Woman's Hour - Edna Adan Ismail, winner of Templeton Prize, Online games, Vasectomy increase in US, Iranian female journos on trial

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Two female journalists in Iran are on trial for covering the death of 22 year old Mahsa Amini, the Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in custody last year sparking protests across the country and months of unrest and shocked the world. Mahsa was arrested and charged with not covering her hair properly and then reportedly so severely beaten she fell into a coma. Niloofar Homedi and Elaheh Mohammadi were among the first to report on her death; a photo taken by Niloofar for the Shargh daily newspaper showing Amini’s parents hugging each other in a Tehran hospital where their daughter was lying in a coma drew international attention. While Mohammadi, traveled to report on Mahsa Amini’s funeral. Faranak Amidi, BBC Near East Women Affairs Correspondent discusses.Now Sex and the City fans have been celebrating some exciting, and rather unexpected, news - Variety magazine reports that Kim Cattrall will be reprising her role as Samantha Jones in the spin-off And Just Like That. She was noticeably absent from the first season, and it's reported that she will only be appearing in one scene in the show's finale. There has been much speculation about how it came to happen as she has reportedly had a strained relationship with fellow cast-mate Sarah Jessica Parker, who also acts as an Executive Producer on the show. Journalist and Sex and the City fan, Olivia Petter joins Anita.One consequence of the overturning of Roe V Wade, which has made accessing an abortion more difficult in some US states, is that there’s been a rise in the number of men seeking vasectomies. An estimated 20,000 extra men chose to undergo the surgery between July and December last year. Anita Rani talks to Dr. Stanton Honig the director of the Yale Medicine Male Reproductive Health & Sexual Medicine Program.A new study by the Universities of Glasgow and Cardiff has found that male characters in video games speak twice as much as female characters, and when female characters do speak, they’re more likely to apologise, hesitate or be polite. We discuss the findings and the reasons behind the gendered dialogue with a lead author of the study, Dr Stephanie Rennick, and games writer and narrative designer Samantha Webb. African midwife Edna Adan Ismail is known as the ‘Woman of Firsts’. She’s Somaliland’s first trained midwife, first female Minister of Foreign Affairs, and former First Lady. And now she has added another first to her title. She is this year’s winner of the Templeton Prize - making her the first black African woman to receive the honour. She has been awarded the £1.1 million prize for her contribution to women’s health. In 2002 she sold everything she owned to build The Edna Adan Hospital and University which has played a crucial role in cutting maternal mortality rates in Somaliland. She still lives and works within the hospital. Edna Adan Ismail explains what life is like for women in Somaliland, and what will she spend the prize money on. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Kirsty Starkey

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What I really wanted to see... Don't tempt me. Hello, I'm Anita Rani, and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, welcome to Friday's Woman's Hour. Sex and the City fans will already know, as word is out, that Kim Cattrall is going to make an appearance in the next series of And Just Like That, the Sex and the City spin-off, which is huge considering the very public falling out

between the stars of the show, Kim and Sarah Jessica Parker. This means that someone, maybe even both, would have had to swallow their pride for this to have happened. So this morning, I'd be intrigued. In fact, I'd love to hear about your own experiences of backing down after a bust up. Have you ever had to swallow your own pride following an argument or a falling out with any relationship in your life? Could be a friend, a work colleague, family member, cousin, uncle, brother, sister, sister-in-law, mother. Why did you decide to try and make up? Did you think you were being the better person? Did it work out? Did they even care or see it that way? Do you have a much better relationship for it? Do you feel like the bigger

person? Or would hell have to freeze over before you admit to being in the wrong? And sometimes it's okay to cull people from your life. Yes, it's a juicy one this morning. So get in touch. I would love to hear the stories of when you have backed down or not. 84844 is the number to text as usual. You can also email me via our website or you can contact me on WhatsApp or leave a voice note. It's 03700 100 444. Now, most abortions are now banned in 14 states in the USA following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe versus Wade. But there's been a rise in vasectomies. More men are coming forward to get the snip. We'll be finding out why this is happening. Also, a new study has found that male characters

speak twice as much as female characters in role-playing video games. And when the female characters do speak, they're more likely to apologise, hesitate or express gratitude. Well, that is right up Woman's Hour Street, so we'll be hearing all about it. And we are all going to be inspired today by Dr Edna Adnan Ismail, Somaliland's first

trained midwife, first female minister of foreign affairs and first former first lady. Also one of the most influential advocates for women's health in the whole of Africa. And at 85, she's still going strong. You'll hear her extraordinary story shortly. That text number once again, if you'd like to get in touch with me about anything you hear on the programme, 84844. But first, two female journalists in Iran are on trial for covering the death of 22-year-old Masa Amini, the Kurdish Iranian woman who died in custody last year, sparking protests across the country, months of unrest, and that shocked the world. Masa was arrested and charged with not covering her hair properly and then reportedly so severely

beaten she fell into a coma. Nalufa Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi were among the first to report on her death. A photo taken by Nalufa for the Shag Daily newspaper showing Amini's parents hugging each other in a Tehran hospital where their daughter was lying in a coma drew international attention while Mohammadi's travelled to report on Masa Amini's funeral. As we know, Masa's death sparked huge protests in Iran and thousands have been detained. Well, I'm joined by Farhanak Amidi,

BBC Near East Women Affairs correspondent, to find out more about this situation. Morning, Farhanak. Good morning. So let's discuss what's happening. What is the situation in Iran with the trial of these journalists? And why is it so significant? Well, they are put on revolutionary court trial.

