Woman's Hour - BBC's Young Reporter, Women's History, Leftover Women

Episode Date: March 12, 2020

BBC Young Reporter Competition is in its second year. More than 2000 young people suggested an original story idea that they wanted the BBC to report on and it was Kay from Bristol who won gold this year. She's 19 now but when she was 12 she was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She's now volunteering at a hospital and it's been life-changing. Our reporter Ena Miller met Kay and her mum, Eileen, at home in Bristol.March is a big month for women. We have International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, but that gets less attention. Why? Jenni talks to two historians, Professor Selina Todd and Professor Krista Cowman, about it's importance and significance.Leftover Women is an unflattering term used in China to describe women who aren't married. China has 30 million more men than women, leaving single women under pressure to marry quickly or risk being rejected by society. Jenni hears from Shosh Shlam, writer and co-director of the film Leftover Women, and Qui Hua Mei who's a lawyer.Lost is a tale of two siblings living in extreme poverty. It's told through the eyes of Lola. She's a resourceful, brave and loyal teenager who’s desperately trying to find her way home. Jenni talks to the author, Ele Fountain, about what inspired her to write the book and why she hopes it’ll start a conversation about friendship, family and finding a sense of belonging.

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 12th of March. Good morning. In today's programme, China's leftover women. In a society with 13 million more men than women, a film explores the widespread humiliation of those who are accused of having failed to

find a husband. A gold prize winning BBC Young Reporter of the Year, Kay describes how becoming a volunteer changed her life for the better. And a new novel for young people by Ellie Fountain in Lost, Lola loses her home and her

little brother Amit. How does she survive the dangers of a hostile city? International Women's Day falls in March. It was last Sunday, of course, as does Women's History Month, which originated in the United States. This year, they're marking the 100th anniversary of some American women winning the right to vote in 1920. Women's History Month is less prominent in this country, despite the resurgence of interest in feminism, the commitment

of numerous female historians to the discipline, and the enthusiasm of local and community history groups. Why is the month important to the study of women's history? Well, I'm joined from Lincoln University by Christa Cowman, Professor of Modern History there, and from Oxford by Selina Todd, Professor of Modern History there. Selina, we have great women's historians in this country like Sheila Rowbottom, Sally Alexander. Why was it the Americans who first adopted a Women's History Month? Yes, a really interesting question because you refer there to Sally Alexander,

who was really influential in the history workshop movement, which was pioneering in getting women's history on the agenda here in the 60s and 70s. Jimmy Carter, as president, introduced Women's History Month in 1980 into the States. And it was part of a really imaginative attempt to push by both the feminist movement and also the black civil rights movement there to recognise history as something that is obviously crucial in terms of helping to create identities and also spread awareness that the contribution of women to societies like America and like Britain has been absolutely significant throughout time. I think that the reason that it didn't necessarily

take off in Britain in the same way is really that we already had various initiatives like History Workshop, like various things that were happening in adult education at the time. So it didn't get the traction here in the same way and indeed wasn't really officially introduced into the UK until 2011. Christa, how useful would you say it is to have a whole month devoted to the subject? I think it's very useful in terms of getting air coverage, if you like, so getting it out there to a wider audience. And I'm sure Selina will agree,

this is a month when we get a lot of phone calls, get asked our opinions on lots of things. So I think it's really great to have this moment that actually focuses on women's history. But I think there's a downside to that, of course, which is that women's history can be seen as what happens in Women's History Month, and that then there's nothing downside to that of course which is that women's history can be seen as what happens in women's history month and that then there's nothing else in between and we have to wait another 12 months before we can have the conversation again. But Selina if it is significant

and important why is it still less prominent in this country and not funded and supported as it appears to be in the USA? Yeah I think it it's a really good question. And part of it is because when it was introduced in 2011, we were going into a period with a government committed to austerity, which meant that the kinds of institutions which have been really imaginative in promoting women's history over the last few decades, thinking about public libraries and museums, really haven't necessarily had the funding and support to push Women's History Month. So I think that's one thing.

