Woman's Hour - 06/06/2025

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

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

BBC Sounds music radio podcast. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to Friday's Woman's Hour. Women will be playing at the Queen's Tennis Tournament for the first time in over 50 years. We'll be hearing how the Lawn Tennis Association will be marking the event. Also today we'll be finding out the latest on the safety of weight loss jabs and contraception and understanding why some teachers quit the profession after having a baby. Also I've got a top film recommendation for you.

The Salt Path is a very beautiful and inspiring film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. I'm going to be speaking to the director Marianne Elliott shortly. You may have read the book. The film is based on the best-selling memoir of Rayna Wynne. After losing their family home, Ray and her husband Moth bought a cheap tent and decided to walk 630 miles around the southwest coastal path. They were both in their 50s and had 115 pounds in the bank. Also, Moth had been diagnosed with a rare degenerative brain disease. They made a wild decision at a moment in their life

when they had nothing to lose and it changed the course of their lives, ultimately for the better. Well, don't we all sometimes wonder what would happen if we made a decision to do something else? Well, this morning I'd like to hear from you if you've actually done it. Did you quit your job to live a totally different life? Where did you end up and how has it panned out? Maybe, like the winds, the choice was not in your hands and you were

forced onto a new path. Did it give you a new perspective on life? I would love to hear your tales this morning of adventures and stepping into the unknown with only faith and hope and possibly a healthy dose of fear. Get in touch in the usual way. The text number is 84844. You can also WhatsApp the programme on 03700 100444 or you can email us by going to our website and if you'd like to follow us on social media it's at BBC Woman's Hour. The text number though once again 84844 but of course you've got it saved in your telephone. First, it's reported today that more than 1.5 million

people in the UK are taking GLP-1s, weight loss jabs, and most of them online from pharmacies without a face-to-face appointment with a doctor. Yesterday, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, MHRA, warned that women using weight loss jabs must use effective contraception. And it's not known whether taking the medicines could harm an unborn baby. It also warns that weight loss jabs may make the contraceptive pill less likely to work in those who are overweight or obese. There are also concerns that the growing popularity of these jabs means many women aren't using the drugs safely or getting the right advice. Well to discuss the issues I'm joined now by Dr Sarah Jarvis, GP and BBC Health reporter, Philippa Roxby.

Sarah, Philippa, good morning, welcome to the programme. Philippa, I'm gonna start with you. It feels like every day at the moment, there is a new story about these weight loss jabs. Let's start with the one that's in the Times Today that I mentioned that says 1.5 million people in the UK are now taking these jabs. Where are they getting them from?

Well, yeah, hi, Lisa. A minority are getting them via the NHS. The NHS does provide some of these weight loss drugs to people who are the most obese and therefore the most in need, and they tend to access them through specialist weight management services, through their GP and then through hospitals. But that's really quite a small number. The NHS can't provide those drugs to everyone who's obese because one in three people in the UK are currently obese and that would cost the NHS too much. So there are quite long waiting lists for those drugs. So because of their popularity, many other people are buying them

privately from pharmacies, from high street pharmacies where they are available and also from online pharmacies and then some people are also because of their popularity again and because of the demand for them are getting them from unregulated sellers so they're not they're not seeing a healthcare professional, they're not seeing a pharmacist, they're not seeing a doctor, they're getting them sometimes sold from social media or even from beauty salons. And that is the worry for drug experts,

that people are getting them without the proper advice and without seeing a doctor or a pharmacist first. Before we start talking about some of the other stories, let me bring you in Dr. Sarah Jarvis. And start by explaining, I just used this term, GLP-1s, tell us what they are and how they actually work. So these are drugs which were first developed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and certainly we are using them in primary care, we are allowed to prescribe them in primary care for some people who've got type 2 diabetes but in general practice we're not allowed

to prescribe them for people who are living with obesity and want to lose weight unless they've got type 2 diabetes. So I just wanted to correct Gillian's last comment. Now they are drugs which work in a variety of ways and one of the ways they were developed to reduce blood sugar, blood glucose, but only if your blood glucose is high. That's why they would develop the type 2 diabetes. However, we discover that they have all sorts of other side effects, including reducing your appetite, working in your brain to reduce your appetite, and slowing down emptying of the stomach, as well as working on hormones, including insulin.

And what that does, especially the appetite effect and the working on your stomach to slow down emptying, is it helps people to lose weight. When we discovered that during the trials of people with type 2 diabetes, then studies started to be done to help people to lose weight. And this is a naturally occurring hormone in your body. The difference is that levels in your own body are likely to be much, much lower than we are giving with this hormone. And when you read a headline in a paper that says 1.5 million people in the UK are now

taking them, but only a tiny percentage are getting them via their GPs, what does that do to a GP? So it doesn't surprise me for a second. These,'ve never in a 34 year career as a GP had anything like the sort of interest that we've got in this drug. So basically we knew in December last year that there was going to be lots of anticipation, that there was new guidance coming out about a new one of the newer drugs which was tiazepatide and we knew that semaglutide, which is one of the other drugs, was also available but only through specialist clinics. We thought it was going to be made available much more widely, we thought GPs were going to be able to prescribe it but in the event