That means it's behind the closed doors and there's no basically jury during the trial. And that is very significant, and it's very worrying as well, but it is not also something that is rare. Since 2009, especially, the state authorities and Iran's security forces have arrested many journalists and put them on trials. But because by the Constitution, Article 46 of the Constitution, there is freedom of press in Iran, they cannot really accuse them of for the things they have written. So they accuse them of national security breaches, or they accuse them for treason and working against the state and regime. And that falls into the category of the

revolutionary courts, which are notorious. And usually they are arrested by the security wing of the IRGC, which is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who are notorious. So they are on one of those revolutionary court trials right now. So they're not being tried for what they've done, they're being tried for? They are accused of cooperating with an enemy state of the United States and conspiracy to protest against the state. Why is it being held behind closed doors? Because one of the, you know,

it's all about controlling the narrative at the moment because what their journalism basically did, Niloufar Hamedi and Elohim Mohammadi, it changed the narrative, you know. It gave people, the nation and information and data that otherwise they wouldn't have. We don't know how many women, how many people have died like Mahza in custody, because their photos weren't published, their story wasn't published. But that doesn't mean it hasn't happened before. But this happened, and it created this rage and anger. So they hold it behind closed doors so they can control the

narrative. But it is also very difficult for them to do that at the age of what we call social media, where their lawyers come on Twitter and actually tweet after every trial. And what we need to bear in mind as well is that the chief editors of the newspapers, which Niloufar Hamedi and Elham Mohammadi worked for, they have constantly come out and said that they were doing their job. We assigned and commissioned them to go and do these reports. If anyone needs to be held accountable, it's us. But they won't put them on trial because they have political affiliations. These editors are way higher up in the political hierarchy,

and it will have political consequences. So they are using these two journalists who are not as well known as the editors, and they're not politically as connected to make an example of them. Do you think Niloufar or Elahe would have known the risks? I think every journalist in Iran, not only in Iran, outside of Iran, any journalist who works covering Iran knows the risk of their job and the danger of it. And you always have that shadow, that cloud over your head that I might get arrested. Including you? Including me, exactly.

Because this is exactly the point, that it doesn't matter where you are. Even when you're outside of Iran, your families can be threatened. I have been threatened in the past few weeks getting messages that your family will pay for this, for what you write and for what you talk about. There are journalists like Masih Ali Nejad, who is a very famous Iranian journalist and also human rights activist and activist against the state,

who has paid a heavy price for her work. Well, it's interesting you should bring her up because actually she was on this program just a couple of weeks ago. And she, as you've said, longtime critic of the Islamic Republic. And she came in to speak to me. Such heavy security for Anak. You know, we couldn't even mention that she was coming into the building. There's so much protection. But she really said something that stuck with me and will stay with me forever. And that was her definition that Iran is going through a gender apartheid. Let's have a listen. In The Handmaid's Tale, the book written by Margaret Atwood,

there's a famous expression saying that if you don't want us to be an army against you, you shouldn't have put us in the same uniform. This is the situation in Iran right now. Women are removing their compulsory uniform, which is compulsory veiling, to tell the government now we are an army against you. But our demand is beyond compulsory veiling. We want to end the gender apartheid regime. And I want to call all the women here. I see a lot of women around me, men as well. I need you as well. We need the men. Gender Apartheid. And I want you to join us, women of Iran and Afghanistan and call the leaders of democratic countries to expand the definition of apartheid, to include gender apartheid as well in all international laws. Such a powerful voice. I mean, incredible. How accurate is her assessment? I think the word gender apartheid has been used by so many women's rights activists,

feminists, human rights activists inside Iran and outside Iran. And it is true because one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic's regime is gender segregation. And by gender segregation, they are creating an inequality. And women will always be second class citizens, second and third class citizens, because with different kind of intersections of your ethnicity and religion, then you can go lower and lower and lower in this hierarchy. So as a woman who grew up in Iran, I remember how it was, you know, public spaces are not for you. You don't have the same share of, malls, schools, universities.

So, yes, it is to a large extent true. And what we are seeing right now, like as a lot of people send me photos of the streets in different cities around Iran. And sometimes I'm shocked, Anita, because I think to myself, I'm like, is this Iran or is it London? Because you see women on the pavements walking with like blue hair, green hair, piercings. They're expressing themselves. Yeah. And it's just amazing. I never thought I would see it in my lifetime. Seriously. So you have that happening on the one hand. You've got women taken to the streets expressing themselves and who they are and how they want want to live and you have this trial of these two journalists happening so going back to the trial of Niloufa and Delehae the charges the women face potentially

carry the death penalty what's the likelihood of them facing the most extreme extreme it's really sad to be to be talking about this but you know you know, this is a regime, this is a state that fears its collapse right now. It's faced with some of the regime, whenever it feels that threat, it takes extreme measures as well, be it taking hostage, dual nationals or executions. I remember a few months back when the head of the judiciary in Iran started talking about executing a possible execution of protesters in Iran. I was interviewing, giving interviews in this building, and everybody was asking me, how realistic is that? And I said, it is very realistic. And they have executed at least, we know, seven people in relation to the protests. So it is a serious threat that we need to, the whole world and the international community needs to take this seriously. So what could that do? Because this is gathering international interest, what impact

could that have? On the trial? Well, it depends on the Western countries and powers, what kind of actions they are willing to take, and what kind of pressure they are willing to take, put on the state. So it is very difficult for me as a journalist at these times to really predict what the state might do, because they are in a very, you know, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place as well. So their actions can be a bit unpredictable as well, in my opinion. And what has all of this done to, do you think, to journalists in the country?

