Woman's Hour - Deep fakes, Female membership on Boards, Exploring Antarctica

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

A new law change has made the creation of explicit deepfakes illegal, with those found guilty facing up to two years in prison. Nuala McGovern is joined by Durham Law Professor Clare McGlynn to hear more about what this means, and Channel 4's Cathy Newman, who was a victim of deepfakes herself, gives her thoughts. Author Clare Whitfield joins Nuala to discuss her novel Poor Girls. The title of the book refers to the young, working class women of the 1920s who were destined for a life in service unless they took other, less respectable, opportunities. Like joining real-life all female criminal gang The Forty Elephants, who were famous for their sophisticated shoplifting scams and their hard-partying ways.Victoria Melluish is a listener who wrote to us to highlight women working in environmentally hostile environments and to encourage more women to get out in the field. Victoria is currently employed as a marine mammal specialist and expedition guide on a cruise expedition ship. She says, 'I’m 30 and I work in the Arctic and Antarctic, and I often get asked how I manage having endometriosis while driving Zodiac boats around glaciers and marine megafauna.' Nuala speaks to her about her work.Private businesses in Norway are now required by law to have more women sitting on their executive boards. In 2008, the country became the first in the world to introduce a 40% gender quota for the boards of listed companies. In 2023, the Norwegian parliament decided to extend the quota to private firms, with a deadline of 31st December 2024. Nuala is joined by Hege Rødland, founder of Matae AS, a recruitment company and Linda Litlekalsoy Aase, CEO of Bremnes Seashore Group, to discuss how successful it has been.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 the programme. The government is going to make creating sexually explicit deep fake images a criminal offence. We're going to hear more in a moment with Channel 4's Cathy Newman, who will speak about her experience of being deepfaked and also the potential impact of this new law.

Also, many of Norway's businesses must now have at least 40% of women on their boards. The deadline to implement it was January 1st 2025. So we're going to hear how they're getting on with it and also how businesses reacted to that change. We'll also go to

Antarctica. A listener got in touch with us who wanted to share her experience as a marine mammal specialist at the end of the earth. We're going to hear about Victoria's life as we sail in the Southern Ocean with her. Plus, closer to the Woman's Hour studio,

the novel Poor Girls, based on the fascinating and all-female South London criminal gang, the Forty Elephants. We're going to learn all about them. And, as the holiday season comes to a close, maybe you're thinking about when you can next take a break.

I'd like your thoughts on the following. This is from a column in the iPaper that I read by Rhiannon Pinkton James. The headline is, Parents should get priority over child-free colleagues on booking annual leave. It goes on to say, It's not like we parents have the luxury of being able to take off whenever we like.

So Rhiannon says she doesn't think it's a big deal for companies to say that only parents should get priority to book off half term or the six weeks of the summer holiday. Now, whether you do or don't have kids or skin in the game, maybe you've retired, for example, I would like your thoughts on her proposal. Should non-parents support the parents in this way? I think you will have an opinion. If so, the number to text is 84844 on social media

or at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email us through our website. For a WhatsApp message or voice note, that number is 03700 100 444. So get in touch with your thoughts on that proposal. But let me begin with deepfakes. This is where photos, videos or audio is combined with artificial intelligence, AI, to make it seem like someone is doing or saying something that they have not. It's often used to create content of a sexual nature. People's faces are placed on pornographic images

and shared without consent. The government has decided to crack down on this. It announced yesterday that creating explicit deep fake images will now be a criminal offence. Those who are caught can face up to two years in prison with the non-consensual taking of intimate images also being included in this law change. You might have seen Mark Zuckerberg on the front covers of the papers today.

He is saying that fact-checking will be removed on Facebook over in the States. But it does bring up questions about how easy it is to police these types of crimes. Here to tell me more is Professor Clare McGlynn

from the University of Durham. She's an expert on laws relating to sexual violence, pornography and image-based sexual abuse. She has advised politicians and select committees alike on this issue. Good morning, Clare. Good morning. And we also have with us Channel 4 News presenter and investigations editor, Cathy Newman, who became a victim of this herself and decided to investigate further. Cathy, you're very welcome.

Thanks for having me. Let us begin with you, Clare. This law change, which would be enacted in the future, we don't have a specific timeline, I understand. What does it entail exactly? How do you feel about it? I very much welcome this. It's a long overdue change. It's going to mean that it will be a new criminal offence

to create a sexually explicit deep fake as well as to share it but also it's going to mean that all forms of taking an intimate image are going to be criminalised regardless of the perpetrator's motivations. So that's going to cover things like down-blowsing for the first time, all forms of upskirting, taking images in toilets, changing rooms etc. So it's a very strong package. So long as we find out that some of the details are still unclear, once we know those details, we'll be able to say even more definitively whether it's going to be as effective as we want.

