Woman's Hour - Brexit anxiety, Bedtime Stories, UN women, Pain management

Episode Date: March 29, 2019

Westminster Politics aside, we look at the wider impact that uncertainty about Brexit is having on families, friendships and out in the wider world of work. With MPs currently debating the way ahead for the whole country, we hear about some of the fallout for people trying to get on with their lives and their businesses. 'Bedtime Stories' is a project set up by the Stratford Literature Festival which helps prisoners to write original stories for the children they're separated from while serving time. Milly Chowles visited HMP East Sutton Park ,a women's open prison in Kent, and talked to festival director Annie Ashworth, Children’s writer Smriti Prasadam-Halls and to some of the prisoners at a writing workshop.Women from all over the globe go to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the UN in New York every year. It's the global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women .This year our reporter Ena Miller also attended. We hear from some of the unsuspecting women she followed in the street and between sessions to find out why they had made the journey. Plus, are our cultural attitudes to women and pain standing in the way of effective treatments? We discuss how pain fits into female identity and what to do about it.Presenter Tina Daheley Guest Louise Stewart Guest Anoosh Chakelian Guest Katy VincentReporter Milly Chowles Reporter Ena Miller

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, Tina Dehealy here with the podcast for Friday the 29th of March. Have you ever taken a day off work because of pain related to so-called women's problems? And did you tell your employer the real reason why? Well, today we're asking if our cultural attitudes towards women in pain are standing in the way of treatment. We visit a prison where inmates are writing bedtime stories for the children they are separated from. And we also hear the stories of the women who've travelled to the UN's headquarters in New York for a global summit dedicated to equality and

empowerment. But first, today was supposed to be the day Britain left the European Union. Well, that's obviously not happening. But as the political drama continues to play out, today MPs have been summoned to vote on a half meaningful vote. But let's not get into that. We're discussing Brexit anxiety, the wider impact the ongoing uncertainties having on families, friendships, relationships and our work. Louise Stewart from the Federation of Small Business and Anoush Shaquillian from the New Statesman. Anoush, Brexit anxiety, is it a thing? And do you think Westminster may be driving anxiety for a lot of people? It's certainly a thing. I've been reporting on it pretty much since the

referendum result came through, and it's certainly being ignored by Westminster. When we talk about uncertainty over Brexit, we usually talk about the impact it has on the economy, on investment, on the pound. But we don't talk about what impact it has on people's households in terms of their relationships and in terms of their view of the future. You know, you may be worried about what Brexit might bring for your children. You may be worried that you might not be able to afford to rent where you're living anymore in the future or buy a house in the future because of the utter uncertainty about what it means for your household finances and also for your relationships.

I mean, this has exposed that people have different value systems, as your person who tweeted said. It's exposed that people have very different opinions about how the world works. And that has caused tensions between couples who are otherwise close and didn't realise that they had so many differences in their outlook on the world. And how much is it about the toxicity of the conversation around Brexit and politics in general? Well, the debate is so toxic. I mean, you only need to look at the people protesting outside Parliament and the way that they've treated some MPs to know that tensions are really high and that boundaries and civility has actually somewhat disintegrated over this debate. Even the way we talk about Brexit in the press

and politicians, you know, we talk about an act of national self-harm. We talk about Brexit in the press and politicians. You know, we talk about an act of national self-harm. We talk about political suicide. We talk about, you know, a collective mental breakdown, identity crisis. This is the language of mental illness that we use about Brexit. No wonder it's making people anxious. What evidence have you seen about the relationship between national events, not only Brexit, and our personal psychological responses? Well, there's been a lot of research into this, perhaps sparked because of how Brexit is affecting the nation. At the University of Sheffield, they've drawn parallels between the Munich crisis in 38

and the uncertainty about whether Britain was going to go to war, and parallels between that and the uncertainty of Brexit now. There were lots of suicides that were linked to the Munich crisis back then. And they're looking into how mental health is affected now by Brexit. And so one fifth of councillors said that Brexit conflict had come up in their counselling rooms, according to the Relate counselling charity. And also, we now know that one in 10 people have had trouble sleeping because of Brexit in the past year,

according to Mental Health Foundation polling. Well, I certainly have. Not least because I talk about it all the time in my day job. Louise, how is uncertainty about Brexit affecting small businesses? Yes, I can just say I've had a few Brexit nightmares myself as well, so I can see how it's affecting people's sleep. For small businesses, an overwhelming majority of younger women in particular those between 18 and 24 they voted to remain in the eu in the referendum and despite

that um you know we're obviously looking like we're set to leave and their lives might be impacted negatively by that and why do i say that well we're expecting a sort of um perhaps um downturn in economic um prosperity after brexit for some time anyway and our latest uh small business index which is out today shows that uh women's confidence is down and i can see why the last recession 10 years ago women were the most um impacted. So if we leave with either no deal or a deal that has a negative impact on the economy, that's going to have a much bigger impact on women than men, unfortunately. What are women business owners saying to you about the kind of decisions they're facing at the moment and the choices they're weighing up?

