Woman's Hour - Caragh McMurtry on her autism diagnosis.

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

She talks to Nuala McGovern about how she’s learned to cope with the condition in the elite sports world as well as the work she’s been doing to support other neurodivergent athletes to fulfil their potential.There’s a new book out, The Equal Parent: how sharing the load helps the family thrive. Paul Morgan-Bentley, head of investigations at The Times, explores why it’s still so rare in this country for parents to spread or split the responsibility of parenthood, particularly early parenthood, and why it’s still expected that women should shoulder this pretty much alone. With him to discuss this and to explore ways the parental load could or should be spread more equally is writer and journalist Nell Frizzell who also has a book out: Holding the Baby: Milk, sweat and tears from the frontline of motherhood.Lexi is an NHS nurse and mum of four, who succeeded in challenging ‘no kids’ barriers in the private rental market on the grounds that such bans disproportionately affect women. Going forward, the Property Ombudsman has determined that blanket bans on renting to families are in breach of its Code of Practice. This news comes as the charity Shelter publishes data which shows 1 in 5 parents in England have been unable to rent somewhere they wanted in the last five years because they have children. Lexi tells her story and we hear from the solicitor Jo Underwood.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Sue Maillot

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, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome. I am back in the Woman's Hour studio today after an exhilarating programme yesterday in the BBC's radio theatre. It was showcasing our winners for the 2023 Women's Hour Power List featuring women in sport. And if you missed it, you can watch the whole event on the Women's Hour website. We also have lots of clips of our number one woman. That's Leah Williamson, England's captain. We do have another sportswoman for you this hour, Cara McMurtry.

She is an Olympic rower who was diagnosed as bipolar for years before getting a correct diagnosis of autism. Cara will be here to talk about neurodiversity in sports and particularly for women. And I want your help with the following. I want to hear your experiences of renting with kids. Have you come up against any obstacles in getting the rental you want due to having a bigger family? My guest Lexi has been through that. She also won a landmark case against an estate agent leading to reforms by the property ombudsman. So if you'd like to get in touch on that, the text number is 84844. Social media at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website.

But I have another one for you. Staying with kids. When you raised or maybe now raising your children, if you have a partner, was the parenting equally shared? We have two guests who are here to share their experiences with you and what they see needs to change to make it an easier ride for women. Again, the text number 84844. Maybe you want to send us a WhatsApp message or a voice note. That number 03700 100 444. But first, more than 2000 women are taking the Swiss government to court claiming its policy on climate change is violating their human rights to life and also health.

The women who call themselves the Club of Climate Seniors have an average age of 73. They say climate change is putting their human rights, their health and even their lives at risk. Now, it's the first time that the European Court of Human Rights, the ECHR, will hear a case on the impact of climate change on human rights. Let's speak to my colleague Imogen Fowkes, the BBC Geneva correspondent who's been looking at this story. Tell me more about this club, Imogen, and welcome.

Well, it's good to be here, Nuala. This case has been going on for several years now. And these women, they are nothing if not determined. They took their case through every layer, three layers it is, of the Swiss legal system and were rejected each time. Their argument is that they are particularly vulnerable as older people, as older women to the effects of climate change. Their health is at risk. The Swiss court said, you kind of need to prove it after the fact, which is like, we should get sick and die first before we can take you to court. So they then lodged their case with the European Court of Human Rights, which agreed to take it. And as I'm talking to

you now, the judges are hearing the evidence. The women have gone there with their medical records and they are saying, look, we live in this alpine country, which is actually warming faster than the global average of temperature rise. We are looking at weeks during the summer where we can't go out because it is so hot. We can't sleep at night. We have health risks like high blood pressure, possible heart attacks, things like that. Could set a precedent because Switzerland, of course, is just one of 46 members of the Council of Europe and subject to the court's rulings.

So interesting. I know you've been speaking to some of them. So let's hear a little of what one of the women was saying. We are heading to Strasbourg actually for several reasons. First of all, why we ever get to Strasbourg is because the three national that 1.5 degrees limit. The fact is that the way our Swiss climate policy is, we are on a path of three degrees heating. And then, of course, Strasbourg is that one court that can decide is something a violation of human rights or not.

So we do hope that the judges in Strasbourg are free from a political agenda and actually just look at our case in terms of, is climate protection a human right? Because we have a right for life, we have a right for health. Are those articles violated or not? And that's what we want an answer from them. It's also interesting, you're a group of older women who've banded together to take this case. Why specifically older women? Why specifically older women? Because we are the population group that is most vulnerable to the increased heat waves. So due to climate change, we have more heat waves and older women suffer more.

They die more often during these heat waves than they otherwise would. Some people say, why are you complaining? You're going to die anyway. But we don't want to die just because our Swiss government has not been successful in coming up with a decent climate policy, with a climate policy that actually supports life and health, not just ours, but also other people. Gosh, there's a lot in that, isn't there, Imogen? You're going to die anyway, and these women continue to fight. I'm wondering, if they are successful proving that it is a human right, what impact might it have?

It's climate policy change they're looking for in Switzerland. Would that be correct? Yeah, they are. I mean, what Elizabeth Stern was pointing out there was that their feeling is the Swiss government is not doing enough to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and that it needs to do more, obviously, in concert with the rest of the world. But it needs, it's a rich country, it needs to set an example, it needs to show that it's looking after the health of its citizens. Now, the court can't order a specific target necessarily for Switzerland, But what it can do is say, you need to up your game. And this is what the Swiss women are hoping for. Elizabeth is there in Strasbourg today.