they said no it's only people already under specialist services and we will announce some other groups who may be eligible in the next three years sometime and nice estimates about 220 000 people will be able to get the drugs through the NHS by 2028. Well given that there are 3.4 million people living with obesity, you've got a BMI over 35, only a tiny proportion. So it doesn't surprise me for a second that people are going online but it does worry me. Okay why? Well it worries me largely because I'm concerned that people are going to unregulated places, Gillian said, I think it's really scary if people aren't getting them from you know a registered work from registered trained healthcare professionals. We know that for instance

pharmacies in February tightened up the regulations for online pharmacies, ordering them to make changes to prevent people from getting drugs that could cause them harm. The general pharmaceutical company, council rather, did that. So the concern is that if people aren't given the right advice about avoiding pregnancy, if they're certainly if they're not getting genuine drugs, or for instance, people who got eating disorders who want these drugs to help them lose weight even when they don't need to and there's also the fact that for instance they greatly increase the risk of losing too much muscle if you're not exercising and eating enough

protein. Are they getting that advice? And people need to know that they can occasionally cause serious even life-threatening side effects So they need to weigh up the risks and benefits. They need to be fully informed Okay, this was one of the other stories I saw this week Which was about the over 60s and the concern and I guess it's about this loss of muscle. Can you explain what why that's? Why that rings alarm bells? It's a real concern to us as doctors We're increasingly becoming aware that if you just stop eating, you know, if people go on fad diets, you lose lots of muscle. And as you get older, then sarcopenia,

which is this loss of muscle, is a real factor in frailty, in falls, in breaking bones, in loss of independence. And what we've seen is that with the GLP-1s, if you don't get the right advice, if you're not really careful about exercise, if you're not really careful about eating enough protein, then you will lose a mixture of muscle and fat. Now, in one study when people stopped taking the drugs, they put on two-thirds of all the weight they'd lost within a year. And when they put the weight back on again, that was fat, not muscle. So we could get people taking them,

stopping them, taking them and ending up with less and less muscle, which increases the risks of falls, of frailty and possibly of losing your independence. Philippa, one of the other stories is around women taking these GLP ones and the contraceptive pill and also becoming pregnant. So what have you heard from women who are becoming pregnant whilst taking these jabs? Yeah, well, we spoke to a mother of two, Natasha, yesterday, who said she started taking the most recent weight loss drug, Monjaro, and she bought it online.

She said she got no advice at the time. That's difficult to verify, but she said there wasn't any advice. Of course, there are patient information leaflets that come with these drugs, but if you're not aware the information is there, lots of women might not read them or might not even be aware that information exists.

She started taking Manjaro and discovered six weeks later that she was pregnant. Now she hadn't expected to become pregnant at all because she'd had trouble becoming pregnant with her previous two kids. So it was a real surprise to her and quite a shock. She did all the right things though. She went to her GP, asked what to do, stopped taking the drug straight away, which is what her GP advised as well. And then she had a scan of the baby and it seems to be perfectly healthy. And of course, we don't know if there are any safety risks to the unborn baby yet. And that's part of the

problem. We don't have the evidence to say that it is safe, but we don't know that it's unsafe either. And so the drug safety experts are saying as a precaution, you shouldn't take these weight loss drugs while trying to become pregnant or during pregnancy or while breastfeeding until they've got the data. Sarah, advice please. I mean, Philip has just given us an overview then and given us some advice, but women are listening to this who are possibly on the pill. Yes. Yeah. So so I mean Philip has given all the right advice the only exception about stopping it straight away if you're taking it for type 2 diabetes do make sure that before you stop it you've got an alternative

place an alternative in place because of course you can stop this drug if you're taking it because you're living with a beast you want to lose weight but if you've got type 2 diabetes there is a risk your blood sugar will go up but basically the recommendation is always read the leaflet and with tizepatide that's otherwise known as mangiaro with that drug in particular they are recommending that if you're using any kind of oral contraceptive pill you should use a barrier method of contraception like a condom in addition to your pill for at least four weeks after you start taking

it and for four weeks after any increase in dose, because with all these medicines we tend to start at a low dose and then gradually titrate the dose up in order to reduce the risk of side effects. Now personally, I always say to women, you know, there is the family, the faculty of side effects. Now personally, I always say to women, you know, there is the family, the faculty of reproductive health has said there's currently no evidence that the other GLP ones reduce the effectiveness of oral contraception, but let's not forget that vomiting and diarrhoea are common side effects of these drugs. So if vomiting occurs within three hours of taking your pill or if you've got severe diarrhoea for more than 24 hours, then you do need to follow the guidance for

missed pills which should have come with your pill. So I would always say, as I say to her on the side of caution, use another method of contraception when you start these drugs, particularly with tizepatide and for four weeks after you increase the dose. Philippa, have we heard anything from the pharmaceutical industry? Yes, the National Pharmacy Association say you should always go to a registered pharmacy, whether that's your community pharmacy in your high street or whether it's a registered online pharmacy, and make sure you talk to face talk to face to face with a pharmacist to find out the best advice because they will they will tell you all these things and there's advice online as well as how to check that if you're buying something from a website

