Woman's Hour - Anne Robinson; Millennial relationships; WWII female resistance fighters; Breastfeeding in public.

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

The presenter, journalist and “Queen of Mean”, Anne Robinson, is best known for her acerbic style of presenting on 'The Weakest Link'. In the 1960s she was the first young female trainee on the Daily Mail, worked at the Sunday Times and the Daily Mirror, and went on to host programmes from Points of View to Watchdog. Today Anne takes up the Countdown reins as the first female host of Channel 4’s longest running series. She will join numbers whizz, Rachel Riley and wordsmith, Susie Dent, to make a formidable female trio. She joins Chloe Tilley.Last week the government voted down proposals to make it illegal to film or photograph someone breastfeeding without their consent. MP’s like Stella Creasy, who has experienced this herself when teenage boys took photos of her as she breast fed her baby while on a train, and the MP Jeff Smith, wanted to make an amendment to the Voyeurism Act of 2019 - more commonly known as the Up-skirting Act - which focused on making it illegal to take photos and films of the lower part of the body or ‘up a skirt’. This recent proposal is for a simple amendment to be made to the 2019 Act to include the upper body and so protect breastfeeding mums. In April this year Julia Cooper found a man taking photos of her as she breast fed her baby in the park. When Gwen Strauss' aunt Hélène was in her 80's she nonchalantly mentioned at lunch that she had led a band of women in an escape from a Nazi death march, in the dying days of the war in Europe in 1945. The women were all members of the French Resistance, although two were Dutch and one Spanish. Gwen embarked on a search for these women, scouring France and Germany to track down their records, their families and their memories. Gwen – an award-winning children’s book author - has now painstakingly reconstructed what happened in her new book 'The Nine'.The reality TV dating show Love Island is back on our screens. The show is undeniably popular and creates many water cooler moments, but what can it actually tell us about modern love and dating? We speak to journalist, podcaster, and author of new book 'Millennial Love', Olivia Petter and Nichi Hodgson, author of 'The Curious History of Dating', about how important the series might be in helping millennials and Gen Z find true love after lockdown. Presenter: Chloe Tilley Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Anne Robinson Interviewed Guest: Julia Cooper Interviewed Guest: Gwen Strauss Interviewed Guest: Olivia Petter Interviewed Guest: Nichi Hodgson

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, thank you for joining me, Chloe Tilley, here on the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, welcome, good to have your company on this Monday morning. Now, for the first time in its almost 40-year history, Countdown is getting a female host. The no-nonsense Anne Robinson is going to be with us to tell us what attracted her to the role, plus her opposition to woke language and how she's treated as a woman in her 70s on TV.

We're also going to be talking to Julia Cooper, who was photographed by a man whilst breastfeeding in a park. Now, she is pushing for an amendment to the 2019 Voyeurism Act. You may well know it as the Upskirting Act to make it illegal. The government says existing laws can be used to protect women. We're going to hear Julia's experiences and what happened when she confronted the man concerned. Now, we are interested in hearing your experiences of breastfeeding in public today. Stella Cruzey MP says she was filmed by teenage boys whilst breastfeeding on a train. So I want to hear from you. Has it happened to you?

Have you seen someone taking photographs or filming you? And did you do what Julia did and confront them? Or were you actually quite frightened by it? Many women can feel uncomfortable breastfeeding in public. I know that I did. And have these kinds of stories put you off? Or as the most natural thing a woman can do for her baby, does it make you more resolute?

You can text us now on 84844 also what more should be done to protect women breastfeeding in public you can reach out to us on social media it's at bbc woman's hour or you can email us through the website we've got texts coming in already modern nell says an intimate moment between mother and child keep it private we're not animals well that, that's Nell's view. In response, Squiggly says on Twitter, keep it private so breastfeeding mums are to stay indoors till the baby is weaned.

Well, do get in touch with us today. You can text us 84844 with your experiences of breastfeeding in public. We're also going to catch up with the author Gwen Strauss, whose great aunt divulged over lunch that she had led a group of women to escape from a Nazi

death march in the final days of World War II in Europe in 1945. It prompted her to track down the other women and to write a book. And Love Island returns to our TV screens tonight after an 18 month break. We're going to find out what the programme, often criticised for racism, a lack of diversity and poor mental health support, tells us about modern dating and finding love after lockdown. But let's begin with speaking to Anne Robinson. Journalist, presenter and self-styled queen of mean, today she becomes the first female host of Countdown. Of course, she's best known for her acerbic style of presenting on The Weakest Link. She became the highest paid female presenter on British TV.

But back in the 1960s, she was the first young female trainee on The Daily Mail. She worked at The Sunday Times and The Daily Mirror and went on to host programmes from Points of View to Watchdog. Well, Anne takes up the Countdown reins of Channel 4's longest running series today. She joins, of course, numbers guru Rachel Riley and wordsmith Susie Dent to make a formidable female trio.

And I'm delighted to say that Anne is with us now. Good morning, Anne. Morning. Now, I understand you've been offered a lot of different opportunities and turned down a lot. So what was it about Countdown that made you say, yeah, I want to do this? Because I've always watched it and I love it and

it's very authentic and uh it's it's not felt the need to jazz itself up to keep up with the times and it's cerebral no I think it's a terrific program I'm just groaning Chloe I'm sure you are inwardly groaning at the idea that it is something of an astonishment that a woman is going to be presenting countdown. It's disappointing, isn't it? We've lost that. No? I mean, why should it be a label anymore that it's females? I said to somebody that they may as well say I'm the first person

from Lancashire with an underactive thyroid that is present in the countdown. But I guess it's an important moment as well and disappointing that we are in 2021 and it's taken this long. Well I suppose it was just tradition on on countdown to have a sort of relaxed guy on it, wasn't it? I don't think anyone was thinking we must have a bloke. Do you think it makes a difference with being with Susie Dent, being with Rachel O'Reilly, having the three of you as women together? Does it change the feel of the programme at all?