And one of the interesting things is, this is the first case, but it is not the last. There is also this week coming a case from France and in the next couple of months a case brought by Portuguese young people against all the members of the Council of Europe. Now all of these verdicts are due out after the summer so we won't get a result today but I think the very fact that the Council of Europe, the Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights is taking these cases, not just one, not just two, but three of them and possibly more, shows that it's taking it seriously. And I have to say, talking to Elizabeth and some of the other women yesterday,

when they were setting off to Strasbourg. They are hopeful. They are certainly very pleased they brought this amount of attention to their case. Definitely. Just very briefly, Imogen, what is the Swiss government saying? So the Swiss government will argue that although it's clear that climate change can affect health. You can't specifically tie Switzerland's greenhouse gas emissions to these specific women's health conditions. That is what they are arguing. They've also argued that it's silly

to take just one country to court. We need to do this together with everyone. But the fact is that switzerland is not given its reputation for looking after its environment it is not a forerunner in tackling climate change and i think this is also something that these swiss women want to draw attention to and so far they certainly have our geneva correspondent, Imogen, folks, thank you so much. So with this story,

I also got to speak a little earlier to Baroness Brown, who chairs the Climate Change Committee's Adaptation Subcommittee. She has called, you might have seen this in the headlines this morning, the last 10 years,

a lost decade in terms of the UK's impact on climate change. I asked her first what she thinks of the Club of Climate Seniors in Switzerland and their court case. It will be an interesting one to watch. I really can't comment on the legal aspects of it. I'm not a lawyer. But of course, that trend of the heat impacts on human health in the UK, we see really quite strongly. I mean, for example, last summer, when we had the over 40 degrees C temperatures, we saw 3,000 heat-related deaths

during those hot periods in the UK. And those deaths predominantly are amongst people over 65. So it definitely is having an effect on the over 65s. Can you imagine British women maybe doing something similar? I don't know. Perhaps the Swiss example will stimulate them to do so. And they are in court today,

those Swiss women. So let's see how it goes for them. The UN does say that women and girls are most impacted by climate change. Any thoughts on that? Well, I'm sure that's true as they tend to be most impacted by poverty and therefore more likely to fall into the disadvantaged groups. They're less likely to be able in some countries to be taking their own decisions about what they do

and when they do it. So, of course, they will find it harder to adapt to the changing climate. Now, tomorrow, the government are releasing their revised net zero plans. It has been known as Green Day by some, others then calling for it to be called Energy Security Day, depending on who you speak to. What would you like to see included in that and are you hopeful? I would like to see a speeding up of action to deliver our net zero commitments in the UK. We've had a lot of policy statements but we really do need to move to more and faster implementation. And of course, energy security and getting to net zero can be 100% aligned in the UK.

The more we use our own renewable resources, for example, the wind energy around our shores, the wind energy we could be capturing with onshore wind, more solar, perhaps some more nuclear, the more we use that energy, the cheaper we can make our electricity and the less dependent we are on imported oil and gas and the less emissions that we will be putting into the atmosphere. And so the less we will be driving climate change and the problems that the Swiss women are talking about. So, you know, I think we can align energy security absolutely with net zero.

But what we need to see is faster progress. Why is it slow? Because, I mean, there's been so much talk about it, right? There's been so many policy addresses, you know, whether we look at some of the big global conferences that there has been on climate change or what the government has said? I find it just intensely frustrating because I think there are so many positives from moving faster. You know, we have the figures for expanding the wind industry from the size it is today to where we need to get to by 2030 to meet the government's target, will create another 60,000 jobs in places along our coastline in some of the deprived communities, some of the areas like Hull and Grimsby, where those new jobs they already have are already transforming those places.

So there is so much positive to come. It's very disappointing that we haven't seen faster progress. And I honestly don't really understand it. And we also need to be drawing in investment from overseas. And in order to do that, we need to show that the UK is really committed to this agenda. And this is going to be the right place to come and invest to create those new jobs and those new industries. You know, you said that the last decade has been a lost decade. That sounds, I mean, it's an incredibly sobering line to read. And what do you mean by that exactly? Well, the Climate Change Act introduced the idea of the government having to produce a national adaptation program every five years to say how it would help the UK become resilient to climate change. So we've had 10 years, two national adaptation programs, and the country has made very little progress

in our preparation for the climate change we're already seeing and the climate change to come. And I think last year was just a brilliant example of how unprepared we are. So if we start at the beginning of last year, we had Storm Arwen and the following storms, which left a million people without electricity for a week in the north of England. We then had the 40 degree C temperatures in the summer. We had problems with our rail network. We had problems with the electricity network because of overheating that led to blackouts. We had wildfires. We had drought that have led to problems for our farmers. So we're seeing all these impacts and the international, I'm sorry, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, said in their report last week that we're going to see more of these

extremes and they're coming faster than they had originally predicted. So it's becoming so urgent that we are prepared and that's not yet happening. So who do you lay the blame at then? I have read when it comes to the challenges that are facing the country, for example, and the Climate Change Committee, of which you are a chairperson, that you say the government has a lack of urgency that you've discussed, but also a lack of vision. Is this the Prime Minister that you feel? And I know, of course, there's been a lot of Prime Ministers over the past couple of years. But is's where you're placing the blame? Well I place it with the government I mean as the adaptation committee of the climate change

committee which I chair are the department that we kind of report in through is DEFRA but this is not a DEFRA problem this is a cross-government problem. So the government does have a cabinet subcommittee for climate change. And this is something that that committee really needs to be taking hold of. Because we need a vision for what a well-adapted UK looks like in 2050. So people know what we're aiming for. They know the kind of environment we will be living in. And then the government needs to be delivering the policies, the regulations, the standards to deliver that.

