Woman's Hour - Cush Jumbo, Author Kate Mosse, Sue Gray quits, Women in business

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

The Prime Minister's chief of staff Sue Gray has left her post and has been replaced by Morgan McSweeney. It's led some papers to claim "the lads have won this round". To discuss, Nuala McGovern is joined by Caroline Slocock, former civil servant and author of Margaret Thatcher and Me, which reflects on women and power. Actor Cush Jumbo has reprised the role of Lady Macbeth alongside David Tennant in Macbeth which has just transferred to the Harold Pinter theatre in London. She joins Nuala to discuss how she is approaching one of Shakespeare’s most famous female characters. A recent government survey showed a sharp decline in the number of female-led businesses. Last year, only 15% of businesses employing fewer than 250 people were owned or led by women, down from 18% in 2022. Debbie Wosskow, serial entrepreneur and co-chair of the Invest in Women Taskforce, joins Nuala. Kate Mosse is soon to release The Map of Bones, the fourth and final instalment in her series of novels The Joubert Family Chronicles, which begin in 1562 and follow a persecuted Huguenot family, charting generations of courageous and resilient women. Adventurer Elise Wortley is following in the footsteps of forgotten female explorers… all whilst wearing the same, historically accurate clothing. She joins Nuala to tell her more about her mission. Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Emma Pearce

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 Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. Well, this hour we have the actor Kush Jumbo who is playing Lady Macbeth. What a role. Now when I went to a performance last week, it began, as my day here often does, by putting on a pair of headphones. So we're going to chat about the binaural technology employed.

It is something quite special, particularly for radio lovers. We also have the novelist Kate Moss. Kate has a new book, The Map of Bones. It's a sprawling epic of women adventurers over centuries that take us around the globe. And I'm looking forward to hearing about how she researched the journeys of her protagonists to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. We also have another adventurer on the programme, Elise Worthley. She has retraced the steps of female explorers. And I am expecting Elise in studio in full hiking gear that was worn by women in the 19th century.

Yes, I am expecting a bonnet and taking risks of another kind. We'll hear from Debbie Wasco, serial entrepreneur and co-chair of the Invest in Women Task Force. She is working to make the UK the best place in the world to be a female entrepreneur. Now, what might that take? Well, you may have personal experience of starting a business,

keeping a business going, or having perhaps to let it go when it became just impossible to continue. Whatever it was, whatever it is, I'd like to hear your stories,

the successes, the challenges. You can text the programme. The number is 84844. On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email us through our website. For WhatsApp, a message or voice note,

the number is 03700 100 444. But let us begin with Sue Gray. Sue Gray ousted as PM wields the knife. So says the front page of the Daily Telegraph this morning. It refers to a power struggle at the heart of government As PM wields the knife, so says the front page of the Daily Telegraph this morning. It refers to a power struggle at the heart of government as the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff has left her position. Until now, she was the most senior woman in Downing Street and she has been replaced by Morgan McSweeney.

He's a long-standing Labour insider who ran the recent election campaign. Sue Gray, a former civil servant, became a household name, you may remember, following her investigations into so-called Partygate. election campaign. Sue Gray, a former civil servant, became a household name, you may remember, following her investigations into so-called Partygate. She had become an increasingly divisive figure, with some accusing her of control freakery, that's a quote, while others say she'd been victim of a coup. The Guardian's Pippa Greer said, once she became the story, it was clear she had to go. Well, joining me to discuss this is the former civil servant, Caroline Slowcock. And Caroline was the first female private secretary to a British prime minister when she served alongside Margaret Thatcher. You're very welcome to the programme. I'd be curious for your thoughts on that line. Once Sue Gray became the story,

it was clear she had to go. Do you agree with that? Well, it's a cliche, isn't it? But I think that the trouble was that it's not just that she was the story. The story seemed to be about dysfunction in number 10. And that's something you just can't allow to happen. And probably, you know, this needed to be resolved. Whether getting rid of her was the resolution of it, I don't know. But we will see on that. I mean, was it fair, I suppose, is that question about her going? How do you understand her becoming the story? Well, what I've been reading, I'm sure others have as well,

is lots of briefing against her, lots of leaking of stories, even photographs, which I think is astonishing coming from number 10. I mean, normally the loyalty inside number 10 is huge. clearly when it's functioning well it's got a massive job and it's entirely focused on that job so I think the problem is infighting and clearly you know heads had to roll I suppose and it turned out to be hers but it's an interesting story really about whether the kind of political now so the political savvy of, you know, the man who's taken over from her, Morgan McSweeney, is really what's needed or whether there's something deeper going on. And I tend to the latter. I think there are sort of structural issues about government, really. So explain that a little bit further. And I want to come back to the loyalty question in a moment. But what's the structural issue then, as you understand it? Well, you know, I think that government has

become ever more centralised. You know, since I worked in number 10, I was, you know, staff of about 100. You know, it's more than double that now. And huge numbers of people taking decisions or trying to take decisions or get decisions through the prime minister which would be better devolved and if you're going to deliver then you know you need you can't do it from you know a small you know place in in the centre of government you have to actually work with others and it starts by delegating to your ministers and then delegating further to others. So a couple of issues. That central core that you're talking about, I mean, some are saying she was a victim of a coup. What do you make of that statement? Well, I suspect it's true. I suspect the infighting between Morgan McSweeney and her is real.

These stories tend to be real when they get out into the media so uh he won she lost with that line i mean i i'm coming to the papers but as you will see it is splashed all over them and no matter which um when you pick up and a line was the lads have clearly won this round you talk about morgan mcsweeney there but do you see it this way? She has been replaced by him. Is gender relevant? I think it probably is. But it's not the only issue. So I think Sue Gray has had a target on her back ever since Partygate. And it's rare to see a powerful woman in her 60s in a role like that. So, you know, I think people have been out to get her. You know, I think there might be an element of misogyny here.

