Woman's Hour - DJ BB, DJ Ritu, Dame Esther Rantzen, Ros Whitehouse, Dr Caroline Boyd, Joy Porter, Dr Mariaelena Huambachano

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

On our final day of Listener Week Jessica Creighton brings a host of stories to the table inspired by your requests.Listener Carol is DJ BB. She got in touch to tell us about taking up DJ’ing in her 50s and setting up an event called ‘She’s In Control’. Nearly 60 she tells us about the negative perception of older women in music and the club scene. DJ Ritu is the same age as Carol but has been in the club scene since her 20s. They both join Jess Creighton to dissect the music and club scene through the lens of an older female DJ. Have you decided to retire and then changed your mind months or years later? What made you de-retire? Were the reasons financial? Did you miss the mental stimulation or daily structure or the socialising? Jessica Creighton speaks to Ros Whitehouse who, in her early 70’s, felt society was telling her to retire but within months she realised it was a mistake. Dame Esther Rantzen, founder of the Silver Line Helpline, joins them.We received an email from an anonymous listener who described her experience of being an unwanted child. To discuss this issue, and the impact it can have later in life, Jessica speaks to Dr Caroline Boyd – a peri-natal, chartered clinical psychologist.And we look at matrilineal communities who trace kinship through the female line and can involve the inheritance of property and titles with Woman’s Hour listener and Professor of Indigenous and Environmental History at the University of Hull, Joy Porter and Dr. Mariaelena Huambachano, Environmental Humanities, Native American and Indigenous Studies at Syracuse University.Presenter: Jessica Creighton Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Duncan Hannant Photo Credit: Mahaneela

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Jessica Crichton. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, welcome to the programme. Great to have your company. Now we're into the final day of Listener's Week, where you tell us what you want to discuss on the programme. And we have another rich mix of topics this morning, including what can we learn from matrilineal communities where property and names are passed down via mothers rather than fathers? How does it impact the balance of power in societies?

Also, have you gone back to work after retiring? One of our listeners left work in her 70s, regretted it, and so made the decision to de-retire. We'll be talking to her and Dame Esther Ranson, who has done lots of work to support older people in the UK. We'll also be talking to two DJs in their late 50s to tell us about the shock reaction they often get when they turn up to venues, sometimes being mistaken as the cleaner rather than the headline DJ,

and how best to deal with the pain of being an unwanted child. One listener contacted us to describe how knowing her mother didn't want her still affects her today in adulthood. As always, if there's anything that you want to comment on this morning, we'd love to hear from you. Send us a WhatsApp message or a voice note

on 03700100444. Data charges may apply. It's 84844 on the text. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us through our website. Do get in touch as always. It's always a pleasure to hear from you. Now, first this morning, you may have seen the headlines all over the newspapers, all over the news, that a new price cap of £3,549 has been announced by Ofgem, the energy regulator. That's an 80% rise on the current cap.

It comes into effect on the 1st of October. Now, it's expected that many won't be able to afford to heat their homes as a result, and charities say it could lead to some people having to choose between heat and food. This is something that is particularly concerning to everyone, but in particular, one of our listeners, the Reverend Caroline Pinchbeck, who is vicar of five parishes in York Diocese. She tweeted in and she asked us in particular to address rural fuel poverty. Good morning to you, Caroline. Just start by explaining how is fuel poverty particularly affecting rural communities in the UK? The percentage of households will be in fuel poverty and when people visit rural areas they see the nice leafy things and the sunshine as it is today.

The problem is that it's about access to services and getting services to houses and community buildings. And particularly in our area, we don't have access to oil or petrol. It's probably 10 pence more than it would be in a city. And you can't shop around. So most of the, I live in a town, but it's pretty much a large village, really. And most of our population use those supermarkets, which, again, prices are increased as well. So most people are using wood, but there's a scarcity of wood. And so it just makes it really, really difficult for people. Yeah, there's clearly a distinct difference between being in a rural area and being in a major city. So what cutbacks have you had to make?

So already at the grassroots, the people that I see, people admittedly are already cutting down on their heating. But we're a significant older population who need their house to be much warmer because they're less immobile. So that already people are feeling the pinch um it's also uh anecdotally people are staying in bed because it's warmer um again it's older people so you know that that impacts on their well-being their mental health loneliness isolation and all that sort of thing. Yeah. OK, let's widen things out now, talk more generally about energy saving. It's clearly something that affects everyone in the UK at the moment. I'm joined now by Laura McGeady, who's Group Head of Energy at the Energy Saving Trust.

Welcome to the programme, Laura. This is clearly affecting everyone in different ways. So what are the best ways to save on energy costs in the short term? Yeah, well, well, thank you for having me. And we know that a lot of people have already made changes, as we've heard from Caroline, you know, people are already very worried. So whatever you're doing to cut your energy use will be working. And when the prices go up, you'll be more protected. But the first thing to do really is to make sure you're using your heating as efficiently as possible. And you. And I totally appreciate Caroline saying that some people have got beyond that and are so worried that they're really not using their heating at all. But where you are using heating, just try and reuse the heat in the rooms you're in. Make sure it's not on when you're

not in the home. Use your timer to do that. Try things with your your central thermostat to to turn it down as far as you can while it's still comfortable between 18 and 21 degrees is what the world health organizer recommends and then there's lots of top quick things you can do around the house that can save you under the current price is about 375 pounds a year which will obviously go up from october and all those top tips are on our website. But things like keep to a four minute shower, try and have a shower rather than a bath. Make sure you switch things off, your appliances off, stand by.

