Woman's Hour - Caroline Criado Perez on the gender data gap, Maggie Gee, Madeleine Mitchell

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

The world has been built by men, for men and, according to Caroline Criado Perez, we’ve struggled to do anything about it because we’ve been using biased data that excludes women. She explains why and what she thinks we can do about it. Author, Maggie Gee discusses her latest novel, Blood – an exploration of some of the darker human emotions in a literary comedy with dashes of thriller, elements of farce, criminal caper and political satire. The English Collective of Prostitutes is campaigning for the decriminalisation of sex work. We discuss the launch of their new campaign #makeallwomensafe and claims the current law puts 70,000 women’s lives at risk by forcing them to work alone. Violinist Madeleine Mitchell talks to Jenni about her new album Grace Williams: Chamber Music, in which she performs previously unpublished work by the Welsh composer. And, we hear why school governors and trustees are going to Westminster today to lobby MPs for more money.

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Thursday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. The English collective of prostitutes today launches a campaign for the decriminalisation of sex work. Is their demand the best way to fulfil their aim to make all women safe? This afternoon, school governors and trustees will march to Parliament to lobby MPs for more money. How serious is the shortfall across the education system? A new novel from Maggie Gee, one of Granter's original best young British novelists, Blood, is her 13th. And the Welsh composer Grace Williams will be played by the violinist Madeleine Mitchell.

She's recorded some of Williams' previously unpublished work. And I'm sorry, we're not able to podcast the full live performance because of copyright, of course. But you can listen again if you go to the website. Now, Caroline Criado-Perez has become something of a feminist hero. She led the campaigns to get Jane Austen on the £10 note, Millicent Garrett-Fawcett into Parliament Square and Twitter to revise its procedures for dealing with abuse. Her latest publication is a hefty tome called Invisible Women, exposing data bias Bias in a World Designed for Men. But what does data bias mean? Essentially that the vast majority of data, the vast majority of information that we have in the

world is based on the male body, the male lifestyle, and that we just aren't collecting data on women. And that goes from women's travel patterns to how women have heart attacks to databases that algorithms are trained on to the economy, you know, how we measure the economy, not counting in women's unpaid work. It's just sort of in every sort of area of life that you can think of, the way things have been designed

have been designed on what men need rather than what women need. So what do you reckon is behind it? Is it conspiracy or cock up? Is it designed to leave women out or are we just forgotten about? I mean, you know, I can't look inside the head of the person who decided to design, I don't know, the phone that's too big for my hand. But in general, I would suggest that it is not conspiracy. It is just simply a product of the way that we think as a culture, as a society, and that is to default to the male.

There is so much evidence showing that when people hear gender neutral terms like person, they think of a man. And, you know, that's what's at the heart of it it's not really that no no one's sort of deliberately setting out to make sure that women are less likely to have their heart attacks diagnosed no one is deliberately setting up to have women be more likely to die if they're in a car crash um it's just that we are so used to thinking of a man when we think of a human that we kind of forget to think about women unless we specifically mention them. Let's look at some of those specific examples then. Why is it that women tend to have more serious injuries in a car crash? Well it's basically because car safety

has been designed around the male body. So for decades the car crash test dummy, the most common one that was used, was based around the 50th percentile male. And that is too heavy and too tall and has the wrong muscle distribution and all sorts of ways in which female bodies differ from male bodies. And as a result, all the things from seatbelts to how firm the seats are, to where the pedals are. So women have to sit, you know, quote unquote, too far forward in order to be able to reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel. And as a result, if they're involved in a car crash, they're more likely to be injured, 47% more likely to be seriously injured and 17% more likely to die.

So it's sort of that and that there has been in recent years, a sort of acknowledgement that women exist and women travel in cars as well. And so a quote-unquote female dummy has been designed, but it's basically just a scaled-down male dummy, and it's not even used in the vast majority of the regulatory tests anyway. In the EU, the only test it is used in is in the passenger seat. So there's just not really any data at all on whether or not female drivers are safe, for example. Now, one of the other areas you cover is town planning and transport.