Has it made them more emboldened to speak out or has it made them more fearful? Well, you have to understand that when you have such threats over your head, hanging over your head all the time, well, journalism becomes more and more conservative. And the reality is that we don't have free press and free media in Iran. And information that gets to people usually is very sketchy. What comes out of Iran is very sketchy.

So it has had an impact on journalism inside Iran. But we have right now people outside of Iran who are trying to be the voice of people inside Iran. But that doesn't mean that in Iran, journalists are not working. They are doing such a great job with all the limitations. Niloufar Hamedian, Elohim Mohammadi are great examples of them. 17 other, at least 17 other female journalists are in prison at the moment in Iran for their journalism, for their are arrested for what they tweet on Twitter.

So that is something to take into attention. Farinat Kamidi, thank you so much for coming in to talk to me about that. 84844 is the number to text now. Sex and the City fans have been celebrating some exciting and rather unexpected news. Variety magazine reports that Kim Cattrall will be reprising her role as Samantha Jones in the spin-off And Just Like That. She was noticeably absent from the first season and it's reported that she will only be appearing in one scene in the show's finale.

There's been much speculation about how it came to happen. She's reportedly had a strained relationship with fellow castmate Sarah Jessica Parker, who also acts as an executive producer on the show. Well, to get to the bottom of this story, I'm joined by the journalist and Sex in the City fan, Olivia Petty. You look like you've just stepped off the set of Sex in the City. Thank you. Very glamorous. Loving that on a Friday in the Woman's Hour studio. How did you feel when you first heard the news that she's going to be back?

I was very excited. I let out a small little whelp in my bedroom when I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw it. And then I didn't sleep all night because I was so excited. No, come on. It's a big shock for fans of the show. So why is she back? In one word word probably money um but I think um if you looked at the reception to and just like that you know it was great in many ways but it also missed the mark I think in a lot of ways and I think fans were immediately very disappointed when it was announced that a reboot was going to

be going ahead without Kim Cattrall, because the whole point of this show was it was about these four female friends, and they all complemented each other in wonderful ways. And Samantha, in particular, was very much the kind of highlight of the show for a lot of fans. And she provided a lot of an antithesis to the other characters. You know, she was the most sex positive one. She was the most outrageous one. She was the one who always chose herself over men. And I think without her, the show felt a bit off. So I think there's lots of reasons as to why they are trying to kind of bring her back and also why they've announced it before the show has even started.

To get everyone very excited. I think you might have to bring people up to speed about what actually happened between the well, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall. Yeah. So according to the pop culture folklore, that is the rumoured feud between Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker. And again, you know, all of this is kind of just reported. But essentially, I think they did the show and Sarah Jessica Parker, I think, was paid quite a lot more than some of the other cast members, apparently. And because she was also an executive producer on the show. So there were rumours of pay disparities while the show was going on. Then they obviously made the two films. And then there was a script for the third film that apparently Kim Cattrall wasn't happy with. We don't know if that was

because of money or because of a rumoured storyline that was apparently going to involve her character, Samantha, receiving inappropriate sexual images from Miranda Hobbs's teenage son, which was a bit of a tawdry storyline anyway. So my understanding is that she wanted to preserve the integrity of her character and the integrity of herself as an actor, perhaps, which, you know, is an admirable choice. But then since that, there's been loads of sort of interviews that Kim has done where she has essentially called Sarah Jessica Parker cruel, accused her of kind of creating a toxic atmosphere on set. So she's called it out?

She has. And Sarah Jessica Parker has always kind of denied it, denied it, denied it and said, you know, I have nothing but love for Kim. But then I think the big thing that people are kind of mentioning now is that after the death of Kim's brother in 2018, I think Sarah Jessica Parker made a public comment to, you know, offer her condolences. And Kim Cattrall did a post on Instagram, calling Sarah Jessica Parker out saying, you know, we were never friends. We're not friends. I don't need your support at this time. And that post is still on Kim Cattrall's Instagram, which a lot of people are pointing out.

She doesn't take it down. No. Yeah, so we were asking people whether they've had to, so basically some backing down on somebody's part for her to come back onto the programme, whether it's Sarah Jessica Parker, because she's an exec producer, or Kim Cattrall, you know, I suppose, as you said, maybe the money was enough obviously it was to get her back what

is the role is she going to be in it in it so what's interesting blink and you miss her i think it's going to be just one scene in the finale of the second season and what's interesting is that apparently she didn't have any interaction with any of the cast members to film that scene or the showrunner mich Michael Patrick King. So it's very much she's done it on her own, on her own terms. We think it's a phone conversation between her and Sarah Jessica Parker's character. So obviously they could film that without them having to speak. And then what's also so brilliant about it is that Patricia Field, the legendary costume designer from the show, has come back specifically just to style Kim for this, you know, 30-second moment of screen time.