I also think that we hear that the female senior ministers really liked her. People like the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner. They liked her emotional intelligence and they liked the fact they could get a word with the prime minister. You know, it'll be interesting to see whether the boys club works as well with the women who are very important in government. And my suspicion actually is keir starmer is a man who likes working with women you know he feels comfortable with when you when you see him you know with rachel reeves and angela rayner he always looks you know in tune so we'll we'll see how that plays out but i don't you know whether the number 10 needs more politics or whether it actually needs more strategy, you know, that's something I would say, you know, is one of the issues here. Politics may not be the answer. You know, I'm struck that you say she was a woman

of high emotional intelligence, but that can't save you inside number 10? Well, clearly not. It can be very useful slide number 10, because a lot of it is about relationships. But that relationship appears to have gone very sour with the man who's taken over her job. I don't know what's really going on there. But, you know, she is the one who's carrying the can. And I think it would be very interesting to hear from her, because I noticed all the briefings against her. She wasn't leaking. She wasn't briefing against others. She was being loyal. And she's a woman with a story, quite a big story, actually, I think, you know, Partygate being part of it. But also, you know, her whole career, I think, is going to be fascinating when she finally gets Ryan to writing a memoir. And I hope she comes on Woman's Hour to talk about it. Do you think she would have faced as much criticism if she were a man? I don't think so. You know, I don't think she's a

Dominic Cummings, you know, who obviously, you know, ruffled everyone up the wrong way and was incredibly sort of, you know, contentious and aggressive in governments. You know, it seems to me that she was getting on with her job. She might not have been the right person. You know, I don't know. I don't, I'm not close enough to know about that. But I think getting in a civil servant wasn't a bad move.

Remember Jonathan Powell, who was the chief of staff in Tony Blair's government for, I don't know, an awfully long time and very effective. He was a former civil servant, a former diplomat, and he really did a very good job.

And, you know, she hasn't really been given the chance. I think she's been, and he really did a very good job. And, you know, she hasn't really been given the chance. I think she's been, the problem is it's been sleaze. That has been one of the problems. There's been a very strong point about restoring trust and the sleaze story is drip, drip, drip. They haven't got a grip on it. And that's partly politics, but it's also that they need to get on with their new independent ethics and integrity commission to look at the standards and make sure that they're actually right. Because I think that, you know, until they do that, make that strategic move, the stories will keep coming.

Just before I let you go, I was struck that you expect a level of loyalty within number 10, when I would say, you know, looking at recent years, and indeed you were working alongside Margaret Thatcher. I'm surprised you still have that faith. Yeah, well, we haven't seen a lot of loyalty in recent years. You know, we've seen a lot of dysfunction in Number 10, we've got rather used to hearing about it. When I was working for Margaret Thatcher, I was a civil servant, you know, I didn't vote conservative, you know, I wasn't a political ally. But I was absolutely focused and determined to deliver what she wanted because that's what

civil servants do but also she had a clear vision you knew what she was about you knew what she thought and I'm not sure the government's established that clear vision and you really need it because once you've got that then people just get on with the job and there's a big task for the new government to do obviously massive. Caroline Slowcock thank you very much first female private secretary to a British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as we were talking about there and just to also

let you know with Sue Gray she's going to take up a part time position of being the Prime Minister's envoy for regions and nations right let me move on

to my next guest a star of the stage and also on screen Kush Jumbo she has returned to a role of Lady Macbeth alongside David Tennant

in Macbeth I'm allowed to say that which has returned to a role of Lady Macbeth alongside David Tennant in Macbeth, I'm allowed to say that, which has transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. Alongside that, she has found the time to launch her own podcast, Origins with Cush Jumbo, as well as come on to Women's Hour to speak to us. Good morning, Cush. Good to have you with us. Good morning, Nuala. How are you? Very well. Very well. I went to see the play last week. So dramatic. Pardon?

Could you sleep afterwards? Do you know what? When we were leaving the theatre, my pal turned around to me and she said, we're going to have nightmares tonight. Oh, good. We were all sick of that. Exactly. Mission accomplished. It is, oh my God, It's so all consuming, so dramatic, really from the very first moment. And I was mentioning to our listeners that, you know, one of the first things that I noticed when I got there, this air of excitement that's bubbling up.

But then it was like, oh, there's headphones here. What's this all about? And each of us put on our headphones dutifully. But it brings us into a realm that I haven't been in, in a theatre before. Do you want to explain a little bit, Kush, of what's happening? Yeah, so we did this show last year at the Donmar originally. And part of what drew myself and david tennant to the project was going to be the use of this binaural um sound which sounds very complicated

scientific but essentially just means that we're able to record sound a sound landscape for the show that comes through the headphones for the audience you wear them the whole show and it makes you feel as if the sound is all around you. So a witch, one of the witches can whisper into your right ear and you will hear it in your right ear. Someone might try and breathe on the back of your neck. You might feel like there's birds above your head. So it kind of gives you a 3D experience of the show

whilst also just hearing us speak normally as we would be on stage and um we were very excited about this idea because we along with the director max webster were really interested in exploring what it is for macbeth to be returning from war and experiencing ptsd and what it is for lady macbeth to be um going through her own trauma with the loss of a child and what does it mean to have scorpions in your mind, which is one of his really famous lines. So we were like, oh, how are we going to do that to an audience? Because three witches hobbling around isn't that scary, but somebody talking when you don't know where they are,

that's scary. It's so intimate. I guess I felt like I was the only person in the theatre, in a way, because you're so in my ears as well as in my vision. I loved it. I loved it. But let's talk about playing Lady Macbeth again to a new audience. You talked about a transferring from the Donmar. How's it been? It's been amazing. It's quite a thing to go from the Donmar, which is essentially quite a contemporary space on three sides, 300 seats, to a 900 seats, very old Victorian theatre.

