Woman's Hour - Baroness Jacqui Smith, Global manosphere, Working from bed

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

What are the implications for girls and young women of Alan Milburn's review for the Government into rising levels of inactivity among 16 to 24-year-olds? There are currently just under a million young people in this age range dubbed NEETs because they are not in education, employment or training. Anita Rani speaks to former Labour Home Secretary Baroness Smith, now Minister for Skills, as well as Minister for Women and Equalities. A BBC investigation looks at on the global expansion of the manosphere and the social media algorithms which are driving young men towards increasingly extreme views on gender, relationships and masculinity. BBC Global Disinformation reporter Jacqui Wakefield examines the rise of two of the most influential manosphere figures in Latin American and Africa – El Temach in Mexico and, Andrew Kibe in Kenya. She joins Anita to tell her what it was like spending time with these influencers and about the women living with the real-life consequences of their influence. Would you ever consider working from your bed? Perhaps you do, by choice or otherwise? Dermatologist Dr Alexis Granite and The Archers Podcast's Emma Freud are both fans and join Anita. Jodi Kantor is a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist. In October 2017 she - alongside her colleague Megan Twohey - published a groundbreaking exposé in the New York Times detailing decades of sexual abuse allegations against the former film producer Harvey Weinstein - which galvanised the global MeToo movement. Jodi is back with a new book: How to Start, which is all about how to launch a career in uncertain times. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones

Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to the program. Jodie Cantor, Pullet's surprise-winning investigative reporter who, along with Megan Tuey, published the groundbreaking expose detailing decades of abuse by Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood. Well, now she's turned her attention to helping us get into not only jobs, but ensure we're fulfilled in our work. She'll be joining me to talk about her book, How to Start. A new documentary looking into the rise of the manosphere in Kenya and Mexico.

I'll be speaking to Jackie Wakefield, who went to both places to spend time with these influences and talk to both the men and women affected. And are you working from home this morning, or more specifically working from bed? Are you pinging off emails from your mattress, still in your pyjamas? How long can you spend there? Are you above or below the duvet? Is it admin only or fully formed empire running? would you do a meeting from bed or just emails?

What's your working from bed routine if you have one? Get in touch in the usual way. The text number is 84844. Am I working from bed? There's a question. You can email the program by going to our website and you can WhatsApp us, of course, on 0300-100-444. Your thoughts and opinions on working from bed this morning, please.

But first, young people are caught in a perfect storm. The words of Alan Milburn, yesterday published a government commissioned review into rising levels of inactivity among 16 to 24-year-olds. There are currently just under a million young people in this age range that are classed as NEETs, not in education, employment or training. That's one in eight of this cohort. Yesterday's report warns that without decisive action, the figure is on track to rise to 1.1 in 6 within the next five years, to around one and a quarter million young people. Shortly before we came on air,

Baroness Jackie Smith joined me to discuss the review. She was Home Secretary during Gordon Brown's premiership, the first woman to be appointed to the role. Today she wears two ministerial hats. She serves as Minister for Skills and also Minister for Women and Equalities. I asked her, what are the factors driving this inactivity in young women specifically?

Alan Hulburn's review was really important in identifying, as we had asked him to do, the reasons why we've got this stubbornly high number of young people who aren't getting those opportunities to work or to learn that we need to see. And interestingly, what you've seen for young women is actually there are fewer young women who are not earning or learning. That's actually changed over recent years from a period of time when there were actually more women who are in this position. but they're more likely to be economically inactive rather than unemployed.

In other words, they're not even able to look for work, sometimes because of issues like caring responsibilities, for example. Although one of the reasons why the numbers of women come down is because of the successful efforts to reduce the numbers of teenage pregnancy. So that's one of the reasons, I think, why you've got this discrepancy in figures. I think if we think about the future, I mean, first of all, whether or not it's young women or young men who are not earning or learning, it is, as Alan Milburn rightly described it, an enormous waste of talent, waste of young people's opportunities to be setting off on a career

path that is going to lead them to a good job and enable them to support their families in the future. And it's something that we're determined to take action on. And talking about the future, Mr Milburn says that there is widespread concern. not least among parents and grandparents, that the challenges faced by this generation of young people mean that they'll be the first generation whose lives won't be better than their parents. Do you share that fear?

I do share that fear, which is, but I also am clear that, you know, one of the reasons why when Pack McFadden and I arrived in the Department of Work and Pensions, we asked Anna Milburn to undertake this review, and we began the reform of support for young people to get back into the workplace and to get into educational opportunities, is because we're determined not to see that happen. We cannot, in the way, frankly, that has happened over the last 10, 15, arguably longer than that time period, including when I was in government, the last time around. We can't have this situation where young people are not able to get the jobs, the training opportunities,

that they themselves want, because I think it was also a really important message from Alan Milburn, that we haven't somehow or another got this snowflake generation who are not willing to work and to learn. They're desperately keen to. But structural changes in the labour market, the way in which the education system had previously been set up, means that there haven't been the chances that young people need to get that first step on the ladder. Well, actually on yesterday's programme, Jackie, we heard from one year, young woman who told us about her own situation. She'd been diagnosed with epilepsy and how she found looking for work in today's job market.

Here's what she said. My confidence was really, really knocked and I felt that I wasn't able to do a lot of jobs. And throughout my time, I've gone travelling, I've done different types of jobs, which I'm really proud of myself for, but it's got to this point now where I've become so burnt out. And my physical and mental health is I've had to move back with my parents. and I'm now really struggling to find work that's suitable for my health conditions, which I think is the case with quite a lot of people.

