Woman's Hour - Daphne Oram - one of electronic music's female pioneers

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

In 'Come Fly the World', journalist Julia Cooke explores the history and legacy of Pan Am, one of the world’s most iconic airlines. Julia focuses on the adventurous lives and careers of the international jet-age stewardesses of Pan Am – a job which no longer exists - who were expected to fit a specific physical profile, speak multiple languages and demonstrate diplomacy. As the women worked to maintain the glamourous image of Pan Am, they interacted with international politicians and helped to transport American soldiers to and from war zones, during the Vietnam War. The stewardesses witnessed global history and world events, playing a crucial role in major wartime missions including the evacuation of children during the fall of Saigon. Throughout the pandemic, pregnant women have been asked to make their own judgements on the risk of vaccination versus the risks of COVID-19. With very little real-world data available, that decision has been no easy task however two new large scale studies may now help prospective parents feel more confident in balancing the costs and benefits. One study of over 35,000 pregnant women given the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showed no evidence of them being unsafe. The second study looked at what happens to pregnant women if they do catch COVID-19. Aris Papageorghiou, a Professor of Fetal Medicine at the Oxford Maternal and Perinatal Health Institute, talks to Anita about the results of this global study. He also explains why we should consider allowing pregnant women to be vaccinated sooner, rather than making them wait for their age-related invite to arrive in the post.Hair removal is a rite of passage for a lot of women and apparently some influencers are encouraging shaving your face! Apparently facial hair removal is nothing new - Queen Elizabeth I started the trend by shaving her facial hair, and women even shaved their eyebrows off. So how popular is it with women today? Beauty therapist and make up artist Naveeda discusses.A new film called 'Sisters With Transistors' about the unsung female pioneers of electronic music, is released today. Featuring women like Clara Rockmore, Suzanne Ciani and Delia Derbyshire, of Dr Who theme fame, the film is narrated by Laurie Anderson and celebrates the achievements of women whose male counterparts took centre stage in historical narratives around ground-breaking electronic composition. The director Lisa Rovner joins Anita as does Bishi, the singer, composer and artistic director and co-founder of WITCiH, The Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub, a platform to increase the visibility women at the intersection of music, creative technology and STEM. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Professor Aris Papageorghiou Interviewed Guest: Naveeda Interviewed Guest: Julia Cooke Interviewed Guest: Lisa Rovner Interviewed Guest: Bishi

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, we've made it to another Friday. Now, name that tune. Yeah, no prizes for guessing. It was the Doctor Who theme. I'm sure some of you are aware that it took Delia Derbyshire, that's right, a woman, 40 days to get the sounds together for that iconic piece of music.

And she wasn't the only woman in the world of electronic music. There's a brilliant new doc coming out, Sisters with Transistors, which shines a light on the female pioneers creating these fantastic new sounds with technology. We'll be going on an audio journey later in the show. Now, it's been a difficult and stressful year for most of us, but even more so if you are pregnant as well. A new study has just come out looking at the effects of the COVID infection on pregnant women and their babies. We'll be talking to the COVID infection on pregnant women and their babies. We'll be talking to the professor who conducted it

and he'll be telling us what they've found. And if you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant and have any concerns or questions, then please send them now and I'll put a couple of them to him a little bit later. You can text us on 84844 or, of course, get in touch via Twitter. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. Then we're flying high and getting a glimpse into what was seen as one of the most glamorous professions in the world, a Pan Am air stewardess. These women,

and they were always women, were travelling the world with the jet set and breaking free from the lives they were otherwise destined for. And how is your facial hair this morning? Mine could do with some threading, if truth be told. Well, hair removal is a rite of passage for a lot of women, and apparently some influencers are encouraging shaving your face. I'm not too sure about that method, so we'll be finding out from an expert. If you want to share your facial hair horror stories, please do. I bet there were plenty of over-plucked eyebrows in the 90s. You can text 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate, and check with your network provider for exact costs. It's at BBC Women's Hour on social media, or you can email us through our website. Now, throughout the pandemic, pregnant women have had to deal with all sorts of mixed messages and

concerns. Will the virus hurt my baby? Will the vaccine hurt my baby? It's stressful stuff. And to make it worse, women have often been asked to work out what to do based on their own individual circumstances. But how on earth do you make the right decision if you've got no scientific background and no evidence to go on? Well, thankfully, things are starting to improve. Last week, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation changed their advice so that all pregnant women will be offered a vaccine along with other people their own age. There was also a study released on Wednesday that showed no evidence of harmful effects for either the Pfizer or Moderna jabs in over 35,000 pregnant women in the US. Today, we're going to hear about one more piece of the puzzle. Aris Papajorju is a professor of fetal medicine at the Oxford Maternal and Perinatal Health Institute

