Woman's Hour - 23/04/2025

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

The programme that offers a female perspective on the world

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, this is Claire MacDonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. This morning in her first in-depth interview since winning the first stage of her libel case against ex-footballer Joey Barton, we'll hear from the former England footballer Eni Aluko. The High Court found that online posts made by Joey Barton about En'll hear from the former England footballer, Eni Aluko. The High Court found that online posts made by Joey Barton about Eni and her family were defamatory. She tells

me why she decided to take the case on, the effect it's had on her personally and why female football pundits are scrutinised so much more than their male counterparts. Yesterday on the programme we asked you what qualities you look for in a good friend. Well, today it's the opposite. Historian Tiffany Watts-Smith felt she wasn't very good at friendships, so it made her want to examine the history of female friendships and how she might approach forming new friendships differently. She's written a brilliant book about it, it's called Bad Friend, and Tiffany will join us live. And we'll bring you the inspiring story of a group of women

from Austin, Texas, who took on the legal system and the police department after they say their rapists were allowed to walk free. Their story is now the subject of a documentary released in the UK this week. It's called Army of Women, will be joined by one of the women involved and the film's director. And if called Army of Women. We'll be joined by one of the women involved and the film's director. And if you want to get in touch with anything you hear on the programme this morning, please do. You can text the programme. The number is 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media, we are at BBC Women's Hour. You can email us through our website or you can send a WhatsApp message or voice note. Use this number 03700 100444. Let's start this morning with this. Trans women should use toilets according to their biological sex. That is according to the Equalities

Minister Bridget Phillipson. This is in response, course to the UK Supreme Court's ruling a week ago on the legal definition of a woman. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has welcomed the decision saying it provides much needed clarity and his office has confirmed that the Prime Minister no longer believes trans women are women. There have been protests against the decision with critics saying it is incredibly worrying for the trans community. The ruling followed a long-running legal battle between the Scottish Government and the campaign group Four Women Scotland. Earlier I spoke to one of the directors of Four Women Scotland, Susan Smith, and I asked her her reflection on the outcome a week on. It was a huge relief at the time. It was a really long road to get to the Supreme Court and obviously we'd lost twice in Scotland. We didn't know what

the result would be going in. Usually the Supreme Court gives you a little bit of notice. So the emotion last Wednesday was really quite intense both in the Rima and back in Edinburgh, where they were allowed to make a noise and clap and cheer and cry, and we had to sit on our hands and hold our breath until the judge had finished speaking. Looking back, I mean, what we've said is we always believed that was the law. So in a way, nothing has changed changed but in another sense everything has changed because policy and guidance had run ahead of the law to such a degree that women's spaces were not being protected in practice.

You were in the Scottish Parliament yesterday to hear the Scottish Government's response to the ruling and you have been calling on them to apologize to women. So what response have you had? Nothing so far and it's disappointing because this was a result of a campaign fought by ordinary women with no real financial backup and with no experience in law or politics. We managed to build a movement. And along the way, we were subject to the most horrible abuse, some of it from politicians. And what we saw in recent days is that that has continued. And there have been some really quite extreme comments from members of the Scottish Parliament and there has been no acknowledgement on the part

of the Scottish Government that they were a part of creating that febrile environment where women were being attacked simply for expressing their opinions. I want to get on to how the personal impact it's had on all of you and your backstory as well how you came to form this group but and your backstory as well, how you came to form this group. But if you're a trans woman listening to this, do you have empathy for trans women who would argue that a week ago they had stronger rights than they do today? Well I think the sad thing is they didn't have the rights in inverted commas that they were told they had. And that is the responsibility of the organisations who misled everybody on the law and they set out to do it very

deliberately. And I think they use some of these people as pawns. And I think that we always said this was a separate protected characteristic. We were fully in favor of working out how people could be accommodated, but we needed clarity on when facilities were just for women. And that was our starting point. And I think the problem is, as somebody who is trans once said, that they could see in the future that there would have to be an absolute line drawn on biology because that is the only way you can really do it in law. Everything else was a little bit of a civic contract. You know, I think people were accommodating of people, especially those they thought passed, because women are conditioned to be nice and we are, and have been very aware when people are vulnerable

and thought that we would give them a little bit of space and protection. The problem is that certain organisations really overstepped and really pushed this to the extent that we were being told that, you know, fully intact men with beards or people like, I suppose, we all saw the pictures of the double rapist Isla Bryson and there were some people who were absolutely standing up and saying that that was a woman and I think when you got to that point we had to pull it back and the only way we could pull it back was to biology. And I would say that there were a lot of women who suffered an awful lot during that period. There were an awful lot of women in prisons, in hospitals, in domestic abuse shelters, in rape crisis shelters who were branded bigots for wanting

to be safe. And I didn't see much empathy extended to them. So I think women are always expected to show empathy but people are often less ready to show empathy to the most vulnerable women. Where does that accommodation, you mentioned the word accommodation, women having to be the accommodating ones, have you thought on where that accommodation now lies for trans women in this situation? I think that has to be men. And I think we have to have conversations about how men can make sure that other men are safe. And, you know, I remember during the time when a lot of

gay men were attacked and abused for their sexuality. And there was never any suggestion that they should then be accepted into female spaces and we should protect them. Because women aren't human shields. And male violence is a problem, whether that's male on male violence or male on female violence. And so I think it bodes us all to think very carefully about how we can tackle some of these issues. But I would also say that I think there's room in certain organizations for third spaces, and that won't just be for trans individuals. You know, there are a lot of people who could benefit from having third spaces. If you have a carer who is of the opposite sex, for example, of somebody, they might appreciate being able to go into a space with that person.

