Woman's Hour - Bananarama, The Baby, Tour De Femmes

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward from Bananarama come into the Woman's Hour studio to talk about how it all started, their friendship and their new album, Masquerade.The Baby is a new TV drama about a woman who suddenly gets a baby. It literally lands in her arms without warning. What's she going to do when she never wanted a baby in the first place? We have Michelle de Swarte who plays 38-year-old Natasha who finds herself with the baby, and Executive Producer Naomi De Pear.This Sunday we've got the Tour de France Femmes. It’s been called a “seminal” moment for women’s cycling because for the first time women will be able to wear the yellow jersey across eight days of gruelling cycling. We have Dani Every from British Cycling and cyclist Elinor Barker, an Olympic gold medallist and five-time world champion. This week the government launched its Women's Health Strategy, pledging to take women's health much more seriously, at every stage of a woman's life. Period education is only briefly mentioned, but we talk to Chella Quint, teacher and period campaigner, about her ideas to get it into the school curriculum for boys and girls.

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. Good morning and welcome to Woman's Hour here on BBC Radio 4. So today I've got a giant dollop of pop royalty for you who can rock a pair of dungarees and a headscarf but equally be slick and sensational. Keren and Sarah from Bananarama give us the lowdown on their new album Masquerade. What would you do if a baby fell out of the sky into your arms?

And what if you absolutely didn't want a baby, but the baby was determined to stay? Well, a new comedy horror takes this on. The Baby, a miniseries, deals with the challenges around motherhood and friendships. So I'd like to hear from you today. I'd like to hear how your friendships changed after a baby came along. Did your friend having a baby change the dynamics of your relationship? Did friendships strengthen or fall away? We're all familiar, aren't we, with the Tour de France, which champions men's cycling. But how familiar are you with the Tour de Femme? For the first time in over 30 years, women will have the chance to wear the yellow jersey

across eight days of gruelling climbs through the streets of Paris and the hills of the French countryside. So what will this do for the sport at grassroots level? Will it encourage you to get your bike out of the shed? This week, the government launched its Women's Health Strategy, pledging to take women's health much more seriously at every stage of a woman's life. We talked about it on wednesday education is included in the strategy which only a couple of

lines um they just give us a couple of lines about periods though how should we teach children about periods how can we tackle taboos chela quinn says that she has some answers for us you can get in touch with us text is Woman's Hour 84844 Texts are going to be charged at your standard message rate. Check with your network provider for exact costs. On social media it's at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our

website. So then if you're a child of the 80s this band needs absolutely no introduction. So Bananarama are back with their 12th studio album. It's called Masquerade. The band has had different configurations over the years, beginning as a trio, but the pop duo always at the heart of it.

Sarah Dallin and Keren Woodward have been together for 40 years, friends for even longer than that. They were listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most successful female group of all time. I've now had 30 hits, selling 30 million records worldwide. Sarah and Keren, welcome to Woman's Hour. How does all that sound? Thank you.

Thank you, yes, wonderful. It sounds impressive when you put it like that. It is impressive. And I need to start by saying that, Keren, you remind me of my friend Jeanette and you dance like her as well. Thank you. And Sarah, you remind me of my friend Sharon and you dance like her as well and sarah you remind me of my friend sharon and you dance like her as well so you know photos it's like gorgeous both of them thank you let's start off with you know the beginning of it all so you

met in a school playground what do you remember about each other from back then we were very sporty so i think we were drawn together with our love of running basically running and jumping and playing karen had a fantastic selection she had and playing. Karen had a fantastic selection. She had very straight hair. She had a fantastic selection of hair bubbles, cola cubes and all kinds of things. I was very jealous. And her mum made her clothes,

so she always had these incredibly short mini skirts and fabulous fabrics. Ridiculously short homemade dresses. So did your mum go on to make any clothes for you when you were in Bananarama then? No but my grandma's sewing machine was utilised on many occasions to make to rustle up clothes that we all wore. Right yeah still got it. Wonderful. So Paul Cook then from the Sex Pistols first discovered you. How did those draft pieces go from hair bobbles in the playground to Bananarama? Well I was at the London College of Fashion

training to be a journalist. And while I was there, we were staying, Karen and I were staying in the YWCA opposite the British Museum. That closed down and we had met Paul in a club. This was early 80s, so he'd finished with the Pistols by then. But he said, you can live in this above our rehearsal room. So it was like Malcolm McLaren's office.

We moved in, it had no hot water, no bathroom. I mean So it was like Malcolm McLaren's office. We moved in. It had no hot water, no bathroom. I mean, it was a hovel. But they used to come and rehearse downstairs with their new band. And Karen and I used to go down and do backing vocals. I learned to play the bass and we were playing the drums. It was just an introduction into that world.

And Paul said, why don't you guys, you know, get together? And I met Siobhan at the London College of Fashion. So the three of us set about recording demos. Yeah, I call her the beret-wearing Siobhan Fahey. Yeah, we all loved a beret. We all loved a beret. Rocked a beret. So you had no intention of being musical then

before you actually met Paul Cole? Well, we were very musical. I mean, we spent... At school, yeah. Well, we were in all the school musicals, the school choir. We spent most of our spare time with a cassette recorder, recording ourselves singing along with Barbara Streisand and various other people, trying to emulate them

and making up dance routines. So we didn't consider it as a career, but it was kind of in us, the sort of love of music. Yeah, I don't think as a female you think that's an option. Certainly back in the 70s, you don't think, oh, well, girls can go on to be singers in the way that it was such a male-dominated industry and probably still is.