Coming back to the energy aspect, I was reading the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. He was saying because the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, we will need another critical source of cheap and reliable energy and that is nuclear. This is when he was talking to the UK Parliament, calling it, he says it's classed as environmentally sustainable

in a green economy. You mentioned potentially nuclear could be also part of the solution, but so many people would push back against that and just don't want any proliferation of nuclear power. I think it's a difficult one from a technical perspective. Nuclear can be very helpful as part of a system. In general, the more diverse sources of generation we have on the system, the more resilient and secure that will help to make our electricity system. The biggest challenge from a technical

perspective I see with nuclear at the moment is that it's so much more expensive than offshore wind or onshore wind and solar. And of course, we can balance the intermittency of the renewable energy supplies by the interconnectors we have to overseas, to the rest of Europe. And also, for example, when the wind is blowing and we don't need the electricity by making hydrogen, which is a fuel that we could then use to run through turbines to generate electricity when the wind isn't blowing. So, you know, we have a whole range of solutions. The more of these we put together, the more resilient an electricity system we can make. To return to the story of the Swiss women who are in court today, if there was that similar movement in the UK of women, particularly these are women over the age of 64, getting

together to fight against the impact of climate change having on their human rights, would you be inclined to support them? I think it's brilliant to see. I think it's brilliant to see the older generation fighting hard for climate change, because, of course, in a way, I feel this is climate change is our fault. And we are the people actually who need to be there trying to drive really hard to get the solutions implemented so that future generations don't see the very worst impacts of climate change. So if what they're doing makes the Swiss government take more action on climate change,

then all power to them. And it's always great, I think, when I see older people getting really engaged in pushing the government on climate change in this country. Would you join them? Well, I think I do join them. I'm in that category in terms of age. And I think I am continually haranguing the government to do more on climate change. Thanks so much for spending some time with us. Thank you very much.

Baroness Brown of Cambridge there, speaking to me just a little earlier this morning. We did ask the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy for a statement and they said to us, tomorrow the government will be announcing the next steps in our plans to boost the UK's energy security and independence

and to help bring down wholesale electricity prices in this country to among the lowest in Europe. Some of you getting in touch on that story, 84844, if you want to get in touch on any of them. Meredith says, what a heartening and brilliant thing these older Swiss women are doing. It lifted my spirits

this morning. Good to have you with us and Meredith listening to Woman's Hour. I want to turn back to yesterday just for a moment to remind you that we unveiled the Woman's Hour Power List. It featured 30 of the UK's most outstanding women in sports. You can

catch up with that programme. It was in front of a live, what will I say, very lively, live and warm and receptive audience and you can watch it in full on the Woman's Hour website. And today we want to take a look at what else can be done to ensure that neurodivergent athletes are able to reach their full potential.

The former Olympic rower, Cara McMurty, spent five years with a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder while training on Team GB before finally finding out that she has autism. She joins me now to discuss her diagnosis and her work helping other neurodivergent athletes to achieve their goals. Welcome, Cara. Great to have you on Woman's Hour. Hi, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me on. So what impact did the misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder have on you as an athlete?

And I'm also wondering, during those years, did you think it was the right diagnosis uh yes good questions um so it was pretty terrible to be honest because obviously not only did I then have a narrative in my head that I was I literally was like I must be crazy like I couldn't trust myself like with bipolar um or my understanding of it was that it was quite unpredictable. And that really didn't sit well with me in having to be an elite athlete. Obviously, people with bipolar are not crazy, I should say that. But that's how I was made to feel.

And it didn't help being an elite athlete and having those feelings. You need to be able to trust yourself. But more than that, I was also put on quite a lot of medication, mood stabilizers and antipsychotics. And I've said this before, but it really does does affect you but it's quite a gradual change so I think if I had kind of jumped straight into my body a year two years five years down the line I would have been absolutely horrified at the difference um but because you can you explain what that difference felt like you know what I put on like eight kilos I put on eight kilos I you know my hair like this is the this is sounds like the way I look but it shows you how um how much how difficult it was my

body like processing all this medication like you have to get um blood tests and things because um you can get toxicity from some of these um so you know your kidneys are working in overdrive already to get rid of all the toxins that you make from training and then you have this as well but my my hair was brittle my nails are brittle like my hair was falling out like my skin was awful I had no energy all of my like because I like to see I like to see neurodivergence in a positive light, but obviously it does come with certain things like sensory issues and things like that. And actually that was all heightened because I had no energy. I had no energy to mask. I had no energy to tolerate certain things. I'd come home with a migraine like most days. got i got so much slower um it was it was hard to it was hard to get up every

day it was hard to get out of bed let alone to train and i would imagine yes with a regular life all those things sound awful if you're trying to be an elite athlete i can't imagine um but you talk about masking there and that's something that often comes up when we talk about autism and particularly uh females that have autism that you know socially they sometimes mask much better for want of a better term it's really I don't know whether better is the right word but that they can kind of fit in within society without people picking up that they're autistic rather than they often will much quicker with boys and young men. You did get the correct diagnosis.