What do we read into that? Is that like taking sides? Is that saying I will come back for Kim? It seems a little bit like taking sides, but I know that Patricia Field didn't do the show originally because she was working on Emily in Paris. But it's quite interesting that she's come back for this and we've got these two kind of iconic Sex and the City legends

coming back together for what might only be 30 seconds of screen time. Do you know what's interesting about this, apart from everything you've already said, is that actually, publicly, it's not like people are like, she's the good one and she's the bad one, or people are taking sides. They just both are still amazing women

that are supported by women and everyone's just very excited to have them back in the show. It's not like one is the hard done by party. No, not at all. And I think there's a lot of respect for Kim. Even among the Die Hard fans like myself, I kind of argued that the reboot shouldn't have gone ahead without her. And I totally understand why she didn't want to do it.

And I think there's a lot of admiration for her staying true to her guns and putting herself first and not succumbing just to the money. And I think even this time she's doing it on her own terms, you know. The fans have supported them both, even though they've been like people have tried to pit them against each other publicly. But it's almost like their characters playing out in real life. A little bit. Yeah. And they kind of did mirror that in the first season of the reboot in And Just Like That, because obviously they had to write out Samantha from the show. And they kind of said that Carrie and her had had a falling out over money their characters had.

So it's very much kind of fiction mirroring reality. How much of an influence has this programme had on your life? Well, I write about sex and relationships and fashion and I'm obsessed with all things sex in the city. So probably a lot more than I'd care to admit. Well, you were the perfect person to come and talk to us all about it then, Olivia. Thank you so much. Thank you. And so we've been asking you about whether you have had to back down to get over a relationship or a friendship or to make up based the base on the based on this and you've been

getting in touch over 10 years ago I fell out with my sister we ended up not speaking and only reconciled six months later when our father became very ill I apologized for my actions in a letter years later when I recognized that I'd been holding a self-righteous resentment inside me I understood she did not mean to hurt me, did not even realise that she had. Life is too short. Then Jen has been in touch to say about not backing down. My friend who shared a flat with me stole from me. I broke the friendship and to make amends, she invited me to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. I refused. And another one here, my best friend and I fell out. She runs a very expensive boutique and never seems to make any money or meet the man of her dreams one day i lost it when she whinged about no money and no man and told me and told

her to stop going on she never spoke to me again after a year i wrote her a heartfelt apology and she acknowledged it but she still never spoke to me again it's now been 10 years of silence are you still upset about it by the sounds of it what are you gonna do maybe she's listening maybe she knows it's her maybe she'll get back in touch with you 84844 is the number to text if you want to share with me the story of when you have or haven't backed down um after falling out with any kind of relationship it could be a friend family member or a work colleague would love to hear from you now last june the united states supreme court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling which established a federally protected right to abortion in the United States.

On Monday, Nula will be taking a detailed look at what's happening there on the first anniversary of that decision. But it's apparently led to a trend I thought was particularly interesting. There's anecdotal reports and some early data to suggest there's been an increase in the number of men seeking vasectomy surgery in America. I'm joined now from the States by Dr. Stanton Honig, who's clinical professor of urology at Yale University. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Could you first explain, just to be clear for our listeners, what a vasectomy is and is it a permanent procedure?

So thanks for having me. In couples or patients who are not interested in having any more children, the tube that carries the sperm can be separated. And that can be done basically in an office procedure, takes about 10 minutes, rarely requires anything more than Tylenol or Motrin for discomfort, and is usually, at least in this country, considered a permanent method of sterilization. I will say that it can be reversible, and microsurgeons like myself do this on a regular basis. And it's usually in situations where either a man changes his mind, or he has a life change, he gets divorced, gets remarried, needs a new partner who does not have children and wants to have more children. but the success rates are not as good

as they are if you did have a vasectomy, it can be very expensive. However, I think men, since this Roe v. Wade decision, have been really taking more of a role and have been considering that they want to have a significant part in the decision-making process in family planning. So I think that generally speaking, women think of it as their role to kind of be the person that takes care of the contraceptive needs, whether it's permanent or non-permanent. And I think this is the type of thing that men are taking more of an active role. So what kind of increase are we talking about then in terms of numbers? How many men are coming forward?

Well, right after the decision, we saw a significant rise. We saw this more in states that were more likely to, as you well know, the Roe versus Wade is based on, it used to be a federal mandate and now it goes back to the states. So in states where this has been overturned, let's say about 25 of the 50 states now Roe v. Wade, the abortion situation has been changed. It's in those states that we've seen a more of an increase where couples don't want to take the risk that this may be a possibility and they want to take more of an active role. What's the demographic? What kind of age are we talking about? Well, across the board, we're seeing more and more. And we'll have to see if this trend continues.