But fortunately, there are more females coming forward now, coming through, yeah. Talking about that then, you've sold, as we've said, 30 million records worldwide. We need to keep saying that because that is phenomenal, isn't it you do you feel you were recognized by the music industry at the time i don't think so i think when we started off and we were very young and uh we looked pretty if i may be so bold to say reasonably pretty and i think people wouldn't judge you just by the way you looked so it was quite hard to quite hard to get respect or any credibility.

But I think a 40-year career does demand a little bit of attention. There you go, longevity says it all. But how did you feel when all that was happening? Did you have a sense of what you wanted your image to be? We were lucky in some ways. I think in some ways we had more freedom than you might have now in some cases. You know, they let us, you know, we had no freedom than you might have now in some cases. Yeah, a great record company. You know, they let us, you know, we had no stylists or any of that.

And because it worked, they sort of let us get on with it from that point of view. So the record company were very supportive of us. I think there may be journalists, people in the industry at that time probably didn't give us the respect that we should have had just for the fact that it was so personal to us. There was no-one manipulating us. But we wrote our own stuff. I was 26 when a journalist wrote,

well, they're pushing 30, they should stop now. And then Karen was 24 when she had a baby. And it was really like, well, that's it, you should call it a day. Their mother's pushing 30, really, they're not our demographic anymore. That's sort of coming from people who you want to play your music, which is absolutely outrageous. How did it feel for you? Do you remember how it felt at the time? I remember when I had Thomas, which was right in the middle of it,

and we were number one in the States when I found out I was pregnant. And it was almost, I was ashamed and embarrassed that I might be letting people down because it was not really part of the image of what people wanted. It is very sad, the way I felt about it. I mean, I was very determined and certainly I only had the one child, the best thing I ever did.

But I think there was a sort of pressure to not embrace motherhood and that would have gone for all of us and all women in the business at that time. It was like you're ruining everything by being a mother because you'll be perceived in a different way. I don't think that that is the case now, thank goodness. Well, I think about Siobhan, actually.

She was pregnant on one of the Top of the Pops appearances, wasn't she? I remember this fondly. Me and my friend Jude talk about it all the time, how beautiful it was to see a woman, a pop artist, pregnant on the telly. It was such a rare was to see a woman, a pop artist, pregnant on the telly. And it was such a rare thing to see. Yeah, she was just about a year after me, Siobhan got pregnant. It did rather interfere with our plans to tour, if I'm being perfectly honest. Two tours were postponed because of pregnancy.

We eventually managed to tour just after Siobhan left which was really sad Well we'll talk a bit more about friendships as well because we're using that as a bit of a theme today We're going to talk now about this new album called Masquerade ethereal synth-pop dance tracks nicknamed, and I've heard you call it a slice of gothic disco Shall we have a little listen to the title track? Let's gothic disco shall we have a little listen to the title track do you know what i really like about that i like that it sounds like bananarama and i can do

bananarama moves to it but there's a freshness as well to it is that what you were intending yeah i don't think you can ever plan how you're going to write what you write i just felt um we hadn't written an album for 10 years except for the last album in 2019 so we felt out wasn't it so it was a very different thing very um ready to do it and also we're self-releasing so we're completely in control of everything and at the end of the day, we own our own music. So there's no pressure. We're not thinking, oh, where's the chart position? We're top of the pot.

There's nothing like that now. So it's much more freeing. And it was written during lockdown, so it was quite a reflective album. It's a little bit of nostalgia there, a little bit of 80s sounding, but still, you know, fresh and new. So, yeah, I's we're really pleased with it it's lovely what about your Alice then she's on there a little bit isn't she your Alice yes Alice is um a singer-songwriter Alice D is her name she's got stuff coming out soon but

she was uh she doesn't live with me obviously she's grown up but she was in my bubble and she came over and there were a couple of demos and we started writing together. It wasn't really the plan, but that's how it turned out. And we loved, Karen and I love two of her songs, but particularly one called Favourite, which is on the album. So we covered two of them. So she's, you know, she's had an input in the album. It's kind of like a family affair. And it was just really easy and really kind of,

to use the word I don't like, organic. Was it nice having your daughter involved, though? Is it like another generation of Bananarama, dare I say? I found it... I mean, I wasn't involved in the couple that Sarah wrote with Alice, but I found them very moving when I heard them and I feel like it was this sort of fresh approach and from sort of not necessarily wanting to do a whole album, it inspired me to sort of fresh approach and from sort of not necessarily wanting to do a whole album it

inspired me to sort of think oh my god I love this new kind of vibe it gave us a bit of freshness I think that maybe we wouldn't have had had it just been the two of us and Alice is obviously I've known her since she was born it literally since she was born and the day you know watching her develop as an artist herself i spend my life crying at alice whereas she's hardcore she doesn't cry at all alice first sang to me when she was doing a school concert at the age of about 30 and i just sat with tears streaming down my face she's got the most lovely soulful natural voice i just find it's kind of r and b pop it's nothing like anything so again Yeah, it's kind of R&B pop. It's nothing like our thing.

So again, that was a different kind of coming at it from a different angle. Yeah, I think you can hear that. Different influence that Alice has had. You're Auntie Karen, aren't you? I am Auntie Karen. That's what aunties do. I know.

We used to laugh at our aunties when they used to cry at things. We're like, yeah, yeah, of course they've grown. Now I'm crying because people have grown. I just try and say, Sarah, what's wrong with you? Why are you crying when your daughter sings? Because I'm with her every step of the way. Beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. Let's go back then to Masquerade.