What difference did that make? And I'm wondering how it came about. It made a huge difference. So it's like five years down the line, so five years of taking all this medication and just slowly getting worse. I couldn't see. I'm a very determined person, so I think that's why I continued for so long and just got my head down and got through it and bound away but five years in I was like I think I hit

the wall finally I was like I can't go on I can't see how this is going to end up in any way a positive result um and so I kind of set a meeting outside of the training center with the performance director at that time and a coach that I trusted um and I just laid my cards on the table and and the performance director kind of said you know I I will help you and that was the first time that someone I felt looked at me as a person um and genuinely wanted to go out of their way to help me and he put me in touch with the UK sport mental health panel which was newly formed um and they're the ones that they looked at all my my huge wodge of uh medical records of like mental health issues basically um and you know read through them they interviewed

me they spoke to people and they re-diagnosed me with high functioning autism so that was people don't like these functioning labels but that was that's like the diagnosis the official diagnosis it would have been called Asperger's but they don't use that anymore um and I I got therapy and developed a communication plan titrated off all the medication over eight months because it was quite a big shock to the system um but more than anything I think I gave myself permission to be different and that was really really key um I stopped trying to like push myself and mold myself into a box I just fundamentally didn't fit into. And that was a massive relief in itself. And I went from being spare to the team at my lowest point to being one of the top performing athletes. And I got like 17 seconds faster, which you don't need to be an athlete to know that's a lot. How incredible. How incredible.

I can see the smile that you have as well, just to share that with our listeners as you speak about that part of your journey. But you have an organisation, Neurodivergent Sport. Tell us a little bit about that and also why you think sport is an area that neurodiverse people can excel in

yeah so neurodiverse sport um i created it i founded it um in 2022 when i was retiring from sport because ultimately although i had found the formula to my own success I still unfortunately faced a lot of stigma and discrimination and I think a lot of that comes from negative preconceptions a lack of understanding so neurodiverse sport is really to promote positive role models to promote a sense of community to change the narrative and to give those athletes neurodivergent athletes the support that they need and they don't have and also we educate sports teams and organizations and we're working with some um academic institutions on research because there's not enough in the area um but basically it's it's it's an area that just hasn't been recognized so there's nothing there like when I stopped um uh when I retired

from sport as an athlete I kind of looked around for something to I want to say latch onto but I was like I want to do work in this area and there was nothing like I think at the moment there's this um misconception that neurodiversity is just a disability and it just belongs in disability sport but there are no categories for neurodiversity in para sport um i think there's now there's one in intellectual impairment sport but a lot of people won't feel like they fit there like a lot of people will want to do able-bodied sport or they might be in disability sport or they might be an intellectual impairment sport they'll be everywhere like sport or they might be in intellectual impairment sport they'll be everywhere like neurodiversity covers every sport and that's what needs to be

understood and accommodated for but when i say accommodated for it it literally is just a case of coaches understanding that these people exist and you might need to just tweak tweak the way you say something or just check in with them in a different way. Like it's really simple. But yeah, at the moment, there's just absolutely no understanding at all. But you're going to change that. Yes. So good to have you on, Cara McMurtry.

And her organisation is Neurodiverse Sport. Excuse me, I think I said neurodivergent. Neurodiverse Sport. Lovely to have you on. Best of luck and success with that venture, as of course you've had as an Olympic rower as well.

I want to move on to our next topic now, and that is housing, which we are talking about. You might have seen in the news today that the number of homes available to rent in the UK has fallen by a third over the past 18 months.

The BBC has been highlighting this issue with its series Rental Health across the BBC, including here on Radio 4. Do catch up on BBC Sounds. But today we wanted to highlight the case of a woman who has won a landmark legal case against an estate agent after she was unable to find a property to rent due to listings which specified they would not allow tenants with children.

So following the case, the property ombudsman has determined that blanket bans on renting to families are in breach of its code of practice. Lexi is an NHS nurse and she's also a mum of four who succeeded in challenging the no kids barriers in the private rental market on the grounds that such bans disproportionately affect women. I spoke to her as well as Jo Underwood, a solicitor from the housing charity Shelter.

They recently published data which showed one in five parents in England have been unable to rent somewhere that they wanted to in the past five years because they have kids. And I began by asking Lexi what happened after she handed her no-fault eviction, she was handed her no-fault eviction on Christmas Eve,

and had to start looking for a property to rent for her and her family. So we were handed our Section 21 notice and we started to look for another property to live. And I started doing all the usual, going on on right move looking around on all the local letting agents and state agents um and started making some calls and I was very very shocked when I would be inquiring about you know a three-bedroom family house with a garden two bathrooms I'm not talking about you know a swanky loft apartment in Soho where I wanted to squeeze all this, all these kids. And they would say to me, oh, I'm sorry, we can't let you view this property because the landlord doesn't want children here or the landlord would only like one child or the landlord would only like two children. And well, I'm just wondering,

what did you think when you heard that? Yes. So first I thought, OK, well, that's weird. You know, I'm not going to go to them again or I'm not going to contact that person again. And I just really thought this, you know, that really must be a one off. I did not imagine that this would be a thing. It was so ridiculous. But as time went on, I was calling more and more places to be met with more and more of the same response. And it wasn't that they were, you know, I would call up and say, I want to inquire about making a viewing. They would say, yes, great. OK, when would you like to view? Blah, blah, blah. Can I take some details from you? Then they would ask me these questions. Who's it for? As soon as