Well, it must do. And also, I've recorded about 40 episodes, or 45, I think. And there is one early one where the guest is female and the two contestants are female. So we're an all-female group in the studio, which we just thought was quite funny. I haven't urged them to have more female contestants. So if you're really, really good at doing Countdown, please apply if you're female. It's interesting, we've had a text already from Bridget this morning saying,

I've heard that you've got Anne Robinson on this morning to talk about Countdown. I was one of the contestants a couple of weeks ago when Anne had just started. It was a strange experience. I left my brain at home. Do you remember Bridget? I do indeed. I don strange experience. I left my brain at home. Do you remember, Bridget? I do indeed.

I don't think she did leave her brain at home, actually. She was terrific. Well, she's obviously putting herself down this morning, but it's good that she made an impression. That's what you do. Yeah. Is that what you think? Yeah, I think there's still a grandmother's voice

in the background saying, don't think too much of yourself. And why do you think we have that? I don't know. I really just feel that we're wired differently to guys and they come into the world with more self-confidence. Actually, that's not quite true because often in a family growing up, there's a younger sister to say two brothers and she runs rings around them but somehow in the mid-teens uh she isn't so

self-assured and she's not so self-assured when she gets to work in in an office you know and she lets i mean i think if you go if you go a meeting, you will find the guys talk about 50% more than women in the meeting. So where do you get your inner confidence from? Or is that just a show? Well, I think there's always a gap between how we present and who we are. I mean, I worry all the time, which is probably not obvious, but I came from a trading household and I had a mother who was the main breadwinner and didn't seem to have any truck with men. And so I didn't grow up thinking it was a problem to disobey. And, you know, she was a great rule breaker. And I suppose she taught us to do the same and not be intimidated.

And I mean, people will remember you from The Weakest Link as being intimidating, as being frightening. I mean, that was a conscious decision, was it, to play that role in that way? Well, what happened was when they wrote to me and it was the days of faxes, I remember the fax coming in and they said, we've got a new programme and we think that you would be brilliant to present it because you'll look as if you know the answers to the questions and you can ease the disappointment as people are sent off. And then when I met real contestants, they were so fusty and competitive

that it was pointless being a cheesy game host so I suppose I just became the person we are in newspaper newsrooms and probably how you are in woman's hour when you're not on air things like god didn't that guest today wear a terrible blouse I didn't know she put on so much weight well it's interesting you say that. I want to get on to you as well about the judgments that are made of women on TV and certainly women of your age. But we'll get into that in a minute because what I want to know is, presumably you've not got that weakest link persona on Countdown.

It's a different Anne that we see there. No, it's still me. I mean, it's dark and light shades, isn't it? There are some contestants I've met on Countdown that are very cerebral and probably not ready to be teased. And there's been some absolutely brilliant ones, and we have laughed our socks off. And I don't think it's very different from Weaker's Link.

You always had to choose and make a judgment on who you could send up and who you had to be quite gentle with. We had a sort of generic man I used to call Norman on podium one because you'd spread them out so you got pretty girl, middle-aged man, and there used to be a 60-year-old plus on podium one. And I'd say to him almost every time, have you always been so devastatingly handsome? And it didn't matter what he looked like. He always said, thank you very much.

It's that inner confidence that you were talking about with men. Yes. And probably a lack of irony. Do you think if Weakest Link was commissioned today, you'd play it in the same way? It has just been commissioned. Has it? Yes.

It's been commissioned by the BBC with a comedian called Ramesh. Oh, Ramesh Ranganathan. Yeah, and it'll be a very different Weakest Link. I think it's quite clever, actually, to have a guy doing it and a guy, a comedian, whose approach will be very different to mine. Do you think you'd get away with being like that on TV today? Absolutely not. Why?

Well, because, you know, we're in a different age, woke age, where almost anything you say upsets someone. And I wouldn't like to be doing a week's length with sort of leg irons on and having to worry all the time, we'll have to cut this, we'll have to cut that. And language has changed and attitudes have changed. So it was very lucky to be able to do it at the time I did it. When you talk about the woke age and woke language, just explain a little bit more about what you think about that.

Well, someone was telling me the other day that I can't say mixed race anymore. I've got to say mixed heritage. And I wonder why. You know, what is the difference? And who is telling me that I can't say one and I must say the other? It's impossible to keep up. And I'd just like to meet these people who tell me how I must speak. Am I right in saying there was an incident?

I'll tell you what it is, Chloe. I don't like things being banned. I think that, you know, there's a sort of fascist element to it. Not personally, but women marched in the 60s for liberation and to be able to do what they wanted. And this seems the other side of the coin to me. And if we are going to pull down statues, wouldn't it be more intelligent to keep the statues up and put another statue next to it, arguing the other side? And you're thinking hard and you don't...

No, I'm just wondering if you think that there is... People are just feeling pressurised by loud voices within communities and they're fearful of saying what they really think. That sounds like that's essentially what you're saying. Yeah, I am saying that and that shouldn't be the way. And, you know, it's a minority telling the majority what to do. Am I right there was an incident on Countdown where you asked a contestant and they pulled you up

on the use of the word foreigner, was it? No, no, it was more interesting than that. He didn't pull me up, actually. On his CV it said that he was teaching English. Wait a minute now. But it didn't say teaching English to those as a foreign language uh it said something like teaching English to those who's to whom English is a second language and I can see the difference because I think what what that means is it's somebody who is British

but whose first language isn't English which is actually essentially different so I don't mind that. Okay let's talk a little bit about being someone on TV you're in your 70s I mean you're known for for being immaculately turned out I'm looking at you now and you you know you've got a wonderful sculpted outfit on. Victoria Beckham. Well, I was going to say, I know that you have a big designer wardrobe. So do you ever feel pressure as a woman in her 70s? And I'm sure you won't mind me saying that on TV, because I know when I've been on TV, I found it infuriating when people would talk to me first about my outfit or my hair rather than an interview I'd done. Oh, no, no. The hair and the outfit's the most important.