that you can tell if it's registered or not you can tell if it's official you can tell if it's authorized so do look online and find the best advice there from the general pharmaceutical council website. Okay, Dr Sarah Jarvis, GP and our BBC health reporter, Philippa Roxby, thank you very much. We do have a statement from the makers of Manjaro, patient safety is Lily's top priority, Lily is the people that make Manjaro, we're actively engaged in monitoring, evaluating and reporting safety information for all our medicines. The patient information leaflet states the medicine should not be used during pregnancy as the effects of this medicine on an unborn child are unknown. If you are pregnant, think you may be pregnant or are

planning to have a baby, ask your doctor for advice before using this medicine. They recommend using contraception while using this medicine and suggest also using a barrier method, e.g. a condom as Dr Sarah Jarvis has just mentioned there for four weeks after starting Manjaro and for four weeks after each increase in dose. They add Manjaro should only be used when prescribed by a healthcare professional and prescriptions should be dispensed by registered pharmacies and providers. Thanks to both of you, Philippa and Dr Sarah Jarvis. 84844 is the number to text. I've been asking you to get in touch with your stories of when you changed your life. I'm going to read a couple of them out. One here saying, I left my job, sold my house and most of my possessions bought

a narrowboat and now live on the UK Canal network. That was six years ago and I don't regret it for a moment. Step away from the rat race. There's a wonderful world out there. Oh, tell us more. Keep getting in touch with your stories and if you want to email, go to the website. The reason I'm asking is because of a new film, The Salt Path. It's a new film based on Rayna Wynn's international best-selling memoir starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. Just days after Rayna learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, has a rare neurodegenerative condition, their home is taken away and they lose their livelihood. With nothing left to lose they walk the 630 miles

southwest coast path. The film portrays their journey of coping with loss, illness and uncertainty, but it's also a powerful story of resilience, hope and love. It's the first film directed by the acclaimed theatre director Marianne Elliott, who's won numerous awards including four Tony Awards and two Olivier Awards. Her celebrated productions include amongst others War Horse and the Curious Instance of the Dog in the Night Time. Before we talk to her, let's hear a clip from the salt path. What? Where are we?

I think we're at the castle rock. Yeah. Which is where? It's King Arthur's country. Really? Yeah, it's impressive. You OK? Yeah.

You should take me back to the shop and get a different one. I don't want a different one. Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs there. Congratulations Marion. I've made it my top film recommendation, but you don't need me to recommend it. It's already smashing it. I know it's incredible because it's a small low-budget independent British film and it's now number two at the box office behind Mission Impossible. I'm not surprised having seen it but how amazed are you? It's a bit surreal to be honest I can't believe it. Because it literally is quite a quiet story about a middle-aged couple that go walking. And your first time directing a film, obviously you have this incredible theatre career behind you. Why did you want to tell this story?

Tell us how this came about. Well there I was, the pandemic struck, I was doing a show on Broadway, it was just about to open, we were really excited and we were closed down of course. And so then I was back at home in London, my poor teenage daughter going mad, being shot in. And I suppose I was thinking, crikey, this is a moment because nobody seems to know where we're going, there's no plan for my future, is theatre ever gonna happen again, will I ever have a

career, what am I gonna do? And I was walking in the park, I lived in East Dulwich at the time, so I was in Dulwich Park which is gorgeous and the sun was out and the plants were having a wonderful time. And I think I just viscerally remembered, it wasn't logical at all, another story of another woman in her 50s who was going through a much, much bigger existential crisis and found herself gathering some sort of nurture in nature and I thought oh gosh maybe just maybe just maybe it's a bit far-fetched and crazy but maybe I could make a film and maybe that would be a really beautiful film because it's so visual it feels so cinematic you know it's incredible parts of the British

Isles that they go walking in and And I had flirted with film before, but I'd always wanted to do a film with an older female protagonist. There aren't that many stories out there. True. And I wanted to do a film that wasn't hugely reliant on dialogue because that's what plays do. I wanted to do a film where the camera was the storyteller. And I realised, you know, that story, it's really a two-hander, but

there's also a third character which is the unbelievable epic majesty of the landscape. Oh, it's noticed. It's absolutely stunning. And also the sparse use of dialogue. Yeah, that was absolutely deliberate. In the story, which is the true story, which is what makes it so unbelievable and incredible and life-affirming, but in the book, they don't talk much. These terrible things happen to them, and the bailiffs are knocking on the door, and she just says, let's just go walking because they have to do something. It's actually the worst idea really.

He's super sick. They've got nothing. Wasting disease. The doctors said, be careful on the stairs and rest up. And they decide to go on this incredible walk, which is actually the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest three times. It's really hard. I, I haven't, I must admit, I'm gonna put it out there. I will do it but I haven't read the book. However, I know all about the story and I've seen many interviews and when I watched it at the beginning I thought this is insane. What

are they doing? By the end of it I was weeping with them and also planning my own life. What do I do next? What's the appeal? What's the appeal of the story? Yeah, I mean your guess is as good as mine really. It changed my life working on the film, working on this story. I was down in Cornwall looking at locations, wrecking locations, and