And one of the examples is Brazil's favelas. You have to ask, why would no one think that moving women out of Brazil's favelas for seemingly better accommodation would make their lives more difficult? I think that that comes down to the data gap in women's unpaid care work, that that's just not being factored in. And because we've sort of built the world and the world of work and the world of transport around this sort of stereotypical man who has a wife at home, who just goes into work and comes home to the suburbs. When they're doing town planning,

whether it be transport or moving women out of the favelas, which of course are in the centre, and therefore they can access work easily and they can access care work easily. And also, you know, they live in multi-generational homes. And so there's someone there always to look after the kids. And also everyone knows everyone, so you't necessarily need child care to the same extent and then you move them 70 kilometers out of the center where there are no jobs and so they have

to travel for three hours to get to a job and how are they going to do that if they have kids you know and on top of that they don't have the transport infrastructure they haven't got care child care services so you know, for me, that is just such an ultimate example, really, of what happens when you design for a stereotypical man. And let's be clear, like most men don't even fit into that stereotype anymore, anyway. So it doesn't really work for anyone. But because women do 75% of the world's unpaid care work, it particularly impacts on them. Now, the algorithms, as you mentioned, raise their heads inevitably. How does technology disadvantage women? Oh, Jenny, we need a whole programme to talk about that. So, I mean, it again comes down to the

data gap, that algorithms are being trained on databases that are heavily skewed towards male data. So, for example, voice recognition software has been trained on voice corpora, which are 70% male. And as a result, these voice recognition devices don't recognise women's voices. So women have to lower their voices, for example, to be understood by their car.

I mean, I had that with my mum you know she was driving trying to get her car software to call her sister i suggested because i it was funny because i'd just been researching that bit so i said why don't you try lowering your voice and it worked first time um things like uh i mean everyone knows about how apple designed a quote unquote comprehensive health tracking system that didn't include tracking for a period but did include tracking for all important copper intake which everyone needs to know about. You know the examples from the tech world are legion and I think that it's largely because the workforce is so heavily skewed towards male and this comes back towards

the idea of cock up. It's not a conspiracy. it's just men don't really tend to have periods so they're not going to need to count them now we have known some of what you write about for really a very long time i mean for example that women don't experience the same symptoms as men when they're having a heart attack how come that info is still being missed after such a long time? Yeah, that one is extremely frustrating. And it does sort of make you feel a bit like maybe not that there's a conspiracy, but there's just a lack of care. It's not just a failure to think. It's just a failure to care almost. And the excuses that you get in the medical world are basically well, and actually everywhere is that women are just too complicated to measure. So for transport, women have a more complicated way of traveling. And so they don't want to measure that. And women have more complicated bodies, please be aware, I'm using square,

square quotes very, very heavily here. Because we have menstrual cycles. And therefore, you have to you can't just sort of test at one point during the month. You have to test at different points during the month. And lots of researchers use this as an excuse. Oh, it would be too expensive. Well, but the reality is that those bodies are going to be taking these drugs and those drugs are going to interact with the menstrual cycle. And so you're going to have to deal with that. You can't just exclude women.

I mean, you can. And that's're going to have to deal with that. You can't just exclude women. I mean, you can, and that's what people have been doing. And that's why women are more likely to suffer adverse side effects from drugs, drugs not work for them. Sometimes during a woman's period, you know, a drug could be too strong the dose, and then later on, it could be too weak. There's one in particular that is meant to prevent a particular kind of heart attack. And at a certain point in a woman's menstrual cycle, cycle is more likely to actually trigger that kind of heart attack. And so that's the kind of thing that will happen if you refuse to test in women. Now, I know you've had a lot of criticism, particularly on Twitter. And I wondered, why do you suppose so many men don't seem to recognise the existence of a gender data gap, which you have researched, I think, for three years? Yes. I mean, I think that it's, again, a case of not seeing it.

