Woman's Hour - 14/09/2026

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

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

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Be the first to listen to your favorite shows, like evil genius, good, bad billionaire, and You're Dead to Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon music subscription. Hello, I'm Neula McGovern, and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4.

Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, you will have heard the news this morning about AI, arguing existing laws are ill-equipped to address the technology's speed of growth. Well, we want to speak to some of the women whose jobs have already been significantly impacted in both negative and positive ways by AI. That is coming up. Also, I've been reading a fascinating book. It's called Girlhood Translated. The author is Dr. Garfinkel-Kroll, a psychiatrist,

who says that when girls come to her these days, they announce they have conditions like ADHD, OCD, anxiety or depression, but they've already self-diagnosed before walking into her office. We're going to speak about why medicalised language has become so widespread among girls and also hear advice for parents to help their daughters in what she calls an age of therapy speak and self-diagnosis. And I do wonder if this is something that you have encountered, perhaps with the girl in your life,

the use of medical terminology, whether that be toxic or trauma, for example, which has given you pause. Perhaps you find it difficult to navigate that jargon. What do you do with it when confronted with it? or maybe you have a question for my guest who's been thinking about this very deeply. You can text the program. The number is 84844 on social media. We're at BBC Women's Hour.

Or you can email us through our website for a WhatsApp message or a voice note. The number is 0-3700-100-400-44. Or on most smart speakers, you can say Alexa, ask BBC Sounds to send a comment. Also today, Spain's National Soccer Federation will fund egg freezing. Is this a win for female athletes or money towards messaging them to delay motherhood, we'll discuss. Plus, we go to Paris.

The singer Celine Dion had a triumphant emotional return in her comeback concert in the city of light. You may remember she was diagnosed with a rare illness four years ago. Well, we're going to hear from two women who were at the Celine extravaganza. That is all coming up. But let me begin, as I mentioned,

Some of the world's leading AI bosses, artificial intelligence bosses, have issued stark warnings in the past days about the catastrophic risks that the technology might pose. Now, there is research that suggests there's a real gender gap when it comes to AI. Women are less likely to use it, likely to feel more sceptical about it.

But when it comes to jobs, women are also disproportionately affected by the impact of AI at the moment. The Trade Union Conference is debating this subject this week. One resolution calls for greater worker representation when it comes to the introduction of AI with particular emphasis on how it might negatively impact jobs traditionally held by women.

Administrative jobs, for example, are statistically more likely to be done by females. Well, joining me to discuss how AI is affecting their working lives. We have Bethan, who works in hospitality, and also Ella Wicks, who works. at the University of Oxford. You're both very welcome to the program, very topical, of course,

you'll be seeing in all the headlines and conversations over the weekend about AI. But let me talk about you, your life, Bethann. AI had a really big impact on a recent role that you held at a university. Tell us all about it. Hi, good morning. Yeah, so I worked at university

as first line IT support. So it was like an in-person role and we'd have students' skills. come up with IT issues and we'd either help them on the spot for anything we could help with. So that was stuff like Wi-Fi, password, stuff like that. Anything a bit more complex, we would field over to further support. A lot of the time though, we found we'd have people come up about unrelated IT stuff. They just didn't know where they were going, so we'd have to help them with that as well.

But a few months into my role, they decided they were getting rid of the entire first-line support and replacing it with an AI kiosk. so me and my entire team lost our jobs because of it. Just like that. And how did that feel? I mean, were you told, hey, your job is going to be replaced or you're going to be replaced by AI? Yeah, so we had heads up. The whole thing took about four months from when we first heard about it to our contracts ending. We fought it. A lot of people kind of just decided that it was inevitable and found. other job straight away. Me and my partner, who I work with on the same team,

we stayed till the end and fought it, but in the end it happened. Which, how did that feel? I mean, it's so interesting, the place that you're in, that technology kind of pushed you out. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't a great feeling. Up until that point, I'd been kind of neutral about AI.

I hadn't really heard much about it. It was 2024. But I think after that, and then just going forward, it's been awful. I mean, obviously, because me and my partner both had the same job and then we lost it at the same time to AI, we lost our flat that we were living at the time where you've both had to move in with our respective parents. It's not been a great time. And how do you feel about AI now? Because you're being bombarded with it, no doubt,

over the past few days, if you've been looking at any of the news. I mean, partially because of what happens with my job at the university, but also just because of its environmental impacts, the way it's treating creative, stuff like that. I'm very anti-AI now. I won't use it for anything. I try and take it off browsers, anything, wherever I can. I just think it's a terrible thing. It can be used for good things, I'm sure, but I think most of its uses now are just not good for us as a species. So interesting. Well, let me bring in, and thank you for sharing that by then. Let me bring in Ella. So your route, I understand, into AI

wasn't a conventional tech career. How did you end up using it in your job? So, yeah, I never had a straight line of a career. I actually trained as a model maker when I was at university and I worked for a short while in film and theatre as a prop and specialist costume maker. And shortly after starting that role, I realised my job wasn't like sculpting and moulding and fabricating

as I'd been trained to do. It was mostly digital sculptors that were. would then 3D print things and I would be sanding and finishing 3D prints, which I didn't enjoy very much at all. So I decided to move career after that, moved into an admin role at the University of Oxford. And then I saw AI coming pretty quickly and I thought, ah, here is another new technology that could completely change the way my career can go, let me get on top of this one this time and let me learn how to use it fast. And so I started exploring, experimenting with it very early on and realized that I found it massively helpful in my role and in my job.