The other thing is that this relates very much to Krista's important point about the sort of sidelining of women's history. You know, I mean, I was at a co-educational comprehensive school in Newcastle in the 1980s. The very first history project that we did was on women's history. We were told to go and interview the oldest woman

who we knew and think about history from her point of view. Now, we've seen over the last 10 years, you know, ministers like Michael Gove really criticising that kind of approach to history. So at the same time that it was introduced here, women's history was also being sidelined in some really crucial ways. But I do also think that it's about the way that civil rights have been talked about in Britain over the last 10 years. You know, we have seen, I know it's a very controversial subject, but we have seen, you know, contestations about how we define women. And certainly, I was looking yesterday online at museums and bookshops and what they were offering in terms of women's history. And in the United States, as well as here, you know, when you look,

very often they're saying, oh, here are the top 10 books that you should read this month. Now, I looked at a couple of universities and libraries in the States, and not one of them was offering a top 10 books that were all by women and about women, right? They were bringing in civil rights of black people, of other so-called marginalised groups. Now, that's great, but that's not what Women's History Month is about. Can we not just, for one month, say, let's read books by women and about women? So if it was part of your curriculum

when you were at school, Selina, what place does it have on the school curriculum now? Well, it's very, very marginal in many schools, I'm afraid, and not for want of trying. I mean, I give a lot of schools talks, but the issue is really

that with the national curriculum and particularly the way that GCSEs and A-levels have gone, you need teachers with a huge amount of interest, enthusiasm and expertise to deliver women's history because it's really not central to the curriculum. to all of us because as a professional historian one resource that I've relied on a lot are oral histories now many of them have been collected from women over the years by community groups and also by school children and have been archived in public libraries around the country so we're really losing that resource which I think is a real shame but what I would say is the energy and the interest are there we see that in terms of the wonderful publicity that books like say Helen Lewis's Difficult Women is getting and I see it when I go and talk to schools. There's a huge amount of interest. I see it in my own students coming to Oxford. They've already been introduced to some extent to women's history. But it is unfortunately being really pressed out of

the central curriculum. Krista, what difference did the 2018 commemorations of the centenary of some British women and the vote make to general engagement with women's history? I think in many ways a lot, and in many ways that was fantastic. It was such an amazing year. Selina has just identified as the one that we have in the school curriculum, whereby it's a sort of modularization and compartmentalization rather than a focus. So throughout 2018, there was a lot of emphasis on local anniversaries. There was some fantastic work done in local libraries, local groups, local heritage, people reconnecting with suffrage in their own location and finding out what had happened. And there was a tremendous amount of media interest. But I think there is a

real anxiety now that it's kind of been done. And it's not going to be until 1928 when we have the anniversary of 1928 in eight nine years time that we'll go back to look at women's history again so I think the the challenge for for me as a professional historian is how you actually affect that mainstreaming so it's not just this is the week we're doing women's history or even this is the year we're doing women's history or even this is the year we're doing women's history but actually women's history is part of history what what do the students christy you encounter think of the subject what status does it have compared with other types of history that they might choose to study i think it still tends to be a little bit mixed. And if you put on a course, my experience is if you put on a course which is specifically marketed or presented to the students as a women's history course, you will get many, many more female students opting for that course than you will male students. But if you teach women's history

as part of another course and you don't present it as women's history, you don't get resistance. So I think it's not as controversial as it was when I started teaching this subject and you would maybe get four or five women signing up and no men at all. But it's still seen as something that's a little bit marginal. How do you define it, Selina? What is women's history? How do women's history and feminist history differ? So I think that they've got a huge amount of links. So really the theoretical underpinning for women's historians is that women's actual and potential role as mothers has mattered throughout time. That's not to say that they see women's biology as essential as determining what they can and can't do. But it is to say that very often in the past, women have been oppressed because of that role and that their biology has something to tell us

about the way that they have been treated and perceived. Feminist history and women's history have been very keen to think about women both within spheres that were seen as, you know, quotes and quotes, traditionally male. And if we think about, say, a great historian like Krista Cowman, something that her work has really done is to show us how central women have always been to the political sphere. And at the same time, women's history has really opened up new spheres that historians perhaps didn't consider before, such as domestic life, where feminist history has been really important, has been in thinking about how we might come up with ways of explaining who exploited or oppressed women in the past and how that happened. But also where women operated agency.