Try and wash your clothes on 30 degrees rather than higher temperatures because they'll be just as clean, but you'll save energy. Try and dry clothes outside if you've got space. All of these little things seem like little things, but they all really add up. Yeah, there's some great tips in there. And I'm sure some of our listeners will have great tips as well. Do get in touch if you do have some savvy ways of saving on energy costs. You can text, you can email, you can get in touch via social media and WhatsApp as well. And we'll come back to them hopefully at the end of the program at time permitting so when you talk about laura uh turning things off uh i assume you don't mean the fridge freezer what about wi-fi yeah absolutely not your fridge and not your freezer because they're working all

the time to keep your food safe but anything else where you're not actually using it you can switch it off and wi-fi is a relatively small cost but i mean i switch my wi-fi off when i'm not using it you know i don't see the point in having electricity wasted and it doesn't affect the the strength and the stability of the connection or anything like that doesn't seem to i'm working from home i'm using wi-fi day in day out but i mean i would say it's not just wi-fi it's all appliances that you stand by you know we've all got lots of gizmos in our house now so if you can switch everything off at the plug in all if you switch everything off typically a household could save 55 pounds a year so it's not a massive amount but you know every muckle max muckle as we say

up here so it's definitely worth switching things off when you're not using them and that that's a general rule apart from fridges and freezers yeah i see this is the thing you mentioned you know 50 pounds a year these energy saving tips how big of a difference do they make overall, really, in real terms? Because there are some people who are going to be you more money from October than it does now. So as I said, the top 10 things we suggest can save you £375 a year on the current prices. If you insulate your home fully, then you could save as much as £400 a year, and that's from good draft proofing and insulation. And of course, that can make you feel a lot more comfortable because drafts are uncomfortable and you're keeping the heat in,

so it makes sense. But there's a cost involved with insulation? Yeah, there's a small... it depends what you do. Draft proofing is relatively cheap to install. Loft insulation is not too expensive either. They pay back and well under five years, draft proofing much faster than that. And if you consider the comfort effects and the fact you're saving energy, and of course that saving is going up as prices go up, it's just worth doing if you can afford it, but definitely do all the free things first.

Recommend that you take control of your heating, switch things off you're not using, don't have things on when you're not in the house if you can. But I appreciate a lot of people have gone beyond that already and are really worried about price rises. So we do need additional support from government to cover some of these costs in the short term. Yeah, there's been a few tips coming about using a microwave rather than using your oven or your stove. Does that save money if you're cooking food? Well, a microwave is suitable for certain things.

So, you know, when you're reheating food, a microwave certainly would be cheaper to use than heating something on a gas hob, for example. It's much quicker and you can tell almost by the time. And you can tell if you're feeling wasted heat. You know, you can almost tell when you're losing, wasting energy, you can feel it.'re feeling wasted heat you know you can almost tell when you're losing wasting energy you can feel it so for the right purposes a microwave is a relatively cheap thing to do so not a bad idea at all good suggestion from whoever sent that one in okay brilliant yeah

we've had a few come in already i won't read them all out because we'll try and save them to the end and then we'll get you laura um to maybe give your uh your comments and your advice as well. But there is one that's really, really got my attention. We talk about microwaves, using that to cook. Someone has texted in to say, I cook rice and lentils in a good quality thermos food jar. That is ingenious. That's something that I might even try this evening.

Laura, thank you for the moment, for coming onto the programme. Do stay with us because we'll come back to you a bit later to talk more tips and advice. Also, thank you to Reverend Caroline Pinchbeck. Now, let's move on to retirement. Have you made the decision to retire and then changed your mind maybe months or even years later? What made you de-retire, as we're calling it were the reasons financial did you miss the mental stimulation or the daily structure or the socializing when our listener ros whitehouse spoke wrote to us i should say in 2017 she was then in her early

70s she felt society was actually telling her to retire but within months she realized it was a mistake now despite having moved across the country in the interim, she set up her small business as a painting conservator once again and is absolutely loving it. Now, Ross joins me now, as does Dame Esther Ranson, who I'm sure you all know has done much work in terms of being a journalist, a broadcaster, presenter, but also is the founder of the Silver Line Helpline, which helps elderly people experienced in loneliness. Good morning, Esther. Good morning, Ros. Ros, what was it that made you feel like you should retire? You said when

you got in contact that you felt that societal pressure on you. Well, I'm that very fortunate generation. and was offered a pension by the state at age 60 and I felt, well, should I be retiring? So I carried on for about 10 years being quite guilty about continuing working and then hubby and I had a really in-depth decision to shut down our businesses, which were small. We're both craft, practical people, and move across the country to be nearer the family. So I had internalised some of that. You're getting old.

