Woman's Hour - Educating Rita at 40, Muslim women on love and desire & Teen mum to midwife

Episode Date: September 5, 2020

Forty years since Willy Russell’s play Educating Rita was first performed we hear from some real life Rita’s, Willy Russell and Julie Walters on the films influenceSam Baker, the former editor of Cosmopolitan and Red and author of The Shift, Kelechi Okafor who’s an actor, director and podcaster and the journalist, Rebecca Reid, who’s written The Power of Rude on how to be assertive without coming across as angry and unapproachable .We hear how a book, A Match Made in Heaven, featuring stories by British Muslim Women about Love And Desire is trying to get beyond the stereotypes of subservient Muslim women. Editors Nafhesa Ali and Claire Chambers and the writer Noren Haq discuss. Dame Cressida Dick the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police tells us how the force is managing during the ongoing pandemic Stephanie Walker on how she went from a fourteen year old pregnant teenager to a fully qualified midwife.Plus the author Ann Cleaves talks about her latest novel The Darkest Evening – the ninth in the Vera seriesPresenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Beverley Purcell

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

This is the Woman's Hour podcast. Hi, good afternoon, and welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. It's 40 years since Willie Russell's play Educating Rita was first performed. Just how influential was it on real life Rita's? We'll talk to the head of the Met, Dame Cressida Dick, about policing during the pandemic and hear about the midwife who encouraged teen mum Stephanie Walker not to give up on her own dreams. Just the way she communicated with me totally empowered me that I was in control of this. I can have great outcomes and it wasn't

the end of the world. She spoke positively about what I can achieve and just totally empowered me to be a better parent and to just to take more control of my life. And Stephanie Walker is now a midwife herself which is brilliant so you can hear from her a little later in the programme. We'll also talk about how you can be assertive without leaving behind you a trail of indignation and outright annoyance and you'll hear from one of my favourite writers Anne Cleavesaves, on why her detective, Vera Stanhope, is going to be around for a little while yet. I think the great thing, because she's set here in the northeast where I live, there's such a wide palette of backgrounds for me to write about.

So we have the almost feudal, rural setting of The Darkest Evening, but then we have faded seaside towns, and we have post-industrial landscape like the former pit villages. So that gives me lots and lots to write about. Anne Cleaves talking about her latest book, which is A Vera, you'll be delighted to hear. Now it's 40 years since Willie Russell's play Educating Rita was first performed. It's about a Liverpudlian hairdresser of 26 studying for an open university degree,

and it's barely been offstage since. Dame Julie Walters played the lead role in both the original theatrical production and in the film opposite Michael Caine. She was nominated for an Oscar for that. Here's a clip of Julie Walters as Rita, an outspoken woman who does occasionally use the odd profanity. Are you a good lady's hairdresser, Rita?

Yeah, I am. But they expect too much, you know? Like, women who come to hairdressers, like, they come in and half an hour later they want to walk out a different person. You know, but I mean, if you want to change, you've got to do it from the inside, haven't you? You know, like I'm trying to do. Do you think I'll be able to learn?

Are you sure you're serious about wanting to learn? I'm dead serious. Yeah, look, I know I take the piss and that, but that's only because I'm not, you know, well, you know, like, confident, like. But I mean, I want to be. Honest. You know, well, you know, like confident, like. But I mean, I want to be honest. When, you know, when did you actually start teaching me, like?

What can I teach you? Everything. That was Julie Walters as Rita, or Susan, and Michael Caine as Dr Frank Bryant in the film of Educating Rita, which was produced and directed by Lewis Gilbert and came out in cinemas in 1983. On Monday, I talked to Julie Walters and asked her how convinced she'd been that she was going to be the one who'd star in the film version of Educating Rita. Films need stars in order to sell. So what happened is Lewis Gilbert, who did direct the film, his wife came to see the play and then told him about it and he rang me and said, Darling, my wife and I have been to see your play

and I want to make a film of it and i'd like you to play rita but i don't know yet whether i'll be able to give you the part because you're not a star and in order to get the money for the film we need to have names in it i said oh okay you know i'm going off to america and to see what i can do with it so off he goes to america then he comes back rings me again again and says, well, they wanted Dolly Parton and Paul Newman. And I said, oh, well, we're not, Willie won't have that and I'm not having that. So I said, oh, OK. So then I didn't hear from him a bit. Then a bit later, I don't know, weeks later, he got back and he said, we've got Michael Caine. So you can have the part because we've got a star. So I said, oh, great, OK. So that was it. Dame Julie Walters reminiscing about how Dolly Parton was nearly Rita.

So what was it like for four real-life Ritas, working-class women who'd returned to education in later life? I talked to Glynthea Madud from Swansea, Sue Slater from Sheffield, Kate Wiseman from Oxford and the Open University's own Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Liz Marr. And brilliantly, Willie Russell, who wrote Educating Rita, was in the mix as well.

First, here's Glynthea. I didn't have any GCSEs, I didn't have CSEs, I didn't have A-levels. I went to a secretarial college at the age of 11. 11? 11, yeah. Whose idea was that? a secretarial college at the age of 11. 11? 11, yeah. Whose idea was that? My mother's, I think.

