Woman's Hour - Andrea Riseborough, Egg Freezing, Women in Qatar

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

The actor Andrea Riseborough has taken on roles ranging from Margaret Thatcher to Stalin’s daughter. But now she’s playing someone quite different: Mrs Wormwood in the new Matilda the Musical film, which will be released in cinemas on Friday 25th November. The film is an adaptation of Tim Minchin’s hit West End musical of the same name, and stars Emma Thompson as Mrs Trunchbull and Stephen Graham as Mr Wormwood. Andrea joins Emma Barnett to discuss what it’s like capturing the camp, comedy, and darkness of one of Roald Dahl’s most famous and reviled characters.As Jennifer Aniston speaks publicly for the first time about her fertility struggles and says she wishes someone had told her to “Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour”, Emma talks to one woman who’s put her future on ice, and a lecturer in Women’s Health from UCL who’s warning against women viewing egg freezing as a guaranteed insurance policy.In the run up to the men’s football World Cup 2022 being held in Qatar, it was the England women's footballers who were the most outspoken about staging the tournament in a country which outlaws being gay and where women’s rights are severely curtailed. On Woman’s Hour yesterday we asked if there was any point in further protests as fans now clamour to enjoy the game – today we ask Rothna Begum, Senior Women’s Rights Researcher at Human Rights Watch, how the tournament is affecting women in Qatar.Tampax has been causing quite a stir on social media after a Tweet they posted went viral. Putting its own spin on the popular 'You are in their DMs' memes about men approaching women flirtatiously on social media, the tampon company explicitly referenced how its products are used by women in a tweet on Monday, writing, 'You're in their DMs. We're in them. We are not the same'. The post has racked up more than 360,000 likes and 73,600 retweets proving that there were plenty of fans, but critics accused the brand of going too far and calling people to #BoycottTampax. Emma speaks to Chella Quint, the founder of Period Positive, a menstruation education advisor, comic and author of the books 'Be Period Positive' and 'Own Your Period'.

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, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. A treat for you today, the actor Andrea Rysbrook will be joining me shortly, talking ahead of the new Matilda film coming out on Friday in which she plays Matilda's mum, Mrs Wormwood. It's quite the performance and my goodness, her outfits in it are just remarkable. So is Matilda, played magnificently by 13-year-old Alicia Weir. And that's what I wanted to ask you about today.

If you relate to Matilda, presuming you know the story, an academically gifted girl who loves studying, she does well at school when she's finally allowed to get in there, and it's not appreciated, shall we say, within the family and also perhaps at times at the school that she ends up being at. Has it been a good thing for you or a bad thing in your life if you were perhaps one of those girls who absolutely loved learning and excelled at it? I'm just casting my mind back. Do you remember when girly swat was weaponised as a phrase for a while when it emerged. Boris Johnson had called David Cameron that as an insult.

And then Baroness Hale, the first woman to be appointed to the UK Supreme Court, said that she loved being a girly swat, defended the moniker as something to be proud of. It got us thinking about the idea of girls and then who obviously grow into women, enjoying their studies, doing well, excelling, and whether that's been a good thing in your life or not. If you can relate to that, if you have a bit of Matilda that you find relatable, get in touch this morning. It'd be lovely to hear from you. And how it's affected you for the rest of your life would also be interesting to hear.

The number you need, 84844. Text charge your standard message rate on social media or at BBC Women's Hour or send a WhatsApp message or voice note on 03700 100 444. Do check all the terms and costs. Also on today's programme, Tampax,

the menstrual product brand, is under fire after a joke on Twitter it posted about being inside women, prompting some women to want to boycott it. Despite doubling down on its tweet, the brand is all quiet this morning. I can assure you we have tried to get a representative from Tampax to come on Women's Hour today, or even just reply. But, you know, despite sliding into DMs, no response. Direct messages, that is. It'll all come clear when I

explain that tweet shortly. And egg freezing. After Jennifer Aniston's comments on the subject a couple of weeks ago, we will separate fact from fiction for you, as some got in touch to ask about the statistics around that and whether it is a reliable insurance policy, as it were, for trying to preserve fertility. But first, we talked yesterday about women's role in protesting in the run-up to and now during the Men's Football World Cup in Qatar, a country where homosexuality is illegal

and women's rights are severely curtailed. Today, we want to focus on how the women of the host nation are being affected by this tournament and the eyes of the world being on Qatar. In a moment, I'll be talking to Rothna Begum, who's just joined me in the studio, Senior Women's Rights Research researcher at Human Rights Watch. But first, I'm joined by Shaima Khalil, BBC correspondent currently in Doha.

Shaima, good morning. Hi, Emma. Good to be with you. Thanks for being with us. What have you observed so far around women, the women of Qatar and their role in this tournament? Are they watching it in the markets? How's it playing out? I think in general, they're much more visible than they were when I lived here ages and ages ago. The majority, I would say, are expat women. At the outset, I'd like to give you a picture in numbers, if you will. Qatar has the lowest share of women in the world. So there are some stats that put them at one in four people is a woman. 70-30 is also another

ratio. So women in general, expat or local, are minority. So generally, they are not very visible. I would say having lived here, you know, from 1996 to 2006, I remember the very first day I arrived in Doha, I went out with my sister to the supermarket to get some water and there was no one. We were being ogled in the streets from people's cars because we were just the only women in the street. And I would say a lot has changed since then. So you go out and, you know, this is the World Cup. There are many, many fans that have come from different parts of the world. So you see women expats, women fans of different countries in general. And you do see local women.

