Woman's Hour - Afghan Women and the Peace Negotiations

Episode Date: February 21, 2019

Jenni speaks to Mary Akrami, director of the Afghan Women’s Network and Sunday Times Chief Foreign Correspondent and author, Christina Lamb who has been reporting on Afghanistan for decades. Why are there no women involved in the current peace negotiations involving the US negotiators and the Taliban? And what could be the consequences for women?Clara Schumann might not be the best known composer with her surname, but her ability and talent as a pianist made her a star in the 19th Century. 2019 is her bicentenary, and she’s being celebrated around the country. We’re joined by curator of the Clara Schumann Festival, Beverley Vong, and Lucy Perham, whose tour ‘I, Clara’, tells the composer’s story through her letters and music.Over the last 6 weeks we have been hearing from listeners about the family secrets they have discovered and how their lives and relationships were changed by the revelations. Lots of you have been in touch to tell us how the tales and their tellers have chimed with you. Psychotherapist Sue Cowan-Jenssen discusses the power and fall-out of family secrets.Laura Bates has just written her debut novel for young adults called The Burning. Inspired by the real stories of teenage girls contributing to the Everyday Sexism Project Laura created in 2012, the book tells the parallel stories of two young women, 15 year old Anna who is mercilessly bullied after a topless photo of her is shared by a boy at her school and Maggie, who lived 400 years earlier and was accused of witchcraft.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Thursday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Laura Bates is the founder of Everyday Sexism and she's been inspired by some of the stories she's heard from teenage girls to write them a novel. The Burning compares the impact of online sexual abuse with the treatment of women 400 years ago accused of witchcraft. 2019 is the bicentenary of the birth of the pianist and composer Clara Schumann. How will the talent so often subsumed by the reputation of her husband be celebrated?

And family secrets, how common are they and how damaging? Now, peace negotiations between the Americans and the Taliban have been going on during the past week. The Americans are keen to withdraw from a conflict that's lasted for 17 years and costs more than a trillion dollars. But there's a problem. No women are involved in the negotiations, even though three were named as part of the Afghan negotiating team. Why are women who suffered so much during the era of the Taliban being excluded? Well, earlier this morning, I spoke to Christina Lam, the chief foreign correspondent at the Sunday Times, and Mary Akrami, director of the Afghan Women's Network, who joined us from Kabul. What concerns does she have about the way

the talks are being conducted? Our main concern as a citizen of Afghanistan and half of the population of the country is that neither the Taliban nor the U.S. care about the fundamental rights of Afghan people, and especially women of Afghanistan. We have concern that U.S. care about the fundamental rights of Afghan people, and especially women of Afghanistan. We have concern that U.S. government is ready to sacrifice the gain of the past 17 years to reach to the peace deal with Taliban. We know that a symposium that was held by the United Nations called for 50% of the negotiating team to be women. We also know that three women were named as part of the negotiating team. Why are they not taking part?

I think that Afghan government has appointed that three women are part of the negotiation team. But we are half of the population of the country, and we must have a strong representation in peace talk, at least 30 or 40 percent. Christina, how well founded would you say Mary's concerns are? I think she's completely right. I mean, women so far have been cut out of all of these negotiations. So we've only seen negotiations between Taliban and U.S. officials, not the Afghan government. And so obviously for women who were the ones that suffered most really under the Taliban, and we all heard the stories of all the things that happened.

The girls were not able to go to school. Women couldn't work. People were locked up to wearing nail varnish and lipstick. So nobody wants to go back to that. Clearly, in the rush for the US to try and withdraw their troops, they seem most interested in just getting a deal to end the war. There doesn't seem to be much discussion about women's rights. And yet, as I said, there was this symposium calling for 50% of the team

to be women from both urban and rural Afghanistan. How likely is that to happen? Well, so far it hasn't happened. There haven't been women at any of the negotiations. But one of the problems in all of this is that the Taliban have been refusing to negotiate with the Afghan government. They say the Afghan government is a puppet of the United States. So they are only interested in negotiating with American officials. So the Afghan government has, as you said, said that they would have three women in their negotiating team.

