Woman's Hour - Cindy Gallop & Dr Fiona Vera-Gray on the impact of porn on teenagers, writer Erin Kelly, Dr Jenny Mathers & Dr Peter English.

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Continuing our look at what’s being reported as “rape culture” in schools, we talk about the impact of pornography on young people and its effect on relationships and sex. Emma Barnett talks to Dr Fiona Vera-Gray from Durham University and Cindy Gallop founder of MakeLoveNotPorn. We hear from the thriller writer Erin Kelly who talks about her latest novel – “Watch Her Fall” – set in the world of elite ballet.After Germany's announcement that it's restricting the use of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine for people under 60 we hear from Dr Peter English a Retired Consultant in Communicable Disease Control, and former Chair of the BMA Public Health Medicine Committee, who says the jab is safe to take.And we discuss the Swiss Army's plans to attract more female recruits by allowing them to wear women's underwear for the first time. Until now female soldiers have been issued with the same underwear as men.Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald

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, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning. As the number of reports from mainly women and girls about sexual assault, misogyny and harassment by boys at our schools continue to rise, your messages this week have consistently pointed the finger at one culprit, online porn. So today we're going to talk about it. If you have children nearby, you may wish to turn the radio down, although we're going to not be talking explicitly per se.

Our conversation does need to be frank and not shy away from realities and will contain adult themes. So porn, it is here to stay. And yet, while we know that both young men and young women watch it, as well as, of course, older men and older women, research shows porn is more commonly seen by boys and the majority of boys think that what they're seeing is a realistic portrayal of sex versus 39% of girls. My question to you then today is,

how is the way we behave and view sex and women influenced by how women are portrayed in porn? In other words, if porn depicted a more realistic version of sex and showed women having sex as equal partners rather than having sex done to them, would things improve? Do you watch porn? How do you find it from the female perspective to our female listeners? I know we've got many male listeners as well. Does it have an impact, do you think it from the female perspective to our female listeners i know we've got many male listeners as well does it have an impact do you think on the way that you view sex the reality of it women men around you how has it changed the way you view sex of yourself and also your relationships and how much do you lay the blame for what's been going on in schools between some

boys and girls at porn store tell us your on this, but crucially that question around the depiction of women in porn. How much do you think that could change the game? Because porn isn't going anywhere. 84844 is the number you need to text. Do check what those costs are associated with that. On social media, we are over at BBC Woman's Hour, or email us your views and experiences through our website. Also on today's programme,

the novelist Erin Kelly on her latest thriller set in the competitive world of elite ballet and women's knickers. Can they really persuade and boost the number of female recruits to join the Swiss army? I kid you not, more detail on that to come. But first, you will have heard this morning that Germany is restricting the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for people under 60. The German health regulator says it found 31 cases of a serious and unusual blood clot occurring, but this was out of the 2.7 million people who have received the vaccine in Germany. We know that all but two of these cases were in women aged 20 to 63. Nine people have died. Canada and France are limiting the use of this particular vaccine to over 55s, but AstraZeneca has said international regulators have found that the benefits of the jab

outweighed risks significantly, pledging though to continue to analyse its database to understand whether these very rare cases of blood clots associated with thrombocytopenia occur any more commonly than would be expected naturally in a population of millions of people. It also said we will continue to work with German authorities to address any questions they may have. The European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organisation has called on countries to continue using the vaccine. And the advice here in the UK continues to be that the vaccine is safe. Here to explain more, and particularly with the focus on women, Dr Peter English, retired consultant in communicable disease control and former chair of the BMA Public Health Medicine Committee. Good morning. Good morning. This rare type of blood clot seems to affect women most. Tell us what you would say to the women listening who are concerned about

trusting the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. They may have already had it. Well, it does affect women more than men. About three cases in women for every one case in men. But that's got nothing to do with the vaccine. That's always been the case. So it's a non sequitur to link that to the vaccine, really. We've got no reason to think that the vaccine causes this at the moment. And yet the statement from Angela Merkel has alarmed people or could have alarmed people, I suppose. So that's why we're trying to talk to you today,

trying to separate fact from fiction. Well, the first thing to remember is that what causes blood clots, there are various things, but one of them is COVID disease. You're much more likely to have a stroke or a heart attack or other forms of clotting disorder as a result of COVID-19 disease than anything else. The vaccine, even if it causes it at all, causes it in the sort of one in a million sort of level of rate of increase of symptoms of cases. And it probably doesn't.