So we spoke to her yesterday. How concerned are you for the mental health of young people? 84% of the NEAT surveyed for this review, and I know you know this, said they want a job. It's a huge weight to carry, and many of them who are graduates, also have rising debts to shoulder as well. So on the point, first of all, about young people who've got special. needs or disabilities or mental health issues. Whilst Alan Milburn didn't find, you know, one single reason why we have unacceptedly high numbers of young people out of work and learning, one of the factors that will be make you more likely to not be able to earn or learn is having

had special educational needs or a disability. That, of course, is part of the reason why we are as a government reforming the SEN system. It's why in the Department of Work, pensions, we provide additional support for young people to be able to get into work where they've got a disability that is making that more difficult. Although there's more that we need to do there. As Alan said, you know, we have, this is a system that focuses more on paying new benefits to stay out of work than it does on supporting you to get into work. And that's why, you know, we need, we are, We are and we need to reform that in order to make sure that people are getting. For example, the work experience that makes that difference to them being able to tell an employer that they've actually got experience.

And today we're announcing 300,000 more work experience opportunities for young people. It's why, you know, and for that young woman, I would say, you know, I'm really sorry about the position she finds herself in. There is, and you know, mums and parents and others may also want to help their young people with this. There is help out there. If you Google job help, it will take you to the DWP information and support for young people to actually get that work experience, to get the opportunities to train and to find the jobs that can transform their lives. Yeah, we know that young women are more likely to enter low, paid sectors like care, retail and hospitality. Should the government prioritise drawing them

instead into types of work that offer greater stability? Well, we are prioritising those areas that link to our industrial strategy where Skills England have, for example, been able to identify that there's the greatest chance of growth and of high paid work. And I think that's a really important point to me. Yesterday I spent part of my day talking to apprentices who were doing electrician apprenticeships. Brilliant young people, actually the rising star apprentice there was a young woman, but there weren't enough women there. And electrician, construction, building and planning, aspects of technology, these are all areas where you are more likely to get high paid work in the future and where there are lots of opportunities, but there aren't yet equal numbers of women.

In fact, it's very unequal. So the things we do in. in school, the initiatives that we've got in place to bring ambassadors in from science and technology to develop, to increase the number of placements in construction, working with construction industry to break down those gender stereotypes. All of those things are important because young women, there are massive opportunities for young women in these areas and they will be good jobs and high paid jobs. No one's disagreeing with that. You know, we do need to get women in lots of different areas and get into these well-paid jobs.

But if women are more likely to be in care, retail and hospitality, is there a need to recognise the value of this type of work for our society and maybe reflect that value in their wages? Well, these are all important jobs. You know, another thing I did yesterday was to visit B&M and talk actually to a range of retail employers about the work experience, the apprenticeships, the opportunities that there were for young people

to get into work in those areas. And yes, you know, we do need to make sure that actually young people find the work that suits them. But I simply, on this point about science and technology and construction, I simply want everybody to understand that opportunities are open to you, regardless of your sex and that we need to encourage people to do the things that will provide them with the very best opportunities.

The report notes that the cost and the regulatory burden of employing young people has also risen. The minimum wage for young people has gone up. Employers' national insurance contributions have been raised, which both adds up to the costs to firms employing these workers. Were these policies a mistake? Well, no, I don't believe that they were. And of course, what the report also shows is that actually we've had stubbornly high levels of young people not able to work or to learn, but far predate decisions that this government has taken.

But, you know, it's an interesting point, Nita. You just said to me, we need to make sure, don't we, that people that are going into retail or care or other what have traditionally been low paid jobs have got enough money to be able to live on. That's part of the reason why we have a national minimum wage and why we want to make sure that where young people get into work and we support them to do that, they'll be earning enough to be able to look after themselves and to build that life for their families that they are so keen to do. Does the report take into account individuals

who are overqualified for their roles and therefore working in lower paid jobs because suitable opportunities just aren't available? Well, of course, you know, at the heart of what the issue is here is getting people, into the jobs that will both provide them with income in the short term and not just income, also the way of living that work brings to people. You know, I think we sometimes take for granted those of us who've been fortunate to be in work,

the structure it gives to your life, the ability to go and meet other people. That's why giving people those opportunities to work is so important. And then we need to make sure that the education system, the apprenticeship system, which, by the way, we have seen failing young people over the last 10 years, moves back to supporting them to get not just the starting life that they need, but the opportunity to get those higher level qualifications that will enable them to get jobs for the future. That's why the Prime Minister has set a target for our skills and education system for two-thirds of young people to be able to be able to get jobs for the future. able to get higher-level apprenticeships, technical qualifications and degrees by the time they get to the age of 25. Because in the labour market, as it is now, as we're seeing some of those entry-level jobs, as Alan Milburn pointed out in his report, no longer existing in the labour market, we need people with higher-level skills to be able to get the jobs that make such a difference

to them and to the economy. You're both Skills Minister and Minister for Women and Equality Do you feel you're able to do both effectively? Should the Women and Equality's Minister role be a full-time one? Look, at the risk of cliché, if you want a job done well, give it to a busy woman, right? I've been around the block a bit, I've got some experience. This isn't my first rodeo as far as being a minister is concerned. And there is a really strong team in terms of women and equalities.