I was looking at these unbelievably diverse, extraordinary, dramatic places which don't feel like England. And I remember thinking, oh my god, my husband's not happy, he's not happy in his job. And I rang him and I said, you've got to get out, you've got to change your life, because I'm meeting all sorts of people here, they're completely, from completely different walks of life, and I'm out of my comfort zone, I've

been put into a completely different place. It's utterly divine, this extraordinary part of Britain that we thought we knew, that we clearly don't. And I'm starting to see things with perspective. That's what happened to them. I think that's what happened to people when they read the book. And I think that's what's so inspiring really about the whole thing because they're in their 50s, they've been together for 20 odd years, they've got kids at uni and yet they fall in love again and they refine themselves. And she's a woman who feels invisible like a lot of women in their 50s, she doesn't really

know who she is anymore. She feels like she's failed everything. She's failing her kids. She's failing her husband who's dying. She's lost her house. She's lost her livelihood, which was this Airbnb business on a tiny farm. You know, she feels utterly useless. But of course, what happens is she refines herself. And one one realizes as one reads the book and hopefully when one sees the film that she's a giant. Yes. She's an ordinary person but she's a giant.

Oh yeah I have my list of, in my own private life, of my mighty women. You know the women who are just so big that you know they can just, you can depend on them for anything and she is that. And she is that. She gets them through this situation how on earth like the extreme weather and they just have a tent. I mean, yeah, you say that she's a woman who's in her 50s and she's not seen then you choose an actress who's possibly one of the most visible sexiest women in that demographic to play this role. The amazing Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. I mean the two of them are incredible in it. Did you know who you wanted to play?

No, it was a journey. I mean I didn't meet any other actresses or actors. I met both of them. In case Gillian's listening. And I felt like Gillian was really connected to the story. She absolutely loved the book and it felt like it was a very personal thing for her. And as we talked through, it was quite a long meeting, I felt, oh gosh, this is actually really exciting because she's a serious actress and it's not her fault that she's always cast as a glamour play.

She really wants to be challenged, you know, she's an artist, she wants to do different things and she was incredible on set because she was unvain, is exactly the word I would use. She was warts on all, she completely committed. And yeah, I think she looks like Raina Wynn, to be honest. Yeah, no, I think both of them. I think it's brilliant. And you just believe it's them doing it.

You can see it, you can feel it. You say it's made on a very small budget. Yeah. So, and lots of women behind the camera. Yes. Or a handful of women. Tell us a bit about the actual shoots and how. There were a lot of women.

I think, I wonder why that is. I mean, I think it's very, very unusual in the film world. It's unusual everywhere But it's only very unusual film world to have so many women I think maybe because everybody who was working on the film wasn't doing it for money You know They were all taking a cut really because a lot of the money was going into the film and so though It was a passion thing for them. Maybe women are just used to doing things for yeah Maybe I also think that a lot of women relate to her and to the story and so we just found ourselves

on set quite a lot of the times. We didn't actually plan it that way particularly, but maybe, you know, I love women so I always relate to women. So choosing the crew and, you know, the cinematographer and all of that, I suppose there is something in there. But, you know, we'd find ourselves on set and Gillian would often be jumping up and down, getting out selfies and going, look how many women there are. This is unusual. So, yeah, it was great that there were so many women. And were Rayna and Wynne involved at all?

They were. Yes, they were. Were Rainer and Wynne involved at all? They were, yes they were. Jason got very close to Moth, the husband, and he chatted to him a lot and every time we filmed any bit Jason would always have Moth in his ear so he could do the accent. He sort of fell in love with Moth, what actually everybody does, because he's such a positive, gorgeous, charismatic man and doing so well. Yeah, how is he? Brilliant.

Brilliant. And he's loving it. You know, he's loving all of this. You said that you love women. We know you love women because when you decided to bring Stephen Sondheim's company back and put it on the West End, he decided to swap the lead character, who is a man in the original, Bobby, to a female. Yeah, yeah. Yes, I mean that took some persuading of Stephen Sondheim.

How did you do it? A lot of conversations. It was fortunate because he'd seen my work before, so I think he probably thought, oh maybe she doesn't, maybe she's not utterly stupid. And he'd had it done all over the world so, you know, why did he need to do another production with a male Bobby? I think he was quite intrigued. But he got very involved and there were times where he said to me, you know, Marianne, you're much more passionate about this issue than I am. Okay, you can win that point, whatever it was. And, you know, there was another point where he said to me, you know, I've been brought up as a

male chauvinist, to be honest, so I don't know, so you tell me, will this work? I just felt, you know, it's a 35-year- old man and the whole point of the musical is should he or shouldn't he get married. He's clearly attractive, he's clearly got a lot of money, a lot of girlfriends, you know, why do we care really whether he gets married or not, just get on with your life. But if it's a woman of course who's 35, she's very aware of the ticking clock, she's very aware if she's single that her friends are starting to think, well you know, you better get on with it and so the

pressure starts to build so I think you empathize with the character, I personally think you empathize with the character more if it's woman. What was it like getting out of a theatre and being in the open air? I so enjoyed you, the character is the landscape, the beautiful southwest coast of Britain, absolutely stunning. And I thought, oh, is this a theatre character just luxuriating in the world being her stage? Quite literally like, just yes. I'm not, I don't, I mean it's here in front of me, I don't have to create it.

