Woman's Hour - 07/01/2026

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

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 program. Well, there are calls by the technology secretary, among others, for tougher action against Elon Musk's social media platform X. It comes after dozens of sexually explicit images were generated by Grok. That's its artificial intelligence chatbot following requests or prompts by users. We're going to explain all about it this hour. Also, 2025 was seen as a fabulous year of women's sport. with record attendance and interest.

But a new report out today shows girls' dreams to reach the top spots have plummeted. That's despite the growing visibility of elite women's sports. We're going to discuss why that might be and also what could turn it around. And I'm wondering, does your home include a girl or a young woman who is striving to be the next Chloe Kelly or perhaps Ellie Kildon?

Well, tell us about her. Or, sadly, have you seen her dream die for some reason and what was it? What do you think could help those dreams ignite? 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, the number is 0-3700-100-400-444. Also, we'll bring you the third and final interview in our series, Going It Alone. We're hearing from solo mums who have chosen to have a donor-conceived child alone. Today we're going to hear from mum Emily and her grown son, he's 30,

Kim on how they see it now. So that is all coming up. But let me begin with that story on X. The technology secretary Liz Kendall has demanded urgent action from Elon Musk about the platform after it was found that its AI chatbot GROC is being used to create

non-consensual sexualised images of women and girls. Now the BBC has seen multiple examples on X of people asking the bot to digitally undress people to make them appear in bikinis without their consent as well as putting them in sexual situations. Behavior that Liz Kendall has called absolutely appalling. We have two guests joining us this morning. The BBC's technology reporter Laura Cress.

Good morning, Laura. Good morning. And also with me in studio is Dr. Daisy Dixon, a lecturer at Cardiff University whose online photographs have been sexualized through AI. Good morning, Daisy. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Now, let me start with you, Laura.

Bring people up to date on what has been happening and the sort of images that have been appearing. So essentially, GROC is this free AI assistant, which you can use on X or it's got its own app as well. It's free, but it also has some premium features. It's not a completely new app. It was first introduced in 2023, but it's had multiple updates and version since then.

Normally it's used to give reaction or more context. feel the posters remark, people will say, hey, GROC, explain this more. But more recently, there was this feature that was rolled out on X where users can now instantly edit any image using this bot, and it doesn't need the original poster's permission. So what we've seen cropping up more recently is people, and unfortunately it is often underneath a woman's post, saying something like, put her in a bikini,

and then suddenly GROC is generating this very lifelike picture of this person, in a bikini, and there are more suggestive prompts and quite explicit prompts being used as well. And for all of these things, you know, there appeared to be very few guardrails in place by grope for preventing anything short of really full explicit nudity. And we'll get into some of the specifics as well about what those guardrails are or should be.

But Daisy, what happened to you? It started about a week ago or so, and I noticed in random other posts I was making, it appeared to be mostly men would start taking my profile picture and start at first just altering the colour of my hair put me in different clothing, put clown makeup on me which seems to be a motif at the moment but then in the last few days it escalated

when I posted a gym progress photo and I was fully clothed it was just me showing off my biceps basically and more and more users started asking GROC to put me in a bikini of various colours, micro bikinis. But they also started to alter parts of my body. So decrease, for instance, my muscles, but increase, let's just say, other parts of me and in a highly sexualised way. That must be so strange to see that happen before your eyes. Yeah, it was, I felt very, like, almost humiliated and confused by the images, but I've been, you know, the way I've been describing it to people is it's very alienating. It alienates you from your own body. It creates this jarring experience where because of the nature of the images, they have this aesthetic quality of transparency, right? They're so real. So you're looking at yourself, but it's not you.

and that affects how you relate to your own body how you like experience how you look and that those images like lingered with me yeah because I'm thinking you obviously were proud of the work you've been doing working out or whatever increasing your biceps and that was kind of a turning point then of the past week yeah and it's it's the strange thing where your body is

you don't have feel like you don't have ownership of your body anymore or someone without your consent has taken it, controlled it and manipulated it. And it felt like the word I've been using to try and make sense of it is a kind of aesthetic domination. It's like you don't have control over how you appear. And, you know, God knows what other images they've been generating. Because there's this other layer to it. It's a power move. They not only put the prompt in and then post it back to you.

So you're being shown how they either wish to. see you? Which I heard from other women as well that went through perhaps disagreeing with something that had been posted on X and then an image would be manipulated and sent back almost as a form of a put down

in relation to what originally been said. I'm sorry you're going through that, Daisy. I want to go back to you, Laura. Ofcom the regulator has made urgent contact with X following reports that GROC AI has been used to create images

such as Daisy is describing. What power do they really have? So what's really interesting here is it is really quite unprecedented for offcom. It's interesting to see currently no one has come out and said a law has specifically been broken here. Obviously there is this online safety act and there they say it's illegal to create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material and they have said that includes sexual deepfates created with AI. But Offcom obviously enforces the platforms for individual cases

that would be going to the police. You know, the question of legality, that's something, of course, or Offcom, they're going to have to decide. So at the moment, we're really unsure about what path this may take. As you say, they are speaking, they've said to X and XAI, which created GROC. And we will have to see from there what comes from this. A couple of aspects on this. I know X have said that they take action against illegal content on X,

including child sexual abuse material by removing it, permanently suspending accounts and working with local governments and law enforcement is necessary. They went on to say anyone using or prompting GROC, that's like when they make a request, to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content. So kind of can't put the blame on GROC.