Well, as I said, their confidence is is down it's negative um women are less likely at the moment to hire than um those running firms if they're male um i think because they're perhaps more cautious women generally have much more difficulty getting finance accessing finance than men do that's a a fact. And so therefore, at the moment when there is uncertainty, they're probably less likely to invest. In terms of exporting, intentions amongst female-led businesses are much lower than men. And just talking to our women members,

I was speaking to a woman member earlier this week, very successful, actually. She runs a company which is now stocked in very large retailers across the country. And a large supermarket, one of the main supermarkets you would know, pulled that product lines and blamed Brexit for it. So, you know, they've got this stock there. They've invested the money. They thought they had an order.

And within just a few weeks, with very very little notice the order's been pulled. So you can see why there's a lack of confidence and uncertainty when decisions have been taken by bigger companies in the supply chain which are impacting on smaller businesses. There's obviously an economic anxiety in workplaces and the businesses but how much of this news is about money and people worrying about managing money in their homes, in their families? A lot of it is about money and what the impact of Brexit will have on a family's prosperity. But what that leads to is conflict within families or within couples. Because if your partner voted to leave the European Union, you might have seen that as a risk to your family's situation and your finances. Or maybe the other way around.

If someone has chosen to remain, but you weren't doing so well in the first place, you know, there's huge wage stagnation and the benefits freeze have meant that people have less money in their pockets at the moment. You might think, well, why did you vote for the status quo? You know, so that's sort of revealing the differences that couples perhaps didn't know that they had. And I've spoken to councillors who have said we've had couples in who were very close and Brexit has just exposed these massive differences in their views of the world. And that can cause such conflict.

And it's not just couples. I'm sorry. I was going to say that in workplaces, you know, very quickly, just this week in my office, a very tight team all get on well, started talking about, you know, whether there should be a second referendum or not. And all of a sudden the conversation became very heated. And as you say, the debate around Brexit is quite febrile and it's quite an aggressive sort of way that people are speaking to each other. You know, that people have such strong opinions on it that, you know, it can be very divisive. And a company that I spoke to recently, another small business that I was dealing with,

a husband and wife couple, they're concerned about whether they'll be able to get the same products in that they do because they import wines, et cetera. You know, but their office was split down the middle. I actually visited there with the Brexit minister, Kwasi Kwarteng. And he was fascinated to see that a small office with six people all sitting in a very small room was split absolutely down the middle on this,

which is how the country was split. Let's face it, you know, it was a very tight vote. I'll just bring you an email that's come in from somebody who wants to remain anonymous. And they say, my sister and I no longer have any contact. She supports Brexit. I do not. Our lifestyles and political perspective have always been very different, but we managed to sustain a relationship by both deliberately not focusing on differences. Brexit made this more difficult. And after what I thought was an amicable discussion, my sister phoned to say she never wanted to speak to me ever again. Despite my attempts to open communication via a telephone call and a mail in which I tried to explain that I loved her and believed family relationships were more important than politics, she would not engage. I attempted to visit but the door was slammed in my face. I know my sister well enough to know that she will never change her mind. I have lost my only sister. How many more rifts like this have been caused? So

sorry to hear that. That is such a sad story and I really do hope that it gets resolved in the end but I have to say in my reporting on this issue I have heard similar stories. I have heard people who have been estranged from their families because they have differing views on the referendum result. I've heard EU citizens' partners also arguing with their own families over their partner's future. So it is quite common, I think, sadly. And I think there's no escape from it. That's part of the problem, isn't it? You can have differing opinions in offices, in relationships, in marriages, over politics, etc. But it's the fact that there is no escape from Brexit at the moment. So it's in every newspaper, it's every time you switch on the television and the radio, for obvious reasons, it's the biggest thing to happen in this

country for such a long time, but there isn't an escape from it. So if you are having difficulties at home or in personal relationships, it's quite difficult. What does it become the elephant in the room that none of you are able to speak about there's huge jeopardy louise in getting decisions wrong about the future of a business if you are running one what impact is that having well absolutely and that's why we're seeing in all businesses really at the moment people are just i would say deciding maybe to put off investment that they might have invested in the past. So whether to grow their business, whether to move to new premises, bigger premises, whether to increase their staff. You know, and women are part of that picture.

