Woman's Hour - 05/11/2025

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

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

Hello, this is Neula McGovern, and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, today, Margaret Atwood and her Book of Lives, the great Canadian author, has written a memoir. As expected, Margaret is sharp, witty and so engaging, just like her latest work. Some of her life story is coming up. We have Naomi Alderman, among others, also on the impact of Margaret Atwood on their work and lives. spoke to Margaret about marriage and the conflicting emotions that there can be around it. And I think it's related in a way to an article by Shantae Joseph.

This article has exploded online. The title, is having a boyfriend embarrassing now? That's a question. Here's a snippet from the article. Where being single was once a cautionary tale, you'll end up a spinster with a load of cats. It is now becoming a desirable and coveted status, another nail in the coffin of a centuries-old, heterosexual fairy retail that never really benefited women to begin with. Being partnered

doesn't affirm your womanhood anymore. It is no longer considered an achievement and if anything, it's become more of a flex to pronounce yourself single. Thoughts? Well, we'll have Chanty with us to talk it through on what she's observed and also why people feel so strongly

about that question is having a boyfriend embarrassing now. You can text the program, the number is 84844 on social media or at BBC Women's Hour or you can email us through our website. For a WhatsApp message or a voice note, that number is 0-3700-100-444. Also today, the Health Secretary you might have seen, Wes Streeting, has said that incidents of verbal and physical abuse based on people's skin color now happens so often that it has become, his words,

socially acceptable to be racist. Now, this is something that some care workers, foster carers, and those in the NHS have been thinking about. We have a conversation also on that coming up. But let me begin. With the inherently frivolous Margaret Atwood, that is her self-description. We know the author as a titan of literature, whether it's dystopian futures or feminist perspectives. Her work is anything but frivolous. She started writing at the age of six. She's now 85.

And in that time, she's written 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and two graphic novels. I had the pleasure of reading her latest work, Book of Lives, a memoir of sorts. It is just brilliant. We began with her childhood spent at times deep in the Canadian forest with her entomologist father and daring outdoorsy mother. Then we learned about her writing, The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye, Ailius Grace and Blind Assassin. And the book charts her relationship, both with her late partner Graeme Gibson, and also with her own experiences and her own occasional fruste.

with family life. I spoke to Margaret ahead of the publication of the book and I asked her how she remembered so many aspects of her life so clearly after all this time. Well, as I say, a memoir is what you remember. A biographer would probably find other things that you've forgotten. But what is it that you remember? You remember stupid things you've done,

stupid things other people have done, bad things you've done bad things other people have done to you you tend to remember those more highlights and catastrophes so you don't tend to remember walked the dog or eight branflakes

unless you write them in your journal but I believe with journaling which you tried you said when you were young but decided your innermost thoughts and feelings were better off left unrecorded did? Well, they're pretty banal. Like everybody else's

inner most thoughts and feelings when they're 17. I think your life is anything but banal and I felt I was very much brought to your childhood. You did talk about wanting to explore the flavors and textures of your life. And at times I felt I could feel the soil underneath my fingernails particularly when you were a child out in the woods exploring the natural world.

And I wonder what it felt like to, if it was, relive those moments. Well, generally it was fun. Generally. Generally it was fun. Well, into every life a little rain must fall. And up in the woods, quite a lot of rain fell. It's a rain forest, basically.

In fact, I was cold quite a lot. and I was especially cold in the autumn because we would have been up in the woods all summer and our feet grew and we didn't have any shoes because we don't grow in them so our mother used to wrap our feet up in pillowcases and take us to the shoe store

as soon as we hit civilization. It's so evocative though as you talk about it and you had these adventurous parents that wanted to live deep in the woods at times, back to the city at other times in your life. But what was it? How would you explain why they wanted that life and to raise children there too?

Well, my father grew up in the deep rural back of beyond. So that area of Nova Scotia, that farm didn't have electricity until approximately 1959. So that was lucky for me because I got to see a 19th century homestead the way it would have been run. And that was very useful for me when I came to write alias grace much later. So I was very familiar with heating with wood, cooking on a wood stove, having a kitchen garden, all of those things that people did

before they had automobiles and electricity and furnaces. So useful for me, why did they want to do it? My dad was a very woodsy guy. So he had a bunch of pals who were similar, and I used to call them the old bushy guys because they liked being out in the bush. They understood the bush. My mother was a tomboy.

She had not much use for frilly gowns and teens. parties and she especially Hayden hats she really disliked them a lot it seemed like a very free and

creative and adventurous childhood I would imagine that that must have been this catalyst or kind of an ignition to that amazing imagination that you have well think again

there's lots of writers who did not have a childhood like that. In fact, most writers didn't have a childhood like that. So Proust's childhood was not like that. So I don't think you have to have a childhood like that. You usually have to have a childhood with books in it, but even then I know some writers who came quite late to it, did not have lots of books as kids,

and then plunged into the world of reading somewhat later in life. But, you know, what makes a writer? You have a story that you talk about, you know, very poignant. It's about a period of bullying that had a big impact on you as a child and influenced your work. You talk about this girl called Sandra and you became this victim of constant criticism. They would suggest improvements from her and other girls. you also credit the resulting lack of trust from that horrible experience of causing you to become a novelist.