Upskirting, we've spoken about many times on this programme. Downblowsing was a term I was not familiar with, but of course it very much describes what it is. But an intimate image that you refer to, as does the law. What does that mean exactly? Do we have exact parameters? So it will cover nude and sexual images. It also covers images where, you know, toileting images and other issues when you're changing someone, say a care person is changing someone through their work. So it covers that range of images. The one thing, though, that

we don't yet know is that when the previous government put forward a criminalising, creating sexually explicit deepfakes proposal, it had a much narrower definition of intimate image. And for example, it would have excluded an image where you had emojis over the nipples. Now that's crazy. So we need to make sure that this proposal coming through is comprehensive and covers all these types of intimate image. So that's one of the aspects you're concerned about how intimate image is defined. Anything else that you feel might be missing? So again, we need to make sure that this new offence is going to be comprehensive. So previous versions have required

proof of the motives of the perpetrators. So it's only been an offence if, for example, you prove sexual gratification or intention to cause distress. Now that leaves out lots of cases and it also means it's very difficult to prosecute. So what we really want to see is a consent-based law and one that is straightforward and comprehensive. We don't yet know whether that's what the government's going to do. Thank you, Claire. Let me turn to you, Cathy. Can you tell us about your experience of being deepfaked?

Yes, it was soon after Taylor Swift was deepfaked, and there was a lot of news about that. And one of my colleagues on the investigations team at Channel 4 News said, I think we should look into this a bit more. So they started digging around and then came to me and said, I'm really sorry, but we've discovered that your image is out there and there was a deepfake video of you out there um and i was you know sort of taken aback but in a way because i've had so many experiences of being trolled and abused online i was not that surprised i'm afraid to say but we carried on investigating and we decided that we'd try and reach out to i think it was around 40 celebrities who we discovered were deepfaked. We looked at five of

the most popular deepfake video sites and we found 4,000 celebrities had been deepfaked on there, including 250 British women. And it is by and large, the vast majority are women. So we reached out to 40 celebrities. Nobody wanted to talk to us, which I completely understand because the worry is if you go public on this kind of stuff, you, you know, drive traffic to the site and you end up, you know, exacerbating the problem. So in the end, um, reluctantly, I decided that I would watch the video that had been created of me for the first time as my team filmed so that I could get a sense of the impact it would have and how I reacted to that

and how many other ordinary victims, you know, who don't have the kind of privilege of celebrity and the protection of celebrity, because one of the people we got in touch with was a florist from Merseyside, Sophie Parrish. Her life had been turned upside down when she was deepfaked. She agreed to speak to me. And I thought, really, if she was going to speak, really, I kind of owed it to her for her not to be the only one put in the public eye in this way. So that's why I agreed to watch the video and share really the impact that it had on other people who've been deepfaked too.

Your video of that, your investigation is up on your Twitter or X feed at the moment if people want to watch that. I found it very affecting actually, Cathy, watching you watching it. And you talk about reluctantly taking that step. But what has the impact been of seeing some of those images? It's funny because, you know, as I'm sure you're familiar with, we cover stories every day that are very distressing. You know, we talk about war, we're talking about the wildfires today, and there's a lot of human cost to these stories. So I really thought that I would watch this video and it would be all part of a day's work.

You know, it just happened to be involving me. I was surprised how much I returned to those images and now as I'm talking about it again, I can just visualise it again. And it is, you know, several minutes of quite, you know, extreme sexual activity. It extreme sexual activity it's not it's every sort of possible angle and you know an array of uh someone's sexual fantasies basically um and so I do keep on thinking about that and I do return to it it has been slightly sort of haunting

is the word I would use really um and at the, I found it really violating because it's an incredibly personal and a distortion of a private activity and done by someone. I have no idea who they are, where they are, why they did it. And that's alarming. And with that coming back then, Cathy, and I'm so sorry you had to go through all that, with this particular law, do you think it can root out or find, for example, that nameless, faceless person that you're talking about? Well, you know, this wasn't, mine was done in the past. I understand. But even, you know, if it were something that was happening more recently? It's what campaigners have been calling for. So I'd welcome it on behalf of campaigners. I think the problem is that this,

I don't know where my video was created, but a lot of these videos are not created in this country. So it's all very well the UK Parliament legislating. That sets a good example. It forces social media and tech companies to up their game but if if it happens in a jurisdiction where there are no similar regulations there's not a lot the UK police can do they're not going to extradite people for doing this you know they'd be very busy if they did so I think it could well unfortunately have a limited impact and what I

keep coming back to is the fact that these tech companies are incredibly clever, you know, sophisticated and wealthy. They have the nows, the know-how to take action on this. And some are, but some aren't. And, you know, when you look at what's happening on X at the moment, for example, with Elon Musk and the way he's, you know, trolled really Home Office Minister Jess Phillips and the impact that's had on her life. I don't have a great deal of confidence that tech companies like that are going to take matters into their own hands and act before they're fined or one of their people is imprisoned. It just seems quite a remote prospect to me. Interestingly, this morning, people will have seen Mark Zuckerberg on the front of a number of the papers. I want to read a little of what he said. He is the CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. He said, in recent years, we've developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms in response to societal and political

pressure to moderate content. The approach has gone too far. As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they've expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of free expression we set out to enable. Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in Facebook jail and we're often too slow to respond. We want to fix that and return to the fundamental commitment to free expression. He talks about working with Donald Trump in the future, looking forward to that chapter. And I suppose I was wondering when reading that, because I just watched your investigation, Cathy, coming back to you, Claire.