If you don't experience it, you don't know about it. it and I think that one of the one of the examples that I sort of used to highlight how this is a case of if you don't experience something you don't know about it was Sheryl Sandberg in her book Lean In talks about how she became pregnant when she was working at Google and she was struggling to walk across the car park and she went to the head of Google because she was in a

position you know to be able to do that and said you need to book in pregnancy parking and the head of Google said, yes, of course, it had never occurred to me. And she said she felt bad that it hadn't occurred to her until she got pregnant. But actually, the fact that both of them hadn't thought about it

just really exemplifies the whole point. You need to have diversity of representation in positions of power so that everyone else can benefit from the experiences that we all share. Caroline Criado-Perez, thank you very much indeed. And the book is called Invisible Women Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Thank you.

Thank you. Now this afternoon, school governors and trustees will be going to Parliament to lobby MPs for more money. They've been expressing their concerns throughout the week about school funding in England, and on Tuesday, budgets were debated in the Commons. School governors and trustees oversee how schools manage their resources and support or challenge headteachers who write the budgets.

So how serious is the problem for it to inspire such a protest? Well, Emma Knight is Chief Executive of the National Governance Association. Emma, one MP on Tuesday said primary schools are laying off teachers and support workers. Another knew of a parent paying a cleaner. How widespread are those kind of problems? Hello, Jenny. Sadly, these problems have been growing and growing over a number of years, and now they have got to the point where they are widespread across England. Not in every school in every part of the country, but seven in 10 of our 5,000 and more respondents said that the way in which they were having to set the budget was now damaging the education offered to pupils. So we think that really is a crisis and we're asking for a much more intelligent conversation with the government.

Now obviously you represent governors in England but there was another example in Northern Ireland that we heard about where parents were actually buying toilet rolls for their children's school. How much is that kind of really basic thing happening all over the place? Governing boards are really trying to protect the educational offer to pupils. So in some cases, schools are asking parents to supplement the budget. That's not something that we recommend because it's very divisive. Not all communities can actually manage to do that. They've got all sorts of ways of trying to make budgets work at the moment. Of course, every single school in the country wants to be financially efficient. But we're now sadly getting to the point, and we have done for a few years, where secondary schools

are having to cut back on some of the subjects that are being offered to pupils both at GCSE and A-level. You carried a report yesterday about the reduction in the number of pupils studying European languages. They can no longer afford to have small groups of pupils. It's not financially efficient. In primary schools, so for example we've got a governor coming all the way from Devon where they've actually had to ask the PTA to fundraise in order to continue the arts lessons for their pupils. are incredibly worried about is the fact that it's particularly the support for our most vulnerable pupils, for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, which is being affected because teaching assistants are being made redundant. So the support that's available to those pupils is reducing. So what solutions can governors offer when money is so tight?

They have been trying to do all sorts of innovative things, fundraising in various ways, but that's not possible for all schools. And that's why it's so incredibly important that MPs understand these challenges so that they can pass those messages on to the Treasury. We're about to enter a new comprehensive spending review and it's really important that those people in power understand the week-to-week challenges that governing boards are facing when having to make those decisions. How successful are you likely to be in your lobbying? I'd like to be optimistic.

I think I'm really pleased by the fact that cross-party MPs have been interested. As you said, there was a debate earlier this week. There's another debate in the House of Commons on Monday after a huge petition started by a headteacher in the North East. So we think that actually MPs are listening. Nobody wants to reduce the support for our young people emma knights thank you very much and we did of course ask the department for

education to give us a comment since 2017 we've given every local authority more money excuse me for every pupil in every school and made funding fairer across the country. We've protected the core schools budget overall in real terms since 2010 and put an additional £1.3 billion into core schools funding across 2018-19 and 2019-20 over and above plans set out at the last spending review. Still to come in today's programme,

the music of the Welsh composer Grace Williams, uncovered and performed by the violinist Madeleine Mitchell, and a new work by Maggie G. Blood is her 13th novel. Now, the English Collective of Prostitutes is launching a campaign which they've called Make All Women Safe. They're calling for decriminalisation of sex work. At the moment, it's not illegal to be a prostitute, but it is illegal for more than one woman to work together or to solicit.

