Woman's Hour - Christiane Amanpour, Child Q, Melissa Febos

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Christiane Amanpour has been at the forefront of international news for more than 40 years, reporting from all over the world as a journalist and war reporter as well as being CNN’s Chief International Anchor, steering the helm of several programmes including CNN International's nightly interview programme Amanpour. She’s now launched a podcast, Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex-Files with Jamie Rubin. It's a weekly foreign affairs show, co-hosted with Jamie, a former U.S. diplomat and Assistant Secretary of State and also her ex-husband. Christiane joins Clare to discuss.The government's proposed changes to the benefits system will have a 'devastating' impact on women, according to a group of charities and disabled people's organisations. They say tightening eligibility for Personal Independence Payments, or PIP, will have a disproportionately negative impact on women due to their higher personal care needs compared to men. Clare speaks to BBC Chief Political Correspondent Henry Zeffman about the 'major rebellion' that's brewing within Labour on this forthcoming Welfare Bill, and then to Alison Kerry from disability charity Scope about their concerns.Do you remember the case of Child Q? Back in December 2020, a 15-year-old black school girl was strip-searched at her school by Metropolitan Police officers in Hackney, London after teachers wrongly suspected her of carrying cannabis. The incident sparked protests in the city. Over the past few weeks a disciplinary hearing has been taking place involving the officers and is due to report very shortly. Adina Campbell, the BBC’s UK Correspondent, brings us up to date.American author Melissa Febos has written about a year of self-imposed celibacy in her new book The Dry Season - Finding Pleasure in a Year without Sex. Why did she do it, and what did she gain from it? Melissa joins Clare in the Woman’s Hour studio.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, this is Clare MacDonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. The government's proposed changes to the benefits system will have a devastating impact on women. So say a group of charities and disabled people's organisations will speak to one of those charities live on the programme.

Now following a disastrous two-year relationship, American author Melissa Fibos embarked on a year of self-imposed celibacy that led to a complete reset in every aspect of her life. Most crucially, she broke the cycle of being a relationship addict. She's written about the experience in her new book and she will join us live in the studio. So tell me if you've had a similar period of stepping off the relationship cycle and what did you learn about yourself?

You can text the program, the number is 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media we are at BBC Women's Hour and you can email us through our website or you can send a WhatsApp message or voice note using this number 03700 100444. Also today the disciplinary hearing involving three Metropolitan Police officers who strip searched a 15-year-old black schoolgirl is due to report shortly. The girl, known as Child Q, was searched whilst on her period in December 2020.

This is after teachers wrongly suspected her of carrying cannabis. We will bring you the latest on that too here on Women's Hour this morning. But first, Christiane Amanpour has been at the forefront of international news for more than 40 years, reporting from all over the world as a journalist and war reporter as well as being CNN's chief international anchor, steering the helm of several programs including CNN International's nightly interview program, Amanpour, the Amanpour Hour as well. She's now added another string to her bow and has launched a podcast. Christiane Amanpour presents The X-Files with Jamie Rubin in a weekly foreign affairs show and it's co-hosted by Jamie,

a former US diplomat and Assistant Secretary of State who is also Christiane's ex-husband. Now in the podcast they look at the biggest stories of the day with the joint perspective of press and government aiming to provide historical context as well as behind the scenes knowledge that they have never actually shared before. It's a fascinating listen and I'm delighted to say Christiane joins me in the Woman's Hour studio now. Good morning. Good morning. It's so good to be with you. It's great to have you. I mean, you've been around major conflicts. You've interviewed

countless world leaders. In fact, you were at the NATO summit yesterday. And I just want to start with this, that class photo that they always take of world leaders. There are still so few women in that line-up. You've been a journalist for 40 years. How does it feel to see so little progress made on that front? Well, on that front, it does bother me a lot because I genuinely believe that women have a different, not better, not worse, but a different way of thinking,

of making policy, and some with a lot of empathy in that women can often see problems in a win-win way rather than a zero-sum game, which means if I win, you have to lose. And I think this is crucial. And I actually just got the whole download on that from the former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who resigned before her term was up and has written a book now on a new form of leadership. And I've talked to many women leaders, including Christine Lagarde, who was the first female head of the IMF, the International Monetary Fund.

She's now head of the ECB, the European Central Bank, and she was a finance minister, the first woman in France. And I asked her about what it meant to be a woman leader, and she's a brilliant English speaker, but she said, well, you know, when we're negotiating around a table with the men, it's all about their libido. And I think she meant really the testosterone effect, how with men, it can often be this just sort of, it's my way or the highway. And we're seeing that too much and many women do have a different kind of vision of leadership. And I think it needs to be included and incorporated

in leadership. It doesn't mean we have only women or only men, but there needs to be a better path for women to be leaders. And just having said that, women, as you know, when they do dare to stick their heads above the parapet for political office, they are tortured and decimated on social media for no good reason whatsoever. It's a misogynistic world. Well, get into the machismo and how that might play into what's going on in the Middle East right now. And that is front and centre, that topic of your new podcast, the recent episodes with your ex-husband Jamie Rubin, The X Files.

Whose idea was it to start this? Well, it was mine. You know, I wanted to get into the digitization space and I had this, you know, wonderful meeting with the head of podcasts at Global, who I'm doing this with, and we just kicked around some ideas and I sort of, really sort of threw it out as a maybe, would it work? I hadn't even any idea, hadn't really asked Jamie about it. We'd been married for some 20 years.