Really? Yes. Listen, no one's going to listen to what you're going to say unless you look good. If you go on television looking scrappy and looking like a tramp, that's all they're going to talk about. I don't know. I think that I'm very shallow and it's always been hugely important to me to dress well and look good. It's vanity.

Do you think there are the same rules for men on TV? Sorry. Sorry. Do you think there are the same rules for men on TV? No. I mean, I've always said that if Hugh Edwards had an identical twin sister, she wouldn't be reading the news on his day off, would she? I mean, we don't have any kind of standards. We don't need men to look pretty. But when I did The Weakest Link in L.A., they used to pay the audience so that the producer could put pretty women on the front row.

I mean, there always has been a need for women to look pretty on television. so that the producer could put pretty women on the front row. I mean, there always has been a need for women to look pretty on television. And there's always been women at home saying she looks a bit ugly. There is an expectation that part of having a woman on television is that she will look terrific. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just telling you how it is. Would you like it to change? No, I like people looking terrific on television. What do you want to change? Well, don't you just say that it's a bit more identifiable? So you see people who look a bit more like you? Because I'm sure lots of men watch TV and see men who look like them. I'm just wondering how many women see women who look like them. So what do you want women to go on television

with not much makeup and a cheap dress? Is that an awful idea to you? No, no, I'm asking you what what sort of woman do you want to see on television? It's not about what I want to see. I think that a lot of people and a lot of women feel a lot of pressure to look a certain way. I mean, I know that you in the past, you've been very open about the fact you had a facelift, didn't you? And you've had cosmetic surgery. Why did you think it was important to be so honest? Well, first of all, I had a facelift in 2004 because I had the opportunity to have it and I thought it would make me look better for me it wasn't it was never about this be a way I'll be able to stay on television longer

not absolutely not and it wasn't pressure of any kind it was no different to me always wanting to be a size 10 it's I know you have to accept that I am very, very vain and very, very shallow. And before we talk about other things, there's been so much coverage, hasn't there, about the lack of older women on TV. Yeah. Would you want to see more older women on TV

and do you think there are enough opportunities? Yeah. I do think particularly current affairs programmes, news programmes, news producers, I think maybe they feel that if they have a woman over 50 reading the news, she'll have to bring her mobility scooter in with her. I mean, it's part of the saying, will she be pretty enough? It doesn't matter how old Jon Snow is or Hugh Edwards,

but we must have a pretty face if it's a woman. Although I've just checked, Fiona Bruce is only two years younger than Hugh Edwards. She's not reading. Oh, yes, she is. No, no, ITV. I don't think ITV has got. Go and look at ITV.

Have they got anyone over there? I think Mary Nightingale's 58, I think. Is she? Yeah. Oh, good. So these are I think Mary Nightingale's 58, I think. Is she? Yeah. Oh, good. So these are all women who are clearly looking very good for their age. Hang on a second, Chloe. How would you like Mary Nightingale to dress?

No, it's not about how I want. I mean, I think it's interesting, isn't it, how women are judged on what they wear and how they look and women less so. Another thing that I wanted to ask you about as well. You're going to ask my question. No, but it's not about me, is it, Anne? It's about what you, people don't want to hear what I think.

I want to know what you want. It's not about what I think. I think there's just a lot of women who do feel pressure to look a certain way, like I've said, and I think it's important to reflect that. Let's talk a little bit about lockdown, because I know you lived with your family during lockdown, didn't you? You lived with your daughter and her family. They lived with me. They lived with you. They arrived the night before lockdown and things

just didn't stop coming out of the back of their car. Cricket bats, footballs, laptops, dogs, grandsons, and they were with me for 13 months. Wow. But you survived that and it was good. I want to also talk to you about how you've been coaching women on interviews during lockdown and the importance of that. Just give us a few tips that you would pass on to people. Well, what I was doing on Zoom, these are women, and it was for charity, actually, I'm just interested in, they're women going for non-executive directorships on boards, FTSE 100. And I was very surprised that when I asked, there'd be six on Zoom, and I'd say, okay, tell me what you would say if you were

applying for a board, you're in front of the board and they'd all say things like, you know, I like a challenge, I'm full of energy, la-di-da-di-da, cliche, cliche, cliche. And then we went round and I'd say to each of them, tell me something that's really important in your life or is really interesting about you. And one of them said, I'm a banker and each of the countries that I do business in, I've climbed at least three mountains in each of those countries to get to know the country. And I said, why aren't you saying that when you go for apply for a board? And so by the end of two hours, two one hour sessions, they had begun to be themselves. And that is what is really important. And I hope, I think I did it for about 12 women in the end, that they've got A, jobs on boards that they want

and that the board knows much more about who they were. And I don't think that comes naturally to women, actually. Anne, thank you ever so much for joining us this morning. You're welcome, Anna. You've had enough of me. It's not that we've had enough of you. It's just we've got other people that we need to talk to, particularly a lady who's going to share with us a story about breastfeeding, which I think is important that we get on.

But listen, Anne, thank you so much. And you start today on TV. We'll see you for the first time this afternoon on Countdown. Thanks, Chloe. Perfect. Thank you so much. Take care. That is Anne Robinson there, who's taking over as the Countdown host on channel 4's longest running series you can tune in and see that today now this may well surprise you it may shock you but it currently isn't illegal to photograph or film someone who is breastfeeding without their consent mps like stella creasy who has

experienced this herself when teenage boys took photos of her as she breastfed her baby whilst on a train, and the MP Geoff Smith, wanted to make an amendment to the Voyeurism Act 2019. This is more commonly known as the Upskirting Act, which focused on making it illegal to take photos and films of the lower part of the body or indeed upper skirt. Well, this recent proposal is for a simple amendment to be made to the 2019 Act to include the upper body and therefore protect breastfeeding mums.