The collective says the current law puts the lives of 70,000 women at risk by forcing them to work alone. Well, Fiona Broadfoot is the founder of the Build a Girl project. She spent 11 years in prostitution from the age of 15. And Laura Watson speaks for the ECP. Laura, why do you believe decriminalisation is the right way to go? Well, as we said, the law that makes it illegal for sex workers to work together, that's a terrible choice that women have to make, is a choice between working on your own and being legal or working with others and being safer, but potentially facing arrest and prosecution. And we're saying that no woman should have to make that choice. And everybody should be able to work in safety and

have the same rights as other workers. How did you arrive at the figure that 70,000 women are at risk? Well, that's the estimates for the number of sex workers across the country. And so that's where we got the figures from. That's the number of women that are working, which is increasing every day because of austerity and benefit cuts. And so that's how many women are at risk. And women say to us all the time, you you know I used to work with my friends in premises but now I'm having to work on my own because the police came and raided us and closed us down and now I'm really I'm scared because I'm having to work on my own. Fiona if I can bring you in here you're in Leeds what's your view of the right way to go with this? Well, interestingly, for the first time probably ever,

I agree with the English Collective of Prostitutes that the women should be decriminalised. However, I do not believe we need to decriminalise all laws surrounding prostitution. I don't use the term sex work, because for me it's not sex and it's not work. A man's buying sexual access to reduce a woman to a piece of meat so he can get his end away, you know,

and it's all about giving men the permission to abuse women for me. So what you're arguing for, I think think is what's known as the Nordic model where the men would be criminalized rather than the women but in 2016 the Home Affairs Committee said that criminalizing the punter displaced rather than reduced demand by pushing it underground. What do you make of that view? Well, prostitution is underground. It's hell. And actually, interestingly, the person who chaired that committee was actually buying sex. Well, actually, not buying sex,

buying access to abuse young boys who'd been trafficked from Romania. So I actually endorse't endorse that. I don't think we can say that, Fiona. We have no evidence at all for that and certainly don't name whoever it is that you're talking about. No, there is evidence. We don't have proof of it, so let's leave that aside. Well, I don't think we can leave it aside

because the people who are sitting on these boards, you know, are supporting the notion. Fiona, we cannot make an accusation for which we have absolutely no evidence. So I'm now going to go over to Laura. Laura, looking at the Nordic model, we know that it's said to have worked well in Sweden. Why do you not favour it? It completely has not worked well. But firstly, just to say that there are already laws against violence in this country. You don't need extra laws on top of the already existing laws against rape and other violence.

And, you know, those laws should be implemented and women should be able to come forward and report those crimes to the police and not face arrest yourself for prostitution because that's what's happening at the moment. But in terms of the Nordic model, we are completely against it. It has made it much more dangerous for sex workers in the various countries that it's been implemented. Well, not in Sweden. I mean, we have seen the statistics and in Sweden they say it's working very well. Well, it's not working very well. We know sex workers from Sweden. Even on its own terms that it claims to reduce prostitution, it's not even true that it has reduced prostitution. And sex workers say all the time that stigma has increased massively in Sweden. In France, where it's been implemented, there's been a study, a two-year review of the law

which showed that violence against sex workers increased by up to 50%. And in Ireland, violence against sex workers, 42% increase. So it's a very, very worrying situation to add laws like that on top of what's already on the books, because actually what's happened in Northern Ireland, where the law has been implemented, and France, is that sex workers actually haven't been decriminalised. They've just added laws to criminalise clients on top. And so we are saying that if you're saying that you want to deal with violence against sex workers, you don't need extra laws for that. There's already laws for that. Fiona, it was decriminalised in 2003 in New Zealand