I might be able to come back to why I don't think it does. But the key thing to hold on to is that if you want to avoid getting a clotting disorder, you want to not get COVID-19. The best way of not getting COVID-19 is to get vaccinated. Sorry, why don't you explain what you were just going on to say there? Okay, well, rare conditions are common. It sounds weird, but when I was training as a GP, I was told that one in 15 consultations would be about a rare condition. Not a particular one. There are lots and lots of different rare conditions. And that's the problem when you start looking at rare conditions caused by or associated with vaccines. It's very hard. There will be some

rare conditions. By the nature of the fact they're rare, there aren't that many cases. So you won't get a big number of cases in your vaccinated group and your unvaccinated group. The numbers will be small. And it's very hard to know if you've got 10 in one group and seven in the other, if the 10 in one group represents a greater risk or whether it's just a play of chance. And if you have a lot of rare conditions and you find that one comes out more as having more cases in one group than the other, well, you'd expect that for some rare conditions because there are so many of them. Some of them, just by chance, in a particular pair of cohorts will be more common in one than in the other. The only way once you've established a possible link like that is to start afresh with new studies where the

hypothesis at the start of that study is there is a difference between these groups. But you have to do that with a new study that's looking specifically at that rather than having used what might have happened by chance in a previous study. So that's why it takes some time to bottom these things out. Do you think Germany is wrong then to be restricting the use of the vaccine? Absolutely. They will be causing deaths from COVID-19 disease by damaging confidence in the vaccine and by delaying vaccination.

COVID kills and COVID causes strokes and heart attacks and other clotting disorders. If you want to avoid dying or clotting disorders, get vaccinated, even if there's a minuscule risk from the vaccine. The risk is greater from the disease than from the vaccine. But how can you be so confident, again, going back to what Angela Merkel had to say, which was around that these are new vaccines, and it's new to us to be able to see so many people having the vaccine, we need to be transparent about this. And especially as we're talking on Women's Hour, how can you say to people so confidently, say to women so confidently, not to have these concerns?

Because although we can't 100% rule out that these conditions are caused by the vaccine, it's possible they are. We don't know. My bet is that in the future we'll discover that they are we don't know my bet is that in in the future we'll discover that they are not why should one particular clotting disorder be caused by this vaccine when other clotting disorders aren't we look we've picked out one and then we're focusing on it but even if it is caused by this you will you've got a much greater chance of having clotting disorders or death from the disease and the disease is common, than from the vaccine. We do know, even if we can't 100% rule out this being a consequence of the vaccine, we do know that if it is a consequence of the vaccine,

it's an incredibly rare one, where it's a very common side effect or consequence of the disease. And for women who might be thinking, I shouldn't be on the pill and then go and have this vaccine, what do you say to that? Well, we went through this a couple of decades ago, and there were some studies looking at the relative risk of clotting after, if you're on the pill, or some types of pill compared to not being on it. And they had a lot of publicity and a lot of people stopped taking the pill. Actually, the risk was two or three times greater,

but it was two or three times an extremely small number. Just like here, if this vaccine causes these things, it does it in one in a million or so of recipients. So three times one in a million is still only a very, very, very small chance. And yet with the pill, getting pregnant interferes with your clotting and makes you more likely to have strokes and DVTs and pulmonary emboli. Having a baby, even more so.

So by stopping taking the pill, a few people got pregnant and some of those got clotting disorders because they're much, much, much more common with pregnancy and childbirth than they are with the pill. And you actually had a lot more cases there. So again, if you're much, much, much more common with pregnancy and childbirth than they are with the pill. And you actually had a lot more cases there. So, again, if you're on the pill, the safest thing is to avoid getting COVID-19.

Safest way to do that is to get vaccinated, even if this vaccine, which you might possibly do, and I doubt it, causes one in a million or so cases of clotting disorders. If you've had the vaccine already and you're listening to this report and the reports about this and you're concerned, what are the symptoms of the clot to watch out for? Okay, well I found a page on the NHS, you look up symptoms of blood clots, it talks about throbbing or cramping pain, swelling, redness and warmth in the leg or arm, or sudden breathlessness or sharp chest pain, which may be worse when you breathe in and a cough or coughing up blood. That would be with the pulmonary embolus.