And what I really loved about the headphones is that, unlike usual, you could be in the cheapest seat in this house, meaning the very back, the very top, the nosebleed, as if you will, which is where I used to watch plays from when I was a student, and be having the same audio to come back and do her again. I don't remount very many things because I'm actually usually done with a character. I'm like, I'm ready to move on. I found it really, it's been a real joy to play her, if that doesn't sound too weird with her being the character everybody thinks she is, because I have a lot of compassion for her as a character. When you last came on the programme, you said you wanted to approach her with compassion and as a woman who has lost a child. How do you do that?

Well, you look at the facts. I mean, when you play a character, it doesn't matter whether you're playing a serial killer or an angel, you don't judge them you play them uh from their logic and so i just looked at the facts and the facts to me were she's a woman was very happily married husbands have been away a long time and everybody in her vicinity is having kids and everybody in her vicinity is having kids the same age and she had one and she lost them having breastfed them. And I wondered what that would be like. And I also thought a lot about a woman who is immensely intelligent and full of ideas and ambition. But it lives in a world where she isn't allowed to express any of it unless it's

through a partner and how frustrating that would be how that might be like being a tiger pacing a cage for your whole life and what that does to a person and I didn't think that any of those ideas were that um unusual or difficult to understand um and I think that's why, essentially, she's written so brilliantly. I think if you took away the Lady Macbeth part of her name, the way Shakespeare writes her, he writes her very male, and a lot of her speeches are kind of phenomenal and her dialogue's phenomenal. So, yeah, that's how you approach it.

I mean, she's just so exciting to play. You know, I was wondering on that thought of, you know, never judging the character, whatever crime they might have committed. Are you like that in real life when you read about stories? What do I, I was going to say, do I hang out with serial killers? No, in the sense, do you try and understand them? People? Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, definitely. no in the sense do you try and understand them um people yeah absolutely yeah definitely I'm very um I'm very inquisitive I always have been I'm very nosy I'm very inquisitive I think that's probably why I've ended up doing the podcast I like to listen to people like to ask people and I like to observe like why people behave the way they behave. I know that

for myself I'm a lot more on the inside than I am on the outside and just because I present a certain way doesn't mean that's how I'm feeling. So knowing that means that I'm always looking for what's beyond someone's initial representation of themselves. I saw you call yourself a magical thinker explain that a little bit um I don't think I've ever thought about the world as an impossible place I don't remember a time in my life where I um wasn't imagining where I could be what what I could be doing, how it could be better. It might be because I grew up in a little bit of chaos, or it might be because I just had a large imagination. But I'm a kind of a, I'm a possible thinker. So I believe that magical things happen, by which I don't mean everyone's walking around with a wand. But I do think that my

imagination means I look at the world in a slightly different way. It's so interesting that you think perhaps that came from chaos. I was listening to some of your podcast of origins with Julianne Margulies, who of course is your co-star in The Good Wife. And she talked about that as well. I mean, both of you talking about that chaos,

but the creativity and beauty, really, and amazement that can come from that upbringing, which may not be what you expect. Yes, and I think that's one of the things I've discovered doing the podcast with some of these amazing people is the whole reason I wanted to do it was that I felt that many of the narratives we get told about celebrities or special people is all to do with them becoming famous, their big break, what they do when they

did it, as opposed to what the small jigsaw pieces are that equal why you did what you did. And Juliana talks beautifully about how she actually grew up a chunk of her childhood in in West Sussex in England and and how she was always imagining what her growing up apartment would be and then it would be so clean and it would be so white and everything would be so simple because she lives in so much chaos and I think a lot of creatives because we interview actors and musicians and models and all kinds of people writers it's fascinating to hear why some people's brains um choose to operate in that creative way where that where that drives them to um so yeah coming back to macbeth you studied Macbeth at school, as did I, but you didn't like it.

What turned that around? What turned it around? Well, yeah, I didn't like it. I now realise it was because Shakespeare is not written to be read. It's written to be played. So you put a bunch of 14-year-olds in a room and start talking about, you know, three witches on a cold heat and no one's interested, everyone thinking about where they're going to club at the weekend I think that um uh what turned it around

for me was most definitely going I went to the Brit school in Croydon when I was 14 and we had teachers there who were kind of um they were they were practitioners they'd been out in the business they knew about text and uh they introduced Shakespeare to me in a way that I just had this massive epiphany that he essentially was writing Hollyoaks and that every single narrative I understood I understood ambition I understood rage I understood war I understood love and all these things and that that and that he was writing for me. He wasn't writing for some kind of very smart, elitist kind of crowd that I couldn't belong to. He was writing for everybody.

And once I kind of made that connection, I just absolutely fell in love with it. And so that's why it's such a joy playing any Shakespeare, but playing this Macbeth and talking to the amount of people under 20 that show up to tell you that they are reading all this Shakespeare now and it's just like blown their minds or people that wrote to me this year to say they brought their kids to see it last year and they all got like amazing grades in their GCSEs they finally understood that is that what That's a great legacy for it I also read that you said you'd be glad when you leave your 30s behind

I understand you're 39 Why is that? I'm a forward motion person I'm getting that feeling I always think it's really interesting in interviews you know like when you read magazine articles and they always go gosh 37 or they go Sarah 24 I always think it's really interesting in interviews, you know, like when you read magazine articles and they always go, gosh, 37.