Look, we've been around the stadiums, the local souks, the malls. And you do see Qatari women in their traditional abayas, they're out and about. Whether or not they're sitting in public places watching the games, not so much. Sometimes they're in the stadiums with their families. I will tell you that all of them, all of the ones that we've approached at least, to speak to us, to get a sense of how they feel about the games, they were still quite reserved about talking to us yes i mean i was listening to one of your your reports on monday where you talked about being in one of the markets and there only being men watching and that and that being quite

a striking feature as well although you're saying some women are watching as well they are watching i would say i mean we we were in the souk and we wanted to speak to local Qataris, because that's the other thing. It's very sometimes it's very hard to actually interact with Qataris in Qatar. Most things happen in houses or behind closed doors. And we we kind of wanted to be in the host country and speak to its people, not about its people. And the only way that we could do that in the market was to find a group of men. And we were invited by a group of Qatari men to sit around the TV in a majlis. It's a traditional sitting area and watch it. But you wouldn't traditionally you wouldn't find women sitting there. I would say the almost the only way still all this time, in my experience, to sit and listen to women and interact with Qatari women would be in a household, would be behind closed doors.

They are visible. Yes. You can see more of them out and about in the streets, yes, but to sit down and have a heart-to-heart conversation with a group of Qatari women, I found that it would have to be in a household. And just away from the regular women, if you like, the first lady was being interviewed just yesterday, I believe, by her daughter. Tell us about that. Yes. I follow her Instagram account and it was really interesting because she was being interviewed by one of her daughters, Hind, and they were telling the story of the

Qatari flag that was made out of the First Lady's Pashmina, burgundy Pashmina. But at the end of that interview, and it was an interview about Qatar's journey from the time they won the bid up until the opening ceremony and the day after the ceremony so it was a reflective conversation but as a part of that, given the controversy given what you've said, that you've just mentioned Emma about women's rights, human rights, LGBTQ rights the treatment of migrant workers

all of that that has come into the limelight. I think the authorities, the Qatari people, that's definitely the feeling that I got. They feel very, very hard done by, because they feel in a way misunderstood. They feel that there's a certain bias. This is the first Muslim Arab country to host the World Cup. So there was a lot of reflection about that. And in the end, the daughter asks her mother, the first lady, what is your message to the Qatari people? And she says, be as you are.

And I think in a way this was so emblematic for me to the issues around the World Cup, to the issues around women, this fine line that Qatar is trying to walk between appeasing its local crowd, which is most, vast majority is, you know, practicing Muslim conservative families, of saying stick by your culture, stick by your religion, do not change, but also a message to the world saying, look, we are open, we are welcoming, we are an outward looking country, come here, you'll be safe. And I don't think they have realized or they've come to terms with the friction that those two sides can cause sometimes. Very interesting. Thank you so much for that. I hope your reporting continues to go well

and you get to enjoy, if you can, at times, this bit of history being made with this tournament, which has been so controversial in the run-up and now as it continues. Shaima Khalil, BBC correspondent currently in Doha, who used to live there. Let me now go to Rothna Begum, Senior Women's Rights Researcher at Human Rights Watch. Rothna, hearing there a little bit about how hard it is to talk to women in Qatar, what are women's rights like? How could you give us that picture? Well, just as Shaima found, it was also difficult for me when I was trying to reach out to women to find out what the issue was. My investigation was published in a report last year. And I can tell you that, you know, you will meet Qatari women, many of them are highly educated, are incredibly progressive,

they're breaking barriers as career women, as entrepreneurs, and so on. But they really have to contend and navigate discriminatory rules known as male guardianship. And this has meant that the Qatari laws, policies and practices essentially require women to have male guardian permission in order to marry, to travel abroad until certain ages, to work in many government jobs, to study on government scholarships, as well as for certain forms of reproductive health care. There are other forms of discrimination. For instance, women can't access certain forms of sexual and reproductive health care without a marriage certificate. Women also can't be guardians of their own children, so not just have autonomy over themselves, but also over their own children. Now, a lot of women said that they were quite privileged,

but these rules were quite demeaning even then. And there were lots of other women who told me about the deep toll these rules had on their lives, where they were denied what they could study or where they could study, impacting their entire careers. Women who couldn't work in the kinds of jobs they wanted to work in or forced to marry men that they didn't want to have relationships with. And so there were women who said, you know, talked about experiencing mental health harms, including suicide ideation, because they were so incredibly frustrated and controlled by abusive families. As you say, hard to get access to these women, but you did put this report out and the Qatari government disputed some of it. They also pledged to investigate and prosecute anyone who had breached the law with regard to women's rights. Any update on that? Well, just to be clear, everything the government said they disputed, they told us beforehand. So

everything that they've said is in the report. And we contest that with our own facts based on what women had told us and the laws and policies themselves. But secondly, that sentence actually provoked two different things. Some women actually thought that meant that they were going to be investigated for having spoken to me. Now, everyone except for two women were anonymized as accounts because women were so afraid the authorities would go after them. But when I read it, it sounded like they were looking to investigate the breaches. So as in the people who were imposing arbitrary rules on women. I haven't seen anything change since then. The one thing that I have heard happen is that right now, for instance, the current policy is that if you're an unmarried Qatari woman under the age of 25, you need an exit permit from

your male guardian in order to leave the country. And that could be from a mobile app. They use this very specific mobile app or on a website that the male guardian is supposed to use. But if you're over that age, you shouldn't need it. But when I was documenting it, women were telling me that even they were 32 or 38, they were being stopped at the airport and being asked to call their guardians to confirm that they were not escaping the country. And that was really, women didn't understand what was going on. These officials were saying to them, it's the law, and they're completely different statements to different women. And that's partly because there's a complete lack of transparency sometimes about these things. Now that practice has ended.

So they're back to the usual policy of unmarried Qatari women under the age of 25 are still required exit permits, usually through this mobile app. What if you don't have a male guardian? I'm sorry if that's a stupid question. Yeah, so there were women who talked about this. There was one woman who said her father had passed away. And they didn't have any other male relatives in the country. And they were at the airport with their mother. She was 21 at the time with her younger sister. So she's an adult woman. Her mother was trying to leave with her daughters

and the airport official said, you can't take your children out. And she said, but, you know, I'm their mother. And they said, well, no, we need a male guardian to say it's okay for them to leave because anyone under 25 here as a woman has to get the permission. So she said, I don't have any male relatives.