I said my husband, myself and our four children. Oh, I'm sorry, we can't let you view. It's so surprising to me. I just wasn't aware of this as an aspect at all. So talk us through then your journey. At first, you think it's a one off, but then you begin to see a pattern? Began to see a pattern. And it honestly just became all encompassing. I mean, it, I was exhausting my supply of who I could call. And I would be calling the same letting agents over and over again. I would be checking. I mean, at that time, one of my, my youngest was very small and so he was just still a small baby and I would be up in the middle of the night feeding him. I'd be checking and refreshing right move and Zupla at like two in the morning, three in the morning thinking there must be one, there must be some

place I haven't called. And I've set reminders on my phone so I could call, you know, 8.59 in the morning. So I'd be the first one to call because it just got us into this complete state of desperation and humiliation because we are having doors essentially slammed in our face purely on the basis that we had children it didn't matter what jobs we had it didn't matter whether or not we were able to pay the rent it didn't matter if we were good people or that my children are lovely children who are well behaved or whether or not we were able to pay the rent. It didn't matter if we were good people, whether my children are lovely children who are well behaved or whether or not I'm a good mother. The point was, they made these blanket bans. They made these rules. The letting agents were enforcing it on behalf of the landlords. And it didn't matter who I was. It didn't matter whether or not I had the money. They point blank did not want children in their properties.

And meanwhile, you have this no fault eviction notice that you're working with. You have the money to rent somewhere, but no one would take that money. What led you then to actually, I suppose, have the epiphany of like, I need to challenge this? There was one tipping point for me, which was almost, I would say it was my breaking point in this situation, because by this time I was affected. As I said, this was all encompassing for me which was almost I would say it was my breaking point in this situation because by this time I was affected as I said this was all encompassing for me it took up every hour of my day every minute of my thought process um and my children were affected how could they not be when your mother is basically going mad because you think they're going to be homeless and we had to look at other schools and I didn't know what um area would be moved to because eventually I had to go to the council

and I had to say I am gonna I am gonna be homeless and I had to ask for help from the council what happened was I had this phone call with with a landlord who had advertised the property on a platform and I had inquired about this three-bed bedroom house and the landlord sent me a message and said, can I call you? So I was like, great, finally, someone's going to call me, you know, we can view this property. And he called me up and he just annihilated me. He went off on this monologue. I own multiple properties. There is absolutely no landlord in his right mind that would ever rent a house to somebody with four children. If I you i would give up now you are wasting your time your best bet is to stay in your house pass your eviction date wait until there's a court order to get you the bailiffs to come and evict you

and then the council will have to do something about you and i just burst into tears and i've been really strong up until this point and i just thought this is the crux of it this is this is how it is and I just felt at complete breaking point and I said to this man will you please put this in writing because I need to go to the council because we are going to be homeless and he said no and that was the moment I thought right here we go these people know what they're doing is wrong because they will not put this in writing to me and I said to him I want this in writing to support my application because if I'm going to the council to say we're going to be homeless and they're thinking well you're a neonatal intensive care

nurse and your husband's a business owner and I don't quite understand here because I was thinking this is ridiculous that I shouldn't be taking services from people who truly need them more than I do I'm here saying I would like to you my money. I will pay you six months of rent upfront. I will give you a golden handshake to let me live in your house. But they all say no. So when this happened, my tipping point for me was, I went to the local MP to say,

did you know this was happening? So the local MP was not interested in the slightest. I wrote to him quite a few times. Eventually I got a reply back, even using the, they referred to me with the wrong name. They basically said, I don't know why you want us to sort this out for you. So I thought, okay, local MP doesn't want to know. Somebody needs to know this is happening and it is not okay. The more I talked about it, the more families came forward to me and said, this happened to me, this happened when we were trying to rent,

this happened to my friends, this happened to my sister. And what is the reason if you've been able to decipher why they won't rent to people with more than one or two kids? I can't tell you the reason why, because I can't get the point past the point of even being able to book a viewing for one of these houses. So I wouldn't even be able to get to the point of finding out why it was just a rejection and i'm not sure where the line ends and i ended up having these real sort of heated arguments with the state in it because i was saying okay so if i had one child but i'm pregnant with twins that's not allowed because they were repeatedly saying to me you know i would say that you are discriminating against my children the actual definition of discrimination is that you are stopping us you are restricting us based on who they are.

We're not discriminating against you because, you know, children are not under the Equality Act. And I was saying, right, so if I was pregnant, then it would be discrimination. Well, are you planning on becoming pregnant? I'm thinking, I don't need to discuss my life choices with you. I mean, I'm not. It's almost impossible. But you did bring a case and you did win. I want to bring in Jo Underwood, a solicitor from Shelter. Jo, I mean, were you aware of this aspect and how significant are you seeing this ruling?