and has just published the largest study yet about the effects of covid infection on pregnant women and their babies and he joins us now to tell us all about it a very good morning to you um thanks for having me yes it's good to have you on the show you've just published a new global study tell us who you've looked at and how many women you've you've gone to you've gone around the world for this 18 different countries haven't you so yeah i mean our aim was to provide women and their families and healthcare providers with evidence quickly and at scale. And in order to do that, really, we need to open your arms

to the global health community, if you like. So we had 43 institutions in 18 countries in order to be able to quickly get enough women with the condition and also women who were compared as well. And what were you trying to find out? Our aim really was to try and find out what the effects of COVID are in pregnancy compared to women of a similar profile who don't get COVID in pregnancy. And what did you find?

So the summary, if you like, is that COVID causes significant harm, if you like, in pregnancy. Now, I don't want to alarm women unnecessarily, and most women will still have an uncomplicated pregnancy, COVID or not. But the truth is that overall, the risks in women with COVID were about 50% higher if they got COVID in pregnancy. And that ranged from having a 70% higher risk of hypertensive conditions, high blood pressure conditions and preeclampsia, a threefold increase in infections, doubling in the risk of preterm birth, mostly medical preterm birth, because we wanted to deliver the babies to improve maternal condition, and sadly, also an increase in the risk of death. Now, we've got lots of people getting in touch with us already. And I'll put some of their

questions to you. So I mentioned in my introduction about pregnant women having to fumble around in the dark to find out what to do about COVID. How do your findings help them find the balance between the risks of vaccination and the risks that come with the infection? Because I'm sure that is what most women are concerned about. I think you're absolutely right. It's a balance, isn't it? And on the one hand, we have the risks of vaccination. Now, there weren't any women in the original trials of the vaccines.

There was a few women who happened to become pregnant shortly afterwards or didn't know they were pregnant. And we didn't see any ill effects in those women, although there were small numbers. But there has been, as you've stated in your introduction, really good surveillance data from the U.S. where close to 100,000 women now have been vaccinated. So, and all those data suggests the vaccination is safe in pregnancy. And also from the biological perspective, there's no reason to think that the vaccine would be harmful because it's very closely related to other vaccines we use. So that's one arm of the balance. And on the other arm, you've got the real risks actually that COVID may produce in

pregnancy. So as I've said, you know, higher risks of needing to go to intensive care, respiratory conditions, high risks of high blood pressure conditions and so in my mind that balance is firmly tipped in favour of giving a vaccine because you've got theoretical risks on one hand and real harms on the other. Aris, I'm going to go to a couple of the questions that are coming in. So we've got one here from someone who said, I'm trying to conceive. I've had my first Oxford jab because I'm in a high-risk group,

a frontline social worker. I hope to be pregnant when my next jab is due and I have no idea if it's safe to have it. Well, the truth is that the data, because they come from the USA, were mostly on Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Although it should be said that AstraZeneca, in theory, should be equally safe during pregnancy. If you're trying to conceive, if you've had one dose of the jab, that's great. You may choose to delay the second dose of the jab until after 12 weeks, because actually what we're finding is that the majority of ill effects of COVID in pregnancy happen later on in pregnancy. And given that the sort of crucial early development of the embryo is complete by 12 weeks, one thing you could do is perhaps delay the second

dose. But the truth is that we don't have that information. Yeah, lots of questions are coming in about similar sorts of things. Someone's saying my daughter's had the Pfizer COVID vaccine without knowing she was in her first month of pregnancy. Is that okay? But I suppose it's the same advice, isn't it? Well, you know, she's in good company. There's been, as I say, many thousands of women who've been vaccinated with Pfizer and no increase in adverse effects have been found. So I would encourage her to carry on with that. So if the evidence is showing that pregnant women are at greater risk of bad outcomes, does it make sense for them to have to wait for their age group to come up before they get their jab? Because we're currently over 45, but surely most pregnant women are going to be under that age. Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, as the age group will drop and more and more of the age group

come into the vaccination cutoff, if you like, more women will become eligible. But yes, it's true that the majority of women will be under that age. In my personal opinion, pregnancy is an additional risk factor. So I think they should be treated as someone who had, for instance, obesity or hypertension and be prioritised. But I know that the JCVI recommendations are not that yet.