I was like, if it is not illegal, as it is not in many states across the United States where Facebook and Meta is located, could some people see issues like deepfakes for example being an example of free speech of and if they're clamped down on as a form of censorship I'd be curious for your thoughts on that. Yes I mean I think the irony of the discussion about freedom of speech is that the one thing that this change will not do is protect women's freedom of speech, because it's our freedom of speech that's hindered by this online abuse and by deep fakes being used to try and silence us. So regulation actually frees women to speak. So that's the first irony. The second one is in Texas, where Meta are talking about putting their, you know, trust and safety and content moderation teams, what's left of them, they actually have a criminal offence,

criminalising, creating sexually explicit deepfakes. They're the one state in the US. So there's also a disjuncture going on there in terms of their discussions. Yes, and I probably should elaborate as well, I talk about defakes being aligned with free speech or censorship. The fact is, in most of the states across the US, there is not a law against them because Mark Zuckerberg does talk about trying to root out illegal activity. But if something is not illegal yet, would it be rooted out? I suppose is the question that is there. Your thoughts as well, Cathy, as I come to that about

tech companies, I'm speaking about Meta there specifically, but of course, in general, there are these questions you talk about in your investigation, five very big apps that make it very easy

to create deep fakes, for example. Can there be any move to work on those or to try and shut them down? Yeah, I thought Claire put it very well when it comes to meta. And I think one key point to make, just to pick up on what she said, is, you know, it's not about clamping down on people's freedoms and freedom of speech. It's about applying the kind of laws that we have in the real world to what's going on in the online world.

And that's all many women are asking for. But you know, the issue is the tech companies. So a month after I did the investigation with the team at Champloo News, we went back on and checked and my video was still accessible. You know, I, as I say, I have the privilege of being able to phone companies and say, you know, this is happening, we're reporting on it. And they act pretty swiftly to derank it as it goes. So it's less easy to find. But a month after we reported, it was still up there. I don't go back and check every five minutes, because frankly, I need to get on with my life. But,

you know, the point is, tech companies seem to be very slow to create an environment where women are as safe as they are in the real world. That is all we're asking for. That is all campaigners are asking for, at least. Do you think that will happen, Claire? Well, we do have the Online Safety Act in the UK, but unfortunately, the regulations and guidance that's been issued by the regulator Ofcom is not terribly strong. So, for example, there isn't the guidelines that Cathy would be talking about, about how they must remove material within a certain period of time and keep it off. They're coming towards April, aren't they, Claire? The tech companies have to comply with those guidelines in April. And that's for the sharing of deepfake that's already

illegal. So you can see how slowly the wheels turn in April. And that's for the sharing of deepfake that's already illegal. So you can see how slowly the wheels turn in regulation. But even the guidelines just aren't that specific. So for example, in some countries, there are guidelines that you need to take material down within 48 hours, for example, and our guidelines don't even have that sort of provision. So we do have some guidance, but it's really rather weak, unfortunately. But coming back to that point of borders and the web, I mean, how effective can it be if it's within one country? Well, it is true. It's obviously an international concern and problem. Fortunately, the regulation across the European Union, 27 other countries, is also strong and is stronger than the Online Safety Act in some contexts. And there are regulations, for example,

some of the guidance in Australia is, again, much stronger. So there is some international agreement about what needs to be done. We've just got to hope that the political will continues to try to ensure that that regulation is there and strengthened. And I don't have a statement from Ofcom here. They may disagree. I do want to read the statement, however, from the Victims Minister, Alex Davies-Jones, who was speaking this week, who says it is unacceptable that one in three women have been victims of online abuse. This demeaning

and disgusting form of chauvinism must not become normalised and as part of our plan for change we're bearing down on violence against women whatever form it takes.

These new offences will help prevent people being victimised online or putting offenders on notice. They will face the full force of the law.

I want to come back to you Cathy Cathy, as well with some of the figures you had. She's talking about one in three women there being victims of online abuse. Can you remind me again of the amount of people that were watching deep fakes? I think you put it in comparison with the World Cup audience. Yeah, I just let me just remind myself of those numbers that we had. It's a few months ago now. But basically, I mean, it's exponentially increasing. That's the problem. So, yes, on the top sites that we looked at, videos have been viewed more than 4.2 billion times.

So that was almost three times the number of people who watched the last Football World Cup final, which is an extraordinary figure. And you are looking at an exponential increase. In 2023, more deepfake videos were viewed than in all the preceding years put together. And that was 2023, the last figures which, you know, figures could be collated for. So it has inevitably gained rocket boosters since then. And so that is the problem that, you know, if we're looking at protecting our daughters,

and we haven't even touched on the issue of child sexual abuse, deep faked child sexual abuse. And that's where we should be looking now, because it's the next generation of women and girls who are going to be facing this on a daily basis. So the government around the world, governments around the world have got to get it right for them, really. And we do cover child sexual abuse on the programme in some of these image-based crimes as well, and we shall continue to do so. But I want to thank you very much for coming on. My guest this morning starting us off is Channel 4 News presenter and investigations editor,

Cathy Newman. As I mentioned, some of the investigation that she was talking about is up on her Twitter or Xfeed at the moment. Professor Clare McGlynn from the University of Durham, thanks also to you

for coming on Woman's Hour this morning. I want to, I was asking just at the beginning of the programme how you feel about a column I was reading about that parents should get priority

from booking leave over the summer holidays and also the half terms. And somebody said I had to pull over to text in, so let's read this. I feel very strongly about this. I'm a single woman in my late 30s. I have eight nephews and nieces and six godchildren, as well as most of my friends

having school-aged children. I work six days a week and my day off is a Friday. This means that in order to see my friends who work Monday to Friday and have kids in school, and in order to spend time with my nephews, nieces and godchildren which I think is very important. I understand where the parent who wrote this article is coming from but I think she needs to stop to consider

how important it is for children to have positive relationships with other adults such as aunts and uncles and family friends and what it means to single people to be welcomed into families by joining in the family holidays etc. There is one. 84844.