But last week, the government voted down the proposals. Instead, the government has commissioned a report from the Law Commission called Taking, Making and Sharing Intimate Images Without Consent and is awaiting its outcome in spring next year. Well, in April this year, Julia Cooper found a man taking photos of her as she breastfed her baby in a park. And she joins me now. Hi there, Julia. Hi, good morning. Good morning. This is something that is certainly resonating with our audience,

because I'm just looking at the number of texts and emails that are coming in, and we'll go through some of those in the next few minutes. But just first of all, tell us what happened to you. Sure so it was the start of April and lockdown had lifted and groups of six could meet up so me and some friends met with our babies for a walk in Greater Manchester and at the end of the walk I sat on a bench to feed my daughter and my friend was also feeding her baby, but she was feeding her baby solids. So I was breastfeeding my daughter and I noticed on another bench, there was a man staring. And I stared back to let him know that I'd clocked his gaze and I wasn't comfortable with him

staring at me. But undeterred, he got out his digital camera attached to zoom lens and started photographing me and you went over and confronted him didn't you I mean did he have any idea that this might be upsetting to you what did he say uh yeah so I finished the feed and my friend was talking to me but I just couldn't concentrate on what she was saying because I felt so disturbed by this man taking photographs so I went over and asked him were you taking photographs of me? He said, yes. I said, right, well, can you delete them, please?

And he said, no, it's my right because we're in public. And he didn't seem, he seemed very calm. He didn't seem at all perturbed by the fact that I was calling him out on it, which was all the more sort of chilling really, because I thought this must be something that you do. How did it make you feel? I know that's a stupid question, but you're doing the most natural thing you can do for your baby.

Yeah. And you're being confronted with this. Yeah, it was a shock because it was only the second time I'd ever breastfed in public. And I would expect glances, you know, by passers-by. I wouldn't expect such a brazen disregard of my privacy. And yeah, I just felt really, really shocked, really angry and really disturbed by it. And you took this to the police, didn't you? What did they say? I did. Yeah. So I rang the police later that day. And the man in the control room, he said to me, I'm going to have to come off the phone because I know that taking pictures of people in public is legal, but I'm just going to

have to come off the phone and check with my colleagues about the breastfeeding element. So he went away and rang me back and said, I don't agree with this, but it is indeed legal to take photos of breastfeeding in public. So there was nothing that they could do. Which is interesting, because we've had a statement today from the Ministry of Justice, because obviously we approached them, about the fact that there isn't going to be an amendment to the Voyeurism Act. And instead, the government has commissioned this report by the law commission and their statement says it's completely unacceptable that any woman should be harassed while breastfeeding and existing laws mean this behavior can result in a prison sentence and they're talking about legislation around harassment

but that's clearly not the understanding of the police in your case. Yeah, and that's the first time that I've heard that from the government. So far, the government's line has been that, yes, it is disturbing, it's unacceptable and we will deal with it. And I understand that they were dealing with it by waiting for this Law Commission report on intimate image abuse. So the fact that they're saying today that it can fit under the Harassment Act, I think that doesn't work because I spoke to the police. They didn't know that that, you know, could have been,

we could have done anything with that law. I spoke to my MP. He didn't know that it could have fit, we could have done anything with that law. I spoke to my MP. He didn't know that it could have fit under that law. I think the law is supposed to be clear and transparent and fit for purpose and known. And if the police and my MP didn't know that, then it's not working. You've set a petition, haven't you? And it's got nearly 30,000 signatures now and growing. When you talk to other women about this, and I'm sure you've done that lots since, whether they're strangers, friends, colleagues, whatever, what are you hearing from them? anybody men and women they can't believe that it's not illegal and it doesn't fit under the

voyeurism act and so when I talk to well friends of friends have been in touch and people on social media have been in touch women who breastfeed or have breastfed and it's happening to other women and one woman I know it stopped her from breastfeeding which is is really sad because it's not only feeding your baby it's a bond with your baby and so if if that's ruined for you then that yeah that's really sad. Julia let me read you some of these messages which are coming in and we really are getting many this morning if you want to get in touch it's at bbcwomansout on social media or you can text us on 84844. One message here says, breastfeeding in

public should be normalised in our society for the health of the baby and the mother. The sexualisation of the female breast has gone too far. Women who breastfeed in public are reclaiming the narrative, keep boobing for your babies. That's one that has come in. But there are other views as well. Do not use the baby

as a pretext to wave your breasts around. Use a shawl to make it private. I don't know if you want to respond to that one, Julia. That's laughable. Yeah, I think anybody who's breastfed, particularly in public, you're trying to do it discreetly. You're not waving your boobs around. When I breastfed my daughter that cold April day, I was wearing a big coat and she was properly nestled inside. You know, it absolutely wasn't a display of, you know, look at me, look at my breasts. It was, I don't really want to be getting my breasts out in public, but I need to do this to feed my daughter. It's necessary.

It's not something that you're doing to show off. Aisha has texted in saying, I'm fed up of women's bodies being sexualised. This is the problem behind society's objections to breastfeeding. If a pretty busty woman wearing a low top gets on a bus or comes to work, no one tells her to put her boobs away. Beaches, magazines, social media shots, celebrities are full of women's boobs being exploited in a sexual context. When the context of a woman's boobs are changed and made for nurturing a baby, hence not a sexy objective, people are in uproar. Again, women's bodies

are being owned by a sex-obsessed society. Aisha, thank you for getting in touch. I just want to read one more to you, Julia. This one here, let me find it, from Brenda in Forfa. She says, intimate moments should be kept private if it means covering up in public places like cafes and trains that's perfectly easy spotty louts won't film shawls on their phones too many of us appear to relish flashing their breasts around is essentially what she's saying be adult about exercising your rights and don't invade other space they have the right not to be forced to share your intimate natural moments okay um i mean you don't have to respond to that it's up to you whether you want to do that but i mean yeah do you want to respond it's up to you um i would say that

