Woman's Hour - Covid Inquiry, Child-free friends, Afghans in Pakistan, Alison Larkin

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Former deputy cabinet secretary Helen McNamara gave evidence at the Covid Inquiry yesterday, saying that she thought that the culture in Number 10 was toxic and sexist. She was particularly critical of the explicit and misogynistic language the former chief advisor Dominic Cummings used to describe her. Krupa Padhy is joined by Lucy Fisher, Whitehall Editor for The Financial Times, and Jill Rutter, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government, to discuss what this says about the treatment of women at the heart of government.Journalist Rebecca Reid talks to Krupa about child-free friends and how she thinks they don't understand that she needs to be selfish now that she has a young child. Pakistan has ordered all unauthorised Afghan asylum seekers to leave the country. Pakistan is home to over four million Afghan migrants and refugees, about 1.7 million of whom are undocumented, according to the authorities. As Afghanistan's neighbour, Pakistan, has seen people travel across the border for safety for four decades, from the 1979 Soviet invasion through to the more recent return of the Taliban in 2021, Krupa talks to Zarghuna Kargar, an Afghan Journalist at BBC News, about the impact of this decision on women.The noughties was an incredibly hostile decade in which to be female, according to the writer Sarah Ditum.  It was the time when the traditional media of television, film and newspapers was joined by the internet; and the fame that resulted for nine iconic women: Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Aaliyah, Janet, Amy, Kim, Chyna and Jen came at a price. Sarah examines how each of these women changed the concept of ‘celebrity’ forever, often falling victim to it, in her new book Toxic.The writer and comedian Alison Larkin is the author of The English American, an autobiographical novel about an adopted English woman who finds her birth mother and Jane-Austen-like romance in the US. Alison had avoided love for most of her adult life. However, in her 50s she found true love with an Indian climate scientist who had also immigrated to the US. Then he died. After 30 years living in America, Alison is in the UK to perform her one woman show Grief... a Comedy which opens at the Soho Theatre in London on Monday. Presenter: Krupa Padhy Producer: Rebecca Myatt Studio manager: Emma Harth

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, this is Krupal Partey and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. There's a great deal of gloom, grief and devastation in the news at the moment. So I want to start the show with something more positive. The words of the comedian Alison Larkin about falling deeply in love in your 50s. Alison writes, you know what your foot feels like when it's been stuck in a shoe that's too tight and then you finally take it off and you can breathe again. That's how being in love with Bima felt. We want to hear your stories about falling in love later in life. How did it make you feel? How did it feel

different to falling in love in your younger years? Maybe you're open to finding love again as you've grown older. You can text us. It's 84844. Email us via our website on Twitter and Instagram. We are at BBC Women's Hour. And of course, you can now send us a WhatsApp note. That number is 03700 100 444. And Alison will be with us a little later to talk about her new show.

But in the meantime, do send us your messages. Also, nine women so famous in the noughties that we know them by their first names. I'm talking about Brittany, Kim, Paris and many more.

But were the noughties the most toxic decade for famous women? That's the subject of writer Sarah Dighton's new book, and she will join us. And this caught our attention. Rebecca Reid, writing in this morning's iNewspaper, issued this apology. To my child-free friends, sorry, I have to be selfish. Rebecca talks about the importance of having a routine for her young daughter and how social plans with her friends who do not have children can be difficult to navigate. So what's it like in your circle of friends?

Do you feel guilty when you can't give your child-free friends enough time? Do you think parents need to be given more compassion? Do get in touch at BBC Women's Hour as always. But first, the COVID inquiry continues and yesterday it made for particularly interesting viewing. Just a reminder, the inquiry is looking into the handling of the pandemic, so no one will be found innocent or guilty, but it does look at what worked and what did not work. And in its current phase, it's focused on the response of central government and how ministers made decisions.

Helen McNamara, who was one of the most senior women in the civil service at the time, gave her testimony and said a macho culture harmed the UK's response to the pandemic. Women whose job it was to do something were not able to do their jobs properly because they weren't having the space or being asked the right questions or being treated with the respect that they would do and it was genuinely um it was it was both striking and awful and then the fact that there were no women contributing to the policy discussions problem in itself because there were some expert women who weren't being listened to and also women were being looked over. She also went on to say that this lack of gender diversity among decision makers had in her view led to catastrophic consequences for women. She also

criticised Boris Johnson's former chief advisor Dominic Cummings and the explicit and misogynistic language that he used to describe her which were outlined to the inquiry earlier this week. Well, let's get more on all of this with Lucy Fisher, Whitehall editor for the Financial Times, and Jill Rutter, former civil servant and senior fellow at the Institute for Government with me here in the studio. Good to have you both with us. Good morning. Good morning, Lucy. I'll start with you. Tell us, first of all, where we are up to with the inquiry and who has been giving evidence. Well, it's been a really key week this week with Lee Cain, Boris Johnson's former comms chief, Martin Reynolds, his former private secretary. And of course, Dominic Cummings, his former de facto chief of staff, giving evidence alongside Helen McNamara, then deputy cabinet secretary.