We have a son. We've been divorced for seven years now. But as he says, and I say, foreign policy discussions were never our problem. We really loved to talk foreign policy, and you know, it was always robust conversations. Usually we kind of were on the same page, but in certain situations we weren't. And certain very, you know, difficult situations like parts of the Middle East, parts of Iran, all those files, you know, we had some differing opinions on.

And I just thought really that, look, and this is before the current explosion of war in the Middle East, given that war is the dominant theme now, and it just is, do you hear people talking about peace? Do you hear people talking about diplomacy? Do you hear people talking about how to resolve it? No, it's all about war and who's going to win and then what happens. And I've covered it enough in my life. I have literally been 35 years on the front line. And so we thought, I thought it would be great to try to

bring in some of that experience. He was a government official for the Clintons and at that time in the 90s. My experience on the front lines, our joint experience from different perspectives, and see if we could remember what happened then, some of it good, a lot of it bad, and see whether we could project it forward in terms of lessons learned and even solutions that we could bring up. And you very much pictured as two people have put whatever personal differences they had aside to come together and try and work through this tangle of world events, as you say, at a very hot period in our world's history. Are you setting yourself up as role models in that sense? Because that can't be easy to do. Is this all the time?

It's a very good question. I had not thought about that, but if we can in the parlance model something, I do think it's important. You know, certainly for children, I cannot tell you how pleased our son is that we're doing this. Not that he was, you know, brought into the decision-making process, but I think that for people, individuals, it's not always possible. Sometimes divorces are along such bitter and sometimes terrible things have happened, and it's very difficult to be civil going forward. But I do think if you can, it's important to be able to find that space and model it, because not everything has to be a perpetual war or a perpetual division. And most particularly if you sort of extrapolate that and talk about today's politics and policy making, it's all about war.

I mean, literally people are at each other's throats. I mean, you know, families are practically at war around a dinner table if they disagree on this policy or that policy. Certainly in America, around the current administration, certainly I remember here over Brexit, and many, many other issues. The current, you know, the current Middle East crisis. It's dividing so many people. So this is not just a personal thing, it's a deeply divided partisan world that we live in and unfortunately aided and abetted by the algorithms of social media, which exist in order to create conflict and to create clickbait. So it's my little way, our little way of trying to make a dent in that.

I do have to say that I love the way you kind of talk to one another because, for example, he will say, you'll say, well, this happened in this year, and he'll go, no, no, no, it wasn't that year. And then you'll just go, yeah, whatever. It's refreshing. Because very often these podcasts can be very straight, very male. I mean, you do have that conflict in the sense, and you say continually through this as a journalist as a journalist but your husband then was working inside the government machinery. So is it a fair criticism to say people could look at you and say well is she, is she, your phrase, truthful not neutral, is she entirely neutral in how she's approaching? No I'm not, I'm the

opposite. I'm truthful. Okay. I not neutral. And that is something I learned. He was in government then during the early Clinton years, during the Bosnia war, which as you know, incorporated ethnic cleansing and genocide. And that was adjudicated at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. So war crimes were committed up and to the worst under humanitarian law, which is genocide. And I was at one point criticized by colleagues, in fact, for quote unquote, taking a side and losing my objectivity. And it was a big dagger in my heart and in my journalistic solar plexus because our golden rule is objectivity.

But I had to decide or rather really sort of try to figure out what does objectivity mean in these cases where the most important pieces of international humanitarian law are deliberately being flouted and broken. So I said, listen, I'm here in Sarajevo and I'm here reporting on children who are deliberately being sniped, women who are deliberately being targeted and shot or mortars are being lobbed into their areas where they're trying to collect food and water, bread under a siege. Remember Sarajevo was under a 400-day siege, the longest in modern history, and you know you have to make a decision.

Are you going to equate victim and aggressor? And of course I wasn't, because I thought that that would be being an accomplice, and in this case, an accomplice to the worst crimes under international humanitarian law. So immediately I said, no, the truth is to tell the truth. And that's the true objectivity. It doesn't mean to say you don't report all sides, but it does mean to say that you don't create a false moral or factual equivalence. Do you think that shift has now been made in Western journalism, shall we say?

No, not always. You know what I'm going to ask then, as far as the current Israel action in the Middle East is concerned? No, I don't. And I think that you can hold two thoughts in your head at the same time. A massive crime was committed on October 7th, a massive crime, a slaughter, rape, kidnapping, hostage-taking. And very, very sadly, the response has become the mass killing of civilians in Gaza. They might not call it that, but the facts are that tens of thousands of women and children have been killed as they go after Hamas.

And now even current and former Israeli leaders themselves from inside are warning their leadership now, that be careful, because what you're doing in some cases is ordering our soldiers to commit war crimes. Ehud Ahmert, the former prime minister, he was, you know, center-right, basically said, yes, war crimes are being committed, and that's why they want to ceasefire, that's why they want a resolution, that's why they want a solution to this because we've seen and I have talked to so many of the families of the hostages and it breaks your heart it really does but they each and every one of them have said at least to me that the only way to get them out is to have a ceasefire to have a negotiation

to get them out we need them out and so far only negotiations have brought that Israel for their part obviously would deny genocide. I didn't use that word. No, but they would deny war crimes as well. They might. I'm quoting a former Israeli prime minister and I'll quote a former Israeli defense minister who actually used to be Bibi Netanyahu's defense minister. This is not controversial anymore, you know, and there's a siege going on. There is a big siege going on. They say they've brought food in, but