They say for more information on our policies, please refer to our help pages or our full X rule. and range of enforcement options. It doesn't seem to speak directly to a case like daisies, though. It doesn't know, and I know having spoken to women who have reported to X, you know, saying that they've had these inappropriate images or videos being made of them, and they have said, you know, well, when we've reported this to X, X's reply that there's been no violation of their rules.

So it appears that the boundaries are being tested here and it really seems to be down to the willingness of the platforms to act on it and currently it seems that X and GROC are not acting on it and they're perhaps waiting to see, you know, where the lines are drawn. Daisy, you were nodding there. Yes, yeah. I mean, unfortunately I've experienced that as well. Only yesterday I reported an AI video where, again, I use the word I

because it's like I'm seeing myself. This manipulated image of you. And I'm sort of moving in this alluring way. And I reported that. I reported another prompter as someone had the prompt was put her back in a burger. And unfortunately that's been happening. There seems to be another common thing that's happening. And I report it and then X within minutes says there's been no violation of X rules.

Right. That's the response that you got. We haven't had a specific response from X about these cases. that we are discussing. As I mentioned, Ofcom have said they've made urgent contact with X to understand what steps have been taken to comply with their legal duties.

But as Laura is telling us, there seems to be a bit of a grey area or it seems to be when it comes to that. But, Laura, you know, I mentioned X's statement there because there are images of children in this discussion over the past few days as well as women.

that's correct and obviously that's another deeply concerning elements of this you know and again with the online safety act that that very much does say that you know it's illegal to create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material and individuals who commit these criminal offences online they can face prosecution by law enforcement of course offcom it's mainly dealing with these tech terms they've said they have to assess the risk of people the UK, encountering this illegal content on their platforms. So essentially, they're putting the onus on these tech firms to assess what's happening and take it down very quickly when they become aware of it. I am assuming that that is what Ofcom will be wanting to know that X

is doing and wanting to inquire about. Yes. I mean, we did have a discussion in December about notification apps or indeed tools and that there would be a ban coming into the UK on them. that is under the crime and policing bill, as I understand it. So that wouldn't take effect for a number of months, I imagine, Laura. That's right. So we did hear from the Home Office, and they told us that they were legislating to ban these kind of things, these nudification tools, and that there was going to be this new criminal offence where essentially anyone who supplied such text, so for example, potentially X, they would face

a prison sentence and substantial fines. Obviously, as you say, that hasn't come into past yet, so again, we're still waiting. to see what's going to happen with that. I suppose it's worth saying in terms of off-com sanctions, they say 10% of their qualifying worldwide revenue or up to 18 million pounds they could find a company such as that, whichever is greater in that sense. Because we're talking about the UK at the moment,

but of course this has been something that has been global. Absolutely, and there are other countries looking into this as well. France, for example, India, they've also been calling on X to act on this. So yes, it is very much not the UK. It's a completely global thing that's happening. Back to you, Daisy. What would you like to see happen? Well, I was hardened to see Liz Kendall's statement and for calling out the toxic misogyny. Let me read a little of that, actually. She said we have made intimate image abuse and cyber flashing priority offenses under the Online Safety Act, including where images are AI generated. This means platforms

must prevent such content from appearing online and act swiftly to remove it if it does. against women and girls stains our society and that is why we've also legislated to ban the creation of explicit deep fakes without consent which are both degrading and harmful. Yeah and of course there's this legal issue here and there's been a lot of debate on X about the illegality of all of this.

But of course as well there's a deeper moral issue going on here about the ethics of AI. I know a lot of AI, my colleagues work in AI and I'm not an expert her in it. But you are an expert in philosophy, which I think is actually a really interesting intersection with AI. Yes. And I think everything to do with the role of consent and the fact that AI doesn't seem to have a robust sense of agency at least. And a lot of the stories have been

talking about, you know, blaming GROC and blaming this kind of chatbot for doing it. And also understand why people use that language, of course, when it comes to a responsibility, moral responsibility and accountability. There's, of course, Elon Musk, who, you know, is responsible for allowing this tech to do these abhorrent things. But of course, this stems from, you know, it's the users who are doing this, who I believe a lot of them are men. And it stems from, again, another instance of rampant misogyny, not taking women to be

equal citizens and treating their words is, you know, just dismissing it whenever I've called this out. I've been dismissed and being told that I consent or on the other hand it doesn't even matter if I consent. So it's just another form of objectification. Yeah, some have you would have seen some of the comments for people who talk about it kind of in relation to guns, that it's individuals that use a gun. The gun isn't the issue. It's individuals that use the chatbot, for example, that it's not the technology is the issue. Yes. And I think there's this very, very, Very, of course, this deepfakes and, you know, nudifying technology is not new. We've seen this for years, unfortunately.

But there was something so blatant about this, being done clear as day just on a platform like X, and it's making it every day. I don't want to open my X app anymore. And it just feels very violating. It's a constant aesthetic violation that a lot of women and girls are now experiencing. Aesthetic domination, that term you used, day to me. Will you continue to post online, do you think? This is the first time I seriously considered leaving X.

But it's a great network. I've met some wonderful people on there. I was involved in the recent trend of just look at the degree on that chick where women from all over the world posted their degree ceremony photos. So there's still a lot of light in that space. and I'm not ready to... I don't want to be kicked off. It feels like another kind of silencing.