Well, we have known for a long time, obviously, that private renters face a number of barriers. But we were shocked when we started working with Lexi. And thank you for your hard work on this Lexi and then Shelter's done some research which shows that one in five private renters in the last five years have been refused a property because they had children that's almost 300,000 private renters this affected and we were really shocked by that. People who are looking to rent have to face a number of different barriers. Finding somewhere affordable, not least in the first place, is an incredible difficulty. You often need a guarantor. There are various different

hoops you have to jump through and to be told that you can't rent a property just because you have children is a huge kick in the teeth. So we are working with the property ombudsman and with Alexei to try and stop this power imbalance and stop this discrimination. But with the letting agents, this ruling, it only applies to those agents that are members of the property ombudsman. And that wouldn't be everyone, right? That's right. But it does affect a significant significant number so all letting agents have to be members of the property ombudsman scheme or the property redress scheme so that will encompass the significant number of letting agents and it's now been made very clear by the property ombudsman that if a letting agent operates a blanket ban on potential renters just because

they have children it will be discrimination it will breach their code of conduct and they may have to pay compensation. So what if somebody found themselves in Lexi's position or find themselves pregnant with twins in the hypothetical? What protection is there for them? So we have been working with the property ombudsman who are very keen to hear about these issues. We would revise in the first place, as Lexi's been talking about, try and get things in writing, try and get the reasons in writing from the estate agent or the landlord.

If not, if you can't, then make notes, like keep a diary of who you approached and when and what they said. And you can complain to your letting agent. And there's information about how to do that on the shelter website. There are template letters there. And if you don't receive a satisfactory response

from your letting agent, you can take it through to the property ombudsman. Do you worry at all? There is the renters reform bill that's going to be brought forward at the end of the parliamentary session. So it's going to be debated and voted on before May 2023. And it may change things for renters, for example, or for landlords.

But do you ever worry that if things get difficult or, what would I say, more restrictive for landlords, that they might decide not to rent and then we have an even smaller amount of places to be rented to people when there's already a shortage in the market? We know that landlords are concerned about that. And there is a lot of work to do on this issue to make renting work for both landlords and tenants. And the property ombudsman decision in Lexie's case is a really significant step forward.

But like you say, the renters reform bill is going through Parliament. It will address these issues. We really hope that the government will bring this through in order to provide more protections and a better experience of renting for everybody. Lexi, I have to find out how you're doing now, where you are. Are you settled? Yes, I'm very settled. Thank you um what happened was I was contacted by somebody after going to the media initially um who offered me somewhere to live which was wonderful and I'm so grateful um but it just highlights that that problem was still there and I managed to find you know a little loophole for my family but the problem is still there it is right it is still happening People are still contacting me.

So, yes, this is one small step to making change, which is fantastic, but there's still more change ahead. And coming back to you, Jo, I mean, can landlords ever have a stipulation of no kids or that a space is unsuitable? So it's discrimination to have a blanket ban on no children, and that's indirect discrimination under the Equality Act. We hope it will be made direct discrimination with the introduction of the renter's reform bill. there isn't enough space or there's a really compelling reason, then the landlord needs to state that and make it clear. But if a prospective renter can show that their family size is appropriate for the property and that they can afford it,

then they shouldn't be barred from being able to rent that property. That was the solicitor, Jo Underwood and Lexi. We do have a statement from the Department for Leveling Up Housing and Communities. They say it is simply wrong for people with children to face blanket bans. We have set out plans to make it illegal for landlords or agents to have no children, as they put it in inverted commas, or no DSS, in inverted commas, blanket bans. And we'll bring forward a renter's reform bill in this parliament. I just want to read a comment that came in.

This is Samantha. I'm a small-time landlord. I rent out the flat above a shop that I myself lived in for almost 30 years. I would be extremely reluctant to rent to people with children again as the only time I did there was so much damage and while they were there there was so much noise that the tenants who rented the shop downstairs took the first opportunity to relocate their business.

84844. I'm going to stay with kids. We're going to go back in time though before they're running around and I don't know whatever else they might be doing. Because there are, it's a new book out, The Equal Parent, How Sharing the Load Helps Families Thrive

or The Family Thrive. Paul Morgan Bentley is Head of investigations at The Times and explores why it's still so rare in this country for parents to spread or split the responsibility of parenthood, particularly early parenthood, and why it is still expected that women should shoulder this pretty much alone. With him to discuss this and to explore ways

the parental load could or should be spread more equally is the writer and journalist Nell Frizzell, who also has a book out, Holding the Baby, Milk, Sweat and Tears from the Frontline of Motherhood. Welcome to you both. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Okay, so for my listeners, very briefly,

what is your home set up, just so they get a picture? Nell. So I live with my partner and we have a five-year-old son. And while I thought I was going to have an equal domestic load, it turns out I'm what I call a control enthusiast. And it didn't really work out that way. Controlled enthusiast. OK. Not control freak. Exactly. Paul, what about you? And I am married to Robin and we have a son, Solly, who turned three on Friday. Okay, happy birthday to Solly. Paul, with your book, you kind of,

you realised pretty early on, I think, also that the exclusion of men or the inequality seems to also start early on. Talk us through, you know, because I think once you came to it and we're having your baby, we're like, wow, okay, I see how it's unequal. So when we had Solly, I think as a gay couple,

we assumed that the formative experience that we would have is one of potentially some discrimination or being treated differently as a two-dad family. And actually we had Solly and we've had a really nice experience and we haven't faced much discrimination at all. Actually, we're just kind of treated like everyone else. We don't feel particularly different or exceptional. But the experience that we kept having is a really low expectation of fathers. So we would turn up at Solly's first vaccination appointment,