Well, we've had a statement from Professor Wai-Hsin Lim, who is the chair for the JCVI, and they said, we encourage pregnant women to discuss the risks and benefits with their clinician. Those at increased risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19 are encouraged to promptly take up the offer of vaccination when offered. There have been no specific safety concerns from any brand of COVID-19 vaccines in relation to pregnancy. There is more real world safety data from the US in relation to pregnancy there is more real world safety data from the u.s in relation to the pfizer um biontech and moderna vaccines in women who are pregnant therefore we advise a preference for these to be offered to pregnant women but they don't talk about making them a priority to get the vaccination not not at this stage although i agree with pretty much everything

else you said um different women are clearly going to feel differently about the vaccination, but for those who feel vulnerable and want a vaccine quickly, can they get one? They can if they've got additional risk factors, additional clinical risk factors. But if they don't, at the moment, it's not possible. There are a couple of trials that are about to start, including in the UK, one from Pfizer and another large study. So it is worth keeping an eye out for those. And they will usually be published on the government website

or on a really useful website, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, RCOG, gives really nice guidance also for the risks and benefits of vaccination for women. Professor Aris Papajodju, thank you very much. I'm sure we'll get you back on to talk, give us some more advice as and when you find out more information. But thank you for that. Thank you for having me. If you do want to get in touch, please do.

The text number is 84844. Now, hair removal is a rite of passage for a lot of women. And apparently some influencers are encouraging shaving your face. Apparently facial hair removal is nothing new. Queen Elizabeth I started the trend by shaving her facial hair, and women even shaved off their eyebrows. So how popular is it with women today? I'm now joined by beauty therapist and makeup artist Navida.

Morning, Navida. I don't suppose shaving your eyebrows, that's not made a comeback yet, has it? No, definitely not. I think we need some eyebrows there i mean nowadays it's about having a really thick you know dark eyebrows around so i can't see anyone shaving those off for love or money yes you're right so it's we've gone back to sort of thick but most of us plucked our eyebrows into obscurity in the 90s so yeah you're shaking your head navida right so that is that's where microblading comes in so you can now go and have microblading done which is a little tattoo like pigments uh hair

strokes on your eyebrows to make them look thicker so which is great so there is other alternatives out there for you if you have over pluck but i always say while you're young don't over pluck them at all because when you get older our hair just stops growing and we're going to miss it on our eyebrows so this this whole story has come about because somebody an influencer is saying we should be shaving we should use a razor I mean this is surely the last thing you should be doing it's the first thing the first bit of advice and as an Asian woman you are given a lot of advice about hair removal the first thing I was told is just don't put a razor anywhere near your face should we be shaving our faces no we shouldn't really but unfortunately if you're having laser IPL done in between

treatments you have to shave the hair you can't pull it out from the root so that is the only time but that's very a very short term that you're actually shaving when you start shaving on a long you know over a long period what people forget men's uh you know men they have thick a 25 thicker skin and they have uh more sebum so they secrete more oil to help repair their skin so they're okay shaving but with women our skin is a bit more paper thin so if we're going to start shaving boy you don't want to go out with that you know that shadow going around it definitely not not a good look then it's more concealer you're going to be worried about using then it's going to be what can i do to improve this why give yourself that headache in the first place don't give yourself the shadow no don't give yourself the shadow and a lot of uh scraping of chin chin on chin action you know uh um so look we've all been

in lockdown and none of us have been able to see beauticians for a long time and thankfully it's all opening up again what's the one thing that women have wanted to come out and get done when they've come to see you do you know what it is literally eyebrows and their face wax. That's the first thing. And they walk away thinking, oh, my God, I feel like a woman again. I mean, this is the worst thing, that we all felt like men. Because we're like attached guys. Can you imagine kissing your husband and you've got bigger stubble than him? Not very nice.

You know, we moan when men have beards. I mean, we don't want them either. So, you know,'s about uh leaving that hair alone and getting it done professionally i do not suggest shaving unless you have to for ipl okay so what are the different methods then and the pros and cons of each what should we be doing okay so you've got waxing and sugaring and the good thing about this and what is sugaring so i mentioned sugaring this morning in the office and not many people knew what it was so explain what the difference is

what's waxing and what's okay so wax is that it's like a honey wax that you put on and you take off with a strip with the sugary it's kind of a waxy uh consistency but you kind of put it on your skin and you roll it around and it takes off the hair as you're going along. A bit like hot wax, but not as, you know, as bad, you know, as hot as. So it takes the hair out from the root so you have new hair growing. It's the same with threading as well. That takes it out from the root. But I'm just, I find threading torturous. I find it so painful.