And I don't wish to be silenced. And I think a lot of women are taking a stand. So I'm not going to leave X just yet. Dr. Daisy Dixon, a lecture in philosophy at Cardiff University. Thank you so much for coming in. Also, our BBC technology reporter, Laura Crest, thanks so much for speaking to us. 2025, let's look back for a moment.

It was a great year for women's sport, from the lionesses successfully defending the Euro's title and the Red Roses winning the Rugby World Cup on home soil, might I add, to the netball Super League's incredible growth. But despite the record visibility, there has been a sharp and concerning collapse in girls' sporting aspirations. Now, that is according to new research from the charity women in sport. It shows that just 23% of girls, age 13 to 24, now dream of reaching the top spot. in sport. That is down from 38%. So down 38 down to 23. That was just the year before. So what's going on? What can be done to change the situation? I have back with me, Steph Hillborn, CEO of Women in Sport. Good morning. And Ceylon, Andy Hickman, Deputy CEO, Football Beyond Borders. It's an education and social inclusion charity that uses the power of football to change the lives of young people. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Now, let's get into this. Steph. what are you seeing? How surprising is that finding?

Well, we were really surprised, actually, because we'd seen an uptick. We've been monitoring this since 2020. There's this significant dream gap between the girls versus the boys' dream they've reached in the top of sport. We're talking of 13 to 24-year-olds, so it's a slight summary to say girl and boy. But, you know, right back then, it was almost twice as many boys dreaming as girls, and we kept monitoring it, and we thought after the lionesses, that would fundamentally shift. We saw a various,

light lift and a lift particularly in girls who love sport. After the Olympics, there was a real massive rise, really from, say, 301 to 38. We expected that to be sustained in some form. We know the Olympics is unique, but after last year's sport, we thought, well, surely, you know, young women and girls would be dreaming. It crashed, down to 23, the lowest we've seen it. And, you know, when we have also asked the kind of why is and how people are feeling, what we've seen is there's been a sort of back up, that's sort of been a lift in the number of girls thinking

that people think sport is for boys and doesn't matter for girls. And that's so sad and it's so deeply in our culture and our stereotype, but 45% of girls and young women believe that. But these particularly a striking finding is that drop, the biggest drop, is among girls who love sports. So you don't even have to convince them about the value of sport. So something like that sport is for boys, for example, why would an engaged girl think that or lose the belief?

Well, I think they've already been fighting that. They really know about the stereotype. And if you actually think about dreams and how much they matter, what we've noticed is it doesn't matter how affluent the participants were. There was no difference. But basically what they see when there's more visibility, it's amazing. But they also see the negative aside. So whereas it for boy dreams, they're fitting with the stereotype of being a boy,

they're seeing these rich footballers, they're seeing all the positive, you only have to be to not be bad as a male footballer to be a role model. What the girls are seeing is these girls have battled through everything. They're battled through the stereotypes, having to play with the boys, having to do this, they get to the top, they get loads of online hate. Not paid as much. And they're not paid as much. You know, it's not a sort of such a kind of fantasy context.

They don't have the same connections. So that dream thing is the visibility is amazing, but it gives visibility to the negatives as well as the positives and it's not as simple as the dream that the boys can have. Just as you're speaking, Steph, there are so many negative stories that do come to mind of what top sports women have gone through, even in the past year of 2025,

which was a wonderful year for seeing women's sports. Ceylon, let me bring you in here. What do you make of the findings? Unfortunately, not surprising, but incredibly depressing. It fits with some of the stuff that we see at Football Beyond Borders on the ground working with teenage girls. We work with some of the girls who are most disengaged at school. That's how they kind of get referred on to our program. And our mechanism is using football to hook them back in.

And we started as a working predominantly with boys as a charity. And I came in seven, eight years ago and started to develop our work with girls. and it's a different relationship. It's a harder sell to get the girls to play football initially, right? They come for the relationship, for the safe space, the relationships with other girls, the sense of team. They don't necessarily come for the football. So we've always known that.

In terms of what gets them to play and start thinking that football could be a place and space for them, we actually found that girls who look at women at the top, so women who are absolutely killing it in their profession, sometimes that can actually have a negative impact on a girl's self-esteem. Already we're working with girls in a sort of self-esteem, mental health, low-confidence crisis. And if they see someone too far away from them, they think, well, that could never be me. So they think...

So interesting. Yeah, let's stop there for a minute, though, because almost like it's an unrealistic expectation and that there's a comparison going on, even at that young age, instead of like, that could be me, that's a role model for me to follow. Well, it's sometimes because it feels so out of touch with their lives, first and foremost. Secondly, I think the points that you've already raised around visibility and the fact that they're not going to earn as much playing sports. So why would they go down that route? If they can't see that, then it feels really difficult to think about that being something for them.

But the critical thing here is that already we're working with girls who are kind of low on confidence and low self-esteem. So they don't love themselves in every single part of themselves as they should. And then they see a woman and they just think that's so out of touch for me. I could not be that. I couldn't possibly be that. So how could I ever get there? So what we find that really works is having a sort of bridge, having a bridge, sort of the big sister role.