But their negotiating team, but their negotiating team hasn't been involved in any negotiations. So that's also a problem. It's said that life for Afghani women has improved in recent years. In what way would you say there have been improvements? I think that if we see like the changes from education, that to have access to health, to have access to justice, and as well, we see like the woman's participation in a political position. We cannot compare today's with the Taliban regime that what women were in a very dark side and there was no movement at all but we have like significant changes and achievements

that we have made during these 17 years Christina there clearly are improvements overall but what about individual women you wrote recently about Anissa Rosali the country's leading female judge. Why did you

focus on her? Well, I think one of the interesting things is, you know, there are some really courageous and inspirational women in Afghanistan in senior positions now. So Anissa is head of the anti-corruption court, which means that she's taking on very dangerous people and she gets threats almost every day. Her car was blown up last month and she feels very strongly that women have achieved a lot. She told me there are more than 300 women judges now. And of course, when the Taliban came, you know, she and other women judges were all removed, but they've now come back and more have joined. So she's very concerned not to lose the games that have been made. But I think we also shouldn't be looking at this through too many rose-tinted glasses because, you know, obviously things for women are not great still in Afghanistan.

I think 60% of girls are still out of school, according to UNICEF's report last year. And Mary will tell you, because she runs shelters, that women are being abused the whole time. So the situation is not wonderful, but it's much better than it was. And I think that there is a really real concern here that in the rush to get out, yes, everybody wants peace. We've had war for so long in Afghanistan, but it can't be at the expense of these hard-won women's rights and other rights too, like freedom of press and freedom from minorities. What do we know, Christina, about the attitude of the Taliban negotiators to confronting women. Well, they have said that they've changed. They kind of present themselves as what's often referred to as Taliban-lite,

which means that they say girls would be able to go to school and women would be able to work in some jobs. But the problem is, you know, they may say that in the negotiations whether in practice they would actually allow that you know there's a very different proposition the united states is spending 45 billion dollars a year to be in afghanistan they're still losing soldiers of course they are anxious to get out president trump has made it very clear that he doesn't see any point in being there but if that's done at the expense of all of these women who have been told for years by the west since the taliban were toppled in 2001 that they would have a new

life that they would be free to have equal rights. And I think it would be a great betrayal of them if those rights are not safeguarded in some way in this deal. Mary, if the American troops do pull out, what do you envisage would happen, particularly for women? I think, first of all those sacrifices that they have given during the last 17 years it was not only Afghans it was also international community they have will lose all those achievements which we have gained maybe they could gradually and slowly go we don't want that they should stay forever but the process should be like a step by step, not sudden.

For that, we have really concern and we really worried about that. After years, after all the struggle, suddenly they bring the Taliban with a power that is not the right solution. And we cannot reach a durable peace and sustainable peace. Christina, how hopeful are you that peace can be achieved without women's rights being compromised? Well, I think there's two issues here. One is the fact that I'm really serious about the peace deal anyway, because in some senses, they've got the upper hand. They have been doing well militarily. The Afghan government forces have been taking terrible losses. I mean,

the president himself said recently that they've lost more than 45,000 of their security forces since 2014. That's more than 25 people a day. The Taliban have everything to gain from being in these peace talks because it gives them credibility they can legitimacy and they can see what they might be able to get but at the end of the day they might decide well we can win this militarily the other issue is why should the u.s be carrying out these peace talks without making very clear that minorities and women and other hard-won rights have to be protected. I was talking to Christina Lamb and Mary Akrami. Now it's 200 years since the birth of a baby called Clara Wieck. With a singer for a mother and a father who was a bit of a tyrant, she became