But interestingly, we've seen it a little bit more in groups that we tend not to see them. So childless men, men who are younger, ones that historically we've thought have had more potential for regret. So a younger man may not have met the right person, may have thought that this may not be right for him. But the more recent data suggests that men are thinking about this on a regular basis and do make the right decision. Have you been surprised by the increase? What's your thoughts on it? Well, I think that it's nice. It's nice to see that men are taking more of a role. And I think

the important point here is that it's a much, much less invasive procedure than a tubal ligation for a female. So the tubes for the female are located inside the belly, whereas the tubes for the male are in the scrotum. So they're much more easily accessible for for procedure on men than it is in women. Yet around the world, tubal ligation is much more common a procedure. So yes, I'm a little surprised, but I think it's important for people to realize that even though women have taken more of a role in this, they should think about talking to their partners about taking more of a role because it's less invasive. Especially if they have a permanent, stable, long-term relationship. Yeah, sure. Is this men showing solidarity with women or do you think they are being self-protective? No, I think it's taking more solidarity because this is, you know, the bumps seem to be more in relationship to the risk of abortion for the wife.

So if it was just out of nowhere, out of solidarity, I don't think this would be I don't think this would be necessarily tied to that. I think they're looking out for their female partners and the risks involved with having a termination in a female and just the complicated decision-making process that a couple have to make in that type of situation. Do you think we're going to continue to see this rise now that we're talking about it here on the programme, maybe other people are talking to their friends about it and something that they may not have this a little bit differently, whereas previously women thought of contraception more of their responsibility. I think it's really a shared decision-making process if you are in a stable relationship, things like that.

By the same token, I think if men are comfortable with the fact that they're not going to have children, and they understand that it can be reversed, but we have people free some sperm ahead of time now, especially if they're young or they're childless, we make them think about it. So we take some of the edge off this by giving them what I would call insurance to move forward in the future. So I think the trend is the more people hear about this of childbearing age, the more they're going to be using it. And is there a noticeable correlation between where the men are seeking the procedure and the states in which abortion rights have changed? Yes, it seems like at the beginning, there was a little bit across the board. But as

state by state, we've seen abortion laws come into play. The states that have had strict laws about abortion, those are the areas where we're seeing a continued rise in the rates of vasectomy. So you're very busy at the minute then? Well, I'm in one of those red states. I mean, one of the blue states in the northeast. So it's not as common as we might see in, let's say, Texas or Florida or the middle of the country. So, yeah, I'm busy all the time doing these and reversing them. And reversing them as well. Yeah, yeah, sure. That we're, you know, in the, I think,

and that's one of the important things to mention as well, which is in the hands of a microsurgeon, 90% of the time, if you have a reversal, you'll have sperm in the ejaculate afterwards. And it's probably over a 50% pregnancy rate. So even if you get a reversal, the common thought is that the chances of getting pregnant are very low. It's really not that way anymore with the combination of vasectomy reversal or a combination of what's called sperm retrieval, where you retrieve sperm and you combine it with in vitro fertilization. Success rates are over 50%. Fascinating stuff.

Dr. Stanton Honig, thank you so much for joining me this morning. And thank you for getting up so early to speak to me as well. We appreciate that. My pleasure. 84844. Have a great day.

Thank you. We will. You too. 84844 is the number to text. We've had an email in saying, my husband had a vasectomy five years later I was pregnant this caused no end of mayhem in the house

until it became clear after medical inspection that he was firing on all cylinders we eventually divorced and he went on to father another child get in touch tell me if you have talked about this with your own partner and whether he decided to have a vasectomy whether it was reversed whatever's happened's happened, if this is your experience, we'd love to hear from you.

Maybe it's something we can pick up on and talk about on the programme at a later date. Now, a new study by the universities of Glasgow and Cardiff found that male characters speak twice as much as female characters in role playing video games. And when the female characters speak, they're more likely to apologise, hesitate or express gratitude. The study, which is the largest of its kind, analysed over 6 million words spoken by 13,000 characters across 50 games released between 1986 and 2020. So very thorough. So why is gaming dialogue so gendered? Well, to discuss this, I'm joined by one of the lead authors of the study, Dr. Stephanie Renick from the University of Glasgow, and Samantha Webb, who's a games writer and narrative designer. Welcome to Women's Hour to both of you.

Stephanie, why did you want to do the study? So we were interested in how to make players' experiences better, and there was an awful lot of chat from game developers and players clamouring for better representation. That was the first bit of the puzzle. And the second bit of the puzzle is there is a long history of looking at dialogue in media as a way of understanding how gender is constructed and represented. But it's been really difficult to do that kind of work historically on video games. So we saw a lacuna to be filled.

So what kind of video games did you look into? So we looked at 50 role-playing games, which are games in which you get to make choices or dialogue is a really central mechanic. And yeah, we looked, as you said, at more than 13,000 characters from 50 games. Because I'm going to expose my age and my ignorance. The last time I played video games, there was no speaking in them. But So this is a certain genre where there's lots of chat. Yeah, increasingly across games, there's a lot more chat. But yeah, I mean, one of the games we looked at had 700,000 words of dialogue to give you some context, whereas an average film script might have 20 to 30,000. So what were your main findings? So we found that overall there was twice as much male dialogue

as female dialogue in the corpus. That's the data set. But mostly that seems to relate to the far fewer number of female characters overall. But even when you account for that, women still talk to women less than you would expect them to. Men still spoke to men more than you would expect them to. Men still spoke to men more than you would expect them to. And there were biases in terms of what people said, what they use language to do and what was said to them based on their gender.