every single day Palestinians are being killed in too high numbers as they try to get some poultry boxes of food in a situation that was warned that this was going to be very difficult because it was an unusual way to deliver food. Just to update because obviously there was more activity in Gaza yesterday. Yesterday Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said Israeli troops killed at least 46 Palestinians waiting for aid. So the IDF, for their part, says the incidents are under review. It says it's redoubling its campaign to crush Hamas, that is what the Israeli side of things would say on that count. As far as both you and your ex-husband's expertise in this area is concerned, you're Iranian, you spent your

life there until the revolution, how do you see how Iran has always been portrayed on the world stage and is being portrayed now? Is it too simplistic, as you say? Is it all about war and not enough about the people? Well, I've always thought that, I mean, we'll get to the actual substance of what's happening right now, but the background is as an Anglo-Iranian, my mother was English, my father Iranian, and yes, I lived in Iran, grew up in Iran until the revolution and then left because of it, because I was a woman and I wanted a career, and my father said, it might not work for you under the Islamic Republic of Iran. And it wouldn't

have done, now we know. But more to the point, the people of Iran have suffered a huge amount, both under the Islamic Republic and under the weight of the international pressure on Iran. In that regard, it's about travel. They can't travel properly, they can't, you know, the price of basic living, the cost of living is so difficult for people, and it's been like this for almost the entire 45 years. I find that sadly the people of Iran, who have always shown themselves to be pro-Western and if you remember after 9-11 they were the only people in the Middle East, the only Muslim people in the Middle East who went into their squares and lit candles for the Americans who had been killed in 9-11.

That's, it didn't happen in any other allied nation, in any other of the Arab states or anything. Quite the opposite. In Iran, people did. They are a very young population. They are a highly educated population. They are a highly skilled population, I would say more than anybody else in that region, because they are taught critical thinking and those kinds of educational methods. And they have shown themselves when they come out of Iran,

to you know, they're powering Silicon Valley, they are brilliant doctors, they're brilliant in culture, architecture, in every, you know, every profession. Iranians are great assets to basically, you know, basically the world. And I do feel that Iranian people, and of course I am one, have been somewhat dehumanized in this way that 45 years of trying to deal with the problems of the Islamic Republic, like the nuclear fire, the terrorism, this and that, has only been about the hard power. And it's never been about Iranians' human rights. It just hasn't. Sometimes world leaders pay lip service to that, but it's never been about the people.

And you know, here we are. Here we are, a final thought from you then on where we go. Because obviously we've had the attacks we've had, we are now in a state of the fragile ceasefire between Israel, the US involved in that, brokering that deal. And of course, President Trump's outburst in the last 24 hours. Where do we go from here, do you think? Well I think President Trump wants to get a deal. That's course, President Trump's outburst in the last 24 hours. Where do we go from here do you think? Well, I think President Trump wants to get a deal. That's who he is. He's a deal maker. So what he'd like is a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue, which they were discussing

before the strikes began. Whether it's still possible is unclear. The ultimate has to be that whatever happens with Iran's nuclear program, it has to be prescribed in a way that it was under the JCPOA, the one that Trump pulled out of, and it has to have inspections, has to have inspections. And so they mustn't pull out of the IAEA, they mustn't pull out of the NPT, they must show themselves willing to have inspections. That's one part of it. The other part of it is Trump is also, I think, but I'm not sure, but he started his administration saying he wanted some kind of deal between Israel and the Palestinians and generally

in the Middle East. And we were talking about Gaza. So some people say this is an opportunity to also use the leverage of what's been achieved in Iran, we're not sure exactly what yet, but use that to then negotiate hard to end the war between Israel and Gaza and to have a peace situation there. It's hard, there's no doubt about it. It'll take very, very intense shepherding by the United States. It's not up to the people, the parties

themselves can't do it alone, but if indeed that is at least possible somewhere in the future, it could resolve the Saudi, Israeli, you know, all that thing, but it has to lead to a Palestinian state. That's what all the regional actors and the US and the Europeans say. Eventually it has to lead to a Palestinian state because otherwise even Israelis who I interview, leaders, military, intelligence, all the others, say that this will happen again if it's an unresolved political situation and that cannot be acceptable. Maybe they should all listen to your podcast. Maybe. Maybe they should because I think they'd get there quicker if they did, Christiane. Maybe. Because you cover all of this crowd. It's a fantastic listen, it's so informative and it's

hugely entertaining at the same time. Thank you. It is called The X-Files, it's out twice weekly. We have a main episode that drops on a Tuesday and a bonus episode where we answer questions that come in via email or social media and the like, even voice notes, and that drops on a Thursday. Fantastic, lovely to meet you. And you too, thank you. Thank you so much for dropping by The Woman's Hour Studio. My pleasure. Kristy Hammampour and the podcast is The X-Files with her ex-husband, Jamie Rubin.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Now let's move on to talk about the government's proposed changes to the benefits system. We are being told they will have a devastating impact on women, that is according to a group of charities and disabled people's organizations. The group which includes Scope, Spinal Injuries Association and the ME Association are concerned that tightening eligibility for personal independence payments or PIP as it's sometimes known will have a disproportionately negative

impact on women due to their higher personal care needs compared to men. We can bring you more detail on that in a moment but first let's get into the politics of this and the major rebellion that is brewing within Labour from the BBC's chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman. I spoke to him just before we came on air and asked him what the government are proposing and why. So this is a piece of government legislation which is set to be voted upon at what's known as its second reading. It's kind of the big do you support this in principle yes or no vote next Tuesday but we've actually been talking about it for months. Some listeners might remember that a few months ago Rachel Reeves had what's known as her spring statement

and in the run-up to and then in that statement itself the government unveiled a big package of welfare reforms they would call them and welfare cuts, their critics would call them. This is the piece of legislation designed to make that package of welfare measures become law and take place. And more than a hundred Labour MPs at the moment have expressed concern about this bill, about the changes in it. What are they saying? Yes, more than expressed concern. I think we're up to 122 who have signed and by signed I mean put their name on, essentially said it is in their name an Amendment that would be voted on potentially as part of this parliamentary debate next Tuesday now Amendment is the correct term in parliamentary procedure