For me, it's been a really illuminating week, adding a lot of flesh to the bone of criticisms we've heard before about Boris Johnson and his style of leadership, claims that he oscillated on policy, was easily influenced by the last person he spoke to on any policy decisions. And to my mind, one of the most striking claims is that, you know, he took a 10 day break in February 2020, where he wasn't briefed on the looming crisis by his Redbox submissions or emails at all in that time. So just a lot of fascinating and very striking revelations have come out. I shared a few lines in my introduction there, but remind us more about what Helen McNamara had to say. Well, I think, you know, you're absolutely right to have drawn attention to the foul four-lettered words used by Dominic Cummings about her. I have to say I was shocked. She herself said that there were in some ways she wasn't surprised to learn that he had described her in such ways that we

can't repeat on Women's Hour, I know. But, you know, talking about wanting to handcuff her and march her out of the building, wanting that woman out of his hair, saying, you know, he had to dodge stilettos from her, I think is just completely unacceptable. And she was right to highlight her disappointment that Boris Johnson, Cummings' boss, didn't challenge that kind of violent and misogynistic language. You know, a basic HR function in any private sector company would see someone fired immediately for that kind of violent and offensive language. But I think more substantively and more worryingly is the concrete policy outcomes of the lack of gender diversity among decision makers. You know, she says she personally brought to the attention of Boris Johnson that there was an issue with PPE not fitting women well,

an issue she says that he sort of dismissed as nonsense. And, you know, also, you know, the gender specific problems that arose due to this lack of diversity around confusion about access to abortion, confusion about guidance on pregnancy. I remember from the time, you know, very worrying reports of women being forced to give birth alone, you know, with their partners left outside in the car park, weren't allowed into hospitals for, you know, very serious kind of important moments in many women's life. And the worst of all, of course, is the lack of provision for victims of domestic abuse during national lockdowns. And Helen McNamara saying there's no doubt in her mind that women will have died as a result of that oversight. Yes, those really powerful words there. Jill, as we've been listening to Lucy,

you've been nodding. Are you surprised by the culture that Helen's been describing there? I'm surprised in general at the culture because Whitehall has over the last decades become a much better place for women to work. If you look, women at senior levels in 2010, only 34% of the senior civil service, so that's the top three or four grades, were women. Now it's 47%. They're women in charge of departments, which when I was in the civil service was a real rarity. So that has changed. But I think what we've seen is just how the culture in number 10, particularly of Boris Johnson and his advisers, infected the more general decision making. And Helen McNamara repeatedly referred to what a difficult, stressful, toxic working environment that was, how that stopped people raising concerns. And that there was a real change as they moved into crisis mode with women who'd been used to actually having their say, being listened to in meetings,

suddenly finding that they were systematically excluded. And that that led, you know, not just to them not being able to do their day jobs, if you like, but led to bad decisions. And she also highlights, I think, one of the things which is not just specifically about women, but the narrowness of the experience of the decision making cadre in Downing Street, which just led them to assume everybody was like them. I mean, she very strikingly talked about their view that it was okay to go to a football match because at a football match you were outside. She made this comment that probably nobody there had ever gone to a football match by getting a ticket and queuing up at a turnstile and getting on a tube or a train to get there, which just gives a sort of impression of a very skewed agenda. It's really interesting that she does make the case

for a much better cabinet government. And she also makes a really interesting point that a lot of the holes in the government strategy were revealed not by discussions inside government, but were revealed when she, with the chief medical officer and the chief scientific officer, which is chief scientific advisor, went to brief the opposition. It was they that raised a lot of concerns, which made the government realise they didn't have answers to the points they were raising. And Jill, I have to bring this back to

language because it is the language being used that has made the headlines. The messages sent by Dominic Cummings talking about Helen McNamara, which Lucy highlighted there. These were words that were not just misogynistic, but violent as well. They were just vile. I mean, absolutely vile. In any normal workplace, that would be immediately a sort of suspension and showing you the door offence. And I think the other thing that Helen said is, why was Dominic Cummings talking about

her in this way? And that was because she was trying to ensure in her day job of overseeing propriety and ethics, she was trying to ensure two things. One, that Boris Johnson didn't sort of flout convention in making his advisor, David Frost, National Security Advisor, saying, no, no, that's not appropriate. And the second thing, and really interestingly, she was telling Dominic Cummings he had to tell the truth to an employment tribunal about a previous incident, which he said, you know, was misreported. But the incident that we know as him frog marching one of Sajid Javid's

special advisors, a woman, an Asian woman out of Downing Street. So she was trying to do her job. And I think one of the things that may emerge from this inquiry is just how much this really toxic environment within Downing Street and between Downing Street and the officials actually took a toll on the quality of decision making during COVID. Dominic Cummings, of course, claims that the foul mouth messages about colleagues were not misogynistic, saying he was much ruder about men. But Lucy, we've heard a great deal of other explicit language coming from the inquiry, haven't we? Well, we certainly have. And it's, you know, just pretty unacceptable. But in a way, you know, it doesn't surprise me the Downing Street culture, you know, it doesn't surprise me, the Downing Street culture, you know, that existed under Boris Johnson, these were people that, by and large,

significant proportion had come from the Vote Leave campaign, which itself was quite a macho culture. They were people that were very linked to the Brexit movement, sort of saw themselves as pirates, people who blew things up, didn't, you know, feel like they had to conform to bourgeois niceties. And I think some of the other evidence we've heard this week speaks to this sort of sense of overconfidence. I've also been, you know, struck by Professor David Halpern, who was head of the number 10 nudge unit, complaining that there was this hubristic attitude in Downing Street, in the bunker, that in turn meant that other ways of doing things weren't considered. You know, people in Downing Street didn't look

