Woman's Hour - Female wildlife rangers; Chief Inspector of Ofsted; Lady Boss: Jackie Collins story; Transgender athletes

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

The work of female rangers protecting wildlife from poachers. Collet Ngobeni of The Black Mambas and Holly Budge of How Many Elephants discuss.The Chief Inspector of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman on the problem of sexual harassment and abuse in schools, and what needs to be done to bring about change.Jackie Collins was one of the most successful female authors of all time but often just dismissed as the Queen of Sleaze. We hear from Jackie's eldest daughter, Tracy Lerman and from Laura Fairrie, director of the new film Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins story. Laurel Hubbard will be the first transgender athlete to compete at the Olympics. She's part of the New Zealand women's weightlifting team. She qualifies on the basis that her testosterone levels have been kept below a certain level for at least a year. But how does a reduction in testosterone affect other aspects of the body - such as muscle mass and strength? We hear from Joanna Harper, a PhD researcher at Loughborough University.A new £50 note featuring the Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing has just been launched. Debbie Marriott is the first ever female banknote designer at the Bank of England, and explains the work that goes into making the notes. Elizabeth Packard was an ordinary 19th century American housewife and mother of six, whose husband had her declared 'slightly insane' and put in an asylum after daring to voice her opinions. Elizabeth embarked on a ceaseless quest for justice, both inside and outside the asylum. Kate Moore has written 'The Woman They Could Not Silence' about this fascinating but little known woman. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Dianne McGregor

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. Welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. On today's programme, a selection of the finest cuts from the week just gone. We've got the first ever female banknote designer at the Bank of England, no less. And she was one of the most successful female authors of all time. And yet, despite her millions of fans fans she was often dismissed as just the queen of sleaze. Jackie Collins was being told throughout her life that she wasn't a feminist or what she was doing wasn't a positive thing for women and she was sharing her idea about what her brand of

feminism was with with millions of women and empowering them through her stories and her characters. Well a new film Ladyboss hopes to set the record straight about Jackie Collins. Then, with the announcement that Laurel Hubbard is set to make history as the first transgender athlete to compete at the Olympics next month, we hear about what the research tells us about how hormone therapy changes the strength of trans women. And we hear from the female ranger from the Black Mambas in South Africa

who's fighting to protect the animals from poachers. If you want to get in touch, you can do so via our website or on social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. But let's kick off the hour with Amanda Spielman. She's the chief inspector of Ofsted, England's school's watchdog. The latest report from her team found that sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are such a routine part of school children's daily lives, they don't see any point in challenging or reporting it. Emma started by asking her about St Paul's Girls' School in London, who it's reported will be doing away with the term head girl as it's too binary and instead will now be using the term head of school. What does the chief inspector of England schools watchdog think about this? I think it's so sad

if girls can't be proud of being girls. There's so much debate isn't there and it always seems to focus on girls and whether girls or women can be characterised that way. So I just hope that St Paul's Girls' School and every other girls' school can carry on. Of course, there'll always be a few exploring their sexuality, exploring gender, but let's hope that girls can carry on being proud of being girls. So no need for head of school should be allowed to be head girl?

Any individual school, it's for them to make their choice. Just to say, St Paul's Girls' School, a spokesperson said, it's reported that they said, it was a suggestion of our senior students that we change the name from Head Girl to Head of School as more modern, age-appropriate and inclusive. Quote, in doing so, we're returning to our roots. From our very foundation in 1904 and for decades afterwards, a senior student was called Head of School. So in making the change, we're confirming, not denying our ethos and traditions. What do you make of that as an answer for it? Well, that's very much down to the individual school and considerations. I'd just like to make sure that the power and strength

of girls and being a woman, growing into being a woman, doesn't get lost in our society. It's so important. Let's come to this report that you were asked to compile by the government. Rapidly so, after thousands of harrowing testimonies detailing sexual abuse and misconduct in schools were posted on the Everyone's Invited website earlier this year. Were you surprised by your findings? I think we were surprised by the extent to which this had become a substantial problem for such an enormous proportion of girls, especially. And I think we were also surprised by the imbalance between the scale of the problem

in any given school or college and school awareness of it. Part of this is because this bleeds across between children's lives in school and out of school. Pre-smartphone technology, perhaps there was a much clearer distinction between in school and out of school. Now the things bleed into each other. So although many of the sort of specific distressing incidents we heard about had happened outside school, the consequences of those and sometimes sharing of images or video from them bled across into people's school lives and were making them so very uncomfortable even at school because they were there with other people who'd been part of the same incident. I mean, just to remind people who are listening who will have read the report,