You haven't got long. You might, you know, kick the bucket and leave the family to clear it all up and to empty the workshop. So we thought, well, we'd better make sure this doesn't happen. So we moved across the country turned out very nicely we found a nice town with lovely people in it and I had some retirement projects and then I found I was missing the work and at the same time old clients found me and said oh Ros just do this one just do this one so having worked at home just for a few years which is really absolutely not adequate for the sort of work I do finally after lots of discussion

which very rarely works lots of discussion took the plunge and got some business premises very modest does that answer the question no it does it does. It does. So in those two years or the couple of years between making the decision to retire and then reversing that decision, what were your emotions? How were you feeling? What was it that you missed exactly? Well, I loved the first six months. It was like a holiday, a real holiday, doing everything I fancied and doing those big retirement projects one of which was to get involved with starting a women's shed which I'm a great believer in following on from the men's shed movement which is a a great way for older people to get together and relieve loneliness and get practical I found it didn't take all my time and although I was making friends and seeing more people and doing more things there was space for work and I thought well it doesn't have to be all nothing

it doesn't have to be all work or all retirement maybe there's a balance to be struck and after my tentative essays in that direction I found it worked yeah that's well that's key isn't it sometimes just finding what works for you Esther good morning to you um in your work with older people have you found that de-retiring is quite common well I've certainly found that retirement can have quite an impact on people if they feel that their sense of identity and their sense of achievement is bound up with the work, let alone the fact that you work very often in teams of people who become quite important to you and a great fun and involve your social life too. So yes, I think losing all that can indeed produce a feeling of loneliness. I think that loneliness is very often associated with loss.

It can be bereavement loss. It can be loss of something like a driving licence or sight or mobility. But loss of work is definitely one of the factors. The great advantage, people don't talk about the advantage of getting older, do they? No, not really. You know, I remember one minister, government minister, looking at the graph of the aging population, called it the graph of doom. Not very positive. Anyway, one of the advantages about being older is, A, you know what you like doing. You know what your priorities are b um you're not as hungry um

metaphorically as you were when you were 30 or 40 so i recommend cherry picking i do not recommend climbing up a ladder and picking cherries because that you know climbing up ladders is one of those things that maybe one doesn't do so much as one gets older. But cherry picking what you do. So I absolutely understand that Ross took a moment to make up her mind what she wanted to do and then did it. And for a lot of people, that's working for charity. the whole voluntary sector would fall over and crumble without the energy, the experience, the skill, the conscientiousness of the older generation. So I say thank goodness for older people. Getting older can be fun, but I do recommend cherry picking if you do retire. Rose, what would you say to people that are listening and think, maybe I'm ready to retire? Actually, maybe I'm not. How do you know? How do you make that decision?

Well, looking back, really, it's a bit of a fumble. You have certain things in your life which are pushing you in a direction, and then you've got your feelings about the directions you're being pushed in. And it really is a very confusing time I think for me in my case it was the need to be near our family so we could help out with the children with grandchildren more because we were we had the m25 separating us not connecting us with with our children and our grandchildren and we couldn't be useful in any way that way so I think that was the precipitating factor was way that way. So I think that was the precipitating factor, was to be available when needed. I think that was the biggest thing.

And Esther, of course, it has to be said that not everyone has the finances to be able to retire, do they? They don't. Not everybody has a kind of job that you can carry on doing into old age. You know, I'm not sure about Britlaying. But I was actually retired by the BBC. It was quite funny.

BBC is very bad, you will discover, maybe, at saying goodbye. And when they said goodbye to me at the end of seven years of a talk show I did, they actually decided to hold a farewell party, which was rather sweet after 39 years. But the date they picked was the day after my swipe card ran out so I couldn't get into the building. The person responsible for inviting the guests invited her friends, not mine.

The food they selected was, well, I don't know about BBC hospitality now, but it was pretty disgusting. So all that, I think, was designed to make it easier, I think, for me to say goodbye to the institution I had known and loved for 39 years. But it also released me to do what I'm suggesting people do and just pick work that I enjoy doing, like, for example, Talking to Woman's Hour, as against the rat race and the sort of permanent hamster in a wheel that you have to do when you are spending every waking hour working and you aren't spending the time you prize with your grandchildren, which I'm sure Roz is finding is a joy and a delight for those of us who are lucky enough to be grandparents.

Is that right, Roz? I'm sure you're very much enjoying the family time. Was it hard for you, Roz, to, I suppose, change your frame of mind because we're brought up, aren't we, as Esther says, kind of committed to this rat race and committed to working a nine- five a monday to friday job and then all of a sudden it's kind of it's gone or you don't feel like you want to do it anymore yeah well you say rat race but when you're self-employed um i've always thought you're

either in business or you aren't and if you're in business you have to push forward, improve, look for work, better work, more work. And it's quite difficult walking a line where I want to be in the business a bit. As Esty said earlier, we're in our 70s. We're not looking forward to many years of running our businesses and being in work. And so we can't think ambitiously, but trying to think in a moderate way, in a cautious way with an approach to work and business, I do find a bit of a difficult line to walk. But I think with most white lines, you tend to fall to either side of it and learn as you go along. And of course, being able to see the children and to be on call when needed is a great joy.