Here's another. Childless and happy to avoid taking holidays when families with children are around. I do not see it as supporting the parents. I see it as a win-win situation. So agreeing with Rhiannon there. Another. I'm a childless gay man

whose partner teaches in adult education. Half terms and summer breaks are the only time we can take holidays together. 84844 if you'd like to get in touch. But I want to turn next to the woman who's just walked into the studio, author Claire Whitfield. She has combined her love

of history and crime in her novel Poor Girls. The title of the book refers to the young working class women of the 1920s who were destined for a life in service unless they took other less respectable opportunities. So for Eleanor Mackridge, who's the main character in the novel,

that opportunity was to join a real life all female criminal gang, the 40 Elephants, which it is based upon. Clare joins me in the studio to tell us all about that fascinating world. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Well, I love our hero Eleanor, who's at the beginning of the novel.

She's quite a, what would I say, drudge-filled life. She's living in Brighton. It's just after the First World War. Tell us a little bit about that setting. Well, I think it's just after the First World War, which is really, from a socioeconomic landscape is really similar to today. And that's what I really, it really filled me with enthusiasm when I stumbled across that. So after the war, there was rampant inflation, you know, there was

unemployment, there was mass inequality, all familiar struggles we're dealing with today and many young women and their mothers in fact during the war were called up egged on by the press to take up jobs to help their country and serve in munitions factory or help the war effort while obviously that all the menfolk went away to war absolutely but then once that was over, they had experienced all these other opportunities, such as shift work, paid, you know, work, working in a team, working, training, progression, all these good things about employment that had previously been kept out of that. And yet, they were told, well, that's over now, we need you to go back to the way things were before. And the choices, they weren't the most exciting.

Not for, it's easy to become confused when you look at history because there were people doing amazing things, but not working class, bog standard, ordinary girls like Eleanor. So school ended up at 14. And then you were expected to go out and get a job. And as a working class girl, most girls went straight into service in domestic service. That's 14 year old girls living out of the people's homes. And having to kowtow.

Well, there's no shift work. There's no team. There's no trade. You know, you are pretty much whatever resource that family needs to use you for. So it's not the most inspirational future in terms of employment, especially if you've experienced something else. So being told to go back in your box, so to speak, or there was waitressing and shop work, and Nell is a waitress.

Eleanor starts as a waitress. She changes her name. She does change her name with her identity. Yeah, sorry. So she starts off in Brighton. You know, she's working at the Grand. It's a very luxurious hotel. And she's serving the genteel and upper classes. But she knows there's no future for her. It doesn't matter how hard she works. And so she's seduced into a criminal gang who were the 40 elephants.

We love that name, right? Immediately it kind of captures you. But this was a real gang. A real gang. Yes, absolutely. So I think many people know of the 40 elephants. I think many people won't, though. So let's tell us.

Yeah. So the 40 elephants started out, I believe, as the 40 thieves. And they were women, organised thieves. London based. London based around Elephant and Castle, Lambeth, Southwark, that area. And there's also a link, if you think to Peaky Blinders, the elephant gang were the male gang. And then you had the female relatives, the female sisters, friends, nieces, mothers, who almost had their own business enterprise going on as the 40 Thieves. They were lady thieves or hoisters, as they called it.

But they kept their businesses very separate. And the elephant gang, the male gang, had affiliations with the Bramuggams, which Peaky Blinders fans may be familiar with. So it was all interlinked. But it wasn't until this sort of perfect storm of self-service in department stores opening up to the public and the interwar years and the advance of, I guess, that education in military operations and the leadership of Alice Diamond, who really came to the helm to lead that gang. And she almost rebranded them, if you think she was an entrepreneurial, strategic woman.

And she rebranded them as the 40 Elephants. And they really pretty much blitzed London and the department stores and helped themselves. They took self-service aspect very, very literally. You know, I was struck when I was reading your book because things were under lock and key before and then it became self-service. So it was kind of an opening for thieves. But when I was in New York last year, in a lot of the big stores I went into, like pharmacies, you know, that sell a bit of everything. Yeah. Everything was under lock and key. Really? Yes. So I was thinking, yes, it's gone full circle. I was just thinking about while I was reading your book last night. But there are fascinating details that you write about.

Let's talk about bloomers. Yes. So there's been some great books. There's always been, I think, there's always been scan information about the 40 elephants. But then in 2015, I think Brian McDonald wrote a nonfiction book and Caitlin Davis has written some in-depth studies of certain aspects of the gang. So what you can piece together. And then there's ex-members who've written books like one ex-member of the 40 Elephants in the 50s, I believe, Shirley Pitt. She wrote about how we did it and the important aspect at the time.

So it's really easy to think of the 20s as jazz and flappers. But in reality, in the UK, women still wore very long skirts, big, heavy, bulky coats, petticoats and all. All of it. It was very conservative society, especially as the middle class aspect lady they were trying to present. And so they had silk bloomers and it had to be silk apparently, because they had more give, you could really get things in them and they were much more forgiving. And they had to train up with veteran hoisters how to stuff your bloomers. So let's see what's going in there. So I believe anything, anything you could.