But I think it probably does what they've done a bit of a disservice Yeah, you hear the word amendment and you think they might be proposing a tweak here or there That's not what their amendment would do. It is tantamount to a wrecking amendment. If it is voted on and if it won, it would essentially kill this legislation at least for now and that's what makes this so serious. And by the way, if you're wondering, hang on, is it normal for 122 Labour MPs to sign up to wreck a Labour government's flagship legislation. The answer to that is no it's not. Why do they think it's so unfair then?

Well there's a range of concerns expressed in the text of their amendment. So there's things like not adequate consultation, especially with disabled people. There's concerns about whether the money that is being invested by the government in helping people get back into work takes too long to come into effect compared to when these cuts would come into effect. There's concerns about what the government's own impact assessment says about how many people this could push into relative poverty. So it's quite a broad range of concerns expressed in the amendment.

I think when I speak to Labour MPs privately, what it all boils down to is them saying, look, I didn't come into politics to do this sort of thing. This isn't the sort of thing I think a Labour government ought to be doing. And the government for their part is saying we have to do this because? Well, there's two things. One, they say look the welfare system is out of control and they would point out that this is not actually about cutting the number of recipients of benefits or rather it's not about cutting overall the welfare budget, it is about slowing the rate of increase that is projected in the welfare budget and they say that if you want a generous welfare state which retains public support then it has to be financially

sustainable and it requires measures like this right now. The other thing is that look as we know and we've discussed in so many other contexts ad infinitum as we know the UK economy is not in a great place and the government's view is that they need the money that this would save to spend elsewhere and that is what makes this such a big issue for the government. Politically it's very hard to see how they don't end up backing down because they may well not have the numbers to get this through but fiscally in their economic measures in the grand scheme of their budget it's very hard to see how the government can back down because this money is all accounted for.

And Henry, the leader of the opposition, Kimmy Badanok, what she said about this and how are other political parties lining up on this vote? Well, yeah, this is a really interesting point because on the face of it, the number of Labour MPs who've signed this amendment is enough to defeat the government if opposition parties also were to vote with them. I think given that is the case, opposition parties probably will vote with them because you know part of the kind of political duty of an opposition in parliament is to try to defeat the government when they can. We see that regardless of what parties are in opposition and what parties are in government over decades. In terms of what specifically the Conservatives have said, well the Conservatives do actually believe in

welfare reform, welfare cuts. They say that they had a better and bolder plan than Labour to do that, which the incoming Labour government scrapped a year or so ago. What Kemi Badenock has said is that there's various conditions under which she would support the government but one of those conditions is that the government rules out increasing taxes later this year. I don't think the government is going to do that and therefore, and Badenock knows that by the way, and therefore I think we will end up seeing the Conservatives vote against this and that makes the parliamentary arithmetic very tight indeed for the government.

That's Henry Zeffman speaking to me earlier. We can now talk to Alison Kerry, Head of Communications at Disability Charity Scope. Alison, welcome. Thanks for having me on. So let's go through this change to the Personal Independent Payments or PIP. There's a new four-point system, so tell us what's being proposed. Yeah, so it's a little bit complicated, but we are concerned that these changes will amount to women's personal hygiene, particularly women's dignity, as being one of the many costs of these cuts to disability benefits. But to just get into the technical bit, a personal independence payment, it's a payment which recognises that there are extra costs being disabled. And as part of going through that

assessment process, you're asked lots of questions about things like your daily life and your daily living, so getting dressed, getting washed. And at the moment, you would need to score against eight points across any of the different criteria or activities as they're called. In the new proposals, you would need to get four points in a single activity. And one of the particular things that we're concerned with here is that something like washing below the waist, being clean below the waist, would only score you two points as opposed to washing between your shoulders, which would be four points. So it's a strange thing that's come out of this review of the eligibility of the PIP.

And of particular concern, I think, to many women who would have issues around, you know, related to menstruation or, you know, incontinence issues related to pregnancy. So, you know, things like that would really, you know, disproportionately affect women, which I know a lot of people are bracing with scope as something that they're concerned with. Yeah. So, I mean, that's kind of logical, isn't it, that issues below the waist would affect women probably more than men. Have you put this to government?

Yes. I mean, obviously, we're making it really clear the extent to which disabled people are going to be plunged into poverty as a result of these catastrophic cuts. So we're incredibly concerned about the numbers of people who may see PIP ripped away from them and that could be anywhere 800,000 plus people who would see that vital lifeline of support taken away from them. So yes, we're strongly opposing and many people are standing with scopes to campaign and lobby government against these changes and as we've just heard, I think there's growing momentum also in parliament from MPs now putting forward this amendment to hopefully vote against these proposed changes.