It was just my husband and he's passed away. And they said, well, do not have anyone in the family. So she said, well, I have a 17 year old son. So they said, we'll call him and he'll have to give the permission. And she was like, I was their mother. I'm their mother. And they wouldn't let me do this. So, you know, it's that level of it's both the denial of adult women being able to travel at that age, but also as women who are mothers are not in a position to even give permission for their children who are underage to be able to travel with them. And then have to talk to perhaps a male child. A male child, exactly. I have cases of women talking about their younger brothers having to give them permission in order to marry. How do you think the World Cup being in Qatar will be affecting

these women that you spoke to, you got to know, presumably? Well, there are some women who, you know, they spoke to me anonymously, because they were hoping the authorities would actually change the rules if it's finally exposed. Other women spoke because they sometimes didn't know the legal basis for these rules. It was partly to uncover and expose that because some of it is completely contradictory. The law itself says that 18 is at the age when guardianship ends, and yet they were still imposing these rules. And during the World Cup, we've got women who do want this to be covered and exposed that the authorities are pushed into changing them. There are other women who don't sort of, they want people to know that they are not fully oppressed and that they are, you know, generally the kind of idea of the orientalist gaze suggests that women are just kept in their homes, that they don't have any kind of life.

And that's, of course, not true. There's lots of women who are incredibly high achieving, but they're forced to navigate these rules. And it's trying to understand that, that it's not so black and white, but that the authorities themselves are the ones who are imposing this form of discrimination. And also, we need to mention the other group of women in Qatar are migrant workers, you know, mainly domestic staff. How might the World Cup being held there affect them? That's right. So migrant women are full under whole other forms of discrimination as well. There's migrant women as wives and daughters who experience male guardianship in a different form. They also need to ask for permission to go to work,

to get married, to study on government scholarships as well, or even to drive. Then there are migrant working women, so migrant domestic workers and so on. And they are specifically at risk of certain forms of abuse. And during the World Cup, the biggest fear is around sexual violence, which increases anywhere in the world. And that is for fans, between fans.

You've got fans on workers. This is the kind of violence that we're going to expect to happen. And what we were trying to push the authorities on was to ensure that the current law, which is criminalising consensual sex, was impacting women disproportionately. It meant that women who reported sexual violence could find themselves prosecuted instead, because the authorities would not believe them. All that

has to happen is the man says it was consensual. And as soon as that happens, it's an investigation on her as to whether they had consensual sex. And so we were incredibly afraid that that was what was going to happen for both migrant women there who are most at risk of sexual violence, as well as between fans. Now, FIFA has written saying that they are assured from the Catholic authorities that this will not happen, that they will not prosecute women for consensual sex and that they can get sexual reproductive health care without needing to prove their marital status.

But we still want to see how this is working in practice. Like, is this happening everywhere in all of the local hospitals? Are the police officials really fully trained on this? But more importantly, are there decent mechanisms out there to actually protect women? Because my biggest fear actually is for that cleaner who's been sent out in the middle of nowhere to a desert villa where there's a bunch of fans who have hired a private accommodation, and she is at risk of sexual violence. What protection exists for her at this time? At this time, thinking about this as well, I just wanted to get your take on whether you think any of these protests,

largely done by Western women in the run-up, and men, I should say, but we've been covering whether it's the footballers from the women's side or we were talking yesterday to some who were there and had their rainbow hats taken from them, you will have followed some of these reports. Do these outside protests, outside of Qatar, do you think they will have any impact inside Qatar and any legacy? Or how should that be viewed? I think it's a difficult one. There are some people who feel strongly about solidarity. So any forms of solidarity sometimes can be considered a good sign.

But the problem is that for the Qataris, it's not going to make a huge difference, right? As soon as the World Cup is over, it's back to business as usual. And so the real concern is what do you need to do to really show that we're pushing to advance everyone's rights. Because what the authorities are doing, along with FIFA, is to just assure that people who are coming into the country, their rights are protected, rather than the fact that the real people who are victims of these kinds of abuses are Qataris, they're citizens and they're residents of this country. So, you know, when we're talking about the criminalization of same-sex relations, it's not really the British white man who is gay and having a wonderful time living in Qatar. He can live in a bubble.

But if you're a Filipino migrant worker or you're a Qatari gay man, you can find yourself arrested because, you know, the preventative security forces finds you, asks you to wipe your makeup off, as has happened in one case. And on that basis, they've been arresting and detaining people without charge, beating and even sexually harassing them. Do you think, I mean, I'm just thinking of the fact that the Foreign Secretary, James Cleverley, is the most senior member of the government to have gone and talked about what was talked about and assured people that fans will be safe, exactly to your point. Do you think there's any hope in your line of work, looking at human rights around the world,

but specifically with your knowledge of Qatar and looking at women and their rights? Do you think there's any legacy potential here of because politicians were forced for a while to have a spotlight on Qatar because of the World Cup, that maybe there will then be this focus that is on the Qataris afterwards? I don't think that the governments have actually done very much, to be honest. Where they have done some things, it's just these assurances that their visiting fans are going to be okay, right? But what did they do before then? What are they going to do after that? They know that British women were subject to some of these discriminatory rules, and they didn't do anything about it. I know of a case of a British woman trapped in Qatar right now because of discriminatory divorce and rules around children.