Do you have to build the set? Yeah, yes. I suppose there was something very exhilarating about being outside every day and I do love visuals. I suppose I'm quite an aesthetic director. I love, you know, how it looks and it is utterly arresting. You know, we take Jason and Gillian onto set, I say set in Vodacom is every day, onto location. It would be a different location and their jaw would just drop. They're like we're filming here

today. How did you deal with the weather? Well for the most part we were kind of lucky because it was that year when the weather was brilliant just before the kids broke up for the summer and then it was terrible so we filmed just before that happened before the breakup and so the weather was pretty good most of the time there was one day when it was terrible but we just found a way around it and ran out when it stopped raining quick film now it's all about having the right gear isn't it it's not about the weather it's just having the right gear which actually rain wind did they they only had their tent and what they had

the power of their story is so immense and it changed their lives ultimately because now I think Wynne's writing a fourth book now. But actually the real power is in how it's touched so many people's lives and inspired them to change their own lives. Has it changed yours making this film? It has, it really has, yes it completely has. I've gone, I've become a freelance director, I'm much more careful about the kind of work that I do now. My husband did leave his work, he's set up on his own. Yeah it has but I think, I think it's more than that really. I think it's about what matters, what really matters when you have nothing and the world

around you seems very confusing and how you connect to the people that you really love and how you understand that you really love them. And you've conveyed it beautifully. It's been such a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you so much, Maren Elliott. And the film is called The Salt Path and it's in cinemas now. And lots of you are getting in touch with your own stories of life change. Margaret says, just over 20 years ago at the age of 53, I moved myself to the outer Hebrides to become Harris Tweed Weaver. Love this. A huge decision that I have never regretted. Not mad, brave or unhinged, just led by my heart, not my head. Another one here saying, after years of putting it off and finding

excuses on why not to go, I'm finally taking a sabbatical away from work and I'm moving to Paris to be an au pair, hoping to broaden my horizons and learn a bit of French along the way. Gosh, these are good stories to hear on a Friday, I have to say. Rob says, to my parents' horror, as a young guy, I quit part way through a degree after my friend unexpectedly died. I thought, how much time do I have? I followed my love of music, wrote songs, played in bands, made records and did a lot of other different work.

But most importantly, that work led me to my wonderful wife. Of course, it's like the butterfly effect. We don't know what the end result will be, but nothing ventured. Keep them coming in. 84844 is the number. Now, the tennis season is well and truly underway and with it, next week sees the return of a new fixture on the women's schedule. For the first time since 1973, women will walk out to compete at the Queen's Club as the Queen's Tennis Tournament gets underway.

For over 50 years, only men have taken part in the fixture. To mark this moment, the Lawn Tennis Association, or LTA, is today launching a series of initiatives to support the health and wellbeing of British women's tennis players. In a moment, we can exclusively bring you some of those details with the LTA's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Guy Evans. But first, I'm joined by the former British No. 1 and Tournament Director of Queen's Laura Robson. Laura, welcome to Woman's Hour. Good morning. Yeah, thanks for having me. Absolutely our pleasure. How does it feel to be welcoming women's professional tennis back to Queen's for the first time in more than 50 years? It's wild that it's 52 years since they last played here, but the excitement from the players side of things has been amazing.

Over the last few days to see them all come on site for the first time. They would have watched it on TV over the years as a men's event, but to actually experience the sort of tradition and the history of the club in person has been really cool. And yeah, we've spent the last few days giving everyone tours because the club is a bit of a maze, and so everyone's figuring their way around. But yeah, I think there's just a general excitement to get on the courts here to start matches. And, you know, in terms of ticket sales as well, we're doing remarkably well for a year one event. I think last I checked, it was over 50,000 tickets sold for the WTA week, which is amazing. So yeah, we just hope it's a massive success and we hope it doesn't rain. I'm sure it will be. Why were women excluded for so long? It wasn't that they were excluded. It was that the tournament moved.

So initially, you know, it was a combined event. Then the women's event got moved down to Eastbourne due to lack of space. So even though now it's moved back to Queens, it's still, we don't logistically have enough space to hold both events at the same time. So it's the women's first and then the men will follow the week after. And that is because of a lack of courts, a lack of facilities basically.

We can't really build out any more than we already have. So yeah, we are absolutely at capacity, but the fact that we can make it almost a combined event and make it overlap for a few days, yeah, it's almost like a two-week tennis festival in a way now. And what about the prize money? Wimbledon has had equal prize money for men and women since 2007, but that won't be the case at Queen's, will it? The men's tournament will have a substantially higher pot of 2.1 million compared to the 900,000 available to women.