So it could be haberdasheries, it could be bags, it could be blouses, it could be fabrics, anything. But especially perplexing, I can't get my head around and one i think it would be great to have a training session actually and see how it's done is a fur coat some of these women could actually stuff now in the research they said it was all about the role and i put that in the book it was about you gotta get that roll tight and be able to stuff it down your get that. Get that fox fur coat. And then you've got to walk out of a shop. And try not to walk funny. Yeah, exactly. And that was the skill. So it was actually quite technical, but they ran in gangs as well. So they had someone running a decoy, people doing distractions as someone was stuffing a fur coat into their bloomers. A fur coat is quite glamorous. Some of this seems like quite a glamorous life.

Did you have any, I don't know, moral reservations about glamorising the life of, at times, violent criminals? Yes and no. So yes, you do think that. It's like, it's probably not responsible to glamorise this, but at the same time, it's probably not responsible to glamorise this, but at the same time, it's true. And it needs study.

And also, why should... We have many, many studies, if you like, Pablo Escobar, The Craze, Peaky Blind, all these male gangs, and we don't seem to have this extra moral gatekeeping hurdle of just examining that as a historic episode in our culture but with women that that's what I was thinking even when we do it historically do you think there is still a different expectation for female crims than the male ones hugely yeah even when I said I was writing about this friends were like oh is that oh you know well is that you know how are you going to make them likable and it's like

did anyone sit there when they were doing I don't know the Pablo Escobar series and go we really need to make Pablo really likable you know it's it's that extra hurdle and also I wonder why that is. We're the same species. Why is there this almost extra layer of expectation that's almost like a personality type rather than... Even when we're looking back on something that happened. That actually happened, yeah. hard partying you know the fur coats when they weren't down their bloomers when they were wearing them around their shoulders

instead wearing diamonds drinking champagne and going out a lot in London it kind of paints a picture doesn't it

after that time yeah I think it was that very much play hard you know live fast almost die young sort of culture

which I guess is understandable if you've grown up in the shocking, if you can imagine what must have been a shocking horror of experiencing World War One. You don't know how long you've got, and you've got nothing. And at the same time, there's so much change, you know, in technology, telephony is kicking off, and then nightclubs, jazz. So before, the nightclub scene really exploded again in the 20s. And it was classes really mixing for once. Because before, you'd have your private members clubs.

And then you'd have your pubs. Yes. But now it was opening up. And, you know, what fun would a nightclub be without women? So let's get the girls down there. And they would put on the posh. They would put on the posh. Yeah, I like that phrase. That's what they called it.

They would look a million dollars, apparently. And they partied hard because at the essence, these were young working class girls. They didn't know how to invest in stocks and shares and bricks and mortar, really. They earned a lot of money and they spent it having a good time because it could end tomorrow um it's a great read um i want to talk about you before i let you go anywhere uh you still have a day job how are you finding the juggle really hard but i think

you know that's the same as everyone else you know it's we've all got like a lot of work on haven't we I work four days a week um so in what industry so I'm a project manager um for a consultancy for the HE sector um we do procurement services it's really grown up and dry I get that so my my book is where I have and do you write first thing in the morning last thing at night last thing at night. Last thing at night and weekends, most evenings. Yeah, yeah. So I really enjoy my job. Don't get me wrong. It's just quite a lot to do in terms of working hours a week. So it's quite a hard slog.

I also read that you received an autism diagnosis in 2020. What led to that? Gosh, that's a longer interview you might need another slot for me for that one but I'll try and wrap it up it was always a suspicion and it was experiences over the years of meeting other people who were like

are you do you think and also my husband had a diagnosis of ADHD and he was like I think you've all learned about that I think you might be so um my niece also was diagnosed and then it was a case of yeah I want to understand this for myself um so it was I think in 2020 I finally got diagnosed because you have to pay for it privately. So again. Yes, you did it when you could do it. You could do it financially, yeah. But I wonder whether you think your autism in any way

affects the way you approach creating characters. Massively. I mean, this is a focus group of one, so it's my personal view. But I think as a child, for me specifically, I miss out on the cultural aspects, those social cues, those unspoken things, unless someone explains it to me. And I think that means if you were to try and fit in, you literally are studying people all the time to try and what am I missing? What do I need to understand? So in terms of approaching characters, you almost do this deep psychological analysis from all their motivations, because that's how you've had to learn how to get by and have jobs and mix with people who are neurotypical.

So, yeah, I guess it does really affect me because I analyse and study a lot. Really interesting. Thank you so much for coming in, Clare. We have other things we could talk about because you're a very interesting person as well as your book. But thanks so much for coming in to chat about your novel, Poor Girls.

Thank you for having me. I'm Sarah Trelevan and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. So welcome. I want to go somewhere completely different now. And it's a listener that's going to take us there. It's Victoria Malouche.

She wrote to us wanting to highlight women working in environmentally hostile environments and also to encourage more women to get out into the field. Victoria is currently employed as a marine mammal specialist and expedition guide on a cruise expedition ship. Here's what she said. She says, I'm 30. I work in the Arctic and the Antarctic. And I often get asked about how I manage having endometriosis while driving Zodiac boats, smaller boats, around glaciers and marine megafauna.