And what are the authorities doing in her case? You know, these are bigger rules and bigger issues that the authorities do not spend a lot of time on, but they are the systemic issues that do need to be addressed. So you would like the Prime Minister, for instance, Rishi Sunak of our country to step up and look at this? I think human rights needs to be prioritised. You know, they prioritise everything else. Human rights has always been a footnote in any discussion, even if it is mentioned. And what would you say, just to what Shaima was saying before, our correspondent, that there is a feeling that it's been unfair,

you know, for some Qataris, that the way that this focus has been, that it's hypocritical as well, that there isn't the then same focus on other parts of the world. What do you say to that criticism of the criticism? Well, I think people are not used to this level of scrutiny. I mean, this is a country that was at one point invisible to the rest of the world, right? And part of the reason why they wanted the World Cup was to be seen. And but part of being seen is scrutiny. And I think it's quite uncomfortable for a lot of people to be under that level of scrutiny. It's not something that they used to.

And that's fair that you can have that feeling of discomfort. But let's be honest here. This is a World Cup that's been built on the abuse and exploitation of migrant workers, both men and women who have given their time and their lives to build the World Cup. Everything you see inside has been built by them. And many of them have not been paid their wages. They've died when their families have not been compensated. And we're still calling for remedy. The authorities and FIFA are not coming through.

So this is a little bit different to any other World Cup when you look at the kinds of human rights abuses that have happened as a result of it being based there. Sounds a funny thing to say, but I suppose I just wanted to ask, are you a football fan in your regular life, long, far away from human rights work? Well, I do watch the game sometimes, particularly around the World Cup or the Euros.

And these are the times when it's actually incredibly fun. I think a lot of people do join in and want to watch the games. And how is this one for you? We did hear from quite a few of our listeners yesterday who were really upset that football, FIFA, as they would say, has made this a very difficult tournament for them to engage in. I have such mixed emotions, to be honest, because on the one hand, when you go to Doha, you're like, marvelling at the level of infrastructure that exists now, right. And I'm really proud of these migrant workers who built all of this. And there's like incredible service, women who have done such amazing work as well. And you kind of

want to be proud about that. And I really hoped, you know, if we got the remedy, we got some changes, we could have all celebrated, including migrant workers including the women but we didn't and that's the problem we're in now and now it feels really mixed like I don't know if it's okay to really watch a game without wondering about the Nepali kid at home the woman who's basically not you know a widow who basically didn't get any money and is now suffering because her husband died I mean these are the people still suffering because of this world cup. And that's just not fair. It's a difficult picture, especially if you do like your football

or even if it's just at these points, these big tournaments. Thank you for talking to us and bringing us your report and how you feel that has or hasn't moved on in the months in between. Rothna Begum there, Senior Women's Rights Researcher

at Human Rights Watch. And Shaima Khalil there, our BBC correspondent currently in Doha. Well, closer to home, there has been a tweet that has been gathering some attention, not from Elon Musk, the new owner, but actually from a brand who has done what you're meant to do in this new Musk era of the social network, if you're on it, and said they're official. So it's been verified to be the brand. I'm talking about tampax which has

been causing a stir on twitter after a tweet they uh the brand posted last night went viral putting its own spin on the popular you're in their dm memes about men approaching women flirtatiously on social media in their direct messages that's what dm for. The tampon company explicitly referenced how its products are being used by women in a tweet saying, you're in their DMs, we're in them. We're not the same. That post has racked up more than 360,000 likes and over 70,000 retweets, proving there were some fans, thousands of them. But critics have also accused the brand of going too far and calling for people, for women, specifically to boycott Tampax. One response to the tweet saying,

sexualising menstruation, are we? That's not perverse at all. Well, I should say we have tried this morning to, we've invited a member of the company, a member of Tampax on. No response on that. We've invited them to give a statement, the brand. Anyone on Twitter or anyone working there, you still get in touch.

I'm on air till 11, but still no response. Chella Quint, though, did reply to our call this morning. She's the founder of Period Positive, and she's a menstruation education advisor and author of the books Be Period Positive and Own Your Period. Chella, good morning. Good morning. Also, you're a performer, I should say well right yeah yeah you know a bit a bit of comedy here and there where you get the time the grown-up book was based on questions audience members asked

me after my edinburgh fringe show every day right about periods yes which maybe we'll get to and maybe um there won't be such a debate about whether you're funny or not. But did you find did you find any humor in this tweet? There's so much to unpack here. I mean, first of all, oh, gosh, the pace that social media is being used by companies to kind of like kind of participate in our lives as the corporations are people uh is is just head-spinningly fascinating um what i'm what i'm mostly excited about is regardless of whether some people liked it and some people hated it we are responding to it in an incredibly media literate way and And that that just wasn't happening 10, 15 years ago, when I was kind of pushing for people to think more about this. And I'm just

so pleased that we are our menstrual literacy is improving, that we are saying no, this isn't this isn't right. Yeah, it can be funny to some people. It's a quick, sharp gag. It plays on a meme that already exists. But you know know there are some schools where we just got teachers to start talking about tampons because they were afraid that tampons were sexualized you know kids were reporting well i do just think this idea just for one moment if i can on the idea of tampons being sexual um the idea that they you know they go inside women and that this is something that women enjoy i mean the amount the amount... No, I mean, tampons are not sexual. I was going to say the amount of... Thank you for verifying that.

Sorry. For the elimination of doubt. Yeah, but I think the number of women who felt in the last 24 hours that they needed to tweet that to just say, hey, in case you're wondering, it's not a sexual thing. I thought that was quite striking as well. Yeah it's a fine line you know like period sex is enjoyed by many people as long as everybody

is in discussion about it use it maybe like a spare blanket but um but not with your tampons are not involved yeah and and the menstrual cycle you know no periods no people so you know being able to make humans is a really cool thing that menstruators can do. But like, you know, like that so many women are saying, no, this isn't cool, should be a really big hint to Twitter. Sorry to Tampax on Twitter. And I noticed they retweeted it later. Like they were so proud of themselves that they doubled down and shared the tweet again saying, you know, we got to send this out again in case Twitter folds. You know, like it's just... Yeah, well, they said, yeah, we wanted to make sure we got this out

before there was any danger to the platform. It'd be great if they got out other things like, you know, apologies for all the shame in their advertising they used to do, you know, rather than like jumping on the sort of like trendy meme bandwagon. Like a lot of the work I did when I was doing my master's research with pupils was helping them unpack old Tampax adverts, you know, and other brands. So, you know, it's really frustrating

that they're not using shame anymore, but they're using shock. But I'm really impressed. The general public is absolutely on it. Yes, and on that point, I mean, it's only relatively recently and it's not every brand and it's not every brand and it's definitely not in every country.

