Woman's Hour - Cash Carraway, Parental leave policies, Girl code

Episode Date: July 13, 2019

Cash Carraway tells us about her life as a working class woman and mother living in poverty today.We discuss the importance of parental leave policy transparency and why only 23 FTSE 100 companies make their maternity and parental leave policies available to the public with Jo Swinson the Liberal Democrat MP, Mairead Niger the chief Human Resources Officer for one of the 23, Diageo and Deborah Hargreaves the founder of the think tank, the High Pay Centre.The novelist and writer Sohaila Abdulali who was gang raped as a seventeen year old in Mumbai talks about the continued assumptions around rape and consent.The teacher and author Emma Kell offers advice around the move from Primary to secondary school and we hear from listeners Jane, Tony and Velda.We discuss girl code, what it is, how it’s broken and whether it has a place outside the tv show Love Island with freelance writer Moya Lothian-McLean and Lifestyle editor at the Metro Ellen Scott. And the Lebanese songwriter Tania Saleh and Palastinian poet Farah Chamma share their experiences as women artists in the Arab world.Presented by Jane Garvey Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Karen Dalziel

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. Hi, good afternoon. Welcome to the weekend edition of the programme. In a moment, why transparency is all important when it comes to parental leave policies at companies. Sahela Abdullali on why we need to question assumptions around rape and girl code. Is it old-fashioned and anti-feminist? It's based on women policing other women, and I think it is very retro.

Now it seems very out of date because it's like we've moved on, our ideas about feminism and solidarity and female solidarity, they're not just in relation to men, whereas Girl Code exists solely in relation to men as we see it on places like Love Island. We are intellectual about Love Island on Weekend Woman's Hour this afternoon. Also this week, how you can help your child move from primary to secondary school and the highs and lows of social media when you're a female artist trying

to make it in the Arab world. It's easy to get to know people when you're online. But the problem is that now it's become addictive. And this is something I don't like at all. I don't like the fact that I'm always on my phone trying to see who liked this and who didn't like that. I want to connect with nature, with people, with, you know, life as it used to be. And this is something that's becoming dangerous. You can hear more about that a little later in the programme. First, a paternity leave was introduced in 2003 and then four years ago, shared parental leave was added into the mix. But just 23 of the big companies in the FTSE 100

are explicit about policies for new parents. Mairead Nijer is one of the chief human resources officers for one of the 23, Diageo. Jo Swinson is a Lib Dem MP and deputy leader of the chief human resources officers for one of the 23, Diageo. Jo Swinson is a Lib Dem MP and deputy leader of the party, and she's running for leader as well, of course. And Deborah Hargreaves is the founder of the think tank, the High Pay Centre. Why does Deborah think companies aren't always clear

about their parental leave policies? I suspect that sometimes they're trying to do side deals, so sometimes they will have a statutory maternity policy and then they will offer more generous terms to people that maybe are more senior or that they want to really hold on to. And also I think these are benefits and companies do go above the statutory, but I think that's something they might want to cut back during times of difficulty when they're going through cost cutting.

I think sometimes companies don't want to be so explicit about these things because then they can change them if they want to. Now, Jo, last year you tabled a bill to make it mandatory for companies employing more than 250 people to make their policies public. Why did you want to go for that? Transparency is a really important tool. And just by putting this information in the public domain, it empowers job applicants, and it helps people in their own organisations argue for better parental pay. And it's part of also how we deal with the massive challenge of discrimination. So we know that 54,000 women a year lose their jobs through pregnancy and maternity discrimination. In that environment, it's not rocket science to understand why people aren't too keen to ask a

job interview. And by the way, what's your maternity pay policy? So if people aren't going to be confident to ask, then it is really hard for people who are perhaps at a stage in their life where they might want to be starting a family. It's important to them. They're thinking about it. But if they are applying for a job, they're in a very difficult position. They don't know whether it's a company they'll want to work for, if this is an important thing that they need to know. And it's hard to ask. It's not an easy question

to ask an interview. How is your bill progressing? The government did last autumn say that they accepted that this should happen, that they would bring it forward as a government measure and that they would launch a consultation on how to do it. That was last autumn. We're nine or ten months on from that and still no sign of it whatsoever. And when you ask, you get these kind of in due course answers. So it's absolutely clear that the government is consumed by Brexit and does not have the attention to give to these vital issues that affect people's lives. Mireille, why has your company decided to make your policy open? Our policy is very open because, as said being transparent is critical we see it as

critical in order to enable us to attract the very best talent but more than that the policies we have in place we think are leading market policies and a company with the history we've had and the culture we've created needs to lead the way on being the most inclusive culture and business we can be. So it's very important to us. We have a global policy now that I think is the most progressive out there, having six months paid maternity leave for all women, irrespective of which country they're in. And then we have a minimum of four weeks in every country in the world. And some companies we've actually matched it. So in the UK we actually have six months paid paternity leave for men as

well as women. And what about shared parental leave? Do you have a policy where it can just be divided between the two rather than making it separate maternity and paternity? We have shared parental leave as well but to bring it to life if a man and a woman

are working at Diageo and happen to be in a relationship together they can both take six months paid leave when the child is born. What have you found the uptake has been? We launched the policy in May actually the uptake has been swift I would say we have men lining up to take it we've had men who were disappointed that they had their children earlier and hadn't that opportunity. It's quite striking. I did a sense check overnight as I knew I was coming on the show. And I've had some great anecdotes of senior sales directors. I just saw on LinkedIn a gentleman in Australia in our business thanking the company for giving him the opportunity to spend the first three months with his wife and his new baby,

a lovely photograph. It's really, really astounding. We think we're going to have significant take-up. Jo, it is a fact, though, that only a third of men take paternity leave. Shared parental is as low as 2%. Why do you suppose it's so low? Well, the amount taken paternity leave is probably more like two thirds, but that some men are taking it as holiday rather than unpaid paternity leave.