I mean, I went to a Catholic school, working class Catholic school, failed grammar, you know, 11 plus. And so they put me in a secretarial school. I did science until I was 12. And then from there on, it was bookkeeping, 12 and then from there on it was bookkeeping short and then typing and that was that so you were set up for life as a clerical worker that was going to be that was your destiny oh yeah the glamorous job of being a secretary yeah yeah and by the way of course plenty of people do it do it brilliantly and it's uh yeah it's a it's a can be a very very

decent way to earn a living. Absolutely. Yeah, let's just bring in Sue. Did you fail your 11 plus? What happened to you? No, they'd done away with the 11 plus by the time I reached 11. My older sisters had left school at 15 because it was the culture and sort of working class background that I came from that you left school as soon as possible

to earn some money to feed the rest of us because there were six of us but I actually managed to stay at school till I was 18 against my mother's wishes and then I went to teach training college at 18 but it was such a huge culture shock that I couldn't cope with it and I just felt really working class and I had quite a broad Yorkshire accent and every time I opened my mouth I felt completely stupid and on the night out we went on the first night there we were chatting about what we'd done on our last night before we became students and I said oh I went to the pub with my mates and one girl said oh I know this sounds awfully ostentatious of me but I had dinner with Wendy Craig, the actress, last night.

And all I could think was, what does ostentatious mean? But you did know who Wendy Craig was? I did. I just felt completely out of my depth. I packed my bags and went home after two days. It was that bad for you, Sue? You packed up and left. Yeah, well, apart from teachers and doctors, I've never mixed with middle-class people before.

And it was a huge, huge culture shock. And I think I just didn't have the confidence that they had. I think that's one thing that it gives you, being middle-class. It makes you feel more confident. Willie Russell, watching the film again last night, I thought actually there was much more about class in the film than I had remembered. That bit about when she is invited round

to the fancy dinner party that Frank's having. I mean, it's cringy, but it's real life, isn't it, that? Well, yeah, and it's Rita imbuing that kind of night with all her kind of fears of that. If you've been denied access to that kind of culture, then, you know, you get all kinds of notions and build all kinds of fences for yourself. I mean, I've never been someone who has that chip on the shoulder,

knee-jerk, damn the middle classes uh attitude i've i've never had that for a second i've never been uh anti-knowledge or anti-education but at the same time coming from a working class background i'm i'm well aware that there are enormous differences between the classes and when you first rub up against a strong kind of middle class culture, it can be fantastically daunting and disconcerted. Let's talk to Kate, because, Kate, you grew up in a family where actually everybody was brainy and you did well at school, but your parents just didn't want you to keep going at it. Is that fair?

Yeah, I did. I was brilliant at school until I parents just didn't want you to keep going at it is that fair yeah I did I was brilliant at school until I did my O levels and they were great and that was all fine and then I kind of it all went pear-shaped um and there was no culture in my family of going to university I knew it was what I wanted to do. I was kind of chronically lacking in self-esteem, but it just, and I'm sure if I'd have put up a fight, I could have got there. But, you know, my brothers were out working and it just kind of happened, really. My dad was, I grew up in Cowley and he worked at the car factory all his life. And it was just kind of outside of our remit.

It just didn't happen. So, you know, it took me a long time to get there. And I got there through an access course, which was absolutely wonderful. But you'd had to, you'd lived your working life before that, hadn't you? You'd worked. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, I did all kinds of things you know I could get jobs but they just weren't what I wanted to do and it took going to uni and and

reminding myself that I had a brain to to give me the confidence to do what I really wanted to do and actually you did a master's in English eventually with the Open University didn't you I did yes so hello um wonderful, wonderful Vice-Chancellor, and thank you very much because it was a fantastic time and I absolutely loved it. Well, Liz, there we are. There's your cue. Why do you, I mean, it's a silly question for you in your role, but why is the Open University so important? I think it's because it gives people like Kate and others opportunities that have been

closed to them for much of their lives. It's really interesting to hear people talking about things like self-confidence and self-esteem. I noted all those things down because they're things that we hear frequently from our students even now. So many of our students have toyed with the idea of going to university, but have believed it's not for them, that they're somehow not allowed into that world. And the Open University, because we are open access, our mission is about being open to people and places and methods and ideas and being radical and creative and innovative in what we do. We're seen as, I think, a much more welcoming environment in which people can develop that self-confidence, that self-esteem, and also the skills that they need to be able to study at that level. Can I just ask Sue and Glynthea and Kate as well, just what it meant to you to get the qualifications

and to, I suppose, just enhance your knowledge. Sue, what would you say about that? I think it was life-changing. And it wasn't just getting the qualifications, obviously, because one of the reasons I went to university is because I met my husband in the civil service and he's an Oxford graduate and he introduced me to lots of other graduates and it was sort of a whole different world and I began to regret the fact that I had not completed my education so he encouraged me to do that but it wasn't just

getting qualifications it was just the whole experience and everyone I met and the opportunities that it opened you up to even you know it just in your personal life not even in your work life it's just a great experience yeah Kate yeah well I think it kind of meant everything really I'd convinced myself by the time I got to university um which was when I was 38 that was pretty stupid and I don't know life was going nowhere and suddenly I realized that I wasn't stupid at all um that I could attempt to do what I really wanted to do which was um write novels that um you know life was still there for me.