abroad to successes that other nations were having with things that they were trialling, other systems that have been set up, particularly by nations, perhaps in Asia, that have been through similar flu seasons or pandemics, and had trialled certain systems that had been shown to work. So I just slightly, you know, wonder as well, that sense of hubris, this also real culture of saving face, you know, Matt Hancock, the then Health Secretary, has come in for a lot of criticism, accusations of frequently lying, frequently refusing to give an honest picture of how bad problems were, which meant that they couldn't be fixed because he was trying to present a picture of everything working well. You do slightly wonder, you know, would this culture

have taken root or persisted if there were more senior female voices around the table? Yes, there'd be more women, and I'm not so sure. And Jill, let me bring you in on that because as a former civil servant, what is the importance of having a diverse group of decision makers and the value that that adds? Well, it gives you a sort of different conversation because you're bringing in different experiences. There's a very interesting point when Helen McNamara, early on when everybody was telling her, as Lucy was saying, that it was going to be OK because the UK would be world beating in conquering the virus. Helen tries to raise in a meeting concerns being expressed in her school kids WhatsApp group. So parents, you know, whatever, and feels that she's patronised in that meeting.

She also makes the very key point that this was totally different to the May government, that she thinks that in the May government, Theresa May had very strong advice in the form of Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, but that, you know, that would have been a very different decision making environment. And if people feel that they just can't say things, raise things, you're going to miss an awful lot. And a good prime minister should want to make sure that he is hearing as many perspectives as possible before he makes what really are, you know, in this case, critical life and death decisions. And they also need to be thinking about, you know, this might work for this segment of people, but how does it work for all these other people who are in very, very,

very different positions. And throughout, there was a sense that the government was overlooking concerns. One of the really interesting things people always talked about was, you know, prioritising opening up pubs before schools. The fact that things like the beauty industry, which employs lots and lots of relatively low paidpaid women, was deemed to be a sort of frivolity, not on the list for early opening up. And that sort of constant skewing of decisions. And really, really interestingly as well, it took a junior woman private secretary in number 10 to say, are we thinking about race at all? About whether there are different differential impacts? And you slightly feel that this is showing up the importance of actually having some of those voices, but just the sheer difficulty they got

in making those voices heard. Well, there is still much to come in the inquiry. We have Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, who will be, they are expected to give evidence before Christmas. And of course, this is all about accountability and learning lessons. We will see what lessons have been learnt. But for now, Lucy Fisher and Jill Rutter, thank you both for your time. My child-free friends don't understand that I need to be selfish, writes Rebecca Reid in this morning's

iNewspaper. Rebecca is a single mum and shares what she wants her friends to understand. It's a subject that has got us talking here on our Women's Hour team. So we're going to have that conversation now with Rebecca Reid, writer and journalist joining me now. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. Why did you write the article? So I had done a previous piece, which is brilliant, about a child-free woman saying what she wished that her friends who had children knew. It's a really great piece, it's online, I would recommend going and having a look at it.

So they asked me to do the kind of inverse view. And hers was a very self-reflective, interesting piece about the ways in which she wished she had been a better friend to people who had children um and I think I kind of wanted to say the same thing which is like I'm very aware of the ways in which having children has made me a less good friend but also that you probably when you have a child or children have to cut yourself a bit of slack and accept that particularly in those first few years you might not be a terribly good friend and you can be sorry for it without actually intending to change it.

So cutting yourself some slack. Do you feel that friends need to cut you some slack as well? I do, I do. And in fairness, the majority of my friends have. But I do have a small number of people who are actively frustrated by the fact that I am a different version of myself now that I have a one year old from the version I was before I had children. And it presents mostly in the sort of

logistics. So if everybody wants to meet in central London at seven o'clock, I can't be there at seven. I live 35 minutes from central London and my daughter goes to bed at seven. I will be there with bells on at 7.45. I'll try and get up at 7.35. I'll leg it to the tube, but I I will be there with bells on at 7 45 I'll try and get up 7 35 I'll leg it to the tube but I can't be there earlier and very very often my friends will be like it's half an hour it doesn't make a difference she's one how could you possibly know can't you just like slightly move it around can't someone else put her to bed can't a babysitter put her to bed um and it's really frustrating having to be like no and I'm not like an attachment parent. I'm not even a particularly amazing parent. I just have a routine. I'm sure you're a wonderful parent.

I'm a solid seven out of 10. And that's what we should probably all be aiming for. But I am uncompromising when it comes to a couple of things about my routine. And some of my friends do find it unbelievably frustrating. Yeah. Let me read you this message from Sarah, who says, I'm childless by choice in my 50s with two younger friends with their young children. I'd be disappointed with my friend's election if their children weren't their priority. Being a parent and general life admin is tough enough without friendship guilt. Flexibility is necessary. Guilt, that word guilt. Do you feel guilty at times, either towards your daughter or towards your

friends? I mean, perpetually, I felt guilty. I was raised Catholic, so I felt guilty every day. But I do. Of course, I feel guilty. And of course, I feel like I'm failing because when I'm out, even though my daughter is asleep and at home with the babysitter, I feel like I'm a bad mother for wanting to leave the house. And I go out a lot. I have a very active social life. I'm a single mom. I was dating for a while and I have a boyfriend I go out with him feel guilty about all those things um and then when I'm here and I miss some you know one of my friends has like a bottomless brunch for their birthday I can't go to a bottomless brunch you can't take a one-year-old it ruins it for everyone and you can't and I don't want to get a babysitter for