So there is an argument about how we broaden society and broaden the spaces and services we provide while not penalizing or taking away from the services that are specific to women. Let's talk about your organization because we've heard the title for Women Scotland quite a few times but people don't necessarily know the women behind the story that everybody is talking about now. What brought you together and who are you all? So the three directors are myself, I was a former farm manager in New York in the city of London and I had stopped work to look after my three children. I'd done bits since then, but nothing particularly permanent. Marion Calder, he's with the NHS and Trina Budge, she's a farmer up in the far north of Scotland. And I largely came across them online on Mumsnet,

which is sneered at a lot by people who don't value mothers or who think that mothers all lose their brains when they give birth. That was how we started. We were tiny. I mean, the four women name was actually a play because the original people in Marion's dream when they founded it was Marion, Trina Magdalene and her girlfriend Nicole. And they said at that point, they didn't know if it had any ever be any more than four of them. That's an interesting detail. I mean just to put the listeners into the picture, I mean it was back in 2018 Wasn't it when the Scottish Parliament passed a bill? Designed to ensure gender balance on public boards. This is what you are unhappy about. Why?

Yes, so the and it was quite a little remarked bill but Trina who is Absolutely forensic and she goes through everything and she finds the devil in all the detail and one of the things that she was very unhappy about was that in the description of a woman in that bill, the definition of a woman in that bill, it said it was anybody who identified as a woman and it then then expanded that to say, that could mean they used female pronouns, or they had a female name on their electricity bill. And then it's further said, but then you don't need to provide any evidence of this. So essentially, we thought, well, it renders the whole thing meaningless, because anybody can claim to be a woman under

this. It doesn't matter if you only can claim to be a woman under this. It doesn't matter if you only decided to identify as a woman five minutes before walking into the interview. So we couldn't do anything about it in 2018. We, as I say, were tiny and ineffective and we had hardly anybody was listening to us. But by 2020, we'd got enough head of steam, there was another consultation on it. And so we thought we'd challenge the government, we took them to judicial review, and we won. And then they went back and amended that to say that it was biological women and anybody with a GRC, a gender recognition certificate that said they were a woman. And that is the part that we've been challenging now for the last two years.

There have been, as you say, there's been a series of legal challenges through crowdfunding donations because this doesn't come cheap. A reported £70,000 donation from JK Rowling that you were able to fund the latest legal challenge through the Supreme Court. What do you say to people that say you have been bankrolled by high-profile people like her and that you are in essence an anti-trans lobby group? Well it's nonsense really because we're very grateful to JK Rowling for that donation but the entire cost of this particular judicial review was over £400,000 and most of that came through in small individual donations. I worked out that for our first judicial review, the donations averaged about £37.

So it was literally thousands of women giving us small amounts. And I think it's quite insulting to them when people think or pretend to think that this is some movement that's funded by high rollers, because it really isn't. As far as the accusations that were anti-trans, I would say that that only works if you think that people who believe women have the right to privacy, dignity and safety, if you think that being pro-women is in itself inherently anti-trans. It's saying that women are not allowed to have their own political or social movement without hurting other people and I don't think that's fair or correct. You've made yourself very visible and none of you, thanks for outlining that, have any kind of background in this kind of campaigning and I know you've carried on doing your normal jobs alongside all of this. What kind of personal toll has it taken?

Because the arguments have got very heightened over the years, haven't they? Yes, they have. And I was really scared initially about becoming visible because I'd always regarded myself as one of those people who's very middle of the road, probably slightly lefty liberal, and I hadn't been getting the sort of information. It was a shock to me when I started looking at what had been happening in law and

society because I really hadn't understood the full impact of it and I think a lot of women were in that position and it was very difficult when I first went to the committee on the census in 2018. I was really scared that how I would be perceived and I think some of the demonization is very upsetting. For me the worst thing is not particularly particularly the abuse and the threats which are disgusting and sometimes graphic, but they come from a certain sector of people who probably would like to send those sorts of threats to women anyway. I think the things that most upset me are when people think you genuinely want to hurt them and that you're genuinely out to destroy their lives. We're not. I'm certainly not. I certainly don't hate anybody and the idea that we are wanting people to kill themselves or be miserable is very far from the truth.