It wasn't because I'd sort of made a bit of a hash of the first part of it. I could still put it right. You know, it changed it. Yeah, it changed everything. And Cynthia? Well, it opened up the world to me. I mean, in those days, you could, there was a choice of jobs. You know, I could walk into you know, what did I want to do? Did I want to

teach? Did I want to do civil service? City? For somebody of my background, it was amazing. Glynthia Madud, Sue Slater, Kate Wiseman, Liz Marr and Willie Russell as well, of course. And if you'd like to hear that programme in its entirety, it was Bank Holiday

Monday's edition, still available on BBC Sounds Sounds and the film is also on Amazon Prime if you're tempted to revisit it. I saw it again really recently and I found it both funnier and sadder than I'd remembered so it's well worth a look. Linda emailed to say I was the eldest of five children brought up on a big farm where it was all work. My father was always telling me that I was thick and stupid and I never did well at school. I moved away, got married and had two children and when my daughter was 18 I went to university. It was the most rewarding thing I'd ever done and proved that I wasn't thick or stupid. I got a degree in history. It gave me a newfound confidence

and while I was there, I also found out I was dyslexic. Linda, that's a really interesting story. Thank you very much for telling us about how you came through all that and got your degree in history. There were so many emails of that sort and thank you all for bothering

to tell us about what you went through and what you achieved as well. It was fantastic reading them all. Now, throughout the summer on Woman's Hour, we've had a series of how-to guides ranging from how to change your career to how to end a relationship. And this week, it was how to be assertive. How do you get what you want and what's right for you without leaving a trail of aggravation behind you and upset. Jenny talked to Sam Baker, the former editor of Cosmopolitan and Red, and the author of the book The Shift. Also involved were Kelechi Okafor.

Kelechi's an actor, director and podcaster. And Jenny also talked to the journalist Rebecca Reid, who's written a book called The Power of Rude. The Power of Rude is really about doing things that you might internally fear are going to be perceived as rude even though very often they're not objectively rude and doing it because it's what you need or what you want and it can be as small as you know telling the hairdresser that actually they've taken three inches off more than you wanted or as big as pushing a doctor when

they ignore the symptoms that you're presenting when you see them. What happened to put this idea of rudeness into your head? So I was on a television debate on Good Morning Britain about 18 months ago and I was on with a male comedian who was quite robust and he wouldn't stop talking and the question he asked me and he really really wouldn't stop talking and I sort of leant forward and I shushed him like you do to a child. Put my finger in front of my lips and I went, shh. And it was very, very briefly a sort of national news story. One newspaper dubbed me Rebecca Rude. And I was really upset about it because I have nice manners.

I always say please and thank you. I write a lovely thank you letter. But then I sort of reflected on it and I thought, well, actually, if everyone's going to think that I'm rude, maybe I'll give it a go. And I was amazed by how quickly my life just started to be easier and better when I stopped worrying about being perceived as rude, assumed I would be perceived as rude and then did what felt right rather than what felt polite. Sam, how much of what Rebecca's saying is ringing bells for you? Oh, I've been sitting here laughing and smiling

at everything Rebecca's said, because literally until I was 50, I did that. I did all of those things all of the time, right down to, you know, if someone would say, what meal do you want tonight? Do you want Indian or Chinese? I would say, oh, do you want tonight do you want Indian or Chinese I would say oh whatever you like instead of actually I really want Indian so you know and that was that was really menopause and that's one of the reasons that I wrote The Shift because

until I went through menopause I was a total pushover total pushover. Why did the menopause make the difference? I went through menopause quite early, so about 45, 46, and it really struck me that there was very little information out there. And I wanted to talk about, you know, how bad it was, but also how good it was. So I wrote, you know, I wrote the book that would tell other women that story. What about you, Kelechi? Are you naturally assertive or have you had to learn how to do it? I've definitely had to learn how to become more assertive. As someone who was a victim of child abuse, sexual abuse,

when I was a child, I didn't really speak up for myself. I kind of went inwards and kind of closed myself up from the world as a way of like protecting myself but actually what I realized is that you know that silence wasn't protecting me in fact it just meant that everything was kind of like ruminating on the inside and there was a lot of anger there as well so that's the current project I'm working on in terms of a book and the reason I started my podcast Say Your Mind because there has to be a space for women specifically black women in my instance to express their anger to express the ways in which society hasn't served them you know hasn't hasn't protected them so um yeah it took me a while. It took me maybe until I was about 21, really, to get to that point where I thought to myself, actually, it feels so horrible to exist inside me.

And in that moment, there was the, well, who is the me who is existing inside of this body? That me deserves a chance to speak up and to speak out and to live as joyfully and as loudly as possible. Do you remember how you actually began to do it? The first stage, I think, was just having that moment on the bus, realising that, oh, this feels horrendous. And then looking at what steps I could take. So I got started to go to therapy, which isn't something that a Nigerian girl necessarily does.