Or they go, Sarah, 24. Because, you know, of course, it's really important that we all know how old this woman is, you know, whether she's past it or not. I think it's because I'm a person who's always been a maker. I've done a lot of acting, but I write and I produce and I make things and in my 20s I feel like it took me a really long time to walk into a room and to get anybody to take me seriously and to believe in an idea that I had um and uh I have only really just started getting to the point where people actually realize how old I am and um will take seriously what I say I also think you do so much emotional growing in your 30s and I don't say I want to leave it behind because anything bad happened

I say I want to leave it behind because I can't wait for the next thing I can't wait for all the extra knowledge and the extra emotional intelligence and the extra bits of like becoming more and more firmly a happy woman within yourself. And I don't believe that's backwards. I believe that's forwards with all of its stuff, with all of its growing older and its wrinkles and its everything. Let us leave it there. Kush Jumbo, the amazing lady, Macbeth,

and Macbeth, which is at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London until the 14th of December. Cush do you call it the Scottish play? No don't believe in bad luck So some actors are superstitious about naming Macbeth as Macbeth. Thank you very much and it's on until the 14th

of December. Now I want to move on to business. There is a very clear goal for the Invest in Women Task Force. It aims to make the UK the best place in the world to be a female entrepreneur. So this task force,

it's industry and government backed. It's going to create one of the largest investment funding pots in the world £250 million to back female entrepreneurs and it comes

as a recent government survey showed a sharp decline in the number of female led businesses last year only 15% of businesses employing fewer than

250 people were owned or led by women and that 15% is down from 18% in 2022.

Let's talk about it all with Debbie Wasco, serial entrepreneur and co-chair of the Investing Women Task Force. You're very welcome to Women's Hour. I'd be curious, Debbie, how you felt when you saw the results of that survey. I'm a bit depressed, but not surprised. Thanks for having me on, Nuala.

So I'm 25 years into my entrepreneurial career. I've built and exited three businesses and I'm 50 this year. So I started out in this when I was 25. And let's be clear, the stats around women raising capital in the UK have remained pretty flat around the 2% mark for as long as I have been in business. Actually, what we need to be aware of is it is getting worse, not better. So in the first half of 2024, of the £8 billion of equity investment in the UK, 1.8% went to all female teams compared to 86% to all male teams. I'm going to let that one sit, which by the way, in 2023 was 80%. So it is getting worse and not better. So why? Why? Why? It's due to several factors. So the thing that I'm extremely focused on is just 11% of senior investment roles in the UK are held by women.

So Nuala, we are not at the table in terms of investing capital. Women are pitching for money, but they're not getting through to the stage of being invested in. And the Investing Women Taskforce is focused on creating a generational shift in the way that investment is allocated. Because my thesis is this, Nuala. If we can invest in female investors, then we are creating an opportunity for women to bat women. Because by the way, female investors are twice as likely to invest in a female entrepreneur as a man. So let's talk about the investors, if we're going kind of top down. How do you create more female investors? Who are they? Yes, that's a great question. So the focus of the task force,

which I co-chair, is to create the biggest funding pot in the world of 250 million to back female investors. So that's the really critical point. So to all the female entrepreneurs listening, I'm here, come and find me, but I'm not here to invest directly in you. The task force funding pot is here to invest in female investors. So the good news is there are them around. There are more women than ever starting venture capital funds. And what we need to be is an international beacon for great female investors. The way that you do that, Nuala, is through carrot and not just stick, right? You have to create incentive. What we're talking about here, by the way, is great financial returns, because the killer stat in this is that women-led businesses deliver 35% better returns than male-led

businesses. So if you can park purpose for a second, this is a great untapped financial opportunity. And at a moment where in the life cycle of UK PLC, we need reasons to be cheerful, if women founded businesses at the same rate as men, that would deliver an extra 250 billion to the UK economy. So for female investors listening, come to the UK. If you're raising money in the UK, then put your hand up and there is capital available for you to deploy in backing women-led businesses and mixed teams. So, Nuala, we're not anti-men, but what we're not here to support is the vast majority of venture capital in the UK being invested in a business that does not have a senior woman within the organisation.

But that's interesting. You're calling globally there, Debbie, for people to come and be investors in the UK to then pull up the female entrepreneurs. But I'm just thinking about venture capital companies, for example. How do you have more that are female-led within the UK? I mean, where does it start? I'm just thinking of the pipeline. Yeah, it's a great question. And, there is no magic bullet, Nuala. So, of course, it starts young. You know, we know that young girls and women need to talk about money. They need to get rich and they need to deploy their capital in backing other women. And this isn't something that women have traditionally done in the UK. We need to get better at it. We cannot be in a situation where less than 2% of capital is being invested in female entrepreneurs,

the female investors are there. But to get technical for a second, Nuala, the bane of anyone's existence in this industry is raising money, right? Whether you're a female entrepreneur or a female investor. So by creating a funding pot, and the money is going to come from the pension funds that have signed up to the Mansion House Compact, the investment banks, and I co-chair the task force with the excellent Hannah Bernard of Barclays, as well as British Business Bank, the ask of them is to back women, because female investors are twice as likely to back a woman as a male investor, and because it makes great business sense. But there aren't enough of them at the moment. You would describe yourself as a prolific angel investor.

Yes. And I'm just thinking about your journey because, I mean, you started as an entrepreneur. You were 15 years old, as I understand it, starting a scrunchie business. Yes, it was the 80s, Nuala.

Although they're back. They're back. I was just wondering, did you invest? Is your hand behind the re-emergence of the scrunchie? But for you, I suppose you've had that route of being an entrepreneur, being an investor. Is that where investors can come from?

