investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. What it reveals about his wide circle of influential friends and the contact that some of them maintained with him, even after his sexual offences against girls, were well known. Lord Peter Mendelsohn, the UK ambassador to Washington, was sacked over his links to Epstein. A number of charities have severed ties with the Duchess of York,

Sarah Ferguson for what appears to be a supportive email to Geoffrey Epstein after his first conviction. Today, I can bring you the voices of two key women in the United States to reflect on this ongoing story. First, Gloria Allred. She has been a women's rights lawyer for nearly half a century. She's represented 27 victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Gloria told me what impact all the current attention on Epstein is having on his victims. It's like a water torture test. It's a drip, drip, drip. Many of them had hoped and expected that they could put all this behind them, but that's not what's happening because now there's a political battle and there's still a legal battle going on by Ms. Maxwell, the convicted felon. And in fact, it's before the United States Supreme Court right now, her appeal.

Now, whether it will prevail, that's another issue. but in addition to the political issue, there are legal issues still out there. You know, they're just constant revelations. It's whenever they turn on their news, it can't be avoided. Disturbing. What do they tell you about what this does to them?

I can tell you that for them, it's very emotional. It's emotional that they even feel they have to fight the battle to have the records released, the files, the investigative files that were done in connection with the 2008 case against Jeffrey Epstein in Florida, which resulted in a sweetheart deal for him

where he could go to his office every day and just sleep in the jail overnight to 13 months and then just, you know, plead guilty or no contest to, you know, soliciting a minor for prostitution and register as a sexual predator and then come back to life where, you know, he was accepted by a lot of his rich, powerful, famous friends who appeared to ignore or plead ignorant of any prior conviction and just resume life as though nothing had ever happened, very disturbing to them. Of course, one of the voices that was really a proponent for the victims was Virginia Joufrey in April of this year, 2025. She died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia.

She was 41. What does it mean that her voice is no longer heard? Well, I will say that her voice is heard through her family members now, some of whom I met in Washington, D.C., not long ago when I was there, for the rally and rallies of many of the victims who, wanted Congress to hear their pleas that the file should all be released and they shouldn't be dribbled out. They should all be released. And why does there even have to be a battle over this? Why can't there be transparency? Why can't there be accountability? So what I'm saying is

they have now organized as a group and they put out statements as the relatives, you know, the brothers, the sister-in-laws of Virginia Goufrey. So they still do have a voice she does. They knew her better than many others. Her voice should be heard through that. You mentioned the files being released. Are you hopeful that they will be? Well, I always say hope is not a strategy. It's a child's wish. So what we have to do, because, again, you know, women are never given any rights. We always have had to have. to fight for them. We still do. So the battle goes on in Congress. And, you know, there are files that are being released. So the whole point is to try to hold accountable any third parties who were not

just there, but who, you know, sexually exploited or assisted in trafficking, sex trafficking, underage girls or adults, and manipulating them and controlling them and abusing them. That's the point of getting all of the files release. But what will you do? You mentioned Congress there. I mean, is that your path? Is that the most effective way that you feel you will get the files released? In the court of public opinion, it is important to keep educating the public

and to bring back to the public consciousness that there are still victims there. Many are speaking out, but majority are not speaking out. want their privacy. Their majority are in fear still. So there's been some justice for them. I represented 27 and we were able to win some justice for them, but it's not enough. That's the point. So yes, speaking out the court of public opinion, doing whatever is appropriate to bring attention to the fact that victims are still there still seeking justice. That's what needs to be done. I think right now the Congress is close to getting, you know, the one vote they need. Actually, a Democrat who said she would support releasing the files was just elected.

So we'll see when she is permitted to take her seat in Congress and then they have the vote. We're following it closely and we'll do whatever it takes. It's legal and peaceful, maybe not so peaceful, but legal and politically appropriate. Explain that to me. To win justice for the victim, as much as possible. Maybe not so peaceful. Explain that to me a little bit more. Well, I'm saying if we have to, you know,

organize protests of victims being out, that may not be considered peaceful. But we have to keep on with this because there's so many other important issues and there's chaos on so many fronts in the United States every day, in so many ways that I won't even go into, but I'm sure you are aware of them in the UK.