Good question. Well, I spoke to her about her work in the Antarctica. We go to very remote places in Antarctica. We take them out on Zodiacs and we take them to shipwrecks, places like Enterprise Island and Neco Harbour. And we show them historical parts of Antarctica, which is mainly old whaling factory places, but mostly wildlife. What might you see if you went out today? There is so much. I believe David Attenborough called it heaven on earth, specifically for South Georgia and Antarctica.

But you see an abundance of penguins. I think that is the one thing you can absolutely guarantee with Antarctica is penguins, the bristle tails, the chinstraps, gentus, the adelies. And then depending on what part of Antarctica you go to, you'll get the kings and the emperors. You also see elephant seals, which are absolutely enormous. They are actually the largest seal species in the world.

We also get the leopard seals, which are one of the apex predators that we have in Antarctica. They're quite amazing animals, quite elusive sometimes. But they are the one seal, the seal that will eat a warm-blooded animals you'll get orca as well whales blue whales have also been spotted the largest animal that's ever lived but i would say humpback whales are the most common animal that you will find in antarctica because of the abundance of krill and phytoplankton and zooplankton that's going around. You love humpback whales, I understand. Oh my gosh, they are just beautiful. We're still learning so much about cetaceans in general.

There's so much that we don't know. But with humpback whales, they are the most musical of all of the whales. They tend to sing, especially the males. Extremely acrobatic, so you'll see them breaching quite often when you're scrolling maybe or you're watching on television. You'll see these whales leap out of the water and do this little twirl in the air. And that's usually the humpback whales. It's quite, what would I say, a jarring juxtaposition of thinking, you know, scrolling on your phone and these crazy scenes going on outside. Yes. And in in Antarctica they're just everywhere. You'll be looking out of your window and you'll see a humpback. We had one sleeping next to the ship a couple of days ago in Eco Harbour. They're quite curious so we have to

be quite careful because we abide by the IATO regulations which essentially just ensures that the wildlife is safe and there's a lot of biosecurity that goes on on the ship so we have to make sure we are absolutely spick and span before we step foot on Antarctica. How do you do that? Oh well we've got something we call a mudroom essentially like a big water tray a vercon it's like a pink chemical liquid and it sanitizes your boots so we step in that before we go out and we also step in it when we come back so we're not traipsing it through the ship and we also have a boot wash and essentially a shower room where we rinse ourselves off after each and every single landing

because the worry is contamination in a place that really could do without it. I understood that the other day you did have the experience of finding avian flu. Oh, goodness me. Yes, it's quite sad because this also can pass on to the pinnipeds, our seal species. So essentially, myself and a couple of other colleagues go ashore first before anyone arrives. We will walk around the island or piece of land that we're looking to hike and we will have to assess if there's any deaths or if there's any signs of bird flu avian flu in both the penguins usually or skewers they're quite prone to it and the seals so if there is more than three looking a little bit avian flu like showing the symptoms, then we will not land. Or if there are more than three mortalities,

we won't land because we really want to reduce the spread of avian flu as it's hitting places like Antarctica quite hard. So what did you find? We found a couple of dead chin straps and a deceased skewer. When you see them actually suffering from avian flu, they'll display different symptoms in different species. But it can be quite difficult because some penguin species actually carry it, but they don't suffer from it. And that was about to be my question. Is it from a non-native species that would introduce something like that? Or is it something endemic within Antarctica? We've had it in the north and it spreads down there, I believe, from back and forth passing to Antarctica.

But there's also birds that will fly to Antarctica and bring it with them. And because seabirds especially tend to group together in rookeries, they'll all be sort of close together, especially when the winter comes. And that's when it really starts to spread. So that is something that can happen, as you talk about with avian flu. We also talk about changes in the environment due to climate change and global warming. Have you seen that? Yes, we do. We actively see it. A few days ago, we were in Neco Harbour, for example, and it's very normal to see glaciers carving, especially this time of year, because this is summer in Antarctica. It's happening at a very rapid rate, especially when we're working in the Arctic,

for example. You see it happen a lot faster. And I think that's because there are people living in the Arctic, rather there's no people living in Antarctica. So in the Arctic, you can see things happening extremely fast. For example, in the last 100 years, glaciers have actually reduced about 40% which is an extremely rapid reduction in glacial ice. So that is a consequence of global warming and as you talk about human activity when it comes to the Arctic but you will have seen of course lots of concerns about the increase in cruise ship tourism to both the Arctic and Antarctica. Some quoting for example the high carbon footprint, pollution,

wildlife disturbance and the habitat being deteriorated. But, you know, I was seeing one question that was being posed in some of the articles saying, should we just say no to Antarctica and particularly the type of tourism that you could be considered a part of? I would say that if you are responsible, and if we encourage the growth of hybrid ships, I would say that it is acceptable. But we are seeing more and more people and ships coming into Antarctica who do not abide by the IATO regulations. They throw things overboard. It was only a few days ago we saw a few krill ships in the bay. And we're seeing them more and more often. And they're taking krill out of the water because it's quite a lucrative business. And it's absolutely devastating for the wildlife, but also the environment itself. There should not be that many ships there, especially ones that are taking from Antarctica and leaving such a heavy carbon footprint.