Is the liquid no longer blue? It may occasionally be red now, which again could be seen as finally being more accurate to the experience of having a period. But just let me ask you another question, which was some women in particular were saying how upset they were

about this sort of sexual joke about periods from Tampax because they said, you're meant to be a women's healthcare brand. You're meant to care about women. You're meant to care about those, you know, having their periods and who we are as your customers. What do you make of that kind of thinking of these brands as caring? I mean, so when I started Period Positive, I created the Period Positive pledge to basically say, you know, these are my demands. Corporations shouldn't be in charge of education. They shouldn't be sending resources to schools. And they shouldn't be using like words like whisper and secret and discreet to sell their products. And I like created a whole list of things that I would like them to do better.

Some brands listened, some brands didn't. Tampax is part of Procter & Gamble. They have never engaged with me. They're like the market leader. Now, Procter & Gamble did have red liquid in one of their ads in 2010. It was a little red dot once. And that was it. It was like huge news in 2010.

But Bodyform engaged with the stuff I was working on. You know, I asked them to change it from blue to red. Other people got involved, we talked about like, leaking on your period, not needing to be a shameful, scary thing. And in 2018, they did actually use red blooded and add but 2018, man, that's real recent. That's, you know, the kids are still in school school who, you know, experienced that change. And so I came up with a curriculum model for teachers to help combat this because media literacy grows when we talk about periods more openly, but we can't just do it willy-nilly. Otherwise we get this situation because it's, there's like real like misogynist overtones to slipping into somebody's DMs. There's not a lot of consent to it. Maybe there's flirtation. Maybe there's stuff around like using dating apps. But, you know,

lots of people menstruate from like, you know, age nine to like 55 on average. So that doesn't hit everybody. But I mean, not everybody's on Twitter. Nine year olds aren't on Twitter. So it's really it's it's it's up for debate, you know, whether companies can do this. But I know what I'd rather companies do. And I'd really rather they take a more ethical, sensible, and period positive approach. So, you know, if Tampax wants to reach out to me, I will absolutely talk them through how to earn the period positive pledge award. Because my pupils said that they wanted to know everything for people to not leave anything out but also to know who they could trust to talk to about it and right now I think this kind of joke has shown that a lot of people aren't

really trusting their messages well tell a quint thank you for making the time in between educating about periods this morning to talk about this joke that some have loved and some have loathed on social media there are a lot of other menstrual products available there are you've done my job for me and i also cross i will reiterate i'm on air until 11 o'clock and i can vouch for the fact it's very hard to get to talk to somebody from tampax despite them being one of the market leaders but if they would like to come and have a conversation about this gag and anything else i am here and ready to talk. Chella, thank you for being available to talk this morning.

I'm here when people want and need me. You live to serve. Thank you. And also, I mean, just to say, you know, a lot of people wouldn't necessarily have been thinking, especially women, about the fact that our education to do with periods for a long time had just been from the brands who were selling us the products as as a lot of them refer to the hygiene products but i don't think we need to call them that because we're not we're not we're not dirty when we're having our periods are we that's a whole other conversation keep your messages coming in as you have been throughout the program and i am delighted to say we've got some wonderful messages about those of you or those you're related to who can relate to Matilda, the Roald Dahl character. The idea of being academically gifted or engaged and how that's affected you in your life.

And the idea perhaps of being a girly swat, which briefly became sort of used as an insult when it was revealed Boris Johnson had called David Cameron that in a pejorative way. And lots of you coming on to that because my next guest who's just walked in to the studio is an actor who's known for playing a huge range, actually. I was looking through it this morning, of really amazing roles, some incredibly strong women, both real and fictional. Who am I talking about? Andrea Rysborough, who's been nominated for a BAFTA for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher.

You may remember in the TV drama, The Long Road to Finchley, she played Wallis Simpson in W.E., directed by Madonna. She's just won Best Performance at the 2022 Raindance Festival for her depiction of a single mother spiralling into addiction

following a huge lottery win. But the role she's here to talk about, we may get to some of those, whilst definitely a strong woman of sorts, is quite a departure from all of that. Andrea is playing Mrs Wormwood in a brand new screen adaptation of the hit west end show matilda the musical uh this is just called matilda alongside stephen graham as her husband and emma thompson as miss trunchbull we forgot to send it to school!

He goes to school all the time, don't you, boy? I'm a girl. No, I don't. I've never been to school. Where did you get all the books from? From the library. Well, they're doing books now. Oh, you are such an idiot! What, me? I've got a business to run. It's not my job to look after brats. Haven't I got enough stress with all this debt you put us in?

That I've put us in? Yeah, yeah, you. Don't you get it? We're trapped in the chains of debt. Well, I have a whole house to run. Dinners don't microwave themselves, do you know? No, they don't. Good morning, Andrea Osborne. They don't. It's so great.

And there's Matilda in the middle of this mayhem trying to just be... Just trying to be a literary genius. Yes. And maybe be noticed for being a girl as well. Maybe have a gender recognised as well. Yeah. Why did you want to do it? I mean, for me, having seen some of this, you look incredible in it.

The outfits are amazing, aren't they? They're ridiculous. I couldn't sit down at lunch. I was flammable. Actually, somebody told me that in an interview the other day. They said, you look highly flammable, Mrs Wynwood. Was anything attached to you? Was anything actually yours? It wasn't.

It wasn't mine at all. The hair, the nails, the butt pads, everything. To describe, how would you say the outfits are? Shiny? You know, there's something about the 80s that just harks back to chicken in a basket and cocktail sausages and gold lame, all being mixed in together in one awful melange.