Exhausting. I go back to work to have a rest. Esther, you may have seen recently that Serena Williams, the tennis icon, decided to almost I want to use the word, but she's deciding to retire without using the word retire. She talks about evolving away from tennis, almost as if retirement is a dirty word. Is it a word that we don't talk about enough, perhaps? Is that part of the reason why so many people are deciding to de-retire? It is interesting, isn't it? A lot of the words associated with getting older are pejorative. Retirement is one of them. I remember when I used to meet retired people, I said, how are you enjoying it? And they said, busier than ever, as if that is the only virtue you could aspire to. You've got to keep busy. But actually, what is this life full of care? We have no time to stand and stare or even sit and stare and I think that's the thing old age teaches you to enjoy the moment

you know I was sitting here in the countryside Covid changed my life completely and I'm now living in the countryside I was watching a wren hopping from branch to branch in a shrub in the garden and that's the thing you've never got do Do you know, when I was working on a programme, you're all too young to remember, called That's Life, my spring consisted of stopping the taxi on the way to the cutting room, leaping out, admiring the local park's tulips, leaping into the taxi again and carrying on my way. I never saw the sunlight.

And I remember doing a program called Never Too Late about older people and walking around that park and suddenly realizing that all the people sitting on the park benches, enjoying the sunshine, having a little chat, wandering off to have coffee, were people who had retired. Those people called wrinklies, oldies, the grey generation, past their sell-by date, all those pejorative things. And I looked at them and I thought, maybe there is a secret here. Maybe people, once they retire, can pick and choose how they spend their days and value the moment. Value the moment. A perfect place to end it. Esther, thank you so much for coming on.

And Ross, thank you for sharing your experiences as well. A few listeners have got in touch. Leslie says, when I retired at 67, I felt that I'd lost structure and purpose and my usefulness in society. I soon learned that active, willing, retired people are like gold dust in the voluntary sector, just as Esther said.

And you can pick when and what you do. Caroline said, I retired after 42 years in the probation service three years ago, age 66. Together with my daughter, we have restored some barns and now run a wedding business. It's this idea of cherry picking. I do like that. Now, do you feel like you can still go clubbing the older you get? I don't know about me. I don't think my knees would be able to handle it anymore. Well, our listener Carol is DJ Bebe. She got in touch to tell us about taking up DJing in her 50s and setting up an event called She's In Control.

She's nearly 60 now. Also, DJ Ritu has been on the club scene since her 20s, working on, well, working as, I should say, a multi-genre DJ, a club promoter, running record labels as well, and two of the UK's biggest Bollywood clubs in the UK. My goodness, how do you find the time? They both join me on the line now. Good morning

to you both. Carol, I'd love to know how come you started DJing later in life. Tell me how it all came about. Well, I've always been a clubber. I've always gone out to clubs, but having a daughter sort of affected what I did the next day. You know, you can't stay out too late when you've got a daughter. So as soon as she left home, went to university, I thought, brilliant, I can be a bit freer. I'd been running some friends only final nights and just decided to take it further from there. So it was all very organic. There was no big plan to do anything and set up a club as such. It just it just happened. But it was the freedom of not having to worry about my daughter.

Hopefully she's not listening to this and thinking, oh, thanks, Mom. But, yeah, maybe a midlife crisis. Who knows? Midlife liberation. That sounds great. Yeah, that sounds great. But you did put in your email when you got in touch with Woman's Hour and said, as a woman DJ, I experience micro sexism in the workplace. As a vinyl only DJ, I get compliments from both men and women, but I find my age and gender still challenges stereotype perceptions to the point where I've been mistaken for the cleaner rather than the headline DJ. Tell me more about that. Yes. So I was putting on an event at a big place in Manchester

and being the DJs and being the person in charge of our little crew, our Supernature Disco crew, I popped in early to check the environment, check the tech was okay and so on. And because I'd popped in early and no one was there, the automatic assumption was that I was the cleaner rather than the person DJing. And, you know, this is a thing of what people perceive as being a DJ is, you know, normally a male.

And what is the perception? Normally a male, normally a white male, normally someone in between their 20s and 30s, a few in their 40s, but very rarely people in their 60s or younger, you know, slightly younger than that. So, yeah. DJ Ritu, is it that rare to be a female DJ? Less so now than it was when I started in the 1980s.

Back in the 80s, you know, DJs were not that common, full stop. DJs weren't celebrities. Celebrities weren't pretending to be djs and women were certainly certainly a rarity in the profession at that time so there's definitely been a huge shift a seismic shift over the last four decades and talk to me about the shift in you know because obviously you've been on the club scene since you you're in your 20s, now in your late 50s, I believe. So how has the way you've been treated and perceived changed when you've got older? It's not always easy to assess that because I'm fortunate enough to still be offered a lot of work. And usually when people book me, it's on the premise of they know what they're getting.