So there's the DVT, the clots in the arms and legs, and the clots in the lungs that you're particularly worried about. And I suppose just to conclude and to reiterate, from your perspective, and it certainly seems like this with the European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization and what the British government is saying, we should carry on as we are. Absolutely even if in the remote chance this vaccine does cause these side effects they are far far more common with the disease and you're likely to get the disease at the moment if you're not vaccinated.

Dr Peter English retired consultant in communicable disease control and former chair of the BMA Public Health Medicine Committee, talking there about Germany's decision and what it might mean for you and what some of those questions

you may have asked. We're hoping to answer those for you this morning. You've already started getting in touch with us around our discussion to do with online porn. I'll come to your messages

very shortly, but we know the reports of sexism and assaults in schools detailed on the Everyone's Invited website you've been hearing a lot about in the last few days has opened up the conversation about abuse in schools. And the issue we keep coming back to is around easy access to pornography and how much that is the problem. Back in 2019, a survey of over 1000 people carried out by by DeltaPol for the BBC Three documentary, Porn Laid Bare, showed that over three-quarters of young men, 77%,

and nearly half of young women, 47%, admitted to watching porn in the last month. We've had many emails coming in on this subject throughout the week, and one that we wanted to share with you came from a teacher who did want to remain anonymous, but we voiced up to share her experiences. I've been teaching in London schools for 25 years. The sexualisation of girls, the unwanted attention, the touching,

the masturbating in front of them, the messages, the catcalling and the physical assaults on girls by boys within school is rife. Senior mad teachers are usually male and they're loathe to involve the police. Female staff are also abused by boys in school verbally, physically and increasingly by boys putting up websites that they can share images, photographs of teachers, up their skirts or down their cleavages or photos that they found from Facebook accounts. To say that boys don't know what they're doing is quite frankly ludicrous. They may not know the law, but they certainly know that this is morally suspect.

Partly this is why boys are doing it, to keep pushing those boundaries. It's a power dynamic. It's a power dynamic. Let me read a couple of your messages before I introduce our guests on this. I'm deeply concerned at the prevalence of family, inter-family porn within the mainly free access porn sites using the terms step-mum, step-sister. These depictions can create threats within families

that parents may be oblivious to. Please don't overgeneralise the style of porn as being about sex being done to women. Voyeuristic experience of sex is potentially more informative than other mechanisms of sex education. Porn does include a large proportion of forceful and inappropriate sex. However, there is a choice of less masculine, dominant, even female-controlled sex. It perhaps generates some better quality and more helpful styles of porn and find a better word to describe it.

Yes, perhaps that's all I need to talk about. The types of pornography made, this other message reads, and consumed are indicative of a wider societal attitude towards women, that sex is something to be done to them or taken from them. Watching pornography itself isn't a bad thing, but better sex education, seeking out quality, well-made porn, which you'll have to pay for, and giving women and girls agency over their own sexuality would all be helpful. It's too easy to access porn showing women as passive objects

rather than active participants, but that is a reflection of our wider society's attitude towards women's sexuality. The two feed each other. And I'm sure two women who will not be short of an opinion on this Dr. Fiona Vera Gray, assistant professor at Durham University who works on violence against women and girls and Cindy Gullop, founder and chief executive of Make Love Not Porn at the platform. We'll talk about what that is in just a moment. But Fiona, if I could come to you first. We just heard from that teacher about boys masturbating at school towards girls.

Do you think that would be happening without porn? I mean, this is the thing. It's not a new, the situation we're in now is not new. This isn't wholly different than situations and generations that we've had before. research that I've done recently I did the largest single study on women's experiences of pornography and what I found there was that from women from 18 to 70 was across generations women were accessing pornography in the same ways when they were younger but what's different is the type of pornography that they're accessing

now and we really can't separate that from some of the behaviors that we're seeing amongst young people so the types of pornography that young people can access today we need to be really serious about it these are forms of pornography and pornographic representations that are illegal to access offline so they're not the things as when I was younger that a lot of people were able to access when they're younger and the thing that's really important about that is that young people are seeing these before they've had the opportunity a lot of the time to start practising their own versions of sex, to start thinking themselves about what sex might be,

what it might look like, what might feel pleasurable. And so it's starting to really blur that boundary. I think some of what you were saying at the beginning, we need to start thinking a little bit more about this idea that there's porn sex and then there's real sex, because actually the two are starting to blur together in a way that we see when we talk about, you know, the offline world and the online world. For young people, that distinction doesn't really match up to their reality. And I think that it's the same with porn. So we need to start asking different questions about pornography.

