Woman's Hour - Casting directors, the Equal Pay Act at 50, Shohreh Bayat

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

This is the first year Bafta has included a casting category, but still none exists within the Oscars. Jenni speaks to two casting directors, who have just won awards from the Casting Directors Guild for their work: Lauren Evans, for the first series of Sex Education and Isabella Odoffin, for Small Island on stage last year at the National Theatre in London. Why has the role of casting been so undervalued?Shohreh Bayat is a chess adjudicator. Last month she was working in Shanghai and photos were circulated of her appearing not to have a headscarf on. For an Iranian woman, even though you’re outside of the country, it’s still mandatory to wear a headscarf. She says she was wearing one, but it was hard to see in the photo. She updates us on her situation.The Equal Pay Act (1970) was successfully steered by through parliament by Barbara Castle and became the first piece of UK legislation to enshrine the right to pay equality between women and men. Jenni discusses how it happened and why the aim of paying men and women equally proved harder to achieve in practice with political journalist, Julia Langdon and Sarah Veale, former head of Equality and Employment Rights at the TUC. What was it like growing up in the 1980s? The Museum of Youth Culture is currently touring their exhibition “Grown Up in Britain”, which showcases artefacts from teen culture throughout the decades. Today, we hear from Mel, who was a teenage goth in North-East England in the 1980s.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Ruth Watts

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast. Fifty years ago this very week, the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, Barbara Castle, was steering her equal pay bill through Parliament. How tough a time did she have and why did the law prove so hard to implement? In our series on teenage history, we hear from Mel, who was a goth in the 1980s, and a ceremony to celebrate casting directors. Two of the winners join us. They were responsible for casting Small Island at the National Theatre and Sex Education for Netflix. A couple of weeks ago,

we spoke to Shoribayat, who's the highest ranked female chess referee in Asia. She hit the headlines when a photograph taken at the Women's World Chess Championships in Shanghai appeared to show her without a headscarf. For an Iranian woman representing her country, it's mandatory to cover the head, even when away from home. So what's happened since? Well, she's now in the UK, and she joins us on the line. Shura, what was the official response to the photograph? Well, as you know, the photograph appeared in all, it appeared in all Iranian media. And then the Federation asked me to write something and show a reaction about this, which means that I had to support hijab.

But I didn't want to do that because I don't believe hijab. And because of that, they purged my picture from their social media channel. And then while I was working in the tournament, the media reported that I'm not coming back to Iran. Well, it seems you have decided not to return to Iran yet. Why not? Because what they reported about me is something against law and criminal action to not wearing hijab in Iran. So the outcomes are very serious. I mean, according to Iranian law, it can be, I mean, the punishment can be lashing or being in prison, arresting, and invalidation of my passport. So it's very serious. I asked the Federation to provide me a letter in which I can come back safely to Iran, but they refused to provide a guaranteed letter for me.

That's why I'm not coming back there. Now, you did say that you were actually wearing a hijab. You say that you don't believe in the hijab. What's the real truth of what happened? Did you have a hijab on which just couldn't be seen in the photo? I had hijab actually, but they were taking a photo of me from an angle that you couldn't see my hijab because it was at the back of my head.

And the Iranian media just used the picture, the one that it was kind of like that I didn't wear hijab. And based on that photo, they were claiming that I refused to wear hijab in order to protest against hijab. Of course, I don't believe hijab and I don't like to wear it, but I had to. So it wasn't something that I could decide about not wearing it, because I'm living in Iran. I mean, right now I'm in the UK, but my family, my home, everything is in Iran. And, of course, I had a ticket to come back to Iran as well. And after these things happened, I just didn't know what to do. And I didn't want to write anything for supporting hijab because it was

too much for me. What contact have you had with your family at home, your husband and your parents? Yeah, we talk through WhatsApp actually and we talk every day, video call and these things. How worried are they about you? Because I know you were very frightened by some of the things that were posted on social media. Your family must be equally frightened. Yeah, of course, they are very, very worried. But, you know, they live in Iran, so there are some restrictions that they can't take everything openly. But, yeah, they are very worried.