But as I said earlier, women do find it more difficult to get finance than men. That's a fact. So therefore, I think think at the present time they're even less likely to want to make these big decisions and invest in the future and as i say i mean businesses preparing for brexit we know that um uh around four in ten have um spent over a couple of thousand pounds one in ten have spent over ten thousand but some have spent literally you know quarter of a million pounds stockpiling goods. And that's a huge amount to invest in your business if you don't know what's going to happen next. What about jeopardy for families, Anoush? What do we know about anxiety among EU citizens

living in the UK at the moment? Well, they're the people who are being affected the most by this sort of emotional response to Brexit because they don't necessarily know what their future holds. They were left in the lurch by the government for far too long. And people within the government will admit that. Now, you know, their rights have unilateral rights have been guaranteed, but they're still unsure because looking at the way that the Windrush scandal played out, there's no reason for them really to feel trust in the way the government treats migrants, or at least from their point of view. And so they may feel that their future is uncertain. Also, talking of women, you know,

women are generally the people who will be running the household. They won't even know perhaps which country their family will end up living in in a year's time. So that causes a great deal of anxiety for them. Anoush, Louise, thank you very much for joining us this morning. Last word goes to Silver Fox on Twitter, who says, the anxiety I have is mostly for my children. Sophie and my eight-year-old, as their future opportunities will be limited by this absolute nonsense.

Thank you for your messages. Now, reading stories to your child at bedtime is a time to relax and connect with the child while also encouraging a love of books. But for women in prison separated from their children it's an experience they inevitably miss out on. Bedtime Stories is a project set up by the Stratford Literature Festival which helps prisoners to write original stories for the children they're separated from whilst serving custodial sentences. The stories they write in the day-long workshops are then made into physical books and recorded in audio form for mums and dads to send home to their kids. Our reporter Millie Chow visited HMP East Sutton Park, a women's open prison in Kent where she met festival director Annie Ashworth, children's writer Smriti Prasadam-Halls,

and sat in on a workshop with a group of women prisoners writing bedtime stories for their children back home. Residents are now to work in the foreign ladies, make their way to health care. Once upon a time on a warm September in St Elizabeth in Jamaica, on a sandy beach under a palm tree full of coconuts with splashing waves in the distance, a beautiful lion cub with caramel skin and a golden curly mane was born. She had big green eyes and an adorable cute smile.

Her mum and dad could see how special she was straight away and knew she was going to make them proud Her mum entered her into the cutest baby competition and she won that Oh my god, what's wrong with me? You have to sort of, yeah, and you have to mask it when you're in a closed prison, don't you? You have to make it short, you know, you have to sort of Yeah, and put on to mask it when you're in a closed prison, don't you? You have to make it short, you know, you have to sort of...

Yeah, and put on a front and stuff like that. And you can't really let your emotions show, can you? But in this environment where we're all sort of feeling the same, we're all trying to do the same thing for the children and our families and stuff, it's nice to be able to just be yourself and say what you want and just relax. I really need some more tissue. What was the idea? was the idea i think me and my daughter are both quite strong and we've both been through a lot so i sort of i'd look at

as like as animals would be lions or lionesses and um she's at a point now where she wants to do well at school like she's she's really messed up but they're giving her homework for c and d level gcses and she's always been like top of the class like through primary school she doubts herself although she appears really confident and stuff she doubts what she can do so i just want to make a little success story like make her see that whatever she wants to achieve she can achieve it so by putting that into the story so i don't know what the ending is going to be yet but yeah that's the start of it all then everyone, so this afternoon we're going to write

we're going to write the stories and hopefully you've come back from lunch with your ideas perhaps a bit more developed I don't know I'm Smriti Prasadam-Halls I'm a children's book author when I had one of my first books published in 2014,

a book called I Love You Night and Day, it was a huge success in the US. And at that time, I got lots and lots of requests for it to be read at weddings and christenings and all sorts of lovely things like that. And then in 2015, I got a letter, which was very different and it was from a prison in Texas and it was from a woman working in the mental health department there and she said I just wanted to write to you and let you know that we are using this book with our male level three offenders. Are you happy for that? Some of the men would like to record this story to send home to their children. It moved me quite profoundly to think that that small story would be used in that way. And so when I heard about this project, I really, really wanted to be involved. And it's been hugely exciting and hugely rewarding to work with the women and the men in these prisons.