And I think if I wanted to torture and get some information from someone, I'd thread them, especially men. I go, that's the one way that you would get the answer, you know, the truth out from them. Because it can be painful, but people are used to it. The other one, electrolysis. Love electrolysis. It's the only permanent hair removal.

It removes white hair as well. So it's a little needle that goes into your pore and electric current then you've got your lasers and your ipls then you've got your creams as well not very good those creams if you've got sensitive skin the chemicals in there and if you leave it on a bit too long redness rawn. So avoid that on the face, actually. And then finally, you've got your shaving. And of course. Ah, but Anita, years ago, do you know the women used to use ash to get rid of their hair?

So they'd get the ash and they'd rub it on their arms or legs and it would actually remove the hair. And it didn't come back that much as well. But you know what, Navida, you know, it is obviously lots of women want to get rid of their facial hair and some women don't, right? Some women are just, I mean, actually once you start, you can't stop. Isn't that the point as well?

Once you're in it, you've just got to keep the maintenance of it. Absolutely. The thing is that hair, this is a myth. If you remove your hair, it is going to come back thicker and longer and darker it doesn't it just goes back to what it was but because we've been hairless suddenly when we see hair we think oh my god I'm going more hairy but that's not the case and once you removed it remember one thing as well with waxing when you remove the hair it actually takes a bit of the dead skin off as well so your skin not only looks hairless but it actually takes a bit of the dead skin off as well. So your skin not only looks hairless, but it actually looks quite, you know, rejuvenated kind of thing.

It looks lovely. So it's very smooth. So, you know, I think it's one of those things that you don't have to worry. Your hair is not going to come back thicker. But once you do start removing, you know, you do want to keep on removing. But the other thing with shaving as well, because when you shave, it's a blunt cut. So you think, oh, my hair's coming back thicker and, you know, more often, quicker regrowth. But that's only because it's the way the hair's been cut.

And that's why it seems like it is, but it's not. So we've had a message a message from ruth one of our listeners who says i'm 53 and menopausal and hoping the worst is over after years of having very little uh hair fair body hair during the menopause i started getting loads of dark hairs on my chin and loads of fairer hairs all over the sides of my face what should you do okay so here comes the whole menopause for us poor women, honestly. What happens is that we've got about 100 follicles, let's say, in an area. About 50 of them grow in our lifetime.

50 stay dormant. And what happens is as you get older in life, those 50 that were dormant start suddenly sprouting a hair. But not only that, during menopause, we're losing our estrogen. It's getting less and less. But we've got more of the malhormone, testosterone. And that's why our hair is coming out more thicker. And it's coming out, you know, in patches. So I would say electrolysis, absolutely brilliant.

You know, you want to wax it, thread it, go ahead as well. I mean, it's not nice having all sprouts of hair coming out. You know, can you imagine? There's like this like goatee going on. Tweez it? Yeah, having little sprouts of hair coming out. Can you imagine? Tweeze it? Tweeze it? Yeah, tweeze it. Yeah, absolutely. But you know what as well?

You've got to be careful when you tweeze because if you don't tweeze in the right way, you could be snapping the hair, which then looks like it's been shaved. Now, tell us very quickly about this new treatment that's growing in popularity, dermaplaning. What is it? What's dermaplaning? Should we all know about it oh well yeah it's another it's another beauty treatment that gets rid of the dead skin cells um but it when it says that it gets rid of acne and gets rid of um you know pigmentation uh i would be a bit like not really because that's really deep in your skin and you're not taking

off that much on the top so remember we've got five layers and our top layer is the dead skin so you're going to be taking that off and while you're taking that dead skin off you're also shaving off the hair that's around there as well so of course your skin's going to look more fresher more you know hairless but there's microdermabrasion out there that does that. You know, there's other treatments that are not so invasive as taking a blade to your face. Navida, thank you so much for joining us on Woman's Hour. You're welcome.