And they're sent a press release or a biog and there's a giveaway in there because it very clearly says that I've been DJing for 36 years. But when I'm booked for events, when people don't know my background or my history. For example, I was doing a wedding in Ibiza, you know, two months ago. And I think this guy just kind of booked me out of the blue. And then when I actually turned up after, you know, dealing with him by email and all the liaison and, you know, pre-production and so on, I think he was a little bit surprised that, you know, I was standing there with hair dye and, you know, not wearing a kind of crop top. And so, yeah, I mean, reactions vary in that respect. But I fully agree with Carol that I think women

of a certain age are ushered into early retirement. And that happens perhaps much more so in certain professions, in certain industries and media driven industries in particular. Yeah, well, we're just talking about retirement and perhaps make people making the decision to to reverse that idea that they want to retire because they felt pressured to do it in the first place um i wonder what skills though do do older female djs bring a dj or two in in particular is it are you offering something different than the younger generation i think we've got a lot to offer um it's like asking well what skills does Idris Elba bring to um the acting world or to tv or film um what skills which skills do does George Clooney bring or Daniel Craig or someone like that um and yet these are questions that are usually posed to women and not to men um and when

it comes to uh if i sort of think about my music background um it is extensive i bring a lot of experience to the table um perhaps a little nugget of wisdom a few nuggets of wisdom here and there i know my records from certain eras inside out because when, you know, if I'm playing an 80s or a 90s kind of set, I bought those records when they first came out. And, you know, on my little record player at home, I listened to those records over and over and over again.

The music wasn't disposable in the way it is now or short-term, short-lived. I used to read the backs off all of the sleeve covers as well. So when you're actually performing or you're playing a set to an audience, you really, really do know your music. And I guess maybe for someone who's been doing this as long as I have, we bring a certain amount of technical skills to the table as well

because we've worked through the different format changes from vinyl through to CD, et cetera. Now I go out with a pair of USB sticks, which is much lighter on the back in terms of carrying things. So, yeah, I think there's a lot that we do bring to the table. Yeah, Penny has got in touch to say, just wanted to say that I still love going out to see bands and festivals and happy to dance the night away.

I am 55. Good for you, Penny. Carol, now you put on daytime events with this organisation, this group that you've created called She's In Control. And I know DJ Ritu, you were also DJing at South Asian daytime raves back in the 90s. Is there something about daytime events that's more safe for female DJs, do you think? Carol first. I guess it could be i think the thing about daytime events is it just feels a bit um like delicious and outrageous and you're doing something really naughty you know and if you've got children at home it's really easy to just to go out for the day and then come back as if nothing's happened so i think that was one of the reasons that um

we wanted to put an event not just because it finished at a sensible time and you know you could get a train or a bus home at eight o'clock and be in bed by ten um but it just felt different and there was very little going on in Manchester at the time um so I've been running the daytime club called Supernature Disco which then has led to She's In Control um it just at the time no one else was doing a daytime club and I know that they've been going on for years um DJ Ritu in the Asian community um but it wasn't happening here in Manchester so it really suited our needs to do something that could fit in with your working life fitting with your children um and you could still have a really good time and feel quite naughty doing it.

Yeah. DJ Ritu, do you think there's a difference when it comes to daytime raves? Because, I mean, what is the main hurdle for female DJs? Is it the public or is it from people within the industry where the barriers are being perpetrated? Definitely from within the industry. It's still a boys club, less so than before. But again, it's not just applicable to the club scene.

You know, if we look at post-pandemic festivals, so many of them have, you know, they've unashamedly come up with lineups that are exclusively male. And you think, really? You know, like huge reggae festivals and why where are the women you know where are all those uh legendary women like you know carol thompson and you know janet k who are part of the you know the reggae um reggae industry as well and have been for so long um i mean there is again i agree very much with carol there's something quite decadent and um lighter about doing a daytime kind of event um i i do feel that more so now

it's it's a bit less pressure um with one of the clubs that i run um which was the first bollywood club in the uk um that's going to be tomorrow night, Kutch Kutch Bollywood night. So we've been running that for 22 years. And I must admit, it is quite daunting for me to leave home at 11 p.m. And, you know, think about how I get there, the transportation, obviously because of the energy price caps uh supposed caps um etc and everything that's going on the increase in um you know fuel uh costs etc for taxi drivers you know i find myself i'm standing at a bus stop at 11 p.m and i don't feel as safe doing that you know to get to work and

then there's the getting home as well. So there is the financial considerations, the costs of what we do, because it's not just always free for us to go and work. You know, there needs to be a financial kind of trade-off there in some way. And that feeling of, you know, how safe do you feel on the streets late at night, question mark. But, you know, one of the gigs that I did last month was a V&A, Victoria and Albert Museum late. And it was just, you know, you wouldn't have known

that this was a day, an evening gig, you know, where I was finished by 9.30pm. And, you know, because the way that we rocked the V&A, you know, it was every bit as frenetic and euphoric as a rave would be. I have to say, it sounds just that I don't doubt you at all. Thank you for getting in touch, Carol, initially, DJ Bibi, and also big thanks to DJ Ritu for coming on as well. Now, for our next story for Listeners Week, we received an anonymous email about the experience of being an unwanted child. She wrote to say, my mother had five children and admitted

to me when I was in my 30s that finding out she was expecting a fifth child was the last straw. She was trying to tell me that she had a breakdown and explain her behaviour towards me. I was well aware as a child that she didn't want me. My mother hardly spoke to me as a child and the school was made aware because when questioned about some aspect of my homework, which was supposed to be supported by a parent, I blurted out that nobody had helped me with it. My childhood was very different from my siblings. They can't remember this as they didn't experience the rejection.