One of the things that I've always found really inspiring as both a student and a practicing historian of women's history is that there's no sense that women were ever just victims. We have to understand their oppression. But also one of the things that's been really, really inspiring about women's history is to say that women operated as agents of change. You know, Krista just referred to the suffrage movement. And I hear her frustration because one of the amazing things that historians like herself have done is to show us that the suffrage movement and feminist movements more generally haven't just affected life for those women who were directly involved in those movements, but also have affected society as a whole

in changing what we think of as politics. You know, for example, welfare states were really a concept that came out of feminist movements. From each of you, briefly, the most exciting example of something that people interested in this subject should read this month. Krista. That's a real pushing me on the spot, isn't it?

I would go back to Sylvia Pankhurst's The Sephragette Movement. It's huge. It's a real blockbuster. If you have to isolate yourself for a week, it will keep you going. But it's full of personalities and Edwardian colour and will tell you a lot of things that you really did not know about that period. And Selina? OK, I'm going to be really cheeky and have two. And one of them is Margaret Foster's brilliant memoir

of her life growing up as a working class daughter, which is called Hidden Lives, which is a brilliant social history of 20th century Britain told by one of our best novelists. And the other one is a more recent history book by Christine Godsey, which is called Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, which is a brilliant bringing together of political and social history to rethink what happened in the Eastern Bloc.

Professor Selina Todd, Professor Krista Kalman, thank you both very much indeed. Now this is the second year of the BBC's Young Reporter competition. More than 2,000 young people suggested an original story idea that they thought the BBC should be covering. Anne Kay from Bristol won a gold award. She's 19 but when she was 12 she was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She wanted to talk about how her life was changed for the better by becoming a volunteer in a hospital. Anna Miller went to meet Kay and her mother, Eileen, at home. I've always had difficulties with my eating.

It's always been my way to control my feelings. When I was seven years old, that's when the problems really started to get like a lot worse and I was referred to CAMHS, Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services. When I was 12 I was then referred again because things were getting really really bad. Within a month they had admitted me to a hospital. I spent six years in hospital right from the age when I was 12 to the age when I was 18. I had a really hard time in hospitals. I've made it out of there. I'm now on community treatment and I am doing much better. When you had been sectioned you talk about your mental health use the word I life is all about I do you want to talk about that? When you have a mental health illness

you're consumed by that illness it is like an addiction you always think about your illness yourself and you always just say I I I over and over again what has helped me is not thinking about the I is about thinking the we it wasn't easy volunteering was it I was like okay I really want to go into the healthcare profession I went to a college open day whilst I was there like I was looking around talking to tutors and they said you'd have to do weekly work experience to complete this course I called up about 30 or 40 different places and they all said no sorry we cannot take you because you've got a carer with you and because you're really struggling still with your mental health. But the Bristol Roy Infirmary, they offered me a chance.

I had to do a presentation in front of a whole group of people. I had to have a single interview, a group interview. And I remember the day when I got the news that I had got the volunteering role. It was just amazing. I started there as a befriender and my support worker was coming with me I'd be on a ward and I'd have to just go up to people and start chatting to them a lot of them have dementia in the adult hospital and so it was really really hard when sometimes they would reject me saying they didn't want anyone but now I've just built up my

resilience and now I can just go okay you don't want to talk that's fine you don't take it personal not at all now I got resilience now you've got resilience so that's one skill you've got from it yeah are there any other skills that you think wow I didn't realize I had that. Yeah, I can talk to anyone, but also the skill of stepping into someone else's shoes. Describe to me K before and then describe the K now because they seem like worlds apart. I was mute for quite a long time. I was acrophobic. I was really timid.

Having a purpose makes me feel so good. So we're going to a volunteering session today and there's one thing that I noticed as well. You can't get to volunteering without your mother. She needs to drive you there. Yeah normally I do get the bus. Oh do you? Right okay. What's her support been like? Her support has been amazing. She also knows how to pace me, so if she knows I'm getting tired, she'll be like, no, you can't go to your volunteering role because you're just not fit for it today.

She was the only person that believed in me throughout my hospital stay that I would get out, that I would, like, enjoy life again. Now we've locked her in the kitchen because she's with the cats. Will we go and get her to have a chat with us? Mum? Mum, come on. Eileen, we've just been talking about you. Oh dear, is that why my ears are burning?