one of the greatest pianists of the 19th century. She also composed and is best known as Clara Schumann, long living in the shadow of her rather difficult fellow composer husband, Robert Schumann. One of her best known pieces is the Piano Concerto in A Minor and this is part of the third movement. La voce di Dio So what's to happen to celebrate her bicentenary? Well, Beverly Vong is curator of the Clara Schumann Festival. Lucy Parham is a pianist and will be touring a show of words and music, I, Clara. Lucy, how much has Clara's music actually been celebrated since her death in 1896? Well, this is such a good question because it hasn't really. And when I recorded that concerto 25 years ago, nobody was really interested in

programming the concerto, programming her works. You know, it's always been difficult to get this message across. And now, suddenly, with this 200th anniversary, we're finally giving her the attention that she so deserves. So I feel really happy about that. Beverly, why do you feel so passionate about her? I think her 200th anniversary is a really good opportunity to reflect on her life and her music and how she inspired other composers who we are very familiar with. I think it's very interesting how you're picking up on the fact that we're experiencing a vogue almost in women composers and women musicians.

I think it's quite interesting to note as well that at her time, she didn't feel particularly confident in her own compositions. So I don't think she would have gone around encouraging everyone to play her own music. I think she was very intimidated by her husband's genius and often felt that her own music would embarrass herself and embarrass him. It was very rare, Lucy, for a girl to have a career in music at all how much is her success as a pianist due to her really rather bullying father? Well it's great about her I mean her father was famously tyrannical and the thing I love most is he also had two sons but he chose Clara as as his sort of prodigy um protégé, I suppose, not one of the sons. And I feel, I'm not a big fan of her father, but I think he does get a bit of a bad rap in that

he did choose her. He devoted himself to making her career. And it's, I think, easy for us to forget that in her lifetime, she was far more famous than her husband. Even as a child, you know, she was the female mozart you could go to vienna and order a clara taught you know she had a cake named after her and all this sort of thing so as a child and as an adult she was more famous than him and i think what's happened is since her death and of course robert's own um ascension with his music, that balance has changed. But also, you know, she was the greatest concert pianist. And I think maybe this whole thing about the composition and should she have composed more,

I think with eight children and she did over 1,500 concerts in her life, we also have to celebrate her for the great concert pianist that she was. That's important. She was, Beverly, incredibly popular as a performer before her marriage, as Lucy says. What do you reckon was so special about her talent that audiences flooded to see her? I think she was a very remarkable musician. I think that was very clear from the start. She didn't learn to speak until she was

four years old and they were actually quite worried that she was deaf until they realized that she was responding to music she learned to play by ear which is very very difficult and not everyone can do that like definitely not naturally from a young age um she was very creative um when she practiced every day she started with improvisatory preludes. That's something which she continued into her 70s and 80s. Throughout, I think, 1830 to 1838, she included a piece either by herself in each concert or a piece of improvisation.

And I think something like that is quite unheard of nowadays. She is, Lucy, almost always described as Robert Schumann's wife. And there's this great romance that I put into inverted commas, always put before her talent as a pianist and composer. Why was that? Because am I wrong in thinking she was as good a composer as he was? I, yeah, this is a very controversial subject and I would say it's hard to put her on a par with his composition. I, her compositions are fantastic and beautiful but if one takes the works such as Chrysleriana, the Fantasy, the Piano Concerto, they are so extraordinary that maybe she would have created pieces of that um genius level but i think her pieces are extraordinary they're beautiful and

they are remarkable on all levels but i would be hard pushed as a concert pianist to say that her work could be put on a parallel with with his work as as really you know lasting major compositions but i think it's also important to know that without her his pieces would never have seen with his work as really lasting major compositions. But I think it's also important to know that without her, his pieces would never have seen the light of day because she went out, took them to Russia and all through Europe and brought them here to London. Because of her, the Arabesque became very famous in London. So she was the vehicle for his success

and without her, no one would have known about him beverly why did her competition stop when she was 36 was it purely because they had eight children i think it's probably a combination every of everything i think um around that time maybe around um 1840 onwards uh it was no longer um expected or very common anymore for a performer to perform her own work, his or her own work in concert. That probably played a factor into it. I think she was juggling eight children with an international career. And that is extremely difficult.