This lack of mothering, I was looked after but ignored by both parents, has left a stain on my life and I still feel very rejected, sad and angry. To discuss this issue and the impact that it can have on us in later life, I'm joined now by Dr Caroline Boyd, who is a perinatal chartered clinical psychologist. Good morning to you, Caroline. Now, the last line there really struck me where the listener said, I still feel very rejected, sad and angry. How typical is that response when, you know, you're dealing with these feelings of being unwanted by your mother or your caregiver? Yeah, thank you for having me. And also thank you to that lady for sharing her experiences so openly I think you know when firstly just to say I guess when considering the psychological impact of of attachment trauma because this is what we're talking about obviously I don't know that woman's

full history and the context for these experiences can really vary and people respond differently but I can talk more broadly to drawing on my own clinical experience working with women as I do and I'm going to talk a little bit about attachment theory and I think it's just worth prefacing this by saying that attachment styles are fluid there's a lot of talk about attachment styles at the moment but just to say that none of these things are fixed and just as difficult relationships can cause injury we can also heal through positive and nurturing relationships but to come back to your question I think it's helpful to zoom out and hold in mind Bowlby's theory about internal working models so John Bowlby was the father of attachment and by internal working model I mean

the idea that the way our primary caregiver responds to us as we grow creates a kind of relational blueprint which shapes how we think about ourselves and the world and our expectations about relationships and how we should be treated by others so if growing up we're responded to sensitively and predictably in a good enough way so that we feel soothed and safe and seen and secure then we're likely to become securely attached and this means we believe the world is a safe place broadly speaking and we feel relatively safe in it. However if our parent as in the case of this lady responds to us in a repeatedly rejecting and perhaps critical way then we're more likely to become

insecurely attached. We see ourselves through the eyes of our parents, at least initially, and if we're often responded to with anger and criticism or simply ignored, then that can create real vulnerability internally. So perhaps those feelings of isolation and abandonment lead to that child internalising a sense of defectiveness. So believing I'm a bad person and perhaps developing other negative core beliefs such as I'm worthless and I'm unlovable. As a child, it's too unbearable to feel that our own mother is bad. So we internalise that badness in ourselves because this is within our control. And this contributes

to low self-esteem and a fragile sense of self so that's kind of the real world effects is that it impacts the self-esteem impacts your sense of identity as well would you say how do people know that what's manifesting in their lives now is due to you know what might have happened in their childhood so once i think one thing that's really important to mention is that as a way of surviving that rejection and abandonment the child tends to develop well they will develop certain survival strategies and that might be believing that they must be good or perfect as a defence against possible criticism and they often become very self-sufficient and learn to give up and care for themselves emotionally believing that they can't rely on human beings to meet their needs and it can also mean that they're not connected to their emotions or their bodies because they

cut off from their own feelings and from others as a way of coping. And then later, as they shift into adolescence and adulthood, these coping strategies, which help them survive as children, can sometimes become problematic. So there could be an impact on romantic relationships as these people tend to avoid relationships while also desiring them. And they may also show perfectionistic tendencies as a defence against shame in the workplace or as a parent if they have their own child, which can lead to overwhelm and burnout. And I think the other important thing to mention is that they are likely to struggle with emotional regulation, meaning that they're more vulnerable to moving into threat mode and stressful or anxiety provoking situations yeah and then you know into either a hyper aroused state or a hypo aroused state yes and these relationships and boundaries yeah someone's texting to say my mother told me uh till i was 25 25 years old that she wished she had had me aborted and she also said that i caused her divorce because my father hated me and left her because of me. I'm 64 now, but it still bothers me

occasionally. So people might think, well, you know, I've been through this trauma as a child. It's still affecting me as an adult. What on earth can I do? What are your tips? What are your kind of practical bits of advice that our listeners can use to help them in this situation? So in terms of healing these attachment wounds, I think the good news is that although our threat system is highly sensitive, our brains have also evolved to talk to someone empathic, so a friend or a loved one, someone you trust as a starting point to help you make sense of how you're feeling, to find some meaning in those difficult experiences. And then finding ways to connect to your community and feel a sense of belonging. And as part of that, you know, taking some relational risks through developing caring and kind relationships to help chip away at that narrative of not feeling good enough because although as I said at the beginning although we know difficult relationships can cause attachment injury we also know that positive

and nurturing relationships support resilience and healing and then of course the relationship we need to pay attention to is the one that we have with ourselves and there are many ways we can learn to tune into our feelings and soothe our nervous system and as I talk about in my book Mindful New Mum we can actually rewire our brains through regularly practicing self-compassion so this could look like learning to quieten the inner critic, developing kind self-talk, learning ways to find our internal place of safety in our bodies through grounding which you know that can include focusing on the breath movement and touch and then really simple mindfulness tip I talk about

with clients often and this can be a safe place to start perhaps if you've had a difficult experience in your body is called the five four three4-3-2-1 technique. So whenever you feel triggered and overwhelmed, you just notice how you're feeling and naming it. So saying I'm feeling triggered either silently or out loud and then directing your attention to the space around you. Yeah. OK. So a lot of helpful tips for our listeners. Dr. Carolyn Boyd, thank you for coming on to Woman's Hour this morning. Now, how different would life be if we had a greater gender balance in society or even if women led the way in terms of economic power? If property and surnames were passed on by your mother rather than your father?