Remember that it's children that will be reading this, so have fun with your, you know... these prisons. It's a fantastic way of being still connected to them when you're not there so I got a bit stuck earlier I'm trying to write something that has got the children involved in it so an adventure with them involved in it so they feel like they're part of the story and part of the journey so yeah it's lovely. Have written much before um no i love reading i love reading books i love reading i used to love reading as a child but i've never written i've never written anything before so this is the first time have you been writing letters and things like that oh yes yeah i write loads of letters yeah hundreds of letters yeah so um i don't think i'm very creative but when I started doing this this morning and you read things out you suddenly think actually I'm much more creative than I

ever thought I was you said that you've you've never written like done any creative writing um but you love books did that make it a bit daunting at all this morning knowing that you're gonna come and try and write yourself for the first time no I don't think I think um I think all the exercises that they went through with us this morning were really easy and really comfortable to get into the mindset of thinking about creative words and all that I think now this afternoon that it's come to you're actually writing it it's suddenly you just I had a bit of a mental block I was like oh I know what I want to do but I want it to be so perfect that I'm I think I'm overthinking it and trying to make it more complicated than it is but I just sat and had a couple of minutes with Annie and um so I'm I'm

on where my story is now I know where I'm going so well I'll let you get back to that now you've got that kind of clear idea of where you're going my name is annie ashworth and i'm the director of the stratford literary festival a lot of the women include one of their children in the stories are there any other recurring themes that come up it's interesting because we work with women and men we find quite a difference in the way the women and men write actually in terms of the themes women are often the primary carers so the rent from their children is immense so they often write quite comforting stories they write very loving very warm stories they might include themselves in the story that mummy is coming back um mummy loves you and so the quite often during the sessions it can be quite emotional

the men we have had a lot of emotion from the men, actually. And we've worked in prisons from, you know, people who are beginning life sentences through to, you know, men who are on shorter term or not far off release. And quite often the themes for men are about don't do what I've done. Quite moral stories, actually, of being good and looking after your brothers and sisters and that sort of thing so and men are being men are much more confident about what they're writing we have to do less confidence building quite often we have to guide them on to how to create a story but they don't question their ability to do it as much as the women do. So if I started off at the beginning then, did that, but then before that bit, then sort of like Mickey went to bed first and then came in and then...

Because you could say, if you choose that, tomorrow was an exciting day and that's where you can put the daddy bit in. When it was time for lunch, Mickey ate his cheese sandwich, drank his orange juice and ate his apple, watching the children play chase on the grass. Still no one came to play with him. Suddenly, on his backpack, a tiny dragon had appeared. Hello, Mickey, said the dragon.

My name is Martha, the magical dragon. Why are you not playing with the children? Mickey looked astonished. Martha was the smallest dragon he had ever seen. She had yellow scales. How's it going? Looks like you've done loads this morning already. Yeah, it's going really well. It's really interesting and it's just creative thinking, isn't it? It's just looking at something you didn't obviously think you could do and now

opens your eyes up to something different. Have you done much writing before? No. No, not at all. This is the first time I've ever really sat down and done something like this. So not really your comfort zone at all then? It's never something I've aspired to do or thought I could do very well. Tell me about your story and what you're trying to communicate and where the idea came from.

Well, the idea came from just thinking about kids and how hard it is sometimes when you're an only child, because my son's an only child, going to school being scared, having nothing to talk to. The dragon Martha is like a figment of his imagination. It's like his imaginary friend, but not to have magical powers and take him off on adventures, just to teach him what to do in situations

where kids of four or five at school don't know how to make friends. You know, be big and brave, and if you don't know, you don't know what's going to happen, you need to try it. And I think that's a valuable lesson in life, isn't it? You know, don't ever admit defeat before you've tried something. Martha, the dragon character, is almost like this sort of bit of resilience,

this sort of bit of inner strength and encouragement, maybe a bit of confidence that sometimes we all wish we might have a bit more of. We'd all love Martha the magical dragon, definitely, because when you're faced with things you're not too sure about, it'll be lovely to have somebody that can guide you but not give you the answers and then hopefully you'll learn the right way. But everyone has a friend. Not everyone, Mickey. Take a look around.