and reports about what happened in New Zealand say it worked well. Why do you oppose it? It doesn't work well. Women are much safer under the abolition model, the equality model, the Nordic model. It's not perfect because there's not enough money invested in preventing girls and young women and boys and young men being exploited and abused in prostitution

or exiting strategies to get women out. I know. I work with women. Fiona, that you have worked in exit programmes to help women get out of prostitution. How accurate is the suggestion that the law as it stands makes it difficult for women to leave? I think that's absolute rubbish. I think what makes it difficult to leave

is the normalisation and legitimisation of something that is absolutely intrinsically abusive, kills women. It isn't laws that kill women, it's men who kill women. In Sweden, there's only been one woman involved in prostitution murdered since 1999, when the Nordic model was introduced, and she was murdered by her ex-partner. In other countries, where decriminalisation is,

there are loads of women murdered, scores of women murdered. So don't tell me that it's the laws, blah, blah, blah. It's the men who kill women. It's misogyny that kills women. It's the hatred of women and girls. That's what's propping up prostitution. It's not sex, it's not work, and we should abolish prostitution. The only way to keep women safe is to abolish prostitution. Laura, the only way to keep women safe is to abolish prostitution. That's completely not true. I mean, there's this law in England and Wales, which is preventing sex workers from working together. It makes you an illegal if you're working together, which is completely not right.

It's obvious that if you can work together, you're safer than if you're on your own. And that's the law that's making it much more dangerous and that's the law that we're trying to get rid of and we're calling for the implementation of the Home Affairs Committee recommendations which say abolish the laws which target sex workers on the street and allow sex workers to work together from premises but also crucially to remove criminal records

from women's records so that you can leave so that you're not prevented from moving on if you if and when you want to but also sorry the crucial thing of stopping women from leaving is also the money sex workers are working for money and it's actually increasing at the moment because of the benefit cuts and sanctions and austerity so stop those and then you'll decrease prostitution. Laura Watson and Fiona Broadfoot, thank you both very much indeed for being with us. And we would like to hear from you on this one. Do send us a tweet or an email

if you have experience of prostitution or what do you think should be done? Now, Grace Williams was a Welsh composer who died in 1977. And a new album of her work is about to be released. The violinist Madeleine Mitchell found some of her unpublished work when she was researching Welsh music in Cardiff and was so impressed she's put together the album of her chamber music including the Violin

Sonata. © transcript Emily Beynon Madeline, what was it about Grace Williams' work that so impressed you? Well, I think you can hear it there. It's so soulful and deeply felt and Celtic and beautiful. And I thought I'd play you a bit from later on in that movement to show how she had such passion and gutsiness. The music builds up and there's a section on its own for the violin marked appassionato, passionately. And then the piano comes in and joins me

in this glorious high register theme and full voice marked con anima. And then it just winds down slowly to this beautiful, low-register, rather soulful, wistful Welsh music. And you have your violin and your bow in your hand. Oh, that sounded lovely. It's lovely to have a violin right next to me. Beautiful. Why was so much of her work unpublished? I mean, there you were, you found it, and it hadn't been published.

It's very interesting. Grace Williams is well regarded as a composer, especially in Wales, and she attended the Royal College of Music from 1926 to 1930, studying with Vaughan Williams, who recommended her for a travelling scholarship to Vienna to study in 1930 with Egon Verles. Must have been such an interesting time. And he very much praised her compositional gifts. And then she came back to London after a year and she took part-time teaching jobs at schools, Camden School for Girls and Southlands College, and at the same time started writing seriously chamber music, but she never really had a pushy publisher. She never really pushed herself forward, I think. And the other thing I noticed, she's obviously very self-critical. She was a close friend of Benjamin Britten, and they were each other's best critics. And when I discovered the violin sonata, I saw the manuscript at the Welsh Music Information

Centre in Cardiff, known as TICER, and on the frontispiece was, in her own handwriting, slow movement worth performing, outer movements not good enough, GW 1957. Similarly with the sextet we recorded and the nonet, which I got very interested after we played this piece and everybody thought it was marvellous. I thought, well, what else is there? She had all these fantastic connections then with very famous musicians. What sort of life would she have had as a female composer in the middle of the last century? How important is her gender in her not being published and not being recognised? I think it was much more difficult for women at that time, in the 1930s and 1940s.