And I would like to come back to Iran, but, you know, they just refused to provide me any guarantee. Have those social media posts now stopped? You know, when I was working in the second leg of the tournament in Russia, I saw that they reported that I applied for asylum and I am not coming back to Iran and these things. Well, I was just at the middle of the tournament and I had no decision. But they just reported a lie and prejudged me. I mean, they put me in such a horrible situation and then they just

keep writing lie about me. That's it. So what are your plans now? Have you been able to make a decision yet? Well, I had a UK visa, so I decided to come to UK and it's a lovely country people are very friendly to me and just community are supporting me a lot so I got a lawyer and we are trying to work if it is possible that I stay here or not. And your husband will he join you? You know, right now I don't know what is my situation, but yeah, of course I would love to see my husband, and that's the next step. I mean, if the UK government lets me to stay here,

then I can apply for my husband as well. Sharia Bayat, the very best of luck to you, and thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. That was in early February 1970 that one Barbara Castle, then the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, began to steer her equal pay bill through Parliament. She was passionate about the matter. I remember her telling me how, as a young MP,

she was shown printed pay scales by firms in her constituency which had managers at the top, then skilled workers, then unskilled and then at the very bottom were women. She'd been furious about it. Well here she's talking to the 10 o'clock news from the Labour Party conference in 1969. Oh, I made it quite clear this afternoon we intend to put it to Parliament in the coming session. And I'm going into immediate consultations with the Confederation of British Industries and the TUC to discuss the detailed content of the legislation within the principles which I outlined to the conference this afternoon. You mentioned that you're going into consultation with the CBI. Now, the CBI have made it pretty clear to you, quite recently,

that they're against any start towards equal pay for at least two years, and they want it phased out, I think, over seven years, even when it started. Aren't you going to run in to formidable opposition, therefore, from the employers, right from the very beginning? Well, it is true, as you have said, that they did put this point to me. But I put a counterpoint to them. I said to them, you know, really, equal pay won't stand still, whatever we do legislatively.

This is increasingly becoming a factor in pay negotiations. And there's going to be, women aren't going to wait nine years, it's absurd to pretend they will. And they will force the unions, therefore, to press this in negotiations. And I put it to the employers, it's far better, therefore, for us to have a planned, phased, advanced towards equal pay over a period which will give the industry's most affected time to repair. And I think the CBI was impressed with this argument. I hope they were. But all this, of course, will be done, as I understand it,

by voluntary negotiations, won't it? The government are not going to specify, are they, a timetable of phasing in? Well, we're not going to lay down an annual progression towards equal pay so much percentage increase each year. What we are going to say

is that at the end of 1975 it will be illegal to discriminate in rates of pay on grounds of sex. One of the things I shall be discussing in the consultations is whether we ought to have a halfway house. There might be some employers who, you know, really pulled their punches and dragged it out too long, unnecessarily long, so we might decide that, say, by 1973 they ought to

have got 90% of the way, but this is a matter for consultation. Is this going to satisfy the unions? After all, they have demanded, the TUC have demanded, equal pay should be implemented in two years. Well, look, seeing, the TUC have demanded, equal pay should be implemented in two years. Well, look, seeing that the TUC has been talking about the principle ever since 1880, I think five years ought to seem like a top speed to them. Can I ask you this, not so much as a minister perhaps, but as a woman? Don't you think that the implementation of equal pay is going to find a good deal of resentment from male workers, and that employers

are going to find that as a result of this, they may very well decide to sack a lot of women, and decide if they've got to pay equal pay for men and women, they might just as well employ men and dismiss the women. I think you're muddling up two points. First, you say resentment. Well, I think there may be some, but the male unions are committed to the equal pay principle. As for the effects on the employment of women, we were told this, you know, when equal pay was introduced for women in the professional classes, the non-industrial civil service, women, teachers and so on, way back some years ago. It didn't have that effect. And I don't think it will have that effect today in industry. True, some industries will

have to mechanise and become more efficient because they have been running on the exploitation of women through appallingly low rates. But this will increase their efficiency, and that, I think, will be a good thing. Mrs Castle, thank you very much. Well, not everyone was as keen as Mrs Castle to see women paid equally. On The World at One, exactly 50 years ago, there was an exchange between the Labour MP, Lena Jaeger, and the Conservative MP, Ronald Bell.