So a younger woman who looks like them, sounds like them, has the same experiences as them, who can sort of connect and say, actually, you could be that. But first, let's go to where you're at. Let's start there and help you see that that could be a route for you in the future. And it's sort of getting that relationship first and foremost is really important. However, we see such a crisis of,

young women wanting to go into those roles and wanting to coach or volunteer and be in their communities and that's a really difficult path for girls as well. So it's a really layered systemic issue. Steph, you advocate for girls' only teams at times. Explain why. I'm just thinking, forgive me for stepping on you there,

but I'm just thinking back to some of the footballers, rugby players that I've spoken to and so many of them started out playing with boys. Well, it's, yeah, we've got to recognise boys and girls are different physically, you know, and even before puberty a bit, or obviously dramatically more after, but more fundamental to that for the very young girls and boys is that because of stereotyping, girls don't tend to get skilled up in throwing balls, catching, hitting balls before they go to school, just like boys are not skilled up in writing. So when children arrive at school, boys are often given extra lessons to help with their fine motor skills because they haven't been sitting down and doing that. but girls aren't given those extra chances and what we do is we think it's equal to throw boys and girls together

when they're starting with an unequal backdrop and so you know the best the top lionesses and red roses have battled through that and they're so uniquely brilliant they have thrived sometimes ultimately playing with boys but what we know from all our data is that's not normal and also for them to be really transparent

is they had no other option at that point they had no other option and what we're finding is for almost all opportunities on the ground, it's labelled as mixed sex, even though when it's gymnastics and netball, you might get predominantly girls. When it's football and rugby, you get very much predominantly boys. And that girls thrive with the lack of judgment that they want to be able to feel confident. They're starting from an unequal, starting point in the majority of cases. And so what we're doing is developing guidance for teachers at school about how to have more single sex teaching a PE at school. We want to

want to see more opportunity in the community for team sport, for girls-only team sports. So even in brilliant sports like hockey, which is for a long time being a woman's sport as well as a man's sport, if you put your girl into it, you'll often find there may be two or three girls, majority boys, and they're just not thriving in the same way. So girls only bridging like big sister, as you were talking about Cillan as well to help them see lots of people getting in touch. Here's one. My daughter is a rower and now rowing at elite level at university.

where the men's crews take priority in terms of training, time and equipment. In the face of this, it's very easy to see why she's becoming disengaged. Any thoughts on that? It completely chimes with my experience of playing football university where I was playing for the first team university team and we were getting bumped off pitches for the college boys' third teams, right? How can you expect girls to think, yeah, this could be a route for me and the world really cares about me doing this and I matter in this sport

when systemically, structurally, you're being rewarded in those ways, right? It makes sense that girls then get to the point and think, actually, this is such a struggle to keep doing this. I have to really overcome so many different barriers that why would I stay in this sport? It takes a lot.

Another, my 14-year-old daughter loves sports and has chosen sports studies as part of her GCSE options. But she has often complained that lots of girls at her school are not keen on PE and rarely engage. I think there's a disconnect with what we see as mental and physical,

physical health benefits of training exercises, adults, and how it's offered to primary and secondary school students. I think we don't, I agree with that. I don't think we see the true value of sport. I think people don't recognise that actually doing exercise and sport at school actually helps your academic achievement. It helps you develop skills for work. It's good for your brain to be active.

And we're not recognising that value. People are almost saying, well, you've got to focus on your academic studies. Don't do the PE, whereas actually it helps, you know. And also, I think, in all of this, and someone's talked to this, young women's mental health is in super crisis, you know, particularly 17 to 19 year old young women. Yes. And we know how good physical exercise and sport is to reduce anxiety, to build resilience. Girls we talk to talk about just stress and that they see stress when they look at these top women players. They don't see release.

We want it to be associated with joy. and, you know, so there's so many factors but it's really this fundamental societal norm that's been there for so long it's going to take many years to properly shift that. Silan, I'd be curious for your thoughts on this because we're talking about perhaps that joy

although who could think of anything more joyful I'm still thinking of Chloe Kelly with, you know, throwing her t-shirt around her head. But somehow there's still that dream gap. I mean, what have you found with the girls that you've tried to help. Have you been able to recognise dreams of an elite sporting career?

I think what we find often is that boys not only are growing up in how Steph was talking about, their motor skills, they're being taught how to play sport, take up space and girls aren't. This goes back to Iris Marion Young's work in the 1980s and throwing like a girl.

Girls are not taking up and the same planes of movement from birth that boys are. So it starts there. But what we find in adolescence I'm talking specifically about dreams in aspirations, is that boys grow up in a world where football is everywhere around them. Their favourite musicians are rapping about their footballers.

Their favourite fashion brands are putting footballers in front of their faces. It's all over their feeds. And what we're seeing with girls is that doesn't quite fit in the same way when it comes to elite women's sport. So they aren't encountering elite women's sport in the other areas of their life. And we found this when we did a bit of a deep dive after the lionesses won the Euros in 2022, about the whether it had reached the girls that we work with, usually girls growing up in cities, working class backgrounds. And we found that it hadn't because it wasn't penetrating the other parts of their world.

And I think strides have been made massively in terms of, you know, lionesses are way more prevalent, red roses, for example. They're in sort of mainstream culture. You see Jill Scott winning the jungle. You see Kaz Kani just winning strictly. But teenage girls that we work with aren't watching the jungle and they aren't watching strictly. So you have to go to where they're at. And I think a really good example of what's happened here

in terms of seeing women that are in their space. An example is Baller League, which is a phenomenon that is taken over teenagers' lives. It's a new format of football. It's on YouTube Monday night and it's influencers. But it's men playing. However, they've put people like Maya Jama and Chloe Kelly as managers of the teams.