We are starting to see the implications, Bourn out, conversations around how does this apply then to health education business? Are you happy with what you've heard a week on? Are you happy with the direction of travel on that? Yes, I think there's a lot of the commentary coming from lawyers has been great. Aqua Rindorf wrote a piece in the Times the other day that's very clear, sets things out very well and of course she is part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and they'll be following it up and there's been lots of good commentary I've seen from from lawyers online. What's next for you? Is it over as far as you're concerned? No, we will keep on going because We do need to make sure all this guidance is sorted

We do need to make sure that it carries through into practice We know there will be pushback and so we're going to have to deal with that and meet that That's Susan Smith one of the founding members of the campaign group for Women Scotland. Now here's a question. Have you ever used the expression bad friend? Have you ever thought that you are one or maybe you've accused somebody else of being one? Well my next guest, the historian Tiffany Watts-Smith has been tracing the evolution and messy realities of female friendship across the past century in the name of research for her new book which she has called Bad Friend. She's looked across

the decades at romantic schoolgirls of the 1900s, office gossips, mum-cleaks, we all love those, angry activists of the 1970s and the coven, women who choose to live together in old age of the present day. Delighted to say Tiffany joins me in the Womzah Studio now. Hi, welcome Tiffany. Thank you. I love the, just everything about this book. It just looks amazing. It's got a fantastic picture on the front of two women, looks like they're on a night out and having a high old time and you've called it Bad Friends. So let's start with the title. Explain. Well, I wrote this book out of a real sense of crisis in my own friendships. When I was in my early 30s, I had a sort of catastrophic breakdown with my best friend, I call her Sophia, in the book. And as I've learned is very common, actually,

after a kind of friendship rupture like this, you really lose your confidence in your ability to choose and make friends. And around the same time, as is also actually very common in people's late 20s and early 30s, I sort of looked around at my other friendships, and I really noticed that they had really changed shape. You know, we used to be the kind of the stars around which each other

orbited but now everyone had got busy, people have moved away, they'd had families, they got very absorbed in their work and it began to feel that, you know, really we were on the periphery of each other's lives. And just to pick you up on the Sophia point, you detail, it's brilliantly written about how you were once so close, weren't you, when your lives were very similar and that it felt like a real loss, you kind of edged further out of her circle and you wondered whether if you just dropped off completely one day whether she'd notice. Well that's true and that story is a really important framing story for the book. But I wanted to share it because I think it's actually quite a common story. In fact, I know it's quite a common story because I've interviewed many women in writing

this book. When I was going through that experience, I would look around me and I'd see the ways in which female friendships were portrayed as these kind of lifelong, very intimate relationships. And I looked at those, very idealized and glamorized and sort of almost fantasy type of friendships. And then I looked at my own sort of wreckage and my own friendships which weren't close like that. And I really began to think, you know, I sort of lack some of the courage that friendship takes, you know, that I'm sort of missing this essential part

of a female and feminist life you know I started to think you know am I am I a bad friend I'm bad at this oh well listen let's get into this you saw it in your daughter as well didn't you when somebody gave her a bag of clothes with all the emblems on it and this kind of indoctrination of you better be a good friend it starts early doesn't it it really does yes so about 10 years after this catastrophic incident my daughter was about five years old at the time and I really started noticing that she was getting a lot of messaging around having to be a good friend having to be a best friend you know it was on the sparkly t-shirts

on the pencil cases you know the theme tune of her favorite cartoon and now I'm a historian of emotion so what I study is how wider cultural scripts live inside us, you know, how they act on us as individuals, even in these very intimate parts of our lives. And it was really that moment that made me think, you know, I need to understand, I want to understand where my own expectations and narratives have come from. Right, yeah, so go easy on yourself, but work out how you got to that point. So how did you start the research? Where did you go back to? Well, actually it's interesting because when I first started I assumed I'd be looking at a lot of

letters and diaries, you know, and very sort of intimate kinds of sources and I wasn't quite sure of the historical period I was going to be looking at so I cast my net quite widely at the beginning and what I found quite quickly actually was the stories that were most compelling were the sources that were most compelling were kind of public sources. So for example historians looking through the kind of dusty archives of 12th and 13th century tax records for example not you think very promising source of information about friendships but have found for example how you know whole communities and streets of older women in particular living together sharing

houses working together you know even sharing tax liabilities and we don't know hardly anything about these women's lives but every so often you get a tiny glimpse so for example there's there's a pair of women and they're called Contess and Nicole. They lived together and they shared a room in 12th century Paris in one of the poorest parts of the city. They were in their 40s, which was pretty considered old, getting old at the time. And Nicole suddenly became very ill. She had what sounds like a stroke. And she would have died, but Contessa really looked after her. She fed her, she clothed her, she rallied other friends and they got a cart and they took Nicole to pray at the tomb of Louis IX for a miracle. And actually this

miracle occurred because Nicole did recover and that's why she was then recorded in the Book of Miracles. And so that's why we have this tiny glimpse of that friendship. So some of these public records, tax records, legal records, law reports, also very important source of information about female friendships in the past. So for example, in 16th century London, there was a midwife called Mary Freeman and she was accused by her husband of infidelity because her husband had caught the pox, which was a sexually transmitted disease. And she was, you know, this was a very serious accusation, and she was able to rally about 20 friends, and these were people, she was a midwife, so these were people she'd helped give birth, these were people she knew from the local community, these were intimate friends, and so on.