Well, I don't think it caused me to become a novelist. I think it was very useful. How? So remember, I grew up with depression parents who'd been in the Depression. My early childhood was spent during the war, and what is the rule for that? Never throw out anything useful, including bad experiences. Yeah, I think cause and effect is very difficult when you're talking about writers.

I think lots and lots, judging from the mail I got about that book, which was Katzai. Lots and lots of people have had similar experiences, and the letters I got were from parents, they were from fellow once upon a time girls, a couple of them. there's an interesting ratio here, were from people who were the bad girls. Were the bullies? Not many people confess to doing that. But some? But some did.

So, yes, I had been brought up amongst trustworthy people, and I was quite gullible. So I think that's, you know, it was quite easy to convince me of things because I'd never had occasion to distrust people. We're talking about girls there, but the handmaid's tale, of course, also talks about women and the way that they treat each other, terrifying ways and also profound bonds. Did you experience a sense of sisterhood, whether that was as a girl or a young woman? Well, sure, I had lots of friends who were female, but remember that I'm older than the generation that really did second. wave feminism. So we did read Simone de Beauvoir. We did read Betty Friedan. But those books

really applied to generations older than mine. So the women who got stuffed back into open planned bungalows in the 50s and told to have four children. That wasn't us. We were doing rock and roll. Staying on the issue of gender. You said that when you began, there was a pervasive attitude that you could be a poet, but not really a woman, or a woman, but not really a poet. And you even published under Emmy Atwood. I did.

Yeah, so how old was I when I was doing that? Probably 20, 21. Yeah, so what were the role models at that time? I really did seriously get asked in about 1967 not whether I was going to commit suicide but when I was going to commit suicide No way Well it would show that you were serious

Yeah I understand that there was meant to be this torment that was attached to Yes you were supposed to be very tormented and sort of none like or else you could be a high priestess of the imagination and do some human sacrifice like the white goddess in Robert Graves' books, which were circulating at the time. So those were the models, and it was somewhat daunting. But you persevered nonetheless. Did you always feel that you would be successful as a writer?

Oh, no. No, no, no, not at all. This was Canada. So no, you didn't think you were going to be successful. you thought you were going to be dedicated. So it wasn't considered a career. It was considered a vocation like being a priest. But you decided to stay in Canada.

There were so many that left the US. I was surprised actually to read in your book that at that stage in Canada when you were growing up, there wasn't so many bookstores or the cinema or the theatre or things that might inspire the arts. There were cinemas and theatres, but the things in them weren't Canadian.

And that was the attitude towards writing that if you really wanted to be taken seriously as a writer, you had to go to England, France, or the United States. And why did you stay? Well, I did go away first. Then I came back. The cultural context was changing. And people were starting little publishing companies,

these new literary magazines were popping up here and there. I see a lovely poster of Graeme Gibson there just behind you as I speak to you. You talk about being confused about your desire to get married to your life partner. He was confused. You feel he was confused? Well, for a very funny reason, and it sounds to say it, but he said he didn't want to get married again because he knew three Mrs. Gibson's and he did not wish to create another one.

So that would be his mother, his step. stepmother and his first wife. I mean, was there a little bit of conflict there, like that you did want to get married, but you didn't understand why you wanted to get married in a way. No, I wanted to get married because it would make things a lot easier when you're crossing international borders. Romantic. Very.

It's a consideration. Do you think Wibbert are destined to keep struggling against while at times being attracted to conventions like marriage? Okay, so it's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it gives you a certain amount of security, and if push comes to shove, you might get these days custody in the house, which wasn't the case for really a long time. In the 19th century, you didn't get divorced because you would be thoroughly out of luck and also disgraced.

So on the negative, you can find yourself trapped. and in a situation that you're not enjoying at all. So I think that will always be a problem, the problem being what are your rights and entitlements versus what are the dangers and perils? And we know there's a lot of domestic violence, and it is two-sided, women throw crockery out the window at other people,

but those who end actually being killed are usually women. Yes, I think it all comes down to whether the person is at all, trustworthy, and worthwhile at all. And whether they have, and this goes both ways, deep, dark secrets that you don't know about. Do you think you need to know everything about your partner? No, but the peaks and caverns, I think it would be wise to know about them. don't you? Yes, I do.

Yes, you do. I'm just thinking of it's so descriptive, the peaks and the caverns. Speaking of, The Handmaid's Tale, I want to come back to that, your dystopian novel about a patriarchal society in which women are forcibly assigned to produce babies. It was heralded, not just as a modern classic, but also prescient in the way that it warned what might happen in the future and that reproductive freedoms could be challenged.

Some say that they are now. We are talking specifically about the United States. Yes. We are talking about the form an autocracy would take, were there to be one in that country. So it would not be, hi, my name is Joe, let's all be communists. That would not fly in the United States. What is much more likely to fly,

as we are seeing unfold before our very eyes, and going way back to the 17th century when the Massachusetts Bay Colony was set up as a Puritan autocracy, not a democracy, forget that part. That came in the 18th century. So what form would it take? Were there to be one in the United States

and it would take the form of a theocracy, at least in name, people would say they were doing these things in the name of the Almighty that's what they would do and once they got into power they would get rid of all the other religions not just all the other non-Christian religions but all the other Christian religions because autocracies are autocracies do you ever worry about something like that happening

Of course I have a worry, and so do people who live there. But it is my contention that America is a very ornery place and that people in it dislike being told to line up and do as they're told. And that can have a plus and it can have a minus. But the plus is they're likely to be resistant to tyranny. They're not very deferential. But with the Handmaid's Tale, or indeed the year of the flood, people see it as preempting the 2008 financial crash, what do you say to people who say you can read the future? Nobody can read the future because there isn't one future. The future is multiple. So the decisions we make now will influence the future we get. But there are always going to be.

unexpected factors. You can make educated guesses. You can say, if we continue doing this, that will probably be the result. But that's all you can do. And the Handmaid's tale was based on a theoretical question. If the tendencies that started to become manifest during the first years of the Reagan regime, if those continue and America deep minds its own past

namely the 17th century this is likely to be the result you are a feminist figurehead in the book you described the impossibility of keeping everyone happy when you were expected to do the right thing for women when there are many different right things kind of related to your last answer

depending on who you ask how easy has it been to stick to your beliefs despite criticisms and objections from the same side? Well, I got more or less immunized against criticisms by those nasty little girls when I was nine. I mean, that is a way of reframing that experience.

Absolutely. Yeah, so I don't necessarily pay any attention to them unless I think they're true. Do you find it difficult to know what's true or what's not true like are you very decisive or are you more kind of this is grey

I'm not sure where I stand on this No I'm not I'm pretty decisive I'm sorry to say which means you can make sort of mistakes but you stand by them yeah

but because I'm always right I never do that so there are about 75 different kinds of feminism And whenever anybody asks me that question, I have to ask them, what kind are you talking about? So my deep past is human rights, because that was the big deal in the 50s. And feminism is a subset of human rights, or let us say, women's rights are a subset of human rights. So you can't have, you know, you can't say, okay, I'm a feminist.

I think all men should be pushed off a cliff except for 10% kept for breeding. I don't endorse that. Right. Good to know. No, I do not. I'm with Margaret Atwood on this one.

I can be decisive about that. I'm glad somebody's with me on something. Margaret Atwood, they're talking to me about Book of Lives, a memoir of sorts, which is out now. Let's talk about the impact of Margaret's work. The Handmaid's Tale was recently described as its own multiverse

following a long-running TV adaptation, film adaptation and 2019 sequel The Testaments. It's been cited by many people as a book that has profoundly influenced their view on the world. One of those people are the best-selling author, Naomi Alderman, who is a friend and former mentee of Margaret's. Welcome. Hello, nice to be here.

And we are also joined by two academics, Dr Rosamund Ports, Lecture Environment and Sustainability at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Good morning. Good morning. And also Dr. Megan Douglas, doctoral program coordinator and at Edinburgh University. Good to have you with us as well. Good morning. Naomi.

I mean, that's quite something, right, to be paired with Margaret Atwood. Yes, I remember at the time that I got that, it was the sort of mentorship you have to be invited to apply for. And at the time that I got it Somebody was saying They should have given this to an unpublished novelist Oh my God An unpublished novelist Trying to discuss their work with Margaret Atwoods

I just think if it had been me I would have crumbled into a puddle on the floor Well how was it going for that first meeting Oh it was amazing I would say my experience is Margaret is much much funnier than anybody remembers She is so funny I had to try and keep up.

She is like, she's also so dry that sometimes it takes me like 10 seconds and I realize what she said. Yes, exactly. You have to go, oh, oh, I think that was a joke. So, yes, people obviously talk about the handmaid's tail and a very, very serious issues around reproductive rights that it raises. And then people think of her as a very serious writer. And she is, of course, but also absolutely hilarious. Also, the handmaid's tail is quite funny. Also, Oryx and Craig is very funny.

Weirdest parts of the Bible, I heard, you were exchanging. We did. We did. So, yes, I had the feeling that most of the conversations with would-be mentees were going to be very conversations in which the person was saying how wonderful Margaret was. And I thought, well, if she's going to work with me, she'd have to know that I'm not deferential. So at the moment I could, we ended up swapping weirdest parts of the Bible that we like. My weirdest part of the Bible was the bit where Moses's wife cuts off her son's foreskin and hurls it at her husband's feet. that is in the Bible.

And her, Margaret's weirdest part was a point at which a tribe in order to apologise for a sin that they have done create 12 golden mice and 12 golden hemorrhoids. You see, there is a purpose to being bored in synagogue or church as it may be and reading through the actual text in front of you. And then you will understand that people in the past were as weird as we are now. So a match made in heaven, it sounds like Rosamond, you joined. the Under Her Eye programme. Now people who have watched Red

the Handmaid's Tale they know the Under the Eye programme. Maybe you can explain a little bit the connection with Margaret and also what it entailed for you. Yeah, absolutely. The Under Her Eye programme took place in 2018 and it brought together

about 14 to 15 young women in STEM so across science, technology, engineering and mathematics to really explore our interest in the environmental sector but also how we might get involved with that sector as women at the time. So we got together initially in Scarborough and we had about three to four days of training where we critically were affected on our role.

We thought about how we want to change the future of that particular sector, where we want to go and how we might work collaboratively as well. And then we went to London and did a conference called Under Eye, which of course had Margaret Upward as the keynote speaker. How great was that? Just fantastic. I mean, they under the how I program really did reshape how I was thinking about my research. I was doing research at the time for my PhD on the decline of bee populations.

And I had started off by kind of exploring all the ways that we had understood bees to be declining. Who was getting involved? I was working with entomologists, actually, as it happens, beekeepers. And I did this under how I program. And this was actually when I sort of rekindled my love of my gap. work as well. And I realized that what I wanted to focus my research on was storytelling and the power of storytelling. So my whole thesis changed direction and I worked with creative artists, creative practitioners to understand how they were telling the story and understanding it and framing it.

And what is the book that spoke to you the most? Well, the book I initially read was Handmaid's Tale. I was quite young at the time. I had a English teacher who introduced me to it. That was really powerful. Initially at the time it was to do with the connection around womanhood and the power and the resilience against the adversity they were facing. As I got older, it became more about the fact that I started to realize that these women were very much embodying the environmental crises that was being talked about, the toxic environment that they were living in. And that really spoke to me. I have to say, since then I've read the Testaments and the hope that was in Handmaid's Tale, the fact that women started to get together the Mayday

community was really starting to come through in the Testaments and we obviously see the fact that people got together and they started to work against Gilead, the dystopian society, which is depicted in it. And for me, I think Testaments has become a strong message and it's something that I talked to my students about because it has that strong message of hope and active hope and working together. And of course the under his eye, under her eye. It's very clever in I mean. Do you want to explain for people who aren't Atwood fans? All right. So this is, under

his eyes, is what, if you've seen the TV show, you will have seen these images everywhere of the eye looking down. So it is that in Gilead, you are always thought to be under the eye of God, but which is also, of course, you're under the command of

whatever men are in charge. And look, certainly as Margaret frequently says about this, the handmaid's tale, nothing happens in that book that has not happened to women somewhere at some point. And it's all based in reality. Yes, it hasn't happened in that way in America. Although, to be fair, obviously America was a slaveholding society.

And so it happened to black women in America to be shipped from place to place and to have their reproductive rights taken by the slaveholder. So in a way, it's an extension of something that was already happening in America. Megan, let us bring you in here. You were also in the under her eye. program, which kind of flips the script. What did Margaret Atwood mean to you? I mean, so I'm also Canadian.

We have a fair bit in common. Both of our childhoods were spent, spending time outdoors in the Canadian wilderness. We both studied the University of Toronto. And we were both Canadians that grew up in Canada, but studied and lived lives elsewhere. So, of course, Margaret Atwood has always been a cultural force in Canada. Her presence was somewhat omnipresent, especially in schools. Under her eye. Absolutely.

And she was absolutely and is a cultural icon, though I don't think she's comfortable with that term. But certainly a high degree of national pride attached to her. And as she mentioned, while so many accomplished Canadians moved south to the U.S. for recognition or opportunity, she went, but she came back. and that was almost unheard of and that really mattered to us because it reinforced this feeling that we would share her with the world

they could read and enjoy her work but at the end of the day she was ours and just such a part of the Canadian cultural landscape just like hockey maple syrup or Tim Hortons and tell me Megan

what impact would you say she has had specifically on your work? You know it's interesting I was trying to think of my earliest memory of her, and it actually wasn't a good one. There was an interview with her, I think, on CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. And I remember my father rolling his eyes and calling her a feminist, and the tone that he used, it wasn't meant as a compliment. I was raised in a household with fairly traditional gender roles, and to be called a feminist was almost a bit of an insult. And the irony is that she pointed out there isn't just one kind of.

the feminists, there's at least 75. But to me, it was a homogenizing concept. And growing up, I thought of feminists as ornery, humorless women. Of course, she's far from humorless and perhaps righteously angry. She represented something provocative and polarizing and pushing the norms. And it wasn't until much later that I began to appreciate that her ability to create discomfort was part of her power and later as a researcher myself

as I was doing my PhD and now in my work inspired as a storyteller to think about my role to make people think differently and what I currently do is I coordinate this program for doctoral researchers

based in Africa, half of whom are women and they explore sustainable African futures plural as Margaret pointed out and they're really on the the research front lines of climate change and envisioning better futures and myself and them making a difference through our own storytelling. It's so interesting because I just think between the three of you, we begin to see the long, beautiful tentacles of Margaret Atwood

and what she has been able to achieve. Naomi, you once said, if you hang out with Margaret Atwood long enough, you become a witch. Yes, I'm afraid that is true. Yes. Yes, people say to me, how do you predict the future in your work? And I go, I don't know. I spent a long time talking to Margaret Atwood, and now I can see the future. What can you do? Is it just honing those observational skills to such a point? I think that's some of it.

I think some of it is also being able to accept what you already know. I think this is something that... Like don't second guess yourself? Don't second guess yourself. Don't think that everybody is more of an expert in something than you are. I think, listen, I think this happens to men too, but I think women do it to ourselves a lot, which is that, you know, the typical thing if you ask a woman to talk about something is a man, if you say to him, give me a, give me your view on 1875.

And if he's an expert in 1800, he'll give you his view. And a woman, if you say, if she's an expert in 1870 to 1874, but you say, talk to me about 1875, she will say, oh, no, but that's not my feel. And I think something that I have certainly got out of all the time that I spent with Margaret is to go, oh no, I think actually you can just say what you think. And often you will be correct because probably you have thought about things quite deeply. And you have also experience just purely by living through these times. So interesting.

Thank you very much Naomi Alderman, also Roseman Portis, Megan Douglas, Book of Life. Lives, A Memoir of Sorts is out now. And Naomi's new book, Don't Burn Anyone at the Steak, Today, is out next week. She's going to... Just today. Exactly. Take it day by day. Day by day.

You will be talking about it on Radio 4, start the week on Monday, the 17th of November. So something to tune in for there as well. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Now, lots of messages coming in. Margaret Atwood's such an icon. Every book of hers has hit the right tone for the time. I'm rereading that Penelope, it puts women back in.

in the Odyssey as real women with their thoughts and expectations and not simply as the male vision of them as cutouts of their desires. I cannot stress how important her books are to women. Lots of you also getting in touch about, you know, whether having a boyfriend is embarrassing now. What's embarrassing about having a boyfriend is that we are still having to call them boyfriends at an age late 20s where they should be something more, but they won't commit because they don't know what they want. That part, last part, in inverted comments. 848 if you would like to get in touch. Now, the Health Secretary West Streeting

in an interview might have seen in The Gorgeant today says, an ugly racism reminiscent of the 1970s and 80s has becoming worryingly commonplace in modern Britain and that NHS staff are bearing the brunt of it. In recent weeks, organisations representing nurses, social workers and carers, many of those areas being dominated by women working in them, have been sounding the alarm saying

their members are encountering unprecedented levels of racism. Patricia Marquise is here, director for England at the Royal College of Nursing. In a moment, we also hear from Harvey Galaher, from the Nationwide Association of Fostering Provid and Nadra Ahmed, Executive Chairman of the National Care Association.

Welcome to all of you. Let me begin with you, Patricia. So calls to the Orscien's hotline have increased apparently by 55% over the past three years. Can you explain what is coming in from those calls. Yeah, so we've seen a 55% increase in the number of calls coming in

directly around racism. That doesn't include calls that come in about other issues where racism is also a feature. There's a really significant rise. And the sorts of things that members are calling about is that patients who are refusing to be cared for by black staff being called slaves, by talking about not being wished to be treated by people like you.

And sadly, even by other staff within the health service, talking to them to say things like, I want to remind you that you're not one of us. So really awful things that are not the sort of thing that should be acceptable in our workplaces or indeed in our communities. And I imagine there will be obviously hate your policies if it comes from staff to staff. abuse as you described there. But I'm wondering if a patient is refusing care from a health care worker

because of their ethnicity, what happens? Yeah, so just to the first point around HR policies, yes, there are. But sadly, organizations are not always quick to use them. So one of our members have been repeatedly racially abused by a patient, talking to them, calling them a creature and mocking their name and their accent. And yet the organization was very, refusing to deal with that incident and support that member of staff. In terms of patients and refusing to care, of course, in normal circumstances, you would expect nurses to care for everybody and they will care for everybody and anybody, regardless of their race, their colour, their religion or their gender.

But on occasions where this is pervasive and repeated by patients, towards staff, we do say there is a time when nurses must be allowed to refuse to treat people and that managers must take swift action to stop the abuse. It is not acceptable for people to be experiencing that. And of course I understand that. But what sort of action? I'm just thinking of, let's say it's, I don't know, any busy, you know, environment, somebody is making racist comments or refusing treatment from a certain member of staff,

what would you like to happen? So intervention, so intervention by more senior staff, if that is happening, if a patient is being racially abusive towards staff, we would expect someone more senior to come to actually intervene and to give warnings. If those warnings are not heeded, we would expect that the person, be removed from the department. Obviously, in a life-threatening situation, they will still continue to get care,

but normally people in that situation are not being abusive to patients to staff. But when they are just there and are repeatedly refusing to stop being racist, we would expect management to warn them and then management to escalate that situation and say, no, we're not going to treat you unless you stop. And things should be reported to the police, sorry, I should also add.

They should be reported to the police and dealt with us racist abuse. Yes, because that is the other part of, I suppose, this conversation as well. Nadra, let me turn to you for a moment. You represent small and medium-sized care providers across the country. What are you hearing? Yes, good morning. Not dissimilar to things that Patricia said, but certainly, but in a slightly different setting, because it's either people in their own homes that have been cared for

or people in care settings. So these are their permanent homes. You know, they've made those choices to be in those services. And I think some of it is quite subliminal. Some of it is difficult to distinguish. But for example, you know, we had somebody call up that it wasn't actually the resident itself. It was the family of the resident who'd come in to see the resident.

and they often complained about, you know, tea being cold or the food being cold and told the carers to take that away and look after it. But on this particular incident, they'd had somebody from a minority group who served the tea and they were called back in and said, well, you know, do they not teach you how to make tea from where you come? Do you know how to make tea?

You shouldn't be, you know, shouldn't be allowed to work here. Now, what that resulted in, you know, was that particular member of staff walking away and getting really upset and, you know, taking it very personally because it was a racist comment and it wasn't a comment that was made before. I think it is that sort of thing

that has crept in much, much more. And it is area by area. I won't say that it's, we're hearing about it from everywhere. We hear about it more from the sort of London, Manchester, you know, that sort of kind of area we're getting members telling us that to the point where we've issued guidance. And what is that guidance for how people are to deal with it

if they come up against it or for the managers on how to intervene? Well, I think it's a bit of both. It's a bit of both. So especially the guidance around people who are going into people's homes, especially in the evenings where they feel a bit threatened. There seems to be a lot of that, especially in particular areas. Because one of the things to remember is that those people, those carers will be going into that particular accommodation on a regular basis around the same

sort of time. So they'll be, you know, they're being watched. They feel like they're being watched. They're being shouted at. In one case, we had somebody who had eggs thrown at them. They were feeling quite upset about it, sort of then had to call their manager and say, I don't want to leave the building and somebody had to go and get them. So it is causing problems. So what we are saying is that obviously risk assess these kind of trips, especially in those areas where there may be incidents. So it is up to the senior managers to be risk assessing trips. And if there is potential of name calling, anything like that, which is unpleasant, then they need to not make sure that people aren't going there on their own. We also kind of highlight, you know,

give people whistles or alarms just in case they feel threatened in any way. I mean, this is quite extreme stuff. Yeah, this is... People are feeling vulnerable. This is what I'm thinking about because it may be that the carer, the cared for person wants that carer in their house,

but it's kind of the situation or the environment they may need to walk through to get to do their job. Charities I know are very concerned about this. 160 have written to the Prime Minister asking for clear leadership on anti-racism. We spoke to one, charity you say they were forced to pause their work because of the threats and also some of

the issues that you mentioned there, Nadra, for example, providing staff with alarms, walkie talkies, they cost thousands of pounds and the National Care Association saying some companies are doing the same as you are. What would it be Nadra if the Prime Minister were to give clear leadership, as you might see it, on anti-racism? What would that be? look like? Well, I think it's changing the narrative. I think the government needs to change the narrative in the way that they are putting forward the immigration policy. People are getting a little bit confused about people who are seeking asylum or coming in illegally, the people who have come in legally and are working. And it's almost, if you're a person of color, somebody like me,

you're logged into this kind of illegal immigration stuff. And I think the Prime Minister needs to talk very clearly about the value of our migrant workforce. Because, of course, nobody can tell by looking at somebody what their status is. No. They're going by colour. Which I'm just wondering whether Labour,

the government speaking about, for example, the difference between those here legally to work or not whether that would actually make a difference, you think it would? Well, I think if we started to talk more about the migrant workforce across our nation in different fields, but, you know, specifically I'm talking about social care as being valued, that at least what we could do is we could, through identity of uniforms, for example, with nurses, with, you know, HCA's, you've got uniforms, they could be distinguished. But it wouldn't eradicate it because once it's embedded,

in your brain, it's not making a difference. I think the Prime Minister himself has responsibility for some of the narrative that they've used and so does the Secretary of State. And I do not have responses in relation to your allegation they're either from the Prime Minister or indeed from the Secretary of State. West Streeting, as you will have seen, of course this morning did talk about the proliferation of

racism. I want to turn to Harvey for a moment, who is also joining us and really representing the nationwide association of fostering providers. We know 80% of foster carers are women. You've heard some of the stories from Nadra and from Patricia. What would you like to add? So we held a meeting of about 30 social workers from right across the country who work with foster carers and young people in care and support them. And I was absolutely shocked at what I heard. And I think this is one of the lessons through this, that we don't ask enough about what's going on

and talk to people enough about what's going on. And the things they were reporting to me were so widespread. This was urban areas. This was rubble areas. This was right across the whole of England. And I was really surprised. It ranged from young people in care feeling scared to leave the house because of the hostile environment they thought they'd face out on the street

and out in the high street, to a foster carer and a child of different ethnicities being challenged on the street as to why they were together, to a Muslim social worker who told us that this was the worst racism she'd faced since she was a teenager. Now, I know you have written to the Department of Education about this. We do have a response from them that say it's really troubling to hear some foster carers are facing this kind of abuse.

We're committed to making sure all carers get the support and guidance they need. We're already investing more money to expand fostering. and doubling council funding for early intervention to £500 million to keep children and safe in loving homes wherever possible we will be sharing further plans to improve the system soon. What do you think needs to happen? So I

thought that was pretty underwhelming. I mean I wrote to the Children's Minister about this and got a similar sort of response. I also wrote to the Children's Commissioner for England and she hasn't responded to me at all. So I think at our level we need to talk to people and understand what's going on but I think leadership sets the tone for this

And so if government, the Children's Commissioner, the Prime Minister, West Streeting can set the tone for saying this is clearly wrong. You can't make people feel unsafe. That doesn't just talk to the people who are creating this environment. It talks to people who are feeling it and who are impacted by it, to say to them, we're on your side. So what about West Streeting this morning? I mean, it's on the front of the Gartier newspaper, him talking about, you know, return to racism, I think, of the 70s and 80s as he talks about. Well, I want to hear that for my sector. Clearly this is a bigger societal issue

He was specifically speaking about the health He is there Yeah sure but I want to hear government talk about our children in care So these are our most vulnerable children Who have been through some really difficult childhood And difficult experiences And some of them are telling us they can't leave the house Because they're scared

And that's not acceptable And I want to hear government address that kind of thing exactly I want to come back to you Patricia The Department of Health and Social Care I do have a statement On that, they say they value the diversity of the NHS. Racism and discrimination are unacceptable and will not be tolerated in our NHS.

The Prime Minister has ordered an urgent review of all forms of racism in the NHS as part of wider efforts to tackle discrimination in the health service. Are you hopeful? We have to remain hopeful. The narrative, I agree with the other two speakers, that the narrative has to change nationally.

The narrative that's sort of come to the fore about migrants as Newler said, is completely confused. That was it, Nadra. Nadra, sorry, said was absolutely right that we are now seeing ethnic minority British citizens as well as migrant workers. The NHS has thrived and was set up on the basis of people coming to work from overseas in the 1940s.

So it is essential that this is dealt with really swiftly. But like others, we want to see really loud voices, centrally within government, taking action and stamping down on this. So yes, we are hopeful. We need to work with employers. They need to become like we are aiming to become an anti-racist organisation, working with our members to really work through the sorts of issues that they're facing and the sorts of solutions that need to be put in place. Employers need help to do it. they need to empower people of colour to actually work with them. We have a programme called Cultural Ambassadors, for example, to help them to actually understand where this is all coming from

and deal with it head on. Patricia Marquist from the Royal College of Nursing. Thank you very much. Harvey Gallaher, or Gallagher, maybe I'm giving you the Irish pronunciation. Harvey Gallagher from the Nationalwide Association of Fostering Providers and Nadra Ahmed Executive Director of the National Care Association. thanks very much to the three of you for bringing your experience

to this story. Thank you also for all your messages coming in, just one in relation to our last item there. I work in an inner London Public Library Service. We routinely experience racist abuse, including sometimes violence from service users. Public libraries are one of the few types of enclosed

public spaces left that are fairly well distributed across the country and open to anyone, no questions asked, until they engage in anti-social behaviour, which we then have to manage. They're usually doing so because they are in some way already marginalised by society. Okay, to something completely different. Boyfriends.

Is having a boyfriend now embarrassing? The writer Chante Joseph recently explored this idea in an article for Vogue and on social media noting this shift in how people, particularly heterosexual women, present their relationships online. So instead of posting clear photos of their romantic partner, many are choosing a subtler signal,

maybe a hand on a steering wheel, a clinking glass. Even blurring out faces in wedding pictures. But why is there this change? Sauran, Mam Danny, might have heard of him. He's the new mayor of New York. Even he was asked in a press conference whether it's still okay to use the term boyfriend.

It's spread far and wide. Shantay, welcome back to Women's Hour. Are you surprised by the reaction to your story? It has been the most insane, like seven days of my entire adult life. I'm honestly completely overwhelmed with the response to this. It has gone so viral. It's been insane. I've seen so many comments come in even this morning when I threw it out to people. For example, to Women's Hour,

as a teenager, I was desperate to have a boyfriend. I felt I had to have one to be accepted or indeed acceptable. I now know that treating another person as a fashion accessory isn't the best basis for a relationship. It seems the wheel is turned and not having a boyfriend is the fashionable thing. When are we going to forget the fashion of the time and see people just as people? Well, according to some of the reaction to your article, so far, Shante, people aren't there just yet. What prompted you to write that boyfriends are embarrassing? And some people might be even wondering about the concept. What does that even mean?