And I was given the freedom to choose where to use it and choose how it could support me in my role, which I found a massive freedom. And I found it helped me enjoy my role better and be better at it. Okay. So what sort of specific things could AI help you with? Because I think we're all kind of fascinated with, is there a way to simplify the mess and the muddle that our day-to-day lives can be? So one of the first things I did was when I started at Oxford, the Oxford tone of voice was not my jam. It's still not. It's not how I speak. And I would agonise over emails. I would be like, does this sound right? Am I talking in the right way? And just passing something through an AI tool very early on, I was like, oh, this is really helpful, not even in speeding me up

particularly, but just in removing a mental load in making it just feel slightly easier for me. And it allowed me to spend my time on things that I enjoyed more where my time was more valuable. But now I'm not in the same role. I'm actually an AI consultant in the AI competency centre. So my current role very much wouldn't exist without AI. And I use it for everything, for helping me organise the talks I'm going to do, collate all of my thinking, organise my diary, do a lot of the work that I don't necessarily enjoy and isn't where my time is most valuable. So what do you think as you're listening to Beth Ann speak about the way her job was swallowed up, by or automated by AI

and you can, you know, hear hereticence to using it at all. I'm just wondering how you're seeing that part of the story. I mean, I completely understand it and it makes me really sad, honestly, because I think I have had the ability to choose where to use AI and to be able to choose whether or not to use it. And I've really enjoyed that freedom. And I work with a lot of people who don't like it and choose not to use it.

So the fact that someone has been forced to and been forced out of their job, I think, is awful. And I don't think that should be the case at all. Berzan, let me come back to you. Do you feel there is part of your job that you carried out, that you feel AI won't be able to? Oh, 100%. A big part of my job, because it was so customer-facing,

was supporting international students. Because we had a lot of them at the university that I worked at. And English wasn't the first language for a lot of them. They would come up and they'd kind of point at something on their phone. We'd kind of have to figure out from what they were trying to point out, like, oh, is it a password issue? Is it an email issue?

Is it something more? We also had a lot of older students who weren't so good with technology. Like they had older phones. They hadn't really used the fancy university computers before. So we'd have to really take the time and have some empathy with them. And obviously, empathy just isn't something that an AI can, reproduce. I think a lot of people, their first issue would be, you know, using that kiosk in the first place, some people we had come up just never had used a keyboard before, which sounds insane,

but... No, I totally understand that, yeah. And I do worry about them now. It was a couple of years ago, but I do worry how they're getting on using this kiosk instead of having a person to talk to. And I wonder about that as well, because you says you've tried to. to eliminate AI, do you genuinely believe you can AI proof your life and career? I think it depends how willing you are to AI proof it. I think if it's something you're really kind of staunched about and you're like, this is going to happen and I really need to do something about it. Then if you make major changes to your life, then definitely if you only do jobs that AI could never do like physical jobs. Like I made.

hospitality now, I don't see AI ever running plates, for example. But I think day to day, if you're just sticking with your career and just you're kind of worried about it, I think it might be a little bit harder because we don't know how AI is going to change the next few years. We don't know what kind of roles it's going to be able to take. Yeah, I mean, there's this interesting concept as well. They talk about AI bias and that it's only people who are inputting the data. For example, it's their opinions that will be, what would I say? I feel like saying spewed back out,

but you know what I mean? That will come back out as answers. And so it's important that there are people from all walks of life, men, women, etc., working within AI to try and make it non-biased, for example, when it comes to various demographics. Do you feel any responsibility to be part of that? I think it's definitely important that we consider who's training the AI.

Obviously, we've had incidents with certain AI's online that the input has made it to have some kind of dodgy output. I think it's important for most people day to day to consider what they're putting online and how that could be input into AI. Personally, it's not something I consider too much just because I try and keep as much. stuff of mine away from AI as possible. But I think it is something very much worth considering. I mean, hospitality is an interesting one to think about, Beth. And I'm already thinking about QR codes on tables. You know what I mean?

When you order or when you pay, etc. Let me bring you back in here, Ella. There was an ONS survey recently reporting. Men are more likely than women to believe AI can improve their job prospects, 11% of men compared to 7% of women and increase their income, 10%, they believe, compared to 4% of women. Also just looking at adopting it,

men were much more enthusiastic, women more sceptical with the figures. Have you seen a difference gender-wise, how people approach it? I mean, absolutely, yes. I think women, in my experience, and the people that I talk to, are significantly more skeptical

and significantly more, like, easy to adopt AI into a lot of things. And I'll be honest, I think that's a great thing. I think having people having more discussions about where AI isn't suitable and where not to use it and what we need to be cautious of is exactly the kind of thing that I think people need to be discussing. And I do think a lot of the time I'm seeing women are leading those conversations and pushing them forward. But I'm also seeing in my work we're having a lot of peer-led community groups spring up of people who want to be discussing how they're working with AI

or sharing training and knowledge with their colleagues. and predominantly not always, but majority of them, are led by women, which I think is brilliant. I think women are wanting to have critical discussions and wanting to share information and knowledge more, which I genuinely think is only a good thing. I just wish there were more AI critical being loud in their AI communities. Because when I think of AI bosses, it's mainly men that come to mind. Yes, it absolutely is. Ella, looking ahead five or ten years, what do you think AI might mean for working women?