Well, it's not difficult to pluck up courage, or it shouldn't be, because it's a very extreme bill. It goes much further than any other country. As Barbara Castle said, it's not a bill for equal pay for equal work. It's a rate for the job bill. Well, that's why it's good. You see, the important thing about this bill is that it isn't really about women. It's about fair wages, and I think men should welcome it

because it ought to mark the end of a lot of undercutting and, more important, the potential undercutting that's going to come with more automation in industry so that women will be able to do jobs that nowadays need brawn. It'll be a question of, you know, brains rather than brawn in the future. Well, Mrs Jager, would you have thought that Mr Bell was showing prejudice against women in his opposition yesterday? Oh, yes, total old-fashioned prejudice.

No other word for it. And so wrong, too, because, you see, the difference really between one worker and another has to do with ability and personality and strength and age. It has nothing to do with sex. Yes, well, of course, if that is so, then plainly a bill like this ought to be based on the value of the work. But what is wrong with this bill is that it requires you to ignore the value of the work, even if you can determine it. Oh, certainly not.

It's going to require an assessment of work in terms of the skill needed and the training and the demands that are being made. That's exactly what it says in the bill. It's a bill to prevent discrimination. You talk about assessing the rate for the job. Who is going to do this assessment, would you think? If it were a man, surely they again would show prejudice against women. Well, there are going to be industrial courts where a woman can appeal. She can appeal through her trade union. And the bill sets out quite clearly that she has a claim if the work is, these are the words of the bill, the same or a broadly

similar nature. A broadly similar nature. It doesn't say anything about how they could be doing the same kind of work, but the men could be producing half as much again. It would still be a broadly similar nature. The Act or the Bill says that you must ignore that. If it's the same kind of work, the same description of work, they must be paid the same. Now, this is the fundamental injustice of the Bill. Yes, but the woman might be producing half as much again as the man, and you're saying the man should get more. No, then she should be paid more.

Well, a lot of women, obviously, would like to see this Bill go through, but the fact is that only 10 out of the 26 women MPs bothered to turn up to the House of Commons yesterday, Mrs Jager. What do you say to that? Well, I say to that that there are certain fair reasons. I know Dame Joan Vickers, who's passionately interested in this bill, was at Strasbourg for the Council of Europe. There are all sorts of things that do keep one away from the House on an important debate.

Mr Bell, finally, did you get any reaction at all from your male colleagues? Did they think that you were showing unfair prejudice against women? Oh, goodness me, no. If it weren't election year, I have a strong suspicion that far more people would have opposed it. People do get a bit scared, you know, of pressure groups and organisations. And as I said, they needn't, because there's really nothing so unrepresentative as a representative woman. We want a fair living wage that's all we're asking for our wages are absolutely disgusting. We want equal pay for women the firm are messing about they just don't want to

give it to us. But do you not think the government is trying to introduce equal pay? Oh the government is yes The government's doing everything they can because it's got to be done, hasn't it? But it's our firm, they just don't want to know. I mean, we're not only fighting for equal pay for us, we're fighting for more money for our men. Do you want to see the government force firms like yours to pay? Yes, definitely, absolutely, definitely.

We've got to have this equal pay and it's got to be done. You heard the MPs, Ronald Bell and Lena Jager, and then at the end there, a woman talking to the BBC News in 1973. Well, how much real difficulty did Barbara Castle face in getting her bill through? And why has it taken so long for equal pay to be accepted as a principle and achieved? Well, Sarah Veal is the former Head of equality and employment rights at the TUC. Julia Langdon is a former political editor who was a lobby journalist from the early 1970s. Julia, you heard Barbara Castle and Lena Jaeger putting the case for the equal pay bill.

What strikes you about the arguments they were putting forward? The extent to which we have now accepted those arguments, and thank goodness for that, and Ronnie Bell, how wrong were you, man? I'm so delighted to be able to say that now. What did you, Sarah, make of the vox pop? The woman in the street saying she was having difficulty with her company, she thought the government was doing its best, and she wanted equal pay for us and more money for our men. Well, I think that's a very good point, actually.