Well, Woman's Hour listener Joy Porter is a professor of indigenous and environmental history at the University of Hull and she contacted us to talk about just this matrilineal communities and she joins me now very good morning to you Joy we're also joined by Dr Marilena Humbachano who is a native Peruvian indigenous scholar from Syracuse University to talk about the history of these matrilineal societies now Now, I do believe, Marilena, you're on the east coast of the USA, so you've woken up ridiculously early for us. So an extra big thank you and good morning. Just tell us, firstly, how are matrilineal communities structured? Kia ora. Tēnā koutou katoa. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, it is very early here. So thanks so much for the

invitation. When we talk about matrilineal societies, as my wonderful colleague Joy will explain also about this, it all depends on the tribal communities, indigenous knowledge or traditional ecological knowledge is very context-specific. So we can generalize and Peru, matrilineal societies embrace this holistic understanding of having an equilibrium, an equilibrium with both the human and non-humans and also the role of men. So they try to maintain an equilibrium between agricultural activities, between daily lives. So when we talk about matrilineal society, it's something that has been there since time immemorial,

but unfortunately, due to the disruption of our traditions, our collective knowledge systems, because of colonialism, because of capitalism, these matrilineal societies, they have been disrupted. However, we're seeing more of a restoration, more revitalisation of the role of woman in agriculture, the role of woman in seed sovereignty and in food sovereignty. So what do they actually look like, these societies look like in day-to-day life?

Because there'll be a lot of people listening who have grown up in the UK where this just doesn't exist. It's something that perhaps we can't fathom. So day-to-day, how does it differ to life right now? On a daily basis, it is a very lively and very dynamic relationship. When I say lively and dynamic, I'm talking about having this reciprocity, having these reciprocal relationships between one another and between the non-human beings as well. And when I talk about the role of women, when it comes to being leaders, when it comes to being innovative in safeguarding food security, when it comes to be leaders in restoring the healthiest state of the planet, you need to be able to spend time with those wonderful indigenous women around the world to be able

to gain a deeper understanding of how they envision collective well-being. Yeah. And Joy, these matrilineal societies aren't new, are they? No, no, not at all. I remember the first time that I went to a reservation in New York State, I walked in and was taken by a young man to a clan mother. And she had complete control, really. And you could tell that she'd had political power for a very long time and so had her ancestors, because the Haudenosaunee that I was with,

they practiced matrilineal descent. And the way I noticed it was the way she used the room. You know, British women, we were kind of taught to keep our knees together and take up not a lot of space. She had her knees wide apart and she used the space the way that I guess I'd become used to men using space and that was the first time I thought hang on there's something really different and and absolutely valuable here um the Haudenosaunee have um clan mothers who decide who gets to be the saccharum or chief in charge of various things and they can veto war. So they have real kind of tangible political power, economic power.

The longhouse tradition, they've had that right back to the Confederacy. Haudenosaunee women nominate the male chiefs. They can dehorn them or depose them. They can veto war and they decide whether or not war starts. They decide treaties of peace. They decide on who gets to be a captive and who gets to live or die traditionally. And also property of all sorts goes through the female line. So it's not a matriarchy in the sense of a mirror image of a patriarchy, which is out of balance, but it is a matriarchy, a matrilineal society where women, power resides with women, but it's balanced and reciprocal. And as Mary-Elena wonderfully pointed out, it's balanced not just in terms of human life, but in terms of other entities with which there is kinship, whether it's water or animals or other resources or other spiritual entities. So what are men doing? Where are they in this Marillennial society? How much power and kind of,

I suppose, economic thrust do they have? The men are doing a lot of work, undoubtedly, but balance is the key word. Women balance all their sorts of power. So the men may well be waging war within the Haudenosaunee traditions, but it would be the women providing the food. And as we all know, without being quartered, you can't wage war. And if you don't have the diplomatic support of your community, you can't wage war either. So the idea of checks and balances is inherent politically and structurally.

And I think that it's replicated in the American system, which when it works right, is one of also checks and balances. So I think one of the ways you can see the difference is the creation story of the Haudenosaunee, where it's a woman who makes the earth. She's, originally the first woman is in a love triangle and she ends up making the earth on the back of a great turtle, whereas as we probably all grew up with, many of us grew up with, in the Christian creation story, it's a much less positive role for the woman, and it's entities that are all prefigured as male, male father, son, Holy Ghost, male priesthood. God gives sovereignty to mankind over all the other birds and bees and so on.