And I think there's probably two big drivers of this. And one is financial and the other is sort of cultural, what our expectations are. And the financial one is important. You know, having a baby is a wonderful, amazing, life-changing experience. They're also really expensive, right? There's a lot of stuff that takes a real hit to the family finances. And so it is one of the considerations. And often because of the gender pay gap,

the man, if it's a heterosexual couple, the man is often earning more. And so, you know, in that situation, it can be a barrier. We need to make this happen. We know, Jo, that Stella Creasy has been very critical of policies for MPs and how difficult it can be. Shouldn't Parliament be setting the agenda on this? Obviously.

And I wholeheartedly support Stella's efforts. There's so much that we need to keep changing to modernise Parliament, partly because it's important for our democracy that it can have people of all different circumstances and backgrounds represented within Parliament, but also because we're making the laws for the rest of the country.

And so we need to walk the walk if we're going to be putting these laws in practice. Deborah, when Jo put her bill through, it was for companies employing more than 250 people, which are quite big companies. How are smaller companies going to deal with this? It is difficult for smaller companies. And you do have to have some sympathy for them because you can often have a small team, 10 people, you know, 20 people. If someone goes on maternity leave, extended maternity leave,

it's obviously a big gap. But I think with a bit of imagination and creativity that can be filled. It's not rocket science. It can be done. We all need to be working more flexibly. The workplace is changing a lot. And I think with some goodwill, we can change these jobs. We tend as women to be fitting into a very rigid work pattern and a very rigid workplace, which hasn't changed a lot to accommodate us. And we need to start thinking a lot more flexibly about the way work could be done and the way caring could be accommodated within work, because we all care for someone. It's not just children, it's older people and that's becoming a bigger and bigger burden. Mireille we heard this morning that the number of female directors in the FTSE 100

has gone up a little bit but their boardroom careers apparently are not advancing or being advanced how much do you reckon a failure to promote family policies just hold women back? I think there's when women are out of work I think the evidence suggests that that then does have an impact on how quickly they are promoted through the organisation. Actually policies that support men taking leave too should create a more equal situation and that's one of the direct benefits I think of introducing policies like we have if men and women both take leave then there shouldn't be that barrier where their absence potentially holds them back. Disappointing to hear that the tenure on boards is shorter than we might like at Diageo the good news is we're at 44% when it comes to women on our board and at

the executive level, it's 40%. And I think that completely changes the conversation. That is higher than the average. It is higher than the average. And we were discussing it earlier, the types of conversations we have, and the things that are discussed at an executive level at the board are very inclusive. I think that shapes the way the business performs and it shapes the atmosphere and the environment we create for our teams. Mairead Nijer of Diageo, you also heard from Jo Swinson and from Deborah Hargreaves. An email from Laura, my husband would have loved to take shared parental leave but as he works for a charity it wasn't an option. He was also worried

about how taking six months out of work would affect his career, which is how I feel. The wider conversation is part-time working for both parents longer term. Our son is now 17 months old and less reliant on mum, so we're now discussing swapping. So I go full-time and my husband goes part-time. This does make financial sense and my husband really liked the extra time with our son that I've enjoyed. But we're both apprehensive about how this will be received by society as it's not the cultural norm in the UK. From Myra, as a voice for the employer, I am sometimes tearing my hair out, she says. I'm all for paternal leave, but we have had key people taking a year off and then three days before they're due back, they resign. These are people that are difficult to replace.

So finding parental cover is difficult and recruiting is difficult. It's all fine if the staff are easy to find cover for. Claire says, I know someone who's male. He works for a car manufacturer. It's all fine if the staff are easy to find cover for. Claire says, I know someone who's male. He works for a car manufacturer. They have a very generous maternity policy, but it was made quite clear that if he wanted to take shared parental leave, he would jeopardise any promotion prospects.

So clearly, still some way to go, says Claire. Thank you all for taking part and giving us the benefit of your experience. You can email the programme, of course, whenever you like via our website, bbc.co.uk. So Hala Abdullali is somebody I really enjoyed meeting this week. She's the author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape. Now, she was gang raped in 1980 as a 17-year-old in Mumbai. The police ignored her and her doctor was too embarrassed to examine her properly. Three years after that, she wrote an article about her experience for a women's magazine.

Thirty years later, in 2012, Jyoti Singh, a young physiotherapy student, was also gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi and she died a few days later of her injuries. At that point, Sahela's old article went viral. Sahela took me back to the day of her attack. We called the police and I think 15 policemen showed up in our house and in India the police are not comforting, they're scary generally generally. So they were there. And I was so naive that I just assumed that obviously this crime has been committed and they're going to find the people. But they just refused to believe me. So even though I and my friend were sitting there, we actually had wounds on us. They just tried every possible thing to make it so that either it was our fault for being out there or at one stage there was the implication that we must have gone out to have sex and we made up the story to cover that. But essentially it was that in those days in India and to some extent even now, nobody wanted to register a rape case because they would look bad.

So they just didn't want that on the record that they had a rape in their district. And so ultimately they just made it harder and harder. And because I was officially a child, I was 17. They said that for your protection, we will lock you up in a remand home during the trial and you can't go to America. So which is where you were living.

Yeah. So the article you wrote, it was, it was, it was published. People read it. And then you got on with the rest of your Yeah. So the article you wrote, it was published. People read it. And then you got on with the rest of your life. I'm not, again, that must have been extraordinarily difficult at times.