I mean, she obviously appreciated that if you start paying fairly, that will benefit men as well as women. And actually, one of the most important things about equal pay legislation in the UK is that you can't regress, you can't start paying men less to make them equal with women, you have to bring the women's wages or salaries up to the equivalent of the male one. So I think women got that very quickly. And her indignation was something we always experienced in the trade union movement, women got very angry and said, if this was discrimination on grounds of race, for example, there'd be public uproar. But because it's women,

it's always shunted away and there was a feeling that there was really glacial progress being made on the issue and they wanted to get on with it. Julia, Barbara had failed in her attempt to reform trade union relations the year before in 1969 in place of strife. What had she learned from that experience? She had had a very difficult time in the late 1960s in Cabinet.

In terms of the equal pay issue, she found it very hard even to get it to Cabinet. Harold Wilson was very supportive of her. I had a look at her diaries yesterday in order to remind myself about the debate that was going on then. And Wilson was supportive, but there was a general view that they couldn't be doing with this sort of thing that was going to rock the boat. The men workers and the TUC was a terribly all-male institution at the time. They were not going to like this, and it was going to have an inflationary impact

at a time when there was a big trouble with the economy. In one issue, one particular day, Barbara says she can't bring it to Cabinet because there's fear if such an issue as equal pay was raised, it would have an impact on the pound. So she did have a very, very hard time. She won round Roy Jenkins just before it was allowed to come to Cabinet. And she said in her diaries, and I wrote it down,

after hesitating and swallowing hard, he reluctantly agreed. And she added, in these ways is history made. Sarah, the Labour Minister for the Arts, Jenny Lee, was concerned about prioritising equal pay, and her argument was that miners' pay was still very low. How prevalent would attitudes like that have been within the labour movement and the unions? There were strong views of that sort. And don't forget, trade unions were exactly were led by men who tended to be familiar with and concerned about male issues. And there was endemic low pay in some industries. But there was a real growing movement, particularly actually

men who worked alongside women, that it was just a basic unfairness it was injustice and it shouldn't be allowed to continue and women were finding their voice and women were no longer considering themselves as the adjunct to the man in the family they weren't just earning pin money they were actually seriously working they were developing careers and they just didn't see why they should sit alongside a man doing the same job as them or a job that was rated as being of equal value and not get paid the same. It just seemed like a fundamental injustice. And that movement began to grow within the trade unions. And actually, on the point of male trade unionists, I would just say it's worth remembering that the Dagenham, famous Dagenham case, the first big equal pay battle at Fords. It was a male trade union officer who very bravely actually stood up to some of the

male senior people in the union and said, no, I want this done for these women and it's going to be done. And he braved difficulties in his union. And I think once men in unions saw a man who took on these arguments and didn't suddenly sort of die on the spot, they realised that this was actually part of being a champion of all workers. And that's solidarity is the best procedure for using to get equality at work. And Dagenham was in 1968, wasn't it? How much did that really press Barbara into saying, right, we've got to get on with this now? Well, I don't know if people have seen the film Made in Dagenham, but you can see that wonderful shot where the women went up to Westminster and met Barbara.

And I think she was very impressed by their argument Julia probably they had they had a banner which they held up in Whitehall and it read we want sex because the word equality had folded over on the banner which of course quite a storm at the time but yes Barbara met them she did several times I think and they went up to Westminster and sat in her office and persuaded her very much. I think she could see what they were talking about and wanted to do something. The other really vital issue that we should mention is Europe. The UK wanted to get into Europe at that time. And they knew that the rest of the continent was far ahead of us on sexual equality at work. And they knew that they were going to have to be obliged to do something in order to fulfil the requirements of the Treaty of Rome.