Let's go back to this video that was shot in southern Italy. Features you wandering around a castle looking very glamorous. A far cry from messing around with cars and mopping your brow in Muckedunteries. In this video of Cool Summer, which I was just enjoying so much do either of you still possess a pair of dungarees please say yes i do i do i've actually kept most of my stuff it's it's not nicely laid out between layers of tissue i mean it's stuffed in an old suitcase but it's all there maracas from i heard a rumor all the flouncy you know can can girl stuff yeah i have most of it i bought two pairs of dungarees recently because of you two.

Because me old pair didn't fit anymore. I'd like to hear, actually, if you're listening and you've got a pair of dungarees, I need to hear from you. And if it's Bananarama's fault, I need to know about that as well. So get in touch with us on Woman's Hour this morning. So let's just go back and talk a bit more about the relationship when you had children. You've talked about how it affected you in terms of tours, but relationships. We're going to talk a bit more about this miniseries, The Baby, which deals with friendships. And I remember, I don't know if you used to watch Sex and the City, I remember when Miranda had her baby.

And my friend that you remind me of, Sarah, Sharon, she was the first one among us to have a baby. It does change things. It does change things. I think because of the reasons I said before, I didn't want to give an inch to it and I worked as much as I possibly could and I was very sick when I was pregnant and we were in the States promoting and I was...

And also, because she was so young, I didn't... I don't think we understood. I was like, well, can you just do what you have to do and then come out clubbing? When I was vomiting. Yeah, it's just that you don't understand it. But for me... For God's sake, you're only pregnant, you're not at all.

Yeah, when I was pregnant, it was... Do you need to do an apology, do you think? Sorry. It was five years later that I had a baby, and I was like, well, I'm not flying to Japan. I need to be with my child. She's two years old, and I don't want to be away from her that long. So I kind of had a bit more control of it.

And what did you say to her then, Karen? I completely understood. And to be honest, I feel like I should have fought more from my end but like I said I sort of almost felt embarrassed and ashamed that I was ruining it for everyone else and I didn't really own and eventually it all affected me very much mentally and I had a bit of a breakdown because I was trying to be everything to everyone and as much as you know i did it for a certain amount of time i couldn't be mum artist clubber um all these things i was trying to just be exactly the same as i was before i was a mother and something had to give nobody really cares it's they don't really care

no one helped no one looked after no that's not good do you worry about young women in the music industry now? Yeah. I mean, I don't know how much it's changed because I'm not part of that. We do everything under our own steam and we've learnt over 40 years, you know, the control. But if it's the same as when we were young, at least there were three of us, so we kind of had each other to work.

But if you're a solo artist, you just need good lawyers and a great friend manager. I mean, you just need someone to protect you from those sort of things. Yeah, full on, isn't it? Yeah. And that Chavonne Fahey who liked to wear berets. She's been a bit of a boomerang, hasn't she, with Bananarama? Is she going to be popping up again at any point?

Well, we did a reunion tour with her in 2017. Which was a massive success. We'd seen her through the years and she'd never done a live thing for various reasons. We'd never toured with her. And Sarah and I have done so many live shows, festivals, tours. It was something we'd not done with her. And it was a pure celebration of our time together. And I can't say it was always a bed of roses when she left and we didn't always get on.

But when you get to a certain point in your life, you think, what was the big deal? You know, it's like there was nothing to fall out over we just moved separately but you know how it is when you're kind of really close to people and yeah but it was so much celebration and it was just that one-off thing so it was never going to be like she's coming back in the group because our paths have gone completely different directions and we've been a duo for 30 years so it'd be quite difficult to be a trio yeah can we just talk about um have you done glastonbury yet yes i thought you had 2019 would you be up for that again yes probably we had a great time we did have our usual panic will anyone turn up to see us um you do panic about that i can't believe it you're adored i, it's ridiculous but we do it every time is anyone going to come and see us?

and yeah the tent and field we were playing when they had to shut down for health and safety reasons so we needn't have worried and it was fantastic but we just love live performances and festivals and we've done quite a few this year

we've got a few more left so very exciting being up on stage and of course we do all the old hits and we slip a couple of new ones in and it's kind of just a fun thing to do. It's sweet the last time you were on in Sheffield it was part of Music in the Gardens at the Botanical Gardens and I'd lost my voice so I'd got the moves

of course I got the moves but I didn't have the singing so if you could come back to Sheffield soon that would be nice. How awful for you. Yes. It's been a joy to meet you both. Thank you so much. Oh, I do.

Thank you for having us on. Thank you. Such a joy. Thank you very much. You are listening to Paulette. This is Woman's Hour. And talking about babies, we've talked quite a bit about babies with Bananarama there. So imagine this. What if you suddenly found yourself in charge of a baby

that literally fell into your arms while you stood at the bottom of a cliff? A baby you don't want, you find a bit creepy, but a baby that very much wants you. Well, that's the premise of the new comedy horror, The Baby, currently showing on Sky Atlantic.

And now we meet 38-year-old Natasha, surrounded by friends who have new babies or are pregnant, but who isn't remotely interested in having a baby herself. In fact, she's struggling to adjust to all the changes that happen when friends start having children. And it's when she goes away to sort out her head that the baby of the title makes its unwanted appearance. The miniseries was created, written, directed

and executive produced by a female team. Joining me now are Michelle Desoit, who plays Natasha, and the executive producer, Naomi Deperre. Thank you so much for joining us. Good morning, Naomi and Michelle. Good morning. Can I start with you, Naomi? Can you just give us, I mean, I've kind of mentioned a little bit about the miniseries there, described as a comedy horror.