And I think she only had so many hours in the day. And also she didn't, she never felt very confident about her own compositions so i think there wasn't much incentive and i think also to say that shuman was obviously in the um as she refers to it the insane asylum at endenich so she has eight children as beverly says eight children a husband who's completely ill at the end of his life and she has to tour 10 months of every year in order to make the money to support these eight children. She's got no help from anyone else. So composition probably, there was no space. I mean, one needs space to compose.

There probably was no mental space for her to do that either. And Robert never seems, I mean, even before he became so ill that he had to go into hospital, when you read things that he wrote, he never seems to have been much of a hands-on father. He left absolutely everything to her. And he loved the children, didn't he? He absolutely adored the children, but he wasn't a hands-on father. I mean, they had cooks and people to help them in the house,

but he wasn't a hands-on father. He was very much caught in his own world and I think expected a very traditional marriage, which, of course, did not turn out like that. It's not what he expected. And the fact that she lived, you know, another 40 years after he died and kept going is all the more testament to her greatness. I mean, it is the most extraordinary story. And presumably the family entirely depended on the money that she made, Beverly. Yes, I think, yeah.

Because it was her touring concerts that made the money to keep him and the eight children. Yeah, I think in three weeks she earned, in three weeks just by performing, more than he earned in a year by editing and working at the journal um so that just gives you an idea of how much more money she was bringing into the household and i think it's interesting what you said just now about uh robert um as a father i think he very much enjoyed living at home and he wanted um clara

to stay at home and be a housewife. Well, it's a traditional marriage, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. It's a traditional sort of marriage and he didn't bank on what he got. No, and I think he probably thought having eight children would help keep her at home. How wrong he was. We're about to hear her romance.

How does the piece, Lucy, fit into your show? Well, in my show, and obviously this is normally read by a wonderful actress like Juliette Stevenson or Harriet Walter, not by me, but I set this piece up in that she got married and then people said why didn't you tour more? So she went to Copenhagen, she went alone

and Robert was really cross and said you're never ever doing that again, next time I'm coming with you. So they went to Russia through hundreds of miles of freezing weather. And he was plagued by illness and physical and mental. Anyway, in the show, he found the socialising difficult. He was silent and reserved. He could not accept the attention that I received. This is the voice of Clara.

He was not Robert Schumann, but Madame Schumann's husband. I remember the evening that an ill-informed patron turned to Robert and asked, does Mr. Schumann play too? He glowered at me and we barely spoke for days. So I think that's a lovely sort of, you know, there she was, very famous in Russia and nobody knew who he was. Let's hear Romance. tear romance. part of clara schumann's romance.

Thank you very much to my two guests there, Beverly Vong and Lucy Parham. And the Clara Schumann Festival will take place this weekend at St John's Smith Square in London. And iClara continues touring this weekend, and that's at the Omnibus Theatre, also in London. Still to come in today's programme, The Burning, a novel for young people by the founder of Everyday Sexism, Laura Bates, and the serial, the fourth episode of Curious Under the Stars.

Now, for the past few weeks, we've been broadcasting some of the family secrets you told us about when we asked for contributions. And I have to say, we were flooded out when we first made that request. How common is it for a family to hold a secret, which may shock, upset, shame or disturb if it comes out? And who owns the secret? If a child finds something out, should they keep it to themselves?

Or is it OK to challenge a parent to come clean? Well, Sue Cowan-Jensen is a psychotherapist. Sue, how often do family secrets feature in your practice? It's surprisingly common, or perhaps not surprisingly, if you think, you know, human beings are complicated and we have complicated lives. So, I mean, not all families carry toxic secrets, but most will carry some sort of, you know, area of something we don't talk about, if you will.