most women well i can't think of a single woman I've seen breastfeeding in public who looks like they've done so for attention, who looks like they've done so for their own sort of gratification rather than the needs of their baby. And also, to be honest, anybody who has breastfed, particularly when it's a very small baby, just getting your baby to latch on can be really challenging. And if you're trying to do that in public while you've got a coat on and pulling up a jumper or whatever, sometimes actually you do need to get your breast out just so they can latch on and then you can kind of cover yourself up a bit more. That's just the reality of breastfeeding. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a natural act, but it's not easy. And whether you're at home or whether you're out in public breastfeeding, your attention should be solely on getting that baby latched on, feeding them and making sure that

you're both comfortable rather than looking around worrying, is somebody going to be photographing this? Is somebody going to be filming this? So, Julia, you obviously want an amendment now to this Voyeurism Act. Are you happy with this report, which has been commissioned by the Law Commission? Is this sufficient for you to get the law changed? I think that it's a great report in that it is tackling lots of gaps in the Voyeurism Act, particularly. And yes, it does speak about breastfeeding and it actually recommends that the taking of images of breastfeeding without consent should be made illegal um but i think that we have this opportunity now um with the policing bill to make a difference

and to empower breastfeeding women now. And it's a shame that the government last week voted down the proposed amendment by Stella Creasy and Jeff Smith to make this illegal and protect breastfeeding women in public. So I would ask people to get in touch with their MPs and ask their MPs to challenge the government on this decision, because we can do something positive for women now. Thank you ever so much for joining us this morning, Julia. Grateful for your time. That is Julia Cooper. I'm just going to end on one more text,

which has come in here from Steph. She says, hello, I'm breastfeeding at the moment and I'm loving it. I have no issues doing it in public. It's a non-issue for me. Don't care what other people think, I'm doing it. And by law, my baby has every right to be fed. Difficult to imagine how I would react if someone was photographing or filming me. Don't care what other people think, I'm doing it and by law my baby has every right to be fed. Difficult to imagine how I would react if someone was photographing or filming me but if I wanted

to continue it would be a non-issue. Perhaps I shouldn't mind, just please share and hashtag normalise breastfeeding. I would probably say to encourage others that it is just normal but I do appreciate that not everyone is comfortable with doing this. Thanks for getting in touch Steph, thank you also to Julia. If you want to share your experiences of breastfeeding in public, whether you've been photographed or filmed or anything else, it's 84844 on the text

or at BBC Woman's Hour on social media. Now, this is a conversation that you don't expect to have over lunch. When Gwen Strauss' Aunt Helene was in her 80s, she nonchalantly mentioned at lunch that she had led a band of women in an escape from a Nazi death march in the dying days of the war in Europe in 1945.

The women were all members of the French resistance, although two were Dutch and one was Spanish. Gwen embarked on a search for these women, scouring France and Germany to track down their records, their families and, of course, their memories. Well, Gwen, an award-winning children's author, has now painstakingly reconstructed what happened in her new book called The Nine. I'm pleased to say that Gwen is with us now. Good morning.

Hi, good morning. So just tell us, how on earth did your great aunt just drop this into conversation? I really don't know. I think what was happening, it was near the end of her life. I think she felt ready to speak about it. And as many survivors who had kept silent for years, they often didn't speak to their immediate family. They would speak to someone a little bit distance from the family. And so I think she found it was sort of a safe moment. And maybe my kind of over-eager American naivete inspired her. I don't know. But suddenly she was telling this story that just completely astonished me.

And so tell us about her story. I mean, it's a fascinating one. Sadly, we don't have time to go into a great amount of depth. But she was caught by the Gestapo doing what exactly? She was an agent de liaison in Normandy, in the M4 region, working with the BOE, BOA, sorry. And she was quite high up in the resistance, actually. She had been working for over a year, contacting agents and guiding parachute drops of material. But she was in her 20s. I mean, she was quite young. All of these

women were in their 20s when they were working in the resistance. Some even joined in their teens. They were all in their 20s by the time they were arrested. And most of them were arrested in 1944, in the spring of 1944, when there was a big push by the Nazis to try to break all the resistance networks in France. And so she was taken to a concentration camp and then on later to a labour camp. And that's where she was with all of these women. That's right. All of the women went through Ravensbrück, which is the largest, is the second largest concentration camp after Auschwitz-Birkenau and very little comparatively is known about it, particularly because Ravensbrück was really only for women. It was kind of after the war, sort of, it was behind the Iron Curtain and forgotten. But all the women would go through Ravensbrück. And only for women. It was kind of after the war, sort of it was behind the Iron Curtain and forgotten. But all the women would go through Ravensbrück

and then because the Nazis used female labor to work on their armament factory, they would be farmed out to different labor camps in Germany. And she was sent to Leipzig to build Panzerfaust. And this group kind of created a tight friendship. And they became, I think they were all on the same work team. They were working in the forges there. And my aunt successfully was able to sabotage the forges.

She was an engineer. She spoke five languages. And so they worked with her to help sabotage the making of these shells for the Pounds of Frost. So how did they escape? So at the final days of the war, this is in April of 1945, that factory had been bombarded many times by the Allies. The Allies knew it was,

you know, making armaments. And finally, the factory was so bombarded that the Nazis tried to evacuate the camp. At the end of the war, the death marches were everywhere. The Nazis really wanted

to empty these camps. They had sort of this strange, Himmler had this sort of strange idea that he could maybe use them as collateral to negotiate. Anyway, so there's all these prisoners marching across Germany, being forced marched, and it's a really deadly time. In fact, over a third of the survivors would die during this time in the war. It was, they were, you know, executions. They would put them on a barn and set them on fire. And it just, it was a terrible, terrifying time. And the women, my aunt included, knew how dangerous it was.