They all came to court, and they were able to to defend her good name and in the process condemn his of course. So you know we sort of there's a default that we imagine the history of female friendship to be you know about these very intimate almost soft kind of relationships but actually there is a very different kind of tradition which is a history of a very powerful and very pragmatic alliances. How, I mean, how has changes in society and women's role in it, for example, in the 20th century, what kind of different perspectives does that throw on female friendships? Because was there more judgment, was there concern about women going out and getting more powers and freedoms

that they would form alliances that maybe weren't looked upon kindly? Yeah, this is a really important point because what we see in the 20th century as women's lives change beyond all recognition, they have whole kinds of new freedom, also their friendships become both more necessary but also more visible. And when their friendships become more visible they also then start to be more tightly controlled and patrolled. And so when I was interested in the idea of the bad friend, you know, for hundreds of years women have been accused of being bad friends, cliques and gossips and malicious and backstabbers and so on. But what happens in the 20th century is we get

very precise forms of bad friends that really cohere around the very specific experiences women are now able to have. So for example in Bad Friend I'm looking at experiences of women from girlhood to old age, from the early 1900s to the present day. And we go to all kinds of places, so we go to boarding schools and prisons and factories and film sets and suburban streets in the 1950s and urban ghettos and hospital wards and communities where friends are aging together. And you know these sorts of spaces are the spaces where friendship is going to be regulated

and controlled. And it's in those kinds of spaces that we see a whole new set of rules emerge in the 20th century about what female friendship ought to look like, what it ought to feel like. And we still live among the ghosts of those moments. You know, they're in us. We probably don't always know they're in us. And what I really wanted to do in this book is to tease out those narratives because once you understand a narrative and you understand where it's come from, then

it's much easier to let it go. And so what have you learnt then? Because you start off the book on this very personal journey with this loss of this friendship and then looking around and this will resonate with so many people and it resonated with me to think people's lives move on and you shift and you go down different paths and when you leave people behind it's almost like you blame yourself. You think well I didn't work hard enough or I didn't try hard enough at that. Have you got rid of the judgement? Has it made you more accepting of how you relate to friends? Has it helped you approach making friends in an entirely different way? Where are you at now? Well you know these are big questions. I do think writing the book has changed my relationship

with friendship. I think it has definitely improved my confidence with friendship. One of the big messages of the book is that friendship is much broader than I think we sometimes are willing to admit or sometimes when we see images of friendship around us and even when we read definitions of friendship in modern dictionaries or by modern philosophers, people tend to emphasize the emotional, the idea of an emotional affinity and a kind of bond that is really nothing to do with instrumentalism, nothing to do with proximity, nothing to do with neighborliness, you know, but it's to do with some sort of lofty relationship that seems to float above all of these ordinary pragmatic concerns.

And I think I really bought into that idea of friendship as something that was really about being a soulmate. And I think that now I'm older and now I've kind of understood all the stories that I've come across while writing this book. I think I've got a much bigger, more sort of messy, flexible, capacious idea of what friendship is and where you might find it. And I think that's really important. I mean, we're living in this age of loneliness, you know, where we're talking about a crisis in friendship. And yet if we're defaulting to this very narrow and idealized

and fragile version of what friendship is, then we're doing ourselves a huge disservice. I think, you know, let's find friendship in all kinds of spaces, let's expand our understanding of what friendship is. And if it's not that lofty, it doesn't necessarily mean the opposite, it has to be transactional. You're saying there's an awful lot in between. Yes, I think that all friendships are very complex and include sort of aspects of all kinds of different relationships and ideas and reasons for their existence and that they change across time. So the

friendship that I was describing with Sophia that you know from my early 20s you know has changed, has completely changed shape nowadays but it doesn't mean it's less valuable it's just different. It's a really fascinating read and a very enjoyable read as well. Thank you so much for coming into the Woman's Hour studio, Tiffany. Thanks for having me. Tiffany Watt-Smith, the book is called Bad Friend and I believe it's out now. It is. You can go along to your local bookshop and take a look at that one. Thanks so much for coming in and thanks to everybody who's got in touch. far this morning. We were talking to Susan Smith, one of the founders of For Women Scotland, earlier in

the program. This text I've never messaged Radio 4 before, but I have been moved to this morning. Can you please thank Susan Smith and her co-directors for their brave stance for women? I am a professional, well-educated woman and articulate, but I have been too scared to speak out on this topic for fear of the sort of aggressive bullying to which so many women have been subject to for speaking up. Shame on the politicians who have failed to apologise to them. And this one, given the recent changes regarding trans people using toilets, for the women

who celebrate this change, they have not considered that this means that trans men will be using their toilets who identify as men and look like men. Will this not make them feel less safe than a trans woman? I feel like this side of the conversation is never covered. It's always about trans women. Do keep your text coming in on that. The text number you need is 4844. Now the former Lyalless, Eni Aluko, had a hugely successful career as a football player making over 100 appearances for England. Since then she's gone on to have another successful career as a pundit, becoming the first woman to appear on Match of the Day back in 2014. Her name dominated headlines earlier this month following the outcome of a civil court hearing involving the ex-footballer, Gerry Barton. In the first stage of a High