You know, I work obviously really closely with Bridget Philipson as the Cabinet Minister for Women and Equalities with Zima Mal Hotra with the rest of the team. So, yeah, I think I'm pretty good at my job, Anita. I'm not denying that you're good at your job, but, you know, maybe it's important enough for it to be a standalone job in its own right, you know, women and inequalities minister. As I say, I think we've got a really strong team. And what's more, we've got a government that understands that the responsibility, to make sure that women are getting on in life, are safe, have the jobs and the opportunities that they need. That's not something that one single minister should ever be responsible for. It's at the heart of the whole of our landfled government.

Baroness Jackie Smith there, who spoke to me earlier this morning. I'm just going to read out a message about working from bed. I am retired, but volunteer and run properties. I work from bed and bath, equally. sending emails, reviewing documents. Careful with that. I can be there for hours. Don't do video calls, she says.

Nobody wants that. And my husband calls it Bedquarters. 84844. Keep them coming in. Now, a new BBC investigation turns its focus on the global expansion of the manosphere and the social media algorithms that are driving young men

towards increasingly extreme views on gender relationships and masculinity. BBC Global Disinformation Reporter Jackie Wakefield spent a year examining the rise of two of the most influential manosphere figures in Latin America and Africa, Elta Match in Mexico and Andrew Kibay in Kenya, who have millions of followers. She spent time following both these influencers, speaking to their fans, as well as hearing from the women living with the real life consequences of their influence.

Jackie, welcome to Women's Hour, and first of all, well done. Thank you so much. Let's start by getting an idea of the popularity of the manosphere globally. We do talk about it here a lot. And then why you decided to look specifically at Mexico and Kenya? It's massive. So what we've seen in the West with the rise of figures like Andrew Tate is that these messages have resonated globally. We've seen influences all around the world in every country from Brazil to South Korea have kind of a similar figure.

And what we've found is these influences have tripled their followings in the last three years. So they're growing very quickly. And why in Mexico and Kenya, what's the, what's the, What's behind the growth in the popularity there, do you think? It's many, many factors. So both Kenya and Mexico have had huge, huge gains in equality for women. So what's happened there is that these figures have come up and then they've seen feminism as the enemy.

It's sort of become this huge backlash to the gains that women are getting for themselves. So tell us about the two influences, you that you focused on this, El Tamach, as I mentioned, and Andrew Kiebe, who are they? So El Tamach is the biggest Manosphere influencer in Latin America. He's kind of one of these figures that is quite inspirational. He really encouraged his figures to, you know, be disciplined, have motivation. But then he would tie in these messages of misogyny within that. Andrew Kibet is probably more of a comedian figure.

A lot of the fans would point to him and say, oh, he's saying what we're thinking. and he would kind of capture it in a very quick message and was usually a bit more outright with his misogyny. And we're going to play a clip from Andrew Kiebe. It's quite a comedic clip, actually. Let's have a listen. What do you mean? Misogyny is not hate of women?

That's what the word means. Where is it? It's hate of women. Yeah. Let's look it up. I have never even looked it up. Misogyny. Misogynist.

A person who dislikes, despises all his stories. strongly prejudiced against women. Who in the world is like that? We've all been born by women. We hate women. No man hates a woman. We love you. We are like gods to you. Worship us. What do you make of that? I mean, it was pretty shocking to chat to him and realize he didn't even know what misogyny meant. This is an influencer who, you know, experts, people around Kenya regularly call him. misogynistic and his rants online can be described as such and he didn't even know what the word was and then once he learns the definition he denies that misogyny as a concept even exists

no man can hate a woman it it was really challenging sometimes to speak to these figures because you almost can't get that straight answer out of them they were always able to kind of turn it to the next thing oh i don't know what misogyny is oh misogyny couldn't possibly exist let's talk about their rise because it seems that both men to start off posting quite innocuous content, sort of beginning with what exercise routines. And then what comes next? It's one of those things where, so El Tamach is a really good example of this. He wanted to be a Hollywood actor.

He went to L.A. He wasn't able to make his dream work. He went back to Mexico. And that's when he started posting content. And what happened was he saw the success of figures like Andrew Tate and began to slowly bring in those ideas of misogyny within this content around self-development. What happened is this, these ideas really resonate with young men because particularly in Mexico and Kenya, there's economic difficulties, there's a lot of tough things happening for

that generation of men. And they're looking for an answer and these figures say, well, go to the gym, work hard, and also make women follow you. You got an interview with El to Match's sister, Alex, and why she thinks his content changes over time. What were her thoughts? She was able to sort of plot out his journey into the manosphere. What she thought happened was as he was posting content trying to help men is he got this feedback loop. More and more men said, you've saved me, you've really helped me. And he began to feel quite responsible for men. And then it kind of turned into this thing where the algorithm kind of

fed back to him that, you know, people wanted more content around men and more anti-feminist content. Well, we've got a clip of El to Match his sister, Alex. People started speaking out about how, about suicide. I think that made him feel responsible for men's health and men's lives. So I think that's when it twisted. He got this, like, this Messiah complex of like, he's the one that has to fix it. I think he knows what he's doing on some level. I also feel bad that his life detoured into this weird, dystopic hell.

And he's just this violence robot. It's very sad. It's a really powerful interview about the whole documentary is, and she doesn't speak to her brother anymore. They don't have a relationship. No, they've not spoken in two years. One thing that struck me was the access. When you make programs like this,

just getting access to these spaces and to speak to these people, it's really tough. There's probably a lot of work that goes in before you even get to any of these places. But whilst you're in Mexico, you've reached out to try and speak to some of the people who followed Elta Match. What was the response?