We need to start asking, you know, who does it benefit for us to desire the kinds of sex that we're seeing in mainstream porn, sex that isn't about human connection, that's not about mutual pleasure, that's not about equality? Whose version of sexual freedom is this? And we also need to start asking really important questions about what are the stories of gender that porn is telling us? And that's some of what we've touched on here as well,

because that message about gender, about women. But Fiona, just to say, if I can come in, just to say, you know, if somebody is looking for their pleasure late at night, they're not going to be considering those questions. They're going to be considering what's free, what's available, what can I get my hands on? And Cindy, this is where you come in. Why don't you tell us, Make Love Not Porn is an attempt to what, bring realism back into it?

Well, basically, our mission at Make Love Not Porn is to help make it easier to talk about sex in a way that ends rape culture. I started Make Love Not Porn 12 years ago because of my own lived experience with younger men and real realizing that when total access to porn online meets the fact we don't talk about sex, porn becomes sex education by default in not a good way. And I want to emphasize, as I said in my TED Talk when I launched Make Love Not Porn 12 years ago, and I've been saying ever since, the issue isn't porn. The issue is that we don't talk about sex openly and honestly in the real world and so people aren't able to bring a healthy real world mindset when they view what is performative

produced entertainment you you have to pay to access your your site and just to say it's people uploading their own films of themselves having sex which isn't obviously porn actors with a director per se, it's real sex. Yeah, but I started effectively the Facebook of social sex. And that's because when I say we don't talk about sex in the real world, a very important thing to be aware of is that the white male founded tech platforms that dominate our lives today censor women's experiences and any attempt by sex tech, fem tech founders like me to bring a healthy female lens to sexual health and wellness. And so when that conversation is not being had in our homes and our schools, when it's also not being had on social platforms the way that many of us want to. Nobody is talking about sex.

And when we don't socialise sex, we don't socialise good sexual values and good sexual behaviour. And so if porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie, Make Love Not Porn is the real-world documentary. But no offence to your business, Cindy, and there'll be others like it. Again, I go back to my point, which is a trend just online. people often don't want to pay for things they want things that are easily accessible and they want to just go to some of those massive sites that you've talked about adults included yep so i've been trying to raise funding for seven years to build out an expansion of make love not porn that would be what i call

the khan academy of sex education free access, more formalised sex education. Frankly, the battle I fight to keep day-to-day is extraordinary and nobody will even fund that. And by the way, friends have said, Cindy, the UK government should be funding Make Love Not Porn. Hello, UK government. Yes, please. Well, that's a whole other question I can put to a member of them if they ever come on.

But sorry, I really want to take it away from your business, if I can, per se, and I understand that's your mission. But to bring you back into this, Fiona, which is that, you know, you can argue she's not getting the funding there, but you can also argue that there's not the audience. The audience has already been trained, Fiona, to want to go and get free stuff that's available that looks like, in inverted commas, what we've become used to as porn.

Because there's now a style of public sex, isn't there? Talking to women that they're not interested even in looking for feminist pornography. And we know this is the same about ethical consumption across practices. I mean, we all know that there are some companies that are selling clothes at prices that it can't be ethically produced.

That's not ethical, but we still buy it because it's cheap, because we're being trained in this version of consumer capitalism. And that is applying to pornography. What Cindy's saying is absolutely right, though. We need to start having these big conversations because porn is stepping into this cultural vacuum around talking about porn, and it's co-opting that, and it's telling us what we should be desiring. We need to start changing that. We need to start changing that conversation and talking back, talking without judgment, creating some open spaces for us to talk about sexual pleasure, sexual practice.