What was it like back then watching your daughter go through her mental health situation? To see your child that unwell is really difficult. You know, you don't expect it ever to happen to you. Your children get placed, you know, far distance from you and get put into hospitals where you have to fight to see them. You've got a few questions you want to ask your mum, don't you? So mum, what changes have you noticed in me? When I remember you as a little girl, you were incredibly caring and then you became very selfish. Often after I travelled miles to see you, you didn't really look at me, you didn't interact with me, you didn't speak to me. That really felt quite a lonely place.

Did you think I would give up when it was difficult to find a volunteering place? It was really a difficult time because I think, you know, not only were you, you know, only just returning from hospital, being on home leave to attend college, you know, seeing you then suffering setback after setback by being turned down from people was actually incredibly hard. I couldn't make anybody offer you a volunteering position. Did you have to be a pushy mum at that point? I was very specifically be a pushy mum at that point? I was very

specifically not a pushy man because you know Kay was already at that stage almost 18 and she needed to grow independent so I was supporting in the background. When did you notice that volunteering was having a positive impact on my mental health mum? It took a little while. The more you went the more I noticed that actually you were coming back with a smile on your face. You were getting joy back. Thank you for everything, Mum. You're very welcome. You're going to volunteering.

Where's your mum taking us? Today I'm going to the Children's Hospital in Bristol. You want to get ready? Yeah. Off you go then. Close the door. Right, the cats are inside. Yes, good. So I'm in Bristol Children's Hospital and I'm just walking up to Lighthouse Ward.

Lighthouse Ward is a renal and urology ward, so there's patients with kidney problems on this ward. I'm just going to buzz in. Hi, Kate. The first thing I. I'm just going to buzz in. Hi, Kay. The first thing I do is I just sanitise my hands. OK, I'm going to introduce you to Nancy. She's the volunteer coordinator. Now, the one thing that Kay told me about you

was that you were the one that gave her a chance when a lot of people said no. It started off with just a note on my desk, as it often does. So a note just saying to ring this young person, they're interested in volunteering. She told me that she didn't think she had much to offer because she'd been in hospital for the last five years. So at that point, you know, it's really lovely for me to be able to say, actually, the value you're going to bring to your volunteering through all of that experience is just fabulous. You've got some questions for her?

Nancy, what made you give me an opportunity to volunteer here? Because I was that teenager once. Why then did you put me in the role of a befriender? Because you had the skills and the attitude and the warmth. How have I changed as a person? Well, your hair has changed colour again and again and again. So you keep me on my toes, having to work out whether it's you or not. You've just blossomed.

Can you describe that key that you first met? Very shy. So although you had a voice, it was quite quiet and quite hesitant. And that five years of being a selective moot, I am slightly laughing at that because of how much... I love talking. Yeah. Yeah.

But you are definitely making up for lost time. I'm going to head off now. What's next? I'm going to go round the ward and speak to some patients. Hello, Lighthouse Ward. What's this? What sound does a car make? Blue.

Yeah. What's your favourite What sound does a car make? Blue. Yeah. What's your favourite colour? Blue. Guess what my favourite colour is. What? Lilo. Why have you got gloves on? Get them off.

My gloves are because I don't want you getting ill. What's this? That's a car. Would it be too far of a stretch to say then that volunteering and being part of a community saved your life? Or am I being a bit dramatic? No, I think it did. When I first came home after being discharged from the hospital, I thought I would go to college and I would make all these friends. That's not what happened. Then I found volunteering in my community and that did save my

life do it again do it again bye bye bye Kay and Eileen spoke to N.M. Miller and you can find stories by other young people on the BBC's Young Reporter website now Now, if you're a fan of the Women's Hour podcast, you may have already spotted a special episode we made in collaboration with BBC Six Music. It's a celebration of women recorded at the Six Music

Festival at the weekend. The presenter, Georgie Rogers, goes backstage with some of the women in the line-up to hear about their inspiration and their experience of the industry, from the gender pay gap to going solo. Earlier this week, we heard from the Mercury Prize-nominated singer Nadine Shah, and there's more from her in the podcast, which is available to download, of course, on BBC Sound.

Another example is the Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard, which women have had the most influence on her music and her life? One of my role models is my grandmother just because she grew up through a lot of hard times living in the south and really resilient really tough raised like five children. She's a role model to me because she was a maid for so many years. She would take me with her to do the domestic worker thing and then seeing seeing her not get paid what she should and really not be treated how she should be treated, and then always see her being so resilient and so kind. I think that's someone I look up to.