And actually, the European Union has layered on all sorts of bits and pieces in the Equal Pay Act, which has made it much, much better. For example, they decided that pensions were deferred pay. Therefore, you had to have equality in access to pensions, which was hugely important, particularly for part-time women and they also established the principle that you could claim backdated equal pay and pensions which again was important because if you're not being able to contribute to your pension and you're suddenly allowed in halfway along you're not going to get what you were supposed to have got if you come in at the right

place so the European Union actually has played a seminal role in improving the legislation beyond recognition, actually. Julia, Lena Jager, in that interview that we heard, made a really striking defence of one Conservative woman MP who hadn't been in the House to vote during a reading of the bill. How common was cross-party cooperation among the women in the House? I think on an issue like this, it was very strong, I think. But there were still some women Conservative MPs at Westminster in the early 1970s. I started working there in 1971,

who completely rejected the feminist cause and wouldn't have anything to do with it. But one or two who would have seen that that was the way the world was going and that it was in the interest of women in general. The Act didn't come into force until 75, by which time Barbara was no longer employment secretary. How far had she succeeded in changing attitudes? Public opinion, oddly enough, public opinion was ahead of political opinion in the 1960s, apparently. And it seems astonishing, but there was a view that this had to happen. Barbara Cussell, I think, in retrospect,

we will look back and see her as having been a very significant figure, particularly as Minister of Transport. She saved so many lives as Minister of Transport. But her name will also always be associated with the Equal Pay Act. And even though it took a very long time, even for the Ford workers, they didn't actually get equal pay until 1980s, I think, or something. They accepted 95% when they went back. We will treasure the impact that she made. How easy, Sarah, have women found it to bring cases under the Act in the decades that followed? Well, that's a huge issue. I mean, the law now on equal pay is more or less impenetrable

to anyone other than a clever discrimination lawyer. The trouble with the Equal Pay Act is it was very much made to suit workplaces where there were grading systems and you could compare a large group of workers against another large group of workers you could get trade union offices in and lawyers and so on but the labour market has been changing so much that it makes it very very difficult now to bring equal pay claims you've got women working partly outside the the premises for different employers you get get situations where, for example, in a hospital,

you can have all the cleaning staff employed through an agency. The agency isn't part of the hospital. It's a separate employer. They employ nothing but women. Those women are on appalling pay often, and they have no ability to take equal pay claims against other staff in the hospitals because they have a separate employer and there are only women against who they can compare themselves. They're all doing the same job. So on and on it goes. Julia, just briefly, how did Barbara regard her achievement?

Barbara was not a woman to be modest about her achievements. She was very pleased. The girl done well, she would have said, except she wouldn't have put it like that, of course. No, she'd have put it much more eloquently than that. Julia Langdon and Sarah Veal, thank you both very much indeed. And if you have memories of that time, do get in touch with us. You can send us an email or a text or a tweet, of course. Now, still to come in today's programme,

an award ceremony for casting directors, the often neglected side of the film, television and theatre industries. Two of the winners join us. They were responsible for Sex Education and Small Island and the serial, the ninth episode of 24 Kildare Road. Now so far in our series about the history of the teenage girl, we've heard from a mod from the 60s, a punk from the 70s, and today we get to the 80s. The dominant teen culture, as shown in the Museum of Youth Culture's exhibition growing up in Britain, to the year 1985.

I'd just turned 13, but prior to that, I used to watch Top of the Pops a lot, and I was exposed to bands like Suzie and the Banshees, The Cure, Barhouse, Echo and the Bunnymen, and there was also The Tube as well, and also Whistle Test. So it was always sort of music-driven, but as you sort of gradually got into being a teenager, you try to sort of find your own identity, and that, to me, was the start of it. I didn't consider myself a goth, I think it was more of an alternative person. It's just that I like to wear black a lot so it kind of just graduated on from there. In the 1980s, especially where I grew up in the North East, there was high

unemployment and there wasn't really much to do for teenagers and I suppose music and being part of a subculture and getting an identity was like escapism really. I would never ever leave the house without like sort of full makeup and my hair like crimped and backcombed, it dyed black I used to wear a really long skirt they used to be called tasseled hippie skirts there were floor length skirts and they had like tassels on the bottom and pointy boots I used to wear cinches the biker jacket was also part of the look as well usually embellished with band logos and badges and things i really didn't like mainstream fashion i think around about 1985 1986 everybody started wearing pastels

and that pastel colors and that was not me at all and the big perms as well what was all that about? I wasn't one for wearing black lipstick. I used to go for the sort of heavy eye make-up, a lot of black eyeliner and, like, sort of draw on... It's strange, I plucked all my eyebrows out and then you just draw them back on again, which is a bit surreal. I used to crimp my hair every day and backcomb it until, well, an inch of its life. And it never used to move because of the amount of hairspray, which was quite amusing.