Often. And actually, if I think about things that the UK could do better, Nuala, If you look to the US, more than 60% of investors in the US are ex-operators, i.e. they've been entrepreneurs. But I think as we're entering an era where women like me are aging up, I'm 50 now, then I think giving back, not just in a charitable way, but in a way where we deploy our money, we talk about our money, and we use it to back the next generation of female entrepreneurs. But I tell you, it doesn't get any easier. So at the moment, I exec chair a business called the Better Menopause, which is focused on supporting women in midlife. And it's a science about supplements business. And when raising money for that business, I spent a lot of time in rooms with men, asking them for money whilst talking about the 48

menopause symptoms of which hot flushes and brain fog are two of the printable ones, right? A reason for my career success is that I'm good at asking men for money. And that shouldn't be the case. Businesses like the Better Menopause, businesses that target women, which, by the way, are often the businesses that women found. So it tends to be the case, not always the businesses that women found. So it tends to be the case, not always, but that we found businesses that solve problems for women. And we know that female investors are more likely to back them. So I've always put my money where my mouth is,

whether it's backing people like Grace Beverly, young entrepreneurs, Hannah Chappette at Hyber, the great next generation. And I think more women need to do that. But we need to do it institutionally. We need to do it bigger. And Grace Beverly has been on the programme as well. Here's a message that came in. I'm a woman who founded a femtech company and we're raising money at the moment. Investment decisions are more likely to be made by a man called Dave rather than any woman. Women like me have the ambition to grow, exit and become investors of the future. But it's a catch-22. If we can't grow our businesses, we can exit and become investors of the future. But it's a catch 22. If we can't grow our businesses, we can't be the investors of the future. And that's Sam getting in touch from Cornwall. I hear her. I hear her. And that's why this new list. So she is absolutely

right that for businesses that are femtech businesses, you are pitching to men for money. Now, it doesn't mean to say that there aren't great male allies and male champions out there. Predominantly through my career, I have raised money for men. But we know that we need more women backing women. And that is why the Investing Women Task Force will create the biggest funding pot to put money in the hands of more female investors to back female entrepreneurs. When will that be there? Watch this space. But I am hopeful. You know, what is also important, Nuala, is we have our first female chancellor. And wherever you sit politically, I think that's a moment. I hosted

an event with her at Number 11 a few weeks ago. And my opening line was, never has the reception area of Number 11 down the street seen so many handbags, right? It's unusual in walking the line between business and politics as I have in my career to have seen that happen. So watch this space. We're looking at an announcement in the next week. Do you think it really makes a difference that she's a woman? Yeah. Why?

I do. Because I think that these issues are front and centre in her manifesto. And I know that's the case, Nina, because one of the first things that she's done since she's been in office is announce her stewardship of the Investing Women Taskforce. I think the personnel is political for her and I do think it makes a difference. The government is to publish its employment rights bill this week, described as a once in a generation overhaul of workers' rights in an attempt to give people greater security. It's been reported it will include granting sick pay, maternity pay and protection against unfair dismissal on the first day in the job. How do you perceive the impact of that on small businesses as we go back to the entrepreneur?

Look, it's complex. It is complex. And I come off the back of my last business, Albright, which had an almost exclusively female workforce. And these things are incredible, but complicated in equal measure. And I think the dance is always between protecting the employee, which is important. I know in my life as an investor, in my life as an entrepreneur, as exec chair of the Better Menopause, that supporting women through the different stages of their journey matters. What I do know is that 25% of women in midlife want to leave the workforce because of their menopause

symptoms and 10% actually are, right? So we need to make sure that those women aren't doing that. The balance is, with my entrepreneurial hat on, this stuff is hard, you know, like it's super hard to take something from being an idea to being a business that raises capital and scales. And you don't always get it right. You know, I've made tons of mistakes. Is it a clash? Is it diametrically opposed, encouraging female entrepreneurs and giving employees more rights? I think it's a dance would be where I would sit, Nuala. I think it's a complicated conversation. And I think we wear different hats at different times. I think that we, as female founders,

we've got responsibility. I think we find it easier to put ourselves in other women's shoes because we are women. And us founders, we need to go fast and break things, right? It's difficult. Another response the government had to the Rose Review was to double the number of female entrepreneurs in the UK by 2030. Do you think that's very unlikely now?

I mean, look, we've got a lot to do. I'm going to be honest about that because I think that the point for me and the reason that I'm the co-chair of the Investing Women Task Force is that women, even when they're founding businesses and there are green shoots, you know, and those green shoots are 16 to 24 year old women, so slightly older than my own daughter, are starting businesses. I think that's because they feel more comfortable with entrepreneurialism, whether that's because they're selling stuff on Depop or they're working on their Snapchat, right? That's good news. I think we also see a flurry of women getting started in midlife, businesses like the Better Menopause.

You know, that's great. I think that we're ageing up and thinking, do you know what? I want to do it for myself. Also great. But these women are not yet getting back and they're not investing. I think if we can solve for that, 2030 looks doable, but we need to get on with it. Right. So it's up at the top.

Really interesting. Debbie Wasco, serial entrepreneur and co-chair of the Invest in Women Task Force. Also grew up in a vast, sprawling matriarchy, I read. So nice to have you on. How about doing Lavenoche? Oh my God, that was a real girl crush there. Thank you very much for speaking to me. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year,

I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. Now, I want to move on to the renowned author, Kate Moss, who is sitting opposite me in Studio ATA. She has written hugely successful novels and plays. And last year, she went on tour with a one-woman show

that accompanied her book Warrior Queens and also Quiet Revolutionaries. Kate co-founded the Women's Prize for Fiction nearly 30 years ago now. And she's here to talk about the fourth and final instalment in her series of novels known as the Joubert Family Chronicles. They begin in 1562 and follow a persecuted Huguenot family charting generations of courageous and resilient women. The Map of Bones is the book and it tells the story of Suzanne Joubert, who ventures from France to South Africa, not just to escape violence,

but also to investigate the fate of her intrepid ancestor, Louise. Welcome, Kate, or welcome back, should I say. Welcome back. It's lovely to be here. And Debbie Wasco is actually a board member of the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Nonfiction. So we're doing very well this morning, clearly. Well, wonderful to have both of you on. Let us talk a little bit about the Huguenots.