And as far as inspirations go, I mean, I really love Nina Simone, and I really love Roberta Flack, and I also really like Kate Bush. And I also love Bjork. So Bjork, if you're out there in Iceland watching this right now, hit your girl up. It would be great. It would be amazing. It's a matter of time.

I feel like I'm ready now, though. The podcast is on BBC Sounds now, and you can watch live performances on the BBC iPlayer. Still to come in today's programme, a new novel for young people by Ellie Fountain, Lost, is the story of Lola and her brother who lose their home and each other and struggle to survive.

And the serial, the penultimate episode of The Leopard. Now, it was anticipated long ago that China's one-child policy and parents' preference for sons would one day lead to a seemingly insurmountable problem. Indeed, there are now 30 million more men than women in China, a situation which has

led to single women being put under intense pressure to marry quickly or be rejected by their families and society in general. Leftover women is the term used in China to describe women who are accused of having failed to find a husband. Well, a film called Leftover Women features the stories of three women. Hua Mei is one of the three who, at the time her family was urging her to marry, was working as a lawyer based in Beijing. Shosh Lam is the writer and one of the directors of the film, which is being shown at the Human Rights Watch Festival in London. She explained the origin of the term. Leftover women in Chinese, Shen Niu, is a term that was created by the Chinese Women Federation in 2007 and was adopted by the Minister of Education in the Chinese lexicon as an official

term. Young women, educated women in big cities that are not married. And we are talking about 25 to 30. And the reason for creating this term is to put pressure on young women to get married because China is facing a huge demographic problem of 30 million more men than women. They believe that if they will push young women and they will create harmonious families, the threat of social stability will be smaller. Why did you want to make a film about them? This is the second film that I'm directing in China. And in 2015, five activists were arrested for putting out stickers on buses and subways against sexual harassment.

And this aggressive act urged me to take a closer look on Chinese women's rights. So I came across the leftover women phenomena, and I saw that it's very important to give women a voice. Huamei, why did you want to take part in the film? The society puts a lot of pressure on women and pushes them into marriage. So I was kind of a victim of this pressure. So everybody, they think I'm strange. I'm over 30, but still not married.

Having to find a guy to settle down like that. And my parents, my sisters, also, they make me phone calls. When I was with my parents at home, they fight with me. When I was going for a job interview, they were asking me, will you go to be married and have children? So I don't like this question, but I was asked with this question. I noticed that the advertisement from Shosh, they want to make such a movie. I think, okay, this is a chance to give me a loud voice, because for me, I have to fight everybody.

What was it like, Kwame, when your parents said you were bringing shame on them by being single. They think no one wants me. They have a daughter that nobody wants here. So that's a shame. Shosh, what about the other two women in the film? How similar is their experience to what Kwame experienced? They're going or they went through the same experience. Guy Kee, the middle of our shooting, she very quickly found a man seven years younger than she is. Chinese society is a very classy society and she got married with someone from a lower class than she comes from.

And I think that she escaped from the stigma of being a leftover woman. She says it in the film that her life was much more interesting. Now her life is boring. And the third one, she's still looking for the Mr. Right, because her mother will choose her husband. Hormé, we see you in the film at a dating agency, and the woman in charge describes you as too old and not really beautiful. How did you manage to sit there and just take it? I noticed a lot of angry comments about this, but to me, I didn't get so much strong emotion from that because my family, they said even harsher comments on me. My mother, I was

ugly. Shosh, what did you make of that incident? Obviously, you were there for the filming. I really was shocked. But my assistant told me, why are you so shocked? I said, because this was very mean. And she said, you know, my mother used to tell me every day that I'm not beautiful. So I don't want to judge. I don't belong to this culture. But I think that this direct way that she used it, how she used it, was very mean and insulting. How common is one of the other things that you show in the film, the practice of parents advertising their children for marriage in the parks? It's very common. Every Sunday, you can find the parents in the park in Beijing and Shanghai trying to find a match for their children. And I have to say,

the Chinese parents, they were very aggressive. And it took us, you know, a few times to shoot there. Because in a way, I think that they are under the pressure that they feel that it's a shame that their children are not married yet and they don't want to be exposed. And as I learned that the Chinese society, they have a term, they call it PACE. Don't put the dirty laundry outside. So it's very common. The parents are very, very involved in their children's lives. And it comes from a Chinese thinking that children owe their lives to their parents. And this is the reason that they are very, you know, obedient to their parents.