They had met a group of women from the Auschwitz death march that had been in January. So they really knew that they had one choice. They had to either escape or they would be killed or die starving. And so they found a moment when there was a kind of chaos and they jumped into a ditch and pretended that they were a pile of corpses, which there had been so many piles of corpses that that worked. And the march continued without them. And then they made their way for 10 days across central Germany, Saxony,

looking for the American troops. Which in itself, just thinking about walking for 10 days, not knowing necessarily the right direction to go in. And as you say, they've been systematically starved at this point as well. And I know that at least one of the women was really quite poorly as well. So how did they cope for those 10 days? In fact, they were very ill. One had tuberculosis, one had diphtheria, they had broken bones, they were starving, they were in really pitiful condition. And in fact, when I retraced the route with my eldest daughter, I realized that some days I only made five kilometers. I mean, it was so

difficult for them to walk and to move. They were really at the end of their rope. But I think that they survived because of their solidarity, which is really the story for me of this book, is how the women really took care of each other and had this sense that in order to survive, in order to survive, they had to help each other, that that was the real tool. It wasn't each man for himself. It was in fact the opposite, that if they carried each other, they could make it. And they really did. Each one had a moment of weakness and they would rally and hold her up at that time. It struck me, I was going to say it struck me when they, as they did just manage to almost stumble across American soldiers. They initially thought they were German, didn't they? But they realised they were American soldiers. And just a few moments before, some of the women had said,

I can't go on, go ahead without us. And that was a non-negotiable. They were doing it all together. That's right. I mean, they really had decided from the get-go that it was all or none. And they had that same ethos in the camps themselves. I mean, there was this beautiful tradition where they called the gamelle de solidarité, where they would pass around an extra bowl each night. And they're all starving. They have hardly anything to eat. They're just desperate. And they would put one teaspoon of food in that bowl and give it to that person who they decided was having the worst day. Maybe they'd been beaten by the estapo or maybe they'd gotten some bad news. And so they did that every night.

They actually gave some of their food when they had so little food to make sure that the person who was the weakest would be able to continue. And for these women, they, some of them stayed close beyond the time, but some drifted apart, didn't they? Yeah, it's that, in a way, for me, the other real thing that I learned was how difficult it was to come home after the war. And, you know, really, especially as women, especially as young women who were completely ignored and not seen as heroes, not recognized. So partly they were told to keep quiet, to shut up, to not talk about it. It was somewhat shameful. Marriages were called off if it was found out a woman was in the camps. They were somehow impure.

And so there were some women who just decided to, like, cut off from that past and go on as if. But then there were others in the group that had formed really off from that past and go on as if but then there were others in the group that had formed really strong friendships and stayed friends until the end of their lives um and then the women did sort of come together quite late again around the time that my aunt told me the story they had a bit of a reunion the survivor the surviving group so i think it was a bit of a survival mechanism, you know, trauma. Each person reacts to trauma differently. And I think they were each trying to cope with trauma in different ways.

And what was really powerful for me was meeting the families of these women and their descendants and seeing the effects of that trauma throughout the family and the secrets and the stories that were told and not told. It's all very powerful. Well, one of the women, Zinka, she had a baby in prison, didn't she? And you tracked her down. Yeah, that was really, that was actually for me, one of the most powerful moments of the research. Zinka had a baby who she named France while she was in prison. She was allowed to keep the baby for 18 days and then the baby was taken away and she was deported to Ravensbrück. So Zinka talked about her baby France all the time to all the women, and I read stories of that in other accounts of women who weren't in the group, other survivors who were in the same block with them. And I knew that France could be alive. I

just wasn't sure how I was going to find her. By weird coincidence, I did actually find her, and when I went to see her, she lives not that far from where I live in southern France. She and I both started to cry. And I and she said, I said first, I said, you won't believe how long I've been looking for you because I've been looking for her for about three years. And she said, well, imagine me after 70 years to learn all this about my mother. She had no idea about her. I mean, she knew who her mother was and she knew that her mother had been arrested by the Gestapo and in the resistance, but she didn't know about the escape. And more importantly, she felt abandoned. She didn't know

how important she had been to her mother and really to her mother's survival. It was one of the reasons that Zinka continued. She always said, I have to survive for my daughter. And so many women knew about the baby, France. And she was, it was, so for her, it was a really powerful discovery. And I felt, I felt really moved to share that with her, really honoured. You talked about how the women felt completely ignored at times. They were told to keep their stories silent, not to, not to brag about it, to allow the male soldiers to take the credit after the war. But I know also that you were writing about how other women in camps were not even recognised as survivors until very, very recently. Sex workers, Jewish women, lesbians.

Yeah, I mean, the real tragedy for me are the completely erased histories of the sex workers and the homosexuals, lesbians. In fact, we don't even know many of their names. They were so, of course, none of them ever spoke up after the war and the war trials or they were not considered. And even some of the sex workers who returned to France were then put on trial for having had sex with German soldiers and were, you know, were one of the, were the tendu, you know, the women that got their heads shaved and shamed. So they absolutely didn't speak of it. And, you know, I, in amongst the resistance, the resistance women, they were quite not, they didn't speak well of those women. You know, it was, they really came with the mores and the social ethics of their time. And so they were looked down on. It's quite tragic.

Luckily, it's starting to be recognised, certainly the Roma and Sinti people, and now sex workers. But really, really recently, that story is starting to be told. And it was even after the war that President de Gaulle only gave out medals to very few women who were resistance

fighters? Yeah, out of the 1,038 Compagnons de la Libération, which were the group that he considered the leaders of the resistance, there were six women and four of them were already dead. So that's laughable because the resistance was probably at least 50% women, partly because women could do it. They had a kind of flexibility of movement that the men didn't have. And also because they were very solidaire and they formed good networks. There's a famous, Marie-Madeleine Foucault,

there's great books about this, other books about this, she led the largest resistance network in France, the most agents, and was really important for so many, like breaking the blockade of the UK, the U-boats, but she was not recognised by De Gaulle. Thank you ever so much for speaking to us, Gwen. And you can catch up on this story in much more detail in Gwen Strauss's book, The Nine. An incredible story from her aunt, literally just saying over lunch, did you know? Now, if like Gwen, you found out that a female relation of yours has done something remarkable, please do let us know her story.