How would you define a toxic secret? Toxic secret is one which I sort of think of as a bit radioactive. It sort of leaks. It leaks and it has consequences outside of the secret. But what kind of things would have happened in a toxic secret? So, for example, I work with somebody who was raped as a teenager and she came from a religious family. She didn't talk about it. She told nobody.

So from there on, you know, she, there was this feeling that, you know, she carried something bad. She blamed herself because, you know, this, she believed, you know, this kind of thing didn't happen to nice people. And when she herself was a mother and had a daughter of teenage years, got incredibly anxious and very intrusive and overly controlling of her daughter's behavior and the daughter started to kick off and it was only in therapy that she actually for the first time sort of revealed what had happened to her as a teenager and how much damage it had actually done to her. And what do you advise when something like that is being held secret? Because shame is involved there.

You wouldn't tell your parents because of the kind of family that you're in. You might even be afraid to tell your own child. Absolutely. I mean, you know, shame is the key. And the key is how do we de-shame things, which are actually not your shame. I mean, if you're raped, the shame is the perpetrator's, not yours. So, I mean, it's not always easy, but I think it is actually important. In the case of this particular client, explaining to her daughter what happened was hugely helpful because

it made sense for the daughter of her mother's behavior and it also helped my client sort of really come to understand that you know the impact of what had happened to her and how it you know absolutely was not her fault now people say that secrets are better out than in. I'm not sure about that one. Are they better out than in? I mean, you have to have the choice, don't you, if it's your secret. But, you know, if it's having impact on those around, for example, you know, the paternity of a child, whose secret is it? And you're making the assumption if it's not told, it won't be doing any damage. And if it is told, there'll be consequences.

But often the consequences of telling are while it's disruptive is not necessarily as catastrophic as the consequences of sometimes not telling in that case whose secret is it because i mean there are theories that an awful lot of children are born to women who the children were not fathered by their husbands. Is that the mother's secret to keep? I mean, that's a fascinating question. And I think increasingly not, because if you think what our knowledge of genetics and the fact, actually, these secrets are increasingly likely to come out.

So I think the child does have a right to know of their genetic inheritance. It could be crucial in later life, you know, vis-a-vis their health. So, no, I mean, it's a huge inconvenience to the mother, possibly. But it is actually the concept. It's not her secret in the end to keep. Well, we did actually hear from Prue, who found that her father was not her biological father. And she said it was primal to want to know who her biological father was. Is primal the right word to use there?

It's profound. Yes, I would agree. My very, very first client I ever had when I started to work was a man who came in and he just started to weep. I hadn't said anything. And he was weeping for the fact that he would never know who his father could have been one of many, and there was never going to be a way he would know. And for him, it was that at some level, there was part of his identity, his story, he would never have. And that has stayed with me throughout my career. But now, of course, things have changed because of knowledge about DNA. How much do you welcome this DNA testing business? Well, it's, I mean, welcome is a difficult word. And I suspect if you have this secret, not at all. And it's becoming sort of widespread in America. There are actually groups of people who have found out that their

fathers were not their fathers. And then the consequences of confronting mothers who are often by this time elderly, who still will not tell, who still deny it. The consequences are shattering. It is, although it might have looked like a pretty simple thing to keep hidden it has one of the most devastating consequences it's about identity who am i just to go back to this idea of who owns a secret let's look for another sort of example if a child were to find something out should that child keep it you know as an adult should that child keep it, you know, as an adult, should that child keep it to themselves or tell the parent that they know about it or spread it about to siblings? What do you do if

you find something like that? Like that your father had reams and reams of affairs or whatever. I think, I suppose you could ask the question, why would you not tell? And I think it's very hard to have, if you like, a close relationship to siblings and hold those sorts of secrets and not tell. It's very lonely. I was struck was the lady who found out that her mother had had lesbian affairs

and she kept it. And she kept it until the mother died. She felt that was her mother's secret. And she didn't seem to feel, she felt privileged to have that secret. She was gay. But you can wonder what did it do, you know, with, you know,