But you did nevertheless. And then something else happened 30 years later. Yeah. So the article was, you have to remember, there was the age of pre-internet. So it came out in this feminist magazine because I wanted to make the point that this happened, that it happened to me, I'm not embarrassed about it. And then I, I did engage with the issue, because I wrote two theses on it, and I worked at a rape crisis center. But then for 30 years, it's always been something of interest to me, but it became less and less personal, and more like rape as a way to explore

all these issues of inequality and feminism and poverty and climate even. It's so connected to all of it. And then I'd kind of forgotten about that article. And then in 2012, when there was a rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in India, which was big news everywhere. It turned out I was still the only living rape victim who had ever spoken out in India. So I was sitting in New York, quite happy to be away from all this, but very thrilled at the protests in India, because it was the first time in our history that rape became a topic of everyday conversation. And even though people were saying some crazy things, they were saying things. They were at least talking about it. And there was a commission. I mean, I could go on, but it was great.

But it led to your article being circulated again. It went viral. People started to, as you say, really engage with it. So I think there are some brilliant, brilliant bits in this book. And you have advice, don't you, for people who perhaps meet a rape victim in their life. Just can you sum up the key points, actually, for anyone? Of the advice. Advice for the people who want to help someone who's been raped.

Oh, yes, absolutely. So I called it the Abdul Ali Guidelines for Saving a Rape Survivor's Life. And actually it applies to anything when anyone's in a trauma. But I kind of, and I sort of say say she but I make sure that people know it applies to all gender. And also of course men can be victims of rape. Yes and trans people in fact more. The minute you're not a binary gender you're

immediately more vulnerable to attack. So essentially it boils down to believe the person. You're not the judge and jury. Someone tells you something believe them because give them the same level of credibility as you would if they came in and told you someone tells you something, believe them. Because give them the same level of credibility as you would if they came in and told you someone stole my wallet. If someone comes and tells you they've been robbed, you don't say, well, why did you leave your house unlocked?

Blah, blah, blah. Why did you leave your money out on the drawer? All that might be not good decision making, but there's still a criminal out there. You're not, you don't excuse them by your behavior. So I guess my main advice is to treat rape like any other crime in the sense of where you put the blame on the criminal, not the victim. You also talk about consent. Yes. And actually, well, you've got some interesting views on consent, actually, haven't you? Tell us about that. Well, I think that we, when I was in college, it was very much feminism of the 80s.

And we used to have take back the night marches. And one of the big things was yes means yes, and no means no. Yeah. And, of course, that's true. But the fact is that that's not a very nuanced way to look at it. Because, first of all, many times you say yes, like I said, yes, you could the police actually said, but you let them rape you. I said yes, because they were going to kill me. And so I would rather be raped than dead. But you could take that whole thing to an extreme and say, well, she consented. And that that plays out all the time. Because, for instance, one of the people I interviewed in my book, it was she had just broken up with a boyfriend and stomped out of a bar drunk after breaking up with him and gone to her dorm room. She was in college. And he came raging after her, knocked on the door and she opened it. And he raped her. And everyone in her life said she had consented and that that wasn't rape because he was her boyfriend. Why did she open the door? She must have wanted it. So I just feel like we need to look beyond these words. And you make the point as well, there should be,

there should always be a link between sex and pleasure. Yes. I mean, often, apparently, there isn't. Well, there usually isn't because you think of sex education. In India, we have none. But say in the West, I don't know what it's like in England. But in the US, I think it would be fair to say. but in the US, it's sort of like sex education is basically you see the diagrams of the organs, which are also wrong because there's no clitoris usually. And sex for girls is be careful.

It's painful. You're going to lose your virginity. It might hurt the first time and be careful how you behave because, you know, can't control themselves. Men are rampant. And they have some innate thing. Well, I enjoyed that bit in the book where you actually talk about this very notion that male arousal is impossible to control. No man can stop. I mean, it's so insulting to everyone. And I actually have this question for men who feel that is that if you were having really hot sex with someone you're really into and you're in the middle of the action and your grandmother walks into the room and looks at you, could you stop? And I think probably most people could. So there's this whole issue of.

But getting back to sex and pleasure, it's that if you're taught as a girl that sex is not for pleasure, you might not even be able to recognize that what's happening to you isn't consensual because it's not even a concept. You never expected to enjoy it in the first place. Yeah. And you don't know how to say yes because you don't think you deserve pleasure. So it seems to me like if you teach girls and boys both that sex is meant to be fun for everyone, you're more likely to have a scenario where somebody's just lying there putting up with it. What did they say? Lie there and think of England.

Yes. Go on, carry on. Yeah. And the other person not even knowing that maybe this is not so cool. That maybe I should care what my partner wants. And so it's complicated to talk about rape and sex together because I would never want to say rape is sex. But they're very connected. It's a sexual act. And sometimes it starts off as somebody thinking they're having sex with someone who wants to. So I think difficult though it is, I think we're smart

enough to talk about them together. Sahela Abdullali on Women's Hour this week. Now, Kash Caraway is the author of a memoir called Skint Estate, and it's all about temporary housing, about living in a women's refuge, about domestic violence, loneliness, forced self-employment, what it's like to work in the sex industry, and how you feel when you're using a food bank. It probably isn't your life any more than it's mine, but it's certainly something that Cash has lived through. She describes her book as gonzo from the gutter. Here she is. I'm a working class woman. I fell pregnant in 2010 and I fled domestic violence whilst pregnant with my daughter and ended up in a women's refuge. And from that refuge, I watched David Cameron walk into 10 Downing Street and form a

coalition. And I suddenly wanted to become political. You'd never been political before? Not particularly. I'd marched against the war in Iraq, but only so I could go and get drunk with my friends afterwards, because it was kind of the thing to do. I'd voted, but I hadn't really put much thought into the voting process. But I knew when I was in that refuge, that I was in trouble under a Conservative government. Was it coalition government? Sorry, coalition government. Yeah, I was scared. And I wasn't able to vote in that election, because we were living in a temporary address. We weren't given the right, none of the women

were given the right to vote so it became more important to me the fact I'd been silenced during that election I started to think about how I'd been silenced kind of the bigger picture of being silenced. You were effectively disenfranchised but deeply vulnerable yes to politicians and to their policies yeah let's talk a bit about then about how you survived and the decisions a bit about then about how you survived and the decisions you had to make about how you and your daughter were going to get through. You've done all sorts of different jobs.