So when you said, you know, if it's late at night and we want to really quickly get off on something, so actually what comes in there is, is that ethical kind of sense in our head? Is this something that we really want? Can we see the problem that this is creating in the world and if we can is there another way uh that we can get that kind of instant payoff that we're looking for we need to start focusing on the social function the social harms of pornography and changing how we we come to it but i know that you've been looking at this that kids what age 10 11 they're looking at porn if parents don't think they are i know you think they're sort of not engaging with reality. When you say we need to have these conversations, have you got any advice for people who want to talk to younger people about watching porn,

who are also themselves watching the same sort of stuff? It's really, it's really, really hard. I mean, some of this, it needs to be a much broader cultural conversation. I think the research that I've done and work that I've done with kids, and it makes sense, kids don't want to talk to their parents about porn and sex. Parental in some ways, I'm not sure if that's the most productive or useful space to have those conversations, but we need to start producing and creating some different cultural stories. Sex education, which was mandated, what, five years ago now that we still don't have

in school. We need to start funding specialist women's services who can do some of this work in schools with young people and creating ways for young people to have conversations in this open way about what they're finding, what they're accessing and how it's making them feel because they're not having a good time at the moment. This idea that porn, everyone's having a good time with it it's absolutely not true and we need to create a space to start talking about that conflict cindy there's a big push there to have this conversation but just kind of with the brute reality that you've seen with some of these platforms what what do you think would make these platforms change what they're offering or do you think we're stuck with it um no we're absolutely not And by the way, I do just want to make you aware that parents are buying their over 18 children and 20 something children subscriptions to make Love Not Porn because they want them to see what happy, healthy sexual relationships look like.

I'll tell you the answer to how we could actually transform the porn industry. And by the way, this is also basically how you transform popular culture in general, because this is an enormously nuanced issue. And we are living in a patriarchal society where every aspect of popular culture is dominated at the top by men. Basically, if women began talking openly about the fact that we enjoy watching porn, then the porn industry has to sit up and take notice of the fact there's a huge market and support actually many wonderful female queer pornographers who are making very different kinds of porn. Porn is not one big homogenous mass. But I think it's also equally important to bear something in mind. I wish society understood

women enjoy sex just as much as men and men are just as romantic as women. Neither gender is allowed to openly celebrate that fact. We'd all be better off if they were. Toxic masculinity means there's enormous peer pressure on boys to go along with it. Oh, look at this. And if they're at all romantic or, you know, vulnerable, they're not encouraged to express that at all. We need to allow open conversations about love, intimacy, connection across genders in a way that then balances out in the real world what is currently the only place people see sex actually happening. They need to see many more nuanced takes on that to be able to understand that you'll be so much

happier when you're able to express yourself you know you'll be so much happier when you're able to express yourself freely and connect with somebody in a really wonderful real world way well i mean you two obviously have no issue talking about this but a lot of people do and a lot of calls here for conversation i want to read you a message from a message from jonathan who's just texted in specifically to you fiona saying i probably saw six or seven murders on early evening television last week for lightweight entertainment but I don't feel the need to go out and hurt anyone. I'm able to distinguish dreams from reality like everyone else. So with porn, this outrage is ridiculous.

We all know they're just acting. It's not real. Fiona, you've looked into what's actually being offered on mainstream sites and how abusive that is at times as well. Yeah, and I think it's really important. I'm not making a causal argument. This is not about an individual based causal argument. You watch porn, you feel like this. This is about recognising that pornography has this social function about setting expectations about sex. And particularly when we're talking about younger people, those expectations are being set before they have the opportunity

to start to test things out themselves, before they're having the opportunity to think about what might I like, what might I not like. So young women that I've spoken to have talked about, you know, for years, years and years, feeling like they had to like being spat on. They had to like having their hair pulled. They had to like being slapped. And only had to like having their hair pulled. They had to like being slapped.

And only getting into their mid to late 20s, starting to feel a bit more sure of themselves, where they felt that they could say, I'm not sure that I actually do like that, you know, but they were unable to do those really basic things at the beginning of their sexual experience, where they start to test out what they like and what they don't like,

because those expectations about pleasure have been set and and i just want to make a point about the porn companies we need to start holding them accountable it's just ridiculous you know we know this famous line about the internet if it's free uh you're the product you know and so what's happening at the moment is mainstream pornography platforms are monetizing the access of children and young people and no one is doing anything about it. So the government needs to act now. We need to keep the pressure on until they do. And we need to understand that this isn't about a single cause. No one is saying that pornography is the single causal reason that we're living in this conducive context for violence that we are. But it is the contributing factor and we need to start doing something about