I'd say Mrs Wormwood is the representation or the celebration of that, perhaps. All in one person. All in the one person, yeah. I have to say, it's lovely to see you and Stephen Graham in this sort of that, perhaps. All in one person. All in the one person, yeah. I have to say, it's lovely to see you and Stephen Graham in this sort of role, because you both do a lot of hard-hitting work as well. Yes, gritty drama.

Yes. Did you enjoy it? It really is lovely. I mean, Stephen's such a fine actor, such a fine actor. One of his performances is one of my favourite performances, I think, of all time, and this is England, the film. Me too. Just an extraordinary actor. And it's so, so wonderful to just laugh.

You know, we laugh... I mean, firstly, we laughed so much more when we weren't being mean to Matilda because actually to be horrible to a child for quite an extended period of time is just pretty miserable, it turns out. You know, the first couple of weeks is really fun and you think you're being quite clever and then actually it wears on you

in ways you don't expect. But the in-between times when we weren't being absolutely horrible to her, we just giggled so much. It was wonderful. We've asked for people to get in touch, our listeners to get in touch today about Matilda if they relate to her in any way.

And there's a lovely message here, which I thought you'd like, which says, I'm 61 now, but growing up, I loved reading. And I desperately wanted to go to university and had dreams of becoming a journalist. My staunchly working class parents were having none of it. My father's favourite expression, he was educated in the school of life, was if it was good enough for him, it should be good enough for me. And so we're getting some of these messages about it being brilliant to love education, but perhaps those around you not. I'm so happy we're putting down the idea. Finally, we're putting aside the idea that if it's good enough for one person, it should be for another. Yeah. Because we're all we just all have our own needs, don't we? And it's one of the things I love about Matilda. And it and especially at a time like this,

is that it just encourages that love of literature. And that's not what the movie's firstly saying. No. But it's the underlying theme. This place that we all have, and it might not be literature, it might be something else entirely, where we go to escape in those very difficult moments, you know. And Matilda escapes in

her head in this wildly imaginative magical way um and it's how she copes with everyday life and so roald dahl writing this in the shed at the back of his house as a as an old man processing his own childhood and thinking of him doing that i think really only with the wisdom of age could you then reflect with that much clarity on childhood there are so many brilliant children's books that have been written by much older writers there's a sort of freedom and you know you've gone through so many rites of passage when you're the age that he was when he was writing um these most of his incredible books um so well i was gonna say mrs wormwood and talking about those around you whether they nurture or not she she's the ultimate anti-mother in in many ways and uh yes there's you know the

first scene of the whole film in contrast to to all the mums singing to their little ones being a miracle she sat there with an enormous baby bump, flat out denying that she's pregnant. Did you enjoy breaking the traditional rules around womanhood, motherhood? Given the expectations that are, you know, often put on us in terms of motherhood as women, it's completely logical to imagine that a woman may,

just like a man, feel like they don't want to be a parent. And I think for Mrs Wormwood, in the dynamic between the Wormwoods and Matilda, the Wormwoods, the parents are undoubtedly the children in that dynamic, and Matilda is the adult in a strange way. She's sort of the calm in the center of a storm and I think it's horribly sad but completely understandable that this this young woman wouldn't be ready to bring a child into the world and then would would bring it into the world

because she felt like that's what well I mean Mrs Wynwood, she's actually having the baby when she realised, in our film, she's literally giving birth as she realises she's pregnant. So she's in quite a lot of denial. Yeah, so a pretty late stage. Yes, I'd say nine months. It's safe to say. But I think also just, you know, there's that idea of how you make your own way, but who those people are who are important to you as well, there whether it's your parents or a teacher you know who those

people are there's a message here which says as a single mum in the 90s excuse me i brought roald dahl's matilda for my eight-year-old daughter it quickly became her favorite book traveled everywhere with her now she's a consultant and ethicist in london with her own children and the much loved and ragged copy of matilda is still on the shelf, says Sally. And I was looking at one of your recent interviews where you were talking about your work, this and other things. And you talked about your Nana pretty much raising you.

And there's a great story here. You know, you talk about work ethic and getting up at 5am, going to bed at 11 o'clock at night, started work at 13, you say, pushing. Yeah, she was 13 or 14, I think. I'd have to ask my mum. Well, pushing a bread cart up a really steep hill. But this line I just thought was brilliant

where you said, and she worked as a cleaner until her late 80s, I cannot remember her sitting down to the point where we were once having Christmas dinner and she was ironing. And if she could hear me now, she'd say, well, it needed to be done. It's a true story. It's a great insight. It's such a picture of her. It's a wonderful memory. She was just such a resilient, generous, very, very funny, like dry humour.

Very, very funny, wonderful grandma. Very lucky to have had her. Do you think she did instil some of that work ethic, though, into you? And how was her influence as we think about, you know, the influence of those around us? I think my parents did. I think my grandparents did. You know, I mean, they were born into a world. My mum and dad were born into rationing.

It was the end of the Second World War. I just always remember a sense of being very aware of feeling how grateful, you know, we were for being able to do what we were doing. I can't really explain that. Nobody articulated that, but I just remember feeling lucky, you know. And my mum and dad worked tirelessly. My dad's a car dealer and my mum was at home and she was also working with my dad sometimes. And at the same time, she was getting a degree

and then she was getting a master's degree actually and going to school at night and in the I mean I remember like we're you know working during the day and then and then studying until midnight you know wow I wasn't wanting for role models of hard workers and my sister who is a brilliant actor as um and and she's in improvisation and a brilliant comedian, has a tireless work ethic. So I think it was just a gift, really. I mean, it doesn't feel like a gift when you really do need to sit down. Yes.

And a cup of tea, which is how I relax. Even in America, where you live. So the tea's still there. Oh, it's a nightmare. It's an absolute nightmare. But getting a decent cup. Absolute nightmare. I pack my own wherever I go now.