Yes. But you know what I'm going to ask you about first, which is your time when you were pregnant working in Soho. Yes. In a peep show, is that? Yeah, I worked in a peep show for the entire time I was pregnant. It seemed like a natural choice to me because I'd been a stripper in my 20s and I knew I wasn't going to be able to work in a glitzy strip club with my, you know, growing belly.

The high class punters just wouldn't put up with that. But in a peep show, it turns out they'll put up with anything. In fact, my change in form was almost enjoyed. It was like people would come in almost to get an update on my pregnancy. What is a peep show? They're all different. But the one I was in, it had two booths, a girl in each booth, and it was split into four sections. You could have up to four men at any time and they'd slot the money into like an arcade kind of slot

and then a letterbox-sized hole would open and from there you'd see their eyes and they would spy on you. My peephole was very popular. If a customer would slot £2 in for more than 15 minutes, then you start earning bonus. And I often would earn bonus more than the beautiful Russian beauty next to me. The detail in this book is unsparing. And you do talk in great detail about, let's be honest, about the smell of the peep show and about the sorts of men and the different sorts of men who would come during the

course of the day yeah but what is the theme really throughout your book is the nuances that the grey areas in life so these geezers who'd come to the peep show people listening now will be making judgments about them i dare say but and me and and possibly you but then they would bring you presents they brought you stuff for the baby they brought me stuff for the baby um somebody brought in a really expensive bugaboo pram i think they're like a grand sleep suits a used breast pump everything that you would need to set up a nursery customers brought in it was like they almost connected with me in some way that they cared and which is weird because if you're just seeing these orgasming eyes, then suddenly they see you as a real person.

And you see them as relatively real. At that point I did, yeah. Throughout the book too are stories about actually not just how tough it is to be poor, but really ironically in a way how expensive it is to be poor because you are ripe to be ripped off, aren't you? Yeah, well, I I mean rents become impossible to navigate in London when you're poor and when I say I was poor I was in receipt of benefits I'm still in receipt of universal credit now I was working constantly on minimum wage zero hour jobs and when you're working those kind of jobs it's impossible to meet rent so something's

going to give so you're going to have to use a food bank or you're going to get evicted at some point. It's impossible. And I think with the book, I wanted to shine a light on the complexities of poverty, that it isn't just a case of you're scrounging or you can't be bothered to work or you're incapable of working.

There's so much more to it than that. It's just a constant juggle. At one point, you outlined the number of estate agents you go to. Is it the 84th estate it was the 82nd one that happened to to find me a place you're trying to remain dignified but you're constantly begging so it's completely it's constantly eroding away at your self-esteem but you just have to keep going. What other choice do you have? And you were a single mother, which also marks you out in a very particular way. Well, immediately estate agents

don't really want to bother themselves with you. I mean, there were times I was always pretending I had a husband. I've got all these rich husbands who work in Dubai, and then suddenly they take you seriously. I think the thing with poverty is that you're always having, you're either on your knees or you're having to lie to get by. Lying about having a husband, lying about how much money you're earning, lying about a landlord reference.

You're always constantly having to provide all this information to prove that you're legitimate. So you've said you want to give a voice to women like you. But I wonder whether by doing that and by expressing it so eloquently, you are encouraging people like me and perhaps some of the people listening now to question your authenticity precisely because you are able to do it and able to write so well. Yeah, that's interesting I imagine whether people are going oh I don't know whether I believe this I think that working class women are constantly under scrutiny or the working class generally are constantly under scrutiny you know isn't it sad that because I'm able to write a book that people

would doubt my story the suggestion being that working class people are stupid but if you look at the way the benefit system is set up, like, for example, I'm on universal credit now. Yeah, I do work. You're constantly having to prove yourself. You know, how much money are you earning? Are you actually looking for work? Why are you not earning enough?

So the fact that you're constantly being questioned by authority, that kind of trickles down into society where, I guess, working class people are... Actually, if you're not if your voice isn't heard often enough and then suddenly someone comes out with a story people are going to question it because it's something exotic it's something completely unusual so I'm used to not being believed because I've been part of the benefits system for so long. And you also, at one point, you're living, for reasons that people can find out when they, or if they read the book, you're living in Maida Vale,

alongside a lot of rock stars and their partners. It's at this point that you set up what is actually a fake Instagram account of a... It wasn't Instagram. Instagram wasn't around then. It was a blog. A blog, sorry, forgive me. But you were doing a kind of Bowdoin mummy blog, weren't you? Yeah, I wanted to fit in. I thought motherhood would give me a chance to fit in. I've always felt like an outsider. Then I saw that the kind of acceptable version of motherhood was Bowdoin dresses, Argers, weekends away at Soho House. And I wanted a part of it, you know?

I wanted to fit in. So I changed my name to all the people locally who knew me. You changed your voice as well. I changed my voice, changed my name, said my name was Camilla. I'm not proud. I'm not here bragging about that. I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. I live in a constant feeling of cloud of shame.