Perhaps you've been doing your own research on your family tree or you've come across a photo album or maybe it's newspaper cuttings. We want to tell the stories of the hidden women who deserve to be known for a new series. So probably the best way to get in touch with us with your details is through email and you can contact us via the Woman's Hour website. Now, the reality TV dating show Love Island is back on our screens tonight after 18 months away. The show is undeniably popular, creates so many water cooler moments, but what can it actually tell us about modern love and dating?

Well, let's speak to journalist, podcaster and author of a new book, Modern Love, Olivia Petter, and also to Nikki Hodgson, who is author of The Curious History of Dating about the role the series might be playing in helping millennials and Generation Z find love after lockdown. Hi there, Olivia. Hi, Nikki.

Hi. Now, Olivia, I know that you're a bit of a fan of Love Island. I mean, let's be honest, it's had its criticisms, poor mental health support for contestants, lack of diversity, criticised for racism. But you actually think it can be quite insightful in understanding millennial relationships. Just explain a bit more about that, Olivia. I do, yeah. And I think it's important to point out that Love Island has rightly faced quite a lot of criticisms for all of those issues that you just mentioned. But I think because of

that, people are quite quick to dismiss what it can actually teach us about young relationships. And I think, you know, if we look back at previous seasons, Love Island has actually educated people on a wide range of really important things like gaslighting and emotional abuse. And I think because of the show's reach and the way that people engage with it on social media, you know, it's been trending all morning on Twitter. It actually has huge potential to help a lot of people understand these issues and raise awareness. And I think the important thing is people aren't simply being told,

this is what gaslighting means and this is how it happens. They're actually able to see how it happens between two people on screen and empathise with the person that it's happening to. And, you know, seeing a man gaslight a woman on TV and having it pulled out as such by a domestic violence charity, which has happened in the past, is a very different thing to simply reading about gaslighting, which can be a very complex thing to recognise when it's happening to you. Let's just explain to people if they're not familiar with the term gaslighting, that it's essentially, it's a form of psychological abuse. It's where people, that their memory is a question, their sanity is a question, their perception of what's going on. It is a form of abuse.

I mean, Nikki, can you see that as an argument for why Love Island can actually help young people form healthy relationships? Well, I could if the fact wasn't that it actually had to be two contestants that would go through that dynamic in order to show everybody. And I've got to say, you know, I agree with Olivia on so much of what she said I was a fan for absolutely years but I've got to a point where I sort of think that showing people being unkind to each other on screen means that some people are suffering in the process to get that content out and then just how many people are going to think oh actually I shouldn't do that because the thing that I always find really interesting is that they have that brilliant program after sun after the show and they get a chance to dissect what's been going on and I feel that there's more of an opportunity there to maybe bring in some psychologists and some other experts

to say hey you know what just went on there it isn't very good and we don't really like it and we shouldn't really be um we shouldn't really be emulating it it's difficult to know sometimes when you read twitter on the day after an episode of people having a big spat just just how much they've learned from it or how much they're enjoying it. It's kind of Roman gladiatorial entertainment. One of the issues as well, Nikki, and I'm sure this is one that you raise, is the way women are portrayed. I mean, for example, this series, one contestant, Kaz, already saying she wouldn't rule out having sex. And often women are divided in the show into the good girls and the bad girls, not something that generally happens with the blokes. And I guess that's something you would be concerned by. Yeah, sure. I mean, it just gets so boring,

doesn't it? This Madonna whore trope that we see played out again and again through society. And it is interesting how I feel that some of the female contestants in particular, you know, before they've even been on screen, are being mocked up to be a certain kind of woman. And you've got to look out for them because they're definitely going to cause trouble in the villa, that kind of narrative. So I do get a bit fed up that it's always on the women and not on the men. And the other thing I get annoyed about is the LGBT erasure of some of the contestants. Now, I'm bisexual. There's been several people in the house that have come out as bi only once they've left the villa. And I find it really interesting that,

you know, in a day and age when one in five young people actually identify as lesbian, gay or bi, we are not representing those people on Love Island. And I feel like ITV is missing a bit of a trick there because that category of people, one in five, it's actually 18 to 24 year olds, I have to clarify. And, you know, I think the oldest age at the minute

of the contestants that are going in is 26. So though we're talking about it in terms of millennial love and millennial attitudes, the actual people that are in the villa are Gen Z. So I feel that maybe millennials are watching, but Gen Z is doing the action. And then as far as I know things about Gen Z, you know, them saying, we don't necessarily want monogamy,

we don't necessarily want to get married, we don't necessarily want to get married, we don't necessarily want to be straight. I don't really feel that the show is betraying that. Olivia, do you want to come back on that? No, look, I completely agree with Nikki. I think, you know, the show absolutely needs to diversify itself. But going back to what she said previously about, you know, it's a shame that the contestants have to go through these things

in order for people to actually understand how they work. First of all, I think we have to acknowledge that, unfortunately, these issues are very common. And gaslighting and emotional abuse happen in relationships, particularly in relationships between men and women, where there are those kind of traditional gender roles at play. And I think the point I'm trying to make here is that a woman might watch that and think, oh, that has actually happened to me. And actually recognize that they might have gone through something like that and that's so important when we talk about these things because so often women would go through something like that and would be made to feel by their abusive partner that they're going crazy or that they are in quotation marks psycho and just going back to what she said about female sexuality you know I

think that is also a really important thing to discuss the way that women are divided into these sorts of good girls and bad girls. And this is something that I talk about in my book, Millennial Love, because I think it's so important that we recognize that, unfortunately, again, this is a very realistic part of the society that we live in where female sexuality is presented as a shameful thing. So when I say I'm a fan of the show, that doesn't mean I advocate for everything that happens on it, but I think it highlights a lot of these very real issues that we need to continue talking about. And that's my point, is when something like this happens on Love Island, when a female contestant is slut-shamed, for example, which unfortunately does happen, it's spoken about on Twitter and it actually starts a really, really important conversation that we need to keep having.