Sure enough, under the tree sat a little girl. She also looked sad. Go and speak to her. I'm sure she will be your friend. Before Mickey could say anything, Martha had gone. Millie Chow speaking to prisoners at HMP East Sutton Park. Still to come, our reporter Enna Miller's been following women who travel to the UN's headquarters in New York for a global summit promoting gender equality.

And just to let you know that the Women's Hour Craft Prize Tour opens tomorrow at the Lighthouse in Glasgow and runs until the 26th of May. It's the last chance to see winning work by ceramicist Phoebe Cummings and work of the 12 finalists of the inaugural prize. A collaboration between Radio 4, the Crafts Council and the Victoria and Albert Museum. A wide range of approaches to contemporary crafter on show

with works made from woven willow and darn jumpers to a bespoke bicycle and intricate jewellery. And a reminder also that this week's parenting podcast is now available on BBC Sounds. It's all about ketamine and what parents need to know about the drug. You can find an article summing up the advice on the Woman's Hour website and our Instagram account at BBC Woman's Hour. You can keep messaging us, of course. We've had this in on Twitter from someone who wanted to send us a message about Brexit anxiety. They say my daughter's studying in Holland and has received letters about her status as a resident there. She will have to leave as soon as her degree finishes.

My son works in France and his future's uncertain. My in-laws voted to leave. I'm furious they've let their grandchildren down. Now yesterday in the news we heard about the British woman who doesn't feel pain. Jo Cameron is one of only two people in the world known to have a rare genetic mutation, which means she not only feels no pain, she doesn't feel anxious or afraid. It got us thinking and we wanted to discuss how pain fits into female identity and whether our cultural attitudes to women and pain are standing in the way of effective treatments. Katie Vincent is Senior Pain Fellow and Consultant Gynaecologist at the Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health

at the University of Oxford. Before we hear from her, have a listen to this. It's Kristen Scott-Thomas guest-starring in a recent episode of the TV series Fleabag. Listen, I was in an aeroplane the other day and I realised, well, I've been longing aeroplane the other day, and I realised... Well, I mean, I've been longing to say this out loud. Women are born with pain built in.

It's our physical destiny. Period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. Men don't. They have to seek it out. They invent all these gods and demons and things so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own.

And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other. And when there aren't any wars, they can play rugby. And we have it all going on in here, inside. We have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then just when you feel you are making peace with it all what happens the menopause comes the menopause comes but then you're free it's so unfair casey what do you make of that? Thank you very much for having me on to talk about this and for letting me hear that which I hadn't heard before

so I think that's right and I think that really exemplifies the fact that it's not just us as doctors that need to change our attitudes to women's pain it's women themselves it's not just the fact that when girls and women present with period pain to their GP or to the gynaecologist, it's also when girls say to their mums that they're in pain with their periods, that their mums need to take them to the doctors rather than saying, well, I had to put up with it, so so do you.

I think it's really sad if the first time a young girl plucks up the courage to tell her mum or her teacher that sex is painful, if the person that she tells says, well, sex was painful for me too, that's what you've got to put up with, then she's going to believe that. She's probably never going to pluck up the courage to tell someone else. Why is it? I mean, it's fine to say I've got a really bad migraine and I'm not going to be able to go to work, but far less acceptable to say you have hellish period pain. And I think that is one of the problems with a lot of women's pain is it's very intimate. It's very personal. And so we don't talk about it. It's fine to say you've got a migraine. It's fine to say your foot hurts after a rugby match, because that's something you should be proud of. But to say you've got period pain, or you had sex last night, so your

vulva really hurts. That's not something you want to talk about in the office. But I think we should acknowledge that men do have sex related pain, and we don't treat that very well either. So maybe that's something that is increasing. And we don't discuss that very often either. How is women's pain characteristically different? It's yesterday hearing about this woman, one of two in the world. She doesn't feel pain sparked a lot of conversations about pain, but also women and pain specifically. Yeah, so I think there is an increasing interest in whether there really are gender differences in the experience of pain and there's been a lot of research on that over recent years and some of it has been very good and some of it's not been conducted as well perhaps as it could have been so we've got