And that's starting to bring Chloe Kelly into a new space, right, where they can see an athlete and say, oh, she's cool, she's into the same things. I am and that maybe will help us shift that aspiration and that dream ambition. Interesting thoughts. Ceylon Andy Hickman, Deputy CEO Football Beyond Borders and in Studio, Steph Hillborn, CEO of Women in Sport that has that report out today. Thank you both so much. Thank you. And thanks for all your messages. Keep coming in 84844. Now, I want to bring you the last in our series of going it alone. This week we've been hearing from women who have chosen to become solo mums. So that is

women who have had donor conceived children, different single mums who may have split up with Charles' father, for example. You can go back to our episode on Monday when we heard from the donor conception network charity and the UK fertility clinic regulator, the HFEA, about the legal and ethical considerations when choosing this route. We also heard from Lucy on Monday about her experience of going solo. Yesterday, it was Jay we heard from. But today we hear from Emily, who also became a solo mum, but 30 years ago when fertility treatment was less developed than it is today. She had her son Kim by donor insemination

and that was before the legislation change in 2005 which ended anonymous sperm donation. Now a retired social worker, Emily has written a guide for solo mums and has been supporting women who are embarking on this journey for over 30 years. Over the years, Emily and Kim, they've had numerous requests to be interviewed.

This is the first time that Kim, her son, has agreed. He is 30. Going back a little, in the late 90s, Emily and other mums made a series of children's picture books, first their own and later for the donor conception network to explain donor conception to donor conceived children. Our reporter Joe Morris met Emily and Kim at their individual homes and first asked Joe, whose Joe asked each of them, I should say, to read her one of those stories. Kim's story. Hello, this is Kim with his mum. Page one. One day Kim said,

do I have a dad? Mom said, there are many different sorts of families. Some might live with their mum or with their dad. Some children might live with their grandparents. Some might live with their mum and dad together and many other kinds of families. And I had to go to the clinic many times when her egg was ready. So the nurse can put the sperm inside her. It's very explicit, isn't it? Why was this important to you? Because I wanted him to be used to it, you know, to have it be something that he'd always known, I didn't ever want to be in a position to say, sorry I didn't tell you. So growing up, Kim, What do you remember about what your mum told you about how you were conceived? Really, it was always part of my life.

But I didn't have a dad. That's how I thought about it, that I didn't really have a dad. So I really just thought of myself as not having a dad. And I understood that I had a vague sense. There was this complicated scientific process through which my mum was able to have a baby without me having a dad, which didn't interest me that much. And probably still doesn't to this day, and to be honest, no. How old are you now, Kim? So I just turned 30.

Well, this is my favourite. It's tiny. I couldn't find the big copy of it. Yeah. So this is a photo. And so how old was he here? Probably three. And he's snuggling into you lying on your chest. And how do you feel when you look at that photo now?

When I look like a photo, it makes me feel all gooey and mellow in sight. You know, yearning for a cuddle that you don't get from your 30-year-old son. Do you know, do you recognise this photo? Yeah, I can't say I remember it. Yeah, sadly think that I might have been, my sort of good looks might have peaked when I was three or four years old. I think it's a very cute picture. What was your idea of family growing up then?

What did it mean to you? So the idea of a family for me was a single mother, really, because most of my friends also had single mothers or didn't see much of their dad. So maybe there was a kind of mystique of fathers as well, like men, because I saw them so rarely, except on TV and film, the idea of a man was sort of enigmatic to me. I think once in an attempt to maybe, like,

give me a sense of what men were like, my mum bought me a picture of Bruce Willis and Diehard to put up on my bedroom wall, which I thought was quite admirable. Growing up, I just had the whole fairy tale. It was going to be, you know, I was going to have babies. I was going to live on a farm with animals. And then I just put it to one side, I think, and grew up. What do you mean you put it to one side?

I didn't re-evaluate it at all until it hit me that it really wasn't going to happen. What had been your experience of relationships after that point? Well, I'd had one strong and very positive relationship after I left school for 10 years. And then we'd grown out of each other, really. it just became clear it was time to go our separate ways. Basically, that's the way I look at it now. And after that, I had been really remarkably free of any real relationships for years and content with it.

Were you looking for a father? I was definitely looking for a potential father, yeah. But every time I met them, I thought either it was immediately no or it's going to take me a long time to get to know this guy or he would have a long time getting disentangled from his previous entanglements and stuff like that, and it just didn't feel like a realistic thing to do. When I realised I didn't have to, and when I realised I could go ahead with the baby without the man, I just thought, oh, that's the way, that's going to be it.

Emily, did you consider adoption? I did consider adoption, and I thought about it, and it just felt that it wasn't, that's not what I wanted to do, then. I didn't rule it out completely, but then I really just wanted to have my own baby. Did you tell people what were you planning on doing? I did selectively. Not looking back, I'm surprised at how few people I told. And I told my sister very first. I think I wanted her blessing in the way. So apart for my mum, the family I was closer to growing up was my aunt and she helped my mum a lot. So I stayed one night every week with my aunt on a Friday

and we'd go and see my grandmother just around the corner on a Saturday. So, yeah, again, no men. She had my son every one night a week for 12 years. That must have been helpful for you. Yeah, yeah. Oh, fantastic, yeah. It's good for him as well, seeing a different household, you know, a different family. Her partner is a woman.