We don't really speak about mental health and the impact, you know, within the community generally, but that's changing a lot. So I had to take that step for myself. And the first therapist I thought wasn't very good. We didn't really connect. But then after that, I was blessed to have therapists who really understood me. Initially, I was doing that through the NHS, you know, so I'm thankful for that. And I started learning vocabulary, vocabulary for the ways in which I'd been violated in a number of instances. And from having the vocabulary, I then found the power to speak up for myself and to also encourage other people to speak out. So when people say to me now

oh my god you're so confident you're so assertive that was something I had to discover within myself um it it was you know there were numerous stages it's not just some kind of epiphany and it happens and then the life is better it's an arduous task but one that I've chosen to take on because I want the world to be better for me and to be better for other women. Sam in the shift you you call oestrogen the biddable or nurturing hormone and I wondered are you suggesting that women are somehow genetically programmed to be biddable or is it their conditioning? Well I'm not suggesting that science is science calls it the biddability hormone but I actually I believe it's conditioning I mean as a very small girl I quickly learned to take the temperature in a room to behave in a way that would not make the temperature drop so you know I think and I watched that happen to me all through my life.

And it was all the things that Rebecca was saying were just so resonant. And now I look back at myself, having learned to get comfortable with saying uncomfortable things, small things, you know, like I'd rather have a curry, or no, it's not convenient for me if if you change that plan now I look back at myself over the years and I think oh my god not only was

it uncomfortable to be inside me but it must have been so annoying to be around me it's so much easier if you just say please don't do that or I would rather do this. You know, if you think about how confusing it is for people to be around people who aren't direct. Rebecca, what do you reckon is at the root of it? Nature or nurture, the way we're conditioned? I think it's very, very much nurture. And I think, so I was a nanny for many years, so I spent a lot of time sort of seeing

how people raise their children effectively. One thing that I really noticed is how differently we treat little girls and little boys. And I know that's probably not a shock to anybody. The difference in how often little girls are told, say please, say thank you, sit up straight. You can't get down from the table. And also how often they're told to hug or kiss relatives, whether they want to or not. All of these small things. Whereas little boys are kind of, oh, they're so energetic, letting them run around.

Boys will be boys. And I think probably we do do better with that now than we did. I'm a child of the 90s. I think probably now parents are less likely to do those things. But it's still there. There still is that sense that girls have got to put other people's comfort above their own. Katie, what about you? What was your nurturing like in terms of not being assertive? I think that when I kind of analyse Nigerian culture and I just think as the world as a whole,

we have a system in place that, you know, supports white supremacist patriarchy in the sense that women, however, you know, they identify. Once we enter into that kind of dynamic, we're always seen as the ones to just be providing. So I'm now a mother and being a mother, there is that myth of martyrdom as well, that I should be all sacrificing and everything. You know, my, my child and everybody else must come before me. But you can't, you know, give, you know, you can't pour from an empty cup. So I've had to look at the way that society has told me I need to behave as a woman as a mother, and eschew all of those narratives. And she's a narrative that better serves me because actually, all of those other narratives make me very very angry and it's actually only through the anger that I think

we'll be able to change things especially as living in a society where black girls are hyper-sexualized from a very young age they're adultified from a very young age and those things don't serve us it doesn't actually allow us to have a childhood we have to grow up very very quickly and yeah I think that those kind of nurturing aspects of things are the things that I definitely wanted to get myself away from so I could be more whole. Sam how useful would you say anger is if you want to be assertive? I think women are not encouraged to be angry. From a very young age, anger is frowned on in small girls, not so much in small boys. And as you grow older, you see angry men are powerful, angry women are hysterical. So I think learning to channel, you know, to harness your anger is really, really important.

It's not something that becomes natural to most women. Sam Baker, Kalechi Okafor and Rebecca Reid. Big response from you on this item. From Anonymous, even though my dad took the role of lead in the family and it was quite a traditional household, I was always encouraged to speak up and speak my mind. I've never felt I couldn't share my feelings with a man or anybody else. I think this has caused more issues for relationships because I'll not just do what the man wants. And I challenge men on the word compromise, which is sometimes packaged as do things my way.

Yes, she goes on. I'm also black and very familiar with the angry black woman stereotype, especially in the workplace. From Rachel, I'm Australian from a single parent and I've been in the UK for 14 years. I'm often told I am rude by my partner who's from the north, whether it's saying my food is too cold or I tell off a child who's hit my child in the park. I've always felt, why should hit my child in the park. I've always felt, why should I be uncomfortable for the sake of somebody else's behaviour? I'm almost 43 and I'm the person that goes into bat for my friends. I literally have no qualms about doing so.

I really do think it's a cultural thing. In Australia, you're taught to question everything, or at least I was. Rachel, thank you very much. More power to your Australian elbow. A Match Made in Heaven is an anthology of writing by British Muslim women. It's the work of emerging writers who took part in workshops in Leeds, in Bradford and in Glasgow. And the aim was pretty simple, really, to just try to get beyond the stereotypes of subservient Muslim females. On Friday, I talked to the editors of the anthology, Nafisa Ali and Claire Chambers and to one of the writers who features in it, Noreen Hack, author of a short story called Rearranged. First, Nafisa told me who'd come to the workshops.