Give us an example then of somebody who would qualify with the four points now on one single thing. No, sorry, that's what the change is. You know, who would qualify now for the points across the piece, but who wouldn't qualify under the new system. An example of someone's day-to-day issues that they have in their life. So the point would be that you may qualify for two points here, and then you may only get under the threshold of four points across all the different categories, so at

the moment that might still tot up to eight and it might be about significant support that you need to live your daily life, but in the future proposals because you would need that weighting of four within a particular category you might not quite meet that threshold and this in particular, this issue of washing is of great concern. And I think the point is that we want to make is that life costs more if you are disabled and PIP is there to recognise that very fact. And, you know, you're much more likely to need expensive mobility equipment or higher heating bills because you have a health condition that's affected by the cold or, you know, more loads of laundry because of incontinence. There's all sorts of things that mean that you have lots and lots of incremental little costs day to day that make your life much

more expensive and that is why PIP is such a lifeline to disabled people. We just have to say the statement from the Department of Work and Pensions. The vast majority of people who are currently getting PIP will continue to receive it. We're creating a sustainable welfare system that genuinely supports sick and disabled people whilst always protecting those who need it most. At the heart of this is our review of the PIP assessment to ensure it is fit for the future. We'll work with disabled people and a range of experts on this as we deliver our plan for change. So they say it's all about helping disabled people. They also say it's putting money into getting the disabled people who are disabled back into work. What do you say

to that? They need to talk to disabled people directly and listen to their experiences in the way that we're hearing every day on our helpline at Scope from people incredibly worried about these changes. You know we've seen analysis that shows that this could be 800,000 people having the PIP taken away so you know they need to listen and they need to act on that and change course. We would urge them to do so. Other charities are warning that, let's talk about women specifically, the personal care will be lost. As you've already said, some women have already been told to wear incontinence

pads instead of being provided with support to use the toilet or maybe use the hormonal pill to stop their periods instead of support to manage their menstruation. Have you heard similar stories? It's certainly, yeah. And I mean, it is quite shocking. We already know that, you know, more women than men claim PIP and also the government's own analysis of this has showed that more women are more likely to score fewer than four points in daily living. So women are more likely to be disproportionately affected by this. Is it risking breaching the Equality Act? Potentially it could breach the Equality Act in terms of sex or

disability discrimination. So it would mean that the benefits system is then actively disregarding women's personal care and personal hygiene needs. Just to put to you, spending on PIP has projected almost double to 34 billion by 2020, 29 to 30 and as we just said that the government said the changes are intended to save the government 5 billion by 2030. So the welfare bill is too high, sorry 5 billion a year by 2030, the welfare bill is too high something needs to be done. If not this, what?

Well, I think the other thing to consider in that is that taking away, ripping away personal independence payments from disabled people who need that extra care and support, if they don't have that care and support, where is that pressure going to go onto health services, NHS social care? It doesn't mean that you will suddenly be able to get a job and also to note that many people receive personal independence payments to help them work and actually it's not an out of work benefit. So there is a bigger picture here and I think we are very concerned that these cuts are going to be catastrophic for disabled people across the board.

Thank you so much for joining us on Women's Hour. That is Alison Kerry, Head of Communications at Disability Charity Scope. Of course, if you have, you want to share your personal experience with us, please do, you can text 84844. Lots of you getting in touch, we're gonna be speaking to author Melissa Fibose shortly about how she sort of stepped off the relationship cycle for a whole

year and how it's changed her life. Lots of you getting in touch telling us how you've done just that. This is from Elaine. I haven't been in a relationship for 23 years. The last relationship I was in, there was coercive control. so I keep well away from anything apart from friendship these days. I moved to Italy on my own and I'm now happily settled into my Italian life on my own, happy as Larry, says Elaine. Keep those texts coming in, 84844. And we will read some more out when Melissa joins us in the studio shortly. Also, just to let you know, if there is a topic or issue you'd really like to hear discussed here on Woman's Hour, now is your chance to make it happen because we have a listener week coming up soon. So if you're a new listener, this is the week where all the items are chosen

by you. We're putting you at the centre of Woman's Hour. Last year, you brought us topics as diverse as our relationship with our tummies to leaving a legacy when you are single. Really important topics. So let us know what you'd like to hear. Text us in the usual way, 84844 or on social media. It is at BBC Women's Hour or you can email us through our website. Look forward to hearing from you. I'm Andini and I'm looking back on the life of a Hollywood icon whose legacy lives on through more than just her film roles. She was someone who was interested in invention all her life.

She wasn't that interested in the film that she was supposed to be starring in. She was much more interested in the latest invention that she was working on. Who developed an idea so revolutionary that it's still being used today. Frequency hopping. It was used for secure military communications. It's in GPS, it's in Wi-Fi, it's in Bluetooth. From the BBC World Service, untold legends, Hetty Lamarr. Available now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now do you remember the case of Child Q? Back in December 2020, a 15-year-old black schoolgirl was strip searched at her school by the Metropolitan Police Officers in Hackney, London, after teachers wrongly suspected her of carrying cannabis. The incident sparked days of protest in the city. Over the past few weeks a disciplinary hearing has been taking place involving the three police officers and is due to report very shortly. Well, Adina Campbell, the BBC's UK correspondent, has been following the case and I asked her to remind us of the circumstances that led to Child Q being strip searched.