So my mum had a bit of help growing up. She wasn't completely by herself. she got one night breakery on a Friday I have no idea what she got up to and I said you mean I can have one night when I just go to sleep and I can sleep the night's room I'm going to sleep whenever I want

that's all I want to do did you tell your mum and dad no I didn't I didn't my mother was very indiscreet basically and there were the other bits of news that I told her that had got really really distorted when she'd retold them to other people.

I just thought, I'm not telling her. And when she asked, after he was born, she said, would you have used a sperm bank? And I said, yes. So, you know, she'd worked it out, more or less. It was past mattering by then. Did you tell your dad? No.

No. He made some comment, or actually when he was holding him in his arms, say, well, in my day, you'd have been called a bastard I just said oh thanks that was it

you know I mean so we're talking about the mid-90s did you have much negative feedback well surprisingly enough I think I might just have ignored it but very little

I can remember being fairly cautious like at work telling you know the older women but so often, I'd get the opposite. You know, I might be a little bit ambivalent.

And then an older woman would say, wow, I wish that had been available when I was young. Maybe I didn't actually disclose it to my friendship group at one point. And I think that led to a very awkward conversation with one of my friends who, where I found it actually maybe a bit easier to just imply my mom had had a one-night stand. And then he then subsequently asked my mum. about this one-night stand and here it had been with and what the circumstances were, which was deeply painful. I mean, it would have been even if it were true,

but particularly given it was a lie. And were you there at the time? Yeah, yeah. I think it was on top-deck rubber bus, no Piccadilly Circus. Vivid, vivid, awkward memory. How do you feel about her decision to go at alone then? Yeah, besides being glad that I exist. Ultimately, from an objective standpoint,

I think it's deeply impressive to decide you want something and then not only spend several years pursuing it, you know, at great sort of personal sort of hardship, but then, you know, something that has then changes your whole life. 18 years of bringing me up probably wasn't that easy or very much fun. What did you think about your son not having a father? Not having a father. Is that a concern?

I was not really, no. When I thought about it, I thought I was more concerned about the fact that he didn't have a model of a good adult relationship. it. So I used to have this sort of niggle about the one thing that our children, that I did worry about our children having was living examples of how a couple get along together, how you negotiate your differences and, you know, in planning and getting over a quarrel and stuff like that because single children of a single mum just don't see it. How do you think it's impacted you, Kim, not having a father growing up? So I think that it has probably done a few things. I think knowing that my mum, you know, did it all by herself, has probably made me sort of more determined, I hope, as well, having seen, you know, how much she did by herself.

I think that's given me really like a sort of strong sense of like independence, I hope. And, you know, I hope that's something I've taken from it. The truth is also that I've, I think it has shaped my life because I do have a sort of smaller family that therefore I have to, you know, focus much more on. And that's different to other people. Do you feel like you missed out? Definitely not. I haven't really gotten much interest in finding my father now, even now. I'm interested in finding my half-siblings.

I think I'm not that bothered about having a dad. And I think if anything, it's harder now. I think if you'd find your dad when maybe when you're still a teenager, early 20s, maybe there's still a role for a father and sort of shaping your life, helping you grow up. I think now I'm 30. I feel like I'm beyond the point

where I could, well, need a father figure in my life. I think it would be very odd. What does it feel like knowing that there's potentially sort of 10 to 12 siblings, half siblings out there that you could bump into? or meet. Bizarre, but potentially quite exciting.

I would like to meet some of my half-siblings. And how do you think, Kim, your experience has impacted your view of relationships? Well, I think I had to figure out what they really meant. Besides what I saw in TV and film, I didn't have a really clear sense of why people formed relationships. Because that was a mystery to me as a child. I didn't have like a clear sense of why people choose to live together and be together and what that meant on why. And it's something I've had to figure out as an adult really.

But are you in a relationship? Yeah, yeah. So I have been. And since I was sort of 17, so coming up to school, so all of my adult life, more or less. So you've been in a long relationship. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I have, which my mum probably finds slightly amusing. It's extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary.

I mean, it really, and I think, whof, it didn't matter that much, did it? It can't have done. I think it's odd probably because I've been in a longer relationship than my mum has ever been in. So I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe I haven't quite learned her spirit of independence. Some people might say that your mum's decision to go it alone

was a selfish decision. What would you say to that? So, having grown up completely content with it and appreciating, you know, that she really wanted to have a child and raise it by herself and that I think she did a great job, I'd find it baffling. I wouldn't understand it. Never mind disagreeing with it. Fathers can make things worse rather than better. I mean, I think the real selfish thing to do is to have a child when you're not absolutely sure that you want one and that you're ready to make the sacrifices and that you can make it work. And surely it's better for a kid to grow up having one, like, love. supportive mother than a dysfunctional mother-father in their household, say it's odd. I think most people who have children do it in part for reasons that are utterly selfish and those reasons are actually very good because they, you know, it is a commitment and if you don't get anything out of it for yourself, then it's not going to happen, is it?