I mean, I don't think I'd have predicted where we were at two or three years ago now. Like I think it's very hard to tell. What I hope is that what I've seen AI do for me and my career will happen on a broader scale, like people having the freedom to choose whether or not to use it and to use it to help them to support what they enjoy in their roles. I'm not sure that's totally realistic and I think to get to that there's a lot of work that needs to be done

in terms of regulation and, you know, AI leadership. That's what I hope what I think might be slightly less optimistic. Interesting. And back to you, Bethann, if a listener is working in admin

or office support roles and feels nervous about AI, is there any advice you might give them? I found when my job was being threatened by AI, I would, I think being nervous was right for me. Obviously, my job ended up being placed. My advice would be maybe seek out unions. Unions were really helpful for me during my job process. The reason that it took as long as it did was because unions really helped us with the fight against the AI.

But I think it's worth considering talking to management as well, see if they could expect. laying further how they want AI implemented, see if it's something that maybe you could reconsider or even work into your job in a way that works better for you. Definitely worth just seeing your options around. Beth, I'm really interesting. You say that, but the reason we're talking about it is that the Trade Union Conference is debating this subject this week. In fact, having a debate tomorrow afternoon, so many jobs created by AI, I should say, as well, when you look at the figures, it's incredible, particularly in the United States. But I imagine at the UK as it debates is trying to decide exactly what path it might take.

Bethanne and Ella Wicks, really interesting. Thank you both so much for starting us off this Monday morning. And Ella was talking there about that she didn't feel her language was correct in this employment setting she was in and that she was leaning on AI for that, which was making me think about actually our next item, which we'll get to girls speak in a moment. What about therapy speak? Have you ever used that to explain how you feel

or explain the behaviour as you see it of someone else? Maybe did you ever say you felt triggered by a comment or that perhaps an ex had attachment issues or you were gaslit during a relationship? But what effect does using therapy speak have in a day-to-day setting? Well, over the past decade, psychiatrist Dr. Suzanne Garfinkel-Kroll noticed more and more girls describing themselves

through the lens of therapy speak and psychiatric diagnosis often pulled from social media. She has a new book, I mentioned it at the top of the program, Girlhood Translated, and she explores how therapy speak is reshaping the identities of girls and what they are trying to say when they use it.

Let me bring in Dr. Suzanne. Good to have you with us. Thank you so much for getting up early. You're on the line from New York. Well, tell me a little bit about what you saw in your practice. Great. Well, thanks so much for having me, Nula. It's great to talk to you. I have been in practice for about 15 years. And what I saw was that in the past couple of years, the way that girls were speaking about themselves had really changed. It was almost like they were speaking a new language. So, you know, for example, when I started practicing, girls would come in and they would talk about the problems that they were having. They would say, you know, I'm not getting along with my mom.

You know, school has gotten really challenging, feeling kind of bad about myself. And then suddenly it was I have attachment issues, ADHD, and depression. So it was almost like, and, you know, of course, these are real diagnoses. People have mental health conditions. But what was really what was especially interesting to me was that those were the stories. that seemed to matter was the label itself. It was almost like the label had become the relevant story. I thought one example that you gave in the book because you use kind of a composite character

of patience to get across some of these issues, but that, for example, Becca, who would come to you saying, I have anxiety as opposed to I am anxious. Explain the difference. Sure. So I have anxiety. First of all, it's not a bad thing to say. extremely common thing to say. I think we've all, we've all, you know, said I'm having anxiety. But the way that girls use this phrase, I exemplify in the case of Becca in the book.

So Becca, Becca would say, I have anxiety or it's my anxiety about absolutely everything that didn't go well for her. You know, it was a bad weekend because of my anxiety. You know, schools is tough for me because I have anxiety. And so I was hearing this language, hearing this language. And as I got to know, Becca more, we started looking at times when her, the anxiety she was noticing would become more noticeable or would flare. And it turned out, Becca was in a group of friends where, that included her boyfriend and her best friend. And in, you know, several of the interactions they were having recently, her best friend was, you know, was kind of flirting a bit with her boyfriend. And Becca didn't even really realize that consciously that this is what was happening

and that she had some feelings about it. And instead, she would just say, oh, they're giving me anxiety and it's my anxiety, you know, which is something called internal attribution. And meaning, making the problem herself and her own mental health situation or condition, rather than even letting herself know that there was something a little bit wrong in her world that she didn't like. Which is so fascinating. And I think with some of the examples you give, what I felt reading them was that there was a thread of these girls being unable

to confront the issue and have conflict with somebody who is near and dear to you. Mm-hmm. Exactly. That is present in a lot of the cases as it is. And, you know, I think for many, many girls who have a therapist and who don't have a therapist because teenage girls are quite focused on their social lives as they should be. I mean, you know, we have research to show that even their brains are set up. to be extraordinarily sensitive to what's going on in the social world. And they, you know, also, you know, this is true of the teenage brain in general, but that feelings are big and they hit very, very hard in adolescence. And the thinking apparatus is still very much under construction for a couple more decades. And these relationships are kind of everything. You know, they teenage girls can't, they can't really get away from,

When you're an adult, you have a lot more choice about who you're going to spend your time with or which friends you're going to really invest in. But, you know, teenagers have to go to school. They have to see each other every day. They're on social media. The same people keep popping up. And I think it's really, really hard because they don't know what to make of situations, what's normal or let alone how to work it out.