Court libel case, the judge found that online posts made by Gerry Barton about Eni and her family were defamatory. Eni said she welcomed the ruling, something you'll hear more of in a moment. Referring to the comments made by her in 2020, which appeared to criticise people placed on the government's furlough scheme, for which she has apologised, Joey Barton then posted comments suggesting Eni's late father had been financially corrupt

and that her private education made her a hypocrite. He also accused her of playing the race card. Mr Barton is yet to respond and could appeal. He could also defend the statements if the case proceeds to trial. In a separate criminal case involving both parties, Joey Barton has pleaded not guilty to allegedly posting offensive comments on social media. The case will be heard in court next month and it was not the subject of my next interview. Eni Aluko joined me earlier and I began by asking her for her reaction to the defamation ruling. I was really pleased and relieved to be honest because litigation is just such a gruelling, long process. There's quite a lot

of risk involved. It's super expensive. But I was very confident that the court would support my view that, you know, Jerry Barton crossed the line, crossed a really big line, actually. All of these things actually have nothing to do with any sort of criticism about my punditry and just personal and professional attacks on me and my family. I just felt that crossed the line and I felt that it was defamatory. To have the High Court support that and rule that those words were defamatory opinion or defamatory facts, there was a mixture of things in the judgment, I think vindicates what I always felt was just cross the line. What impact did those posts have on you personally?

Well there's a lot of posts. So there's 45 tweets that Joey Barton has tweeted about me and what that does is it impacts you in real life where it just feels like a wave of abuse and it feels like you're in a fishbow do what I do. I'm conscious, I'm looking at who can recognise me. You know, for the first week I was disguising myself and, you know, some people think that's over the top, but that's genuinely the impact it had on me. How do you feel now, post this ruling? Does it give you greater confidence? Yeah. Well, look, I think anyone that knows me knows that I'm an extremely resilient person. So after a week of feeling quite intimidated and scared and worried and having to speak to police and make sure my family was okay because Barton also insinuated to where my

family lived. I thought, you know actually, I'm not having this. I'm not having this. This is going to go legal. So I just got on with it and tried to empower myself in doing things that make me happy. But it has been difficult and as you said, the ruling definitely gives me a lot of confidence and really cements what I always felt was unacceptable. I guess what it does is it draws a line to say this is not an acceptable dialogue to have, it's not an acceptable way, it's in law, you cannot do this. What do you think it points to that is going on though in the male psyche when it comes

to women like you who are visible and working in football? Well that was always my intention. My intention was always to draw the line in what I feel is a culture, not just towards me but towards other female broadcasters who are working in men's football. And this is a specific thing to men's football. I think we can be quite specific about that. This is also something that reflects a culture of sexism and misogyny towards women who are in male spaces. And I think we're easy targets.

For me, as a black woman, I'm a target of racism. If anybody wants to go and read the amount of racism and sexism and misogyny that I've had to, that came as a result of Jerry Barton's tweets in the replies, it's publicly available in the court. A line has to be drawn. And I think the greatest lines are drawn by the courts, by the law that says if you say these things online, by the courts, by the law that says if you say these things online you will be punished for it. It's going to cost you financially. These are very costly behaviors. So my intention is to make sure everybody understands that you have to regulate your speech, self-regulate your speech online because we know how

to do that. You know I always use example, if you did a survey of the UK and you asked people how many people like their boss, I think a lot of people would say, I can't stand my boss. But you would never ever go into work and say that because you know the consequences of saying openly, you don't like your boss, you'd lose your job or you'd get in trouble, right?

So we regulate our speech every single day. We keep our mouths shut. And so the same thing needs to apply online, right? So you've stood it up in law, but let's talk a little bit about what you experience as a lack of respect as professional in that space. Who needs to do more than to change the perception of women like you being a

pundit in men's football? Who isn't doing enough do you think? I've been doing this 11 years and you know I was one of the first in the men's game to be visible and gradually over the last 11 years it's become more normalized but it's still not at the point where it's normal enough, where we're not easy targets for abuse and misogyny and sexism and racism. So I think the only way really is to continue centering women, continue supporting women in a way where the broadcasters are actually doubling down and saying, no, we support these women despite the external abuse that they have to face. I think, and this happens in lots of industries, when women stand up for themselves,

their career takes a hit. And what that effectively is saying indirectly is, we'll pander to this sort of noise, because what the Jerry Bartons and some male football fans want is for women to get off the TV. That's what they want. So if you take women off the TV, you're pandering to them. If you double down and put more women on TV, who are excellent and good broadcasters, so we're not on the TV because we're women,

we're on because we're good broadcasters, then you're supporting the progression of the industry with women included in that. So I think there's an opportunity for broadcasters for sure to do more of that. You say when you speak out, your career takes a hit. Did yours? Yeah. I mean, I think as a, just as a matter of fact, you know, I've been doing broadcasting for 11 years I'm not new to it and the last 18 months I've done the least