Well this case dates back to 2020 but we didn't actually find out about it until two years later when the details were revealed in a safeguarding report and it said that what happened to Child Q was unjustified and that racism was likely to have been a factor and at the time Child Q was unjustified and that racism was likely to have been a factor. And at the time, Child Q was suspected of carrying cannabis. She turned up to school. It was the day that the children were taking mock exams. Teachers said that they'd strongly smelt cannabis on her. They carried out a standard school search when they searched her coat, her bag, couldn't find anything. They still suspected that she was carrying drugs and that's when they decided to call the police and within an hour of the police arriving that's when she was taken into a medical room and then

strip searched. And once these details came out in this safeguarding report, there was a huge reaction at the time. You may remember seeing or hearing about some of the protests up and down the country, mainly in Hackney in East London, where the search had taken place and hundreds of people decided to come together and show their support for the teenager. At the time, her family released a statement saying that the support meant a lot but that Child Q had been left feeling deeply traumatized. It's really important to say that no drugs were found. And when you say strip search can you just explain to us what happened because this was incredibly intimate and she was menstruating at this time as well, wasn't she? Yeah, this is probably the most serious of strip searches. So the two female officers

had taken her into a medical room and she was asked to remove her clothing to get naked. And they started off by taking the top half of her clothes off and then she was told to take the bottom half off. And at one then she was told to take the bottom half off and at one point she was told to remove her underwear and at the time Child Q was on her period and she was told to remove her sanitary towel and then bend over and expose her into intimate parts. The police didn't find any drugs and a further search of her hair was also carried out and again that led to the same outcome. And just to be clear there was no appropriate adult with her while this was going on. No and this was something that has come up in the

hearing which started three weeks ago so three police officers are accused of gross misconduct they all deny that allegation but at the time there was no appropriate adult present. The panel heard that Child Q did not want her mum to be informed and as a result the two female police officers were left to search Child Q while the deputy safeguarding manager at the school acted as the appropriate adult. However, that person was standing in the corridor at the time. And this is one of the most shocking things that many people say they can't believe in terms of what happened, because generally speaking, in most cases, an appropriate adult should be present.

And since the child queue search, there has been some policy change. The Metropolitan Police did apologize at the time and has since reviewed its policy, meaning that any child strip searches will need the approval of an inspector. And going back to the hearing, when they were when the police officers were deciding whether or not to take further action, at the time the police officers should have got the approval from an officer at sergeant level or higher, and that didn't happen. The government has also strengthened guidance for schools since this has happened,

and staff are now being advised to make sure that less invasive approaches have been tried first and at least two other people must be present if a strip search takes place and parents must be contacted as soon as possible because before the search it's important that parents are present and the school should facilitate this as quickly as possible. Adena, I know you've been at the hearing in recent weeks. You've heard evidence, the hearing has heard evidence from the officers involved. So the allegations against them, if you could go over those and how they responded. Yes, the hearing started earlier this month.

The three officers who were involved in the search, they are trainee detective constable Christina Linger, PC Victoria Ray and PC Rafael Smidinski and they're all accused of breaching professional standards of behaviour. They all deny gross misconduct and the panel within the first week heard that the three officers overreacted and they took a disproportionate, no stone, unturned approach in a manner that, uh, that was alleged to have been unjustified, inappropriate, disproportionate, humiliating and degrading. Now, the panel are also considering if child cues race was a factor and heard that

black people are disproportionately more likely to be stopped and searched by police. PC Smidinski and PC Linger are also accused of making a misleading record of the search after its conclusion. And the panel heard that they were reluctant and dismissive about the details of the search when it was reported on the police database

five weeks later. Going back to when the officers gave evidence, trainee detective constable Christina Linger, who was one of the female officers who carried out the search, she told the hearing that she absolutely acted in good faith but accepted that the search caused upset, which she apologized for,

and asked if she would have done anything differently had Child Q been white. She answered no. While PC Ray apologized to child Q and her family for the search but had said that she thought she was doing the right thing and her words were I thought the skipper had authorized it I thought the officers at the scene had covered all bases so that was some of the evidence that we've we've been hearing over the last three weeks. You mentioned the issue of race there. The allegation against these officers is that

this child queue was discriminated against because of her colour. This is a major plank of the effective prosecution in this matter, isn't it? It is and that's one of the allegations that the panel, the independent panel, are looking into. And if these officers are found to have breached these professional standards, which amount to gross misconduct, they could be sacked from the force. And what happened to Child Q isn't an isolated case, it's reignited conversations about the way black girls are perceived and racial stereotypes which lead to them being treated like adults. We've heard the term adultification which was talked about a lot more since the details of child

Q were made public. And in some cases this bias leads to black children being treated as adults known as, as I say, adultification. And it effectively it means they're given less protection and punished more. But this isn't a new issue, especially within black communities. This has been going on for a long time and lots of parents that I've been speaking to in recent weeks have said that they feel that nothing has really changed and they are really calling for stronger safeguards and they want the relationship between black people and the police to improve. Let's talk about the fact that this actually happened in school and not in police

custody, this search. How unusual is that? Schools are authorised. They are permitted to carry out standard searches. So children, if they are suspected of wrongdoing, for example, possessing drugs or possessing offensive weapons, schools are allowed to search pupils but they can only go so far. So in the case of Child Q, the teachers had searched her, they'd searched her bag, they'd searched kind of her outer clothing, but that was as far as they got and they were still, that

they still believed that she had cannabis on her and that's when police were called. And it was the Safer Schools Officer, which is fairly common in schools across the country. There's a liaison officer who works quite closely with schools. They act as the first point of call and that's their role is to kind of make sure there's a dialogue and to sort of strengthen the relationship between schools, pupils and the police. So that safer schools officer was contacted in the first instance, but then it was then escalated and the two female officers arrived

and they made the decision to carry out this serious, severe strip search. I think that's what shocked so many people in her local community because she was 15, she was on her period and this happened without her parents' presence. And I think people were deeply concerned about the safeguards in schools, the role teachers had, the power that they had to intervene because generally speaking most strip searches will happen in police custody and the panel had heard that at the time Child Key was told if she did not comply that

she could later be detained and I think that was an issue that came up and some people felt that maybe that potentially could have frightened her and that's why maybe it led to what happened. Adina what about the school itself have they been heard from in this hearing? We have heard from a couple of teachers. We've heard from the head teacher and also the deputy safeguarding lead. They both have given evidence over the last three weeks. And they both say that they believed a strip search would not take place.