So their brains would much rather just say, oh, I have anxiety. And you do speak just to put this fully in context. You talk about poverty, racial discrimination, access to care, being beyond the scope of this book. I would say reading that many of the girls that you speak about come from fairly privileged backgrounds, of course, to be able to access therapy often and pay for therapy. It may come from a certain socio-economic group. But there was a term cyberchondria that I had not heard before. Do you want to tell me a little bit about how you see the interaction with social, media playing out? Sure. Well, just, I mean, first, to the point about the patients that I treat, you know,

patients who have the privilege of working with a psychiatrist or a therapist, you know, it's a real problem and it's a fact. But part of the reason why I wrote this book is because this is an issue that really does transcend, you know, all kinds of socioeconomic groups and demographics, I think, largely because of social media. So it's many, many girls and families that I think are struggling to make sense of what this language means. Which relates to your second question about cyberchondria. So that's just a term that means self-diagnosing or believing that one has all kinds of mental health conditions because of what you see online and on social media.

And that's an extremely common problem for young people. There is one chapter that talks about anxiety, girlies, people, girls, you know, giving themselves that diagnosis and talking about what feels, like what they do, what they don't do. And I suppose normalizing it, I would say. But I was wondering, you know, can this language, whether it's the trauma, toxic or a diagnosis, ever be helpful, even if as a psychiatrist, you may not agree that they have that actual condition? Yes. Well, that is an incredibly important point in this book because I think we've become really polarized as a society, at least. in the U.S., and I get the sense in the U.K. as well, around this language where, you know, half of the,

half of the people are saying, you know, therapy speak is bad and it's harmful and, you know, everybody shouldn't speak in this way. And then, you know, other half of the people, I think, rightfully so, are saying it's so good that this, that these generations of younger people are more tolerant and accepting of mental vulnerabilities and interested. And if I had to pick which, which era I would live in. You know, I'd much rather be in this one where, you know, perhaps everybody talks about their trauma a bit too much.

But at least, you know, you're not getting shoved in a locker for, as I've said, for being different. You do say in your introduction, hysterical girls were the original psychiatric patients, serious, fatherly, older men were their doctors. And we kind of, so I suppose we have that legacy,

shall we say, when it comes to mental health and being a girl. or a woman. Here's a message that came in. I think you'd be interested in. Girls have the ability to mask far more successfully than boys, and the medical profession sadly still takes girls and women much less seriously. The increased use of self-diagnosis and medical language

may just be the only way some girls can find clarity and understanding for how they feel. Yes. Well, thank you for that comment, because one of the many reasons why therapy speak feels necessary and to young women is that, first of all, it could be spot on. I mean, self-diagnosis is not always wrong. Therapy-speak is not always bad, and oftentimes can be really, really helpful. And I think part of the reason for that is even when it's not describing necessarily precisely the right condition,

is girls have been called hysterical and silly and crazy through the ages. So if I can unpack those two different points a little bit, teenage girls are, are routinely mocked and trivialized in our society. And oftentimes, I do think for young women, the only way to feel heard is to reach for this elevated medical language, especially because sometimes maybe if you don't even, you know, don't necessarily warrant a full diagnosis, we all have psychiatric symptoms at times. So it can feel very much like, you know, you've got, you know, you're on the way to at least a psychiatric disorder. And that's, those are terms that people take very seriously.

So sometimes girls really do have to be sick to be heard. To have a medical diagnosis to be validated for how they're feeling. Fascinated by the term you use the girl self-defense system. Let's talk about girls speak. I alluded to it at the top of this item. You said, girls just want to have fun. with language, you talk about the use of like that many teenage girls will use or questions at the end. You know what I mean. And you talk about a circumstantial thought process, which includes many details,

whereas what's lauded by society often is a linear, goal directed speech pattern. Explain. Sure. So girls are the language pioneers and disruptors. You know, lots of evidence shows that, you know, among sociolinguistic communities, that it's young women who are determining the slang and the, you know, sort of casual speak and the buzzwords of each generation. And it's also young women who look up the most health information online and who, you know, because of internal attribution, are looking to find what's wrong with them. Why are they the problem? So all of these things kind of combine to make young women the real, you know, the heaviest users and pioneers of therapy speak. But part of what's complex

here is that oftentimes therapy speak can be very useful and that young women are being smart when they're using this language because they recognize that this is what is necessary. So it's all part of the great female intelligence with language, including in terms, using words that are often seen as trivial. And I use the word like as an example. because if you think about it, you know, I have a big footnote in the book about the word like. Because, you know, I think most girls and young women have been told you should use the word like less. You know, it makes you sound silly. But when you're talking to your friends and you say, I was like this or I was like that, it's a very nuanced word. It doesn't really mean I, you know, if you say this was like my favorite meal, you don't mean this was my favorite meal of all time. You just mean it's, it's, it's, It's something that I think, that I feel, you know, or I was like this or he was like that. It doesn't necessarily mean that's what somebody said. It could also mean that's what somebody was thinking or feeling.