That was enlightening. And my hair feels like it's just disappeared already just by talking to you. Thank goodness the beauty parlours are opened up again. Thank you, Navida. Now, a new book, Come Fly the World, explores the history and legacy of one of the world's most iconic airlines, Pan Am. But more specifically, it looks at the lives of the air stewardesses who were very much part of the international jet set. It's a job which no longer exists in the same way. They interacted with international politicians and even helped to transport American soldiers

to and from war zones during the Vietnam War. The stewardesses witnessed global history and world events playing a crucial role in major wartime missions and all the while maintaining the glamorous image of Pan Am. I know, I had no idea either, but thankfully Julia Cook has written a book all about it and she joins us now to tell us more. Julia, very good morning. Welcome to Woman's Hour. What inspired you to write about the Pan Am Air Stewardesses? Hi. So my father had worked for Pan Am until I was about nine years old when the airline went bankrupt. So Pan Am had always been a really big part of my family lore.

But really, I hadn't thought that much about the airline itself until I went to an event that was hosted at the TWA terminal at JFK airport in New York. I don't know if anyone has any specific memories of that place, but the terminal was made by Eero Saarinen, this incredible architect. It's just the most beautiful place in the world. I love it. And I always really wanted to go. So I went to the this event that was held there and I toured the building and it was stunning, as I had expected. But more interesting to me was I stood there talking to these two former air stewardesses for the basically the entire event. And I was just completely entranced by them. They talked about global capitals, but also intricate events of geopolitical history with this level of casual intimacy and this sense of authority. They told me about, you know, diplomatic incidents, but also where I could buy the best shoes in Italy.

They were also really fun. They were one of the women told me that she never bought a return ticket home from anywhere at age 75 because you never know what might happen. Wow. I mean, I was totally enthralled by this because when I was two, it was the first job that I wanted to do because I went on an international flight and just thought these women were the most glamorous, had the most glamorous lives and exciting lives. And they really did, particularly when they first started out. So why were these jobs particularly attractive to women? You know, I think it's really easy for us to forget from the vantage point of today just how restricted the opportunities for women were in the mid-20th century. I think it's so easy to forget that really prior to the 60s,

it wasn't that socially acceptable for women to be travelling internationally alone or even nationally. They had to have a chaperone or a spouse. As far as professions, professionally, women's opportunities were pretty minimal. It was socially acceptable, especially in the U.S., for women to be a nurse, a librarian, a secretary, or a teacher. So imagine, you know, along comes this job that offers a paycheck. A job on an airline obviously offers practical benefits like a paycheck and health insurance, but it also offers an excuse to travel without sacrificing that formality of a job that was acceptably feminine. So really it offered tremendous freedom. It became to some extent an embodiment of the glamour of that new post-war era because these women had access to all of these different geographies and places. And gave them more of a choice about what to do with their lives. I'm sure for a lot of

women in the 1950s, their life plan was pretty set, especially in suburban America. Exactly. Yeah. You know what I found really interesting as I was talking to these women more, it made me reflect on the importance that travel has had for me. I know I've certainly learned so much about myself by, you know, testing myself against these different places and interacting with people who aren't like me, whose life stories are different. And so to imagine in the 1950s, you know, you can live at home with your parents and work as a secretary or you can go and explore these different places and see who you could be in a different context. I mean, the choice is pretty easy for me. But I'm sure it was a highly competitive profession to get into. So what were the requirements to become a Pan Am stewardess?

It was hugely competitive. And then the requirements were kind of a contradiction in terms, in a way. On the one hand, there were these incredibly restrictive physical requirements. Women had to be a certain height, a certain requirements. Women had to be a certain height, a certain weight, they had to be really quite pretty. They were assessed by their interviewing panel which was composed of men so they had to adhere to these really patriarchal norms of femininity and beauty. They had to be young, under 26 at the time of hire and unmarried. They could be fired for being in their 30s

and turning 35 or getting married because the airline really wanted them to be, have this perception of availability. But they also on Pan Am had to be really smart. They had to speak two languages. They had to have some degree of college education. In their interview sessions, they were tested on their ability to

think on their feet and their diplomatic abilities. They really had to be able to handle any situation that might come their way. So the statistic that I have in my book is that in the late 1960s, 6% to 8% of American women had college degrees. Now, at the same time, 10 percent of Pan Am stewardesses had gone to graduate school. So these were an incredibly ambitious, really bright group of women. And of course, it was 1950s America. So how were African-American women treated by Pan Am? Pretty poorly on every airline. In reality, you know, this is one of the excruciating parts of my research. It was really hard to read some of the open racism of the hiring practices that were openly shared in the 1950s across airlines. But again, across airlines,

you know, a number of really intrepid and ambitious Black women with the help of the NAACP brought lawsuits against various airlines. And by 1962, Northwest Airlines hired the first African-American stewardess. And a couple of other airlines started opening their doors. It wasn't really until they were compelled to hire a more diverse crew by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the US, which was passed in 1964. It wasn't until the mid-1960s when the government really compelled them to do so that they began to hire more diverse crews. Yeah, when they were forced to do it, when they had to do it, they did it. Did these stewardesses shape American feminism? Did they identify with feminism? You know, some of them did and some didn't. You know, these were women who, you know, as I mentioned before, really did adhere to traditional notions of femininity.