The idea of being landed with a baby that you didn't want. Why did you decide that you wanted to give us a little bit of this kind of action, Naomi? Well, I think for Lucy and Sian, the creators of the show, and for all of us on the core creative team, it felt like comedy horror was in a way the only logical choice in terms of genre with which to examine the way that society views motherhood and the pressures that are put on women around motherhood and to also celebrate kind of radical motherhood. It felt like the obvious choice. You know, it is it's a weird time having a baby and it feels like you've caught it off a cliff and you're just left there. You've got to figure out what you're going to do. And yeah, so it was an exciting script as soon as it came into Sister and we couldn't wait to make it. Should I need to give a spoiler alert for people who are pregnant

with their first babies, by the way, I think at this point. And I think part of what's interesting about this is that it gives us a new perspective, a different perspective, a kind of scary and brave perspective on motherhood. Naomi? Yeah, I hope so. I think, you know, there are a lot of depictions of motherhood, Naomi? Yeah, I hope so. I think, you know, there are a lot of depictions of motherhood on screen, but they're often quite white and heteronormative.

Like there's certain depictions that we're used to seeing. And I think one of the things we wanted to look at is making it strange again and looking at what is mothering and what is caregiving as opposed to just what does motherhood as we're normally shown it look like because it comes in all sorts of forms and that idea of caregiving and mothering is often seen you know often men are amazing mothers often often and and and we also wanted to look at the perspective of people that um can't necessarily have children in the normal when i say normal what is normal but in the heteronormative route hence the um story around uh natasha the main character's sister who is trying to adopt a baby you know we wanted people to look at mothering again in a more diverse way. Michelle, as the actress in this, you play Natasha,

what attracted you to this role then? I just loved that it showed a new, fresh perspective, you know, of the friends who sort of feels abandoned by her friends because their life is changing. And when I got the first script and read it, I was like, wow, this is how me and my friends interact without any of the fluff and the cuteness. This is how we speak to each other. Obviously, Natasha is a bit more on the abrasive side and unfiltered, but I really, I was just really captivated by the script.

We're going to look now at a little bit of, you know, what it sounds like. And your character is finding it hard, as you said, to adjust to her friends having babies, less time for friendship group. In this clip, she just had a falling out with one friend who brought a baby to their get-together, spent most of the time distracted by the crying,

possible dirty nappies. Also just found her other friend is pregnant. A little bit of language in here, but let's have a listen. Are you going to turn into a massive arsehole when you have a baby? My promises. How pregnant are you? Three months. So it's not too

late. I'm joking. It's a joke. No. It's a joke. No. It's a joke. Christ. I love you and I'm sorry you're finding this hard. So what is it then, you think, Michelle, that Natasha is finding so difficult and can you relate to it? There's aspects that I can relate to.

I think that when your friends have children, there's an adjustment and some room that you need to make. And I think Natasha is dealing with the fact that although she hasn't made the choice to have children, her life is still going to change. Right. And I think you have to kind of make a choice as you get older and your friends have different choices to you that like are you going to accommodate those choices that your friend has made and yes it is going to change your life not necessarily for the worse but I think what Natasha's dealing with is just this sense of abandonment by it all and she goes on this emotional roller coaster where her hand is forced to kind of get a taste of what her friends are experiencing.

I'd love to hear from you about this, actually. You can get in touch and let me know how a baby in your friendships, you know, the baby, the new baby, the first baby, any of the babies that have been introduced by your friends into your friendship have had an impact on you. Has it been a good impact? You know, has it affected the relationship, the friendship in a bad way? You can text Women's Hour on 84844.

We're on social media. We're at BBC Women's Hour on Twitter and Instagram. You can also email us through our website. So can I just go back to you, Naomi? Let's talk about the work and how it all came together because, as I mentioned in the introduction, it was an all-female team. Do you think being in an all-woman team kind of helped with the nuances of the story and the general theme of motherhood and caregiving that you talk about?

I think so, yeah. I mean, it was quite a diverse team. There were men on the team as well but the core creative team was female yeah and I think in a way we we all had skin in the game we were either mothers ourselves or we were women who would experience the pressure from society to view motherhood in a certain way um and I think when uh the core creative team is always uh has all got an itch to scratch then you end up with something that perhaps has quite a lot to say. But yeah, it was a very female crew as well. But we often have very female crews

and we don't need to positively discriminate because there's just so many talented women out there that we just always hire the best people for the job. And Michelle, I still think that we're not great at accepting childlessness, especially childlessness by choice from women do you feel as if that's dealt with in this I think what this show does is give a good illustration from a number of perspectives and yeah I completely agree with you I think when a woman says I don't want children it's society sort of sees it as very

suspicious and kind of gives you this feeling that you might regret it. In fact, you probably will. Your mind will change. And although that can be true, I personally know that some of the beliefs that I had in my 20s, I still hold today. So I think that this show does quite a good job of showing a plethora of, you know, different points of view. And I think especially for myself, Natasha's point of view in this is one that I hold also, you know. But with Natasha, it's funny because she's not charmed by this baby at all. And although she is a caregiver, I don't think it necessarily means that you have to have this maternal instinct, you know, and like, what is a maternal instinct anyway? It's all very interesting, isn't it? Can I ask you both? I

know this was made before the news on the Roe versus Wade reversal, but are you hoping people are going to think about the obvious connections about being forced into a parenting situation are you trying to put people off having children i mean i i think that you know sometimes politics can run in unison with something that you're watching on tv and although my personal opinions are that women should have full agency over their body I think that what would be a shame would be to exclude anyone from possibly starting a conversation that is needed right so I think regardless of what your views are about um choice or pro-life I don't I still think you should watch the show you know it might start off an important conversation. It was we were quite I mean as a creative team I think we were shocked that that particular issue is back on the table in such a forceful way recently you know when

we started developing the show we were really developing it to look at motherhood and the concept of it in society and I think we all feel it's a great shame that it's back that that particular issue is back on the table but it is very relevant to the show you know because actually the show is very much about women's bodies as a political playground and why why women's bodies are viewed as public property, because clearly they're not. But it's very frightening to think we're in 2022 and that a horror show about motherhood could feel so prescient still. In a way, I wish that we didn't have to make that point anymore. But we apparently we do. And it's terrifying. It's a horror show in itself.