I loved this. I had this on holiday, your book. Thank you. Which accompanied me. It was just this wonderful tale. Talked about her vast, sprawling matriarchy of Debbie. Well, this was a vast, sprawling epic going through courageous women. What inspired you to write about the Huguenots?

They're not that well-known, perhaps, the history. No, not at all. I mean, the English Huguenot story is known a bit, of course, but my journey with this started in a graveyard in Franschhoek in southern Africa 12 years ago. This is why publishing The Map of Bones feels like the end of an era. I've been dreaming this and thinking about it and these characters for 12 years.

And I went to this tiny town, Franschhoek, which is in the Western Cape. You know, it's great research. It's the wine land. It's beautiful. Ladies, anybody who's listening to this. And I stumbled upon this piece of Huguenot history, which I didn't know.

You know, other people, of course, would have known, which was in a not entirely, but in no short measure. The South African wine industry was founded on the shoulders of about 400 impoverished, traumatized Huguenot refugees who had found their way there in 1688. You know, fleeing persecution, just wanting somewhere safe to lay their heads. And this kind of blew my mind. And I could see French names were everywhere. But of course, learning the history doesn't make a novel. And then I went into the Huguenot graveyard, which is by the museum, and I looked at the mountains around and I thought they look like the mountains of southwest France. Just imagine if you'd grown up in a family and hearing your mother and grandmother and great grandmother, all of women, going back to the beginning of the wars of religion

in 1562 in France, which had destroyed your family and destroyed your country, and you'd been told about this place you'd never seen. Then you got to the other side of the world and it looked like it could be home. And then I had this image of a woman in a graveyard, that graveyard in the 19th century, so later, leaning forward and rubbing the light shone off a gravestone to see who was buried there. And finally,

in the map of bones, I discovered who that woman was and who's buried in the ground. And that's how fiction works for me. It's taken me all this time to write back to that moment. That's so interesting. So you kind of started at that end point, shall we say, in the book, no spoilers, but then worked your way back to who her ancestors would have been. Yeah. And because the thing is, you've just got to trust your instinct as a novelist. And I've been at it long enough to do that now. So I know the history. I've done the research. I know I'm going to tell 300 years of history, the four books. It's a Romeo and Juliet story, a Catholic family and a Protestant family, their enemies going through the generations, through France, Amsterdam, Canary Islands, finally to South Africa.

The whole of this book pretty much is set in South Africa in the 17th century, in the 19th century. And once I've done that research and I know the sort of story I want to tell and it's a story of pioneering women, it's a story about the power of words and women writing their stories down otherwise they disappear and the power of family, within family women supporting each other and looking out for each other and then I start writing and I see where I end up and the map of bones is the end of that eight years of thinking and the 12 years of dreaming about these stories. There is also, of course, these tiny details,

which are amazing, that create, that bring us there, shall I say, into that time, particularly for the role of women or where there was an absence of women and also how a family history is told or remembered. Yes, and the thing is that, you know, I do work with Find My Past and there were 38 million women missing from family trees. I know 30. I know if you could see if you, you know, you're looking astonished and it is astonishing. And that's because we know they were there because they were children.

But the deeds of the farm or whatever in man's name. So it's man, you know, John Smith, let's say, plus a woman, you know, her name's gone. And so for me, writing this story is all about that, that if women are not allowed to write, they can't tell their own stories. Then we all vanish from the record book. And that's what Suzanne Joubert in the 17th century in The Map of Bones and then Isabelle Lepard Joubert in the 19th century. You know, Isabelle is a lady explorer and she is a writer. And she has decided that what she will do is write the Joubert family chronicles. You know, we get back to the starting point of the whole series. She's writing the women's stories down.

And both of them have chosen to not be wives and not have children but to bear witness to women's stories and it was why it was very emotional writing this I it's only the second time it's happened my whole career when I was writing the end of the map of bones because it is the end of an era for me all this time I had a bit of a tear in my own eye and I've been really pleased not many people have read it's out on Thursday but so far people go, I was quite emotional at the end, Kate. And I was like, yes, that's what I want.

Because it's an adventure thriller. But I do at the end, that resting point of we have come to the end of this story of amazing women. I went to the hairdressers in Spain when I was there. And the hairdresser, I don't speak Spanish that well, but she was so excited to see

that I had a copy of the next Kate Moss book. So I thought that was lovely as well. She was very, very interested in what it was all about. So obviously it goes global, as we know. But what about, I was just wondering, you know, what about your own family? Do you know all the details of your family history? Well, in my feminist history book, Warrior Queens, I used the background of my own great-grandmother as an example of how even really well-known women

disappear from the history books. And then I discovered at the age of 60, and this is only like three years ago, that I did have Huguenot ancestry. So I hadn't even known that when I started this story, for example. But I have quite a bit of information about my own family. And I like that. You know, the first thing I ever knew that I was told was that there was a secret.

I don't know if this is actually true, of course. Secret clause in a will that if you were named Catherine, which I am, spelt K-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E. Oh. Then exactly. Then this piece ofery would come to you my parents claimed they had no idea of this and I'm sure they didn't

and sure enough after I had been born I was born very prematurely and it was a bit touch and go but once it was clear I was going to make it this package arrived of these

I know and I don't wear jewellery at all so it's a terrible terrible waste but I so I am interested in family histories because often... Arrive from where? Arrive from the last person who'd been called Catherine in the most family.

With that spelling. With that spelling, left to the next person called Catherine. And so it has jumped generations. What is it? It's a pair of diamond and emerald screw-in, because they're very old, earrings and a matching pendant. How beautiful. I know. They are beautiful and I look at them. It's just I'm not a jewellery person, so I don't wear them. But in a funny way, I don't need to wear them.