And yet they unarguably, absolutely shaped American feminism. The legal battles that they waged in an effort to dismantle the sexist job requirement that they be young and unmarried. They really, they wanted to keep working into their 30s when they got married, when they had kids. They loved their jobs. Their love for their job really propelled the women's movement forward by establishing the legal precedent for equal opportunity employment law as it pertains to gender for decades to come. So all of us owe something to those initial battles. Indeed. And what role did they play in the Vietnam War? I sort of mentioned it in the intro. This is a fascinating story. Yeah, I found it fascinating, too. I had no idea about this when I started researching the book.

So unlike in other countries, the U.S. has no flag carrier. So we have no national airline that's affiliated with our government. So the U.S. government still today, private airlines have a standing contract with the government to perform airlift and troop transport duties in the case of combat. So in the Vietnam War, 12 different airlines contracted with the government. The Pan Am got the largest chunk of those contracts. And if you think about it, it's really easy to forget that on each of these flights, there were women who were performing the duties of the crew. They were flying into an active war zone and everything that you might think that that might entail. I heard stories about mortar fire. I heard stories about soldiers with tremendous PTSD. Women watched body bags be loaded into the belly of the plane. It was really an affecting and really

harrowing situation for a lot of these women. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. Now, these stewardesses, as you mentioned, they're not allowed to continue with their jobs once they got married, shockingly. So they were dismissed when they're around 32 or 35. But their eyes have been opened to the world. They're very bright, intelligent women. What kind of professions did they go into once they'd left? So many different professions. There are women, if you think about it,

the job of being on an airline and being a stewardess, it was pretty flexible and it could be performed around the demands of graduate school. So I heard about a lot of women who went into psychology or business school, law school, they became activists, they opened small businesses. Some went into actual formal diplomacy, you know, in the 60s when my research, when the book picks up in the mid 60s, the opportunities for women in formal diplomacy and formal statecraft were pretty limited. There were lawsuits going on there as well to open that route for women. But by the end, you know, in the 1970s and early 80s,

those opportunities had grown. So the way I thought about it, a lot of these women really took this job to have some fun and see the world and wait until the world, you know, became open enough for their ambition to find other routes. Absolutely. It's kind of what women are always doing,

waiting for the world to catch up with them. Julia, thank you so much for that. Really fascinating. Julia's book, Come Fly the World, is out now. That's Julia Cook. Thank you. Now, a new film called Sisters with Transistors about the unsung female pioneers of electronic music

is released today, featuring women like Clara Rockmore, Suzanne Chiani and Delia Derbyshire of Doctor Who theme fame, the film is narrated by Laurie Anderson and celebrates the achievements of the women of groundbreaking electronic music from the 1930s onwards, the pioneers in a world dominated by men.

The director of the film, Lisa Rovner, joins me now, as does Bishi, singer, composer and artistic director and co-founder of which the Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub, a platform to increase the visibility of women at the intersection of music, creative technology and STEM. Lisa, let me come to you first. I mean, congratulations, absolutely loved this documentary, the point of obsession actually. Why did you decide to make it? Thank you so much. I was just drawn to these women's stories.

Obviously, their music. But I think the thing that really drew me was when I read Laurie Spiegel explaining that women were especially drawn to electronic music when the possibility of a woman composing was in itself controversial. You know, the thing that I thought I found fascinating about these women's stories is this idea that electronics enabled these women. It's a very unique emancipation story because this new technology allowed women to be heard by others without having to be taken seriously by the male-dominated establishment. As Suzanne Chiani says in the film, you could do it

all yourself. You were the composer, the performer, the sole arbiter of your creation. In a sense, you could present music directly to your audience. And I found that absolutely fascinating. Absolutely. And you've got some stunning footage throughout the documentary, which is beautifully woven together, home videos, archives. How on earth did you manage to get all of that? It was a challenge. It took years. And I have to say my stint as a private detective really came in handy. You know,

some of the archive was straightforward, like the archive of Delia and Daphne. And then some of it took years to locate. I was actually swapping archive until the very, very last day in the edit. And I have to say, I don't think, you know, this film was really challenging to make. I wasn't commissioned to make it. It was really something that I kind of made independently. When we talk about independent film, really, it means without budget. But it was very difficult. And what I should say is that the archive really dictated who I was able to cover in the film. And it's important to note that this is in no way the definitive history of women in electronic music.