Yes, so the prize money this year has been a massive increase on the WTA side. That was something that the LTA announced yesterday, where by 2029, they're going to have equal prize money, but it doesn't happen overnight. And, you know, there is a big step year on year to try and get it as close as possible, which we have done this year. There's been a massive increase and across the year, it's now the second highest paid WTA 500 level tournament. And I think what people don't necessarily realize

is that outside of those four grand slams, the WTA and ATP set the prize money markers themselves. So it's not something that's decided tournament by tournament. Of course, we can do all that we can, you know, in the meantime to try and close that gap. But, you know, from the LTA's perspective, we're ahead of where the WTA is year round. So, yeah, it's a step in the right direction, but in order to close that gap eventually, we need to run a successful event. We need to sell as many tickets as possible and make sure that we do everything we can over the next few years to

create a legacy in its own way for the WTA weekend. Absolutely. Now it's one of many tournaments female tennis players can compete in now. It's a crowded schedule with lots of travel and players are expected to be their best during every game. This is one of the reasons the LTA has today launched a series of initiatives aimed at improving the health and wellbeing of British female tennis players. As I mentioned, we're also joined by Dr. Guy Evans,

who is the organisation's chief medical officer. Morning Guy, welcome. Good morning, Nita. Give us an overview of what you've launched today. Yeah, so we've been working for about two years following player feedback on the support that we provide to our female players. And broadly, I kind of divide this into two parts. One is the very player-facing part. And we've introduced regular screening of our players, so at least annually, where we sit down with each individual player and we

look for issues that are related to female athlete health problems, women's health issues. And when we identify an issue, even our players are kind of transient creatures flying in and out at any given time, you know, all the way around the world, we have set up bespoke quick referral pathways to specialists who can see, diagnose, offer scans on the same day and potentially even treatment so that our players are not disadvantaged

given their occupation as a tennis player. The second part of it is focused more on education. And a lot of our female players wanted to know more about areas related to female athlete health, such as do periods affect performance? What's the best contraceptive choice for a female player to go on? What is the implication on fertility for career and elite sports? And so we've developed a podcast series that players can listen to. And we chose podcasts,

because again, they're on the road so often that they can just, you know, link up to the podcast when they're in the airport lounge or waiting to see their warm up and get the information they want. We've also done a couple of other bespoke initiatives. So for example, we offer sports bra fitting service, which sounds a bit odd, but it's important to have a little bit of sports bra. How important is that? Why is that so important? Yeah, hugely important because we've partnered with the University of Portsmouth and it's fascinating talking to their research team about breast you know, breast health in sport. And they told me a stat the other day that in a poor supporting bra, a breast will move,

the poor supporting bra, when you run, the stride length will shorten by four centimetres. So it just shows you the biomechanical change that having a poor supporting bra can have. And if you're running a marathon, that's a mile extra that, you know, if you had up all the four centimetres. So having a really good supporting bra is both good for breast health, but it's good for performance as well. So you're doing some really important work in looking into the sort of unique needs of female athletes.

And so let's, we've talked about the importance of a well-supporting sports bra, but you mentioned the menstrual cycle. What advice or how might a female athlete adapt their schedule around that? Yeah, that's a good question. And the answer is, it needs to be really bespoke. There's a lot out there at the moment about something called phase-based training. Should we be changing the schedule and the training according to where a player is in their cycle? And I don't think we have the evidence to say

that we should be at the moment, to be honest. I don't think that's backed up evidence. So what we encourage is firstly, a period of tracking, using a tracking device, maybe two or three months, and encouraging our players to note down symptoms and feelings and the way the training goes over that period of time and look for any links throughout the cycle.

And generally, they fall into two categories. Some players don't notice any real link, and they're very happy, and I don't nag them, and I say, look, if you're happy, and with your cycle, it's not impacting things, and you've got a plan in place, I'm happy. Others will identify cyclical issues that cause either an issue with

the way they feel or their performance and that's when we set about trying to improve things for them. A good example of this is in the year a player identifying that at the same time every month they felt their balance was disturbed compared to normal, and they noticed an increase in their double fault rate. And so they didn't initially think that this was a medical problem, and it isn't really in many ways, but it was an interesting observation that was flagged and we worked with her team to improve that scenario for her. So we're still sort of gathering information, but also finally people are actually paying

attention to what the requirements of female athletes are. Laura, none of this was around, I suppose, when you were playing. How might this knowledge and support have impacted you, do you think? What do you think about all of this? I think it's absolutely great and a step in the right direction, something that's you know it feels like it's been a long time coming and the fact that we haven't had access to this kind of research and you know developments in this area is going to be massively important for people as they plan their year out, as they plan their schedule and we talk about

tennis as being pretty non-stop but you need to be able to fit in your downtime, your training weeks, make sure you're peaking for the right tournaments and all of this goes hand in hand with that. So yeah it seemed like you know women's football was sort of the first push in this area to try and figure out what's going on in your body and now tennis is trying to catch up a little bit, but yeah, it's all really good stuff. And I know the players have really bought into it. And as you might expect, obviously, but yeah, I can just see it helping massively

as the year goes on. But when you think about your own career and the sort of lack of knowledge or the lack of conversation, what do you think about that? How might it have helped you? Yeah, I guess it's not something that I really thought about because it was never available to me, so it would have been great. And so the more people that have access to it now, that would be a step in the right direction, not just for British players, but for it to be a a tour wide initiative. And you know, for players who might not necessarily have

this sort of same access to health insurance as well, someone outside the top 100, let's say, who's not an official WTA member who's, you know, traveling week in week out, but might not have the same access to doctors. So yeah, this is something that we want to see at every level of the rankings and just the beginning basically. Absolutely and also part of all of this is what you were saying there Laura that you are talking about it like what female athletes, female tennis players are actually having the conversation I suppose that that was a difference as well no one was even