So I don't feel bad about my selfishness. But once that child's born, your ego doesn't have much, have a child. in there and maybe I didn't know that but not your own person anymore and that's a good thing if Emily if you could change things now would you no not one bit you know I made those choices and I was lucky and I wouldn't change a thing did you have any other relationships or you still solo I didn't have another relationship I had no energy for another relationship until after he left home and when he left home

and his girlfriend also left home so he wasn't coming back to London to see her then I thought oh I've got room now I don't think I ever resented her or wish that I'd had a father and actually I'm very glad that you know she didn't go out looking for one when I was a kid and bring like back a man

to live in my house I think I would have hated that do you why? I was happy you know the two of us growing up and I liked her in my space and I felt like I got everything I needed from a parent from her. So apart from that, I also get on with her now too

as an adult, which is strange. You see her every week now. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, maybe if she's listening to that she might object. That's not quite true. Every other week, every other week. What's the best thing about being a solo mum?

I suppose it's not ever having had to compromise or on anything. Once I'd made a decision or, you know, Some of those decisions were hard to make, but I never had to compromise. I could always have it my way. We were a good match, really. So, you know, the things I might have done differently, if circumstances have been different.

But I know he's become just a sort of person I'd have asked for, you know, with a few tweaks. But he couldn't be a more ideal son for me. It's made my life, really. So interesting to listen there to Emily and her son Kim And that does mark the end of our series But if you go back to yesterday's program on BBC Sounds You can listen to another mum, that was Jay

On Monday we heard from Mum Lucy Who's about to have her second child as a solo mum We also heard from two experts That was Ruth Barnsley from the Donor Conception Network And Claire Ettinghausen from the HFEA Which is the UK's fertility clinic regulator All of it really interesting so maybe you'd like to go back and listen to a little off that.

Thanks for all your messages coming in about the dreams, the sporting dreams, becoming an elite athlete. Here's one. My daughter is a 12-year-old signed academy player for a top football club. What I find really shocking is a huge disparity between options for a girl at this age and the comparable options for a boy. It's been a struggle with her secondary school to get her playing with the boys, even though we asked them to assess her on ability and not consider gender,

but they were very reluctant to let her trial. She finds it incredibly frustrating. And the commitment that our club requires means that they've, in the not too distant future, it's likely she may have to make a decision between her education and her football career. Another, Lucy has contacted us to say, my daughter, when she was around seven years old,

lobbied her head teacher for girls-only football sessions at playtime as boys excluded the girls during mixed sessions. The head teacher was convinced, my daughter is now 16, and she's still playing football, having formed an old girl's team. So really picking up on some of the points we were hearing from Steph and Ceylon a little bit earlier. Well, I want to turn back to a little bit of history now.

For more than a century, children have been moved between homes because of legal decisions that decided their fate. Yet child custody is curiously absent from the history books, according to my next guest. Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at King's College London, Lara Fiegel, a new book is Custody, the secret history of mothers. And it examines what she describes as an often-farlane.

fraught complex territory. She draws on thousands of cases not only in the UK, but also Europe and North America. And Laura says she's offering a new interpretation of how it evolved. Really drilling down into a handful of women, as we're going to find out.

It is a battleground of modern history and culture as she sees it. Good morning and welcome, Laura. Hello. Hello. So really the story, as you go through the chapters, there's seven women who fought for their children, some that would be very familiar to our listeners, others perhaps less so.

Caroline Norton, George Sand, Elizabeth Packard, Frieda Lawrence, wife of D.H. Lawrence, Edna O'Brien, Alice Walker, and Brittany Spears. How did you choose them? I think, I mean, you mentioned custody as a battleground. I think the last 200 years have been essentially a sort of one whole battleground between the patriarchy and feminism and custody is one way we can tell this story.

And I wanted to find women who are at pivot points, at different points in this history. history and particularly to find women who had transgressed in some way, the idea of what a good mother should be at that particular moment and then found themselves in court held to standards that they thought had sort of long past. All these women thought they were living in more feminist worlds than the court sort of allowed them to be. And you talk about that law, for example, being a deliberate attempt to control women. And perhaps we could jump into Caroline Norton because she was interesting because she did, with a lot of hard work, got Parliament to initiate the 1839 Custody of Infant Act.

Tell us a little bit about her. Yes, so Caroline Norton was a writer in 1830s, London. She was way ahead of her time. She was the main breadwinner in her family with her writing. She was the fastest rider in the hunt. Her salons were famous. She was the main confidant of the Prime Minister. And she thought it was all going rather well.

her marriage wasn't great. Her husband was rather violent, but this didn't sort of matter too much. She could just about keep her life going. And then her husband got fed up of her success, really, and decided to try and divorce her. Initially, he tried to accuse her of adultery with the prime minister, but lost that case. And then just took the children because it turned out she hadn't quite realized, and this was the astonishing thing about 19th century custody laws, that women didn't quite realize how strong they were, that actually the children were the husband's possession, however little childcare he'd done. And she was obviously absolutely devastated, as well as being this glamorous hostess.