Michelle, can I ask you finally, they say that you shouldn't work with animals or children. Would you agree with that? How was the how was the baby in all of this? The babies. Oh, of course, it would have been a number, wouldn't they? Yeah. Yeah. There was a number of babies. I was really lucky. I was supported by the crew and the team and mum and dad were really trusting with me. And I still see the babies. So, yeah, it was all right. Also, it's my second acting job, so I don't really know any different. Maybe on my next job, I can come back and tell you that, you know, maybe it's not the best idea.

But right now I was like, yeah, it's fine. Well, it's been great. I was just going to say Michelle was amazing with the baby and um he was he was very very uh those twins were really good on set but um it is quite a difficult feat that Michelle achieved holding a baby so that it feels comfortable whilst looking as if you never want to hold the baby again as the character that she was playing, which was the tightrope. Parents trusted of us, we're all right. Actress and comedian Michelle Desuartes, who plays Natasha in The Baby and executive producer Naomi Depayre. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm looking forward to seeing this. Very excited about it. So then, on to something a bit more serious. Keeping women safe.

Now at the heart of the world's largest dating app, Tinder, according to its new female chief executive, Renata Nyborg. Tinder has announced today that it has joined forces with a campaign group called No More, aiming to end domestic violence. There have been plenty of studies, several by the BBC, all showing an increase in crime, including rape, on online dating platforms. And earlier this year, a third of young people surveyed by the BBC

said they'd faced sexual harassment or abuse on a date set up via an app. Denise Ouar is the Deputy Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition. And Denise is with us for a chat. Good morning, Denise. Hi, Paulette. Hi. Hi. What do you think about Tinder's announcement today then, Denise? Yeah, I mean, so the new safety features that have been announced today, we think are a small step towards, you know, encouraging users to report harassment, for example.

But we're really clear that they don't go anywhere near far enough to address the disproportionate amount of abuse and the scale of that abuse that women are experiencing on a daily basis online, on apps like Tinder. And I'm talking about things all the way from cyber flashing, image-based sexual abuse, sometimes referred to as revenge porn, rape threats, as you said, and rape or assault of dating abusers. And we know that this is a massive issue for women and girls in their daily lives. One in five of us has experienced harassment or abuse online and women are 27 times more likely than men to face this abuse. So, you know, these safety features, they're all well and good if they

increase users' reports of harassment and abuse, but they really need to be followed up by action and consequences in a timely manner. And we know that this currently isn't the case. I think you made mention of the BBC Three investigation, which recently found that the number of reported sexual offences linked to dating apps doubled just before the pandemic. really want to see the conversation around this, but also the approach that tech companies are taking to kind of take a different direction. So, you know, we're talking about, you know, women's safety and that kind of safety work element of things. But really what we want to really focus on is moving on from these sorts of features that are about educating women, us, how to stay safe online or putting the responsibility on our shoulders to take extra steps to keep ourselves safe, but actually coming back to addressing the root cause of the problem. So addressing

the sort of harmful actions of perpetrators and educating male users about what is and isn't acceptable and also having like really clear and consistent consequences for when abuse takes place so we know that it's not tolerated anywhere in any part of our society and you know online being one of those spaces. Denise are you encouraged by the fact that the new chief executive mentions the need to employ more women and make the company more diverse are you encouraged by that? I was interested to hear her say that. And on the one hand, I'd say yes. Of course, I'd say yes, it's great to see more women at the top holding positions of power, especially given that the tech sector is typically dominated by men.

So I'd say yes, absolutely, representation is important. But then I'd go one step further and say the answer is bigger than one woman or as the chief exec said, 30% of women at the top. We really want, you know, for the approach of that company or that organisation to change, representation is only part of it. What we want to see is the issues and the approach to those issues changing too, in a way that they're centering women and girls' equality, our rights, and also our safety. And I suppose my final thought on it would be, why are women always expected to step in and fix male behaviour? We also want to see, you know, men holding one another to account too. There's a racial element to this as well, isn't there, Denise? Yeah, absolutely.

I think we always need to be careful that when we're talking about women's experiences in particular, that we don't talk about it as one thing. We know that racialised harassment and abuse online is a huge problem. So we know that black women are 84% more likely to receive abusive tweets than white women. And that's absolutely huge. And if we don't embed the principles of around equality and rights and freedom, then the response will only fit some cohorts of women if we're thinking just about limited safety features. But if we centre the principles of equality, women's equality and rights and freedoms, then we've got a much better hope of, you know, the online safe being,

the online space being safe for all women and not just one particular cohort or a couple of particular cohorts of women. There needs to be a push, doesn't it? It's a business. They're making money. They're making money out of potentially women's misery if they're not careful. How do we make them more accountable then? How do we do that? Yeah, I think that's one of the things that I find sometimes missing from the conversation, and that is the fact that these tech companies like Tinder, for example, they're ultimately profiting massively from a business model that is allowed to ignore the abuse that takes place on its platform. So absolutely, you're right.