There was no expectation that they were going to become famous composers. She was a practical musician. She worked for the BBC schools department in the 1940s, but then she suffered ill health, so she went back to Wales, and she lived there in Barry near Cardiff for the rest of her life. And although she did have success with some orchestral works, for instance, she wrote a mass called the Missa Cambrensis,

the Welsh mass, towards the end of her life. And the first performance didn't go well. So it wasn't until a couple of years ago when the BBC National Orchestra of Wales did it and it was successful. And I got hold of the manuscripts of these chamber music pieces from the National Library of Wales and just thought, why haven't they been published, let alone recorded? And I think they deserve to be heard. So why were you so keen to record an album?

Well, I just think that she really deserves to be heard. So why were you so keen to record an album? I just hope that people will agree with me that this is really lovely music. And the album spans her whole life, really, of writing music, from 1930, the violin sonata, through the sextet the following year, the nonet, which is very modernistic, minimalist even, 1934, and then through to three short pieces. There's a romancer from the 1940s, a saraband for left-hand piano, which she wrote for a friend who lost the use of her right arm. Lovely thing. And then in 1970, a rondo for dancing for two violins, which was published in an album of teaching pieces. So it's tonal and delightful and just serves a really good purpose. And I have marvellous colleagues from my London Chamber Ensemble.

What would you say, then, is her legacy? Well, I think that she has a broad range of work. She was the first woman to score a feature film, The Blue Scar, in 1949. I've just mentioned the sort of practical sides of her, but she has very fine orchestral pieces. She's probably known best for the Fantasia on Welsh nursery themes and sea sketches and the Penithelion, which means theme in variations. But there's this other music. And interestingly, her favourite instrument was

the trumpet, which is very unusual. She played the violin and piano, but she loved its brightness. And the chamber works, which we we recorded both feature the trumpet. And that hasn't had much of a precedent apart from perhaps Saint-Saëns. What was her life when she went back to Wales? Well, she wrote music and, as I say, she was admired in Wales. And I'm delighted that we're going to be releasing the album on International Women's Day in Cardiff with three other extraordinary women.

Judith Weir, first female Master of the Queen's Music. Lily Boulanger, first woman to win the Prix de Rome. And Rebecca Clarke, first woman to play professionally as a viola player in a London orchestra. And Grace Williams, who I think is a marvellous composer. Madeleine Mitchell thank you very much indeed it was lovely to hear you play your violin live in the studio. Thank you so much. Thank you very much indeed. Now it was in 1982 that Maggie Gee was named as one of

Granter's original Best of Young British Novelists. There have been 12 greatly acclaimed novels thus far, and now comes the 13th. Blood is the story of the Ludd family. There are six children, but Fred, the youngest, has died as a soldier in Afghanistan. Then there are two older boys, Anthea, who's successful in advertising, Fairy, who's a beautiful model,

and the narrator is Monica. She's tall, big, a deputy head teacher, and accused of murdering their brutal dentist father, Albert, who's been found battered and bloody. Here, she's being interviewed at the police station. Did you ever contemplate violence against your father? The policeman asked me later that day, when upon request I accompanied him and his doddery colleague into the station. Nobody had noticed the axe in the hall. I was not arrested, I was a witness. The policeman was one of those smug graduates,

making an effort to sound worldly-wise and failing. I asked him if I needed a lawyer, and he snorted. An unpleasant habit, I was going to say, an attractive habit, but bizarrely, the man was not unattractive. Testosterone alert, Monica! Yes, I do use exclamation marks. Punctuation's my métier. You're here voluntarily, aren't you?