all of Saturday she's in child care most of the. So I feel guilty that I'm letting down my friend. But the only other alternative is to say I can only do evening activities. And then I'm expecting my friends to wrap their lives around my childcare situation. It's a logistical nightmare. Do you ever think about what you were like before you had children and your attitude towards friends who did have children? So my saving grace is that I was a really good friend before I had children. And I would always, you know, I would take a train across the country to

go and take presents to birthday parties. I'm a fairly solid godparent, though lesser since I've had my own children. But I was, you know, really good at turning up for christenings and birthday parties and nativity plays and assemblies. And I was really enthusiastic. And unfortunately, it feels like the system kind of hinges on child-free women being more flexible more understanding and more giving than women who have children and all I can do is I was great before I had kids and when my child or children if I have more or older I will oh we seem to have lost you there. Right, we're going to carry on that conversation if we can reconnect to Rebecca Reid,

but hopefully we'll be able to bring that line back to you because we're in the middle of a fascinating conversation. I would love to hear your views on this. It's at BBC Women's Hour on Twitter and on social media. And of course, you can text us on what we've been discussing with Rebecca. It is 84844. But in the meantime, let's cross to another story.

Pakistan has ordered all unauthorized Afghan asylum seekers. That's an estimated 1.7 million people to leave the country by the 1st of November. Pakistan is home to over 4 million Afghan migrants and refugees, about 1.7 million of whom are undocumented,

according to authorities. And as Afghanistan's neighbour, Pakistan has seen people travel across the border for safety for four decades, from the 1979 Soviet invasion through to the more recent return of the Taliban in 2021. Now, 1.7 million people who are deemed to be in the country illegally

are facing deportation. And these numbers would include many women who left since the Taliban came back to power and they can no longer work as teachers or civil servants back in Afghanistan. And many of them are now being forced back to Afghanistan. Well, let's speak to Zarguna Karga, who is an Afghan journalist at BBC News. Zarguna, very good to have you on Women's Hour. First of all, let's talk about the terminology. Who are these unauthorised asylum seekers

and what do we exactly mean by unauthorised in the context of Afghans in Pakistan? Yes, Pakistani government a few years ago, kind of 10 years ago, started a scheme for Afghans that every Afghan that entered the country will be registered or those Afghans who had been living there for many, many years would be registered as Afghan citizens having permission to live in Pakistan. And many of those ID cards were issued to Afghans who applied. And in some cases,

they were not issued because there were Afghans who had businesses, who had been living there, their children grew up in Pakistan, they were born in Pakistan. They kind of, if they were in another country that followed international laws, they would have been considered Pakistani nationals because they were born there. But that is different in Pakistan. When you are an Afghan, you're always an Afghan. You can only claim to be having permission living in Pakistan. And they obviously don't have like a proper asylum seeking or refugee status procedures that are, for example, in the UK. So those are Afghans who don't have the ID cards

or who have expired ID cards or not applied for a new one. They are considered illegal. And also Afghans who have gone for, as you mentioned in the queue, Afghans who left Kabul or other parts of the country after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Some of them had passports because they were supposed to be in a third country, which was Pakistan, to leave that country for asylum in maybe in Western countries. Those are considered legal because they have Afghan passports.

They have applied for visas and they have paid a lot of money to buy those visas. But now the situation is that, I've been speaking to many Afghans, if you're an Afghan living in Pakistan, you're in danger of being expelled, whether you have passport, whether you have ID cards, whether you don't have it, because Pakistani government has decided that

it's time for Afghans to go back to their country. It's such a complex situation and you've just highlighted just how difficult it is to get your head around all of that information. I want to focus in more on how this impacts women and girls because some of these young people, these women, will have never lived in Afghanistan. They would have been born in Pakistan, raised in Pakistan. And now they're having to return back to a potentially much more closed society. Exactly. I know Afghan girls, teenage girls who are studying in Pakistan because you can't pay for an education in Pakistan and get educated. Most of them are helped by families in the West, in Afghanistan, to pay for their fees. And now those girls and women have to leave back.

And among them are women who have recently left Afghanistan, teachers, several servants who have no jobs anymore in Afghanistan, who are banned from working. Like beauticians, we heard in the reports a few months ago that beauticians, all beauty salons were shut by the Taliban. So I know beauticians who I've been speaking to, they left for Pakistan. They had passports and visas, but they haven't got a certain asylum claim that they will be going to a Western country for asylum so those are all in danger and all a lot of families are split i know of a young man who has very young children from

newborn to like five year old uh he has to leave his wife who was born in pakistan who is Afghan, their family members, their cousins. So the family of the wife has ID cards. They have been accepted as ID cards. So she can stay with the young children. But he cannot. And he was a laborer. He lost jobs when the Taliban took over. So he's going back. It's heartbreaking. It's splitting families families it's splitting families from their fathers it is telling those girls to go back now and what they are going back to a society that is becoming shrinking for women it is it's um heartbreaking because as you say afghans have been in pakistan for such a long time um they are integrated in many areas there will be mixed marriages and this is impacting women, children, families from all directions. Another way I imagine is that

those who are choosing not to leave Pakistan, many of the men are being arrested? Yes, yes, there have been arrests. In the last two months Afghans have been arrested as we have reported on the BBC. And I know from other Afghans who live in Pakistan in fear, because if they are going out for shopping on the street, the police can stop you. And as an Afghan, they can put you in prison. And if you don't have the right documentation that they want you to show. And sometimes they have the right documentations. Afghans have been talking about having the right ID card, but still put in prison because they want to make the situation is becoming very tight for Afghans.