What we were looking at was actually just trying to include more people into creative writing, but also looking at the element of diversity within creative writing. So you did have to be Muslim. That was one of the criteria that we were looking at. But also we were looking at young Muslims as well who could tell new stories. And you didn't have to have any experience. You could be a novice, you could be have to have any experience you could be a novice you could be um a budding writer you could just have even have an interest previously and you know you might have left it for a while and come back to it so no no experience at all and that was actually the um the benefits of it really because we had such a group a range of people within the groups that um these fantastic

stories came and everybody had a different lens um in which they viewed love and desire yeah no some really interesting stuff in the anthology claire probably a daft question in a way but how did you know the appetite for these workshops was there i think there really is an appetite and too often british muslim Muslims are associated with problems and when we think about love and desire we think of Rotherham and grooming gangs on the male side or if we think about women we tend to think of passive or repressed women and that's not most people's experience at all and I think what Nafisa was saying about ordinary non-stereotypical non-sensational experiences was something that writers were very keen to get across.

Go on. And so in the anthology I mean there's such diversity not only of the writers themselves as Nafisa's been outlining but in terms of there's a real, you know, variety in the tonal palette. So there's, you know, greatly humorous stories, you know, very irreverent pieces, you know, sometimes, you know, very edgy and shocking. Yes, well, at least one story genuinely shocked me. But that's a good thing. That's a good thing, isn't it?

Well, that was the one about the porn, which we'll see if we can get on to that. Let's bring in Noreen. Noreen, I want to know a little bit about how you felt when you went to the workshop. What was that like for you? I absolutely loved the workshops every single minute of it. I mean, you know, my experience before that, I'd only ever been to um other kind of course and uh when I went to to that one um it was quite negative in the sense that the the teacher of the class turned around to us apropos of nothing and and decided to say that Muslim women who wore the hijab were downtrodden and oppressed and I remember sitting there the only one with my hijab on and all eyes were on

me and I was just so utterly shocked and that comment was just delivered so casually as if it was nothing so coming to these workshops was just so it was just like a breath of fresh air to meet other creative Muslim women who had really similar experiences and interests and were passionate about writing and it was I remember feeling at the time it was like being in a room full of unicorns you know like not that it was not that the talent isn't out there but having access to women who were given that space and opportunity to be openly creative and it was just an amazing thing to witness and experience and be part of and um you know they were hosted in um Glasgow Women's Library which is a fantastic place it's just so kind of um welcoming and open and and the really good thing is that the workshops have actually

continued there specifically on playwriting so in conjunction with Stella Quine's theatre company so I've actually just finished writing a play which will be read at Glasgow Women's Library hopefully February of next year. So this has had a real impact on well your interest in work and your ideas have been sparked by the workshop and you feel more confident, clearly. Oh, definitely. Yes. I mean, you know, the workshop's finished in 2018. And since then, I have written flash fiction, short fiction. I've started writing my own novel. I don't think I would have considered these things possible. That's fantastic. Can we hear a little bit of your short story, Rearranged. Just set it up for us. It's about a woman whose husband has died.

That's right. So she's an older woman and she has realised that she's been in this unhappy marriage and she feels like she's never really lived. And now she's finally free to make a fresh start and choose her own ideal husband. So the story catalogues her experience on a matrimonial website and going online and meeting people and the disasters that she faces on this kind of journey to self-discovery, her search for happiness. And it's about her love of life and poetry as well. OK, can we just hear a little extract from it?

Yes, sure. She had been married to Gazanfer for over three decades. It had been 30 years of bland indifference. Even on the day she accepted his proposal, she had suspected she would one day find herself telling the story of their engagement with a sigh. But her family wanted her to marry him, and that was the way things were. Not like now, when young people did as they pleased. She sighed and waited for her laptop to snap into life. She brought up the website, took a bite from her cheese and chart masala sandwich and typed in her login details. Username, 58 Jaffa Cakes. Password, The Road Not

Taken. And what had her parents based their decision on? Did they admire his wit? Were they impressed with his charisma or recognise the traits of a kind, caring, selfless nature? No. He had the right job, was the right colour, sported the appropriate amount of facial hair. She was stabbing at the keyboard and had to force herself to stop and breathe out her frustration. Well, now there was no one left to disapprove. She typed out the words, yes, let's meet, and clicked send. And I don't want to spoil it, but she does meet him. And Noreen, I suppose I listened to that and listening to it and I read it too.

There's a real attitude about that story. And it probably says a lot about my misconceptions that I was shocked by the attitude in it. And I shouldn't be shocked, should I? Well, I mean... That's the whole point of this, isn't it? Yes, exactly. To make people like me understand that there is no simple Muslim woman cliché.

No, exactly, yeah. And I find it funny that there is that cliché out there because my experience is just so the reverse of that. And I use the characters to kind of and the humor to kind of portray all those wonderfully confident opinionated at times matriarchal and eccentric Pakistani women that I've encountered my whole life and and it just made the story a lot of fun to write as well. Now Lisa some of the writers have used pseudonyms now why is that yeah so was um bringing people in as well so as um muslim women and um some were south asian we had a range so we had some um middle eastern as

well um when you're coming into groups and talk about love and desire it's not something that um muslim women with these intersections can just openly talk about. So we had the advantage to say to women that when you're writing fictional pieces, which doesn't have to be based on your life anyway, you have the advantage that you can actually fictionalize your name as well with a pseudonym. And that really created a safe space for these women to broach upon topics that they were actually sometimes quite fearful of talking about. Not that they don't talk about, all women talk about these issues, you know, personal relationships and marriage and, you know, their hopes and aspirations,