But I suppose at the back of my mind, that's always the thing, that women's history can't be linear because quite often it's not that women weren't there. It's not that we weren't doing everything. And everything I do is not about leaving gorgeous men out, it's about putting the women in. And that's what the Map of Bones is about, about women writing their stories in. But you can't always rely on the archives because women's words are not saved for the archives. So you have to be really nifty and nifty when you're writing women's history. And things like family stories and wills and letters often tell you the truth of women's history. And things like family stories and wills and letters

often tell you the truth of women's experience. And that's what The Map of Bones is about. You know, Suzanne arrives wanting to find her illustrious pirate queen ancestor because she had arrived in the Cape before that, 60 years before, and has vanished. And nobody knows. Her ship was sailed back to Amsterdam without her.

But I don't decide all these things when I'm writing. I let the characters go, OK, Kate, this is the story we're going to tell now. And it sounds terribly airy-fairy, but that is how it works for me. Are any of the characters based on real people? When I use a real person in there, so for example, one of the things that's, you know, a horrifying piece of research really is that on the ship, the real ship that Suzanne Joubert arrives in Cape Town, Table Bay it is then, on the 4th of August 1688, there are eight orphan girls. These are real people from a Rotterdam orphanage. They are 13, 14 and 15 and they are being sent to be sold off as brides essentially. So but I always say if it's a real person so at the front of any of my books it will say these are real

people. None of my lead characters are real people. They are all imagined people who could have lived and that's what I always say when I'm you know in Labyrinth and all the rest of it. They're imagined women who could have lived. Which you will also have the Labyrinth theatre tour. So a lot going on and as I was reading Kate women who could have lived. Which you will also have the Labyrinth Theatre Tour.

So a lot going on. And as I was reading, Kate, I read about you have one chosen style of shoe for years now. Ha ha! Creepers. Yeah, go on.

Get out. Give us a foot. So, OK, these are platform creepers, sometimes called brothel creepers. Triple stack. They're triple stack, black platform, crepe soles,

suede uppers, laced, very nice. Made famous by the Teddy Boys. But they look like they're a new pair. You hold on to them for a while. Is this because of the new book and the launch? No, no, no. I can't be thinking about shoes.

I enjoy clothes and all of that kind of stuff. But when I'm out and about, I can't be thinking about shoes. So these are my work shoes. I wear them every day with everything until they wear out. They last about five years and then I'll buy a new pair exactly the same. So the old ones ran out about three months ago and I've been waiting for these and they've arrived in time for the new. I'm just breaking them in, which is not great going up and down station platforms actually for our new shoes.

But when did this shoe choice begin? Oh, Nuala, I never really got out the 70s. I don't think I did either. Basically, I was there and all I wanted, I went to a big girls' comprehensive school in the 70s in Sussex and all of the cool girls had these big platform shoes and my mother would not let me have them. And I always, you know, when I was going to buy my own shoes, bought a pair of platforms and I'm never really out of platforms, to be honest.

Of a platform. Renowned author Kate Moss, her new book is The Map of Bones. It is a thrilling, compelling page turner of a read. Thank you so much for coming back into us in the Woman's Hour studio. But, you know, we're going to kind of stay on the theme of adventurers and explorers. Lise Worthley is making her way over to me. I don't know what shoes she has on her feet, but it's kind of a little bit difficult

for Elise Worthley to come in because, yes, she is dressed in 19th century hiking gear that women would have worn when they were exploring. There is also a giant bonnet. You're very welcome, Elise. I think we need to first, let's describe the outfit, put people in this studio so they can kind of get an idea of how you look.

Yeah, so I'm in an outfit that the first women who climbed Mont Blanc wore in 1838. So I'm in a massive bonnet. I'm in a woen dress and woolen trousers. And I've even gone as far today as my Victorian undergarments. So it's kind of lacy, white cotton. Yeah, I'm in those and a nice belt. And it's super heavy. And it's super hot. It's plaid, I should say, red, green and yellow. I mean, some of it not unlike Vivienne Westwood, perhaps. Quite stylish. But the bonnet is quite something because it has a fur rim around your head and then the bonnet propped on top of it. I just don't see that as being practical.

No, and it's not when you're climbing mountains either. But this is what women sort of had to wear. You know, back then there wasn't outdoor clothes for women in 1838. This is what they had. And actually, this was kind of a homemade outfit. So a lot of women back then wore corsets and things like that. But Henriette decided that she wasn't going to do that to climb the mountain. Now, Henriette, we're going to come on to her in just a moment. But you're an explorer. Yeah, well, I'd say I'm sort of like an accidental adventurer because I never meant to get into all of this. But yes, I suppose I am. But when you explore, you wear outfits like the one

you're wearing right now. Yes, I wear what the women had back in the day. And specific women. Yes. Let us talk about one of the specific women. Yeah, so a lot of women explorers and adventurers back in the day, they were never given the credit that the men were. They were never given sort of the book deals or the press coverage. So a lot of them sort of got brushed under the carpet. And so what I do is I kind of find their stories, dig them out of history and recreate them.

And I wear what they had at the time because I'd never really understand what they went through if I was in sort of modern day clothing. How did you come to this point? So I read a book by a woman called Alexandra David-Neal and I was 16 when I found this book and it was called My Journey to Lhasa. And in 1910, she went off on this 14 year journey all through Asia just to find

out the secrets of Buddhism, because obviously they didn't have internet, they didn't have anything like that back then. And it's this really incredible story. She was the first Western woman to meet the Dalai Lama, she learned Tibetan, she would sleep on like freezing mountain passes. She had such an epic story. And I was like, hang on, like, why have I not been taught about her at school? Why have I not heard of this book? So I found that book. And then I started researching. And now I have a list of like 150 women from history, some more famous than others, but some that were really kind of ignored and did these amazing things. You mentioned the name Henriette. This is Danville? Yes.