He smiled at me. He had a bouncy quality. Really, it depends, Ms. Lud. How formal do you want this to be? What was he saying? Would it be kecks off? Did you ever contemplate violence against your father? He repeated. Of course I did. Doesn't everyone? Was certainly too truthful an answer. Maggie, how would you describe Monica? Because she's very open in her speech throughout

the book. Yes, there's a lot of passages I couldn't read on air. Well, she's tremendously frank. She's funny. She can't help speaking her secret thoughts aloud, which gets her into terrible trouble. She doesn't know she's doing it. But that also makes her funny, I think. And given that there are black things in the book, I think the comedy is what probably keeps you reading and certainly kept me writing. The style of the book is almost farcical and there were times when I thought why? When a central theme is the damage done by a brutal father. I think women cope with humour. I laugh an awful lot with my women friends.

Women are very funny. Men often don't notice that. Sometimes they do. But I think also this is a time in world affairs when satire seems the only possible response. We have some huge, almost caricatural statesmen on the stage. And laughter seems to me a way forward and direct action, which is what Monica takes. But there's this brutal father. I mean, some of your descriptions of the way he knocks the kids about

and knocks Monica aside are really horrific. How would you say his brutality has influenced the way the family views the world around them? Certainly the death of Fred, or Ferd, as he sometimes described. Yes, the children really only focus on how bad their father has been when one of their number, Fred, is bullied into the army and killed in Afghanistan. And then I think they start realising that maybe they have to do something.

But what the book is really saying is that if you take matters into your own hands, then that violence rebounds on you. So it's really a kind of, it's a sort of debate on how you deal with violence and I think you can't do it without law. Whatever's wrong with the law and whatever's wrong with the law whatever's wrong with the policeman who ends up having an affair with Monica but nevertheless she can't cope without him and one of the tragedies in the book is that police stations are being closed down what impact has their mother leaving had on them um the mother, this is the thing. There is the obviously bad father,

but there's a rather mild little mother who it's hinted is complicit. But the children actually can't bear to blame her because I think children do want to love their parents. And these children want to love their parents and do love their parents, however monstrous they are. That is the fate of children. And in the same way, leaders are loved by their people, however terrible they are. How significant is the fact that the father is a dentist who does implants? I was trying to think of a really brutal profession. I know there are wonderful dentists around. Have you had bad experiences with dentists. It's a parody because he's all

in all out on one day. And it's also the cosmetic industry, isn't it? And really what Monica is, is a challenge to all those social media ideas of ultra femininity. And she is defiantly herself. She feels very attractive despite her size. She is very attractive despite her size. She's not bothered about all those boring definitions of women. She is just this terrific, funny bruiser, trying to do her best, trying not to be a maniac like her father. And towards the end, she becomes a real hero

because she does love the children that she works with. That's what humanises her. She's also, I think, humanised by the fact that we're always laughing at her timid head, her timid male head, Neil, who's very bureaucratic, and Monica is the person who just actually gets things done. Now, you live in Ramsgate, and the book is set in Thanet, which you describe as the front line of Britain. Why?

Oh, because that's where most of the invasions have come. That's where Caesar came. That's where people from the north came. The Norsemen came, the Vikings. And in a way, you look across and you see France. So I think that's why some people are pro-Brexit there, because lots of them have got military background and they have faced up to invasion.

Although most of those invasions ended up, what did the Romans do? They started marrying people and doing deals. So on the one hand, I think perhaps people are less neurotic about migrants and refugees, but on the other, they have a healthy sense that there is a channel there. I mean I know lots of remainers but You know lots of both as we all do. Now how has the Me Too movement influenced your work? Yeah I think that was quite important because it came in really in the second half of writing the book. And I am saying we can't be victims and we do have to stand up, speak out, hit back,

preferably not literally. Yeah, preferably not. Preferably absolutely not. Not a good idea. It doesn't go well. But there is a different kind of strength that she shows at the end and that kind of strength of being not easily intimidated, of knowing you have a right to speak out.

That's what Monica's got. And when she speaks her mind, I had so much fun. Now, it's your 13th novel. And I remember you once saying writing novels was a ghastly profession. Why? Well, it isn't a profession, that's why. It's almost totally random. It's a lovely thing to do.