but it's not something that you will go and talk to a stranger about openly. You know, I wouldn't do that myself. So we had to create these spaces that were comfortable for them. So whether it was fictionalising your own experiences or whether it was placing a pseudonym on your own name in the book or just in the stories that they were creating, actually gave these women the spaces that they needed to explore, you know, their hopes, their fears and their desires, really. Nafisa Ali, Noreen Hack and Claire Chambers. And if you'd like to explore that anthology, it is called A Match Made in Heaven, British Muslim Women Write About Love and Desire. Now, lockdown saw quite a significant fall

in gun and knife crime in London, but domestic violence charities have reported a big increase in calls for help. There's been the Black Lives Matter as well, of course, and controversy over some officers kneeling in support and the ongoing questions about stop and search. At the heart of all that, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, a guest on Woman's Hour this week, Dame Cressida Dick. It's been a terribly difficult time for London and for the whole country and, you know, well, so many thousands of Londoners have lost their lives and other people's lives

have been turned upside down and it remains a very worrying time for people. I'm very proud of the people of the Met because they carried on. As other people were obviously and quite properly staying at home, they were out on the streets. We stayed very resilient and we've had very low absences. We saw some changes in crime patterns and we took advantage of that to make lots of arrests, same numbers as usual, actually, whilst changing the way we deliver the service, being COVID aware in all ways, we continue to arrest about 500 people a day in London.

And we were bearing down on violent criminals, violent criminals, violent criminals, whoever they may be, organised criminals, gun criminals, domestic violence, I'm sure we're talking about. So what difference has it made to the way domestic violence is handled? Because the rising calls to the charities has been phenomenal. It has. So many people in London live in quite confined spaces. They might have many children there. If you are living with a partner who is violent or of whom you are frightened, it is a horrible, horrible thought. And of course, as you say, some of the charities saw a big rise in calls to them. We did not and continue to have not had a huge rise. We've seen since lockdown eased a bit of an increase in the number of crimes reported, but probably only in line with the annual year on year increases we are seeing.

So we had to work really closely with charities and we had to reach out to people we knew were vulnerable victims and indeed aggressive offenders and keep in touch with people. We arrested 100 people a day for domestic violence during the height of the lockdown period. So we carried on bringing people in and to justice wherever we could. Now, obviously, trust in the police is something you're desperate to build. But what do the parents you work with say about stop and search? Well, I don't want to generalise too much, but it is fair to say a large proportion of them have said to me that they believe, as I do, that stop and search is just one thing that police should be doing, but a very important thing.

And it is not unusual for parents to say to me, we'd obviously like to see more officers on the streets, but we would also like to see more use of stop and search. This isn't absolutely everybody, but it is a very, very common thing. And I suppose it's, you know, you and I, I'm sure, can't put ourselves in the shoes of somebody who's lost a child to the knife crime. But people then learn a lot about, you know, what has led to this particular incident and others as well. And most people feel passionately that if we can take knives off the street and guns through stop and search, which we do hundreds every month, that done professionally, done in a way that the young person, if it's a young person being stopped, sort of understands that feels fair. Of course, all my officers have their body warm video. Then it is a very

important thing for us to continue to do against those people who are most violent, who carry knives regularly, or, you know, for example, prolific drug dealers of whom we've arrested record numbers in the last several months, where we know there's a huge amount of violence associated with the gangs associated with that. What do you say to people who insist that there is a racist element in the stop and search procedures? The stop and search in London, and I suppose in the UK, is something that resonates in some communities much more than others, I think in 1983 and this was before we had the power we now have. But you'll remember, perhaps, Jenny, how people felt about police use of searching on the street then. And I fully appreciate that for some communities who are sadly often within our black communities, both those most victimised by knife crime, most affected by

serious crime in so many ways. If you're living in an area like that and you're concerned about your child and you have a lower level of trust than I would like in your police because of the history and whatnot, then there will be concern about officers' interactions, stop and search and arrests and potentially use of force. So my job, I set out to reduce violence and to improve the trust of those communities who have least trust in us. I don't accept that my officers are biased when they are undertaking stop and search. I look at the outcome rates that we get and they are the same across different ethnic groups and different communities. And that tells me that they are dealing with each case in terms of what is happening there and the issues and the intelligence and the evidence. But I do understand that for some people, stop and search is still seen as something that worries them. So I'm doing the

load in schools to try to help young people understand their rights understand who we are why we do it we involve our communities massively on the streets we have advocates out on streets watching us as we do stop and search as i say if somebody does something which is clumsy or or wrong then we've got our body one video if somebody makes a complaint it will be investigated. And the vast majority of the time, the officers are extremely professional and very courteous. What about the issue of officers taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter? Why did you instruct them not to do it, which almost seemed that it didn't do any good for relations

between your officers and the neighbourhoods they serve? So we had a couple of officers who took the knee, as it's called, during I think it was the first large Black Lives Matter protest. And I think they probably did that out of a sense of wanting to show some respect, but also because they were being, and had been throughout the day, screamed and shouted and abused much of the time. And they felt perhaps that it would take the heat out of the situation if when people were screaming at them, take the knee, take the knee, take the knee, that they did so. However, this was, as you know, towards the end of a protest which became extremely violent. And sorry to say, although the vast majority of Black Lives Matter supporters