TV I've ever done. That's just a fact. That's not a feeling. That's an opinion. That's a fact so I think people can draw their own conclusions from that but That I don't think Really adds up if anything I would have loved to be on screen more, to the point for the point I've just made, right? Where actually when there is a lot of noise to try and get women off the TV,

purely for sexist and misogynistic reasons, there's an opportunity there to say, no, actually we love these women, we support them, we think they're great, we think they're brilliant broadcasters and actually doesn't matter that they're women, we're gonna keep supporting them. Last year, to mark 10 years since you made your debut as a match of the day pundit, you said that whilst there's lots to celebrate, the game is actually falling

short in many ways, you said there are still only one or two regular pundit spots for women and the men are dominating broadcasting and coaching roles in the women's game because obviously there's no more money involved in women's football and the sexism, misogyny and racism are still widespread within football fan culture and the pundits are not protected from this. So do you stand by these criticisms a year on? You've been through a lot in the last year. Yeah, I do. And I think, you know, in many ways, it's sort of a mixed positive and negative, right? So I'm happy that the women's game has grown and is seeing an exponential growth in all areas,

on the pitch, off the pitch broadcasting. But I still feel like there is a double standard where there is still a limited amount of opportunities for women, female broadcasters, both in the men's and the women's game. We're still competing for two or three seats maximum, which includes the presenters. Whereas I think men, there is a lot of men who have much broader opportunities, who are now coming into the women's game. So for example, you know, if you look at the WSL in terms of coaches, I think there's six or seven male head coaches. There's still not one single female head coach in the men's game. So whilst the women's games growing we have to be very careful that it's

still a space for women to develop their careers as broadcasters, as coaches. What we don't want is a repeat dominance of men in the women's game as broadcasters, as coaches, earning more money than women when we can't do the same in the women's game as broadcasters, as coaches, earning more money than women, when we can't do the same in the men's game. I would never ever be able to usurp Gary Neville or Jamie Carriger. You know, these are guys who have done it for a long time, they're brilliant broadcasters, they rightly dominate their sport. I think the same should apply in the women's game.

I'm thinking of Ian Wright, who has been an incredible advocate for women's football, but also is used a lot as a pundit. Is this the kind of thing you're talking about, that high profile men come in and that's taking up space that could be a female appointment? Yeah, I mean, listen, I've worked with Ian a long time and, you know, I think he's a brilliant broadcaster, but I think he's aware of just how much he's doing in the women's game. I think he should be aware of that. And the fact of the matter is, as I said, there is a limited amount of spaces, you know, available. If we had a situation where there was an equal opportunity in the men's game for broadcasters and coaches than there is in the women's game, it's a free for all. But that's not the case. I can't

dominate the men's game in the way that, you know, you used Ian as an example, Ian is dominating the women's game. Do you think it's wrong that he is? in the way that you used Ian as an example, Ian is dominating the women's game. Do you think it's wrong that he is? I don't know about wrong, but I think we need to be conscious. We need to make sure that women are not being blocked from having a pathway in broadcasting in the women's game. It's still new, it's still growing. There's a finite amount of opportunities.

And I think that men need to be aware of that. Men need to be aware that you're in a growing sport, a growing sport for women, and we haven't always had these opportunities. And so it's about the awareness and supporting other women through that pathway. It could be argued, of course, that somebody who is a household name like Keirne Wright takes an audience with him to women's football. That has to be a good thing surely. It is a good thing.

No, it absolutely is a good thing. But I would say that there's female broadcasters that household names too. And we've done a lot in the sport. I just don't want to see women being blocked in women's sport. Who needs to advocate? Who are the men then? Because women are great advocates for themselves, but who do you think could advocate more and isn't for everything you're saying today? I think everyone. I think, you know, everyone can just be aware of where we're at. I think that there's no point pretending that women's sport is, and women in sport, are all rosy and dandy. We still have issues in terms of

sexism and misogyny and racism and I'm quite vocal about it because it's there, I can evidence it. This case with Joe Barr and I think evidences it and I think everybody needs to make sure that that's just not a continuing culture moving forward. So that whether that's broadcasters, whether that's pundits, whether that's other women, there's quite a lot of people at the beginning that told me to ignore him and I think that's really dangerous because if you ignore somebody who has 3.5 million followers, who can tweet to the world at large, who has other people saying the most horrific things, who have smaller accounts, then you just let it become a culture that just is the norm. We all have to continue holding people to account for this culture that is

unfortunately still existing around women and women in sport. Why do you keep going? You've detailed the abuse, the mental toll. Most people wouldn't blame you for walking away from all of this. Why don't you? Well I'll be honest, over the last 18, I've definitely questioned whether I want to continue broadcasting and whether it's worth it. But as I said, I'm that person that I really do believe in myself. I believe I'm a good broadcaster. I wouldn't be doing this after 11 years if I wasn't. And I believe that I represent something very important, is you know diversity in the in the game, excellence in the game and you know there are lots of people who look at me