They want to make it as difficult as possible for Afghans to have no choice but to make a way out. So these are men who are being put in prison, but they're also husbands, fathers. And so in many ways, it's breaking up families again. And you know, Krupa, in that culture, women are so dependent on men, on men of their family. They're laborers. They have been working outside. They've been earning the money that they needed for livelihood. And now those women are left with nothing. And by living in Pakistan and

having the experience of being a refugee myself there, it is a very, very scary situation you face as an Afghan, as a refugee. You are scared of the police, literally terrified. As a young Afghan, I used to be terrified of the pakistani police because we used to hear stories luckily i didn't face anything during my time but we used to hear stories that were terrifying that you were put in prison and no one is there to listen to you um and it is just a terrifying situation for many afghans, young, old women, men. And sadly, it's been going on for years. I remember as a young Afghan refugee, my school suddenly got shut

because the Pakistani government stopped all the Afghan refugee universities and schools for us. So for months, I didn't have the choice to get education. So those things, they have experienced it a lot. Yeah, and your personal insights are so important here. One thing I do want to ask you is about what's happening now on the ground because yesterday I was looking at pictures and I also heard from women who were, you know, packing up their belongings with their children, with their families

and in truckloads, everything they own, trying to cross that border. But I also heard from one young woman who had decided to go into hiding. Yes, a lot of women stay at home. They don't come out. They are living with families and relatives. They don't come out to the street. It's been going for months.

But even more so now, because of this order from the Pakistani government, rather than going back, they're choosing to go into hiding. Into hiding. And obviously they have escaped Afghanistan, which is, as I said, it's a shrinking society. And on the ground, you see these thousands of Afghan families with young children packed in trucks with their stuff to go back. And imagine being a refugee in your own country. The Taliban are setting up camps and tents for these Afghans because they have no livelihood in Afghanistan.

They have no income. They have no future. They don't have any prospects to look forward to. So I think it is the most, for me as an Afghan, the most heartbreaking point is that you're becoming a refugee in your own country to live in a tent. It's a very desperate situation. I must ask you, Zarguna, just before I let you go, what the Afghan authorities have said in response. What are they saying they will do for these families,

for these women, for these girls who are forcibly being returned to Afghanistan? I haven't heard any of the Taliban officials talking specifically about girls and women, what will their future be. The only thing that they have, the Minister for Refugees has spoken about is like they are organizing trucks

to get afghans from turkham border back to their country they are organizing refugee camps uh tents for them to live in and a harsh winter is coming winter in afghanistan is really really cold and freezing you you feel the cold in your bones and imagine if you're living in a tent. So that is what Afghans are facing. And job prosperity, economic situation is dire in Afghanistan as UN agencies and international community has been speaking about it for months

since the Taliban, for years now, since the Taliban have taken over. So poverty is widespread. There's no prospect of jobs or future for young women with no education, no school for them, no university for them, no businesses like beauticians who had good businesses in Afghanistan. So they are going, yeah, they're going to a very uncertain future and being pushed by Pakistani government. Sarguna Karga, thank you so much. Absolutely valuable having your expertise here on Women's Hour. And we'll keep checking in on that story.

I'm Sarah Trelevan. And for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. Were you, are you, a fan of Brittany, Paris, Amy, Kim, Jen?

These are just some of the female icons of the naughty, so famous that they were instantly recognisable to many by just their first names. The writer Sarah Dighton has selected nine women for her new book to illustrate her argument that the decade, the noughties, was the most toxic, in recent history at least, and the most hostile for women ever. Sarah, join me now. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.

So you're looking at how each of these women changed the concept of celebrity forever. Are you saying that the noughties was the most toxic ever? And if so, why? Well, that would be a big claim when you've got the whole of human history. And obviously, we've just heard an enormously affecting item and incredibly devastating things happen to women around the world all of the time. But what happens in the noughties is I think you have a really kind of a powerful combination of old misogyny and new technology and they come together and they create the situation where celebrity women, the women I'm writing about in this book, are kind of the canaries in the coal think in the book, I describe fame as an elite trauma. So you can be famous and it's very, very, I mean, it has huge psychological consequences for people that, you know,

women like Brittany and Paris are now speaking about how much they've suffered from being in the public eye. But at the very beginning of the period I write about, it tends to be something that, you know, you get famous, but you also get rich as well. And as social media comes in, by the end of the decade, all of us are a little bit famous. And it's possible for all of us to experience the very worst version of fame and being exposed to public scrutiny. And that's the movement that I'm really interested in, like how the things that happened to these women kind of presage what was happening to women everywhere. You break down each of their life stories in many ways and the implications of fame for them. In a very clever way, you associate them with a key word. With Britney, you associate her with fame. And the line that stood out for me was,

her sexiness was her most valuable asset, but she couldn't be trusted with it. Yeah, and I found listening to Brittany talk about her experience of being the kind of supreme object during the conservatorship hearing really heartbreaking because she talks about her body as a separate entity from herself she's kind of she's trained for stardom since she's a little girl and you, you know, nobody, I think no child can ever understand what it's going to mean to be a star. We all know that child stars tend to have very rocky outcomes, but especially in this period,

because the nature of stardom changes so much from, you know, the point when she's on the Mickey Mouse Club to the point when you're kind of, you know, she's really suffering in 2008 and being absolutely hounded by paparazzi fame and the music industry have transformed entirely. And she's basically co-opted as an asset, really. But the nature of the conservatorship means that she's sort of taken over by, quote unquote, Britney Inc., headed up by her dad, who, you know, exploits her as a property it's really distressing you then move on to talk about Paris her word is invasion because so much of her story revolves around

the sex tape yeah the sex tape um I think interestingly for Paris herself I don't think the sex tape is kind of her defining trauma because she's now spoken about how many like massively unpleasant experiences she had before she became famous. She was sent away to this incredibly brutal reform school by her parents and has alleged that she was physically and sexually assaulted while she was there. But that's then kind of sort of echoed in her public reception by the fact that as she starts to break through, a sex tape featuring her is leaked into the public sphere.