We also found a lump of polystyrene in the water yesterday, which is absolutely just devastating to see because you're in the wilderness and then you find a piece of plastic. It's really quite heartbreaking. There's regulations in place for a reason and there definitely should be a reduction. But what about those who feel that cruise ships should be banned from Antarctica? I certainly think there should be more regulations with it. Like? Reducing the amount that come down.

So a quota? Also a quota, but also there should be someone on board from IATO or a conservationist, for example, who is monitoring. There always should be a monitor, I believe. I'm quite certain that all cruise ships don't have one, whereas we're quite lucky on particular ones, which are very, very stringent, very, very careful with where we go. If we're looking at whales, for example, in a zodiac, we must keep 100 meters away from this animal we don't want to disturb it we want to give it lots of space we think about noise pollution

we want to make sure we're far away from it if it's feeding we're 200 meters away from it we're being as careful as we possibly can and as and as lovely as it would be to um stop all ship trafficking including uh cruise ships coming to Antarctica. I just believe it's not going to happen. It seems to be a constant battle between money and conservation and politics. And it can be quite a tangled and difficult thing to solve or even talk about. Because people who go on a cruise like yours, for example, they would be very wealthy, it's very expensive. Did I see 35,000 somewhere? And it means only a certain person can visit Antarctica. Yes. And, you know, that can also be sort of a difficult pill to swallow as well. A little bit

of a philosophical thing to think about too. If we couldn't go at all, then we wouldn't know what's going on in Antarctica. You know, there are things that we can do and are doing, especially for the research vessels, it's essential that they are able to access Antarctica to be able to keep an eye on it and keep reporting back the changes that are happening here. And even evolutionary changes. As a human race, we also need to see places like this. It's just a shame that it's quite closed off to only a number of people. And it is quite closed off in the role you are doing, I understand, in the sense that it is mainly men that you are surrounded by. goes back a very long time. We're speaking 1800s, even 1700s. The stories we hear, these amazing voyages are brilliant to read about and hear about in lectures. But it's also very sad that it is quite male dominated. And it would be great if more women could get into this industry and really

make a mark and make a difference. If we are going to continue coming down to Antarctica, we need to be able to protect it. We need to be able to do everything we can do to preserve it. And I think that there's not enough women down here in Antarctica to make a difference. And you talk about the history and culturally, mainly men that were there. Why did you do it? What was different for you? Quite simply putting it, I love wildlife. I love animals. I love the planet, the environment. I was working on a little boat in Cardigan Bay with Steve Hartley from the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre. He's the founder of the centre and is absolutely fantastic. It's bottlenose dolphin research,

harbour porpoise, the local the local seals everything and i met another woman on this boat and she was doing this expedition work and she said you should really get into it because you can pass on your knowledge you can't just have people saying oh look how pretty this place is you need people on ships if they are going to antarctica to talk about the detrimental effects of human activity that can happen. And the best place to do that is in the place where it's happening. So it kind of convinced me to get out on the ships and start talking about conservation and talking about the environment and how crucial it is to protect these animals. But I'm wondering what it's like as a woman there. I mean, for any person,

it is incredibly cold. But you also have to manage the pain of endometriosis, for example. Somewhere so remote, it can be difficult enough to get treated when you're in a metropolis with something like that. How do you manage? I'm not going to sugarcoat it at all. It can be very hard. I obviously take medication with me and a TENS machine with me, hot water bottles. The cold also doesn't help much, but you just have to prepare. You just have to put those things in place to help you get by. And I'm very lucky because I have a very amazing team. They're very sympathetic. If I do suddenly have quite a bad flare up, they'll cover me and I'll go back to the ship and then be back on the water the next day. Mentally as well, you're away from your family for months at a time. So it can be a real mental

strain, physical strain. It's exhausting, quite frankly. But if you're making a little bit of a difference and you're just telling people about these animals, this beautiful place, it makes me feel like I'm contributing something. And you'd encourage other women to join you? I absolutely think they should. Victoria Mellewish there in Antarctica. Thanks so much to her for getting in touch with us. We always love to hear from you.

Now, at the beginning of the programme, I asked you, should parents get priority to book off half term or the six week summer holiday? And you answered. Many, many of you answered. Here are just some of the messages coming in. Elaine, I object to work colleagues with children being given priority on holidays over Christmas. For me, with elderly parents 200 miles away, taking days off is needed for travel, food, shopping, spending time with loved ones who may not be with us much longer. Elder care is as important as childcare. That's interesting. Rhiannon didn't bring up Christmas, but that is a conversation. Jeanette, parents and school children are restricted enough by school term dates.

Childless workers already have the benefit of cheaper off-price, off-peak prices for travel, which school parents cannot take advantage of. So she is in favour of Rhiannon's proposal. It came from a column by Rhiannon and James Pickton. Also another, I don't think women or any person without children should have to pick

up from those who do have children. I am childless, not by choice, and I find special treatment for those with already massive good fortune leaves me feeling ever more worthless. 84844 if you'd like to get in touch. We were just in Antarctica now. The magic of radio.

We're going to the other end of the globe, north to Norway, because as the clock struck midnight to welcome in 2025, businesses there hit a key deadline, requiring them to ensure more women are sitting on their executive boards. So the country was the first in the world, this is back in 2008, to introduce a 40% gender quota on the boards of listed companies. So those companies that are on the Oslo Stock Exchange. But now the Norwegian parliament has extended the quota to all large and medium sized private firms.