But it's part of this incredibly elaborate social communication system that involves language that girls are developing as they enter the teenage years. Fascinating. Circumstantial thought process. Here's another message. I'm a psychotherapist. Almost all of my, in the UK, almost all of my younger. women have self-diagnosed and appears to be part of their identity. It can be unhelpful as the woman may feel she cannot change this or that about herself because of her label in inverted commas. She might be annoyed that I want to explore it. It also extends to those around her relationships described as toxic, toxic, mothers as narcissistic and so on. It takes time to tease out whether

these descriptions are accurate or more adopted speak. The challenge to help a younger woman work out who she is as she matures is more difficult than it was for them. For them, any therapist, a teacher or a long-suffering parent. I mean, that is very much echoed in your book. And let me get to the parents in our last minute or so as well. Because you say parents often live in fear of their teenagers' strong emotions. You also talk about there can be a culture in the home that looks down upon vulnerabilities, for example. but what would your advice be to parents of girls who are speaking in therapy speak, how to help them?

Yes. Well, I think it can be incredibly challenging for parents, just as it is for therapists hearing this language. I think for parents, they often fall into one of two pitfalls. One is being overly panicked and taking the words so literally that they think, oh, my God, I've got a daughter with all of these mental illnesses. I couldn't possibly be helpful and, you know, call the doctor immediately. I do think that there is a huge role for mental health professionals, just to be clear, but that's one of the problems is being overly panicked because you're sort of missing the moment where your daughter is coming to you saying, whatever it is, I'm depressed or whatever.

The other pitfall is not taking it seriously enough. And I think parents are so frustrated with hearing these. words and believing that, you know, that every person in this generation thinks that they're very, very sick, that there's this eye role culturally. And that, of course, is extremely unhelpful, because then that's just dismissing girls and women once again. So what I recommend is that parents introduce something I call small acts of translation. And what that means is you're not going to argue with the term, nor are you going to take it on fully. You're just going to reach for plain language. And so it's a two-step process. The first one is just a thinking step.

Your daughter says, I'm depressed. So think of language that pops into your mind about depression. What do you associate with that word? You know, sad, hopeless, lonely. And you're just thinking about her experience. And you're already doing such a service for her just by thinking those thoughts. because you're first of all, you're not making it worse and you're not overreacting or underreacting, but you're just being present and you're really trying to consider her experience. And then the second step is a talking one where in the right moment, you know, the right time, you may try offering a word back to her. Like, that sounds like it could be really lonely for you.

Is that part of it? And see how that lands. And of course, it's not a one and done. It's going to be many conversations, some of which may include a mental health professional, if necessary. But that is the human connection. And I think that that is the greatest thing that we're losing

with all of this therapy speak is just relating person to person because whether she has a diagnosis or not, everybody wants to be understood as a human being. And I think that this step could really help us. Girlhood translated, understanding girls in the age of therapy, speak and self-diagnosis.

It's Dr. Suzanne Garfinkel-Kroll's book that is just out fascinating stuff as we've been hearing. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. Thanks, Niller. If you want to get in touch with us, as many of you are, here's one. Interesting conversation. I think our language is so gendered, and you called it out with the fact that the word hysteria comes from an old white man.

My experience is that the younger generation and workforce of today are so much more informed and empowered to challenge the negative stereotypes. I would use women more than girls. We tend to say men rather than boys, unless they're under the age of eight. That's from a man called Andrew. We are talking about girls in this, primarily teenage girls,

but I take your point. Growing businesses deal with the same problem, too many tools, too much back and forth, and not enough time. Odu helps bring it all together. It's an all-in-one business management platform fully integrated from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing,

so your team can spend less time chasing information and focus on growth. Whether you're in retail, manufacturing or service, Odu gives you one place to manage your business. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's ODb-O.com. Get more with BBC Podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows,

like Evil Genius, Good, Bad Billionaire, and You're Dead to Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon music subscription. Okay, of course, it's Celine Dion. Well, for many fans, they thought that moment might never come. But in Paris, this weekend,

one of the biggest selling artists of all time, Celine Dion made an emotional comeback. She has sold 260 million albums worldwide. And this weekend, her fans saw her first full concert in six years. That was after a diagnosis of stiff person syndrome in 2022, which meant she had stopped performing. For those that didn't get in, Paris City Hall, get this, organised a free outdoor karaoke for 10,000 people on Friday night

as a giant sing-along to the hits. How wonderful is that? Two people who did get tickets for Celine's gig were superfan, Dr Frankie Jackson Spence and Culture Writer and fan Beatrice Hazlehurst. I'd like to know the difference between fan and super fun, but we can duke it out here. Frankie, let me begin with you. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

You've waited years to see Celine Dion live. What did it mean to be there on this opening night? Oh my goodness. I grew up listening to Celine Dion and I've never seen her live before. So when she got poorly a few years ago, I thought, that's it. I've missed my chance. So it just meant everything to be able to go,

not only to see her, but on the opening night, it was just electric. Okay. How would you describe it? Give me a little bit of the frizzle of excitement. What did you see? Well, I was very lucky to be sitting in the super van zone. I was really near the front. I can't believe the luck I had getting those tickets. So what was incredible was actually being able to see Celine herself, not just watching it on the screen. You know, sometimes when you go to a concert, you're too far back. You feel the atmosphere and you see the screens. But I could actually see the expression and the emotion on her face. So that was incredible. There was so. much emotion in her performance, not just by her, but also by the crowd. You know, people were actually sobbing around me when she came on and she was sobbing on stage. So it just, it was incredible. And I think also there was some quite famous people sitting around me in the audience as well.