It was very challenging. So we were in talks with Elta Match to come and film with him, and then a couple days before we were going to fly out, he posted a live on his YouTube, telling us that he didn't want to be a part of the documentary in slightly ruder terms than that. He also told his fans not to speak to us.

So what happened was all the fans I'd been speaking to message me within about 10 minutes of that YouTube going live, essentially telling me to go away, once again in ruder terms. So when we got to Mexico, it was a real challenge to get these young men to speak to us. there was a real deferential attitude towards Elthamatch. So if Altamatch tells you not to speak to us, he means it and they won't do it. He talks about war mode. What's that?

What does that mean? War mode is a mode that young fans can go into when they're in a period of high focus and discipline. So it means they don't speak to women. They don't see friends. They don't drink. They don't take part in any vices. You actually went to one of his big events. The audience, mainly men?

Yeah, mainly men. So it was a strange experience to be one of the only women in the room of hundreds of men as they speak out, you know, going into war mode. And in the documentary, he speaks about, you know, women who are whores are always going to be that way. What did you, what was the sense that you got from being in that space? It was really challenging because I think for any woman being in a male dominated space where, especially one where they're speaking like this about women, it's very uncomfortable. It was sometimes difficult. to, you know, just listen and take it in. But that's what we were there to do. We were there to listen and try and understand. Did you fear for your safety? We had a lot of things in place.

I was there with a team. But I think it was one of those places where, you know, you did have to have your wits about you. You also went to Kenya and you caught up with Andrew Kibbe. He did get interviews, multiple interviews with Andrew Keebe. And there was one bit whether you went on a tour of a university campus, with him. Lots of female students were against his visit. What did they tell you? So when we chatted to the female students, we could kind of see the very real world impacts that this content

has. They told us that a lot of the young men at the university would just ignore them because in their eyes, females aren't friends. That's a common slogan that Andrew Keybay encourages his followers to say. The other aspect of it was these young women we spoke to were very engaged with their university, but the men didn't believe them to be such. They said that these women were just there to meet a rich man and get money. It's obviously not the case. These women were both there to study, work hard and, you know, make their own way in the world. But they felt very dismissed by these male students. He sort of tells them all, as he's getting into the car, all women are called gold diggers, including your mothers. Yeah, exactly. So it's one of those things again where he just encourages

this idea of seeing women in a very specific way. They're not friends. they're there to take your money. So for now, ignore them. One says that feminism means men's problems are invisible. Tell us about that. So this was Julian, who was a fan of El-Tamatch in Mexico. So you did manage to get in touch with what? He was 19.

Yeah, he was 19. So after great effort, we did find one fan who would speak to us in Mexico. And he felt as if, you know, he was at the stage in his life where things won't maybe going smoothly, you know, he was a very smart, polite young man. But what he had seen online, and we got access to his social media so he could see exactly what he'd been seeing online, was these influences are telling him that women's rights and women's advances are the reason why he's struggling. Are they making a lot of money? And how are they making it? These influences are making huge amounts of money. There's so many income streams. So, for example,

or Altamatch makes up to $1.5 million US dollars a year from social media views alone. Then he also makes money from live chat donations. That's the $2 to $300,000 a year mark. He makes money from events, tours, merch. There's so many income streams that come together. So it's hard to say an exact number, but in the millions. Andrew Kibbe? Similar again.

So Andrew Kibay goes live on his social media pages and asks his fans to send him Mepessa. Impesa is a Kenyan money transfer app and his fans sent him money as donations just as he's chatting through the live. It's very telling when you were talking, asking him why he didn't make a speech at the university campus because all these young men have, you know, they've follow him, they've bought his book and he said he had nothing to say and they're not his fans. He doesn't see them as fans, I'm paraphrasing obviously, but I thought it was very telling when his friend sitting next to him said they're customers. Exactly. And Andrew Kibay kind of laughs along with this comment. And I mean, that's a clear relationship.

I mean, these guys are making massive amounts of money of these young fans who are hanging off every word they're saying. One of the most important bits, I think, in your program is when you get to the point where you're discussing the impact this is having on women, because you meet one woman, Fernanda, whose ex-boyfriend was a fan of Elta match. Actually, let's hear a bit of her experience first. He felt that if he didn't control me, if he didn't have total control of the relationship, he was failing as a man, as a macho. I think he was already a sexist who was hiding it. El Temach influenced him to no longer feel bad about it.

I really wanted to run away that he wouldn't let me. He also forced me to watch videos from El-Temache. He actually threatened to kill me. I was afraid for my life. Is her experience typical, Fernanda's experience? Fernandez certainly on the most extreme end, but we did speak to other women who had had similar experiences as well. And I mean, this is what this content results in, right?

There are real world harms and women are the ones paying the price. I think we often ask the question, like, what are young men getting out of this content, which is really important? But also what happens when young men do take in the content and then enact those. things on the women around them. And Fernanda was such a sad example of, you know, an ex-partner of hers got super into this content and then used it as justification to control her behaviour.