and say it's possible. There's lots of people that are motivated by my pure existence in men's football and women's football so if I give up I feel like we're taking a step backwards. I think if any so you knowters like Alex Scott, who's also dealt with a lot, Karen Carney, a lot of these women, we've come through a lot to just be on the platform. We worked very hard to be on the platform. So I'm not going to allow abuse to stop me from doing what I want to do. Any alouco there. And just to say we did contact Ian Wright's agent but are yet to hear back on that. Now to a documentary that follows a group of women in Austin, Texas who took on the

legal systems that they feel let their rapists walk free, specifically filing lawsuits against the police Department in Austin and the District Attorney's Office in Travis County, the office which prosecutes cases in that area. Now those suits were settled in 2021 and 2022. This documentary debuted at the South by Southwest Film Festival last year but it's being released here in the UK from this Friday. It's directed by Julie Lundy-Lily-Sator and it's called An Army of Women. It follows the lives of some of those women and their pursuit of justice.

Delighted to say Julie joins me in the Woman's Hour studio. Welcome, Julie. Thank you so much. And on the line from the States, we have Hannah Senko, a lead plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, who's live from Austin. Hi, Hannah. Hello. Thank you.

It's great to be here. It's great to shine a light on this truly excellent documentary. Julia, let's start with you. You are the director. How did you hear about these stories and think, I need to film this? Yeah, thank you so much for having us. I learned about this case when I had lived in Austin for about a year and I thought Austin was such a nice and safe and wonderful city.

And then I came across this new story about this lawsuit that had been filed on behalf of thousands of women in Austin who had experienced that their rape cases had been dismissed. And it talked about how less than 1% of all reported rapes made it into court room. And I remember feeling really shocked and surprised. I think I had this naive, I now know naive thought that when an assault happened, there's a system in place to handle it properly, make sure it doesn't happen again. And so when I learned about this case, I felt like my sense of security shattered a little bit. Because if there were thousands of women who had this experience it also means thousands of rapists are just walking around Austin and so I reached out to the attorneys and they introduced me to some of the plaintiffs Hannah and

Marina who became then the main protagonist of the film. Hannah as you just said we just heard that you are one of the film. Hannah, as you just said, we just heard there, you are one of the main protagonists. You were wary and you explain this in the documentary about coming forward. Tell us why. Sure. So after my assaults it was something that I really approached just from a place of trying to bury it and kind of ignore that it happened and try to move on. And I lived in that state for a very long time. It was over 10 years before I decided to look into really what had happened to me.

And so my weariness, I think, really was focused on a few different areas. One, just being vulnerable and being vulnerable about my own personal story and the public atmosphere was very difficult. But to add to that, I hadn't actually shared my experiences of sexual assault with my parents. And I think through a lot of the journey and my weariness,

there was always this fear of, oh my gosh, they're gonna find out. Not just about my sexual assault, but now then about the work that I'm doing as an advocate, trying to seek change. And that was a hard journey for me. Also you yourself didn't consider what had happened to you. You explain this in the documentary, don't you?

You didn't consider what had happened to you in the way that your brain framed what sexual assault and rape was. Can you talk us through that? Yeah. You know, I think it's very common in our society to think about sexual assault and rape was. Can you talk us through that? Yeah, I think it's very common in our society to think about sexual assault, to be with a stranger in a dark alley. And that was not what my sexual assault looked like.

Mine was an perpetrator. It wasn't violent per se. And I think something that's common, that I've learned that's common within sexual assault survivor space is that we find ourselves comparing ourselves. Like mine wasn't as bad as theirs, therefore, you know, it's okay that I didn't get justice or what have you. And I spent a lot of time in that space.

And if I'm honest, I think I still struggle with that a little bit in the context of mine wasn't as bad as hers. And so I did have to come to the realization though that I was representing the vast majority of sexual assault survivors, knowing that 70 to 80 percent of the survivors are perpetrated by individuals that they know. Julie, let's bring you back in. When you looked at the, you dug into this, and it's documented in the film, there were all of these assaults going on, but nobody was being brought to book and you examined this. What was going wrong? Why weren't these women being taken seriously?

I mean, I think that's a lot of different reasons, but it starts with how investigations are done, the quality of the investigations. And so there was just a lot of different things going on in Austin that had been going on for a really long time. And when I met with Hannah and Marina and the other plaintiffs, I saw that they were doing so much work, not just with a lawsuit, but also with trying to change, you know, talking to the media, trying to change, influence how, you know, this was handled politically. And so I became really interested in following them because I saw that they had solutions for how to fix this.