This is a history of women in electronic music. I don't believe a definitive history exists because I think that history is not fixed, that it's constantly evolving. And what I hope is that people walk away with a kind of curiosity to keep looking and including women and people of color to this history, to this history as they are rediscovered. Absolutely. I mean, you definitely opened my eyes to it.

And I was in a lot of sort of wormholes digging up on lots of people from watching this documentary. And you begin with one of the early pioneers, Clara Rockmore, who played the theremin. And there's a wonderful clip of her in the 70s, even though she was playing it in the 30s. This is a clip from the 70s demonstrating the instrument. Let's have a listen. Now, here, hold your hand over this. It's a fallacy to think that the instrument is easy to play. You know, it is much more difficult than the violin. I was a concert violinist

before I played this. Fabulous clip there. Bishi, you've played the theremin, haven't you? I have, yeah. And is it hard? She says it's harder than the violin. It's incredibly hard but it's a beautiful experience. And lots of these women were classically trained musicians as are you so do you think that helps? Well it certainly was an entry point for all of these women. What's really progressive and really beautiful about the moment we're in now is you have synths on your phone, you have basic music editing software on tablets, on laptops. And so that barrier of having to go

to music college or having to be trained has been removed, which I think is really progressive and very important. Yeah. And Lisa, how important was new technology as well? We've got the technology as she's saying now, but how important was new technology to the explosion of these new sounds? Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating how obviously these new devices created opportunities for women, especially women composers, but it also opened up music to the entire field of sound. You know, electronic music not only changed

the modes of production, but it also changed the very terms of what we define as music. Yeah, I think in the film, Elaine Riddick says something lovely about it. But it also changed the very terms of what we define as music. Yeah, I think in the film, Elaine Riddick says something lovely about it's a love story with her synthesizer. I particularly loved that. But of course, it wasn't always accepted, was it? Because the soundtrack to Forbidden Planet wasn't even seen as music because composers were worried that they'd be written out. So we weren't even allowed to be described as a composition of music was it no it wasn't um so sad and you really hear that in

in in bb when she's kind of talking about it that they weren't even you know they were yeah it was called electronic tonalities it was so fascinating that soundtrack because it was it was it was made with amplified and and amplified homemade electronic circuits recorded on tape and it was it's fascinating because uh bb and louis and bb were building their own instruments from army surplus stores because as bb says in the film there weren't any to buy so they were just collecting it themselves it's brilliant now bishi you've been involved in events celebrating delia Derbyshire. We're best known for the original Doctor Who soundtrack, which we heard. Tell us a bit about her. Who was she? a stint at was it like Boozy and Hawks and then she got a job as a trainee assistant at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop which hello here we are and yeah she was known for harvesting sounds from real noises and she loved sampling household objects and then manipulating them and looping them to

create melodies and sounds and textures on tape. And she had creative relationships with the likes of Stockhausen and Peter Maxwell Davis and Brian Jones. She was in the band White Noise with David Vorehouse and she engineered for the likes of Yoko Ono, so an incredibly groundbreaking woman. Absolutely. Let's hear a bit of Delia back in the 60s, explaining how she built a track using recorded sound. We don't always go to electronic sound generators for our basic sources of sound.

If the sound we want exists already in real life, say, we can go and record it. But those basic sounds aren't really interesting in their raw state like this. To make them of value for a musical piece piece we have to shape them and mold them. We can get the lower sounds we need from the rhythm by slowing down the tape and the higher sounds by speeding up the tape and then all we have to do is cut the notes to the right length. We can join them together on a loop and listen to them. And then with the higher notes of the rhythm, again we join them together on a loop and play it in synchronization with the first And over this we can play... Lisa, it is such a joy to listen to it again.