So what I'm saying is we have to be persistent. How would you, Gloria, describe your role now with survivors? Well, to continue to help them to have a voice and to support them if, as in when they wish to speak out. And I think right now it isn't a question of lawsuits. There's never going to be complete justice because complete justice would mean they would never have been victimized by Jeffrey Epstein and Galane Maxwell.

So we can't undo that, but what we can do is to win as much justice as possible and to try to minimize the injustice. I think were it not for the victims, we wouldn't even have the release of the files that we have, but we just have to keep at it. In January, I'll have been practicing law with my law firm for 50 years. and we still have so many battles to fight and I always say that the women's movement is unique in that it's the only movement

in which the participants become more radical as they get older and I think that's very true but the reason for it is because we go back to our lived experience as women and the battles we've had to fight and continue to fight

So we don't agonise. We organize. That's what we have to continue to do to win rights because we know what's at stake for our daughters. Women's rights lawyer, Gloria, all read there, reflecting at the end on the lived experience that drives the women's movement. Well, now let's hear from the American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit.

She says it's important that when thinking about the Epstein scandals, that we don't lose sight of how much things have changed over time. And she says that we have feminism to thank for that. For Rebecca, the attitudes and some of the behaviours revealed in the release of the Epstein files are not surprising. And in her own girlhood, we're thoroughly normalized. I entered my teens in the 1970s when what gets called the sexual revolution was raging. There was definitely with the birth control pill and second wave feminism, some liberation for women. But a lot of what the sexual revolution consisted of for,

for a kid like me, surrounded by a lot of counterculture people, is sex is good, everyone should have it, there's no reason to say no. And a culture still in which women and girls were not heard and listened to, you were pressured from the age 12 on to have sex by adult men. And you had no recourse. We just learned to disappear, to hide, to avoid, to essentially duck and cover, because For a lot of us, and this includes cousins and friends of mine in my age group, you know, there was no legal recourse. Adults weren't intervening. A lot of this was happening quite publicly. And it was also very present in the movies, in rock star culture, etc. And people would just kind of snicker about jailbait and things like that. But really, I never saw in my teens an adult intervene to protect

an underage girl. You also point to other movies, for example, that you see. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That perhaps looks so different looking back in a way. I just talked to somebody who had watched Pretty Baby when he was very young, Louis Moll's movie in which books Shields at, I think, age 12, plays a girl growing up in a brothel in New Orleans.

And she's sexualized and exposed in ways that are, really grotesque would be considered completely unacceptable now. And there were a number of other movies in which very young girls were sexualized. It was just so pervasive in the culture and so normalized. I mean, do you see it when you look back now as that we have progressed in leaps and bounds? I'd be curious of your take. Absolutely. I think there's two big revolutions that feminism brought us.

In the 1980s, feminism really brought to bear an analysis. That said, all relationships are power relationships in profoundly unequal levels of power. Abuse is very common that, you know, a 12-year-old girl and a powerful, you know, adult man do not have the same kind of power. And they talked a lot about rape and child abuse in ways that they hadn't been talked about before. And a lot happened, all those on-campus programs and rape crisis centers and hotlines. a lot of training for police and the law and how to address rape. But a second wave was really needed, and it began around 2012 or 2013. I think that campus rape activists, the Steubenville rape case in the U.S.,

the sexual assault rape murder of Jody Singh in New Delhi, brought a second wave of feminism that took place partly on social media, allowing a kind of Greek chorus to what individuals, said and what news stories brought us, which ultimately dismantled a lot of the protection for rapists. The protection essentially was all the ways in which people decided women and girls were untrustworthy, unreliable, incompetent to bear witness, vindictive, et cetera. And we really had a situation well into this era in which people just automatically dismissed victims as lying. And women so often didn't report at all women and girls because they knew that they

were likely to be shamed, blamed, threatened, dismissed, not believed. One thing, as somebody who's written about violence against women for a long time, I've often experienced, is for the last 20 years women who were victims of sexual assault in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s have told me their stories and sometimes told their stories publicly for the first time because for the first time they felt that they were in a world that would actually listen to them the fact that people like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, the gymnastics doctor in the U.S., Jimmy Saville over there in your country, and of course, Epstein first saw consequences for what they did. Well, of course, Jimmy Saville was already dead.