Huamei, you decided to leave China and found the man of your own choice in Europe. How did your parents respond to you leaving? Actually, after I have left China, my parents stopped pushing me on this marriage stuff anymore. They just worry about my life in a foreign country because I'm so far away. So then I'm married. They just feel you do it because they lost their control of me. I know, Shosh, that you've shown the film in China. What reaction have you had there? I went to Shanghai. We had four screenings sold out. Most of the audience were young people and they were laughing all the time. And I was very surprised because I don't think it's a funny film. But they explained that the laugh came from embarrassment.

And the reactions were that the film is a mirror to their own lives. Well, Mei, what impact do you hope the film will have in China? I really hope society stops putting pressure on women. Left of women don't want to be married. Marriage is not everything. It shouldn't be everything for women's life. They have dreams, they have jobs, they have a professional life.

So I hope the society gives the women more space to live their own life. I was talking to Hua Mei and Shosh Shlam and the film is being shown at the Human Rights Watch Festival in London, that's at the Barbican, and Curzon Soho on the 13th and 14th of March. That's tomorrow and the day after. Now, you may remember a couple of years ago, we spoke to the novelist Ellie Fountain about her first story for young people, Boy 87, where she's now published her second, Lost.

Lola and Amit live a comfortable life with their father and their nanny and housekeeper, Mila. Their mother has died. Mila leaves to have her own baby, and their father unaccountably disappears. The two children end up homeless and are

eventually separated. Lola spends her time trying to survive in a hostile city, looking for her little brother. Ellie, what inspired the idea of these two lost children? So my family and I lived in Addis Ababa for about three years. And during that time, I would see street kids every day. And on one occasion, I was coming home and I saw a young girl begging at the side of the road. And on the adjacent street, there was a homeless woman lying next to the road.

And when I was able to return later that day they'd both gone but I discovered that the girl had been trying to raise money to take her mother who was seriously ill to hospital and the girl must have been about four which was the same age as my eldest daughter at that time. And the woman had been lying in a street that was about two blocks from our house. And it made me wonder how I would have felt if that daughter had been my daughter. Because I think for many of us, the idea that a few misfortunes could lead to the loss of something as elemental as your home feels unlikely. But in reality, for many tens of millions of children, they've never had one in the first place.

Why do these two end up on the street? Because they do have a comfortable flat. They know Mila, their nanny. She's gone off to have a baby and their dad. Why do they end up as street rats? There is that saying that you're never more than three paychecks away from living on the streets. And I wanted to write a story that tied a thread

between the reality that many of us live and the reality that many street kids live and show that in actual fact those two realities are not so very far apart and what happens to to Lola and Amit is a is a series a sequence of misfortunes in in real life could happen to anybody. Their father doesn't come home one day. They don't know why. And he's behind on the rent. And that's when events begin to snowball.

And from having lived a very, very comfortable life, in a relatively short space of time, the unimaginable happens to Lola and Amit and their comfortable, stable life disintegrates and they find themselves on the streets. Let's hear what it's like for Lola, alone, with no home. As I walked along the platform, I realised how different I look to the passengers waiting for their trains. I'm dirty and my hair is unbrushed, but I sense there's something else too.

I carry everything with me now, inside. I cannot leave any part of me lying safely elsewhere. There is nowhere else. Maybe that makes me walk in a different way, look at other people in a different way. Whatever it is, I feel like it's the first part of becoming a street rat, or maybe it's the last part. Why did you decide that Lola should be the narrator of the story?