but she did tell it after the mother died because she was talking about it on the radio. I think it affects the relationship with the siblings. And telling a partner, say you find out your mother's up to no good, do you tell your dad? Sorry, these are really difficult questions hugely hugely difficult i think you carry those burdens i mean there's no question i mean you can think of secrets are the those that you're excluded from or those that you're included in so it's too little knowledge or too much knowledge and i think it's you know it is very very individual if you tell the family breaks up you have to live with the consequences of that if you don't tell you carry that burden you it

it damages the relationship with the dad your if dad finds out later down the line and you knew, it's devastating. How much do secrets change as time goes on? You know, when we think about illegitimacy as it was, sexuality that you would not have confessed to, they would have been secrets, maybe no longer. I think that's interesting because shame has changed and what's shameful has changed. And so a secret that

say 50 years ago like a suicide or a homosexuality simply doesn't have the punch but still you know the older generation can still find it very very difficult to talk about a homosexual uncle or homosexual affair. This would, you know, still not be easy to talk about. But for the younger generation, it doesn't carry the charge. And now we have social media, how easy is it to keep a secret or even expect some privacy? Well, I mean, harder and harder. It's, you know, because you find things out so much more easily, so increasingly. In a way, keeping secrets isn't actually easy in a family because it affects how everybody communicates.

It's as much what's not said as what is. So if you doubt, you know doubt the paternity of your child, you don't sort of say, oh gosh, you look just like your dad, or your dad has that sort of behaviour. It becomes a sort of no-go area. So they're sort of holes. So I don't think secrets

have ever been easy. Sue Cairn-Jensen, thank you very much for being with us. And if you missed any of the family secrets, we have wrapped the stories and audio all up into one article, which you can find on the Women's Hour website. And social media is the subject of our next discussion. It was in 2012 that Laura Bates started a project called Everyday Sexism.

More than 100,000 women and girls have posted their experience of sexual discrimination and harassment. It's from some of their stories that Laura has taken inspiration for a novel for young people called The Burning. Anna is 15 and has been bullied after a topless photo of her was shared by a boy she thought she could trust as a boyfriend. When she's researching a project for history, she finds out about Maggie. She's a young woman who 400 years ago became pregnant by the son of the local aristocrat, was dubbed a witch and burned. Well, Anna thinks she's escaped the bullying when her widowed mother moves her to Scotland, a new school and new friends, but soon finds abuse on social media does not go away.

Slag. The word hits me like a slap. I start to scroll down. The comments go on and on. Loose lips, easy air, Suzanne and the slut. My vision begins to blur as I scroll on faster and faster until the words run into each other. Bitch, ho, slag, whore, slut. The words aren't the worst part. It's the names. Each comment next to a little thumbnail picture of somebody I know, somebody I went to school with for years,

somebody I would have called a friend, somebody who stood next to me with a tea towel on their head in the primary school nativity or exchanged panicked looks as we sweated over the papers in our mock GCSEs. Somebody who knew about the time I broke my ankle playing netball in year three. Somebody who knows all those things about me and still thinks I deserve those words. When did the rest of me disappear? Laura, why that comparison? A 21st century schoolgirl and a 16th century woman accused of witchcraft? Because nothing has changed. I'm working with young women in schools up and down the country, thousands of them. Their stories are so shocking. Their stories aren't being heard. And when you do try to talk about what they're facing, people shake their heads sadly and say, isn't it terrible what the internet's done for young women, these problems that technology, modern technology has

created? And when I started researching this huge craze of Scottish witchcraft trials between the 16th and 18th centuries, I was so struck by the fact that many of the stories were near identical to the girls I was talking to at schools today. There was one day, for example, I was on a train on my way to speak at a school and I was reading an old witchcraft trial in the transcript from the 17th century of a woman who'd been accused of using the alluring power and magic of her body to enchant a man who had been powerless to protest and she was at risk of being burned at the stake for this. I then arrived at the school and met a teenage girl