But all these stories coming out now is evidence that the situation has changed and people are ready to listen in ways that they weren't before. It is interesting that you bring up recent years as well, me too, Harvey Weinstein. You mentioned Larry Nasser there as well, the gymnastics doctor for the U.S. team. Fran Leibowitz, the writer, I remember she said that she went on marches through the 60s and 70s, and she never, she says nothing ever really changed. And even when Me Too happened, she's like, this isn't going to change anything.

But it did. She says she stands corrected and not for the first time. There was real consequences for people that acted in a certain way. People lost their jobs or perhaps their freedom if they were convicted off these crimes. I'd be curious for your thoughts on why you think. it happened at that time. What does it take for that change to take hold? I love Fran Leibowitz and I'm going to disagree with her here because essentially the groundwork was laid by the kind of really boring feminism that's often dismissed. I think what happened

and Me Too came late in this feminist surge that really begins 2012, 2013, 2014 is that feminism has changed what people understood, the reality they recognized. A lot of women and a lot of men who were willing to listen to women were in positions of power. And so we had a really different system. We had police, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, politicians, journalists, television, producers, etc., who were all willing to hear things. Women came forward because somebody was ready to hear them in ways that weren't punitive, not like, oh, you said that were blame you, will shame you, will discredit you, will hound you out of your career, et cetera, you know, which is why so many women came forward about things that had happened long before, and Harvey Weinstein

had a 40-year career of assaulting some of the most highly visible women, you know, in Hollywood, and yet the mechanism for them to be heard and for there to be consequences the kind there should be didn't really exist until 2017 coming out of this wave of feminism that had begun a few years earlier. And I think one of the real effects of what gets called me too, but I think is a much broader wave of feminism is the one we're not going to see. I think seeing Harvey Weinstein in prison, all these other things is telling you. a whole lot of would-be rapists, assailants, etc., I no longer have the confidence that'll get

away with this that I would have 15 years ago. So the real measure of something like this is all the things that aren't happening, and that's impossible to actually measure. But I'm sure there's a lot of men out there who are not committing sexual assaults, not because they're somehow morally improved, but because they're confidence that they can get away with it, because no one will listen to her. No one will believe her. I can destroy her if she speaks up. The police are on my side. The legal system is on my side. I can get an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement to shut her up, that the game has changed. And I'm not here maligning the great majority of men who are not actually rapists, but rape is still way too pervasive, but the system deals with it somewhat better.

So what does feminism need to do next, Rebecca? Where do you see the biggest challenges? I think feminism has done miraculous things. Patriarchy as a misogynist system that gives men power, including the power of credibility, of voice, of consequences. when they speak up is thousands of years old. The fact that in my lifetime, we have not completely abolished it is not a failure or a sense that feminism is somehow doing it wrong. I think we need to continue. I think men need to liberate themselves because patriarchy oppresses them as well. It gives them some advantages, but at a terrible cost. And I think we need to recognize all the ways that men benefit from a world in which women are free and equal.

This is not a zero-sum game any more than white people are oppressed by non-white people having rights. Men are not oppressed by women having rights. Living in a world where everyone is free and equal is a more beautiful world. In the slavery era, in the United States, people talked about the ways in which a master was also caught up in a hideous system as well as an enslaved person and I think inequality distorts and deforms this all. The author

and activist Rebecca Solnit, thanks very much to her. Now I want to hear from you on the subject of money and your relationship to it. Do you think you have a positive money mindset or do you prefer to bury your head in the sand

but do actually want to get better at juggling those finances? Perhaps there's a big pay gap between you and your partner or maybe you and your friends that causes tension, well, whether it's what to do about a pension, mortgage or a life change that's proving difficult to figure out, we want to hear about your thoughts, questions, dilemmas around managing your finances and around your spending choices. You can text Women's Hour on 84844. You can also get in touch on WhatsApp. That number is 0-3700-100-444. We're at BBC Woman's Hour on Instagram or you can email us

through our website. It is for a future installment of the Woman's Hour Guide to Life. It's a brand new series of conversations which is only available on BBC Sounds. Our first episode on the subject of friendship is waiting for you right now in case you missed it.