perhaps not recalled necessarily all the details, but nine out of 10 girls that your inspector spoke to said that sexist name calling was part of life and that they were being sent unwanted explicit pictures or videos, that that happened a lot or sometimes they don't see any point in reporting it or challenging it and I suppose that's what makes your job right now very difficult in to how to advise schools with what to do about it because the central recommendation as I understand from your review is schools must assume now abuse and harassment is happening to their pupils. Yes and it's a strong and unpalatable message but we visited 32 schools and colleges,

and there wasn't a single one that wasn't significantly affected by these problems. So there were some schools which thought that they didn't have a problem. And yet, our conversations with their pupils said, yes, they do. Similarly, we talked to a number of local authority, local area safeguarding we talked to a number of local authority, local area safeguarding partnerships, and a couple of those thought it wasn't a problem in their area. What's come across very strongly for us is that this really is universal. So every school, every college does need to operate on the premise

that from a startlingly young age, a significant proportion of young people will be affected. So the work that they can do to build a healthy culture, to do really good relationship and sex education, which came across from young people as often being an area of weakness, where the right issues weren't really being talked about, or the people who were teaching those lessons weren't really confident and competent to do so. So a very firm handle to make sure that this is addressed as strongly as possible from a relatively young age. What age do you think discussions of pornography should be introduced? We certainly heard that young people, by the age of 13 or so, a very large proportion of young people had seen at least some pornographic material.

Basically, once children have smartphones, it's very, very hard to stop them seeing pornographic material and natural curiosity. When you start to hear people talking about things. Children just are very curious. And we did hear, even we heard about younger children in the older age groups in primary school using highly sexualised language, clearly showing familiarity with things that it was quite concerning that children at that age should be aware of and bringing into their games and conversation.

So what age do you think it should be formally discussed by teachers? It's an important question, not least because a question that's come in here for you, one of our listeners has got in touch to say, one of the main issues seems to be girls feeling pressured into sharing and receiving explicit photos, and this is normalised. How can this be challenged? This is a very big problem being able to take nude photographs of your of

of your of yourself um or being put under pressure to do so that's that's that's really a new thing and it's it so many girls do do say that this this has happened to to them them or to their friends and it's very hard for them to resist And this is one of the things they really want sex education in school to do, both to both to help them understand, to strengthen their their ability to risk. But also, they rightly say it shouldn't be their job to educate boys. So to get stronger messages into sex education for boys about what age they're sexed. What age do you think sexting, porn and this whole terrain, which is the new element of this, what age, Amanda Spielman, should that be coming in at? We seem to be in an era where most children have smartphones from the beginning or relatively early in secondary school,

so you probably do need to do it there. From 11. I don't want to be precise and say that it that it has to be from year seven and it's it's it's a matter from from government um puberty adolescence um kick in um around that 11 12 30 13 age so that that probably is the age you really need to start talking about these stuff it's always that you want to get in ahead of pornography don't you to to start talking about healthy relationships and the boundaries of acceptable behaviour before young people start experimenting for themselves rather

than after. Is it safe to say that you're now going to include, having done this report, this element of safeguarding and changing culture as part of what you mark schools on? We have always included all the different aspects of bullying, behaviour problems and safeguarding in our inspections. But what we started doing from 2017 onwards was strengthening the inspector's training, introducing specific requirements to ask schools about reports of sexual harassment and violence.

And what we're doing in the light of this is to strengthen the expectation on inspectors to really push on this one because one of the things that came out of introducing a requirement to ask schools for this ahead of inspection was we discovered only I think it was six percent of schools gave us anything in response to that request and nearly half the others gave us a nil return, essentially saying we haven't had any reports. So comparing this with what we hear from young people, it says that this point about so much not getting reported is desperately important here. And we went into this in some depth. And partly young people are concerned that they won't be believed or simply

don't think anything would be done, which is very worrying. There's also a strand about worrying that they'll be blamed because they have done something that they know an adult has told them not to do, like sharing a nude image, even though they may have been put under considerable pressure to do so. Or they can fear that once they talk to an adult, the process will be out of their control. Young people don't like processes like this going out of control when it's talking about something that's incredibly difficult and personal. So helping them understand better exactly what will and won't happen when they report does matter. Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of Ofsted, talking to Emma there. Now, Kate Moore, bestselling author of The Radium Girls, has written a new book, The Woman They Could Not Silence, about the little-known Elizabeth Packard, an ordinary 19th-century American housewife and mother of six.

Elizabeth, inspired by the first Women's Rights Convention in 1848, began to dream of greater freedoms and voice opinions on politics and religion. Increasingly threatened by her growing independence, her husband had her declared slightly insane and committed her to an asylum. Incarcerated for daring to have a voice, Elizabeth embarked on a ceaseless quest for justice, both inside and outside the asylum. A fascinating story which begins in 1860 at the cusp of the American Civil War.

Starts with Elizabeth, this 43-year-old housewife and mother of six, lying in bed in her marital home. And it starts with this simple question, what would happen if your husband could commit you to an insane asylum just because you disagreed with him? And that's what happens to Elizabeth. She gets committed because as, you know, crazy, for want of a better word, as it seems to us today, actually, the received scientific wisdom of the age was that women like Elizabeth, who stood up for themselves, who had, you know, their own opinions, who had their own voices, they were actually textbook examples of female insanity. And so you would find those women in the asylum, and Elizabeth does, when she's locked up, all the women around her are also sane, and they've been locked away, essentially, for being

unsatisfactory wives. But she's been a textbook wife for a long time, hasn't she? Explain how long she'd been married to him and got six children together. I mean, she's the dream wife mother in many ways. She is. And actually, she became a writer, which is partly what The Woman They Could Not Silence is about. It's about how this housewife finds this unsilenceable voice. And Elizabeth, yeah, she protests in know, protests in her writings that essentially she did everything right. She was married for 21 years. She had six children. Her youngest at the time she sent to the asylum is just 18 months old. And yet her husband rips her from her family, despite her being this exemplary wife, because she is finding her voice you know this is what changes she has been

the perfect wife and mother until she is no longer a silent listener until she challenges her husband politically religiously and does so publicly and for him that is the final straw you know at that point she needs to be sent away and she needs to learn her lesson and that was something in my research for the book that I found fascinating. The treatment in the asylums was what Elizabeth called a subduing treatment. She said she'd been sent there to be broken in. I can just, just going to say I can hear the audience booing and hissing towards the husband. So what was it like for her in the asylum, at first, I think to many people's surprise, including Elizabeth, the asylum was nothing like

we would imagine a 19th century asylum to be. The ward that she'd sent to is a place where the women dine at oilcloth-covered tables. They dine with glass in China. There are paintings on the walls. And it's a very civilised environment. And that's because these women have not transgressed too much. The doctors who are treating them, including

Dr. Andrew McFarland, they are there to essentially teach the women how to behave. McFarland writes that he is his patient's superior. And he uses the metaphor of him being Prospero and the women are his caliban there to be controlled he wants to have control over the clothes that they wear the food that they eat the very thoughts that they think and so Elizabeth at first is you know subjected this treatment and as I say the way she responds is amazing because she does become the woman they could not silence she protests against this cruel treatment that she sees the way women's personalities are pathologized you know it's a real medicalization of female behavior and Elizabeth protests and that leads her into what we you know would see as the traditional idea of an insane

asylum where there is you know it's almost like a dungeon and she is essentially locked up and the key is thrown away because she dares to protest and have a voice to fight for her sisters, not only for herself. I mean, it is an incredible story. So she's not insane. The doctors know she's not insane, but because she won't go along with it, she's punished and she ends up on the eighth ward. Explain what it's like when she really is put into a proper psychiatric so the eighth ward is totally different from the experience i've just described you know as elizabeth crosses the threshold the floor is stone cold um there are none of those sort of aesthetic trappings that she sees before instead the patients are filthy. They're not cared for

properly. And they themselves, you know, forbidden a voice are, you know, that she's categorized with an inmate called the filthy insane, who literally use their own experiment to try and make their voices be heard. You know, that's how they make their mark on the world. She's committed to a place where there are dormitories, it's iron bedsteads, husk mattresses, freezing cold. And Elizabeth is sent there, even though she herself is not mentally disturbed because the doctors want to silence her voice. And that's what it's all about.

And remarkably, Elizabeth writes, the worst that my enemies can do they have done and I fear them no more and that fearlessness is what gets her through it's that and it's wanting to help others so even though she's attacked physically by the other inmates she chooses to see the humanity in them which is an exceptional position in the mid-th century. But she believes that, you know, people, even if they're afflicted with mental illness, deserve human rights. And this actually only fires her up to greater desire to speak out and to change the world for the better. My goodness me, what a what a woman. So how long was she in the asylum for? How did she manage to get out?

Well, she was in the asylum for three years, which if you think of how awful that is, because she doesn't know it's going to be three years. As far as she knows, she's there for life. How she gets out is in some ways quite amusing to think of because the doctor who releases her from the asylum says he only let her go because she'd become a source of unendurable annoyance. She had caused too much trouble.

Brilliant. Did she go back to her husband? She initially goes back to her husband, but she says she returns as a mother, not a wife. She simply wants to be there to care for her children. And without getting too much away, she miraculously manages to secure a sanity trial for herself. So the book then takes a twist into courtroom drama. And there's this landmark legal case, which was exceptional because women at the time could actually be sent to asylums without the evidence of insanity required in other cases. They were not supposed to have a court case. There was not supposed to be a trial that Elizabeth manages to secure one. And this is part of her exceptional story.