quite blurred evidence but I think in some ways there are differences in the experience and certainly women's pain in general will often vary across the cycle and that's not just pain associated with periods but pain for example related to bowel function pain related to bladder function migraines can all change across the menstrual cycle and men don't have that variation their their physiology the way their bodies behave is much more consistent on a day-to-day basis how much of this is down to our hormones and how does our hormonal cycle affect the pain we experience so again that's something that we're only just beginning to really understand and unravel but certainly we're beginning to see that hormones

definitely do have an effect on all sorts of different things within the body not just on what we would classically think of as reproductive function so we understand now that our hormones affect how our muscles work how our brains work how our psychology works we all know that they affect our mood for example and we're beginning. We all know that they affect our mood, for example. And we're beginning to see that our hormones also affect in some different ways how we perceive pain. And certainly things like, for example, migraine are very well understood to have a hormonally driven component to them. If hormones play such a big part in how we experience all these things, pain included? Why is there so

little research into it? I think that's a really good question. And I think in some ways, it's just because people haven't really thought of hormones outside of the context of general gynecology and reproductive health. And we've really focused very much on them as a way of thinking about contraception, or as a way of treating menopausal symptoms or very clear gynecological things like endometriosis or fibroids for example and I think also there's been resistance to use them for other things because we've worried about the side effects of hormones there have been big publicity about clots for example in association with the pill or breast cancer risk in association with HRT

and so people who aren't familiar with using them have worries about them and I think we need to dispel some of those myths because we know that a lot of the modern day hormone preparations are very very safe and we should be focusing on the benefits of these hormones rather than worrying about the risks. What are some of the myths? Well, so for example, the risks about cancer risks or the risks about clots are actually very small compared to the benefits of them. And we know that the risks associated with having daily episodes of pain, for example, both with social risks, missing out days of school, risks on your mood, long-term risks on associations with changes in your brain function, risks of other chronic pain conditions. Actually there are

long-term associations with having all of these chronic pain conditions and associated with a very small risk of a clot. For example actually maybe we need to think about the risks and benefits of these treatments in a different view the pill is used to treat very heavy periods and period pain do we need to do more of that in my view absolutely and i think again we need to think that we would use these treatments as contraception very happily for young girls so why are we so resistant about the idea of using them as a treatment why are we because you say that's my view what's the opposing view well i think again people tend to think that periods are normal and period pain is normal so why do we think we need to medicalize it? And for girls who are happy with their periods and where they're not causing them problems,

then we don't need to medicalise it. But I think if girls are missing days off school or it's getting in the way of their lives, then we know that we have very safe hormonal preparations that we would happily give to them as contraception to stop them getting pregnant. And therefore, why should we be letting their periods get in the way of their lives? How can we get to potential treatments if there's a reluctance to acknowledge the causes and little research in this area?

So I think education is the first thing that we need to do and I think as you highlighted really well with that clip right at the beginning that's got to be education at all levels. It's got to be education of teenagers. It's got to be education of their mothers, their grandmothers, their teachers. And it's got to be education of health care professionals across the board. I think it's endometriosis that has a 7 to 11 years average time to die knows, which is pretty shocking. That training also needs to come, I'm guessing, for doctors and GPs knowing how to respond to women's reports of their pain, as you mentioned.

That's absolutely true, and I think it's really disheartening when you hear the stories of the patients who come and say they went repeatedly to the GP with their symptoms or then to the gynaecologist with their symptoms or often to other specialties if their symptoms were related more to their bowels or their bladder and they were repeatedly dismissed and told that they had normal period problems and they just had to get on with it and then finally they get a diagnosis and often by the time they present at that stage their symptoms have become much more widespread.

They have other associations. They have all over body pain or significant mood disorders or other things that make it much harder to get on top of their symptoms. Whereas perhaps if we'd managed to treat them earlier, we might have been able to get a much better result more quickly. Katie Vincent, thank you very much for joining us this morning. Theodora's tweeted us to say a good orgasm helps period pain and the congestion in the area not often suggested. And this from Caroline, why does anyone explain the reason why they're taking a sick day? I'm not going to explain my period cramps anymore that I'm going to tell a boss about explosive diarrhoea. We'd love to hear from you on this, on pain. How do you communicate pain? Is

it something you find difficult? Please do share your stories with us at BBC Women's Hour if you're using social media or you can email us through the website. Now the 63rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women, CSW, has been taking place at the United Nations headquarters in New York and finished last Friday. It's the global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. Every year, women from all over the globe, leaders, representatives of member organisations, volunteers, schoolgirls, make their way there to be part of a conversation. Our reporter, Enna Miller, has been way there to be part of a conversation. Our reporter, Emma Miller, has been long fascinated by what goes on there.