She was a very devoted mother. She'd breastfed her children, which was unusual at the time. She had taught them to read herself. She'd nurse them through every cold. And she was appalled that they could just be taken away like this. And she first did what she could to sort of get them back. And then she used her influence with some MPs to get them to lobby Parliament for this bill, the custody of infants act. It took three years

it kept being voted down by the House of Lords but eventually in 1839 she got it through and it enabled women to go to transfer to petition for children under seven and she thought this would help her get her own boys back but in fact her husband just moved them to

Scotland and made it harder. Very sad consequences which I'll leave for people to read in the book but you go into such detail as well I mean I feel every chapter is almost like a novella, you know, even though this is based in fact of what happened. But if I do fast forward, let's talk about the author Alice Walker, for example, and the decision she made regarding her daughter when her marriage broke down. Yeah, so this is the only one

of my subjects where the custody decision was made out of court. Alice Walker and her husband, Mel Laventhal, were a kind of ideal of a civil rights marriage. She was from a very poor black family. in rural Georgia. He was from a much better off Jewish, white Jewish family. And they came together in Mississippi to fight for civil rights and had a mixed race daughter at a time when that was very unusual there and sort of endured all the hatred and thought they could sort of live through it. But then as the civil rights movement fell apart, their marriage did too. And by the time it ended, Alice Walker, I think, knew that as a bisexual black woman, the courts were pretty bad at this point everywhere for lesbians, a lot of lesbians were losing custody in America as everywhere

else. And she also wanted to keep up the ideal in a way by trying for 50-50 custody. But by this point, he was, he'd met a white woman and was living a sort of suburban life in New York. And Alice Walker had embraced a much sort of more free hippie lifestyle in San Francisco. And they couldn't make a sort of week on, week off schedule work. So they went for two-year interludes with Rebecca moving between her two parents for two years at a time. And it wasn't just the disjunction of these kind of appalling two-year jumps. It was the fact that her two lives were completely different. And she didn't feel as a mixed-race girl growing up and that she felt she was sort of not at home either in her mother's black world or her father's white world.

And she sort of talked to me about how she just wished they could be writing the same script that she felt she had to sort of reinvent herself in both places. You know, you quote a line from the film Marriage Story where the lawyer says getting divorced with a kid is one of the hardest things to do. It's like death without a body, which I found so stark in a way. And you describe the battles that can be with divorce as at times winners and losers with the child as the prize.

But it's not inevitable, is it? I mean, I think, yeah, I think that marriage story is brilliant. And I think marriage story is one of the great custody films along with Kramer versus Kramer. Yes. Up there with Anna Karenina as a great custody novel. And I think, indeed, what marriage story brings out is that even with parents who are sort

of trying their best, there is a sort of terrible disjunction, the kind of tragedy that comes in because both people have these kind of concepts of the good that can't be reconciled. I think, I mean, I've been going into courts a lot in the presence. Recently, yeah. And have found a pretty grim situation there. I think as soon as the law is involved, it's very easy for cases to escalate. It can feel, I think, in the courts, I know from my own case too,

that it's sort of almost designed to make things acrimonious and that it splits people into a winner and a loser and there's a danger of them that the winner becomes sort of punitively self-righteous and the loser becomes traumatised. And the more we can stay away from the courts, the better. I just do want to mention a statement from the Department of Justice because the government yesterday announced the Pathfinder's family court model saying it is to expand,

saying it introduces earlier identification of risk to improve children's safety and streamlines the court processes to increase efficiency and reduce delays because when I was looking at some of the figures, it could be at times up to a year, for example, for decisions to be made. The Justice Minister, that's Baroness Levitt, said, the rights of every child to a happy, healthy and safe childhood is non-negotiable. When relationships between parents break down,

the courts must respond without delay to protect children and prevent any further distress. That's exactly what our Pathfinder courts are doing. So I was hoping when you looked at Family Courts that you wouldn't see parallels between what was happening in your book and today. Yes. I mean, I've been into the Pathfinder Courts and I do think they are a great initiative and do offer us some hope. But in most of the courts I've been to, I have unfortunately found that the kind of same problem

which is the sort of over-idealisation of mothers in the culture somehow leads to the vilification of mothers as soon as they're seen to transgress that kind of over-high ideal of what a mother can be and I've been in many cases where sadly a father has been found

to be domestically abusive and then has responded by alleging that the mother is hostile to him and is alienated. the children. And it can end up a mother in that circumstances then that has her child removed. And it is a very contentious issue. We do have other episodes

that we have discussed on Women's Hour about some of the issues that you raised there. But in my last 30 seconds or so, do you think the issues that you raise, particularly you talk about that clash between feminism and patriarchy when it comes to custody, different terms are

used in family court today. But do you think they're fixable? I think they are if we can really sort of drill into finding alternatives to the kind of win a loser dynamic in the family court. But in the meantime, I do hope that kind of looking at some of these women in the past might offer some kind of solace and solidarity to people going through it now. And that I think people like George Sond, Edna O'Brien and Caroline Norton are sort of inspiring and heroic as well as desperate. So interesting. I found the level

of detail also wonderful kind of brought you there. Lara Fagel, her. new book is Custody, the Secret History of Mothers. Thanks so much for joining us in studio today. I do want to let you know tomorrow we'll be asking should the age for breast screening be reduced from 50 to 40. Chemith Therapy nurse has started a petition because she says she's seen so many younger women with breast cancer. Also, lighter note, did you watch Riot Women about that band made up of older ladies? Well, we'll talk to the real life Riot Women. Well, Anita will right here tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour.

Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Amul Rajin and from BBC Radio 4, this is radical. We are living through one of those hinge moments in history when all the old certainties crumble and a new world struggles to be born. So the idea behind this podcast is to help you navigate it. What's really changed is the volume of information. That has exploded. And also by offering a safe space for the radical ideas that our future demands. Go to the Chancellor and say radically cut the taxes of those with children.

Telling our stories is powerful and a radical act. Listen to Radical with Amal Rajan on BBC Sounds.