Yeah, very worrying. To say the least, what did Andrew Kibbe and Elthamatch have to say as a right to reply to your documentary? El-Tamatch denied the allegations of misogyny in the film and he also said that it was irresponsible to publish his income. Andrew Kibay, who we got to interview in the film didn't have a right to reply of such. So he told us that he didn't think that his content was misogynistic. And he also thought that he shouldn't be a role model for young men. He's just putting himself out there. Jackie, thank you for coming in to speak to me. And you can watch the documentary BBC Eye Investigations Manusphere, Messiah's on Eye Player, or listen to the BBC I Investigations program on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have been impacted by

what you've heard, you can go to the BBC's Action Line website for links and support Jackie Wakefield. Thank you. 84844 is the text number. Now, did you miss the Spring Bank holiday on Monday? We took a break from business as usual and went in search of wonder. Children's author Catherine Rundle, who writes fantasy and adventure books, joined Noola and shared why it's so important to keep that childlike wonder alive even as we get older. I think have come easy to see wonder as something that is an awesome.

optional extra, something that we might seek occasionally at a weekend, rather than something that needs to be absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the reality of the world. Not to see wonder is to be blind to the truth. And I think in many ways we owe the world. The natural world in particular are furious, hope-filled, active political wonder. If I say to you, where do you find wonder, where does your head go? For me, it will always be the natural world. The natural world is an inexhaustible place of wonder.

But also in learning itself, I think one of the things that we think about when we talk about childlike wonder, childlike wonder is childlike only because for them so much is a process of new discovery. I have no interest in being childlike except in the sense that we can continue to learn. with the same veracity and hunger and thrill and excitement that children do. It just requires us to be more disciplined and more ironwilled about it. Catherine Rundle, and you can hear the whole program on BBC Sounds, search for Woman's Hour on Monday the 25th of May. Maybe you find wonder from your bed.

Do you ever work from your bed? Psychotherapist and writer Philippa Perry was on the program last month and made an admission. This is a bit of a confession. I lie in bed in the morning. I get hold on my phone and I dictate to notes. And I do it before I get up. I'd like to think of myself as a sort of Barbara Cartland, you know, supine.

Not dictating to a secretary, unfortunately, but dictating onto my phone. And I did manage to do about the first quarter like that. After that, I had to sit up and work at a laptop. The whole thing gets too big to do it lying in bed. But that's how I start off. Oh, I like that. That kind of gives other people permission. Yeah, lie in bed and do your best creative work, yeah. And in fact, there are quite a few examples of very successful women who worked from their bed.

Emily Dickinson, Frida Callow, Florence Nightingale, Virginia Woolf, all worked from bed for long periods, often due to illness or disability, but sometimes it was by choice. Tracy Eamon has said she treats her bed as a creative space. The French writer Collette said she did some of her best work in bed. equally Edith Sitwell treated her bedroom as a theatrical and intellectual space and Joan Didion apparently enjoyed the bed as a controlled and closed working atmosphere. So we're in good company. Well, we have two proponents of bedworking joining me now, broadcaster and archer's podcast presenter Emma Freud and dermatologist and June bird founder,

Dr Alexis Granite. Emma and Alexis, welcome. I'm going to come straight to you, Emma, because I'm so distracted. I mean, you are obviously working from bed in your pyjamas, feeding your cat. Yeah, my cat is my co-worker in my, what was your listener called it, Bedquarters. Yes. And that works quite well.

I've also got a husband here too, but he's, yeah. Morning. What kind of work do you do in bed? Well, all the work that I do comes into two categories. So I have masses of admin, you know, four children and a home to run and a husband. And then I have all my creative work, the scripts that I write for the Archer's podcast, Richard and I are co-writing a play at the moment, the films that we do.

And the work that I do in bed is only the creative. I don't find it works so much for the admin. It makes me feel a bit slummy, and I feel a bit slummy anyway. But working in bed on the creative stuff, it's just quieter. I am downstairs in the rest of the house and in my office, which is in the middle of our sitting room.

I'm a mum and I'm a wife and I run a house. but as soon as I'm in bed, I am the only, I'm just the creative person that I want to be, and I find it much easier to focus on actually doing imaginative work. Do you have a specific routine? Are you in bed in the mornings, in the evenings, any time of the day? No, I'm just in the mornings. And if I can do some creative work before I ever go downstairs, then it's a sort of purer space in a way.

As soon as I'm downstairs, I'm so many things. So in the morning, a couple of hours is probably my max. And then in the afternoon, a lovely little calming moment is really nice, like between three and five or something. Never in the evenings. It doesn't work for me in the evening. Alexis, you're nodding away. Tell me about your work routine.

You work from bed. I do. Obviously, I'm a dermatologist and a brand founder, so there are things I can't do from bed have to see patients in clinic and work with the team. But I completely agree. I do have a sort of, I do have a little bit of a routine. Mine is actually in the evening, so I tend to work from bed in the evening and sometimes on the weekends.

But I like to kind of come home, shed the day, change into my comfy clothes. I also have a co-worker who's one of my dogs. I have a heating pad that I lay on. And I kind of have to get everything done first, all the bits, the admin, the stuff around the house. And then I'm kind of in my zone. And that's where I can really be creative. I can write. I can do things that require a lot of focus in a way that I don't find as easy when I'm

bed. We need more detail here. You have a heating pad. So this is a proper setup. Do you have a special outfit? Yes. My family affectionately calls it my grout fit, my gray sweat outfit. But I love to kind of come home, be super cozy and comfortable. The heating pad, actually my husband turned me on to. He originally started with it for like lower back pain. And honestly, it's the best. It's, it's an electric pad that I sit on that's sort of against my lower back. And it just signals relax. What are the husband's doing whilst you're working in bed? My husband's usually falling asleep. I'm a night owl, so it's late.