And Paris never wanted it there. I think, like, having read all the available legal documents about it, like, there's no doubt in my mind that she fought the release of this tape at every possible stage. But the legal situation at the start of the noughties, in the early noughties, when this is happening, is that, you know, legally, there is no effective way to deal with an invasion of privacy like this.

And she's... So eventually she ends up sort of acquiescing to its release. But the public reception of it is that it's treated as if it's something that she must have wanted. Like, you know, she's this bad girl who would do anything for attention. And so she's kind of, you know, there's both pleasure in invading her privacy but people give themselves this alibi that she must have wanted it anyway. You know, I mean, it is that logic, right? Asking for it.

And it's an example of how technology really changed the private and public lives for women in the noughties. 100%. So kind of pre-internet, there's a fairly stable division of the public and private realms. But public and private are concepts that apply really differently for men and women, because men are historically associated with the public public sphere entitled to have a public life for women there's always been this tricky thing to navigate where if you make yourself visible if you you know put yourself in the public realm then you're deemed to be making yourself available in a sexual way right public women is a euphemism for a prostitute um and because the women i write about had all chosen to be seen they'd all pursued careers that involved being looked at to some degree.

There was this public attitude of, well, you want to be seen, so you don't get to say no. You don't get to say at what point the cameras stop. And in some cases, the cameras were, you know, like being aimed directly up their skirts because the paparazzi were that aggressive. Alia's story is different in many ways. Someone who, as you share, publicly groomed, privately abused. Really heartbreaking story. So Alia is a protege of the R&B star R. Kelly. She first starts to achieve success in the late 90s as a teenager.

She's very young. I think she's 14 when she starts recording her first album. And there's always this kind of teasing presentation of their relationship in interviews. Kelly, who was, I think, 12 years older than her, they would be asked if they were cousins or girlfriend and boyfriend. And it was treated as a joke. There was a real and it's very hard to reconstruct now because I think our attitudes towards certainly the sexualisation of girls and age gap relationships more generally have moved on really drastically. There was a huge, much more disapproval of something like that. And I don't think it would fly in the same way that it did at the time. But it was treated as kind of, you know, a naughty thing,

like, you know, an edgy aspect to their relationship. And now we know because Kelly has in fact been convicted of sexual offenses against girls including Aaliyah um the it was a sexually abusive relationship and even though it was presented in the media often as a you know quote-unquote love story between this kind of Romeo and Julia who were tragically sundered by age it wasn't that at all he was abusing girls en. And one of the really sad parts of Aaliyah's story is because she was, you know, publicly, she was the epitome of the aspirational black girl, beautiful, high achieving, and gave every impression of, you know, good behaviour, behavior right i think she was described by one of her um record company

executives as the church girl that you want your your daughter to become but because of that image other parents felt confident in trusting their daughters to r kelly for him to you know cultivate for stardom but actually to sexually abuse enormously upsetting incredibly sad story then we have Kim which I know and I must bring in Kim because she knew how to be famous before she was famous it's almost like she worked the system to her advantage yeah Kim is um fascinating because she's a real entrepreneur of noughties fame and she comes from this background um her mum is christiana who has been working as a manager to kim's stepdad already um her family are close friends this is really important are close friends with oj simpson and his wife nicole brown before simpson

murders her and the whole trial around that. So even when Kim was really young, she'd experienced the most brutal form of celebrity circus because of their exposure to the OJ Simpson trial. And I kind of think if you still want to seek fame once you've experienced something like that, then number one, you have to really want it. And number two, nothing that happens to you is going to take you by surprise. And she has

navigated it exceptionally well and just in case people don't know who i was talking about it is of course the kim kardashian um have things got any better i think it depends on um this is a very mealy-mouthed answer it depends on what you mean by better and where you choose to look i certainly think within mainstream media when i I was researching the book, I would find mainstream coverage of these women that I found intensely shocking, that just seemed so blatantly, you know, slut shaming or body shaming. And not just in the outlets, you would imagine, not just in the sort of supermarket tabloids, or the, you know, dirt dealing blogs, but also in broadsheets and kind of august liberal publications um you would find you know sort of live people journalists live blogging themselves watching Paris Hilton sex

tape and be like my goodness like this can't have been okay but it was okay it was acceptable by the standards of the time that has changed we have a whole vocabulary for talking about the kinds of harms that are done to women you know you can talk about revenge porn we can talk about slut shaming we can talk about grooming and these were not concepts that were like readily available at the start of the period so there has been progress yeah but if you look on social media if you look at for example the treatment of Megan Thee Stallion when she was prosecuting her boyfriend for shooting her in the foot the public attitude that you saw on social media was intensely hostile to her so it's not as if misogyny has gone away, but it's more often moved. Sarah Dytham with your new book, Toxic. Thank you so much for being here in the Woman's Hour

studio. I did at the start of the programme ask you for your tales of love stories, and we've had so many in. I am going to try and squeeze a few in now. Jill says, I married my husband last Thursday. I'm 61. My husband is 65. I've never been married before. My husband was a widow and we've known each other for 17 months and we are perfectly matched souls. We have a complimentary MBTI profiles

and we are so alike and yet so different. Well, congratulations, Jill, on your wedding. And this one says, this is from Hillary. Right now, we are arranging the seating plan for our wedding in December. I'm 64.