So we're talking about 8000 businesses. Have the companies met the deadline? Let's hear a little bit more about it. Høge Rudland is the founder of the recruitment company Matei AS. Also with us is Linda Letle Kallsoy-Orsa, who's the CEO of Bremnes Seashore and the winner of Norway's Woman Board Award in 2022. So well placed. Let me start with you, Hugge, and Happy New Year to you. The deadline was on New Year's Day.

Would you consider it a success so far, one weekend? It's going to be, I promise you. But there are still some companies that have work to do. And what's that work? Have they got the 40? Because we should be specific about this. I say 40% women, and that's because usually women

are in the minority, but it's 40% of either gender. So it can't be all of one gender or the other. Exactly. So mostly the boards in Norway has been male dominated. So now most of the boards

are going to have more female candidates or female members into. So that's the work for finding the candidates. So most of the concern for the companies are finding, are they there? Are they? They are there. Yes, they are. So that's why I started the company, actually, because I knew they were there.

So I wanted to give them to the companies because there are so many and many have raised their hands. But it's all about finding the right match. So talk about the match. In what sense? Do you need a certain, I don't know, qualification? What is it that you feel is the hardest match to make? What's standing in the way? There are so many members already in the boards

that have plenty of years of experience from the board. So it's not necessary, but understanding the role of the owner's interest and also for maybe having been having the pnl respon responsibility and to have a c-level position before so that's so an executive level position very high up in a company um and so right so it's kind of like a vicious circle do they have the experience to take on this role? But if they don't take on the role, they won't get the experience. Exactly. So there are plenty of candidates with C-level or executive experience already. And still, diversity is also about not only gender, but also about age and different kind of industry experience.

So a lot of younger candidates are now entering the boards because they have other different questions that really can emphasize the new strategy of the company. So there will be a diversity, not just gender. And Linda, let me turn to you. You've been on several boards

over the past decade or so. It was, as I mentioned, introduced to Norway for listed companies. How do you feel about the 40% representation? Was there pushback from companies, whether back on the listed companies or indeed this time for private ones? I think just to start on the good note, it has been a door opener. And i think there has been the company has been forced to think out of the box so so even though there were some resistance they had to do it so i think that's the good thing with having this introduced as a law this is something that

the company needs to do and of course it's always good to test it out on the stock noted first. And maybe the in a positive way to bring in more diversity in the boards. But they are the diversity on the boards that you talk about there, Linda. But some people criticise that actual internal leadership positions in businesses which hold greater power, that the women aren't there yet. I mean, is that where a quota could be introduced? Well, they are already there, but I believe that the tone has to be set on the top, meaning the board. So we need to give, again, the opportunities to those really good qualified women out there

because, as Hege said, they are there. I think that's not the challenge. It is that we haven't seen them before in the way that we do now so uh so there are plenty of good qualified women out there and they should really been seen and been included at the board but it is not enough to invite them in they have also to be invited to dance in a way. So you cannot bring them into the board and then have them in a corner. So don't put the, you know.

Don't put the new woman on the board in the corner. I totally get it. Let me turn back to you though, Hegge. There was, I was seeing how some businesses are trying to get around it to have this 40%. Is there making their boards smaller? There was, I was seeing how some businesses are trying to get around it to have this 40%. Is there making their boards smaller so then you get the quota easier? Have you seen that?

Yeah, I've seen that, but I kind of excuse them for making a temporary arrangement. Okay. Because the most ambitious boards will, of course, look at this as an advantage and see that okay now we can have new questions new perspectives into the board because female candidates and members they bring in some new perspectives into the boards that's the feedback that we have got. I'm also of course this is happening in Norway when I was reading into it yesterday

it said it still not gender equal but it's one of the countries that's getting closest to it with some of the recognised parameters but in the UK there's a voluntary quota target

of 40% voluntary women do now make up 42% of the UK's FTSE 350 board so that's ahead of their voluntary 2025 deadline. This is according to the FTSE Women Leaders Report. But it was still only 32% for the top 50 largest private companies.

What do you think the UK can learn from Norway? Oh, that's a difficult question. But I think what's been an advantage of Norway is that you see the change in the boards that is going from more controlling kind of perspective into the boards to be more strategic and business development oriented. So I don't know if that's an answer of the question, but that's something that I'm really impressed by in Norway. So it's basically that culture of it or the ethos of it is changing. Really interesting. We'll continue following it.

Haga Rudland and Linda Lettley-Kalce Orsa, thanks to both of you for joining us on Woman's Hour. One from Paul. Fair enough for parents to take priority booking holidays during the school halls, but surely companies can identify times that are unpopular and offer employees five days off for the price of four.

We're back with you tomorrow. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. I'm Michael Gove, and in a new series for Radio 4, I'll be discussing how to survive politics. I'll be joined by fellow politicians to discuss how politics really works.

It is only because of your principles that it is worthwhile. We'll be talking about how to build alliances. You're all trying to make the world a better place and you have quite a lot in common. How to cope with being unpopular and how to stick to your principles when things get tough. Faith, family and friends are very important. Has there been a time when you felt betrayed?

Do you think you've ever done the betraying? Surviving Politics with me, Michael Gove. Find it on BBC Sounds in the Politically feed. 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's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake 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.