So when the women do speak, what do they say? So when the women do speak, they are more likely to apologize than their male counterparts. They are less likely to apologise than their male counterparts. They are less likely to swear. They're more likely in some of the games we looked at to refer to family if they're trying to get the player to do something, for example. And they're less likely to be in such a diverse range of roles within the game as their male counterpart. That apology thing that you've just said is really interesting

because there are inconclusive studies about whether or not women apologise more in real life. Some studies have shown that men apologise to women interesting because there are inconclusive studies about whether or not women apologize more in real life. Some studies have shown that men apologize to women just as much. So why do you think video games are perpetuating this particular idea of women that we don't really know whether it exists in real life anyway? It's a really good point. And you're quite right. This isn't a robust empirical finding. There isn, there isn't evidence that shows conclusively that women do do this. And sometimes what we hear when we talk about these findings is,

well, aren't video games just being realistic? And it turns out, no, they're actually, seems like they're doing a kind of a worse job of representing women, even than the real world does. So as to why, I mean, I think a lot of these are folk linguistic myths. People expect women to apologize more. People experience women talking as talking more than in fact they are. You know, women expect are expected to swear less, for instance.

So I suspect I mean, Samantha might have more to say about this, but I suspect that some of that kind of folk belief is then trickling through to the characters we write. Wonderfully, you've done exactly what I was about to do there, Stephanie. Let's bring Samantha in on this. So, Samantha, welcome as a games writer. Does any of this surprise you? Sadly, no. I think both as a game writer and obviously as a gamer myself, it's something that I've encountered and also kind of fought back against.

So, yeah, I was not surprised to see the results of the study at all. So tell us what's happening in these writing rooms then. Why do writers revert to these stereotypes when they're writing dialogue? Give us some of your examples. It's a very good question. I mean, first of all, I think that so many different elements tie into this. You know, it's not a there isn't a single problem. We've got those ideas, like you said, Steph, of the folk tales and the unconscious biases that teams at both the writer's room and also, you know, the game design level, game direction level.

I think in some cases, teams might genuinely believe that they are giving equal weight to male and female characters. But again, those kind of preconceived notions come into it. And it's only when you sit down and, you know, actually look at those lines at those word counts and do the studies that we realize that maybe it's not as equal as we think um i think as well for game writers in particular uh especially as a freelancer by the time you come in to do the writing a lot of the characters in the story have already been decided they've already been decided by um by game design or game So, you know, often you come into a situation where there's very little you can do to address the problems because they're already so far into the game development.

And as one of the few women in those rooms, how easy or difficult is it for you to speak up? And do you speak up? I do speak up, yes. More now than I used to. You know, I'm about five years in the industry now so I've uh been getting bolder as I get older um it's the best thing generally yeah wonderful feeling getting bolder as you get older but anyway sorry

no that's fine I was gonna say a lot of my uh female colleagues within the industry are following the same pattern as well so we're all getting louder um i mean my experience has been to be fair when i do challenge people um whether that's other writers or designers or direction um most of them are very open to the challenges and and want to hear more about what they might not be doing so well and where they can improve um it's not always the case you know i have been in places where you're kind of, you know, politely pushed aside and said, you know, thanks for your input, but we're going with this. We've decided on this. Yeah, so, you know, it does depend on the teams. But on the whole, I think people want to be better. It's just that they don't necessarily know how or they don't realise that they're not being there. It's good that you are, that they're responding to you well,

but then it is always on you, I suppose, to be the person speaking up about it. Yes, that's definitely something that I've often been very conscious about being, because it feels a bit like you're always the one that's pointing out the problems. You're always the one that's like, oh, yeah, that's a really good idea,

but we're buying into this trope or um or this stereotype or you know this is quite offensive language um and you know that there are days of bitterly I think where um and I'm sure most professional women have faced this where you think I just can't stay you know I can't I'm just going to let that one slide um but I think for me it it's, I've learned as I've kind of progressed through the industry, which hills I'm willing to die on, basically. So where am I absolutely going to stand firm and really push against something? And where I can give a bit more ground, which then effectively makes, when I do stand firm, people are more likely to listen because they're like, you know, normally Samantha kind of lets us get away with stuff or will voice an opinion, but also kind of go with what the team wants.

So, yeah. So hopefully then when I, you know, when there is something that is just so egregious, I'm like, we absolutely cannot do this. God, that is good psychological work you've done there to figure out how to get your voice heard. And so what are those hills? Where would you absolutely draw the line where where have you oh my gosh um i mean i i really hate the um the fridging trope so um it's something that stephanie you can go on yes someone explain what that is um i can i can go ahead if you like it's when it from comics, but it's when a female character is killed to advance the male character's story. So the husband avenging his wife or, you know, it's very common across media, but it means that women are just sacrificed to advance the plots of men. Absolutely. And it's something that in video games in particular, there's a bit of an in-joke that in the last kind of 10 or 20 years, quite often it it is exactly as Steph said it's um the absent mother you know she's gone because she she's died somehow or she's not there and it's

up to the the man to kind of save the day take on that plot and go yes take on um and Stephanie the game actually games actually respond differently depending on whether you're playing as a female character is that right yeah they can do so often games treat gender as purely aesthetic it's just a choice of you know how you look and what voice actor you have but some games do have non-player characters react to you differently so in one example we found that if you played as a as a woman then you were offered salad if you're a man you were offered um pasta if you're a woman you were called beautiful and offered wine if you're a man you were described as energetic and