I had a terrible time at school. I got bullied a lot because of the way I looked, just to be slightly different. I mean, I did sort of turn down at school I might have had my hair crimped and slightly spiky and I did sort of try and customise my school uniform a little bit so yeah it wasn't a good time but you sort of develop a thick skin and when you do sort of get out into the wider world you do find other people with sort of similar tastes and musics well a similar outlook in life basically. I remember my first day at art college when people with sort of similar tastes in music, well, a similar outlook in life, basically. I remember my first day at art college

when all those sort of new students assembled in one room and you sort of look across the room and say, oh, my God, there's somebody who looks like me and there's another person that looks like me. And you just sort of... It was a good two years and good friendships reformed. I just mainly sat up in my bedroom and just listened to music and read music magazines like Melody Maker and Sounds and NME.

And when I did get to the age where I was able to sort of go out clubbing and things like that, I used to go to places like the Riverside in Newcastle. There was a couple of nightclubs local to where I lived. The first band I saw was The Damned in 1986 in Newcastle City Hall. I was just absolutely mesmerised by it. I felt a little, I wouldn't say intimidated

because a lot of the audience was like four or five years older than me because I was only about 14 at the time. I still go and see them to this day and I still get that sort of tingly feeling when I see them with excitement. I just think they're an amazing band. My late father, he didn't like it at all

but I think because of my nature, I'm quite determined and I suppose a little bit stubborn. It just made me sort of rebel even more. My mum was more understanding, and at first she thought it was a phase, but nearly sort of 35 years on, no, it's not a phase, it's just me. I used to wander the town centre of Middlesbrough and also York taking photographs of people who looked alternative either with like black crimped hair and like ripped jeans, biker jackets, paisley shirts that sort of sort of clothing and that's how I met my husband. I took

his photograph and then a couple of years after that I then saw him in a nightclub and I tried chatting him up and he wasn't he wasn't having any of it so fast forward nearly what 20 years after that event we found each other on myspace obviously romance blossomed and we got married he had long black crimped hair and he was wearing a big overcoat and he had pointy boots and yeah, he was pretty cute looking then. He still is. And that was Mel the goth. Now it's awards ceremony season and earlier this week in London there was a celebration dedicated to awarding casting directors, the often neglected side of the theatre, television and film industries. BAFTA introduced one this year, but there is as yet no Oscar for the person who decides which actor will play which part, a decision which can make or break a performance. Well, Lauren Evans won a Casting Directors Guild Award for Best Casting in a TV Comedy for the first series of

Sex Education. Isabella O'Doven won Best Casting in a Theatre Production for Small Island at the National Theatre. Isabella explained why she thinks there are more female than male casting directors in the UK. I don't know if it's born from having been quite an administrative role, secretarial perhaps, almost servile. Back in the day, printing CVs and running about, and that was very much a female role. And obviously it's evolved over time and become incredibly creative and collaborative.

Lauren, it's been the first year for casting at the BAFTAs. There is still no Oscar for casting directors. Why has it been so unrecognised? Oh, I mean, that is the question. Especially now, this year's head of the Academy is David Rubin, casting director. I think it's been deemed as too collaborative. We've been deemed facilitators, I suppose.

And a lot of people just don't know what it is that we do what is it that you do good question very good question a lot of things it's a big admin role but we can be on a project for months years even depending on how long it takes to get to that green light phase so we can be on it in a development phase with just a producer to attach cast, to attract broadcasters, to attract finance. And then we make lists, we meet actors, we workshop them in the room, we try to get as much out of them as we possibly can. We act like a director for those casting sessions. And then once we get to that place where we all make a decision, we have to contract them and negotiate their deals,

how they get to set, what trailer they have, their credit, all those fun things. I know, Isabella, you've called it an old-school profession, and I wonder what appealed to you about it. By old school, I mean you almost go through a training that's not accredited in a sense, or wasn't when I started out anyway. You're almost fed down to, you're taught how to do it. It's all quite holistic.