But you've got a set-up as well, haven't you? Your separate mattresses? We have the same mattress, but two different sides. So his is firmer than mine. I like the softer side of the mattress. And your co-worker is your dog? Yes. I have two dogs.

One of them likes to sit on the heating pad with me. That's Peaches. So she is my co-worker. I need to just get the name of your ginger cat that keeps popping up Emma, because it's your co-worker, just in case we need to, this cat needs to be celebrated. He's beautiful. He's called Teddy.

Teddy. I was his midwife. I birthed him into this world. Amazing. Now, you've, you, you, I used to love watching as I'm sure lots of people listening will have done to the late great Pauli Yates, who used to interview famously on the big breakfast from bed. But you're the OG bed interviewer.

So you did this in the 80s. Tell us about that. In the 80s. TV used to end at 11 o'clock. You wouldn't even remember that. It was before you were born, Anita. But I remember it. And the program that was the first network show I ever did was called Night Network.

And it was the first ever program that went beyond 11 o'clock. And it was on ITV. And because we thought people would be watching it in bed, so it was kind of new territory, new uncharted waters, we thought that I would do the celebrity interviews that was my job on the show in bed. So I wore pajamas, the game. guest for pyjamas. We all got into big double bed together and it went out, that segment went out at about half past midnight. The irony was that we actually recorded it at 10 o'clock in the

moment, so it didn't feel very bad. But it was great. Did it disarm people? Did it mean that they were willing to open up and you could have a more intimate conversation because of that setting? That was, that was why we did it. And in the 80s, having an off-guard attitude to an interview was kind of knew that, you know, that wasn't, the TV interviews were formal on purpose. They were a coffee table in two chairs and you wore a suit and all that. So we were trying to make it off guard. And it did kind of work despite being first thing in the morning. I mean, to varying degrees. We had, I had one famous actor who, by the time he got into bed in his pajamas at 10 a.m. On the morning of the interview, he'd already drunk a bottle of vodka in the dressing room. So that was a very

off-garde interview. Ah, the 80s. Weirdly, and this is weird, one of my guests back then was Jimmy Saville, and he said, well, I don't wear pajamas, do I? So he didn't wear it. Oh, that is weird. I'm very strange.

Are there any disadvantages, Alexis, to working from bed? I mean, we're told constantly that we should have clear space to transition from our laptops and working. to sleeping. Yes, that is true. I think if you do have trouble sleeping, you know, particularly in the evening, it is good to kind of try to separate church and state, so to speak, so have a sort of separate place for your work and then you kind of enter your routine for bed. But in all actuality, I haven't really found for me that it's an issue. I do need to kind of, you know, once I shut off the laptop, I do need to do something else for five minutes, whatever that is, read a book, read an

article something to just kind of signify it's time to transition to sleep mode. But like I said, I, yeah, I'm a huge, I'm a huge proponent of work from bed. How do you avoid the Gen Z term bed rotting, not getting out and about enough? Yeah, I think it is good again to kind of have your allocated periods in the day. So whether that's in the morning, you're going to do, you know, your couple hours, as Emma said, or in the evening, but you do need to sort of force yourself out and about outside of bed too. I think there's another thing on that, Anita, which is that there's a kind of natural time limit that I think your body goes, oh, okay, that's enough now.

And actually, if I do a morning in bed, I'm much more likely to go for a get up and go straight out for a walk or go to the gym or do a class or something like that, because the kind of middle class guilt does get to you in the end. And you think, no, no, no, that's enough. I've really got to balance this. You've both got grown up teens or grown-up kids. Would you worry if they worked from bed? Horrified.

I'm in my 60s. I really feel I've earned it. You've earned it, absolutely. Yeah, I couldn't have done it in my 20s because laptops didn't exist then. But, you know, I'm glad that I didn't. But I feel I've really earned it now. It makes me feel a little bit luci and disgusting, and I quite like that. We like it, too.

How about you, Alexis? My kids, I find, sort of rotate around different stations. So they might do a little bit of work at the desk, a little bit of work at the bed, a little bit on the couch, which, again, I'm okay with. I think it depends on what sort of flow you need to get into. So you might find if you're, you know, maybe you are more creative when you're writing from the bed, but then when you need to do your math problems, you need to be sitting, like, upright at a desk. I'm just interested in this. Like, does it creep up incrementally? Because I've started to read, like, I used to just read books in bed.

now I have my laptop and I read briefs for work in bed. Am I going to, am I on, is this a one way trajectory? Am I just going to become a working from bed woman? I think, next, you need your heating pad and then that's it. You're in. And I need a club. I need a co-worker. I'm going to read out of some of the messages that are coming in,

because we've got quite a few. Someone's saying here, I never work from my bed. My bedroom needs to be a refuge from stress and daily grind. I like to close my laptop and walk away at 5pm. But if your work from home space is visible all the time, your dining room, living room, dining table, then you're constantly reminded of work and can't switch off fully.

Plus my bed is normally littered with cats and my current reading pile adding a laptop will not add to the coziness and my pyjamas, lovely though they are, are not for general viewing in meetings. That's from Michelle in Nottingham. Another one here, Carmen in Saltburn, says, as a writer, I need to write from bed.