who'd been sent home and punished for wearing a skirt that showed her knees because the school said it might be too distracting for the boys and the implication, of course, again, that they couldn't be expected to control themselves and it's all women's fault. How did you actually discover Maggie? Because she, I mean, obviously Anna is made up, but Maggie isn't made up. Yes. And of course, Anna's story as well is there's almost nothing that happens to Anna

that hasn't happened in real life to a teenage girl I've worked with over the last six years. But Maggie's story was something that just jumped out and grabbed me in a tiny clipping, a chance mention in a magazine about walking tours in Scotland of all places. And I had to go digging back through the records and find an older document that sort of documented this story from this very tiny local fishing village about this young woman who I discovered had been impregnated and then abandoned by a local nobleman. And that when he was later lost at sea, not only was she in the first place completely torn apart by the village, she was deemed a harlot and a scandalous limmer.

And they pulled her up in front of the congregation on Sunday to be shamed as a slut while the child was declared fatherless, even though everyone knew full well who the father was. But on top of that, when he was later lost in a fishing accident, she was accused of witchcraft. And it just so chimed for me with the stories I was hearing from girls today. Now, it's now common knowledge that girls are pressed into posting compromising photos, as I said, by boyfriends they think they can trust. But why do you portray their classmates as having so little sympathy for them? Well, I thought it was very important to show another parallel,

which I think is the survival mechanism, the real sort of desperate coping strategy pressed upon women and girls to see one another as rivals and enemies. And in just the same way that 400 years ago, saying I saw Goody Johnson with the devil was a way for one woman to distance and save herself really by tearing another down for girls today as well there is such great pressure to join in the slut shaming and many girls are fabulously brave and standing up for each other and there are examples of that in

the book as well but I wanted to explore that huge pressure that really pushes girls to tear each other apart. Now, Alicia, one of Anna's friends asks, how do we win? Where's the perfect, not too slutty, not too frigid middle ground? What do girls and boys need to help them answer that question? I think the honest truth at the moment is that there is no answer. There is no answer. There is no winning. The game is rigged. It is akin to the ducking of witches. You know, if she drowns, then she was innocent.

If she floats, sorry, if she drowns, then she was, yes, then she was innocent. If she floats, then she's guilty and we'll burn her. There is no winning with the system as it is. And the more that we train girls saying, if you just wore the right skirt, if you just did this, if you just changed a little bit, the more we fail to tackle the problem i think what girls and boys desperately need is really good quality education around sex and relationships sexual consent healthy relationships and what they look like at the moment they are bombarded with online pornography with messaging that's very confusing and there's very little to give them the tools to navigate this. There's a recommendation on the cover of the book that this is a book teen girls need to read.

What about the boys? I think absolutely of course I really hope it's something that teen boys will read as well and I hope and think that it might be quite useful for a lot of parents as well. I'm so often asked by parents you know we want to help but we don't really know the landscape of what our children are facing. There's this gulf at the moment where a generation of digital natives is being raised by and educated by a generation of non-digital natives. So I hope it's a window into that world. But I think for girls it is important,

it is important for girls to hear their voices heard and validated because so many of the girls I speak to experiencing these things are either too terrified to come forward at all or when they do they're blamed and shamed. So I wanted to honour their voices as well. At the heart of the story is a newly widowed mother and her daughter Anna. Why was that important for you? I think because of the gulf that I'd recognised in so many of the parents and young people I was coming across, that there was a real lack of understanding. I talked to a lot of parents who thought, for example, that when you talk about

online pornography, you're talking about, you know, the equivalent of an FHM centrefold, but online, or who might know about Facebook, but wouldn't necessarily know about the 10 other apps that are allowing people to send anonymous abuse or demand naked photographs of their child there was just a real disconnect that meant it was very difficult I think for parents to know how best to support young people and that was a very sad thing that I wanted to explore as well it leaves girls feeling very alone. Now as you say you give a lot of talks in schools how do boys and girls respond to your messages? Do they differ? It's very mixed and you do get a huge number of different responses. I'm seeing a lot of boys in schools increasingly who really want to be part of the solution and are keen to help which which is great to see. For me, the difference really is around age. So around 12 or 13, both boys and girls seem to be really interested in these issues