Yeah, you learn by trade and learning from somebody and you develop your own taste, often born from who you're working with and for and I was attracted to it because I studied English and drama I love text I loved acting when I was younger and I just wanted to do a profession that was fulfilling and where I could marry the two and I found one and ran with it. So, what was the process for casting Sex Education and how did you persuade Gillian Anderson to do it? We had incredible support from Netflix and we weren't under any pressure to find any names, as it were. We don't have the luxury when we're looking for actors

in their late teens, early 20s, of visiting showreels or bodies of work. You just have to meet a lot, a lot of people and make very quick decisions. And Gillian has been very vocal in saying that when she got the script, she threw it in the bin. So we owe a lot to Peter Morgan who told her to reconsider it, which we're very thankful that he did. How do you tell when you're meeting all these young

actors whether you've found one who will be comfortable with so much sex and explicit talk about sex? There's so much prep that has to be done even before we get them in the room, especially with young performers. They need to be armed with all the information available, what the content is. Everyone had a copy of the pilot episodes. They knew the language that was being included, the themes that were being explored. We had a breakdown of every actor that would have simulated sex, potential nudity. So everyone has their own voice and can make their own decision before they come in. Will they be comfortable with this? And we didn't put pressure on anyone because it's a huge ask.

I certainly wouldn't have been comfortable with that as an 18-year-old. Absolutely not. No, I don't think I would have. I take my hat off to anyone who came through that door and had to come in. One to a casting session, which already makes them very vulnerable. It's a very odd setting, isn't it, a casting situation? And then to deliver dialogue like that. Now, Small Island, as I recall, had an enormous cast.

Where did you start? Revisited the book that I knew very well and very much honed into it needing to especially given the backdrop at which it was due to happen the Windrush scandal I knew as did Rufus Norris the director that we needed to serve a certain demographic and that's Caribbean actors and so that was my starting point really finding actors who I knew had that background and auditioning every single one that we could. So how did you choose Hortense, Leah Harvey and Queenie Aisling Loftus?

So Leah Harvey, I went to see Amelia at the Globe and she was brilliant in it. Actually rather too young for Hortense. She's only 23, 24 and ideally she should have been older but she managed to hold that stage. It's almost similar in its exposure to the Olivier stage. There's nowhere to hide given the shape and where the audience are. You have to be able to own it and she was superb and if you can work that stage I thought right she needs to come in and audition for this part and we whittled it down to about five and recalled and she was the best and Aisling once again I believe in authenticity especially when casting

Small Island and you know Queenie she's not a Londoner she's from Lincolnshire in the book and I thought it was really important to have an actor with a regional background a non-Londoner we met lots of actors for the part of Queenie as well and Aisling brought something of herself to that part and blew us all away. What happens if the production that you're casting for wants a big name and you think somebody much less well known is right for the part? Who wins that argument? Given this circumstance and I'm here to talk about Small Island I feel that the triumph was on my side. There is the pressure when you're dealing with a London stage to go the route of leading actors,

of which there are short lists of male and female leading actors who are young and who can handle the Olivier. And it was almost just digging deep, being really courageous and showing through auditions why it should be a specific actor as opposed to someone who is leading but not necessarily the perfect fit for it. And how different, Isabella, I know you've done both, is casting for theatre from casting for film? You have more time. You start quite far ahead.

If it's film? If it's theatre, sorry. I would have thought it would have been the other way around. I think it depends. If you're working on an indie that's not greenlit and isn't for many years, then you have time. But with a play, you know when it's going to start rehearsing and you'll start months before, no matter what the size of the cast is.

Maybe it's four, maybe it's ten. So you have time in that respect. You have the director in the room and you often have the writer in the room if they're alive or perhaps it's someone who's adapted from an original text, they may be in the room as well. And usually the decision will lie between the writer and the director largely and you are there to feed in. No cameras in the room. It's almost about soaking in notes and taking direction and seeing how a director could work with an actor as well as how they perform.