Well, do stay with me for another 12 minutes, at least. Let me turn to Mimi Nation Dixon, a writer-performer who's one-woman play. Sitter Neal transfers to London this October after a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Mimi plays Margot, a young third. female vicar in a village full of unsolicited advice and passive-aggressive casserole drops. She is grappling with dating, grief, loneliness, identity, questioning her faith.

And Mimi joins me now in the Woman's Hour Studio. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. It's so good to have you here. So now you have an undergraduate theology dissertation about the Vicar of Dibli, I understand. Yes. So I slightly hacked the system. My dissertation title was how Richard Curtis said yes to vickers and knickers in the vicar of Dibley. Have you had a response from Richard Curtis on that, I wonder. No, and when I was writing my dissertation, I hand wrote him letters. I did the whole thing and I was ghosted or aired.

Well, let's see. Let's see if anything happens after this. But that dissertation has kind of brought you here. Tell me a little bit about Sitter Neal and Margot, who's at the centre of it. So Sital Neal follows Margot, this central. character who's a young woman in her 20s embarking on her first year as being vicar of the parish. So set in a rural parish, it explores the kind of the tension between coming of age and coming to terms and the masks we all wear in society. I notice you're wearing

a crucifix. Are you very religious? This is a slight fashion choice. Which was my question. I find religion fascinating. I mean, I chose to study it for three years. I would say, in terms of labelling myself today, I'd say agnostic. I find faith fascinating, but yeah, I find it more interesting how faith infiltrates parts of our society. Now, it would be fair to say that this is an irreverent look at the inner workings of a female vicar. The title, Sitter Neal, is it double entend? Yes, I mean, the working title of the play or the TV series,

which I originally thought up, it was Parrish. And then as I got to know the character of Margot Better, she slightly took a life of her own, and my favourite scene, not when I was performing it for the first time in front of my parents. But my favourite scene is the pleased little Neil scene. It's a play on words. It makes it into bit of an innuendo.

kind of an homage to a silent laugh I always had to myself in church whenever the vicar would say please sit or kneel and sometimes my mind would think gosh can you imagine other contexts where the phrase sit or nil could be used okay

someone who's religious might be offended by Margot's more risque musings yes potentially but I think at the end of the day it's all real I don't think anybody in whatever position you are, whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, a vicar,

I don't think anybody is always perfectly aligned to their role in the inner workings of their mind. I think there's always scope. Interesting. So as I was thinking about vickers in TV, etc., there's Father Ted, of course. Yes. Vicar of Dibley in 1995, saying something quite different about religion. I mean, Fleabberg's

hot priest got a lot of attention as well. Why do you think there's such attention or attraction to a religious figure in comedy? I think what for me, and everyone will have their own opinion on this, but I think what makes something really funny and is when it feels truly real. And for me, one of the most real elements about people and about humans is the contrast between the masks we all wear to society and our inner workings. I mean, if you look really far back at Shakespeare, the reason why his characters have lasted such a long time

and are still so alive, is that because they all have such a heightened contrast. And I suppose with Vickers, it is a literal mask which they wear into society. They're literally kind of robed. They're facing a congregation. And I guess that that means the contrast between their exterior, expression and interior selves has deepened. You know, you're reminding me at the time the Pope Francis was elected,

I went to Rome for that and it was like an incredible experience as a journalist and I spoke to a lot of young priests that had just been ordained and they said they couldn't believe when they put on a priest's garb, you know what I mean? Yeah.

The collar, etc. The minute they walk down the street they were treated completely differently. Yeah, it's so interesting. And I found that writing Sitle-Nil and writing the character of Margot, such an amazing vessel to explore that because you have quite literal mask. And it's so true, even when I'm walking down a road and you see a vicar or somebody wearing a dog collar, they just have a different presence around them. Or they are given that by society?