They said they were carrying out due processes. They both strongly believed that Child Q was in possession of cannabis. But they said that when the police arrived on the premises, there was no conversation about a strip search. And they said that if they would have known a strip search was going to be carried out, then they would have taken action. But that, of course, did not happen. This case that the hearing we're talking about was brought by the Independent Office for

Police Conduct, the IOPC. How have the Metropolitan Police responded? Well the Metropolitan Police did apologise shortly after details were revealed back in 2022. They admitted that Child Q and her family were obviously caused huge distress and they apologized for their part in that. What about the family of Child Q? Have they taken any legal action against the force? There is current legal action that's being taken by Child Q and her family against the school and the Metropolitan Police, but those details we don't know too much about. Child Q's family haven't spoken publicly,

they've remained private as you can understand, and at the time Child Q's family did release a short statement saying that they appreciated the support from the local community but did acknowledge that Child Q had been left deeply traumatised and at the beginning of the gross misconduct hearing earlier this month the panel heard that Child Q would not be giving evidence because she was still suffering trauma and the search itself had left her feeling physically violated. Adena, when can we expect a conclusion then to this case? We are expecting the hearing to close in the coming days and it's likely that we may get

an outcome, a decision on what happens to these officers by the end of this week. That's Adena Campbell, the BBC's UK correspondent. You're listening to Woman's Hour and on Friday Anita is going to be presenting live from Glastonbury where her special guests will include musician, songwriter and actress Rebecca Lucy Taylor aka Self Esteem ahead of her performance on the Park stage and Anita is also going to meet three generations of Woman's Hour listeners aged between 7 and 76. So if you're going down to the festival and you see Anita and the Woman's Hour listeners, aged between 7 and 76. So if you're going down to the festival and you see Anita and the Woman's Hour team pop by and say hello.

Now we're going to talk about stepping off the relationship cycle because following a disastrous two-year relationship in her 30s, American author Melissa Fibos embarked on a year of self-imposed celibacy. She's written about the experience in her new book, The Dry Season, finding pleasure in a year without sex. So what was lost and what was gained? Melissa joins me now in the Womans' Hour studio. Welcome.

Thanks so much for having me. Lovely to have you. Great book. Why do it? Why step off? Why have you got to that point? Sure, well, I had been in nonstop committed monogamous relationships from about the age of 15 until near my mid-30s, and these relationships had lasted maybe two to three years at the outside limit.

And I had been working really hard in those relationships to be the kind of partner I had sort of been prescribed to be from that early age at adolescence. I think I absorbed some lessons that I was meant to be kind of accommodating and constantly compromising and sort of prioritizing my partner at every turn. But at my mid-30s, I had this disastrous relationship and I thought, you know, I've been doing this a long time, it ought to be going better by this point. And it had been suggested to me by friends and family a few times that I might want to

take a little intermission. And so I thought, you know what, this has gotten ugly enough. Let me take a break and take some stock and see where I'm going wrong. What reaction did you get then from family and friends? Could they believe that you were actually going, nope, that's it? I think the people closest to me thought, oh, thank God, she's finally gonna step off

and take a look at things. But some friends chuckled at me affectionately because I started with three months, which obviously doesn't sound like a very long time to a lot of people. But for me, it was quite a departure. I'd really never spent any time alone with myself, like truly stopping, no flirting, no sexually charged friendships, really stopping everything to take stock and

take a look at myself and what I'd been doing for all of those years and to work on my relationship with myself. So it really was quite a radical departure for me. And what you did and what you document in the book is you audit your previous relationships. You go way back. So did you see a pattern? I did. And you know, I started this experience

with one story about myself in relationships, which I alluded to before, where I was working very hard, a very accommodating partner, and why wasn't it working out? Why weren't they lasting longer? And when I completed, I made an inventory, kind of an exhaustive inventory, beginning in my teens,

listed everyone I had ever dated or even really had a massive crush on. And I asked myself a series of questions trying to perform a kind of autopsy on those relationships. And very quickly, I realized that all of that hard work I'd been doing was really kind of a form of manipulation because I had not been forthright about who I was and what I needed, how much alone time I needed, how much time I wanted to spend with my friends,

and I'd actually been sort of eliding the truth from both myself and my partners. Yeah. Why did you do that? Why do you think women do that in general? Yeah, I really think I absorbed these messages starting in childhood, that to be easy, to avoid conflict, to prioritize other people and their wants and needs was the way to happiness in partnership and really in life writ more broadly. And I think everyone absorbs a lot of messages about who they should be in relationships, but for girls and women in particular, it's about being accommodating, about being agreeable,

and about being sort of selfless when in the long term that actually doesn't serve either partner in a relationship, not in the kind of relationships I'd like to have anyway. So is the opposite of selfless selfish or is it just a different way of living? I think it's really about a different way of living and I think I had that sort of false binary of selfish and selfless when actually the key to the kind of relationship of truly fulfilling life in a relationship is really somewhere in the middle where you're taking responsibility for your own needs and supporting your partner and taking responsibility for their own needs. And of course, compromise is

included in any healthy relationship, but there are limits to that. And I have found that my happiest relationship, the one I've been in sort of ever since this year of celibacy that I write about at the very end of the dry season, is one where we really are, it's not based on dependency, we're truly choosing each other and supporting each other in our own work to find our own contentment. So when women kind of throw off the shackles of what everybody else expects of them, I mean, that's a quite brave thing to do. You did a bit of historical research to look back and see who else has done this. I mean, this Holy Order sounds amazing. The Beguines, tell us about them. They don't care. Oh, absolutely. I fell in love with the Beguines. You know, when I started on this journey,