And I think a lot of working class people will relate to that. I've always just wanted to fit in. And it's hard to fit in when you're working class. Cash Carraway. If you've got any thoughts on that, you can let us know. Her memoir is called Skint Estate. It's really interesting. I have to say it is quite detailed in places and it's extremely harrowing.

But it's well worth a look and it's available now monday's edition of woman's hour is about black women and they are now and this is an astounding statistic they are now five times more likely to die as a result of complications in pregnancy than white women in this country we should say of course that overall britain's maternal mortality rates are very low. But that statistic about black women comes from the latest study from Embrace UK, Mothers and Babies Reducing Risk Through Audits

and Confidential Inquiries Across the UK, is its full title. And that risk for black women has been increasing year on year. What is going on here and why? So on Monday, Jenny is going on here and why? So on Monday, Jenny is going to look at those disturbing statistics. They actually were released late last year, but they didn't get very much attention at the time. And on Tuesday, I will be live in Liverpool for the Netball World Cup, which of course is happening in Liverpool. It started already, but we'll have a live programme from the event on Tuesday morning. Now, Monday's show was a phone-in about the transition from primary to secondary school,

and my guest was Emma Kell, who is a teacher and a parent and the author of How to Survive in Teaching. First, we heard from some children from Chorlton and from Darwin in Lancashire. My biggest worries about year seven is just like older children teasing you or picking on you and maybe like homework as well. I think the one thing that I might be nervous about is probably just getting detentions and not making that great friends and having toxic friends and maybe having some issues with social media. a ddim yn gwneud cyd-dau ffrindiau hynny a chael ffrindiau tocsig. Ac efallai bod gen i rhai problemau gyda'r cymdeithas cymdeithasol. Ac ie, dyna'r peth.

Wel, yn amlwg, rwy'n ymwneud â'r hyfforddwyr, oherwydd mae llawer o hyfforddwyr gwahanol. Yn amlwg, mae gen i hyfforddwr gwych ar hyn o bryd, ond oherwydd y probabilrwydd, byddai'n debyg bod yna hyfforddwr na fydda i'n ei hoffi ac ati. Felly rwy'n ymwneud â'r holl clases gwahanol. but, like, because of probability, there's probably going to be a teacher that I might not like and stuff. So I'm quite nervous about all the different classes. I don't really want to leave primary school because, like, I've known this place for a long time and it feels like this is my school.

That's it, isn't it? You are, by the time Year 6, or I think think it's P7 in Northern Ireland and Scotland rolls round, you're very much the cock of the walk. You know the place inside and out, don't you? And it's a hell of a wrench. Yeah, and primaries are absolutely brilliant at that, aren't they? They gradually get more responsibility as they go up. And the year sixes are in charge of playground patrol and looking after the younger kids.

And they really are the big fish. And to go from being the tiny fish in schools, which, you know, 1,200, 1,200 students, huge corridors, everything else is absolutely huge. Let's go to Stoke. Hi, Jane. You are a former transitions coordinator. That's correct. I've been retired for eight years now. Yeah. But I was the transition coordinator in a large comprehensive in East London I started my job in the preceding September because you need to have familiarity for those young people coming into your school and most importantly to get the parents on side if I say

if I may say some parents are very keen for the children to move on to your school all schools have a reputation so some parents are less keen we had a large asian community in the area so many of the girls were hoping to go to the single-sex schools which of course were oversubscribed so didn't get in so that sometimes could be an issue but so can i just pick you up there so sometimes there's a negativity even before the school has started. Definitely. How do you combat that? I think through personality.

I would take ex-students back to the school. I would speak to have parents' meetings. We'd have parents' meetings at my school. For several years, we had a full week on a timetable where we brought the children in who were going to be in year seven and they ran that week as year seven students and that was a very worthwhile experience and at the end of it we would have a parents meeting and anything that had been discussed at home obviously we could deal with it as it came up and 90 percent of the issues were will my child be bullied really yeah yes the fear that they came up and 90 percent of the issues were will my child

be bullied really yeah yes the fear that they might be and can i ask do you think let's say a parent had a negative experience themselves at secondary school what should you do if that was you should you ever tell your child that or should you just try and pack it away and be positive i think you should pack it away and be positive but obviously not all parents do that. I mean I personally didn't have a very, I went to a girls grammar school back in the day in Kent and I didn't have a very good experience in secondary school myself. Lovely primary school, go into this secondary school and it was just for me a nightmare and I've you know I think the nurture in the secondary school is still important.

And many parents feel that that is missing. And let's be honest, they're taught by perhaps 10 or 12 different teachers. Yeah. So some teachers do not have that nurture. Thank you very much, Jane. I really appreciate that. That's Jane, who worked as a transitions coordinator. One of the young lads in our little vox pop of pupils there talked about the number of teachers he was going to have and you're used to often just having one teacher for the whole year

and then you've got about 12 of them you don't always like all of them and they might not get you either What do you do about that? Well the other thing to remember of course is we are in a teacher crisis so a lot of schools are struggling to recruit high quality teachers across the board I think like everything my daughter was extremely anxious about this as well, the different personalities and would she be picked on and would she get into trouble with some teachers? I think it's just life, isn't it? You have to get

used to working with all sorts of different types of people. And the vast majority of the teachers she works with have been fantastic. You know, they've been great. And getting used to actually different teachers with different quirks and different foibles in different classrooms and different limits and different boundaries and different senses of humor has actually really helped her to grow as a person the form tutor is absolutely crucial so the form tutor is the person your child will meet at the beginning and sometimes the end of every single day so i would say without making a big deal out of it in front of your child because obviously everything you do is embarrassing from the age of 11. I would say get to know that form tutor, get to know those key people. Okay. And can you as a parent email that form tutor and