offered ale and there were also some comments about how good you would be at video games based on your gender as well so yeah. Samantha what's it like experiencing this as a gamer? Oh it's um it has kind of ruined my experience of gaming in some instances like often I can I can recognize it analytically you know be like yeah okay that that was a decision maybe I wouldn't have made if I was if I was writing that character um but that you know admittedly there have been very few but there have been some games that I have just had to stop playing because I have just found and not just the the language or the the speaking of the women but also how they're depicted the outfits they're wearing um yeah there have been a few where I've just had

to put my hands up and go do you know what I just can't continue with this why does it matter Stephanie well it matters for a few different reasons it matters because more than three billion people play video games and the industry makes more money annually than the film industry does. So it matters if you care about profits. It matters because lots of very thoughtful people have done studies about the importance of representation. It matters because media allows us not just to represent the world as it is, but how it could be. It allows us to tell aspirational stories and video games are particularly well suited for that, I think, because they're immersive.

They allow people to really embody. And they make believe. They make believe. Exactly. And for a lot of us playing video games, it's escapism. And when it makes the world worse than it really is, that's a missed opportunity. So, yeah, missed opportunities across the board.

So what can we do? What can be done to change the situation? Well, I hope that doing this kind of research is helpful for someone like Samantha in the writing room to be able to say, look, there are patterns that if we just focus on individual games, we won't notice, but somebody has done the numbers. And so many of these games are catering to this market. There is this market that's untapped, or there are these patterns that we wouldn't have noticed if we just focused on individual characters but we can see that something problematic is happening has uh has stephanie provided you with some backup now samantha absolutely yes um and i i think it's um like i i personally i've started adopting this

um woman by default approach when i design characters, which doesn't mean that every character I create is a woman, but it challenges both me and the team to think about why are we defaulting to a male character here. And yeah, the type of research that Stephanie's doing is wonderful because it does just back up what we're instinctively saying. Fascinating. Thanks, Stephanie. Yeah, love that. Really great speaking to you both. Thank you for that, Dr. Stephanie Rannick and Samanthab uh lots of you getting in touch with various things we're talking about this morning um on vasectomies i had a vasectomy a few years ago from our second after our second child was born we both agreed that two was enough and i didn't see why my partner had

to take the pill for the next 15 years it's a very simple procedure and not as painful as childbirth i'd imagine my midwife mum has warned me of the countless vasectomy babies she's delivered, though. If there was a male pill, I'd take it. But I think it's time men took some responsibility for long-term contraception. 84844, number to text. Now, my next guest is one of the most influential advocates for women's health in the whole of Africa. Her name is Dr. Edna Adnan Ismail. She's one of Somaliland's first trained midwives,

first female minister of foreign affairs and former first lady. I can see her nodding. And now she's added another prize to her title. She's this year's winner of the Templeton Prize, making her the first black African woman to receive the honour. She's been awarded the 1.1 million pound prize

for her contribution to women's health. At 85 years old, she spent more than 40 years helping women give birth safely. But that's not all. She spent years campaigning to end FGM, being a high-ranking politician in the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, worked for the World Health Organisation. Then, in 1998, instead of retiring, she sold everything she owned to build the Edna Adnan Hospital, the first maternity hospital in Somaliland, which has played a crucial role in cutting infant and maternal mortality rates. She still lives and works at the hospital to this day. And she joins me now. Edna, welcome to Woman's Hour. It's wonderful to speak to you.

What does it mean to you to have won the Templeton Prize and congratulations? Well, thank you very much. And thank you for giving me this chance to talk to you from the Edna Hospital. I'm in my office. I'm in the, by the way, my name is Adan, not Adnan, just a small typo there. There is a typo. It feels great. My hospital is about 21, 22 years old now. We've delivered over 33, 34,000 babies. We've just come out from a C-section just a few, about half an hour ago. Beautiful, healthy boy, beautiful mother. That's what the hospital has done for me. And what will the prize money do for you at the hospital? What will you spend it on? My goodness, it will give life beyond my lifetime to the hospital and to the activities and projects that I love and devoted my quarter of a century, the last quarter of a century of my life to health education,

training of health professionals and fighting harmful traditional practices like female gender mutilation. So I'm grateful, I'm blessed. And what a wonderful thing to have received, you know, after doing all that hard work for so many years. I think it'd be really, it's really important for our listeners to understand what life is like for women in Somaliland currently. There have been recent conflicts, 100 people were killed in February due to clashes, but just give us an exact idea of what life is like for women. Well, I think life in Somaliland and for women is far better than in many other countries.

Somaliland, by the way, is not a self-declared independent. It is an independent country that was granted independence by Her Majesty the Queen in 1960. It was a former British Somaliland protectorate. That means that it always had its sovereignty. Women in Somaliland, of course, have suffered because of the war and the destruction that we had that was between Somaliland and former Italian Somalia, our neighboring country.

Health facilities were destroyed. Schools were destroyed. People were, because of the war, went into refugee camps in neighboring countries. So when Somalilanders liberated their country from foreign occupation, returned to Somaliland in 1991, they began to rebuild their country from the ashes left by the war. Since that time, in the last 32 years, Somaliland has been building hospitals.