And this year, she got a ticket. For Women's Hour, she followed unsuspecting women in the streets and between sessions to find out why they'd made the journey and what they had to say. She also heard from a woman determined to have her shocking life story heard in order to help other survivors of sexual violence. Where are you going? Modern slavery and human trafficking, effective responses for women and girls. I think that's where I'm going.

Are you? Yeah. There's just so many things, isn't there? There's so much stuff going on this week, it's ridiculous. Trying to plan what we wanted to go to was so hard. Hi, I'm Kajal. I'm from the National Council of Women. So we've just left the ambassadors reception.

We have. I was going to go on to something about windows and then I thought, I think I'll just follow you. I feel like sometimes that's the way things go. We're on East 47th Street. I've never been interviewed like on the go like this. How does you being here make a difference? I think it's going to be like a fact finding and listening and try and do something small scale you know back home where we live.

And when you say something small scale someone did talk about how it's very important that what we take globally is also passed down locally. What we plan to do is go into schools and talk to them about what we did and I think for a lot of young kids and girls in the UK to be able to see that like someone that isn't much older than them has managed to get somewhere like this and has managed to like speak to people that we're managing to speak to it shows that what you're doing in school does have an impact and like sometimes I'm a little bit cynical about it because you worry that like okay we sat in a room and we talked about it but what actually happened we've arrived kind of I think so I'm gonna go and ask one of these gentlemen here. I am passionate about making sure

that people like me can fulfill their potential and that nothing stands in their way and they can be educated they're free from violence so those things drive me to do the work I do. My name is Ebony I work for Orchid Project we have a vision of a world that's free of female genital cutting, also known as female genital mutilation. It feels very prestigious to be here. We're surrounded by all of the amazing skyscrapers of New York that we can see out of three of the windows. And we're also surrounded by lots of amazing colleagues who are here for CSW. We're on the 29th floor. It's the building that homes the UK Ambassadors Residence, so we're here to talk to world

leaders and build alliances to end female genital cutting. I would say something like FGM has quite a lot of support, so what more do you need? Because of population growth in countries where FGC is practiced, by 2030 we could have an extra 68 million girls who have been subjected to female genital cutting. So we really need to accelerate focusing on it, prioritizing resources. I think recently in the UK, obviously, we had the first ever prosecution and that really sort of brought the issue into the consciousness of the public, which is great. But this is a global problem. It happens, yes, in communities such as the UK with diaspora communities, but also it's happening in 45 different countries worldwide at least.

I'm Emma and I work for United Society Partners in the Gospel. We're a 300-year-old mission agency. Religion and women and the UN, what are you here to achieve? I think we're just here to continue the conversations around the importance of faith and religion in the lives of 80% of the world's population, right? So you cannot have conversations about gender and gender equality without realising the importance of faith. It was really surprising to speak to you

because I hadn't really thought about religion, gender and women. I didn't really put you as part of the mix. And I think that's been really common and I think part of the problem is there was this modernisation theory that as everything becomes more modern, faith will become less relevant. And that's not what we're seeing.

That's not what's happening in reality. But as the UN, the World Banks, the different government organisations were saying, you can come to us, but you leave your faith at the door. But for us, that was a no-go. If you're asking us to leave your faith at the door. But for us, that was a no-go. If you're asking us to leave our faith at the door, then we can't engage with you. And so I think that's why the conversations around faith and gender and gender equality have almost fallen off the radar a little bit. But what is so encouraging is that especially with

the Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations in particular have said, we get it, we get the importance of faith, we understand the importance of engaging with faith leaders, faith actors, faith communities. So can I just ask you, maybe it's controversial, maybe some people might say faith has caused a lot of this? Definitely. Oh! Don't get me wrong, oh my goodness, yes.

I didn't expect you to say that. And it continues to. After this two weeks of madness, what would you like to achieve? I think we would like some more people within the government and within the United Nations to understand the importance of faith, because right now we have some serious faith advocates. But we also know that they still have quite a hard time convincing some of their other, particularly Western colleagues, of the importance of faith.