It's critical that they're held to account for ensuring the safety of their users. And that's why we've got a really set clear of calls for the government, given the introduction of a new online safety law to kind of explicitly address this in that law. And I'd be happy to speak a bit more about that if I've got a bit of time. Yes. Yes. I want to know. Great. So, yeah, I mean, you know, this basically as I'm coming back to talking about sort of freedoms and equality, what we really want to do is ensure that this new law really has the teeth to make tech companies step up and act. And our fear and our very real concern is that it's all failing at the first hurdle. So the law doesn't even name the problem of violence against women. So we're really clear that without this,

we don't think that tech companies will be able to be made to focus on the issue and fix it. So that's why we and actually more than 60,000 people who are supporting our campaign are calling for the government to simply be explicit and name and address the problem of gendered violence against women and girls. And what about users of the app? Can I just get that in before I let you go? Because that's quite crucial, isn't it, to get the thrust of that group of people involved as well? Because there might often be a bit of shame, maybe a bit of guilt around this. Absolutely. I mean, we know that dating apps are one of the most popular ways

that people use to meet each other for all sorts of things. So we know that, you know, of those people that are supporting our campaign, we are all those women that are experiencing abuse on those platforms, but also in wider tech spaces. And another thing that we've done that, you know, we really don't understand why the government aren't taking the steps they need. So together with our coalition partners, we've done a really good bit of the hard work and the thinking.

And what we've crafted is a ready-to-use set of guidelines, which is something called a code of practice. And this is basically a set of requirements that would sit in the law and require tech companies to take action. Can we see that anywhere, Denise? Because I'm going to have to, I know this is very important. Is there anywhere we can go and have a look at that? Absolutely.

So I'm here speaking on behalf of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, and we have both a petition online. So do visit our socials, but also the code of practice. And I would say that if this code of practice were adopted, the UK would be the first country in the world to hold tech companies to account. So if this legislation will keep being spoken about as, you know, world leading once in a generation, then we really need to understand, we really need to see the government demonstrate this in practice. Denise, thank you very much. Denise

Uwe, who is from End Violence Against Women Coalition, the End Violence Against Women Coalition. It seems we're getting quite a few messages actually coming through, especially about dungarees. We've started something with Bananarama and the dungarees, haven't we? I'll read some of those after my next item, which is going to give me the opportunity to practice a little bit of my school French. I'm going to show off a bit here. So this Sunday sees the return of the Tour de France Femme. It's been dubbed a seminal

moment for women's cycling, as for the first time in over 30 years, women will have the chance to wear the yellow jersey across eight days of gruelling climbs through the streets of Paris and the hills of the French countryside. It begins on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on the same day that the men's tour ends. Dani Evry is the cycling delivery director at British Cycling

and encourages participation from grassroots to elite level. And the cyclist Eleanor Barker also joins me. She's an Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion. I started by asking Dani why this is such a historic moment. Well, the Tour de France Femme is a real watershed moment for the sport. We believe that this can take women's cycling to the next level, make household names out of our current crop of riders and just inspire more women and girls to get on their bikes.

We don't know much yet. You know, talk about household names. We've not got to that level. We're aware of a few names from the Olympics. We need to take it bigger than that, though, don't we? That's right. At British Cycling, we saw a huge spike in membership and participation around 2012 in London

and when Sir Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France. So we understand that the bigger this event gets, the more that we're likely to be able to inspire the next generation. And in fact, the British riders will all have their own role models that they've grown up admiring and dreaming of following in their footsteps in terms of Dame Laura Kenny, Nicole Cook and many others. So we hope that that's the path that will follow for the Tour de France Femme.

It's filling you with glee. I can see that on your face. Eleanor, you're off this year because you've recently had a baby. Congratulations. Would you like to be getting in your Lycra now and heading off down the chancelise yeah i mean as much as i'm very very happy with my current situation um god it would be incredible to be there uh in paris this week and having the opportunity to be the first woman in the yellow jersey insane but i've got a bunch of teammates who are racing it and I'll be rooting for them so I feel just as excited I think um as if I was racing it just the fact that it's happening and that I'm going to get to watch it on tv it's wonderful isn't it we'll talk about where we can

see it in just a moment what about what the women's euros have done then are you hoping for a similar response among women's cycling yeah I think Yeah. And I think what's so important and so special about it is that, as Danny said, every time there's an Olympics, there's a massive uptake in people taking part in cycling. But for me, the London Olympics had such a massive impact on my life because I was already riding a bike at that point. I was a teenager. I think I was about 17 when it was on. And I'd always felt a little bit embarrassed talking about it in school. And it was kind of not really a cool thing to do. So I actually didn't really tell many people that I was a cyclist.

And then suddenly we came back to school the summer after London 2012 and everybody had seen Laura Kenny and Lizzie Deidman and Victoria Pendleton. And suddenly it was kind of cool to be a cyclist and everyone was actually interested in it rather than rolling their eyes at me a little bit. And I think having that accessibility to those role models, it didn't just matter to me because I already knew who all of those people were. But the girls I went to school with had no idea. And making it accessible to everyone, I think, is really, really important and has a massive impact in.

I mean, it certainly impacted my enjoyment of my own cycling. Wonderful. So it was probably already cool. It was always cool, but it just took other people a bit of time to catch up, which is what we're kind of doing now. So, Dani, how can we watch this tour then? How can we see it on our screens um it's i mean it's brilliant that fans can watch the racing live for your sport and on discovery plus and also there'll also be uh plenty on social media platforms uh and we know there is a sort of fervent and growing audience out there sort of desperate to see more women's racing on TV. And it seems that at the moment we have to pay to be able to see it. We need it on Freeview, don't we, so that it can attract more people, so that it can have an impact on more people?