and there'd be a huge amount of praise because her dad was there. And it wasn't that, you know, if there's just a low expectation of dads kind of gay or otherwise, it didn't matter that we were a two dad family. And that kept happening, happening, you know, people would either praise us or kind of gay or otherwise. It didn't matter that we were a two-dad family. And that kept happening. You know, people would either praise us or kind of be shocked that we were there. There's always an expectation that mothers are there. And that carries on. You know, even a few months ago, I went to pick up a prescription for Solly

and the dispenser, who was just trying to be lovely, said something to me like, oh, it's so good to see dads doing things like this. And I just thought this is the very basics. I'm picking up a prescription for him. But as a man, you're praised for that, whereas no one would expect anything other than that from a woman. Now, how involved was your partner, who's a man, at the beginning? Well, because he was retraining as a teacher, so he was officially a student,

he was entitled to no parental leave whatsoever. So he had two days of compassionate leave, I think, and then he managed to get a placement relatively close. But within five days, I think, he was back to his school that was an hour and a half commute each way. So I was on my own at home with a newborn, still bleeding. You know, my milk had just come through for 12 hours a day. And what Paul

was just saying about being a hands on father, I could literally pull my fingernails out and carve them into toys and no one would call me a hands on mother. Like there's almost nothing you can do as a woman to be sort of generally appreciated as doing enough. And I think, you know, in my book, I talk about the guilt and the anxiety and the feeling of being judged because we just have very different expectations along gendered lines. Yes. Let's talk about that concrete aspect of parental leave. You've explained what your situation was, Nell. But, you know, even where there is parental leave within an organisation, there's only a tiny proportion of fathers that take advantage of it. Yeah. Why do you

think that is, Nell? And then I'll come to you, Paul. Well, it's really interesting in a country like Japan has fantastic parental leave in theory, it's actually only taken up in a tiny minority of cases, because workplace culture just makes it much less attractive, I think, for men and women and non-binary people to take up what they're due and so I in Paul's book he talks brilliantly about how we need to have like independent parental leave I take that one step further and say compulsory parental leave particularly for MPs and business owners I want them to have to take that time off change nappies change bedding wipe sick up off the floor get peanut butter out of a plug socket. Because I think until parents are

made to, you know, and allowed to be at home, as a matter of course, it's not that you are choosing how long you take, we won't have a sort of equitable parenting domestic load, and therefore an equal working place, workplace culture, politics, anything. Let's take a step back and think about what Nell said about her partner. Had Nell had an accident and had she lost lots of blood in the accident, a workplace would firstly, the hospital would expect a partner, a family member, someone to be there around the clock. In the UK, most hospitals kick dads out after the birth. In some cases, they're only allowed to be there for one hour per day. And also workplaces, you'd expect your boss to say something like, take the time you need. However, you have a baby and partners are expected to go back, usually after two weeks, but sometimes after no time at all. You know, it's a disgrace. And then the rates of pay for parental leave in the UK are a disgrace.

They're less than half, it's less than half of minimum wage. And what does that say about how we value looking after children? It's often hidden, though, I think, from the professional life. Changed a bit, perhaps, during the pandemic, but even about being a parent. And you often might know that a woman is a parent.

You won't always know that a man is in the workplace. I think that some people would feel that way. I want to talk about sleep and it's a huge issue. Both of you talk about it. But one aspect in particular, kind of intersecting with the office there uh why is it that we still think it's important for the

person who's paid to go out to a job has to get the proper sleep i mean i've often heard that and i've never even thought about where that came from. Thoughts? Yeah, I mean, there's one type of conversation that literally makes me feel rage. And it's when I hear dads talk about how they have to sleep in the spare room at the moment because they've got a new baby and they have to be rested for their day of very important accountancy work. And it's part of this idea that we don't value looking after a newborn baby as work. And having done it myself, Nell's also done it, it's absolutely work. There's nothing more important and it's absolutely exhausting. And yet we don't see it as something that means you need as much sleep as the other partner. So what do you do to change

that? I just want to jump back for one second. I know you were saying that dads are often treated as visitors in the hospitals. I will say that sometimes hospitals feel that they're overcrowded, that women might be feeling vulnerable, that they don't want more men around them. That is absolutely necessary. And that might be part of the reason hospitals say that dads aren't able to be there all the time. But let's get back to the sleep conversation now. I know you've thought about this deeply. You talk about night nurses in some way being subsidised.

Talk us through that. Yeah, I forget Scandinavia. I want utopia. I'm going all in. And I think we do outsource childcare in lots of people from as early as three months or even earlier. And yet, if that childcare is going to take place

outside of a kind of nine to three arrangement, we seem to see that as impossibility unless you have private wealth that you can pay a night nurse to come and do that whereas in countries like the Netherlands you will have a postnatal nurse that will come to your house for between four and eight hours a day for up to it you get 12 appointments and it can be up to four months I might be wrong on those details but you get the picture yeah the idea that someone could come around to your house and they would watch your baby because insomnia goes hand in hand with early parenting.