I started thinking, you know, I don't need to reinvent the wheel here. Who are the women throughout history and the people throughout history that have chosen to sort of divest from romantic and sexual economies to find some self-fulfillment and sort of redefine what their lives are about. And I moved through some radical feminists and sort of cultish people and got into some nuns and found my way to the Belgian Beguines who were the sect of religious lay women in medieval times

who were, they sort of lived like nuns, but they weren't under church rule and they were artists and they worked in their communities as nurses and teachers and kind of social workers and they were really committed to each other and their own independence and did a lot for their communities. And I thought, you know, if these women were doing this in the Middle Ages, I can do a bit better here in the 21st century. Yeah, I want to read up more on them since you've pointed them, me in their direction. Lots of people texting in. I just want to read you a few. Clemmie from Glasgow. Thanks for this, Clemmie.

After some disastrous dating last year, I decided to give myself a year of self-imposed singledom. And I have to say that I'm having probably one of the best years in a long time. I'm really enjoying not having to think about the pressure of finding someone. And instead, I'm prioritizing doing things that make me happy and spending time with the people I really care about. I highly recommend it. That's great to hear, isn't it? Yeah, I relate to it tremendously.

Congratulations to Clemmie. And also, that was also my experience. Every other part of my life flourished. I anticipated I would feel deprived, but actually it was the most abundant, one of the happiest years of my life. You weren't lonely. No, I wasn't lonely.

I had spent so much time with my friends and loved ones. And the truth was, I think I was starved for time alone with myself. I hadn't realized that I had been sort of deprived of my own company for my entire adult life. Fran from Welshpool, hi Fran she's been in touch. I was widowed three years ago after being married for more than 50 years so I've had a period of enforced celibacy. I'm 73. I have to admit that I have embraced it. I miss my husband of course in so many ways but I

don't miss sex. We still had sex fairly regularly right up until two weeks before his death I have no interest in forming another relationship as I really couldn't be bothered with men and their needs It's given me such a sense of freedom and peace of mind my self-confidence to has soared it suits me just fine Says Fran and she highlights a very important point that doesn't she I mean you go into this in the book as well we don't have much time but women's relationship with sex and and you know, what where your pleasure lies in this whole spectrum. Sure, sure one of the great revelations of that year was how much what a lack of attention I had given to sort of my own needs and pleasure and how I had been sort of robbing both myself and my partners of a different kind of intimate experience both emotionally and physically and I found that I didn't miss it that year. I was happy to return to it in a different

kind of relationship on the other side of it but I absolutely understand Fran's position and I think when we're oriented to another person's pleasure at all moments it can be quite exhausting and not particularly fulfilling and I've really been able to embark in a different kind of intimate relationship on every level. There will be women listening to this who will say, I'm her as she used to be. I'm still stuck in that cycle. I'm not really putting myself first. What would your advice be to them?

Now you've come out the other side. Sure. I would say take the leap, start small if you need to. And I think it's possible even within relationships to sort of redraw the shape of how you're interacting with your partners so that you can share more of what you want and need with them. I think it serves both partners to do that kind of work. And even for folks who are involuntarily celibate, I think it really, both of us have a problem with our relationship to aloneness

and to really turn toward the self and think about becoming that perfect partner to yourself rather than going out and trying to outsource it in another person is really the key to both contentment and finding a different kind of relationship. And have the courage for people to judge you and not care. You know, I had such a good time that year. I didn't really care if people were judging me. I thought you have no idea what you're missing. Follow my lead.

Listen, thank you to everybody who's got in touch. I'm going to leave you with this. No name on this text. Hi, woman's hour. I'm happily embracing my fifth year celibate at the age of 65. It certainly cleanses the energies, physical, emotional and spiritual. My philosophy nowadays is this, if I ever have sex again, I probably won't even notice. I think you might. But if I never get asked, I will be devastated. Listen, it's been fantastic having you on the program. Thank you so much. It is a book

full of poignant self-reflection that makes the reader ask themselves some very interesting questions. Melissa Fiebos, thank you for joining us again. The book is called The Dry Season, Finding Pleasure in a Year Without Sex. That is it from Woman's Hour for this morning. Join me tomorrow when I'll be talking to the actor Rose Leslie about her role in a new production of Somerset Mourne's subversive comedy The Constant Wife. Talk to you then. That's all from today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Nick Robinson. You might be tired of switching on the news, hearing those pre-rehearsed

sound bites, the lines to take from those who shape our lives. When politics is as fragmented, as unpredictable, as fraught as it is now, it can be hard to cut through the noise. That is precisely my aim on Political Thinking, my podcast from BBC Radio 4. I have extended conversations with those who shape our political thinking. I try to get to the heart of what makes these people tick, what lies behind what you're seeing or hearing on the news. That's Political Thinking with me, Nick Robinson.

You can listen on BBC Sounds. I'm Andini, and I'm looking back on the life of a Hollywood icon whose legacy lives on through more than just her film roles. She was someone who was interested in invention all her life. She wasn't that interested in the film that she was supposed to be starring in. She was much more interested in the latest invention that she was working on.

Who developed an idea so revolutionary that it's still being used today. Frequency hopping. It was used for secure military communications. It's in GPS, it's in WiFi, it's in Bluetooth. From the BBC World Service, Untold Legends, Hedy Lamarr. Available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.