get to make a connection with them without your child knowing? Yeah, you can, you can. There's also a meet the tutor evening almost certainly at the beginning of every year. So get along to that if you can. But it's difficult, isn't it? Because you go from primary where you're greeted every morning and every afternoon by name, by the teacher, you know, everybody, you know, every parent, you know, every family. And then you go to secondary

and it's a lot harder. It's a lot more anonymous. I couldn't name my daughter's science teacher off the top of my head. You know, it's very, very different. But I would say that if you're concerned about something as a parent or your child's expressed a concern, don't hesitate from contacting the school you don't

need to be in there every single day but you know if you know you got instinct if you're worried about something if your child says something or is losing sleep over something just just drop a line to the form tutor possibly the head of year head of year has a bit more time depending on the seriousness of of the issue and they and in bit more time depending on the seriousness of the issue. And in my experience, it might take a couple of days because these people teach. But people will get back to you. Zelda in Suffolk. I just wanted to report on a fantastic secondary school my daughter's going to in September.

They've worked really hard at getting that transition for primary to secondary as smooth as possible. And they invented Saturday morning workshops, which are slightly controversial because obviously staff are asked to go in if they want to. Right. But for the students, they go in three, four times from the year from January onwards. And they do workshops in the morning

with the other tutor group that they'll be with from September. And it just means they get used to that cohort and they get used to being in the school and used to the teachers. And it just makes that transition really smooth. Zelda, thank you. Appreciate that. Tony, I think Tony, you're in Somerset and you're a fan of the middle school system. Hi there.

Yeah, I'm in Froome in Somerset. And I was really happy to find that there was a middle school system here. We've only recently moved here. Right. But I had a real horror story when I transitioned from age 11 with 200 pupils around me to a really rough comprehensive with 1,700 pupils around me. And actually, a fair number of those pupils needed to shave, so I wouldn't really call them kids.

I would call them, you know, men. And it was quite terrifying but what I love about the middle school system is when I when I stand at the school gate and all of the kids come out they're all unequivocally that they're all kids and it means that my my boy has got a couple of extra years to transition to the to the idea of hanging around with far older kids when he does eventually end up in a secondary school. It feels like a really natural transition and progression. It feels like he has that level of maturity that will enable him to cope with those changes

and with those big people that are going to be around him. Thank you very much. I appreciate that, Tony. What do you think about that, Emma? Middle schools, they're not very common in Britain, are they? What struck me about Tony's comments was the reference to play because that year seven, year eight age group is really interesting. They're in between. They're neither child nor adult, are they?

And I find myself one minute confiscating slime and the next minute telling them off for some crude sexual reference and they're in this strange little world. But I do find that actually when they don't know you're looking at this kind of age, 11, 12, 13, they do love to play. And I love the fact that those middle schools give them the opportunity to stay children. Emma Kell, who was my guest on that phone-in programme, and you also heard from callers Tony, Zelda and Jane. Jo emailed to say, I'm happy to report I've just picked up my granddaughter from her transition day and she came out absolutely buzzing.

Oh, Grandma, she said, I've had the best day and I want to come back tomorrow. I don't want to go back to my old school. I want to start here now. So much, says Jo, for transition nerves. Well, the best of luck to your granddaughter, Jo. I hope she has a terrific time when September rolls around. She certainly sounds positive about the whole thing. Leslie says, something I don't think helps is the tendency for some primary teachers and parents to use secondary teachers as a threat. Things like they won't put up with that at big school. You won't get away with that next year.

Your teachers at secondary will give you a detention and so on. It's entirely understandable, but it makes us sound really strict and not very compassionate. We want the year sevens to settle in and be happy too, says Leslie, who sounds like a very nice, concerned secondary school teacher. And from Helen, as a child in the 70s, I went from a small private school with classes of no more than 16 to a big grammar school. I did find it overwhelming, but it was great once I adjusted. My parents were really calm and supportive and always encouraged me to see the positive. My sister-in-law recently retired as a primary school teacher. Her gripe wasn't the children and their worries, but the parents who often created or made the situation worse by being overprotective and not accepting

that it's a life lesson that children have to experience the negative as well as the positive to arm them for going out into the world. You may not watch Love Island, but if you've got people under the age of, I don't know, it's hard to gauge, 35 living in the house, there's a fair chance they will be watching it absolutely avidly. And one of the talking points this season, and not for the first time on this show, has been Girl Code. What it is, what it means, and under what circumstances should it be broken, if any? I talked this week to Ellen Scott,

who is Lifestyle Editor at the Metro newspaper, and to the freelance writer, Moya Lothian-McLean. I think the clue to Girl Code is in the name. It's an infantilised version of, I would say, feminism. and to the freelance writer, Moya Lothian-McLean. I think the clue to Girl Code is in the name. It's an infantilised version of, I would say, feminism. I think it has its roots in kind of 90s Laudette post-feminism. And it's very much about patriarchal kind of ideas of women being in competition with other women, always pitting it, but they're repackaged

in a sort of feminism-lite kind of product where it says... And it's based on women policing other women and i think it is very retro it is something that we don't now it seems very out of date because it's like we've moved on our ideas about feminism and solidarity and female solidarity are more based they're not just in relation to men whereas girl code exists solely in relation to men as we see it on places like love island yeah you're right you're right to use the term heteronormative because i'm not would it apply in other sorts of relationships i'm bisexual and if you are dating women you will date your friends exes okay tell us more about that then because

it's such a small world like you're going to the same clubs and it's just not it's not as possessive at all you kind of see each other okay, this is my ex for a reason. Hang on, are you saying women are not as possessive as men? Shockingly, yes. Oh, you really say? Do you believe that? Yeah, 100%. I think when they're not told to be, I think a lot of girl code is saying you have to be for women.