I believe Michelle Obama, Oprah, Shania Twain were amongst us. So it was a great crowd. Oh my goodness. I mean, that's like, what would I say, a dream list for a guest list for women's air. Let me bring you in here as well, Beatrice. You're there as a fan, but you're also working, right, because you're a culture writer. What was your first impression of Celine walking on stage? How would you describe it? I mean, electric is the word. It was so magical. She was wearing this enormous Diorga gown. And then she had like a Boucheron diamond, which I've heard since it's worth five million. So it was like more than that, she was just so incredibly radiant and looked. strong. And I think that was really something that I wasn't prepared for. She has trained like an

athlete for this show. She does ballet and Pilates multiple times a week. She has just worked so hard to get to this point that I don't think she ever thought would come. And that is why, I mean, the crowd was so emotional. She was so emotional. The crowd started chanting to kind of bring her back because she started crying during, um, on Echangez-Pas. And it was just like, I've never seen that from a performer before. I've never seen like a performer crack. And that transparency was almost like a relief. It was like, okay, we can all experience this together and like have and sharing this moment and this joy together. Like she's not stoic. She's human. And that vulnerability, of course, connecting you probably even more. So did she sing all the old classics, Beatrice? She sung all the old

classics. She went straight into, I believe, because of you, it was like, my heart will go on, obviously, anthemic and like so impassioned. I'm sorry, because you loved me, was where she started. And then she, oh my God, what did she do? She did like a transition from Donna Summers, I feel love until I'm alive. And it was actually, I just so wasn't prepared for it. I wasn't quite prepared for like a cover of another artist. Certainly not when she did Sweet Dreams by the Euryth and then it was like just kind of bangor after banger. Like she did Beauty and the Beast. That's the way it is.

And then finished with all by myself. And that was also probably the only time during the show that we saw any kind of exertion from her. She just puffed before the final note. I'm sure Frankie will remember that moment where she just was gearing up for the final note. She just turned and it was like, okay, yeah. like we understand like the work that's involved in this. Let me talk about that because both of you are so perfectly placed. Frankie, you are a doctor.

We heard that Celine Dion had stiff person syndrome, still has it. It's not curable as my understanding. But she has battled obviously to get to this point. What do you think that would take? And many people won't be familiar with stiff person syndrome at all. Can you explain a little of what it is? Stiff person syndrome is an extremely rare neurological condition that causes rigidity and involuntary spasms in the muscles. And it's so rare, we actually don't know that much about it. We don't know exactly what causes it.

It's thought to be autoimmune, so your immune system attacking the muscles. And it's around a one in a million condition. Now, what's so interesting for me watching her is that it is thought to be a progressive disease. So with time, symptoms should get worse. but actually this is like the comeback of the century because I agree she was in such amazing physical condition and I don't just mean vocally that will have taken a lot of vocal therapy and commitment and training to get those laryngeal muscles and those vocal cords back into action like that but also physically like her body looked so strong the way she was dancing the way she was holding herself by the way in like six inch heels as well so it will have taken a lot of work and I think that is what fans love so much about her is that she could have

just, you know, hung up the towel and said, I've nailed my career, I've earned enough money, I've got this reputation, I'm going to call it a day now and, you know, focus on my health and not jeopardize my reputation, but she didn't do that. She's really must have spent a lot of years day in, day out to get to this point. This is a residency that she has in Paris that she's doing, I believe it, I think it's 16 dates and then she has more coming back. in May. As we were talking to Frankie there, her speciality is, of course, medicine. To you, Beatrice, as a singer, tell me how you saw her performance. Yeah, I'm classically trained singer and I think, honestly, I mean, it was just so transcendent. She did an Italian aria towards the end,

which I think was actually the finale moment and then came back and did an encore. But the plus one who was with me, the last time she was in that arena, was for Taylor. Swift and she just turned to me as a big Swifty and said, Taylor could never do that. And I was like, yeah, it is kind of like, it's a superior talent, tech, like, technical expertise. Like, I've just never seen live. You don't see singers like that, that kind of breath control, that range. She's just like one in a billion, you know, not to use them for disease. But it's like, it really is, like you just don't see talent like that.

And I can't think of a contemporary artist. who could deliver what she did two hours of that kind of music, it's so incredibly difficult for a singer to even like tackle a song like The Prayer, which she made famous with Andre Bechelli, and to do that with a full gospel choir as a solo song. I mean, it was so impressive. Sounds wonderful. Now, I described you as a fan beach,

because I'm thinking I might put the moniker superfan on you now. Honestly, I, but the guilt I felt there, as kind of a reviewer and a critic when I was talking to kind of French friends and people in Paris who were like, I waited in line. I was in the lottery and I was like, I didn't know there was a lottery. Like I really, oh my God, I felt so undeserving to be there because of just her reach, her breadth and like in France specifically, I mean, she is an icon. She's a national treasure. So everyone wanted to be there. And I think that's why I was feeling a lot of imposterous. Well, I'm glad you had such a wonderful night and able to share it with us as well.

Thank you, Beatrice, Hazlehurst. Also, thanks to Dr. Frankie Spence. Really interesting. I feel like I was there, vicariously at this point, who went to see Celine Dion on Saturday night. Thanks for all your messages that are coming in. We'll get to some of them on footballers and fertility in just a moment. Because last week, Spain's football governing body announced they will offer egg freezing treatment to all national team players.