I really wanted to write the book in the first person because I wanted to show the contrast between where she had come from and where she ended up. And I wanted the reader to experience the helplessness that she was experiencing as events gathered place. And it was a sort of speeding car that she couldn't leave. And I didn't want the reader to be able to leave either and I also wanted the the main character to be a girl because um there are terrible things which street children all street children um have to face on a daily basis but for a girl um for a girl living on the streets there's's another layer to that, you know, the levels of abuse and possibly ending up having to work in a domestic situation, unpaid or worse, are things that I touch upon

and things that I think are important to acknowledge. Obviously you explore the sibling relationship, but you also explore friendships with girls. Why is Lola's relationship with Bella so significant? So I think that girls can often be quite passive in relationships that aren't necessarily working for them. I think that Lola perhaps senses that Bella doesn't see her as an equal. And when Lola's life begins to change, and she has to rely on her instincts

to survive, she begins to trust her instincts. And she begins to have more confidence in them and by the end of the book she is learning to act upon them and she was never really active in her friendship with Bella and I think she's beginning to unpick and understand that she can she can be active she can make choices because Bella's from a fabulously wealthy family isn't she Bella's from a fabulously wealthy family, isn't she? Bella's from a fabulously wealthy family. And Lola was absorbing some of her prejudices, some of Bella's prejudices. And again, that's something she realizes she didn't need to do. She could have made a choice not to do that. But she didn't have the confidence to do so.

Now, Lola makes friends eventually with a street boy called Rafi. What's the importance of that relationship because they don't look as if they're going to be friends at the outset. No at the outset they are definitely not friends and I wanted to show that as part of Lola's evolution when her the threads of her family and her her previous life have started to unravel I wanted to show how she was reflecting on um what family really meant to her and how she was beginning to understand that family did not necessarily mean um a home with mom and dad and a sibling family could basically be somebody who cares about you, somebody who's there for you. And I think that through her understanding of that, she starts to teach Rafi that as well.

Now, you said originally that a lot of the inspiration for this novel came from your experiences in Addis Ababa. But you don't specify in the book where the children are. Why not? I don't specify where the children are. And I didn't specify where Boy 87 was set either. It's for the same reason. Both of these places exist and they're very real in my head, which is very important for me when I'm writing about it

but for both stories I wanted the humanity, the human side, the empathy to be key to the story. I didn't want it to be about one particular country's politics or one particular country's failings because this is a scenario which could apply to many countries not just developing countries. Now, the book, I said it was a book for young people. I think it's sort of aimed at the 11 to 14-year-old.

What are you hoping that the readers will take from it? So I have written about some gritty subjects, not intentionally. I write about subjects that are very close to my heart, things that I care about. And in my many years as an editor on the other side of the coin, editing other people's books, I learned that the story must come first. Otherwise, people won't want to read about the thing that you care about. And ultimately, I think I want children to feel some sense of empathy because I think it's key to our emotional development, to thrive as adults, to see beyond ourselves.

And if I can light a spark of empathy, then I will be very happy. Ellie Fountain, thank you very much. And I'll just repeat, the novel is called Lost. Thank you. I was talking to Ellie Fountain about her novel for young people, and it's called Lost. On Women's History Month, someone who didn't give us a name said, it's so important that we remember women's history as we've always operated as agents of change.

The suffragette Mary Clark suffered hardship after leaving an abusive marriage, but still played a leading part in the suffrage movement with her sister, Emmeline Pankhurst. And Catherine, in an email, wrote, I'd like to shout out my seven-year-old granddaughter's primary school in South London where she's tucking into biographies of amazing women led by her very enthusiastic and inspiring teacher.

My daughter-in-law introduced her daughter to women's biographies before it was cool. On the BBC Young reporter Diana Coker tweeted congratulations Kay and keep soaring. And on the leftover women film Jennifer tweeted this is a sign of a very dysfunctional society. Once again women compromised and cast aside. Now do join Jane for tomorrow's programme when she'll be joined by three women to discuss sexual violence within the black community. Why are black women far less likely to report or disclose abuse allegations? And how much does culture play a part?

That's Jane tomorrow morning, two minutes past ten. Do join her if you can. From me, bye bye. Hello, it's me, Greg Jenner, the bloke from the funny history podcast You're Dead to Me. I've got good news. We're back for a second series where historians, comedians alike will join me in learning things about, well, Mary Shelley, the ancient Greek Olympics and their history of chocolate. Find us on the BBC Sounds app or wherever you get your podcasts and you'll be able to hear comedians ask historians questions like this one. This is Tim Minchin asking about Neanderthals.

Do they have penises like us? Search for You're Dead to Me on the BBC Sounds app. 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.