You have to be on the woman's side always and be loyal to women. You can't choose a man whereas when it's women loving women that rule doesn't apply you're not getting possessive over men i think women i mean in the sense of possessiveness i think women can be as possessive as men but i think in the tenets of girl code it's more about it's fear because women are socialized to always see men if in a heteronormative way, obviously. Women are socialised to see men as a prize and competing with other women and women getting picked by that man as a prize

and women are seen that we're replaceable. We're taught that we can always be replaced and in the pretence of Girl Code, the whole fear is that you will be replaced and that men can't control themselves. So if you're in a situation where a man is dating someone and then that's your friend and a man then approaches you or hits on you,

then it's up to you to turn that down. There's no put on the man the onus is always put on the women to protect other women through solidarity because the idea is that men are never going to control themselves men are going to run rampant it's actually hard on men as well as yeah 100 but that's always the way isn't it even with the patriarchy it affects both men and women in a poisonous way is there ellen a boy code No, that's what's the issue. There's kind of bro code, but it's nowhere near as enforced as girl code is. And it's not seen as such a betrayal

if a guy goes for a friend's ex in that way. Because I don't think women are valued in the same way to men. And bro code is all about being sexually like, bro, let's have a beer. I was reading up on it and it's a very Americanised thing as well. It's not very entrenched in English values. It's more like, bro, let's have a bit i was reading up on it and it's like it's a very americanized thing as well it's not very entrenched in english values it's more like bro let's have a beer let's like go get some girls whereas girl code is very also girl code is very passive in the sense that it's not actively supporting other women it's not something like let's walk other women home let's protect women from harassment let's do this it's all about watching somebody

move on someone else's man and snarking about it afterwards oh god this is depressing i know but the thing is it doesn't have to be that way we can have a girl code and we already have feminism which is why i think a girl code is redundant because feminine is the girl code it's the it's the woman's code whereas a girl code is all about this kind of like baby like just don't touch someone but i think we could we could rebrand it completely let's talk as we're here and as you're both here um about Maura and about how divisive she has been because um our listeners I'm conscious some of our listeners will be saying I don't want to hear this on radio 4 but if you live with young people it's their water cooler telly they're watching it it's their communal talking point of the moment and actually this generation don't get that many and Maura

has been a consistent talking point throughout this series now both of you just give us a quick take on Maura what she's done and whether or not she's a good thing well I love Maura so yes she's a good but what she done she has so she's kind of broken girl code twice um she's gone for one guy Tommy who had a girlfriend at the time and then she's also expressed attraction to another guy who's just broken up with someone. So that's Curtis and Amy. I'm a big fan.

What I would say about Maura is, again, I'm a fan. I think she's fascinating in the sense that she is a properly three-dimensional person. And yes, she sometimes oversteps in that sense, but I think that's, you know... She's been assertive. She's assertive. She's completely assertive. She's sexually open, very open about that. She makes mistakes, yes, and then you can call her out. But she's assertive she's completely said she's sexually open very open about that she makes mistakes yes and then you can call out but she's not she's not

something you can brand as a hero or villain she exists in a totally 360 degree fully realized character i think that's so important for us to see especially as women it's like we're not going to be perfect and we are going to do this and we are going to do that but we also are sure of ourselves and we move through the world making our own decisions and you can't just put us in a box i think on a program like love Island which often has very two-dimensional characters in previous seasons and that's why this season I think has also really hit a chord you have someone like Maura who says no no no no no this is like the 21st century woman she will go after the things she wants she will do this she will do that and yes she will make

mistakes but you know that's all part of being human it's interesting that Amy does appear to have been made very upset by what has happened. And we were led to believe that this series was going to be different. It was going to be kinder. And I just want to know whether you think it has been, Ellen. I think maybe they've put in more things and measures that we're not seeing. But in terms of the very dynamic of the show, absolutely not. Like you've seen men, especially on the the show be incredibly cruel to the women that

they're dating and it's been quite painful to watch in a way it hasn't been kind at all i would say that whatever love own does it as long as the measures that are in we don't see them but i think there's no way of making it kinder because the end of the day it reflects the real world and real world dating right now is not that great and the sexual dynamics in heteronormative dating as well are particularly skewed especially in post me too well not because of me too but because women are starting to say i'm not going to do this i don't want to settle for this and that's what we're also seeing on the show i think we're seeing a lot more kind of mainstream feminism come through in a way they might not even be aware of so it's got a lot more charge

what i do know and we were talking about this in the green room earlier is that because as i said at the start your generation doesn't have it has you have so much choice in terms of your entertainment you don't have many collective television experiences and for people under 25 love island is that sort of telly isn't it over 25 as well everyone in the office is talking about it yeah but how often do you all watch the same thing um i mean netflix i think how often you don't say the same time it's an event television yeah exactly it's like we can watch the same thing but this one is like eventually i think the reason as we say is it's sex and relationships and that will always get people involved because it's something that everyone

can relate to on some level someone has always felt heartbreak someone has always fallen in love with somebody who didn't love them back somebody Somebody has, you know, had that passionate four-month romance only to realise that actually the ground is falling out under your feet. So the dynamics we see in love and the reason we talk about it all the time is because it relates to so many wider issues. You've got the emotional abuse, the gaslighting conversations. It's brought concepts to mainstream discussions that I don't think we would have been talking...