Women priests in the Church of England are now part of the fabric of society but I suppose the number is still not equivalent No I mean where 33 years It's a nice little round number 33 years since the general synod voted to allow females to become vicars but then less than 33% are vicares

So it's still incredibly imbalanced And I even found I mean the fact that Margot is a woman I think is probably the least interesting thing about her. And it wasn't meant to be some great political point, her being a vicar. But even when I was doing it at Edinburgh, I would be there, you know, pounding the Royal Mile, flyering. And people would, I had one morning where so many people came up and they thought it was so controversial, me doing a play about a woman vicar.

Did they? I'd be curious on the reaction you got there, yeah. Yeah, and I found out quite interesting, but also in a way it made it so exciting. because whenever a bit of art or something you create any conversation that sparks from it it's a bit of a thrill and a privilege to be part of that conversation

and it's good to make people think even if you don't necessarily agree with their opinion I think it's amazing when a bit of culture we consume gets us questioning. I haven't seen your play yet because you're, I hope to see it you're coming next month, right? Yes.

But there is a theme I know of dating going through the show, how much of that is reflected by your own experience? Tell us a little. Well, thankfully, thankfully not really. And I mean, it'd be incredibly, it's all really quite a vulnerable to do, but it'd be incredibly vulnerable if I had to be like, yes, every single thing that's mentioned, it's all me. It's all happened to me. Sometimes people sit there and that has happened. Some of it's imagination. Some of it is based on, is based on some real experiences. but I think what explores love, I feel that love is kind of in so much.

And I slightly came to this realization myself. I don't think it's about who Margo loves and it's not about the love story which she may or may not have. I think it explores more the reason about why she wants to be loved and why she feels that being loved is so key to her happiness in the world.

talk about pistachio nuts? Yes, you can because that is my favourite metaphor. Why? Tell us a little bit. Explain it a little for us. So it came about from like so many people being told, oh, you're a tough nut to crack. And I think I had heard that one too many time. And I was going, you know, I'm not a pistachio with an unenable shell. Pistachio or delicious, though? They are very good. One great thing about doing the photo shoot for the poster for the play. I had a bag, a great little snack. And I do eat them throughout the play. So it keeps me going.

But it's about this whole thing about being cracked open and how everybody has this deep longing to be seen and the frustrations when you feel that other people don't see you quite the way you see yourself, which I think is a universal feeling. It's so into it. So it's all about that kind of the reflection or the mask or how you're seeing or how you're trying to be seen or not being seen.

The first people that see us, probably, when it comes to humour or comedy, are our family. Yes. How was that growing up? Great, I mean, I'm so lucky in the fact that my family were all incredibly close. I'm the only girls, I've got brothers,

and as you can imagine, being the only girl, I had to slightly fight my way, fight my way to the top. And I've always viewed, I've always loved well, and I've always loved acting and especially through humour I've always found that for me there's nothing more satisfying

when at any moment in life whether it's a sad moment or a really happy moment you can kind of create connections and create elements of warmth and what otherwise can be quite a cold time through humour and jokes so that's the way I kind of grew up and now look at me

and have they come to see it? Yes they did I have to say the first time my um so now you know both my parents are so so supportive and they kind of get many a draft many a voice note going what do you think of this but the first time they saw me doing at edinburgh they had not a clue and they came on a family family trip up to edinburgh and i remember walking out seeing them all sat front row my dad in between my two brothers considering the title of the play not ideal siter neal is the play it's on the 21st and 26th of october at the other palace studio in London.

Mimi Nation Dixon, thank you so much for coming in. Tomorrow, the tech entrepreneur, Lucy Go, who at the age of 30, has become the youngest, self-made, female billionaire, according to Forbes. She'll be speaking to Anita. I'll see you soon. That's all for today's woman's hour. Join us again next time.

I think we need to be jolted out of thinking this is just a program of tributes to people. It isn't. It's an exploration, and we may not always like what we find. It's such a cliched idea to say a chimpanzee, at least say an octopus or a wasp or something, God's sake. There's Elizabeth Day on the Pharaoh, Hapshatshut. The subsequent ruler defaced a lot of her statuary, and so we also have very little clue of what she actually looked like. Miles Jop on the novelist J.L. Carr and Stuart Lee on guitarist Derek Bailey.

You've got to meet the challenge of a culture that is failing the public. Great Lives continues on Radio 4. and BBC Sounds.