talking about it. Guy you've also introduced protections for female players who become pregnant how will this support work? Yeah so this is our maternity policy which really is trying to allow us to for female, to not have to choose between a career and whether they start a family. It's mutually beneficial for everybody because if we can support a player through pregnancy and return them to competitive tennis in a healthy, happy way, then everybody benefits. So this policy applies to those players that are supported by the LTA and it allows them protected time and ongoing support through the pregnancy phase, the childbirth, the aftercare and the postpartum period and it outlines how they can access and what the sport might look like

as they look to return to competitive tennis. Thank you very much both of you for speaking to me this morning. You can follow the coverage of Queen's across BBC Sports. Thank you to Dr Guy Evans and also to Laura Robson. Thank you both. Actually Guy, you've led me very nicely onto my next item. Thank you very much because it's also about women going back to work after having children because it's increased part-time work, the solution to female teacher retention. Well, a new report out today, excuse me, which is a large-scale analysis of what happens to teachers after maternity leave. They've studied data from 150,000 teachers across 7,000 schools in the UK over the last four years,

so it's a huge study, have looked at the impact of part-time working versus full-time during the first four years after returning back after maternity leave. Nicola West-Jones is director of Insight and External Relations at the key group and co-author of the report and Jess Edwards is a primary school teacher and Chair of Policy Research and Campaigns at the National Education Union Executive. Nicola and Jess, thank you for taking the time to come along to tell us all about this. Nicola, I'm going to start with you. How important is part-time work for women coming back to the profession after maternity leave? Tell us what you've found. We found a lot in this report and also it's worth noting that this is the first time that

this has not existed before. We've tracked these 150,000 teachers over a four-year period through their teacher contracts which is stored on their kind of data which is, we used to think about half of schools in the country have their teacher data on there and we were able to compare and contrast what happened to the teachers, about 3,000 of them who went on maternity leave in year one and how that compared to other cohorts like men or women or other versions of different cohorts across the across the group and what we found that was super interesting in particular was that when we looked at the leaving rates of those that came back after four years,

that were still working after four years, they were the highest leaving rates were for people that came back from eternity leave and work full-time. And conversely the lowest leaving rates were for teachers who returned from eternity leave and went part-time. And quite a significant difference of 13 percentage points actually. So we saw that 32% had left after four years if they went part-time. That's actually, it sounds quite a lot actually, but in teaching that's kind of, that's good. And that was 45% if they came back full-time. So they're just not staying if they're coming back full-time.

What's happening Jess? Well I think it's a variety of things really but mainly there is a bit of a kind of computer says no culture I think in schools. We know that we've got a huge retention problem inside of our schools so we know that for example in our secondary schools huge numbers of people teaching outside of specialty so it's really important that we start to address this problem and to keep hold of those teachers and so I'm also a commissioner on something called the teaching commission and evidence that we've seen has teachers that say things like I couldn't work like I do now if I had children. Cohorts that we've interviewed, teachers in their 20s that say they can't envisage being able to

ever have children in the profession unless they were able to go part-time. Clearly there's lots of things in teaching we place a huge amount of importance and quite rightly on the relationships that we develop with families and teachers are telling us we can't develop relationships with the teachers of our own children in the way that we seek in our professional lives to develop relationships with the parents of the children that we teach. Teachers are telling us that they're missing key milestones in the life of their own

children, they're missing their children's performances, they're not able to attend the parents' evenings, the school trips, things like that. How easy is it for teachers to go part-time? Well it depends on the, partly it depends on the timetable and it depends on the culture of the school and the policy of the school, but these things are all doable. They do take a certain amount of effort and will and timetabling is a really interesting one. What we found was that in primary schools there were much higher incidents of part-time working. So 31% of primary school teachers were part-time compared to 26% of secondary. And that surprised us because we were talking earlier on Jess when you said actually lots of you know parents maybe of primary school children like to have one

teacher for their for their child but it is much more prevalent in primary school and I think that's because of the timetable it's quite easy actually to take one teacher one classroom 30 children and then think well actually if we moved another teacher into that class on a Friday, you know, it's not that disruptive. If you think about that from a secondary perspective, you've got, you know, maybe a year seven student would have, say, 14, 15 teachers across the different subjects. If you think about the number of rooms they need to be allocated to, if you think about the setting by ability, if you then think in Key Stage 4, where people are picking options for GCSE it gets really complicated and then you layer on some of these teachers don't want to work full-time so it's quite

you know reasonable for some secondary schools to think this is just too hard but there is software that exists to sort this out and we also heard from schools that said we've just changed the way we do timetabling it's not just about the software. In the past lots of schools I think have done, you know it's often the job of the head of maths or the head of physics or someone that's really good with numbers who will sit in a room, in a dark room for a week and work out the timetable for the next year, but the schools that are doing this really well are saying no we are going to get the whole of the school leadership

team around the table to do this because we know who we want to keep, we know who we want to progress. Yeah you're nodding. Yeah I think that's right isn't it, it's we don't want a computer says no approach and it's about the the human being sat around a table really trying to work that out in a way that you can't do just via a spreadsheet and you have to have the human experience in the room but I did want to just say actually that unless we start to address this problem, we have huge, we are building up a huge problem in our schools and that is one of experience.