Absolutely. I'm hugely biased, but we'd love to see it on free-to-air TV and broadcast platforms. What we do know about women's sport is that it does take some time. Hopefully this race will grow from strength to strength develop a lot more interest with the major broadcasters and it won't be long before we're all watching it on free to air. Eleanor can I ask you about this eight day ride then and what it would be like it must be quite hard to pull yourself up those those French hills can I just talk a little bit about how gruelling this is?

It seems like one of the most excruciating things you can do in the world of sport. Yeah, I agree, especially when being exposed to the kind of weather conditions that we've seen in the last few weeks, it's really, really tough. I think the course for next week is going to be really interesting because there's quite a variety of stages so there's actually some days that are really quite short and sprint stages that'll be almost i mean not quite a rest day but almost a rest day for some of the riders there um because it's just not that long and then it uh it kind of builds up to this really really hilly stage at the end um

which goes up quite a famous mountain in france and i think that's probably where the gc race is going to be decided um and so the kind of everything leading up to it is just going to be setting yourself up for a good place into this last mountain stage which is going to be really really important. So is that La Super Planche, just to practice a bit more of my French? Yeah, I wasn't going to try and say it. And it reminds me, I don't know if you've seen this animation,

a film called Belleville Rendezvous, where it's a little old lady, Madame Souza, and she wants to rescue her cycling grandson from the mafia. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it's enough to put you off cycling. Have you seen it, Danny? No, I really haven't. You must. I don't know it'll put you off. Mind you, it'll put me off because I've never really cycled.

So it already puts me off. But at some point, I know that one of you is going to say, Paulette, you need to get off your lazy bum and get on a bike. Is it going to be you, Danny, that says it to you? It definitely is. One of the great things about um this this event um is that we can all relate to it so whether you go to commute to work or whether you're uh just playing with your friends or out with uh out with the family we all know the pain

of of uh climbing a hill at whatever pace and we also know the joy and freedom of descents and just being on the open road or in a safe environment like a forest or something. So I am absolutely going to say to you that this is the moment for you to dust out on your bike and get out there and feel the joy and freedom of cycling. Oh, well, the last time I cycled was on the Monsell Trail in Derbyshire, and I fell off my bike twice. So I think I do need a little bit of encouragement as to what to do, Eleanor, when you fall off your bike. How do you get yourself back up, dust yourself off and get on with it again? Because I just wanted to walk at the side of my bike and that shouldn't really be an option, should it, Eleanor?

I mean, it's always an option. I suppose the thing about cycling is that the race doesn't stop. There's no time out. So you just have to get back on. If you've any ambitions of being in the bike race, you've got to get back on. So you almost don't have time to think about it and think about what hurts where.

You just get on and go and try and get back to the peloton as quickly as possible. Wonderful. So who are we looking out for then? Who are the names that we need to watch out Wonderful. So who are we looking out for then? Who are the names that we need to watch out for when we're watching this on the telly? I would say, if I were to guess at the moment, I think that the race for the GC, for the overall,

is likely going to be between Marianne Vos and Annemiek van Vleuten. In terms of British riders, my kind of slightly biased choice as to who I'd look out for would be my teammate Joss Loudon. She's a former hour record holder. She's a national champion in the time trial. And I think she's built for these mountains. I think she's super motivated and hopefully is going to be up for at least a stage win, I expect. Yeah. And you in the future, obviously, we need to look out for you, Eleanor.

Fingers crossed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a bit devastated, to be honest, to be missing this year. But there's always next year. So hopefully I'll be I'll be on the start line then. Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion cyclist Eleanor Barker and Danny Every, Cycling Delivery Director at British Cycling, speaking to me about the Tour de Femmes. So it's all very exciting that, isn't it? And maybe I will get my bike out. We have been talking about dungarees.

It's Bananarama's fault. They were on earlier talking about their early days when dungarees seemed to be part of their staple kit. So I've been asking you about your dungarees and whether or not you've still got a relationship with a pair. I've got multiple pairs, says this message, and while I can't directly blame Bananarama, I saw them in the Newport Centre circa 1986,

and that day lives with me to this. Special place in my heart for Bananarama, I feel uplifted when I hear Venus and transported back to being a kid, which is lovely, isn't it? The music still sounds great. And yes to the new album, says this message. Dungarees? Aye, of course.

I swear to goodness, she says, says this message rather. I hear Bananarama and I feel I have the moves. I've no doubt that you've got the moves. I love Bananarama, says this message. Great hearing them on the show. I'm a retired 67 year old teacher. I've been wearing my dungarees for years. I didn't know the girls would be on the show this morning, but this is what I choose to wear. I chose to wear them. Angie, you were right on. Really, really right on it with those dungarees today. Love Bananarama in the 80s, says this message. A proud dungaree wearer now,

thanks to the wonderful Lucy and Yak. That's from Sarindra. And I had my first baby when I was 23 in 1989, says this message. Felt very cool in my dungarees with hair tie Bananarama style. Oh, Claire. Replaced those dungarees last year, age 55,

with more current style as advised by my grown-up daughter. Still love Bananarama and dungarees last year, age 55, with more current style, as advised by my grown-up daughter, still love Bananarama and dungarees. Claire, you do what you want. She'll be fine, but you do what you want. I'm actually wearing dungarees today, says Deb. Sadly, nothing to do with Bananarama, but because they're comfortable and stylish. I'm 63. Not that that should have anything to do with what clothes I wear. Deb, you're right. It's got absolutely nothing to do with what clothes you wear. So then, what about this? This week, the government launched its Women's Health Strategy,

pledging to take women's health much more seriously at every stage of a woman's life. If you caught Wednesday's programme, you'll have heard the Women's Health Minister, Maria Caulfield, and Women's Health Ambassador, Dame Lesley Rager, discuss its aims. Education is included in the strategy, but when it comes to periods, it states, and I quote, girls and boys should receive high-quality, evidence-based education

on menstrual and gynaecological health from an early age. And that's it. So what should period education mean in practice and how can it be implemented? One teacher and period campaigner has a very clear idea and wants period education to more than just be the period talk that girls get. She's Chella Quint and she's here to chat to us this morning. Chella, good morning. Good morning. So how do you feel then about these few quick lines about period education in this new strategy? I'm so frustrated. I mean, there are so many aspects of the strategy that are actually really positive steps forward around aspects of reproductive health.