Who was she? And why does she inspire you it's her outfit you're wearing today so I'm in her outfit so she was incredible so this is 1838 so this is a time when women just didn't go into the mountains they didn't do things like this and she was the first woman to climb Mont Blanc unaided so there was actually a woman called Marie Paradis who 30 years earlier went up but she actually got carried to the summit so Henriette thought I'm going to be the first woman to do it walking the whole way on my own so she created this outfit which is actually Scottish wool um that she she kind of made it all it does look very heavy yeah super heavy and then she obviously put trousers on which for women then

was really you know women didn't wear trousers so to actually step out in this outfit and go and climb this mountain is quite an incredible thing to do and I was just really drawn to that sort of bravery of so you decided you would trek in that outfit where did you go exactly yeah so we went to Chamonix and we tried to do Mont Blanc um I say tried because we didn't quite get to the summit because there was a storm um but I've got the hobnail boots on and everything that's when I was hearing I saw Kate Moss is going out in her creepers her platform creepers and you're toddling in on your hobnail boots yeah which actually on rocks are fine but on this modern shiny floor not fine not good um so yes we went and we attempted to climb Mont Blanc but are you

I mean I'm just thinking with that well like are you freezing or are you sweating uh are you uncomfortable yeah so it's it's hot really hot but then obviously when it's snowier and you get higher up in the mountains it kind of works really well actually it's kind of a little bit waterproof warm I mean it's the heaviness that it's it's not like your cortex you've obviously a coat that you put on over it yes and there's a big coat that I had as well um so yeah it's hard it's hard going um and the bonnet very annoying actually when climbing up because there's proper sort of climbing involved and it hits everything I mean earlier I was trying to put my thing on over my

head and I couldn't your what my sort of cape I couldn't even get my head around the bonnet to put that on it yeah it hits rocks and you have to sort of move your head around a lot and um yeah I'd say the bonnet's probably the most difficult item I'm just wondering you know I mean particularly sports performance clothing has come on in leaps and bounds um over the last decades what must they think when they're in their super waterproof, whatever, gear and they come by you? I know. What do people say? What do they do?

The mountaineering world, it's still a big sort of man's world as well. So we were the only women in this hut going up Mont Blanc and it was just full of guys in there, you know, exchanging gears, their kind of waterproof trousers, big, big things. And actually, it's funny because people look and they go, you're going up in that? I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's what people used to have to do. And the women would, yeah, not only were they sort of facing everything else, but they also had the clothing issues. You must even have more respect for those women. Yeah, and that's why I do it in the old stuff because I'd never

fully understand, you know, what they went through, everything else they were kind of battling against, plus the clothing. That's why I do it in the old stuff. And I mean, it's still, you know, today there's, it's definitely a male-dominated world, explorers or adventurers.

I read that your dream trip is to have a pirate ship with an all female crew that dresses as female pirates. Did you get to speak to Kate Moss in our green room? Yeah, I know. I think she's the woman that could help you make that happen. I'm a big fan. Yeah, definitely. So there's a pirate queen from Ireland called Grace O'Malley. I know Grace O'Malley indeed. And I'd love to recreate her journey

because she went to Greenwich to meet with Queen Elizabeth, which was a big meeting between two women of the time. The monks tried to write her out of history because she was so sort of formidable and disruptive. And yeah, I'd love to get a big boat and fill it full of women and all dress them as 1500s pirates in all the outfit. You have to let us know if that is going ahead

but I did just in our last minutes or so Elise you talk about the difficulty of kind of having women seen

in that space granted lots of random trekkers have probably come across you and we have you today in the Women's Hour studio but trying to get a TV show commissioned

for example has been tricky. Really tricky, yeah. And I mean, you can see there's hardly any adventure shows by women on the telly. And I just think it's a repetition of these women being missed out of history. It's always been a man's space. And still today, you know, when I do school talks, I say, can anyone think of a woman who does the same job as Bear Grylls? And there are, there are lots of women, but no one can ever name them so yeah our sort of challenge is to try and get this made and it is very difficult but yeah kind of have hope that we might but my understanding is you've been told

that people won't watch if a man is not presenting yeah because it's not extreme enough or it's not you know it's not what the audience want but, I'm pretty sure we can prove them wrong. Yeah, I mean, surely if that's one audience, there must be another audience that would love to see it. Yeah, definitely. Do you bring people along? Are other people that are travelling with you, trekking with you, also dressed as you are?

No, I mean, I do give them the option. I always try and keep an all-female team. So I have women mountain guides, which they're super-rest. So super so in Europe only one to two percent of mountain guides are women and you can imagine what that's like the rest of the world where some of the world's highest mountains are like women just culturally don't do that job so I always make sure try and employ women in this space and also filmmakers the adventure sort of film world is again very male dominated so it's about is it changing at all slowly very slowly yeah but not that quickly so interesting to have you in thank you so much for also dressing up for us this morning you look fabulous that's elise worthley who has walked in

the footsteps of the women who came before her in their clothing really quite something to see i do want to let you know tomorrow we have the best selling author Sophie Kinsella she's known for hugely popular shopaholic series she's joining me

to talk about her latest novel What Does It Feel Like it is incredible this novel I read it in one sitting it talks about waking up in a hospital bed with no memory

of how she got there and learns she had surgery to remove a large tumour growing in her brain two years ago, Sophie was diagnosed with glioblastoma, which is an aggressive form

of brain cancer. We'll talk about all of that. Thank you so much for spending some of your time with Woman's Hour today and I will see you tomorrow. Same time, same place, 10 o'clock. That's all for today's Woman's Hour.

Join us again next time. Cafe Hope on BBC Radio 4. By the time I'd finished these 100 meetings, I'd raised £50,000. I'm Rachel Burden. next time. engaging in conversation with people that you know can make a massive difference amazing individuals trying to make the world a better place it's a real gift cafe hope from bbc radio 4 listen now on bbc sounds i'm sarah 11 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.