So egg freezing involves storing a woman's unfertilised eggs with the aim, they would say, of making it easier to have a baby later in life because it's very important of what age you freeze your eggs as well. The announcement comes after players, including former Spain captain, that's Alexia Puteas, said that the world and European champions should not have to choose between their sport and motherhood. But the news has faced a backlash. Some suggesting it pressures players to prioritize their careers over their personal lives. To discuss this with me, we have sports therapists, a member of FIFA's A Female Athlete Project, Michelle Lyons.

Also, former Chelsea goalkeeper Carly Telford. Carly is now the commercial manager at Chelsea. They run a similar scheme to support female players who want to freeze their eggs. Great to have both of you with us this morning. Thanks for joining us. Carly, let me begin with you. This must be a dilemma that you have spoken about. with your teammates, peak competitive years

often overlap with the reproductive years. They do, but I think I want to set the record straight. What we're doing is not just offering egg freezing here at Chelsea. I think as a former player, there's a lot of stuff that goes into your playing career that means a lot of stuff goes on the back burner. And that's even just looking after your health and your reproductive health.

Are you getting tested? Are you kind of your hormones, endometriosis, menstrual cycle, all that kind of stuff encompasses us as athletes. But also, yes, egg freeze in an option of IVF and wanting to have children whilst you're still playing and at the end of your career gives us multiple options. So I think for me, when I sat out on this journey about 18 months ago to look for a partner, it wasn't about freezing eggs.

It was about allowing the players and the athletes to take charge of their bodies and find out more about themselves and then have options on the table. So the VIK kind of is there for the players via Fertility Plus is for them to kind of have an menu of options. that they can use from testing their own fertility to then freezing their eggs if they wish to, to their hormonal, kind of how they react during their phases, their menstrual cycle. And yeah, I think it's for us to allow the players to take control of that rather than having to

wait or have to go and seek help from elsewhere. Yes, and we'll get to some of the pushback on that as well. But about that particular point, it must be something that is spoken about, I would imagine, probably more open now than it would have been years ago about the fact that if you want to have child, it can be difficult as an elite athlete. Yeah, and it can, of course, there's a lot of choices in particularly my era when we are making choices between having full-time jobs and playing football, let alone when to have children or not, and whether that was possible and taking career breaks and whether

the clubs were going to resign you if you announced you did get pregnant and what that looked like after you returned, because again, the physical health, probably Michelle will talk more here at Chelsea. We have a pelvic floor therapist. We have a menstrual cycle doctor. We have things that help athletes prepare. themselves for performing, but also if they do go on to have children. We've had Malilopouls, the Chiramuicevich, two players who played for Chelsea, go on to have children and then return and play for us. So it's about encompassing the player and allow the players to feel comfortable to make their own choices.

And that's very individual to every athlete and every player. But I think having that choice is super important and it makes them feel comfortable. It allows them to come to the club and have options on the table to have children while they play for us or after or during. And I think that's super important for a player's happiness. So let me go, though, to sum off the objections. The first thing, I suppose I should lay out as well, that the HFEA, this is the human fertilisation and embryology authority,

they talk about, because we are talking about egg freezing today, specifically says that frozen embryo transfers. They rose, the birth rates from that rose from 18% in 2013, up to 33% in 2023. But, you know, they very much stress. Egg freezing does not guarantee a future. your baby. There's so many variables. And relatively few women who freeze their eggs for non-medical reasons return to use them.

I'm wondering, Michelle, if a sportswoman is considering egg freezing, what do you think she should know? Well, I think, you know, first of all, it's great to see that sporting bodies are actually acknowledging that female athletes have reproductive lives. because I think as one of your earlier speakers was talking about, you know, from a mental health perspective, a very linear goal-directed path. And that certainly would apply to male athletes. But for, you know, I think I should put it, the complexity of female circumstantial thought processes.

You know, we've got to look at. You've been listening to the whole program. I took notes. I took notes. I think it's really important that we do look at anything that gives women reproductive autonomy and choices, I think is a good thing. But I think it's important as well that we don't end up in a situation where female athletes feel that they have to go down a path of egg freezing for the sake of their career.

Because I think for a long time there was a bit of a motherhood penalty in sports. But now, you know, I mean, even looking at the last Olympic cycle, we saw the rise of the mother athlete and lots of athletes hitting PBs after having babies. So I think it's really just important, as Carly was saying, that we support female athletes throughout, you know, menstrual health. pregnancy and postpartum, and certainly within the FIFA Female Athlete Project, we're looking at creating a body of research, first of all, so that we have an evidence-based practice, and then we can filter that down from high-level, high-performance athletes all the way down to grassroots.

So we're supporting girls and women at every stage of their reproductive lives. But it's about choices. And if I can just say as well, as you pointed out, egg freezing can be really empowering, but we don't want athletes have a false sense of security about it either as well. And that's what I want to come back to. I want to turn to... This is Anna Palatero Camperore Brayon.

She's a Spanish Olympic triple jumper, but of course it's something that sportswomen in various disciplines come up against. She criticised the move. I'm going to read quite a bit of what she said. The problem isn't freezing eggs, she said. The problem is, why does the institution these women work for have an interest in financing them to delay their motherhood. And here's, there's a problem for me that it changes absolutely everything.