it. Thank you very much to both of you. So many messages coming in on this. Dr Fiona Vera-Gray and Cindy Gullop, they're talking about how we need to talk about this differently and how we need to hold those companies to account and change things. Your speaker just said parents don't want to talk to their kids about this and that, vice versa. Surely that's the key. They just need to step up and grow up. My children are 20 and 18. Nothing is off the table, says Sarah. Come round mine for dinner. It's not porn per se that is the main problem. It's the pornification of everyday life. Wherever anyone looks, print or media or social media, especially the images of young women in a highly sexualized way. It's sad to say most of the images on Instagram are put there by women themselves,

portraying themselves as sexually desirable and available. Perhaps you should question why women are doing this and what the consequences of doing so are all too predictable. Well, you could tie that back to what we just heard around women thinking what's normal and what they should be putting out there in the first place. Just a correction from yesterday's programme when we were talking about this issue. Ava Vakal, we described as a former pupil of King's College School, Wimbledon, London. She was talking about experiences from school that she'd gleaned from other people she'd been at school with. She was, in fact, a former pupil at Wimbledon High School. Keep your messages coming in. 84844.

Do let us know what you think about this and also your own experiences. We're having a very frank chat. Just let me read this one. I'm a 16 year old girl from a small school. I feel strongly about feminism. I want to advocate more open conversation in school about assault and harassment and what they are and the consequences for it. The 15 to 16 year old boys in my school must be aware that the constant stream of derogatory terms, unwanted pictures and catcalls are wrong, but they may be oblivious as to just how punishable they can be. To be honest, so am I. No one's conversing with young people on how to report this abuse and how to deal with it. And instead, I feel there's a large grey area on punishments for this abuse. Porn definitely plays a part. It almost advocates the diminishing of women, not only during sex, but also in everyday life, but also the fact that senior members of the school, mostly men, are not infiltrating the consequences or threatening the constant harassment

that many of us girls experience during school. So putting a few things together for us, that message there from a 16-year-old girl. Thank you for that. Keep them coming in. But we all know about Swiss army knives, but I'm going to ask you something I've never asked before. What about Swiss army knickers? It does sound like the beginning of a bad joke, especially what we've just been talking about, but I'm actually going to talk about Swiss army knickers because it turns out that in an effort to get more women to sign up for a life in the

military, Swiss recruits are going to be allowed to wear women's underwear for the first time. It also made us wonder about the uniforms of women in the British military. So to discuss that, I'm joined now by Dr. Jenny Mathis, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Aberystwyth University. Good morning. Good morning. You did have to read, or I certainly did, this story twice just to check it wasn't a joke. Yes, I had to double check the calendar as well, because if I'd seen it tomorrow rather than today, I would have assumed that it was an April Fool's joke. But no, it's true. It's absolutely genuine. Yes, because until now, women have been wearing what the men have been wearing. Is that right? Yes, exactly. So, you know, when you join the military, obviously,

the army issues you with a whole set of uniforms and boots and all the rest of it, everything that you're meant to need for your working life in the military. And of course, even though women have been in the Swiss military for, you know, a generation or more, and they've been doing all the same kinds of jobs that men do, it's only just now that the Swiss army has decided, oh, perhaps actually we should issue them with appropriate clothing, including underwear. Including knickers. We have got you on to talk about knickers in the military. But you know, jokes aside, although it is something just to think, oh my gosh, how is this happening right now? But at least it's happening. I remember doing a piece actually for Radio 4 about women on the front line. And I went to interview women and they

joined some of the women I've been talking about. There had been a one size fits all bra until quite recently. Well, I would be tempted to say at least they had one. You know, I shudder to think what women in the Swiss army have had to put up with before now. But I mean, it's absolutely typical. This is the sort of thing which, you know, going right back 100 years or more, anytime women begin to enter a military, this is one of the first things that they discover is that the military hasn't really thought through these basic things like, you know, what size boots they need to have for women and what size uniforms and so on and so forth. And, you know, you quickly realise that everything in the military is geared for men, and not just the clothing, but also the equipment, the weapons, everything is designed with men in mind. And these just create additional barriers and hurdles to women's integration into the military. And it usually takes quite a long time for these kinds of problems to be rectified. Yes, I mean, I did sort of shudder at the thought of a one size

fits all bra, even if they were lucky to have one, because that would be quite an interesting experiment to see what size you'd put it at. But apparently, when they then got an allowance to buy bras, which were allowed with the uniform regulations, the men were quite jealous because they wanted to have better fitted pants themselves. Do you think though that these sorts of things, and you can argue it's military playing catch up, do you think they can have an impact in women thinking that this is more of a world for them? Well, yes, only though if it's part of a much bigger programme of looking at what women's experience in the military is, and what kinds of things really need to change in order for women to be integrated into the military in a way that's not just tokenistic.