That's how I knew I'd reached a certain point. I actually brought one in my pocket here today. Well, come on. We'd look after you at Woman's Hour. I know, but I've already drank it. I'm just very specific about tea. And people don't understand that it can't be lukewarm. Brought one in my pocket here today. What? Come on, we'd look after you at Woman's Hour. I know, but I've already drank it. Just very specific about tea. People don't understand that it can't be lukewarm.

You know, Maggie Smith does, but it's hard to explain that internationally. I like the way you threw that in. Maggie Smith does. You know that tea rant in the film that she's in, which is something about it being a herb and it needing to be revived back to life with very hot water, not lukewarm piss. Excuse me. Oh, yeah, we'll take that. We'll excuse it. But I thought you were just saying

when you and Maggie, you know, are out. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I've never, ever had a cup of tea with Maggie Smith. No, neither have I. But we should seek to try and make that happen. Maggie, if you're available and you can be asked. Please. Yeah. Come with me and Andrea. I've just can be asked. Please. Yeah.

Come with me and Andrea. I've just gatecrashed. Sorry. But I was going to say something else about you in the sense of you are in a great deal of roles. There are a lot of characters that you have brought to life. And I wonder, do you get recognised? Because there was this tweet I saw. There was a thread about the phenomenon of what's called Andrea Rysborough face blindness.

So the idea, the inability of the public to recognise you in many of your roles. So they'll see you and then they'll be like, who's that? That's Andrea. Okay, and I wonder if, how's that been in real life? Do you get stopped? I do, yeah. I mean, it's generally really, really lovely

and, you know, lots of just very thoughtful things sort of said, people say thoughtful things and that's lovely. But yes, at the minute I have, you know, I have a shaved head because I've just played a character going through chemotherapy. And so, and those, the thing as an actor,

those things are great tools apart from being interested in, you know, changing the sort of rhythm and tone of of how you move and speak and the experience you've had as a throughout your life. You know, I have hair growing on my head that instantly makes a difference, you know, if it disappears or if it changes in some way. And that's really, really useful as a character. When I had a shaved head for the last six weeks or something, I've seen so many people be really, you know,

so many different reactions to the way that, to me having no hair. I bet. And to have that experience, you know, it's arresting. It's heartening in loads of ways because people are very, very kind. And you want to say to them, God, I'm not going through what people are actually going through, which is so, so difficult. You know, I'm not going through that. You don't need to take care of me, you know. But it's given you an insight into that.

It's an unusual job in that way, I think. Yeah. Also, I haven't seen it. I'd love to, though. My name is Andrea. You're one of the actors taking on the role of the feminist activist and writer Andrea Dworkin in a documentary. I'm definitely going to make sure I do see this. I presume you weren't just drawn to that because your name is Andrea. That would have been really worryingly narcissistic, wouldn't it? Yeah.

But a divisive but powerful feminist figure, certainly in America. Such an interesting writer. I mean, there's a brilliant debate that she's doing. I think she's here in Cambridge actually debating political correctness. Right. And it's fascinating to see the young Cambridge students take her on. And, yeah, anyway, she's a she's a really really interesting writer I think the the contribution she made to not just a feminist literature but to but but her thoughts on pornography and many

other other things but really important and valuable and just deeply interesting it was fascinating to play as she had a very unusual relationship at the time in the sense that she was in a sort of platonic relationship with her partner slash husband who was gay, I think, and they had a very happy partnership as man and woman. I'm going to check that out. It's very nice to be able to talk to you. There's one very quick question, if I can ask.

Yeah. I didn't understand it. How did you end up being a table for Patti Smith and Madonna at a premiere of W.E.? Yeah. Playing at Wallis's. We were in Venice, which is where the film premiered, the Venice Film Festival. And I was wearing this stupid dress and these, you know,

false eyelashes. I just started having to do all that red carpet stuff and I didn't know what I was wearing this stupid dress and these, you know, false eyelashes. I just started having to do all that red carpet stuff and I didn't know what I was doing. I felt like a camel, you know, and I didn't feel like myself. I remember feeling deeply embarrassed that this is the moment I was meeting, you know, I was with Madonna already, but we were meeting Patti Smith. And it was the first time Madonna had met Patti Smith as well and she was a completely normal person to her.

You know, she's very welcoming and Patti talked about having had a dream about Madonna. And it was a, you know, it was a great meeting. And I just sort of froze in the middle. I was sitting in between them and they were each resting on one of my legs. And I was just sitting erect, terrified, thinking, you know, she's going to think I'm some sort of show pony camel. I don't know who I am. I still want to impress Patti Smith, but I know it's not going to happen. I can't even talk. You just became a sort of thing in the middle. Yeah. The same happened when Beyonce once asked me to dance and I just sort of

tried to get up but I just ended up just looking at like a lower midriff sort of thing, area. Just unable to move. Then I felt like I really disappointed her. I don't know her, you know, but we were... But she asked you to dance? Yes, it was a place

where people were dancing, you know, and I sort of panicked. You know when you go to those when the world just slows, you know, and the people that you just admire so much for so many different reasons, that you just kind of freeze. How many times have you relived that moment in your mind? None. Only once with James Corden in an interview, the Beyonce one. And now the Patti Smith one with you here. And actually, Patti's got on to be a friend

and she's just one of the most inspiring people I've ever met. Well, that's good. You've managed to actually have a conversation. I can talk to her. Not just being in and out of it. I mean, I can do a sentence here and there. Andrea, thank you so much. Thank you.

Sorry you felt you had to bring your own tea bag, but we promise to always look after you. Absolutely. Tea I'm always good at. We all are much. Thank you. Sorry you felt you had to bring your own tea bag, but we promise to always look after you. Absolutely. Tea I'm always good at. We all are here. I promise. We will talk again. If we get that date with Maggie Smith, it's on.