The writing is bliss for most of us. We really enjoy that. Wonderful to get your take on the world out there. But, you know, unfortunately, there are big publishers and agents to deal with. There's the market. And the market has got slowly simpler and more brutal, I think, over the years that I've written.

So, you know, I love to encourage young writers. It's always worth doing. Well, you are Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, and I wondered, with your view that it's a ghastly profession, you nurture the young hopefuls you work with. I'm very truthful to them. But I also say stories matter and that they are part of a tradition and telling stories has to go on. So I tell them it's worth doing, but be realistic. You have to say both things, really. What do you teach

them? Do you teach them how to write or how to deal with the publishing industry? I think both things. But when you say teach people how to write, you can hope to make anyone, to encourage anyone to write better. You can't teach them to write if there's nothing there, but they usually don't get in. It's a mixture of encouragement and editing. It's just craft, really. Maggie G, ending Thursday's edition of Woman's Hour.

Now, lots of you were interested in Caroline Criollo-Perez's gender data gap. Joanna tweeted her experience. It's a problem everywhere. In ladies' loos, why are hand dryers fixed to walls at heights that mean our hands and arms have to be raised so water trickles down our sleeves? I've experienced three this week. Are they set for the height of the installer or the user? Graham tweeted, I think Caroline's findings feed into the inclusive design debate and brings

a new perspective to it. Somebody who didn't want to be named emailed, I'm a six foot tall house husband and I struggle with a world built for women. Brooms, vacuum cleaners, pushchairs and nearly everything I use are designed for people considerably shorter than me. Stairs are difficult for people with large feet. As for your example of car safety, these devices wouldn't work for tall, heavy people if designed for smaller people than they are currently. Shelley tweeted,

Loving this from Caroline Criado Perez on the gender data gap. It explains so much. And then the Make All Women Safe campaign, which I discussed with Laura Watson and Fiona Broadfoot. We got a lot of you talking. Islay tweeted, We just want to be safe and have our rights. D.C Crim now.

The Nordic model pushes demand underground and does not make sex workers safer at all. Lynn tweeted, But Lee tweeted, injustice by allowing anyone to describe it as such. It implies a woman does not get pleasure from sex. But Lee tweeted, it's time for a major overhaul of legislation in this country. Sex workers are workers and deserve the same rights and protections afforded to every other worker. Patrick emailed whether it's legalised or not. It's the behaviour of men that's the issue here. And that's what should be discussed and not whether to legalise an industry that perpetuates

the abuse of women at the hands of the patriarchal society. This argument plays into that patriarchy rather than challenges it. Isadora tweeted, Fiona is right, prostitution is about misogyny and men do kill women. But the issues go much deeper about women in society and our role. Full stop. Great debate. And then on a more musical note, Rhian emailed, excellent to hear deserved recognition for the work of Grace Williams. There's also the wonderful work of two other talented and underappreciated Welsh female composers, Dilys Elwyn Edwards and my favourite Morfydd

Lywyn Owen, who tragically died at a very young age in suspicious circumstances. Her life story, intriguing though it is, is often given more attention than her music, which is truly sublime. Well, thank you for all your contributions to today's programme. Do join me tomorrow, if you can, at two minutes past ten, when I'll be talking to the chief executive of the World Bank, Kristalina Gorgieva, about some new research that they've done on the legal rights that men enjoy, which maybe women don't. That's two minutes past ten tomorrow. Bye-bye.

Did you know that technology can make us kinder to one another? Did you hear about the diver who walked out of the sea onto a Portuguese beach, dragging the internet behind him? Did you realize that how you speak to the little robot helper in your house might cement age-old stereotypes for decades to come? I'm Alex Kretosky, and those are just some of the stories that we've looked at in The Digital Human, the podcast that explores what it means to be human in the digital age.

If you want to hear more, and I guarantee we will surprise you, come check us out exclusively on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

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