and keen to talk about them. But you get to about 14 or 15 and something really creeps in. The boys start asking questions about false rape allegations and repeating things I think they've heard online about women asking for it and what do they expect if they go out dressed like that. And at that age, the girls get very, very quiet indeed. But if you talk to them on their own, they have hundreds of stories to tell. How do you answer those questions that the boys pose? That, you know, these are the things we've read. She asked for it.

Well, I really welcome the opportunity to talk about it because there are answers to all of those questions. There are ideas, for example, about false rape allegations being very common you know it's really helpful to be able to give them the facts we know that a man is 230 times more likely to be a victim of rape himself than to be falsely accused of rape so I think it helps to just give them the information at the root of what they've read rather than the kind of often quite misogynistic propaganda just one final point there is implicit criticism in the book of the way Anna's school handles the problem. The head implies it's all Anna's fault. She chose to pose the picture and put it up on the internet. What should schools be doing? I think schools need really good support and training to help them

to deal with this. Unfortunately, that is not an unrealistic portrayal of some schools I've come across. I've come across many cases where girls are being blamed and shamed when they're the victim. They're being forced back into a classroom with a perpetrator of a rape or sexual assault. I think schools need to switch the focus. Instead of punishing girls or trying to tell girls how to avoid sexual harassment and abuse, we need to be educating boys on what is and isn't acceptable and healthy relationships with mutual respect. I was talking to Laura Bates and her novel The Burning is out now. Well, thanks for all your comments on today's programme.

We heard from lots of you on family secrets. Daisy Law on Twitter said, as a parent, unravelling family secrets can be the key to protecting or healing our children. I work with school and youth groups. Even the youngest of people can feel burdened by issues surrounding secrecy. Jules Dorrington on Twitter wrote, I was told my father was not my biological father but a one-night stand and my mother never found out who he was. I received no help on genetics for the future or how to find him so I asked myself what was the point of the confession. Helen Wormsley tweeted, the phrase shame is the key is so true. Shame is what shuts us up and it's a hard habit to break

but break it we must. And someone who didn't want us to use her name said my mother decided to tell me before my father that she intended to leave him and then told me to keep it a secret until she found the right time to tell him. Being only 15 years old and already having a tumultuous teen experience, I found this an incredibly confusing and horribly stressful time. It had a significant detrimental effect on all my relationships at the time and ultimately my mental health. Unfortunately, I inadvertently let the cat out of the bag by screaming at her, when exactly are you planning on telling Dad that you're leaving? Only to realise he was already home from work, and so had heard everything when he walked into the room at precisely that moment.

It took nearly two years of counselling for me to realise, holding this secret, and the subsequent feelings of guilt about being somehow complicit in my mother's plan should never have been my burden in the first place. It was indeed a toxic secret. Now, tomorrow we'll hear about living with herpes. Seven out of ten adults over the age of 25 carry the virus in the UK, although only two out of three of them have symptoms. So is there still a stigma around something that's so widespread? We'll be hearing from three women from different generations about

the impact diagnosis has had on their lives. And Jane will discuss the Oscars and the women directors who have missed out on a Best Director award, but maybe should have had one. Join Jane tomorrow, two minutes past 10 if you can. Bye bye. Did you know that technology can make us kinder to one another? Did you hear about the diver who walked out of the sea onto a Portuguese beach, dragging the internet behind him? Did you realize that how you speak to the little robot helper in your house might cement age-old stereotypes for decades to come? I'm Alex Kretosky, and those are just some of the stories that we've looked at in The Digital Human, the podcast that explores what it means to be human in the digital age.

If you want to hear more, and I guarantee we will surprise you, come check us out exclusively on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.