My husband-to-be is 79. We've been together for a year and hope for many more, filled with fun and laughter. And we've been together since we got together last Christmas. Well, congratulations.

I hope it is a wonderful wedding, Hilary. I am going to try and pepper in a few more towards the end of the programme. But the reason we're talking about this is because of my next guest, Alison Larkin. She's known on both sides of the Atlantic as the English-American writer and comedian, also the award-winning narrator of more than 250 audiobooks, including the complete novels of Jane Austen. She's also the author of an autobiographical novel about an

adopted English woman who finds her birth mother in the United States. And Alison had avoided love for most of her life. However, in her 50s, she found true love for the first time with an Indian climate scientist who had also immigrated to the US. Sadly, he then passed away. We'll learn about what happened. After 30 years living in America, Alison is currently in the UK to perform her one-woman show, Grief Comedy, which opens at the Soho Theatre in London on Monday. Thanks for being with us, Alison. Oh, it's so lovely to be here. Well, we've been hearing all these wonderful love stories. Can I start by hearing your wonderful love story? Yes. I, as you said, had avoided love all my life, I think, because I was adopted. And

a lot of people who are adopted do what I did, which is to, well, the key to dealing with the fear of abandonment is to date people you don't like. So if they do leave you, it doesn't matter. So I had thought, okay, love is not really going to be for me um i had early childhood abandonment and twin loss which according to um adoption psychology meant that i was doomed so i sort of gave up on it i married a very nice man who didn't speak uh for 20 years but when he lost all our money i found myself on my own in the middle of the countryside with two children. I raised them, but supporting them by narrating Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. And then when they went to college, a friend said, why not online date?

So I tried it and I met, you know, a chap who talked about himself for three hours straight and then told me what a great conversationalist I am. And then I met another guy who literally had scrambled egg in his beard. And I thought this isn't for me either. And then I met Bima, who was the same age as me a little bit younger and for the first time in my life I fell truly in love and I'd always wondered what it was like and I found out you know I used to say we can't be in love because there's no friction and we don't have to negotiate. Too easy. I know, it's not great. And it was an amazing gift. And I had a year and a half with him. And I had quit comedy, I'd quit writing. He and I were off to India and America and England. And then he died very suddenly after a perfect, perfect day. And I found myself

in the pandemic on my own with the cat and the dog. And I remember that I had processed finding my all-American birth mother with my novel, The English American. And I had been friends with Archbishop Desmond Tutu years before. And when I met him years before, we cracked each other up because I did a Margaret Thatcher impression. And the two of us were the master of impressions as we are learning in this very short segment. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, no, I love it. So we'll keep it going. So what happened was, he had said to me, I want you to remember something. I can't control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it. Flip forward 15 years and my beloved Beamer died.

And I remembered what he said. And our mutual friend said, you've got to tell him what happened. And I did. And he then started writing me emails and he said, Alison, you've got to do another show. You've got to do a comedy, write songs, write a book, tell the story. Because I found after he died, that instead of wanting to hide under the bed and never come out again. I wanted to live life and love more fully than ever before. So I had avoided love for 50 years. And because I was afraid of the worst happening. And then when the worst did happen, I found I had this deep sense of joy and I still do. So I wrote a show and I'm doing it at the Soho Theatre on Monday and Wednesday.

You are so invigorated. You're beaming and I can see just how much love you have for Bhima. Well, when somebody you love dies, the body dies, but the love doesn't. And so it's still there. And I also think that when people die there's a shift in energy but I think if you're open to it you can remain connected and so it's been an extraordinary journey and I'm really excited to be back at the Soho Theatre because last time I was there I was doing my show about finding my birth mother and now here I am doing grief for comedy and but there's a lot of humor because he was so funny and I just wanted to share with

people that you know don't be frightened of love because even if the worst happens and if it can happen to me and I can be okay then you can too and I think we get to choose how we spend every day and and the other thing was just the message I got from it was don't waste your time on anything that doesn't matter because it could all be gone tomorrow so there's been this extraordinary journey for me and I'm really excited to be sharing it with audiences and it's wonderful for you to be sharing it with audiences. And it's wonderful for you to be sharing it with us here on Women's Hour. Jackie has said, I have in the last five months reconnected with my first love. We are 65 and 66 respectively. We met at 17 and we were in love,

but circumstances and indecision separated us at 21. We are now both widowed with five grown-up children. We reconnected by email and met two months later. It's been amazing the feelings are still there and our awareness of the fragility of life has made it all the more wonderful and we are planning to marry as soon as we logistically can so with mature spectacles on it can still be rose-tinted that's beautiful I you know what I loved I was listening to what Jill and Hilary yeah and I think yes I know and when