Yeah, we'll get to that in a second. What I found incredibly moving, Hannah, was the way that women come together, there is a incredibly moving, Hannah, was the way that women come together, there is a problem, and individually, none of you are getting listened to, and you've been through these awful traumas, and you came together to fix it, and it's documented, and these incredible female lawyers you had representing you as well. What difference did it make to have your voice and your experience amplified in that way, surrounded by these women? It was absolutely critical. You know, none of us could have done it individually. And on top of that, there were, you know, there were times, this was a long journey, this was occurring over, you

know, roughly four years. And there were times when one individual would need to step back, you know, and just take personal space and time and knowing that there was a team of us that were able to keep going and then take turns stepping back time and knowing that there was a team of us that were able to keep going and then take turns stepping back was so incredibly important. But all the voices, the collective voices were really critical in the work that we were doing. And it's very moving because you go behind, you know, we're in your lives, you know, we see your day-to-day lives going on while all of this is going on at the same time. And Hannah, you're in a room with your young son

and you're saying, okay, you go and play there. I'm gonna be here on my computer, having these really important conversations with lawyers about what we're going to do next. How difficult was that to carry on the day-to-day functions whilst you're taking on the system at the same time? Yeah, it was difficult and I often wondered if I should be holding some of that space more in privacy, you know, privacy, private from my child.

And I really just had to get to a space where I recognized that this was my job and people do their jobs with their children around all the time. And it was really an opportunity for me to be able to find the right language and talk to my child an age appropriate way. And I think it's part of what needs to happen more and more in our society is figuring out how we have these conversations and have them in the right avenue even with our youth. So it was it was certainly difficult but I also think an important component of what we were what we're

dealing with in our society in this issue. Julie we're really on the inside of the rope on this whole journey these women go on and one of the most moving scenes is because both of these lawsuits ended up being, well they were settled separately by the Austin Police Department and the Travers County District Attorney's Office and there is one moment when everyone is in the City Council to vote on the second settlement offer from the Austin Police Department. And everyone's listened to the testimony of these women and then they vote on whether they're going to accept it and approve it. And people on this committee are in tears as well. What was it like as a filmmaker capturing that moment? It must have been quite a moment for you,

having been on the journey with all of these women. Yeah it was it was a very powerful moment you know they I had seen them fight for so many years for someone to acknowledge what had happened for someone to take accountability and say okay this was wrong we're going to do something about it so being there and seeing that happen was really felt very momentous because we knew that this case would be really hard. People had tried before to sue police and prosecutors for this kind of thing, but they have a lot of immunity and so no one had really succeeded. And so just to see that they were actually able to do it, not just get a financial settlement, but also an apology and, you know, real changes was amazing.

Yeah, well, let's move on to that now. Final word to you, Hannah, because there is real change. You alluded to the fact that you are now working with the police. And we have to say that according to Travis County District Attorney's Office in 2023 and 2024, the Travis County District Attorney's Office almost doubled the number of convictions in sexual assault cases compared to any other year in the past six years. So things have clearly changed. Tell us about the work you're doing now. Yeah, so I'm really grateful to be Tell us about the work you're doing now. Yeah, so I'm really grateful to be continuing to be a part of this work. I am serving as a consultant to the Austin Police Department, leading a project that's implementing all the reform initiatives that came out of a settlement and a third party audit. So we have over 123 elements of change and reform that we're striving to accomplish.

I'm really grateful that we're here. I'm also the mindset that there's always more. You know, there's always going to be the next iteration and that we've got to keep working at this. So I'm thrilled with the games that we've made, but I'm also continuing to focus on where it is that we need to keep going on this issue. Well, you've come such a long way and it's a brilliant documentary. Julie, Lindy, Lily Sater and Hannah Senko, thanks so much. And I know you're going to be going around the country, Lily.

If you want to go and watch the film and listen to, sorry, Julie in conversation, go to anarmyofwomen.film. A couple of statements to read you. First, from the Travis County District Attorney's Office, the prosecutor's office named in both suits. Over the past five years our office has fulfilled the overwhelming majority of the commitments related to the settlement. This includes implementing major policy reforms, increasing staffing and resources for victims and enhancing training for staff. And Kachina Clark, division manager with

the Austin Police Department Victim Services Division said the settlements reached in previous lawsuits reflect our commitment to addressing the harm caused and working with more just and supportive environment for our survivors. As I said, the film is in UK cinemas this Friday, 25th April to commemorate Sexual Assault Awareness Month. If you've been affected by anything in this discussion, you can go to BBC Action 9.ault Awareness Month. If you've been affected by anything in this discussion, you can go to BBC Action 9. Anita is here tomorrow. That's all from today's Woman's Hour.

Join us again next time. Hi, we're the VanTollekens, the identical twin doctor VanTollekens, Chris and Zand. In What's Up Docs, we're diving into the messy, complicated world of health and wellbeing. We are living in the middle of what I would call a therapeutic revolution, but it can sometimes be hard to know what's really best for us.

Do I need to take a testosterone supplement? How can I fix my creaky knees? Why do I get hangry? Is organic food actually better for me? We're going to be your guides through the confusion. We'll talk to experts in the field and argue about what we've learned and share what we've learned and maybe disagree a fair bit too. No we won't.

What's up Docs from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds.