Woman's Hour - Family secrets, Who was Mary Macarthur? Poet Fatimah Asghar, Gender pay inequalities in UK nursing

Episode Date: February 20, 2019

More Family Secret, today we hear from Prue who's niece brought her a DNA kit for her 70th Birthday. When she found out that she could find people with matched DNA, she was shocked to discover that the man who brought her up was in fact NOT her biological father. Since then she's been trying to find him. Reporter Jo Morris meets her at her home to talk about the impact the news had on her.Nursing is predominantly a female occupation in the UK, but men still hold one in five of the best paid jobs, according to a new study by London South Bank University . Jenni talks to Professor Alison Leary, Chair of Workforce Modelling, who headed up the study called ‘Nursing pay by gender distribution in the UK - does the Glass Escalator still exist?’ Rouse, Ye Women! a folk opera is currently on tour around the country. It tells the tale of Mary Macarthur, a female trade unionist in the early part of the twentieth century who relentlessly fought for better working conditions and pay for women. We hear from actor and singer, Bryony Purdue who plays the activist and Mary’s biographer, Dr Cathy Hunt.And Fatimah Asghar, is an impassioned voice on the experience of young Pakistani-American women and the voice behind the web series Brown Girls. She shares some of her debut poetry collection which examines daily microaggressions and the long term trauma that the Indian-Pakistani partition has had on her culture.Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Bryony Purdue Guest; Dr Cathy Hunt. Guest; Fatimah Asghar Guest Prof. Alison LearyReporter Jo Morris

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Wednesday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Fatima Asghar's collection of poetry is called If They Come For Us. Why is a 29-year-old woman writing about the impact of an event that happened long before she was born, the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The next in our series of family secrets, how Prue, at the age of 70, discovered her history through a DNA kit she'd received as a birthday present.

And who was Mary MacArthur? Her story is told in a folk opera, Rouse Ye Women, which is touring the country. Now, you may have heard on the Today programme this morning that six weeks before the deadline, when companies have to publish their gender pay details, the BBC has worked out that of those that have submitted results already, four out of ten private companies have a wider gap than they had last year. Of course, the whole picture may change when the full results come out, but there is no doubt about the results of a new study by London's South Bank University

into the gender gap when it comes to nursing. Nursing is largely a female occupation, but men hold one in five of the best paid jobs. The profession says the report has a sticky floor rather than a glass ceiling. It's gender opportunity rather than a pay gap that's the problem. Alison Leary is Professor of Healthcare at the South Bank. Why does nursing suffer from a sticky floor? or increasingly other caring responsibilities. So it's not that women are not capable of rising to higher occupational status in the profession. It's just they're more likely to be held back by other factors. So what then are a bright young nurse's chances of promotion and a significant pay rise if the if it's a nurse that's uh young and actually the the average age to enter nursing is actually in the late 20s now although we're likely to see a decrease in that

as the change of the bursaries have happened um the there is a a good prospects of promotion however it isn't as good as a man's and that's the issue so 11 percent of the workforce in england are men then the nursing workforce are men but they hold one in five of the highest paid jobs and in areas like northern ireland they hold one in three of the best paid jobs despite being less than seven percent of the workforce so generally this applies across the country it applies across the uk we found similar pattern of advantage of men being promoted faster than women across all four countries. So how much of a gender pay gap is there for, let's say, men and women working at the same level? Would they be paid the same if they were doing the same job at the same level?

They would generally be paid the same if they were doing the same job at the same level? They would generally be paid the same. The gender pay gap is quite interesting because what it looks at is the average in an organisation between a man and a woman doing kind of roughly the same job. But what we find is that because NHS organisations particularly are so big and the pay range is so wide, this can actually be hidden. so this advantage of men being paid higher salaries for nursing is actually hidden in the gender pay calculations quite often which is why we looked at distribution uh nursing is not seeing as a knowledge intense occupation as a safety critical occupation seem more of a service job um which is untrue. And that means... Sorry, my eyes widened when you said that. What?

Caring for people, giving injections. Goodness gracious. Yeah, and a lot of the work of registered nurses is vigilance. If you look at the work of a district nurse, for example, it's incredibly complex. It's case management, all kinds of things like that. And yet they'll be earning less than, say, a state's project manager in the NHS or an IT manager. A ward sister will be, including a child nurse, actually,

because men are affected by this genderisation in the profession as much as women are, to a degree, might manage a staff of 70 people, a budget of a quarter of a million pounds, a 24-hour responsibility for a ward, and yet still be paid around £32,000 a year. So you could earn better in retail, quite frankly. Now, your results suggest opportunities for women now are worse than in 1992. Why? Yeah, so we went back and looked at other people's studies and and this has been consistent um why why it happens we're not entirely sure we would have expected with changes in legislation

and also the promotion of different roles that this there would have been some kind of catch-up um there has been in some other professions but other professions have tended to migrate to be more gender neutral. So nursing has remained resolutely female in terms of the workforce. So across the UK, it's still a roughly 90% female profession. And all the things that come with that, I I think have held the profession back slightly. You've said more needs to be done by employers to create a more supportive working environment for women. What are the priorities there? What do you think they should be doing? There are priorities around the gendered workforce, so more women are likely to work part-time. So valuing part-time work could be seen

as something that would be a real step forward and I get lots of emails from people particularly nurses who have had issues with working part-time where they've had to accept a cut in pay for example a lower grade to work part-time which is is really unacceptable in this day and age because they're doing essentially the same job. And in our work, we've seen that women, particularly in the mid-range salary bands, will accept a demotion to take better hours or better conditions. There was a study by the Health Foundation, I think it was released last week, that shows an increase in dissatisfaction with working conditions in health care.

So improving working conditions would really help I think not only recruit people but retain them and also give them the opportunity to progress. There are 41,000 vacancies for nurses in England yeah how attractive is the profession for women given your findings? I think it's about making it attractive for everybody, actually. You know, there are reasons why men don't come into the profession. So it's about making it attractive to everyone. So that's improving working conditions. Nursing, if you speak to organisations like the Royal College of Nursing,

will say that there's been effectively a pay cut in the last 10 years. So valuing the work that nurses do helping people understand that is a safety critical critical occupation that's knowledge intense it's not a service industry per se i think would help particularly employers and policy makers understand the value of registered nurses unfortunately the value of registered nurses is only seen when they're not there so if you look at a lot of the big issues that we've had in the past for example mid-staffs you know there was a direct link there to a lack of registered nurses. Professor Alison

Leary thank you very much indeed for being with us and we would of course like to hear from you on this question. Are you a nurse? Have you been a nurse? What do you think of what we've just been discussing? Send us a tweet or an email. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you. Now, in our programme yesterday, a contributor mistakenly referred to the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, when discussing Mesa Gifford and Joe Robinson's role in fighting against ISIS in Syria. They were both, in fact, members of the YPG,

the Kurdish People's Defence Units, and we apologise for this error. Now, there's a show described as a folk opera, which is touring the country at the moment, and it's called Rouse Ye Women. It tells the story of Mary MacArthur who was a trade unionist born in Scotland in 1880. She fought for better working conditions and pay for women and was one of the first women to stand for Parliament in 1919. She didn't make it. Well, Bryony Perdue plays MacArthur in the show and Dr. Cathy Hunt is her biographer.

Cathy, why was Mary MacArthur known as the angel of the workers? Because she was so brilliant at communication. She was a middle-class woman, but she wasn't a do-gooding lady bountiful. She really took the trouble to make sure that she understood working conditions in the locality that she was working in. And because of that, and because also she didn't take chances with women's future, if she thought there wasn't a good reason to strike, then she would say you must go back to work and you must wait, you must unionise and you must wait for another time to come. Stay strong in your union. She understood their working conditions. How did she become a trade unionist and actually create a women's union. She did, yeah. She created the National Federation

of Women Workers in 1906, when she herself was only 26. She was born in Glasgow in 1880. And as I say, she was a middle class woman. She was born of a comfortable family. Her father was a draper. And she'd worked for him as a bookkeeper and while she was living still in Scotland she did a bit of part-time journalism and she went along to a meeting about the establishment of a branch of the shop assistants union and she went there not quite knowing what to expect but she had a kind of moment of conversion and she became a member of the Shop Assistance Union and she went from strength to strength doing that, realising that it was women's conditions that she needed to organise.

Now, Briony, the place focuses the Chainmaker Strike in 1910. What appealed to you about playing her? To be a young woman now, to be someone who feels I have a voice and a choice and to be an actor, respected for being an actor, not treated necessarily differently. Obviously, there are certain roles that I can do as a woman and vice versa that make more sense. But actually, there's this powerful female role to look her up she's also Scottish and I grew up in Scotland which appealed and I lived on an organic farm in Scotland where there was a folk band who lived who lived in the downstairs part of the house and I studied opera so the

music appealed the story appealed and the timing now appeals because we are in similar conditions with women's pay now. Well, you call it a folk opera. You are going to perform for us. I am, yes. Will you go ahead and perform, please? Of course. So to begin with, a little speech that Mary MacArthur, actually some of her words are used in this, and then a little part of a ballad because she had two sides to her she could encourage and rouse women and she could also be quite moved so but the apathy of sweated women regarding their own condition has always been a stumbling block in the way of any improvement

for as well as contending with belligerent employers these women are dealing with suspicious male co-workers. They're having to convince male trade unionists who view women as merely temporary workers that they're not a threat to men's wage levels. We must face this gender-based hostility by working within the labour movement. By working with women workers, not just for women workers. The children are level with the anvil Where the mother beats her chain And on the floor a baby That screams and screams again.

Screams at the narrow cradle. Screams as the flames go higher. Screams when sparks come landing from out that blazing fire. Oh, that's beautiful. Thank you very much. The Chainmaker's Strike, Cathy, I am so ashamed to say, I knew nothing about Mary MacArthur or the Chainmaker's Strike. And then this morning we discovered that she's around,

one of the names around the statue of Fawcett. Yes, she's on the plinth. Yeah, on the plinth, so we should have known about her. So what was the chainmaker's strike about? It was a strike for a minimum wage. So the chainmakers, the women chainmakers, worked largely in forges attached to their homes, making lighter chains. The men were in factories and they were often unionised.

And these women were working for incredibly low pay, awful conditions, very long hours. And so the government had passed the year before the Trade Boards Act, which had granted these women in the chain making industry a minimum wage. And yet the employers or many of the employers in Cradley Heath thought they could get around that. They thought they could go on doing what they'd always done, which was let the women say to the women, we'll after you you don't you don't you don't you know you just need us to make sure that you're okay um which they didn't and they weren't quite victimization intimidate intimidation um and so mary mccarthur on behalf of the national federation of women workers called the women out um and said no no, we will fight for this minimum wage, which is rightfully

ours. And the country responded because her publicity was so good. And they responded by contributing thousands of pounds, which allowed the women to stay out on strike for over two months. And now, Brownie, what impact did her politics and her passion have on her family, particularly her father, who didn't share her politics, from what I gather, and then her marriage and her child, her child who was four when she died? So I think that the most... I was actually talking to Cathy about this when we first met,

because the relationship with her father, I think he was a very enlightened quite a lot of room to feel and think for herself. He was politically conservative. He was pretty horrified I think when she first announced she was going to be a trade unionist and set up a branch within his shop using his shop as her branch address but I think he was quite liberal as Briony said within his shop, using his shop as her branch, her dress. But I think he was quite liberal, as Briony said,

in many of his attitudes towards women and her future. She did die quite young. She was only 40 and her little child was four. What did she die of? She died of cancer. She was diagnosed in 1920. And, yes, it was a tragedy. And it was recognised as a tragedy, not just as a young mother who lost her life. And in fact, her husband had died just two years before her. But because she would undoubtedly have gone on in the Labour movement to have been a very big noise. She was the first woman to be adopted as a Labour candidate for the 1918 general election. She lost, but there was a huge future for her.

Dr Cathy Hunt and Bryony Purdy, thank you very much, especially for a lovely performance. No reflection on you, Cathy, but she was good, wasn't she? She was. And Rouse You Women is on tour until the 18th of April. Thank you both very much indeed. Now, still to come in today's programme, Fatima Asghar, who's a poet and the voice behind Brown Girls. Her collection of poetry is If They Come For Us and examines the impact of the partition which divided India and Pakistan.

And the serial, Episode 3 of Curious Under the Stars. Now, do remember you can search for Women's Hour on BBC Sounds and subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And that's also where you find podcasts. If you miss Monday's programme, you can hear an interview with a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest. She was a child when it happened and spoke to us as Pope Francis hosts a meeting on protecting minors. And there was a discussion yesterday about the fate of Shamima Begum, the 19-year-old who travelled to Syria in 2015 to join the Islamic State group

and now, of course, wants to come home. Now today we have the last in our series of family secrets. When we asked you to let us know if you had a secret to share we heard from Prue who last year was given a DNA testing kit by one of her nieces. It was a present for Prue's 70th birthday. There were no surprises in the results about her geographical origins but recently she discovered that she could find people with DNA which matched hers and was shocked to discover that her father was not her biological father. Well since then she's been trying to find out who her father was with the help of people she's met online. She discussed the impact of her discovery with Jo Morris.

I've had a few shocks in my life. This has grown to be one of the big, if not the biggest thing in my life. Because it's about my own identity. It's about me and who I am. It's a primal thing. I have to know. And I can't rest till I know who he is. Who is my biological father?

I'm just having a look, checking my phone to make sure nobody's come through and found my dad. You never know what the latest message will say so how much time are you spending on this during the day all the time really yes so this person here you can see here that's one is helping me and she's already written something to me today she's taken the loneliness away from it you know when everybody else has forgotten and that sort of thing and i've got more wound up about it. So how's it been affecting you then? I sit in the same seat every day with my laptop on my lap, and I'm thinking and thinking and thinking and looking at family trees and looking up old newspaper cuttings.

And it makes me feel better to be working on it, like an addict almost. You know, that's my fix. Right, we'll have a look at the pictures. That's my sister and me. I don't know if we look alike or not there. We're both blondes. What's the age gap between you? 16 months. So she came 16 months after you were born.

Yes, yeah. So quite close together. They sometimes call them make-up babies, I've heard that. Ah. What do you mean by that? I don't know. I suppose maybe it does mean if there's been some sort of problem. So was it a happy marriage between your mum and dad?

Not really. We know my mum had a hard time, so... So what did you think, Prue, when your nieces brought you a DNA kit for your 70th birthday? What did you think? Lovely. It was a lovely present. There was about to be an explosion of people doing DNA tests and finding out that their fathers aren't theirs

and all sorts of secrets. You'll have lots of skeletons coming out of cupboards. And the more I thought about it, possibly could explain the mystery of why I felt like I did and why I had always felt like I did. To find that your whole life has been a lie and your identity is not what you thought it was, it's shocking.

How does that feel? I feel betrayed. I feel angry. I understand, but I still feel angry. And it makes me feel sad as well. And I still have trouble believing that my dad isn't my dad because we got on so well and we looked quite alike. Were there any other signs or comments about this when you're younger anything

that looking back now you think oh yeah I remember that my mum occasionally um would say that my father thought that I was the daughter of a Canadian M and that's what it was and I used to think it was probably a post-war joke that everybody said to everybody. She'd say this to you? Yes, to me, yes. We were a very, very open family. There were no no-go areas. We'd talk about everything. And so when I asked her about it, she used to say, haven't you noticed how your father reassures himself

by emphasising how little features of yours are the same as his, which he did. I've got a biggish nose, he did, and we both had knobbly knees and things like that. And it's true, he did do that, but I never probed or asked. I didn't say, why would you think that? Because I thought it was a joke. I wish I had probed it now. So that was one of the first avenues we started, you know, Canadian Airmen maybe. Do you wonder now why she said that to you?

I do, actually. And really, looking at it now, of course, it was a perfect opportunity to open up the whole subject and if I'd have known more. But it just shows how certain I was that I was his. Who do you think knew about this? My family. I said to my family Who do you think knew about this? My family I said to my family do you know my close family and they had not got an inkling and then I spoke to my cousins my more distant cousins and they said well actually we had heard some whispers and I said please you know think of

whatever you can think of it's the only clues I've got. The two words they came up with were prisoner of war and acquaintance of the family. That was it. What do you mean that's what they came up with? That's the only words they could remember in relation to whose I was. What, because they were young kids? They were young, they'd listened in to conversations. Oh, they're eavesdropping.