So I think a lot of it came from, you know, this idea of like the way we kind of post and even talk about our partners online now. Whereas it used to be a source of sort of pride, like that listener said. It was like almost an achievement to have a romantic partner, particularly because of the way that we treat single women. now it doesn't feel that way anymore and I kind of wanted to speak to women about why they were doing this you know a lot of them spoke about this like privacy that they wanted to have just particularly around their romantic relationships and then some were worried that if they posted their partner

and they broke up next week it would be embarrassing for them because they'd have to delete all of these posts and then other women were like it's just embarrassing period to have a boyfriend um why I kind of wow this is what I wanted to get into and what I started to understand more was that it's mainly around this idea that when we look at how men are raised and how they behave in society, the rampant misogyny and sexism, the hetero patriarchy we live under and how oppressive it is to

women, as we start to like rise up, it starts to feel like almost like it contradicts our values to be in a relationship with someone because it feels like we are like continuing to support an institution that was never really built for us. And we're stopping looking at like heterosexuality is something that we just do that we're resigned to. And we're starting to think a bit more kind of like critically and consciously about the way that we engage with it. One of the things I talk about in this piece is heterofatalism, this idea that as straight women, a lot of us complain about men

and how they treat us and how they behave. And, you know, people always say, you know, I hate all men or men are trash. You know, these are things that are constantly being said. But we will never refuse to date them. And so I kind of wanted to tap into that idea and express how, oh, this idea is man. investing even in the way that we present our partners online.

And I think it's difficult. I think this has been a very hard conversation for a lot of straight women, especially straight women who are in relationships to have, because this one thing that sort of validated them and made them feel like they'd achieved something is now, it doesn't have the same clout, basically. And then the other side of that, you have a lot of single women who are just overjoyed at this idea that being in a relationship is embarrassing because they've been made to feel horrible about being single for so, so, so, so long. It kind of, they take this as a win.

And so it's been kind of juggling all of those reactions. But at the heart of it, it's about we live in the time where men and women are so divided politically. Men are way more right wing. Women are leaning more left wing. So it's becoming difficult for us to have these partnerships without really evaluating what they mean and what we have to sacrifice to be in them. And Chanty, of course, not all men treat women badly. You're talking about some specific incidences that people have talked about. My head is kind of fizzing, thinking about Margaret Atwood at the beginning of our programme and coming round to you.

But here's something in relation to some of the points you make. I'm 23. I have never had a boyfriend and have on many occasions been made to feel as if I've already been left on the shelf, whether implicitly by constant conversations about relationships among friends or explicitly with people making jokes about my Bridget Jones-style perpetual singledom. I'm thrilled that vogue. The custodian of coolness has decided that it's.

It's cool to be single. It is finally been declared a choice instead of a state of neglect or rejection. I just have to get to in our last minute, however, Shanty, there have been people disagreeing with you. You will have seen the backlash against the Vogue article. Some say that making singledom cool, in fact, is a jealousy or bitterness about not having a boyfriend. Your response? My response is that so much of what I understood about the heteropage pararchy and heterosexuality. I have read from a lot of very talented and amazing queer academics. One

book I've told everyone to read is Jane Ward's The Tragedy of Heterosexuality. By no means is Jane Ward a very proud lesbian, jealous of heterosexual women at all. In fact, she actually feels quite bad for us. And so a lot of my basis comes from there and I just wanted to share that with a wider audience. Okay. I just, you know, when I was reading your article, then who popped into my head, but Ray and her hit, where the hell is my husband? So hasn't she just made that cool? Is boyfriend not cool, but husband is?

You've got 20 seconds. No, a lot of women have been saying, you know, it's cool to have a fiancé, it's cool to have a husband. It's not, we need to re-evaluate our relationship with men in this political climate. He did it in even under 20 seconds. Shante Joseph, her article is having a boyfriend now.

Embarrassing. You can find it on folk. You can find Shante. on social media as well. Tomorrow, the goalkeeper, Mary Arps, who played that pivotal role in England's Euro-2020 win, will be here,

helping the lioness reach the final of the 2023 World Cup. She has a memoir. Join us then. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. As part of Limelight from BBC Radio 4, this is The Betrayed,

the story of a family torn apart by a political extremism sweeping across Europe. You see this guy in the red t-shirt? I'd allowed myself to believe that this moment would never come. Do you remember the looters outside the sports shop last year? The one guy who'd let his scar slip? I think that's him.

My brother, Frank, standing with a group of angry men, shouting abuse at the police. He's the same guy? I now knew that Frank was an anti-immigrant activist. Listen to the whole series right now. First on BBC Sounds.