So the spiritual world is foundational to how it all develops, I think. And Marilena, how can we learn from matrilineal communities of the past or even the communities that exist right now? That's an excellent question. I have a book coming up called Recovering Our Ancestral Foodways, Indigenous Traditions as a Recipe for Living Well. And that encapsulates the different work that has been done, for instance, in Aotearoa New Zealand, women taking leadership. There's a Maori concept of tino rangatira tanga, which is self-governance, self-determination, leadership. But of course, it goes broader than that.

The Arabs are still revitalizing their food systems because, you know, we know women are the key players when it comes to economic society, when it comes to taking the lead in preserving food systems, water, when it comes to water politics. So we're seeing a revival in restoration of many food waste projects. The same is happening in the highlands of Peru and even in the capital of Peru, Lima. We're seeing, again, this food sovereignty movement led by women. And same in North America, we're seeing so many, we have so many wonderful seed keepers. Here in Syracuse, we have the wonderful Angela Ferguson, who is the seed keeper of over 2,400 varieties of seeds.

So what we're seeing is women coming together, women supporting one another, and what they have been working, what people believe silently is not silent anymore because we're seeing more and more of the work when it comes to food system, when it comes to restoring the water, the rivers, the lakes, and all in a very holistic and harmonious way. Great to hear. And something I'm sure we will talk more about on the programme.

Dr. Mariana Humbachano, thank you very much. Also to Joy Porter, thank you for coming on to the programme. Now, I did say we'd get to some of your tips and your pieces of advice for saving energy. Laura McGady, hopefully, is still with us, Group Head of Energy at the Energy Saving Trust. We've had lots of people come to us with this. So many people have tips, Laura.

Now, I want to go through some of them with you. We've only got a couple of minutes, but I want to see if any of these are any good. So one listener has said, the only thing I have on all the time is the fridge freezer. I turn off everything else so that nothing, even the microwave, TV, Wi-Fi is using electricity on standby. I also have a tepid, shallow bath

and I have a raw or cold organic vegetarian diet. So there's no cooking. What do you make of that, Laura? That is amazing. And if that's keeping you happy and well that is great and definitely switching things off and what you're suggesting are all top tips yes lovely uh another listener says baked potatoes are so much quicker in a microwave and you can still fill them with small amounts of leftovers like curry so I suppose that goes back to me asking about you know is it better to cook in a microwave than a conventional oven? Yeah well it's certainly cheaper to bake a potato

it's maybe not quite baking but it cooks it so yeah that will be cheaper than baking it in an oven. So those living in rural areas this has come from Jane she's tweeted in those living in rural areas are penalized by energy companies. We cannot have smart meters due to poor signals, so they won't work. This means any discounts proposed by the energy companies aren't applicable. What advice would you have for those people, Laura? Yeah, so the discounts that come through smart meters are just starting to happen. But at the moment, the market is a bit, you you know unbalanced because of these hikes and prices um definitely read your meter definitely keep in touch with your energy supplier um there are very small number of households that won't be able to connect to the

smart meter network and i know there's work going on to try and resolve that but um smart meters do mean that your your readings are going straight to your supplier so you're not getting estimated bills which is a benefit if you have one but um yeah i mean i think be canny and do everything you can you know we're i guess we're limited by our infrastructure but there's still things that people can do and i would really encourage people to you know just think about what they can do around their house take our our top tips and get the help available. Yeah, there is a top tip article on the BBC website as well, if you want to look that up. Someone else is texting to say, how to save energy? Get up with the sun, use all of the sunlight time, go to bed earlier, sacrifice TV time and read books. Thank you for that, Noel.

Someone else has said, I save electricity by using the washing machine at night by using the delay button. So it washes at 2 or 3 a.m. when energy is a bit cheaper. Also, I'd like to ask you, Laura, about using blankets, using scarves, using electric blankets, in fact. Are they good? Are they a way to kind of warm yourself up without using too much energy? Well, generally speaking, anything that warms you up rather than the whole room will use less energy so they're a good idea as long as you're careful not to leave them on when you're asleep you know they are a fire hazard potentially so just as long as you're using them safely yeah that's that's a general rule you know if you're heating all the space

that'll cost you more and does turning down your fridge freezer to the lowest setting does that make a difference oh no i can't i don't know that i well the risk is that your food will become unsafe the thing is you've got to keep your food at a certain temperature if you turn it down and the food is the fridge is warmer your food will last less long so you've just got to be really careful about safety i'd say if you've got a thermostat in your fridge that shows you what temperature it is just make sure it's at the right temperature because you don't you don't want it to become a glorified cool box you know yeah and someone else has said you should talk about pressure cooking it cuts 70% off the cooking time so people make massive savings thank you Laura McGady for getting in touch and thank you to all of our listeners as well. Weekend Woman Hour is back tomorrow.

I'm Jade Adams, and in Welcome to the Neighbourhood, I take a peek at the nation's community apps and message boards for some comedy eavesdropping. Does anyone know who's parked in our drive? I got hit by a potato on the high street earlier. Could you please have some decency and close the curtains if you're having sex? Each episode, I'll be joined in my online curtain twitching by a different guest, including... You don't need to put out a theme to the local community. You can just go straight to the police.

I highly doubt she's read The Highway Code. They're inciting a riot in three sentences. Welcome to The Neighbourhood with me, Jade Adams, on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.