But you don't have that structure of having a camera there and it's like, right, go, you need to perform this way and show us this. It's more collaborative, even from the audition space. How easy is it to fulfil diversity demands, of which there must be so many now? We were just saying, funnily enough, because of the push for diversity, which is fantastic,

there's such a limited pool of actors available, especially if you get to 40s to 60s, because the roles have never been available for them. So, of course, why would you get into this industry if you never see yourself on a screen but it's so important it's so important for people to be seen especially I feel younger people to feel like you're not alone to feel recognized it's hugely important yeah what's been the hardest casting job you've ever had to do? I think it's probably this, is trying to find a cast who can handle these complex themes in a very sensitive way

and to make sure that all young people who are going through this turmoil at home with all these hard-hitting issues feel like, ah, that's me, I'm not not alone other people feel this way yeah I think it's been sex ed. And what about you Elizabeth? Probably Small Island. Those pools of talent that Lauren mentions they're not huge in a drama school given a certain year you might have a couple of graduates who may be black so when it comes to this kind of production, it does mean searching far and wide, but knowing that a lot of actors just simply wouldn't have had the experience to

be able to pull off such a show. And that's not their fault. But we are trying to do better. And we've got some wonderful initiatives in place, such as the website Profile, which includes actors with disabilities on it, neurodiverse actors. And I think it's very much up to us as well as casting directors to really push that, meet these actors and consider them when we're reading our scripts. I was talking to Isabella O'Duffin and Lauren Evans. We had lots of response from you on the question of equal pay. Roy tweeted, Barbara Castle is one of my life heroes. Her efforts with In Place of Strife should be required reading for all.

The 1970s and 80s, the die was set when she was stymied. Thank you for reminding me of her leadership on equal pay. Someone who didn't give a name tweeted, people forget women who did exactly the same job as men were paid less too. My mum Alice was a teacher and head of department on less than the men she worked with and when the act came in, colleagues said, imagine little Alice getting the same as us. Anna emailed, women have not yet achieved full access to equal pay because we still don't have full access to equality of work. Older women have had a double whammy, terrible pay plus discrimination in the workplace and are now having to keep looking for work at a

point when they should have been retiring. Retraining for a job you don't want to do and competing against people 40 years younger and suffering real poverty is the fate of so many of us. Dr Lucy tweeted, I'm listening in hospital hearing the hideous male arguments against her has filled me with fury. Their heirs and allies are definitely still around, spouting the same idiocy sadly, but they sounded like dinosaurs. Catherine tweeted, I'm 59 and have taken equal pay for granted. Feel overwhelmingly grateful to the women who challenged their traditional thinking about gender and work. My humble thanks. And Carol emailed, girl was undertaking the same work as permanent members of the department while he made the tea and collected the post. Roll forward 40 years and I recently supported a female graduate's request

to see figures of the pay gap by grade rather than in total across a vast global company. This was ignored by our female head of department. There's still work to do. Thank you for all your responses. Do join us tomorrow when we'll be asking, is chivalry dead? There's research from the dating website Plenty of Fish, which says the way to behave chivalrously in dating has changed, with ordering for two, bringing gifts and pulling out a chair, now seen as old-fashioned. So what will be chivalrous on Valentine's Day? Find out tomorrow.

Join me two minutes past ten, if you can. Bye-bye. If you're listening to some other podcast, then stop now and listen to a good one, because the Infinite Monkey Cage is back for a new series, and we're doing loads of things, aren't we, Robin? We're going to be dealing with the science of laughter, conspiracy theories, coral reefs, quantum worlds and finally UFOs. I love UFOs. It's also, by the way, the UFO one available to watch on iPlayer.

In fact, all of the series that we've done are available on BBC Sounds. I must say that I wouldn't bother with the first series. I don't think it's very good. I wouldn't bother with the first two. Yeah. But we were played by different people then, I think, weren't we? Yeah, yeah. Melvin Bragg was you.

You were Debbie McGee. Debbie McGee. Bragg and McGee. Now that is a 1980s TV detective series that I will be making. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody.

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

Available now.