Paul's written about this brilliantly that, you know, your enlarged amygdala means that you are so aware of the fragility of your child that you can't sleep even if they are asleep. Sleep when your baby sleeps is the biggest load of baloney I've ever heard in my life. But to go back to the if we recognise parenting as work, we can therefore recognise sleep as essential in order to do that work. And I joke in the book that if you advertise the role of parent to a newborn,

it would say 20 hour a day shifts, seven days a week. It's a contract that involves blood loss, partial nudity, manual labour, acute stress, several meetings with outside agencies per week, partial nudity, manual labour, acute stress, several meetings with outside agencies per week, amateur medical treatment, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech therapy, sleep deprivation, cleaning and administration. That job would be illegal and yet

we expect people to do it largely unpaid or for £20.80 a week. You know it's absolutely absurd that we're not recognising this. But how do you change that cultural and societal mindset that feels that childcare is a private matter in how you deal with it and if you have the means then you get the night nurse but that outside influences aren't really coming into your home, if that makes sense. Even within couples,

I think because there's such a societal expectation on women that they are the ones with the maternal instinct, you're a bad mother if you're not constantly waking up first. I think that plays into all of this as well. And even within couples, you'll find that predominantly it's the woman that wakes up. And of course, there's a biological reason. You know, if the woman's breastfeeding, then she's going to have to feed. But there's no reason, I think, that a partner shouldn't be doing their share. Feeding a baby doesn't just involve actual feeding. There's burping. There's all different things that dads can do.

Let's talk about the amygdala, though, because you brought it up there. And people often say, you know, that the reason a woman is not getting the sleep that she deserves is because of this enlarged amygdala, that she'd be waking up during the night and that is so attuned to her baby's cries. I'm just wondering, Paul, how that was like in a two-male household. Well, it's really interesting, actually, because this is a really key thing that scientists have tried to get to the bottom of, which is why does it seem that women tend to wake up first?

And they've scanned new mothers' brains and new fathers' brains and found that new mothers, typically, their amygdala is four times the size of new fathers. And that seems to answer the question as to why they wake up first. However, they've also now scanned couples like us, two dad families, typically through surrogacy. And they have found that whoever the primary carer is, their amygdala is also four times the size. Their brains change like new mothers' brains change. And that's not because uh gay dads have some kind of magical power it is it is actually it's much more simple

than it sounds and it's just that feeling of the buck stopping with you and actually in our household what happened was i was off work on parental leave for the first six months i woke up first i was furious with robin my husband I couldn't understand why I was turning into this cliche new mother. And he was still sleeping really deeply. And it sounds too neat when I say it, but it's 100% true. When we switched and Robin's focus was childcare and I was back at work, even though we were both in the same room, Robin started waking up first. And it's something I've heard repeatedly from other couples like us.

And all it is, it's feeling that sense of responsibility. So you had that 50 50 i do say i see somebody else getting in touch share the roles equally it works well in lesbian relationships where the jobs are shared equally but i'm wondering when you hear that now what was the term you used instead of controlled i was a control enthusiast not control freak but i would say in my, as a breastfeeding and birthing parent, there were certain tasks that inevitably fell to me when my son was young. And then you become primary carer almost by accident. And I have campaigned my whole life for gender equality. And yet I found myself slipping into this life where I was at home

and I was cooking and I was cleaning and I was waking up to the sound of a door closing four flats away and I was lactating every time I heard a goose outside. It was wild, the things my body did. But then scroll forward three months and because those roles have been set up that way, it became ingrained and it was really hard to do something that Paul writes about brilliantly,

which is to see a father not as a mother in a male body, but as an equal parent with their own style of parenting that you have to respect and allow them to do it. But how did you do it? Well, I didn't do it very well. It's a secret.

I don't think I achieved equal parenting. I'd like to think if I did it again, having read Paul's book and studied this a bit more and learned more about the kind of science and sociology behind this that I could. But I think I was sort of unwittingly pushed into something much more familiar to a 1970s parent, just by the dint of the way we organise work in this country, how we organise money, organise

childcare, the housing, access to space, public space, transport, all of that made me feel like I had become a woman I wouldn't have recognised at 20. We're just coming up to our last 30 seconds though. Is there somebody though perhaps who's pregnant now that should be keeping in their mind as they go down this path with a partner? I think one really key thing is having responsibility for certain things. Obviously breastfeeding can be excluding for fathers. Weaning, there's no reason you have to be a woman to puree a carrot. I really feel like dads.

That is one way in which you can step up, take responsibility, and that lasts a lifetime feeding a child. Yeah, pick your roles and allow the other parent or co-parent or whoever you're raising your child with to do their roles how they wish. Oh, yes, how they wish, just to do them how they wish. The baby will not die. I think I was reading in one of your books, just let them take the reins. Nell Frizzell,

Paul Morgan Bentley, thank you both so much for joining us on Women's Hour. Lots of food for thought. Thanks to everybody for keeping me company this week. What a week it was. Tune in tomorrow for Anita Ranney who will be talking to two women who've written about love and money.

Lots to talk about there. And how to talk about it between yourselves and your relationship at any stage of that relationship. See you Monday. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. From BBC Radio 4, this is Breaking Mississippi, the explosive inside story of one man's war against racial segregation in 1960s America. I knew the state of Mississippi would stop at nothing,

including killing me. James Meredith's mission to become the first Black student at the University of Mississippi triggers what's been described as the last battle of the American Civil War. It's a fight that draws in the KKK and even President Kennedy himself. Can you maintain this order? Well, I don't know. That's what I'm worried about. And we must fight! I thought, wow, this could be it. This could be the beginning of World War III. Now aged 89, James Meredith tells his story. I'm public radio journalist Jen White, and this is Breaking Mississippi, available now on BBC Sounds.

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 I'm Kate Snell.