were not violent, the next three large protests also had a very violent element. And my view is we are professional police officers. We have a job to do, which is keeping the public safe. We have to be alert at all times to doing that. And actually to take the knee in an operational situation is something that may distract you and make you or your colleagues or more to to the point, the public, less safe, not more. So I was very clear about that. How effective is the drive to recruit more women and ethnic minorities into the force? We have hugely increased the numbers, if I start with black and minority ethnic officers in the Met, over the last sort of 10 and 20 years. So at our sort of point of entry, over the last couple of 10 and 20 years. So at our sort of point of entry over the last couple of years,

and we are growing, as you know, we've generally had somewhere between about 20% and 28% black and minority ethnic recruits as police officers. Overall, we're now just about just over 15% officers. And as a service, because we have lots of people in forensics, intelligence, all sorts of other roles who are not officers, we're just under 20% black and minority ethnic. So that is a huge improvement. It's not as far as I would like to go. We focused also a lot, as you've said, on recruiting women and different ways to attract and keep women with us. You can join part-time now. We are, you know, I think much better than we were at supporting people through maternity. I have a large number

of senior women officers. My board is half female. I have four assistant commissioners, two of them happen to be women at the moment. And I generally have well over a third of my seniors are women, which may not be as good as some organisations, but it's a very traditionally male-dominated environment, as you know. So we're doing far better than most police services. And in many of my meetings, women will be in the majority. We've got women flooding into detectives and specialist roles that perhaps in the past would have been seen as quite male-dominated.

The head of the Met, Dame Crestedick, who talked to Jenny on the programme this week. Stephanie Walker was pregnant when she was 14. 14 years on, she tweeted to say that when she met her teenage pregnancy midwife, she absolutely knew that midwifery was the career path for her. And she's done it. She wrote,

I had my last shift last night as a student midwife. I've delivered a total of 48 healthy babies over three years and had the time of my life doing so. So how did she cope when she found out she was pregnant at 14? I did struggle at first. As you can imagine, being 14, finding out you're pregnant. I was in year 10 at the time, so I learned from my GCSE. I didn't expect it. It was a big shock to the whole family.

Very disappointing time for them all and it was quite difficult to adapt to that. I knew straight away I had the support in place to be able to continue with my pregnancy so I knew that was the right thing to do for my situation now joy it was very overwhelming joy Strachan was your midwife how did she help you through the pregnancy and the birth of your son when I I first met Joy, she was my community teenage pregnancy midwife. So I saw Joy from my first appointment in the community and she just spoke to me with an equal respect. Just the way she communicated with me totally empowered me that I was in control of this and I can have great outcomes and it wasn't the end

of the world she spoke positively about what I can achieve and just totally empowered me to be a better parent and just to take more control of my life and when I left that appointment I just knew that that was the way that was the path for me I knew the way that she'd spoke to me just I'd love to be able to help other mums in that position and so I knew I'd want to I wanted to start a career in midwifery eventually. So how soon did you manage to get back into education after Daniel was born? I think it was about three or four weeks after. I put them straight in a lovely little child mine down my street, expressing my breast milk and sending it around. It was quite full on. Just to be able to return and sit my GCSEs,

that was what I really wanted to do. I had a clear goal in my head. I wanted to be a midwife, so I needed good GCSEs. Unfortunately, I didn't get the GCSEs I needed to go and do my A-level so I took the long way around and went to college I was 17 by the time I got to college with a two-year-old and I knew I'd get back to it eventually when I was a better position in my life so. We know there's been a big decrease in teenage pregnancy in recent years but I understand the rate is highest in the northeast so when you volunteered with a teenage parent support group as you were training

what sort of advice did you give from your own experience? I think it was important for them to see that it's not the end of the world so part of the programme that we offered to the young mums was to educate them about their further educational options. So we'd take them to the local college and discuss what supports in place in terms of transport and childcare assistance to enable you to get back into education. So we did a lot of focus on that and empowering them as individuals,

what their rights are as parents. Just from the start, basic antenatal education, up and to all sorts of things, just to really empower them as parents, really. How easily did you manage to complete your training? Because not only did you have Daniel, who's now 14 you married and you had two more sons how did you manage that's right so i've got isaac and freddie who are seven and six as well so to get my gcses up i did a night class at college over an access course so that worked well to balance that once the children were in bed and i have a really supportive husband and my parents are foster

carers so they're available um they're around the corner as well so everybody's just really mucked in and helped me they knew that um midwifery was a really intense degree to do um alongside your education you've got 37 and a half hour weeks on placement so balancing that with assignments it is really it was really intense. But I've just had a great support network, really. Now, you said in that tweet, which went viral about your history, you said you've had the time of your life delivering 48 healthy babies. What is it you love about being a midwife? I don't know where to start with that answer, really.

It's just all so... Basically, it's just so interesting to start with. The anatomy and physiology that you learn along the way is just so... Like, it's really amazing. But just supporting women and parents through that transition in their life, it's such a vulnerable moment in their lives and it's just so overwhelming to be a part of that journey that they're on. It's just all lovely, but particularly delivery is lovely.