Somalilanders have been building health facilities. And to give you an example, when I returned to Somaliland in 97, we had about 20 to 28 trained midwives and nurses in Somaliland. Amazing, considering you were the first. The first in 1960, I was the first. In 1959, I was the first. 1959.

But I was trained in England. Yes, you were trained in England and you studied to be a nurse in the 50s. What was it like? It was great. It taught me what I am teaching today. It taught me what I was practicing today. I owe a lot to the Hammersmith Hospital, to Lewisham Hospitals, to King's College Hospital, to the West London Hospital on Hammersmith Broadway.

I owe a lot to the training that I had in Britain. And it is that training that helped me to return to my country in 1961 and start training at that time. But then because of the war, everything we did in the early years were destroyed. And since 1997, when I returned with only 18 or 20 or 30 midwives in the entire country, a country, by the way, which is as big as England and Wales combined. Thank you.

And with over 4 million people, 20 or 30 midwives were not enough. So this is what I devoted my time to. What I knew and what I had been doing for the World Health Organization and in many other countries was training health professionals. So this is what I did. And I feel so blessed that today Somaliland has over 1,200 trained nurses and midwives. That alone a trained doctor. to become a doctor and instead you became the very first trained midwife and you had to take unpaid work how hard was it being the first as a woman would explain to us what that experience was like challenging well it seems that you've read my book a woman of firsts um it was challenging

because we only had one doctor as well the first medical doctor who was trained in Dundee was also in the hospital. So in a hospital of 400 beds to have one trained nurse and one trained midwife was quite challenging. But then we were able to generate confidence in our people because we spoke the language. We were from there. We are the people who um who's they knew our parents they knew us and it was a great challenge to be helping our own people the best way we could with the resources that we had at the time and which were far more uh scarce and limited than the environment we had been trained in in Britain.

It must have been so difficult, one doctor, one midwife, having to help women give birth. I mean, just how did you, where did you find resources within yourself, you know, when you couldn't help or there wasn't the medication or the resources to be able to provide what you needed? You do what you can with what you have. And whatever energy you have, you devote to saving a life. And it's a choice that we took. It was a blessing. It was challenging.

I learned a lot. Oh, my goodness, I learned so much. I was doing procedures and things that I was not trained for to do as a nurse, but there was nobody else to do it. So it was either me doing it to the best of my ability and having seen it being done by others or allowing somebody to die and to be ignored or to be unaided. It was not easy, but we did it.

And somehow we survived it. We trained others. And then as more people, as more doctors were recruited by the Ministry of Health at that time, then we began to fill the gap with more trained people than we had at the beginning. You're also a very passionate anti-female genital mutilation campaigner. FGM rates in Somalia are still 98%. Are you hopeful that you can... Yeah.

Well, I don't know what the rates are in Somalia, but in Somaliland. Yes. Somaliland, there's a difference. Yes, yes. They're very high. And even one child, one girl mutilated is one girl too many. The practice, of course, is something that happens in about 16

or 18 countries in Africa, in the African equatorial belt. There's a few countries that practice FGM in Asia, in Yemen and other countries. Female genital mutilation or what is sometimes referred to as female circumcision is something that is denounced by medicine, that is denounced by our religion Islam. It's an old traditional

practice, it's an old custom that many countries have abandoned and no longer perform. So when we got to know that this was not a religious requirement, but a traditional practice that was denounced by our religion, that is not practiced in countries, in Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, where we go and perform our pilgrimages. Yes. And it was right, it was our duty to start convincing our people to stop practicing it. And how easy is it to convince them? You explain, you are a victim yourself.

You explain by using the medical complications. The complications of female genital mutilation are many. It goes against human rights, it's child abuse and so on. But you concentrate on the medical complications. Everybody understands bleeding, infections. Everybody understands pain that you don't have to undergo, which is imposed on you.

Everybody understands the safety of our daughters. And then everybody understands or should understand or needs to be informed by the complications that femur gentin maturation leaves with this eight-year-old daughter. Yes. Who in a few years' time would be required to have babies.

I have to ask you, because at 85 you are vibrant, you are energised, you're passionate. What keeps you going? My love for my people, my love for what I'm doing, my love for my profession. That's what keeps me going. And I say, I need to go on for as long as I can. And I'm so inspired by the people we have trained, the nurses we have trained, who are doing so, so much better than I could ever. And we are so inspired by you. Thank you so much for speaking to me this morning. And congratulations once again on winning that £1.1 million prize money,

the Templeton Prize, which I know will go towards so much good use at the hospital. Thank you. And thanks to all of you who've been in touch with various stories. Double the amount of dialogue for male characters. Not surprised one iota, says somebody. Join me tomorrow for more female chats on Weekend Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, it's me, Jade Adams, and I'm back with a second series of Welcome to the Neighbourhood.

This is the Radio 4 podcast, where myself and a celebrity guest like to have a nosy round social media groups from up and down the country. Bit of a strange one, but I am looking to get rid of a second-hand coffin. My mum has found this little metal box in her garden. Can anybody local please remove three stitches out of my neck? This series, I'm joined by some top people, including Nick Grimshaw. It's a grenade! Izzy Sutty.

That's my favourite reply. And self-esteem. If you think I should cover this one, we should see me other one, bloody hell. Head to BBC Sounds to find brand new episodes of Welcome to the Neighbourhood with me, Jade Adams. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody.

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

It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.