I really don't think we would have been talking about gaslighting and that would not have become a buzzword in the way it has if it wasn't for last season of love owned people do um take take it seriously it's an entry level thing i think as well like when you're growing up you have this sort of fuzzy idea about sisterhood and that you know you should somehow ally with other women you're kind of aware that you're in this together but at the same time you're being socialized with so many messages from this kind of patriarchy we live in about being in competition with them for men and, you know, pitting against each other. And I think it's very hard to unlearn that. Moya Lothian-McLean and Ellen Scott on Girl Code. Shabak is the name of a festival of

contemporary Arab culture. It's on in London at the moment. It finishes tomorrow. Farah Chama is a Palestinian performance poet who grew up in Dubai. And Tanya Saleh is a Lebanese singer-songwriter. What was her childhood like growing up during the Lebanese civil war? Horrible. I'm sorry to say, but this is the truth. During the war, my parents had divorced. At the same time, the war has separated me from my friends because my friends happened to be living in the other side of Beirut. So I was feeling left out in many ways, within the family and outside. And I had those feelings about becoming a musician,

but I never dared to even dream that. I mean, because I wanted to take piano lessons and guitar lessons, and I couldn't. And I wanted to take ballet classes, and I couldn't because of the war. So I didn't even dare to think about myself and the future at that time. So how did you develop a career in music? I studied fine arts and went into advertising. Also, I took courses in advertising and I worked in advertising. The first job I had was to write a jingle for a brand. And at the time, my boss told me, you should write songs. I didn't understand what he was saying. He said, trust me, you should write song. And it was not in the plan at all. This is how I started. It was a challenge and I

like taking challenges. And you have now to tell us what you're actually singing about. Farah sitting there knows exactly what you're singing about, but I don't. Well, it's describing the situation in the Arab world. I wrote this song as part of an album that was an audiovisual album telling the story of the Arab world and how we are being stagnant for the past maybe 400 or 500 years. But the album is telling the story of this world in the past 100 years and how the history is repeating itself. And this girl is asking, where do I go from here? Can you tell me on the map which way to go because I'm lost?

The song is called Show Me the Way. Now Farah, you grew up in Dubai, Palestinian parents. How have you developed a career in performance poetry? I started writing in school, showing my text to my English teacher. And then I discovered a group called Poeticians, run by a wonderful filmmaker and poet called Hind Choufani. I stumbled upon them and went with a little text, along with my extended family and my family for support. I was 16. And I performed for the first time, even though Hind had told me, you're too young, we need to be 18 plus to be in this group, because we might speak about, you know, politics or something that's not appropriate. And ever since then, it just

started happening, there was a ripple effect. And this became what I want to do. And it just made sense. Now, I know you write in, is it five or six languages? Well, to be fair, I mean, I play with language, it's what I love to do. But I mean, I speak four languages, I would say, well, the other two I just play with mainly. But I mean, I think Arabic, English and French are the main ones. And then Brazilian Portuguese, because my dad lives there and I go to Brazil a lot. So yeah. Okay, you are going to perform live in Arabic. Yes, I am.

Okay, where are going to perform live in Arabic. Yes, I am. Okay, where you go? It's such a beautiful language with beautiful rhythms, but I have no idea what you were saying. What do you think it's about? I've got no idea. I have no clue. What is it about? So I looked at you as if my mom were here. And I asked you, what are you afraid of, mom? Are you afraid that I become exactly like you, a dreamer, a peacemaker, a lover of beauty? And it's a poem I wrote for my mother, whose name is Sahar. And the word Sahar is in the poem, which also means dawn, a moment of dawn. That's what Sahar means. So I wrote it

for her when I decided to study theater, because she wasn't okay with this decision. She opposed it. And I wrote this telling her, but I want to be like you. I want to be a writer. I want to be the beautiful person you are. So stop asking me not to. Is it in the Arab world, which one still perceives as something of a patriarchal society, how easy is it for young women to become performers? I think it's a very easy and difficult question at once because it all comes down to the nuclear family. And I always tell my mother, I'm so grateful that you are my mother because she has always seen beyond the patriarchy, has always opposed it on a very small scale. She's not a political figure, or even she doesn't even think politically. She's a very literary and emotional person. And I always say that I

try my best to understand the world on a micro scale and fight the patriarchy there in that nuclear family in order to see the world in order for it to become a bit easier and not become very overwhelming. Tanya what about you? I don't think I've had any problems with that because I imposed myself at an early age but I I imposed myself as a woman, not as a, I was thinking about that the other day, that sometimes when we were young, because of a lot of harassment, we tend to become stronger and more aggressive and more manly. And I didn't do that at all. I stuck to my femininity and I wanted to impose that on whoever was opposing it. Just briefly from both of you, how important has social media been in spreading the work that you

do, Farah? It started off with social media, with an Arabic poem called How Must I Believe that spread on the internet. It's very difficult to understand your work only through the numbers and the likes sometimes. It becomes very limiting. So I think it's very important to understand social media as a tool and not as an objective. Tania? I feel that it was important for me

because I'm not a mainstream artist and it helped me to become known in the Arab world and also everywhere. It's easy to get to know people when you're online. But the problem is that now it's become addictive. And this is something I don't like at all. I don't like the fact that I'm always on my phone trying to see who liked this and who didn't like that. I want to connect with nature, with people, with, you know, life as it used to be. And this is something that's becoming

dangerous. Tanya Saleh and Farah Chama talking to Jenny about their contribution to the Arab Culture Festival currently running in London, Shabak. Now on Monday's programme, why are black British women five times more likely to die as a result of complications in pregnancy than white women? That's Woman's Hour on Monday, just after 10. 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's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. Settle in.