Stephanie Walker, the midwife, talking to Jenny, of course. Now, Anne Cleaves is the author of more than 30 critically acclaimed novels, and in 2017 she got the highest accolade in crime writing, the CWA Diamond Dagger. She's worked in the past as a probation officer, as a bird observatory cook, and an auxiliary coastguard. And all that, of course, informs her wonderful writing. Her latest novel is The Darkest Evening, and it's the ninth Vera book. family. So her dad grew up in this big crumbling country house and was the black sheep of the

family. And quite by chance, Vera finds herself back there investigating a crime. Yes. There is something I think that's quite reassuring about those winter country house murder mysteries. So it was great fun to write. Yeah, we should say that murder in itself isn't terrifically reassuring, but I know what you mean. I think it's the classic murder mystery, though, isn't it? That at times of trouble and discontent and when we're all a bit anxious and we're not quite sure who's in charge of us,

our lives and our destiny, to have a traditional murder mystery where there is some sense of order restored at the end of justice being seen to be done. And justice being seen to be done by Vera, which is hugely significant. Will, can I just ask a sensitive question about Vera? Will she ever retire from the police? She's not ageing in real time in the books. So I'm quite happy to go on writing her for a little while yet. Yeah. So she will be with us for many, many cases to come. That's what I'm most concerned about. I hope so. I think the great thing, because she's set here in the northeast where I live,

there's such a wide palette of backgrounds for me to write about. So we have the almost feudal, rural setting of the darkest evening, but then we have faded seaside towns so we have post-industrial landscape like the former pit villages and the places where I used to build ships and we don't anymore so that gives me lots and lots to write about I stopped writing about Shetland because there are only 23,000 people in Shetland and between us the TV drama and I had killed quite a lot of them. Right it's just very practical you felt you couldn't realistically set any more murder mysteries on Shetland fair enough. Well I think I'd also said said all that I needed to say about it. Yeah I mean but I mean on the same point you wouldn't buy a property in midsummer

would you because your chances of lasting longer than the first ad break would be pretty limited. What I love many things about Vera, not least, as you've indicated, we do hear about her inner life and her sticky family circumstances and also her judgment on her colleagues. Despite knowing almost nothing about marriage, she's got a lot to say about other people's marriages and relationships, hasn't she? I think her colleagues think that she's very hard on them. But I think what Vera would hate more than anything is to be patronised. So she absolutely refuses to patronise other people. So she doesn't see why they should need the pat on the back or for her to be thoughtful about their childcare arrangements or the fact that a baby's kept them awake all night. She would hate people to make allowances for her, for the fact that she's got to drive back to the hills in her battered old Land Rover or that she's on her own. And the fact that she struggles with her, well, she is actually her protege, Holly, who is the young female detective. They have quite a spiky relationship, don't they? Why did you want to write it like that? I think it just grew like that, really. Holly is young, ambitious, but also a bit of a loner in the same way, socially awkward in a way.

She's a young Vera, isn't she? She is a bit of a young Vera, yes. But neither of them are keen to recognise the similarities. No, absolutely not. No, Holly is much smarter than Vera. She certainly wouldn't be dressed in charity shop clothes. No, and Vera, I think the reason that so many readers, particularly female readers, invest in Vera is that she is,

there is something delightfully non-threatening about her, because we know that Vera is a bit sad and she isn't a wild success story. And a lot of us can identify with that. Yeah, she is. And she's a loner, but she's not lonely, I think. And for lots of us who were in lockdown on our own and struggling and surviving and doing it, I think she's somebody that we admire because she's always on her own and she's always having to cope

without the help of other people and without having friends to have coffee with. Her job is her life. And again, I think there are quite a lot of people who are like that, both men and women, who worry about what they'll do when work is at an end. What has your experience of the lockdown period been personally? It wasn't very different because I was here and I was writing. I did for the first eight or ten weeks have my 11 year old grandson staying with me,

because he'd come straight out of hospital. He has chronic asthma, and was on really high medication. So it was before the official lockdown. His siblings are still at school. So the whole family thought he was better to come here for a bit and to shield. And so we had quite a nice time. He would sit at the kitchen table and do his work and I would sit at the kitchen table and make up stories and then we'd meet for lunch. So that was quite jolly. Yeah, you make it all sound so simple. Does he know that his grandmother's sitting at the kitchen table, as you described, just quietly writing bestselling books? Again, because I've been in it for a long time,

so since they were born, and really they've only been best-selling for the last few years. It's just what I've always been doing, really. And I have dedicated a book to each of them. Anne Cleaves and her book The Darkest Evening, which is a Vera, as she made clear there, is out now. Anya's a fan like me. Emails to say just wanted to express how much Anne Cleaves' worlds have meant to me during lockdown.

Her novels are just an endless source of escapism. I don't really like crime fiction, but I love her characters. And I've learned so much about Shetland and Northumbria. Reading her feels like I'm there, she says. Thank you, Anya, and thanks to everybody for listening this afternoon and for emailing and tweeting the programme this week. On Monday, amongst other things, we're discussing Botox. Would you? Should you? Have you?

Tell us, at BBC Women's Hour on social media, and then we're live, of course, on the radio, just after the news at 10 on Monday. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.