And so I think kind of we're also here to support them. So we've got two big events happening, looking at faith and feminism, faith and frameworks. And so I think we're really hoping that actually those conversations will get some people who think faith is bad, that faith is a barrier to gender, to gender equality, and to have the conversations with them of, in some cases it might be, but you can't ignore it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured to be able to stand before you today as the first female Prime Minister of Aruba. Today I will address a worldwide problem which is human trafficking or modern day slavery. 71% of human trafficking victims are female and the majority of victims of commercial sexual exploitation. I'm Summer, also a survivor of human trafficking and torture and And I'm here to just bring more survivor voices to the table. You know, I started getting sexually assaulted at a very young age. And then as a teenager, I ran away and got kidnapped and was gang raped. And then at 17, I entered the life, which I met pimps and started being trafficked to where I've been in buried alive, I've been

thrown out of cars. And now I'm actually the founder and executive director of an organization that I run two residential homes here in the States. And so for women coming out of it so they can have a safe place. Because when I got out of everything, I was always too much for everybody because it was the trauma I had experienced. And so now the women don't have to worry about that coming to my house because I'm a survivor. And who better to say that you could do this and you can find a voice than someone who's been through what I've been through. You get to speak but say it's a room full of a hundred people but there's thousands of people maybe that should be hearing your story so why is it important for you to be here?

It's just really important for me because I think each survivor has a different avenue of the human trafficking and the torture and you know being being buried alive is not something you hear about a whole lot or being through some of the things that I've been through, you don't hear a lot. And so it's just really important for me to always be at the table, which all survivor leaders should be at the table. It's great and awesome for non-survivors to get together and do all this stuff. But I was the type of woman like, I don't want you talking about me. I want to be in the room when you're talking with me and so what's it like now being in the room talking with people it's awesome you know because you get to see the different opinions and different thoughts and the ones that might not really add up to what's actually going on I have an opportunity to educate them and say okay I

appreciate your point of view but let me tell you really what's going on. When you go home tonight and you wake up in the morning and you think, God, I did that. That was brilliant. What is it you're going to be most proud of? I think just being able to survive everything that I've survived and now be able to come on this type of platform and be able to give my voice. I mean, it's pretty awesome. They tried to kill me, but look at me now. More from Anna's trip to the UN next week. It's pretty awesome. They tried to kill me, but look at me now. Yay! More from Anna's trip to the UN next week. Thanks for all your messages. Lots of you getting in touch about Brexit, anxiety and pain.

Claire says, I've lost friends over the past few years, which has been really sad. We haven't argued and they've never come out and said why we don't hear from them again, but I have seen the blame in their eyes behind the fear. I'm part of a couple where we voted differently to one another. And that's fine by me, but not by some friends. We've had to keep quiet and lie to family and other friends because we didn't want to lose yet more people or have to explain ourselves. This one says, above all, I, like most of us, am really exhausted by it. I

choose now not to watch the news about Brexit or read much except for a few level-headed pieces every now and then, which might actually look at both sides of what's possible rather than bemoaning how bad the others are. I just want us to move on through the mire and get on with real life. We're a collective, like it or not. And this anonymous message from someone who says, my ex-partner's a French national. We had a few problems, but the referendum broke us. He was so upset and felt so unwelcome. He started to hate England and English people.

And after a year, he left to go back to France. We were not strong enough to survive. And some of your messages on pain. Paddy, thank you for the discussion on period pain. Being a father of an eight-year-old girl and the primary carer, there are subjects I'm not prepared for. It's been informative and hopefully helps me to be confident to research the subject more so I am prepared if I get asked any questions. And Christine says, while this and other programs on period pain etc are useful and

informative they can sometimes sound like this is the inevitable fate of all of us I think you should acknowledge that many women like me have never experienced period pain and sailed through the menopause with no problems I'm sure lots of people want to be you Christine and Rosie says thank you so much for this. It actually made me cry on my way to work because it couldn't be more relevant to me right now. One and a half years ago, I suddenly started constant bleeding and even leaking through my clothes, which as a 41 year old woman, I knew wasn't normal. I went to my GP who dismissed me. A year later, following four more GP visits, I was in constant pain, very fatigued.

They at last listened and I was diagnosed with a condition I'd never heard of, adenomyosis I think it is. I've never heard of it despite one in 10 women having it. Following a series of unfortunate events around having a coil fitted to relieve the problems and more of not being taken seriously by my GP, I ended up in A&E with sepsis. If only I'd been taken seriously, I believe so much of this could have been prevented. That sounds awful. Thank you, Rosie, for sharing your story with us.

And thank you all for listening. I'll be back tomorrow with Weekend Woman's Hour from 4. I'm Sarah Treleaven, I'll be back tomorrow with Weekend Woman's Hour from 4. 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.