And so this underwear move is part of a wider effort to increase the recruitment of women in the Swiss Army. And presently, only 0.8% of the Swiss Army is comprised of women and they're aiming for 10% by 2030. So this is, you know, quite an ambitious, you know, attempt. And so if it is accompanied by other measures, which make it clear that women have real opportunities, and that, you know, women's women's experiences in the military is something that could be positive for them, and not just, you know, endless misery, and trying to deal with with all kinds of problems, you know, like the underwear problem, then yes, potentially it could have a difference. Why the attempt to boost the number of women in the first place, do you think? Right. Well, there are lots of reasons why militaries decide to try and encourage women

to join. I mean, classically, the one reason is because they can't get enough men. Now, in Switzerland, they have universal male conscription. So, you know, on the one hand, you would think, perhaps that's not an issue. But if the birth rates have been falling, then that might be an issue, actually. So, you know, having enough people is one reason to expand. But also kind of trying to keep in step with society, with civilian society's norms. So if civilian society is moving towards more gender equal, you know, lifestyles and workplaces and so on, then the military very often will feel the need to try and catch up. And also, of course, you know, it enables them to benefit from the skills and the intellect and all the characteristics that half the population have, which they're

previously not benefiting from. You were saying you would have thought this was an April Fool's joke. How's the British military looking in comparison? Well, as far as I know, they allow women to wear women's underwear. But certainly, you know, there's a much higher proportion of women than that in the British military. But still, you know, there's a whole wide range of issues that women face in state militaries really around the world, including in Britain, and sexual harassment is one of them. It's been a very big issue, particularly in the US, but it's increasingly coming to the attention of people in the UK as well. So indeed, we're actually going to look at that very soon here on Women's Hour, because there was talk of the kind of Me Too moment in the British military

for women. Thank you very much for your time, taking some time to talk about our briefs in quite an important way, it seems. Dr Jenny Mathers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Aberystwyth University. Now let's talk to Erin Kelly about a very different world. She's written eight thrillers. I'm sure many of you will have read them, including the best-selling He Said, She Said. Her latest, Watch Her Fall, is set in the world of elite ballet. So from military to dance, the London Russian ballet company

led by the charismatic and controlling Nikolai Kirillov. His daughter Ava's about to dance the role of Odette in Swan Lake in a new and much-anticipated production. She has lived for dance all her life and her journey to the top has required total dedication. But when an overheard comment feeds her paranoia, Ava's life goes in.

I don't want to ruin anything in the book. And there is a big twist, Erin. We'll talk about twists in just a moment. But welcome to Woman's Hour. Tell us why the world of ballet. What drew you to that? Well, I grew up reading ballet books. So from a little girl, I remember reading a book about a dancing bunny rabbit.

And then I moved on to Ballet Shoes by Nell Stratfield. There's some fantastic YA, young adult fiction written about the ballet world. Gina, I read when I was growing up and devoured her books. There are very few adult novels about that world and I do love the ballet I also knew about it before I started this book my mum is a huge fan and I grew up you know the nutcracker at Christmas and um but it is a world that is just extremely intense and competitive and it's always seemed to me to be fantastic grounds for a psychological thriller because it's very, so I like to write about people

under incredible pressure and on the edge of sanity. And everybody knows what dancers have to do to maintain their physical peak. But what's really interesting to me is the psychology that goes along with that the kind of mindset you need to sacrifice a normal childhood um normal social life your teenage years when everybody else is out dating and drinking cider in a park um you're there at the bar putting in 10 hour days and also the knowledge that by the time you're 30 you need to do something else so you give up your life and the clock is always ticking it's incredibly competitive there's only you know the spotlight can only shine on one person at a time it just felt to me like an incredibly rich world to explore when you were talking to dancers about it did you get a sense

that that's changing the clock ticking certainly isn't in terms of what they're able to do by what age. But is it is it moving with the time slightly? It absolutely is. And actually, the clock ticking isn't what it was because sports medicine is incredible and it's advancing. And what I was very interested in is that all the major companies now have psychologists who work with their dancers along with a physio so that they can keep their mindset healthy for longer as well as their bodies. That said what dancers are now expected to do because of that same sport science is much more athletic and much more demanding. Dancers now, female dancers now are athletes in a way that maybe they weren't 50 years ago. I mean ballet's never been easy if you if you try to anybody who's ever tried to kind of rise up on point or stand on one leg knows that it's the kind of superhuman that's