Yes, please. Andrea in many things, but Mrs Wormwood, Andrea Rysborough in Matilda the Musical in cinemas from Friday. It is a real treat. Thank you for coming on the programme. Thank you so much. Now, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about what happens when IVF and other attempts to have a child do not work with someone

who has direct experience, the baker and businesswoman, Caroline Stafford. That conversation was prompted by the big response to an interview given by the actor Jennifer Aniston to Allure magazine, you may remember this, in which she publicly opened up for the first time about her efforts to have a baby in her 30s and 40s, which ultimately didn't work. What we didn't cover, and some of you asked about, were Jennifer's comments about egg freezing. She said, I would have given anything if someone had said to me, freeze your eggs, do yourself a favour. But is egg freezing a reliable way to try to preserve fertility? Some companies now offer it to their female employees as a corporate perk. Figures in the UK also show it's increased tenfold in the past 10 years. But it's not cheap

and does it work? Catherine Hendy, author of Everything Egg Freezing, the essential step-by-step guide to doing it right, is joining me now, as is Dr Zeynep Gürtün, a lecturer in women's health at University College London and authority member for the Human Fertility Embryology Authority. Welcome to you both. Dr Zeynep, if I come to you first, what data do we have? Does it work? Well, so the data we have is a little bit limited because most of the women who've frozen their eggs haven't come back to try and use them. But of those women who have come back to try and use them. But of those women who have come back to try to use those eggs to become mothers, it's about one in five that actually end

up having children. So the success rates are really low. It's definitely not a guarantee. And I would say with, you know, with success rates around one in five, you couldn't really even think of it as an insurance policy. And the other thing I imagine is if, which has been talked about, is do it when you're younger, when your eggs are fresher. It's very expensive. And you're not necessarily thinking like that in your 20s, are you? No, and I don't think it's appropriate for women in their 20s to be thinking like that. Because for a woman who's in her 20s, there's every chance that she will go on to have children naturally later in her life. So I think, you know, the push to try to get younger and younger women to try to freeze their eggs, which we're certainly seeing in the US, is not appropriate. And in fact, it's kind of

exploitative. It's a way of trying to make money by getting lots of women to undertake what's essentially a medical procedure that has associated risks and side effects and not least is incredibly costly. So I mean, costs, we should say, range from a few thousand pounds upwards. Yeah, I mean, I think the minimum would be around five thousand pounds, including drugs, and that would be really at the low end. So anything between five and ten thousand pounds for one round of egg freezing and then there's a few hundred pounds a year to to keep those on ice as it were and i think you know just to say uh you know someone who's pretty familiar with the fertility procedure you know frozen embryos are very different to frozen eggs uh which is also sometimes what what can be confused because an embryo is is obviously already fused with sperm and is,

you know, there's also odds around that you could get. But I just wanted to make that distinction. Catherine, good morning to you. How old were you when you decided to freeze your eggs and why did you do it? Yeah, I was 31 going on 32 years old and it was the end of a really long relationship. And I didn't want to be in a big rush to have to meet somebody straight away off the bat and it just felt like a sensible move to be able to just buy some more time and also be able to increase my odds later if it did turn out that I needed an IVF cycle when I did decide it was the right time to try to have a child. And were you aware of the one in five number and the odds? Yeah, it was actually

made really clear to me. And I think that what is a bit of a problem in the way that we think about success rate and looking in quite a binary way, does it work or does it not work at the moment, is that we run the risk of not helping people slice the data in a subjective or an accurate way because when you actually group all of the data around egg freezing it varies hugely from let's say somebody who's 29 and otherwise healthy to somebody who's 39 massive range of success rate statistics per increasing cycle and being able to help people more accurately understand what their own success rate prognosis looks like as accurately as possible. That's a really difficult thing is really the way that we should be looking at it. Briefly, Zainab, on that, do you agree with that? Yeah, there's definitely a range, but even at the upper end, it's never going to be higher than 30%.

So in the best case scenario, which is what we can look to donor frozen eggs, you know, from donors who are at premium health, the success rates for those are hovering around. To a live birth? Yeah, exactly. So less than one in three. Catherine, for you, I mean, you may wish to come back on that, but please do. But just also has the idea that it also gives women peace of mind is perhaps also an important element of this to bring up. Yeah, exactly. I definitely want to come to that.

But just first on that other success rate data, that's actually because of the inherent limitation of where we are with IVF working at the moment. So if you do an IVF cycle with younger frozen eggs versus fresh eggs at a later age, you do have a significant increase in the differential success rate. And that's the really important thing to understand although IVF is what it is you know it's that is that is what you have to use so even if I suppose you're some people say perhaps splitting hairs on that but it's important for you you're saying I get it that the age is also taken in and the health what are we going to say about peace of mind yes and I think it's another consideration too which is that part of it's just about agency and part of it's about saying who knows what the future holds and who knows what's going to happen. But actually, when you're synthesizing that kind of data, you've also kind of got to think about how much does it matter to me personally having a biological child in the future or having a better chance of having a biological child in the future if you do end up needing to use IVF and to some people maybe that is not worth the investment whereas to others even if it buys a five percent more likelihood of being able to have a biological child through an IVF cycle then that to them feels really

worthwhile. And for you are you feeling now I mean I don't know where you're up to with this, but having gone through this whole process, and I'm aware of what a lot of people are asking about what Jennifer Aniston said, do you envision using them? Hopefully not. No, that's not in the game plan. And actually, when I did it, I kind of thought, you know, the insurance policy thing is really exactly the way I was thinking about it and the way I still think about it. Well, I think you're not alone with that. I'm so sorry to break in there, but as I imagine, we'll get quite a lot of messages of this being at the end of the programme. They'll probably come in a little bit after, some feeling exactly the same.

Others, very grateful to hear the figures from you, Dr Zainab Gurtun. And Catherine Hendley, thank you very much for sharing your experience with us this morning. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. 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.