And the one who could remember eavesdropping like you do, one of them remembers their mother having a go at my mum because she thought she told me or something. They just heard little snippets. So they kind of all knew. I mean, skeleton in the cupboard, and this is families for, you know, do they protect? I think that's what it was about, protection.

Nobody said anything is there any part of you that's deep down not surprised by this the part that's felt so awful all my life i suppose deep down i've always felt like a cuckoo in the nest and my family have reminded me my close family that I have said that to them occasionally I've always felt different a feeling of aloneness and sadness always sad the feeling that something was wrong that's what it was something something was wrong, that's what it was, that something was wrong with me. The family, our little family, which at that point was mainly my mum and my brother and my sister, had, I think, probably quite a similar sense of humour and quite light-hearted in lots of ways.

They were more laid-back, not so intense, that's probably the thing. I think I was probably the intense one, the responsible one, the serious, more serious one. And was it noted in the family that you were different? My mother used to point out that my moods, she used to say Prue's having her isms. I felt I was always trying to get her love, and I felt my sister had her love.

That's what I felt. And that might be completely wrong, but that's how it felt, that I had to work for it. What do you mean? Earn it. I was always there for her, and I absolutely adored her. And right through everything, when she got old and all the rest of it,

I was there for her. Why do you think that is? I felt I had to sing for my supper. I really felt I had to earn her love. Like I said, I think my mother could have treated me differently because of it. As I say, not because she meant to, and I really want to stress that, but because I probably did remind her of it, and she could feel guilty easily as well.

And yet she did an amazing job, really. So how much do you know about what was going on around the time of your birth? Now I have found out quite a lot I found out that like lots of people my mum was in the land army up in the Northampton area with her sisters-in-law. When were you born Prue? 47. I know my mum had a breakdown when she had me and that's, just a hearsay family thing. I don't know, it must have been a really hard time for her, and they just had no money. So you were told she had a breakdown,

and do you think now maybe that's because she was...? Well, it could well have been, couldn't it? I mean, I knew where I was born, and it was in a thunderstorm and all that sort of stuff. She said all the nurses went and hid because it was such a bad thunderstorm. And left her by herself. Yeah, yeah.

But I can't work out at what point, you know, whether my mother conceived me in Northampton or Surrey and when my dad actually got back from the war. But for him to be on the electoral roll suggests maybe he was there or maybe you automatically put the husband's name on the electoral roll even if they hadn't come back from the war I just don't know. How did your mum and dad treat you growing up? Well my dad wasn't around a lot he didn't come back till we were about 11. Why where was he? He just ran away a lot he was lovely but he was very irresponsible.

He wasn't up to the job of being a dad. Did you know where your dad went? No. We used to say, where did he go? What's he doing? I don't know. We were told he was in hospital like you do with kids. I was always scared that he was going to go again, that he would disappear. Do you think your dad knew? I think he suspected, but he could see what I could see, that we looked alike, so, yeah. And I was probably the closest to him. And he loved classical music and he used to take us out into the countryside to see the sun coming up and things like that,

which wasn't a mum thing to do. She didn't like classical music. And those were things that I really related to with him and felt that I was probably quite a lot like him in lots of ways. You see there, I think he looks like he's got my nose, my chin. I must admit, I mean, looking at him there, if you said to me, that's your dad... You wouldn't think so? No, I wouldn't question that.

I can see a likeness. I can see why people said that you look like him. That's why dad. You wouldn't think so? No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't question that. I can see a lightness. I can see why people said that you look like him. That's why I kept saying, is the test right? Has it changed how you feel about your dad, knowing this? No, not at all. Other people point out to me what damage he did as a father by not being there, how terrible it was for my mum. I mean, I should really be very angry with him, but I can't.