Is this measure intended to make it easier for women to be mothers? Or is it intended to make it easier for them not to be mothers while they're playing? She says, look what can happen here. Instead of adapting the sports structure so that motherhood fits within it, we adapt to women's reproductive timing so they continue to fit the structure. And there's still something else that worries me more, she says. Today, freezing eggs is an option. But when that option is offered to you by the institution, your professional career depends on,

at what point can the option start to become an expectation? Let's imagine. If you could freeze your eggs, why did you decide to get pregnant right now? There we have a huge problem. Michelle? Yeah, I mean, I think she makes a lot of valid points there. Look, egg freezing is shiny, it's bright, it's scientific, there's some magical thinking going into that as well. I would actually be super excited if we saw a postpartum support system being put in place.

Like what are we doing to support breastfeeding with athletes? They're childcare, their transport facilities. What are we doing about making sure that every athlete going through this perinatal transition has access to pelvic health physios like myself? You know, what are we doing to look at that broader picture and really supporting motherhood as well as giving women choices. So it's all about making informed choices and giving women the support,

female athletes the support that they need, no matter what choice they make, and not pigeonholing them and forcing them down a path that they may not want to go. And of course, you know, various clubs can have different programmes. I know the Spanish policy includes, among other things, supporting female players to travel with their children

during major tournaments. I want to turn to the former line as Tony Duggan, Carly. She became pregnant in 2022 while playing for Everton and England. She said, I don't think women's football is ready for women to be pregnant. Carly, do you understand why she would say that? Yeah, of course. Like Tony's lived and breathed it very much like myself. She's a couple of years younger.

And I think different clubs, that is the fact it's not led by the FA at the minute. The PFA have just announced something in the summer to help players out. But every club is different. Every budget is different. I think that comes down to everyone's kind of how they think about it in their clubs. We've been led by Emma Hayes and over six years who went through something herself and wanted her players to feel like they were cared for in various ways.

She left the club and left people like me in charge and others around us, CEO, directors to be like, how can we do things different at Chelsea? How can we lead in these areas so that other clubs follows, other federations follow? So I think for me, it was very powerful that we've done this. I think leading on to what you're saying, you and Michelle are saying on Thursday,

we'll announce a player care policy that will come out that will surround the postpartum around what that looks like for a player when they're pregnant, how they exit that and what it looks like for the return to play. So again, we're very impassionate about, like, yes, we're going to do something, but we're also doing more than that. And that leads into the after of motherhood as well. So look, we...

Let me turn to you, actually, on that, Carly. I'm just thinking, staying with the egg freezing for a moment and really interesting that those other initiatives are being launched. But how much take up have you had from players when it comes to egg freezing itself? That's not my... In that it nice as possible, it's not my business. I think that the business of the players and what they're... do and what they do with that and the fact that it's not just about egg freezing, that that is one of the options.

Well, this is the, I suppose, the aspect that we're talking about today because it's so much, you know, whether we're talking about AOC, the politician in the United States or others, it's very much on the headlines. And as I keep on reiterating, it is not obviously a guarantee and there's so many variables and the numbers are still low, for example, when it comes to a successful live birth after egg freezing. but I didn't want specific players details of course but I was just, you know, are people doing it? Yeah. Again, as I'm aware that one of the decisions that we made

is when we were doing this is that it would be play confidentiality, stability and the doctor, the player themselves and whoever they wanted to tell within the team player environment. But look, that is there to support them wholeheartedly. That is there if they want to go down that route but also like if they just want to

to know more about, want to know more about their bodies and that is the most important thing. Every player is different. All their bodies are different. how they interact and how they go through this cycle of life and what they want that to look like for themselves whilst they're playing is super important to us as a club. So we want to know that they have that support and that is optional if they access it.

If they don't touch it at all, that is also their choice. But if people want to know more and go down that route, then it is exactly there for that reason. We hope that other clubs do that as well. It's a comment coming in. I'm 73 now, but I would have leapt at the chance to freeze my eggs. It would stop the musical chairs approach where all girls grab the man,

even if they don't love them, leading to much unhappiness later on for both parents and for children. Just one message that's coming in here. Let me see. As you discussed, there is only one gender who can give birth to future geniuses and footballers. Yet women are being asked to dedicate their most productive years to work rather than reproducing somebody kind of chiming in on how they see this particular story playing out. I suppose the thing is, it has got everybody talking and thinking. about it and looking at some of the realities of reproductive years

and also fertility and egg freezing. I want to thank both of my guests. Really interesting to hear from both of them this morning who are thinking about this. Former Chelsea goalkeeper Carly Telford, commercial manager at Chelsea and also Michelle Lyons from the FIFA's Female Athlete Project. Do join me tomorrow. We'll be talking about absent fathers again, fascinating series that we've

had on Women's Hour over the past couple of weeks. I do hope you'll join me then. Thanks so much for all your contributions, and I'll talk to you tomorrow. That's all for today's Women's Hour. Join us again next time. 25 years on from the deadliest terror attack in history, why are thousands of grieving families still fighting for answers? In early 2000, two young Saudis arrived in San Diego.

They'd never been to America, spoke almost no English, and had no idea how to open a bank account or rent a flat. Within weeks, they'd done all of it. 20 months later, they hijacked a plane and crashed it into the Pentagon. Jane McMullen investigates the hidden story of a man who helped two of the hijackers and reveals a story that the U.S. and Saudi governments have fought to keep secret. From Radio 4, this is Intrigue, a 9-11 story. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

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