I have the mangled toes to prove it. I did dabble. But, you know, very clearly when I was doing ballet, when I was growing up, you know, I did not have the figure for it because I had a figure. That was the whole thing. You know, quite quickly you were told if you had boobs if you had hips not for you yeah I danced um I danced as a teenager but I quit ballet when I was eight not that not that I had hips and boobs at that age but it was already clear that the girls who were going to progress were the you know the sylphs you like and there's a line in the book when the ballet master sees one of his girls and he kind of looks on shocked and says she gets hips and that's a direct quote from one of the dancers who I interviewed for the book yeah um you can you can spend two hours watching

a production and not see anybody who needs a graph um and if you ever do see anybody who has a figure it's usually in contemporary dance and partly that is because of the astonishing workload that you put yourself through when most bodies are going through puberty a body which is dancing for eight hours and is um dancers now will tell you that they eat intelligently rather than fast but you know you don't you don't look like that on green cakes all day, every day. And when your body is under that kind of stress, puberty often is delayed and sometimes never really happens until dancers retire. That's when a more kind of heavy womanly shape will finally be allowed in. What's your view of that world now you've properly?

Well, I held dancers in high regard before. Now I'm absolutely your view of that world now you've properly? Well I held dancers in higher regard before now I'm absolutely in awe of that discipline and of how creative they are. The company in my book is fictitious and it's very old-fashioned Russian ballet in particular is astonishingly disciplined it's mathematical precision and that does seem to be changing there seems to be changing. There seems to be more diversity in, I mean, what dancers call diversity in body shape, we would still reckon, you know,

mortals would still recognise as somebody who could barely bust out of a size 10, but, you know, dancers of colour are making waves in a way that they weren't a generation ago. So it's changing, but there are still incredible restrictions and it's just a very, very closed world. Let me ask you about this big plot twist. That's what thrillers rely on, a bit of misdirection there. How do you go about making that work?

Do you always want to have that within your books? I think readers love twists. They love to be able to talk about them and compare notes did you guess when did you guess I guessed on page x I guess on page x but three paragraphs later I mean my books are really popular with book clubs for exactly this reason and of course nobody wants to read any book let alone a thriller knowing what's going to happen next and they are they're huge fun they are very difficult to write and I would never set out to plant a twist in a book for the sake of it it's got to belong organically

in the novel and not feel like something that's tacked on and not feel too much like plot pyrotechnics for the sake of it but what I will do when I have my first draft when I know what I'm trying to hide is I will then go back and I'll write it page by page. So sometimes it's, you know, you have to go through every sentence and check that the right pronouns are being used. If you're trying to deflect attention from one character to another. And you can't lie to a reader because then they'll finish the book feeling cheated and withhold information. And you can lead people down a different path by manipulating their assumptions but it is just a case of revision and revision and also there's more to it than the mechanics of the plot what I

whenever there's been books that have given me a real pull the rug gasp out loud moment so I'm thinking of a book like Rebecca or Fingersmith by Sarah Waters or Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane it's because I have been immersed in something else it's because there has been some really beautiful language or I'm learning about a world I didn't know anything about or there's a love story that's completely swept me up and that's a misdirection in itself that's another kind of sleight of hand if you and so I've tried to do all those things with Watcher before so that when they're so busy enjoying the story you weren't expecting that. And that's what a twist is.

It's not a, with a whodunit, you always know what the question is. The question is, who is the killer? We don't start this book with a dead body. It's a different kind of crime fiction where you're working towards something terrible happening. But a twist is an unknown, unknown. Exactly.

And I'm going to have to stop you there to go to our own drama. And also, I don't want me or you to give anything away. Watch Her Fall by Erin Kelly. Thank you for talking to us. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one.

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