But the period stuff has been sort of sidelined and they're saying, oh, yeah, maybe in 10 years we'll get to it. Literally, these little bullet points. Oh, 10 years. I say give me 10 weeks. I've got a plan. So you've got 10 weeks, you've got a plan. How are you going to implement that, though? How are you going to get that past the school that you worked in and past the research that you did to be in law, something that has to happen and that has a wider effect on not just education around periods, but around the taboo of periods as well? So I want us to look at menstrual literacy nationally as a strategy. Menstrual literacy is all the stuff around learning about periods,

knowing how to read a period, not just for people menstruate, but for everybody. So I've got a curriculum model that puts periods into every subject. And I'm inviting teachers this summer to come and do some voluntary workshops while we're in the planning stages of the year so that next autumn we can trial some lessons where, say, when kids are learning about averages in maths, they can learn about the averages of a menstrual cycle or where they're learning about how to rapid prototype a new product and design and technology. It might be a new design of cloth pad. And in English, if they're analysing advertising, why not an old menstrual product advert from the 1940s or 50s? Those things are a really clear example of how we got those taboos in the first place.

Do you really think that schools will take this up then, Chella? Because there's a lot of, well, should we call it period insecurity? I don't know if I've just created a phrase there. I think you have. Menstrual taboos can have people feeling shame and discomfort and not even realising it sometimes. The way we first learned about periods, whether we have them or not, can often create this awkward feeling. So the first activity I'm going to do with anyone who volunteers to take part over the summer is look at internalised menstrual shame, because we have to explore where we're at and how we learned about periods before we can teach it. But it's often about those teachable moments. If lots of lessons have a little bit about periods, it's spread across the curriculum. So, you know, we've both been teachers.

If you have to teach literacy in your lesson, even if that's not your subject, you can. If you have to teach numeracy, we've learned how to disseminate it. But this is one of those few topics where there's so much uncomfortable sort ofness around it that you have to work on that first. And I'm inviting teachers to do it. Lots already have. This curriculum was first developed in 2018. It was shared with the government back then, but no one has taken it on. So I would like teachers to volunteer to get us some evidence to prove it works. And I would like the government to make it a priority, put this in the national curriculum. I'm calling it a period positive national curriculum, but I would like it to be the period positive national curriculum. I would like the government to,

that's something that a lot of us say, how are you going to make that difference? There's a lot of changes among, you know, among leadership, especially in the government at the moment. I think we've had five education ministers this year, four of them in the last two weeks. So I've spoken to some people in Parliament about it. The Sheffield MPs have helped me with a launch earlier this week. And then Baroness Chakrabarti was there as well, who's been a longtime supporter of this project. I'm going to be talking to some of the period poverty activist groups who have already found in their research that period poverty is not just poverty of products. A lot of young people

need more confidence to talk about menstruation before they'll even ask for the products. So I've got a coalition of volunteers, ready, willing and able. It's really just time for people in government to make this a priority. And I'm sorry, but 10 years from now is not a priority. So it's the how then, isn't it? To make it a priority, it needs to happen now. I was quite surprised that, you know, when I started my periods, when I was younger and thinking about my teenage years and how much of a taboo periods were then. So that's, you know, a while ago, 16 year old young women, 14 to 16 year old women, we were having a chat with them on BBC Radio Sheffield and there was the same amount of discomfort and taboos around it. Yes.

That's a long time. Are we going to wait that time again? We can't afford to, can we? Absolutely not. When it comes to women's health in general, Chela? No, I think it's outrageous that it's still going on. It was true for me. It took me until I was in my 20s to start even thinking about periods in an objective way and I don't want it to take that long for anyone else ever again we need to educate all genders of pupils and teachers so boys should be included now staff should be included it's really important to just make this like a normal part of everyday life I always say everybody had a room that was a womb we all grew up inside a uterus we all have the right to learn what they're like do you feel like a one-bound woman with this, Chela?

Absolutely not. So sometimes parents talk to me in my neighbourhood about periods. I've got somebody who's one of the school governors at the local primary school has already said, let's meet up. I want this to be happening at our school. Local teachers have been involved. Where I used to teach, I get to go back and work with the pupils and staff at my old school all the time. It's been such a privilege to sort of have this little sandbox to play in with these ideas. They're all on board.

Brighton Council worked with me three years ago. They invited me down, but again, to talk to the PSHE teachers. And that's not fair. It can't just be, we know one teacher, one talk, one time. It's got to be everybody because those teachable moments can undermine it. Thank you very much. I'm going to have to stop you there. Chella Quinn, author, teacher, founder of Period Poverty,

campaign to raise awareness around menstrual literacy. Thank you so much. I'm going to have to stop you there. Chella Quinn, author, teacher, founder of Period Poverty, campaign to raise awareness around menstrual literacy. Thank you so much for listening today. You can get more of Woman's Hour on BBC Sounds. I'm Paulette Edwards. you you you That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again soon. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in.

Available now.