you're older and you have raised your children you are you you want different things and you're actually able as a woman to say well who am I now and often you're very different from how you were as a young woman and also as an older woman at least in in my case, I can say no. So with the online dating, there's a lot of no, thank you very much, no, no, no, no, no. Which I think, by the way, that online dating is a really good thing because you can be intentional about it. And I'm absolutely thrilled to hear this about these two women. And it gives me hope that maybe again one day. I was going to say the hope of finding love again. I'm sure I will. But I feel like I have to complete this show. And there's also a book coming out next

year first. Yeah. And once that's done, perhaps he'll show up. You know, we've been talking about love for the past seven, eight minutes. I need to talk about the actual show. Okay. Grief. Yes. Grief and comedy. You don't associate the two with one another but you've said that um when it comes to a serious subject matter you say people need to be laughing 65% of the time how do you make that happen well it's true that if you want to tell people the truth you make them laugh first or they'll kill you and and I just I I have a a great sense of humor and Bima did as well. And he was so funny. And so I've remembered a lot of our conversations and there's just a lot of humor in it. And I think there's something ironically funny about spending a lifetime avoiding love because you're afraid of it. then the worst happening and then finding that you want to live more fully than ever before. That is, it's joyful. And one thing I can say is that people who come will feel a lot better when they leave from when they came in.

It's not a downer. I don't think loss has to be. That doesn't mean you're in denial. I think I got very lucky during the pandemic. I had no choice but to grieve him solo for a long time. But once that period was over, there was this extraordinary energy and it's still there. And it was, oh my goodness, this life is so precious.

Don't waste it. And so if you meet a guy online and you don't really like him nope next that's what i would say yeah and i want to rewind desmond tutu how on earth did you meet desmond tutu i believe uh you've done many impersonations for him i would never do him not of him for no but he you know i him because I was, a friend of mine called Karen Hayes was making a documentary about him. And she invited me to dinner, to a lunch in New York. And he was sitting at the end of the table. And there were these two very impressive young men talking about themselves. And I'm right at the end of the table. And suddenly Tutu stops the conversation.

And he says, I did not win the Nobel Peace Prize to listen to you two talking about yourselves because you think I might be good for your career while you completely ignore the young woman at the end of the table. Alison tell us about you and I said well I was adopted I found my birth parents in America and now I'm a stand-up comic and he said did you have a good adoption and and I said well well, yes, I got very lucky. But then again, if I'd been married to... But then again, if I'd been adopted by Mia Farrow today, I could be married to Woody Allen.

And he cracked up and then asked me to join him for two days and he would make me sit opposite him because I would become Margaret Thatcher. And he, of course, was Desmond Tutu because he was Desmond Tutu and we'd have these political discussions and he we just were on the same role play it was you know he needed a little help but we had a blast and we got on same sense of humor and then that was how I met him and that's how the seeds of this grief of comedy were planted yes and it was him really pushing me i said i don't really want to write again he said no you have to because most people would condemn themselves to a life of despair

after this happening but you have found a way to find the joy in the midst of the suffering and this is something the world needs right now and you can't say no to archbishop Desmond Tutu. So I didn't. You didn't indeed. You're now back in London and you've said that there's so much about London that you missed. What was it that you missed and how are you finding it? Well, the people. I live in a very small rural town in New England

where the average age is 75. So I really love seeing all these young people around, the energy, the rain. And actually I'm starting to... The rain people around the energy the rain and actually I'm starting the rain the rain well you know I hate to say it we have it snow right now back home but although I do like that but we start rehearsals at the Soho Theatre actually as soon as I'm done with you I'm going down there well we will let you go because your comedy it opens grief a comedy rather opens at the Soho theater in london on monday the 6th and it runs until wednesday the 8th such a pleasure to have you on oh thank you so much and thank you to

all of you who have been messaging in with your messages and i want to share a few of them before we wrap up the program francis says i met the love of my life at 65 and got married for the first time at 70 the difference was i'd had a great life as an independent woman, a very successful career and discovered how wonderful a grown up relationship could be. We're happy for you, Frances. And then I can see Alison nodding there as well. And this one, I fell in love later in life. I am 53 and it has been wonderful and unexpected and awakening. Again, what Alison was sharing with us as well.

Unfortunately, I am married to someone else and have been since I was in my 20s. I have not had the courage to leave my marriage. I have had younger children. And so it has been desperately painful and I feel awful guilt. But to meet someone who saw me so completely and who I adored at this stage of my life, who I didn't realize I was missing something has been beautiful and I don't regret it just shows how very complex love can be and Trisha says I worked all my adult life and couldn't seem to find anyone to settle down with I have

given myself until the age of 42 to find someone and then I just gave up and enjoyed life and when my mum died in 2007 I decided to go to a residential course in Scotland. And I arrived in a taxi. And it looks like she fell in love. I'm going to have to wrap up soon, but I'm very happy for you, Tricia. Thank you for joining us here on Woman's Hour. Thanks for listening. There's plenty more from Woman's Hour over at BBC Sounds. From BBC Radio 4.

Life can be unexpected. It was big. This was not a wind. This was not a storm. This was a tsunami. But when confronted with change, humans are remarkably resilient. I knew in that moment as I fell to the ground that I would recover more. I'm Dr Sian Williams, psychologist and presenter of Life Changing, the programme that speaks to people whose worlds have been flipped upside down and transformed in a moment. If I had to live my life again, would I ever want to go through what I went through?

There's a very simple answer to that. I would go through it again. Subscribe to Life Changing on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, on BBC Sounds. more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.