I need that in-between headspace between waking and sleeping to imagine worlds and people and find uncensored honesty to write. I also do most of my creative lesson planning from beds. It's basically what you were saying, Emma. At the other extreme, I work with large groups of young people in schools, museums and festivals. So I shift between both extremes, focused, daydreaming and fully immersive teaching. Maybe I need bedworking to recover.

Oh, that's a good point. And actually, this is another one. This is quite an important one. I have fibromyalgia, chronic pain and fatigue illness. Work from home and different seating and lying positions are the only way I keep up. I'm a health and safety manager. and I also know that setting up comfortable workstations is really important for posture and pain reduction.

So I have a few gadgets to help like adjustable chairs and laptop stands that I can use in different ways, including from beds. Yeah, that's a really good point. And actually, one of the things I've noticed from Junebird is we use co-working space. You know, so sometimes it's just grabbing a random chair and pulling it up to a desk or a table.

And I find as I've gotten older, I really struggle sometimes with a comfortable working position. So that's where bed can have that sort of ultimate, positioning for you that you know gets you in the flow. Emma, if you needed tea and coffee, do you have it on tap in your work? You're working from bed space. Do you have to actually? No, that's why I married Richard Curtis.

Brilliant. Very good. Well done. She's got it sorted. Alexis Granite, Dr. Alexis Granite and Emma Freud. Thank you so much. Lovely green pyjamas as well, Emma. 844-844.

Keep your thoughts coming in on working from bed. listening to this next to my forge. I'm a blacksmith. No way could I work from bed. Fair enough. Now, daddy issues. What does an absent father truly mean to you? We're looking for women from all walks of life

to share their experiences for a new series. The phrase daddy issues is often used as a memeable soundbite, but the reality behind it is deeply complex. Woman's Hour wants to move past the cliche and explore what it truly means when a father is missing from a daughter's life. Whether your father physically left, he died or was emotionally unavailable when you were young or became an absent father in life, later life due to conditions like dementia, your story matters and we would love to hear from you. Maybe your dad wasn't in your life and then came back into it and you're both willing to show your story of reconciliation and how that works. How has an absent father impacted you and the woman you are today?

So get in touch with the program in the usual way. The text number is 84844. You can also get in touch via our social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. Now, my next guest, Jodie Cantor, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist. In October 2017, she alongside her colleague, Megan Toey, published a groundbreaking expose in the New York Times, detailing decades of sexual abuse allegations against the former film producer Harvey Weinstein,

which galvanised the global Me Too movie. originally started in 2006 by Tarana Burke. Jody and Megan then wrote the book, She Said, all about this experience, which was later made into a film. Well, Jody is back with a new book, How to Start, which is all about how to launch a career in certain times, a theme of today's program, it seems,

and she's here now. Jody, welcome to Woman's Hour. Good morning. I'm going to get to the book, How to Start, but first of all, I want you to take us back to 2017, if you would. I think it's really important, you know, we're talking about it on Woman's Hour. When you first broke the Weinstein story, did you expect it to bring such a reckoning? Certainly not. First of all, it's always an honor to speak about the Weinstein story to a UK audience

because this is in part, as you know, very much a UK story, some of Weinstein's victims, but also some of the women who were very brave in coming forward, like Laura Madden and Zelda Perkins are British. And so, no, we had, I mean, how could you walk around the New York Times newsroom saying, and then we're going to publish the story, and then there's going to be a global uprising that's going to last for years and years, and the law is going to change, and the culture is going to change. We weren't sure whether anybody would care because the history on this issue had been a history of lack of accountability, and plenty of people in Hollywood in particular had said to us, Jody, Megan, sexual harassment is part of this culture.

The casting couch is endemic to Hollywood. It may be unfortunate, but it's how it works. And you are naive to think that anything could ever change. The story opened the floodgates to lots of women coming forward, including many high-profile celebrities. How did you build trust with these women to let them, By showing up in person in part, I flew to London. I crashed Laura Madden's summer vacation.

She was kind enough to give me an hour on the beach in Cornwall. I will never forget the stunning sight of that very wide beach in Cornwall where we sat. By making it clear that it was their agency, it was their decision, whether to speak to us, whether to come on the record. And then I think finally, you know, there's a sentence that Megan had used in her reporting in the past that we adopted. And this was kind of our pitch to women. We said, we can't change what's happened to you in the past. But if we work together, we may be able to use your experience to protect other people. And, you know, I've been a journalist for a long time.

And that is ultimately the best way and sometimes the only way somebody will participate in a story. It's been nearly 10 years since you broke that story. During that time, dozens of women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, including rape. It's been a complex legal picture with many appeals from his legal team. He denies all wrongdoing. I should say that Harvey Weinstein has consistently denied doing anything. Can you briefly remind listeners what he's been convicted of and the states of these legal cases? Yes. So let me give you like the 20 second summary of both the convictions and the legal complication.

So Harvey Weinstein's in jail for a long time. He has been sentenced in two states, New York and California. He is currently scheduled to get out of jail when he is very, very old. The cases have been complex. I mean, he's been sort of more or less continuously on trial since about 2019, 2020. And remember that it's hard to convict people of sexual crimes. It should be hard. The bar has to be very, very high. And most of the... Nearly 100 women have come forward about Weinstein, but most of those cases are about sexual harassment, meaning in the states you can't go to jail for that. It's a civil offense, not a crime. And also some of them are beyond the statute of limitation.