Of course we want a mixture of youth and experience in our schools, but if we carry on losing women in their 30s in the way that we are losing from education, I think that has an impact on the education we're able to provide for children in two ways. One because, you know, the children miss out on that experience, but also those younger members of staff don't have the level of mentoring from experienced teachers that actually they deserve to have as well. So it's a problem that we really need to fix in the system. Yeah, what are the differences? I mean, we've touched a bit on their primary and secondary. Is it important in primary for children to have just one teacher in the class that they can focus on or is it quite are they very it's surely they're adaptable surely it doesn't matter?

I mean there is a bit of challenge there you've got you've obviously got to know those children really well and you've got to know each other really well I think you're probably referring to things like job shares and if you've got you know in a primary school you would never really have more than two people sharing a class and it would typically maybe be split kind of 50-50 and you really want to be building in some time in the middle of that week for those two teachers to speak. We spoke to lots of teachers who were doing this and they said things like, you know, they're all going over and above so, you know, they have, you know, they're talking over WhatsApp on their day off. They're saying, oh don't forget this happened or you know they're communicating

with each other and they're very, because often it is they're just, it's mum to mum. So they're very respectful of each other's boundaries actually and we heard people saying well I don't contact my job partner you know between the hours of seven and eight because they're putting their kids to bed but actually she doesn't contact me after this time because I'm taking my children to football practice or whatever and it's just about communication really Are we seeing it correlation? I was seeing anything in different locations or certain things that what's happening? Yeah I mean we were really surprised by this so we looked at rates across the regions and actually the part-time working in inner London is only 16%

the part-time working in inner London is only 16% and that goes right up to nearly double in the southwest where 31% are working part-time. So a huge difference across the regions. I think that's right and I think some of the time in our most challenging schools there's even more of a reluctance to allow part-time working but I think it's short-sighted, it's not seeing the benefit that keeping teachers in school long term able to relate to parents over a period of time, families over a period of time can bring to an education setting. Jess, as well as being a teacher, as I mentioned in the opener, you're a commissioner on the Teaching Commission and a body set up to investigate the causes

of the teacher shortage. You've got a report coming out next month. What's the teaching commission identified as good practice? How do you retain women after they have children in this profession? So without giving too much away. Of course. The commission is going to make some recommendations and particularly around women teachers we've heard from not just the teachers themselves but also where there is good practice happening and what needs to be done so basically we're going to be saying

that there's a perceived cost of supporting flexible working that isn't necessarily the actual cost if you compare that with losing teachers and all of these sorts of things and we've heard from Matt CEO's, multi-academy trust CEOs talking about the need to really have a complete shift in mindset in the profession. We think that schools, school governors and Matt governors should really regularly review this situation, should be monitoring the situation and should be digging into how they improve this really within schools. We know that men, for example, are promoted even though the profession is I think 75, 76% female.

We know that men are still promoted above women, partly this is because you've got more women part-time etc and these things aren't monitored. There's no equality monitoring going on really in most maths, most schools, most local authorities and we want that to change. That'll be a key recommendation. And what about you Nicola, from your report, what are your recommendations? I mean we have several actually. I mean first of all we heard some great anecdotes and case studies along the way about things like job shares and how people are making those work so we would

encourage people to do that and there was a really nice one actually which talked about a mum coming back from maternity leave with her second child and she was a middle-eater, she was head of maths, she didn't want to come back five days a week and that's what the job demanded, but she did want to progress into leadership. And in the same school they had an assistant head teacher who was close to retiring and wanted to step down a bit and phase their days down. And what this school did was to take these two people, give them a job share, so they've given them six days over five, and they're using the more experienced person to actually coach the less experienced person, and effectively

they're training them up into that leadership role. Being creative. It's a very creative way of doing it. But yeah, I think we would recommend smart timetabling, iterative timetabling. I mean, most timetables are done about now for September, and that doesn't really take into account what do we know about that teacher that might be returning from maternity leave next March. You know maybe next February we might want to tweak that timetable, maybe we need to just play around with it a bit, not wholesale changes

but maybe we need to look at it a bit more regularly and then really just having this connection to a retention strategy so that the two things go hand in hand. Thank you both for coming in to speak to me about this really interesting stuff, Nicola West-Jones and Jess Edwards. That's it for me on the Weekend Woman's Hour tomorrow, Tina Knowles, who's been a driving force in the success of her daughters, Beyoncé and Solange on her new book, Matriarch. If you didn't hear that brilliant interview with Nuala in the week, you'll be able to hear it on Weekend tomorrow. I'm going to end the program on a couple of your brilliantly inspiring messages about changing your lives.

My husband died after retirement after a suggestion from a friend I applied and spent 18 years as a tour manager taking groups on ocean and river cruises all over the world. My son calls me Shirley Valentine and Sally is a retired teacher, nanny, housewife, cleaner. After watching The Salt Path, she says, I've booked a trek to India on my own. Good for you. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. I'm Annabelle Dees and from BBC Radio 4, this is Shadow World, the smuggler. People coming to this country was making me successful. A year ago, I met a people smuggler, a British man who joined an international smuggling

gang. I uncover his motivations and his methods. I'm telling you now how easy it is. And investigates whether his tactics are still possible. That does leave a really exploitable loophole for individuals who want to do harm. Shadow World, the smuggler. Listen now on BBC Sounds.