I know intellectually he was an awful father, but from an emotional point of view, I just loved him. At the moment, still no idea who your biological father is? No idea whatsoever. Oh, my God, yeah. Who the blooming hell is it? How did your nieces react when they found this out? Of course, they bought you the DNA kit, didn't they? Wow!

Aunty Prue! More like that. But again, I think a lot of people didn't realise the impact, including them, and understandably, because I don't think I would realise the impact on people. They were interested in what I found out. If you hadn't done the DNA test, of course, you'd never have known this, would you? No, I wouldn't have a clue.

And people say, are you glad you got it all? And that's a hard one, isn't it? It is a hard one. If it comes up with some answers about why I am as I am, then it will be perfect present if it makes me feel better. Has this changed how you feel about your mum? No, I don't blame her at all. I feel sorry for her. It must have been a terrible shock, awful to live with. No, not at all.

Do you think your mum wanted to go with this secret to her grave? Yes, I think she must have done. I nursed her when she was ill for a long time and she had plenty of opportunity to tell me, but she didn't. Prue, talk to Joe Morrison tomorrow. The psychotherapist Sue Cairn-Jensen will discuss the power of family secrets. And we've put all the family secrets together in one article, which you'll be able to read later today through the website.

Now, you may be familiar with Fatima Asghar as the writer of a series, which is on the web called Brown Girls. It's about young American women struggling with their lives as modern women and with the expectations of their families when it comes to religion and how to behave. She's also published her first collection of poems, which surprisingly perhaps for someone who's only 29, are often inspired by the impact of an event which happened long before she was born, the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.

The title of the book is If They Come For Us. This poem is Partition. I pluck my ancestors' eyes from their faces And fasten them to mine Widowed tree, roads caravaned with cars Browned date palms trampled, the house packed in 20 minutes, suitcase crammed with toys and atta. The war no one calls war crisps my Olu's tongue. He runs towards and away while the field, while the ghost trains, deliver bones burnt.

While I bury the stories of my dead at the tree's base to dig up when winter ends. Fatima, why is partition such a theme throughout the book? Partition was something that I have always been obsessed with ever since I first heard the story of my family and their interactions with partition. And to me, I think it's just so important. History is so important. It's such a violence to divorce people from their history. And growing up in America as a South Asian, a young South Asian person, there was just no mention ever of partition in any of our textbooks. Nobody ever spoke about it. Nobody ever talked about it. And it kind of felt

like this thing that, you know, I knew in my family and these little, this little secret that we had, but wasn't, that no one else knew about. And it was this thing that I just felt really, like I wanted, I could not shake from me. So I just kept writing about it and writing about it. And then found when I was kind of morphing this book that it was a really big theme in my work. And so I just leaned a little bit more into it. And of course, subsequently, other things have happened that have had a deep impact on you. You were 11 growing up in America when 9-11 happened. What impact did that have on you? 9-11 had a huge impact on me. And I think it was this thing where I grew up in America when 9-11 happened. What impact did that have on you? 9-11 had a huge impact on me.

And I think it was this thing where I grew up in a really diverse area in America where there was a lot of people of color, a lot of different immigrants, and it was very mixed communities of people living together. And while it wasn't perfect, it was this thing in which we were all, sometimes we were all the other, you know, know kind of felt like that and um it also you know there was so much i think of my childhood that was actually just about like exploration of what it meant what america meant because you know my aunts and uncles weren't from america and there was a lot of joy in that um and then i remember uh when september 11th happened i remember the

exact i remember the exact day like i remember everything um i remember when September 11th happened, I remember the exact day. I remember everything. I remember when I found out. I remember when I went home and they hadn't told us exactly what happened. And then I remember watching the footage and just being like, oh, everything is about to change. And what I felt strongly was this real sense of othering after that. I felt like when I was walking around, there was just a way that people kind of were always IDing me as dangerous. And that was one of the, it was a real transition that I noticed when that happened.