Some of them are alleged to have taken place abroad. So the number out of that hundred, the number of those stories that could serve as the basis for a criminal trial are very, very small to make it more complicated because there have been a couple of convictions. there's been a lot of back and forth in terms of convictions being overturned and whatnot. Some of those stories involved consensual sex as well as allegations of non-consensual sex. That makes it very hard to convict.

The Me Too movement, as you mentioned, became a global phenomenon. It's touched many lives. In the time since, what's fundamentally changed for women, in your view? I think the consensus has strengthened that no young woman, none of our daughters, should show up in the workplace and be subject to sexual pressure from the boss. The defining characteristic of the Weinstein story is that it was about work. These were entry-level workers, whether they were assistants who wanted to be producers or actresses. They showed up with dreams, asked, aspirations, ambitions, and Weinstein turned those into vulnerabilities. Because the way he prayed on them was he made promises, you know, come to my hotel room to see a script. I've got a job for you. I've, you know, let's discuss your Oscar campaign, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think Me Too is certainly

controversial. And as you know in the U.S., we have a presidentially led backlash to Me Too. But I think the thing that holds is that anywhere I go in the world with people of any political stripe, nobody wants their daughter to show up at work and be subject to sexual pressure from the boss. It is wrong. I just wonder what your thoughts are, because we just did an interview about this documentary that's been made for the BBC about the manosphere and the rise of the manosphere and the influences in Mexico and Kenya and it's happening around the world. Is that happening in a sort of retaliation to women feeling more empowered? That's a really good question. I mean, in the States, it truly is led by President Donald Trump, who, as you know, has been accused of sexual and misconduct and has pushed back very strongly

and really in a wide variety of ways. I think the answer is not just about me too, but it's about women gaining power. in the workforce. You know, tell me if you think that this, I can tell you that this statement is true of the U.S., and I'm curious whether it's true in the UK as well. The most stunning development in our lifetime has been women's power and earning power in the workplace. You know, we say at the beginning of she said our book about the Weinstein investigation, a woman living now can make more money in a single year than all of her female ancestors put together. In the U.S., we've got law school classes, med school classes that are over 50% female.

So what that means is that not even in a political sense, in a workplace and economic sense, women are holding more power than ever before, and that is a radical change. Yeah, yeah. Over here, we might be earning more than all our female ancestors, but maybe not still as much as the men. But we're working on it. Let's talk about your new book, talking about the workplace, how to start. It was partly inspired by your daughter's friend. Tell us about this. So the real thing that inspired it is that so there was a very chaotic period on American campuses having to do with the Israel, Gaza, war. just a tremendous amount of controversy and protest and argument about how it should be handled. And my alma mater in particular, Columbia, was just very caught up in it. And in the middle of turmoil on the Columbia campus, I got an invitation to give the undergraduate commencement address. Graduation speeches are a big deal here in the U.S. This is a, you know, you guys are generally better at us than public speaking,

but this is an area of concentration in the U.S. And so it's a huge honor, but it was also kind of a bad offer because the place was so toxic at the moment. But the students asked me an incredible question. You know, as journalists, we love hard questions. And they said to me, we don't want to talk about President Trump. We don't want to talk about Israel. We don't want to talk about Gaza.

Our class, despite its political differences, is united in anxiety over one question. How in this era are we supposed to find and start our life's work? And the question seized me, in part because I had been covering the workplace for 20 years and seen some of this digital transformation and written the Harvey Weinstein story. And really, I mean, it's wonderful to be talking to you

because part of the reason it seized me is that it is a global generational, question. You are a proponent of finding a job, which is also your passion. How did you do that? Well, I want to say that with an asterisk. I think if you say to young people now, just follow your passion and it's all going to work out, you may get shot. What this generation is facing is truly harder than what we've faced before in the U.S. People are having their interviews for their first jobs through AI. Robots are interviewing them,

not real people. So the advice has to be very practical and very realistic and grounded. But in the book, I do tell my own. I had a pretty rocky beginning in journalism, and I do tell that story. Craft a need very quickly.

Tell us about that. Like 30 seconds, yeah, sorry. We're going to solve everything in 45 seconds. So, okay, so craft. I'm challenging young people to not just look for a job, but look two things, craft, a special skill or expertise that you have that other people don't have, need some larger need, whether business or altruistic, that your career is going to fulfill something that other human beings are going to need, a product care, information over the course of your working years. I would argue that the best careers are made of craft and need. Look, it's a really brilliant. It's a page turn. It's an easy read.

It's how to start by Jody Cantor. Jody, very quickly, though. How do you feel about working from bed? My God, as an investigate, I was fascinated by the segment, but as an investigative reporter who reports and really toxic, harsh things, get those things out of my bed. Anita, I want, I do not, I do not want the fumes and the pollution of the stuff that I report on in my private space.

Quite right. Jody Cantor, thank you so much for joining us on Woman's Hour. How to Start is out now and I'm going to end with this. I'm working in bed in my PJs right now over the covers as it's warm

and listening to Woman's Hour. That's from Sarah and Edinburgh living the dream. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm David Bediel and from Radio 4 and the History Podcast I'm hosting 60 years of Hurt, a series about football and Englishness

in which we try and define what Englishness actually is, via the roller coaster history of the England men's football team. It includes contributions from various English gentlemen and women, Stephen Fry, David Seaman, England sports psychologist Pipper Grange and many others. England may or may not win the World Cup in 26, but maybe you'll find out why it means so much to us as a country that they might do. Listen to 60 years of hurt on BBC Sounds.