It's important to say, of course, that ITV has announced lots of new duty of care protocols during this series. For example, the contestants are going to get training on social media. They'll have a minimum of eight therapy sessions when they return home. So there is a greater mental health support. I mean, how do you think, Nikki, this translates to real life dating? I mean, if we're thinking about particularly young people who've been like we all have, you know, in lockdown for the last year or so, can we learn much from Love Island in relation to the way young people are dating and meeting each other right now? Really good question, because obviously what is going to happen on Love Island is this privilege

of all living together, spending actually an obscene amount of time together, which you never do in real life, and also being put on this kind of escalator to the goal of the end, which is actually about prize money as much as it is about coupling up. So that's really not how society works. I mean, you could argue that actually people are in a relationship escalator they're encouraged to get married and they're encouraged to kind of make as much money together as possible but that's been really cynical and I don't think actually lots of people do live their lives like that I think what's important is that during lockdown people have really slowed down their attitudes to dating and that there is a kind of slow dating movement on the horizon people have had little choice but to go slower.

And in many, in many areas, that's actually created better, deeper connections and allowed people more time about who they want to make a decision, you know, about spending the rest of their life with or not even the rest of their life, the rest of the week with. Equally, either of those are valid. So I just think the kind of heightened artificial elements of Love Island do make it a little bit difficult to extrapolate out actual real life dating behaviours. What do you think, Olivia? I mean, look, I think obviously it's a TV show and a lot of people watch that show and think, oh, that is so far removed from my life. But I think ultimately these contestants are filmed 24-7. And yes, we do only see a very edited version of that. But because they are in

this house all the time, we see the natural conversations that we have. And we see these issues that crop up between men and women in straight relationships, a lot of which are revolved around power. And I do think that that can be really beneficial for people. Like I said, particularly if you have been a victim of some of these abusive psychological abuse behaviors in the past and I think it can be I think it can be really helpful I just wonder um if people have been because of the lack of ability of going out to meet people during lockdown if people have been more inclined to get back with with old romances I mean we've seen Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are apparently getting back together and Olivia am I right that you've actually got back together with an ex?

Is that right? Yes, but I've been asked about this before. I promise it wasn't just because it was going into lockdown. But yeah, that is something. We believe you, of course. We do have to be careful about that because I think some people might be inclined to think, oh, well, they're just being lazy because they can't be bothered to go back on the dating app scene, which we know is incredibly complex and incredibly difficult. And so, you know, it could be very easy to just think, oh, well, I'm just going to go back to the last person who I know cared about me and loved me.

I just think if you're going to do that, you know, just think very carefully about why you're making that decision. do you think nikki that the the landscape has has changed not necessarily forever but now post lockdown people are just having to approach relationships in a different way yeah like i said before i think people are much more thoughtful and reflective than they were in the past they've had but it's funny though i was going to say to you one of my one of my friends rushed and got together with someone really quickly and moved in with them because they kind of thought well i've got to form a bubble with this person. And then you just wonder if you lose the fun and the kind of the long term.

If it's slower, maybe it's more fun. Well, yeah, maybe to some extent they've lost the spontaneity. I've got some friends that did the same, actually. But for the majority of people that I talk to, they think I'm actually going to be more careful about who I go out with. I'm going to have higher standards for myself. I'm going to accept better behavior and not accept poor behavior from people.

And it's interesting because when you look at the history of dating, like I've done in my book, apparently the Victorians used to use two years as the average length of courtship. And they thought that was the perfect amount of time by which to decide you wanted to get engaged and be married. Has anyone got two years to wait now? Well, I waited how many years? Three, four years before I got married to my husband last November. But there's something to be said on both counts for deciding, actually, you know what, time's running out. This person's great. Let's have a go at it. And also, you know what, I've got plenty of time. I'm not going to rush into anything. Olivia, do you think it's possible to

avoid bad relationships? Can we educate ourselves, whether it's possible to avoid bad relationships can we educate ourselves whether it's through watching Love Island or whatever to learn to see those warning signs and avoid those bad relationships? I do yeah I think the ultimate thing that we need to keep doing is talking about it and we just need to keep talking about these issues that we have been conditioned to normalise so for example the way that you know a woman who talks about sex a lot we then expect her to behave a certain way sexually and we do see that on love island a lot with contestants like megan barton hansen and maura higgins and when they do actually have those moments on screen and we empathize with them when they've

been slut shamed i think that is important because then it starts a conversation between you and your friends and think oh well has this happened to you yes this has happened to me and ultimately that's all we can do is just keep talking about it and listening and trying to understand and I do think that that is one thing that Love Island can offer people. Olivia thank you for joining us Nikki thank you for joining us Olivia Petter there and Nikki Hodgson speaking to us as Love Island starts today got one tweet coming here from Rowdy saying, I want a programme called Kebab Island. It's a place where you end up at 3am in the morning

crying into a kebab alone. I think it's a real winner. Thank you for that. Also, other people getting in touch with this on the breastfeeding story. Trafica said, I grew up in a Muslim country in Algeria. And from an early age, I used to see aunts and other women breastfeeding their babies openly

in the presence of grandfathers and uncles. There was no awkwardness. Where are these negative derogatory comments coming from? Thank you for listening to Woman's Hour today. It's good to have your company. Keep your messages coming in. I'll be back again tomorrow at 10. Hi, I'm Matthew Side and I'd like to invite you to see the world differently with my podcast Sideways. Those societies and social networks begin to act as a brain, a collective brain unto itself. Sideways is all about the ideas that shape our lives.

And in this series, I'll get to grips with the myth of mind control. This is your subliminal programming tape on smoking control. He is what I would consider to be a quack charlatan. And I'll find out why it's so hard to be original. For all this and more, subscribe've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's 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.