And then as you got much older, there was the travel ban imposed by President Trump in 2017, which you've also written about. How did that influence your experience of being a young Muslim woman? You know, the travel ban was something that was so disheartening and disappointing. But having lived at that point with so much Islamophobia, it wasn't actually like super surprising to me. And it was, it was a thing in which I remember, because I was so young when September 11th happened, I remembered how much that shook me. And, and being older, I was able to be like, this is wrong, it was easier for me to be like, this is a this is a thing that's wrong. Whereas when I was younger, I think I internalized

that more because I was like, you know, you don't really know what's happening and you believe the news and you believe what people tell you. So I didn't have the discernment to fully say, like, this is not who I am. Whereas when I was older, I was just way able to be like, well, this is a part of a legacy of history that America has done. You know, and particularly thinking about Trump as president, the kind of legacy of what he's creating, a lot of these policies that are pretty vile, that, you know, and it falls into a kind of historical pattern

that I was able to kind of understand a little bit better. Now, you wrote Brown Girls, which is very different from the poetry, which is all rather serious uh and brown girls is often really quite funny about you know how difficult it is to be young brown women yes uh with aunties who don't want you to behave the way you want to behave why was it important to put that funny relationship on screen it was um you know it was just really important for me to think about all of the nuances of what it means to be brown, right? So there's a lot of times in my poetry, there's a kind of pain or hauntingness that I think comes out because of the form for me. It's just, it's a lot more internal

sometimes. So it's reflective in that way. Whereas the form of screenwriting, I wanted to show something that was a little bit lighter. And I wanted to show the love that really exists in these friendships and the love that kind of when they're making fun of each other, when they're when one of them is like, this thing is racist. And the other one's like, no no it's not you you are wrong like you know um so I wanted a lot more play and really what I was thinking about was thinking wanting to see my friends laugh I wanted to I wanted to create something where my friends could sit in a room and just enjoy and watch themselves on screen and have have a good time um so that's really the impetus of where Brown Girls came from. And how likely is it as it rumored, to get onto Netflix or Amazon Prime, a mainstream platform? You know, inshallah, we'll see. I'm hoping we have a really great, you know, script and TV outline for the series. But TV is so interesting. So we'll see. Fingers crossed. Now, both your parents died when you were very, very young. And there is a beautiful poem in this book about them. Will you please read Lullaby? Yes. This poem is for my sister, Khadija. When the sadness comes,

my sister tells me a story. A man buried in Pakistan. A woman buried in New York City. When we sleep, they wake. Opposite sides of the world. The planet opens a tunnel where they meet. Dirt sky and warm stars. The lovers dance. All night. Their way back. My father's fingertips pressing against my mother's crooked smile. Her henna-dyed hair light the underworld. The mole on his lips' left side winks the dark. Fatima Asghar, thank you very much indeed for being with us. Thank you. That poem made me cry when I read it, and you've almost got me again. Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed for being with us. Thank you. That poem made me cry when I read it and you've almost got me again.

Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Fatima Asghar and Lullaby. Now, thank you for all your comments on today's programme. Earlier, we explored the study into the gender gap in nursing and Gillian emailed to say, I've been a midwife for 10 years. I worked two set nights until a computer rostering system was introduced,

and I was then given a mixture of nights which was not feasible for childcare. I now earn half as much. The NHS is not a family-friendly organisation, and this in turn affects the ability of women to reach the top. Alex wrote to say, I almost halved my salary to work in better conditions. I changed from working 12-hour shifts in a hospital ICU to work in a GP's practice. I'm poorer, but so much happier,

and I feel more valued too. And then someone else on Twitter said recruitment in nursing remains who you know. I have six years of band seven experience in London and can't even get interviews for band five jobs in Newcastle. Jobs are promised to people and it may be that men in particular are good at securing these backroom deal promotions. Now, tomorrow, I'll be talking to Laura Bates, who, of course, created the Everyday Sexism Project in 2012. She's published a novel for young adults called The Burning. It tells the parallel stories of two young women, Anna, who's forced to move to a remote Scottish village to change her identity and start a new life

after horrible things have happened to her on the internet, and Maggie, who lived there 400 years earlier and was accused of being a witch. And this year is the bicentenary of the pianist and composer Clara Schumann. I'll be talking to two women who are dedicated to making her music better known, the curator of the Clara Schumann Festival, Beverly Wong,

and the pianist, Lucy Powerham. Join me two minutes past ten, if you can. Until then, bye-bye. 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.