And there's so much good archive and so many brilliant women that you've highlighted. And one of the ones that stuck out for me was the composer Pauline Oliveros, because she had a very philosophical take on music they were making. Tell us about her instructions to encourage deep listening. Yeah, so Pauline Oliveros is a fascinating composer from the United States. She was particularly drawn to talking about gender inequality. It was a theme that she addressed repeatedly. She wrote an essay in the New York Times in 1970 that questions the title of the piece is Why Have There Been No Great Women Composers? And then she enumerates reasons, including gender bias and societal expectations. She was very influenced by her studies of Native American culture and Eastern

religions, and her compositions really introduced this meditative and ritualistic practice, and while exploring deep and existential ideas like listening. Her sonic meditations were text-based scores, experiments in self-care, And when she published them in 1971, she shared her goals for these scores, which included expanding consciousness and healing. I think what's so fascinating, so she, Paulina Oliveros, was kind of founded this idea of deep listening.

And she really believed and argued that listening was a form of activism and that through deep and inclusive listening, we could heal. And I think it's such a beautiful message for these times you know one of the things that I really I feel like I hear differently now after making this film I feel like I listen differently and one of the things that I think is the biggest takeaway I think for me and what I hope for audiences is for people to understand the importance of active and engaged listening especially for what's left out absolutely i mean the documentary really does do that it makes as

soon as you watch it you you just want to sit and listen to what's going on outside your window um fishy i know that pauline oliveros was a big influence for you but what else who else got you interested in electronic music growing up well definitely laurie Spiegel, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, everybody who's involved in this documentary. I mean, my path into electronic music was introduced by artists such as Bjork, Pulp, the Beastie Boys, Stereolab, all of these slightly left field indie bands and artists who were opening me up to the world of sound. And, you know, it just absolutely changed my life in terms of being this kind of polymath woman,

which I still think is a very misunderstood concept. So it's been with me throughout my life. And you mentioned Laurie Spiegel. She worked with the Bell Labs computers, didn't she? Because you mentioned Bjork and all those other great people that we've grown up listening to. But we sort of take the technology for granted because that's the age we're living in.

But these were the women who were kind of really inventing it, figuring it out for themselves, weren't they? Tell us about Laurie Spiegel. Yeah, well, I'm very lucky that I got to meet Laurie Spiegel a couple of summers ago and I got to spend time in her warehouse and she's really encouraged me to pursue all of my kind of analogue synth love but she was famed for creating software for bell labs should we have a listen let's listen to some

of her music and you can talk over the top of it but i think you should hear this this is bit laurie spiegel yeah it's absolutely meditative and beautiful and uh piece of hers, a sediment, it was actually included in the Hunger Games in 2012. She realised a piece of music called Harmonix Mundi, which was a sonic realisation and it was sent in 1977 as a part of Voyager 1, so it's still up there. And this is a short excerpt of her playing that piece from 1977 yeah and you can just disappear into sound it's so wonderful like I highly advise everyone to

watch this and then just disappear into your own musical journey um Lisa these women are now starting to get some recognition for the work they've done and of course thanks to you because of this uh documentary that you've made. Why weren't they recognised at the time? Why don't we know their names? Well, I think it's really because history was written by men and that the history of women is a history of silence.

You know, I've really thought about this question a lot and I really believe that it's the oversimplification of the way we tell stories are learned longing for a generally white male hero that has led to the erasure of their groundbreaking accomplishments. You know, that's why it was really important in the way that we made the film

that the form feature multiple heroines whose stories are told subjectively. As a way of confronting these limiting storytelling practices, we opted for a chronology that weaves, a narration that's not all-knowing. I studied political science in Canada, so ever since my early 20s, I've been thinking deeply about the politics behind storytelling. The stories were told, the stories were not told, and the consequences. And I think, yeah, so much of what's wrong with the world is due to bad stories. And know storytelling is not neutral people live and die because of the way we tell stories so yeah I hope that um you've redressed the balance a little bit

with sisters with trans sisters uh very quickly Bishi you know who are the most exciting women working in the field of electronic music right now apart from your good self Imogen Heap, Sophie, Hannah Peel, Anna Meredith, Gazelle Twin, Shiva Feshereki, Afrodeutscher, Lorraine James, Kayla Painter. I founded which on this principle? Amazing. Brilliant. It's been really fascinating talking to both of you. Elisa, thank you so much. And thank you, Bishi. Sisters with Transistors is getting a virtual cinema release today and is being streamed by Curzon Home Cinemas, Everyman Cinema, BFI Player, Barbican at Home and also cultural

partners such as Rough Trade and lots of independent cinemas. If that's your vibe, then I highly recommend it. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, Woman's Hour listeners. I'm Dr. Michael Moseley. And just before you go, I want to tell you about just one thing you can do for your overall health and well-being I'm on a mission for my new

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