I mean, we don't want to obviously give too much away and people will go and get the book because your writing is just exquisite, Kate, and you really take us into this story. It's amazing. But she does then hit a terrible low point. Things get worse before they get better for Elizabeth, don't they? They do get worse before they get better. And ultimately, she is left at the age of 47, penniless, homeless, childless. And Elizabeth's fortitude and resilience when she faces that situation is extraordinary. Because what she does is miraculously becomes a best selling writer. This is a woman who has no capital. She goes to publishers, they refuse to publish the manuscript because she's been in the asylum, you know, they won't touch her because of the stigma of mental insanity, even though she's, you know, a sane woman. But Elizabeth, who is incredibly forward thinking, essentially crowd funds her book. You know, she goes door to door, she tells her story, and she says to people, to thousands of people, will you give me 50 cents so I can print my book? And so she convinces

people, and she becomes this best-selling writer off the back of it. And she uses what she calls a platform of greenback independence to then become a political campaigner. And she fights to the end of her days to improve the rights of women and the mentally ill. She is successful. And she writes, I don't want another sister in America to suffer as much as I have. But she didn't go back to her husband.

No, not ultimately. No, not in the end. No, she was independent to the end of her days, which given this is the mid-19th century we're talking about, is exceptional in itself. I mean, Kate, I love her so much. I'm thinking of getting an Elizabeth Packard tattoo. I mean, the story is that inspiring.

We've had a message in from someone saying, there are so many echoes in what's happened to Brittany, in what happened to Elizabeth Packard, talking about women being locked up by their husbands and families through history the woman they could not be silenced so someone's absolutely resonating the story is something we find familiar 160 years later completely and as you say the parallels with britney um you know completely losing her legal identity that's what happened to married women at the time

uh you know britney talks about um you know, when she is assertive, she refuses to do a dance move. They come down even heavily on her in terms of her psychiatric care. And what really struck me as well was the way Britney talked about the sort of pressure she felt to put out this public vision of being happy. You know, that's what Elizabeth and the other women in the asylum were expected to do too, to paste on a smile, to become these sort of cut out dolls who don't think or feel or become angry. And so the resonances are completely there. It's actually really quite chilling to think that the situation from 1860 right the way through to 2021, you know, there are still so many parallels to what's going on today. 160 years later, and we are still fighting the good fight.

A fascinating story of Elizabeth Packard there, told by Kate Moore. Now, it was the first ever World Female Ranger Day on Wednesday, which celebrated the work of female rangers around the world who do an important but ultimately dangerous job protecting wildlife from poachers. The emphasis this year is on the work of female rangers in Africa, where there are approximately 3,500 female rangers in teams in 18 countries all over the continent working to protect endangered wildlife. One of those women is Colette Ngobeni of the all-female team The Black Mambas in South Africa. Holly Budge is the founder of the charity How Many Elephants and of World Ranger Day.

Colette told Emma about the job of being a ranger. We are in Greater Kruger National Park, where we stay at Balule Oliphant West, and then we patrol 9,000 hectares. It's a home of, for example, elephants and rhinos, which we protect. And how do you protect them, you and your fellow female rangers? What do you have on you and how do you make sure that what you're trying to protect stays safe? We have our smartphone, which we have app inside it. And then we go out with our handcuffs and pepper spray so it's just sending the message

out there to the people that you are not allowed to come near our reserve because we are there and then another thing the poachers they don't want to be seen because they're there to do the quick jobs and then they can go out so when see us, they won't come inside the reserve because they've already seen us inside the reserve. So handcuffs and a pepper spray and your smartphone. This is what stands between you and a potential poacher and an elephant's life, for instance. Yes, and we even have our armed guard response.

If something happens, then we manage to call the armed guard response to come and help us. Okay. And why is it an all-female team, the black members? Why is it all the women together? I would say because of love and natural love that we have inside our hearts. And then again, we are mothers, So we are too much secretive than men because a lot of reserves, the people who give information to the poachers is the people working inside the reserves.

And that is men. So as women, we don't have that mind of giving out the information to the poachers. We always want to keep the information outside us. And then what we do is to educate other people of conservation because a lot of people, they don't understand anything about conservation. Let's bring in Holly at this point. Holly, it's fascinating to get this insight from Colette.

And is that part of the motivation to actually recognise the work of female rangers? Absolutely, Emma. that part of the the motivation to to actually recognize the work of female rangers absolutely emma so i mean i was so inspired when i first heard about the work of the black mambas in 2014 when i was studying for a master's in sustainable design and i was also so horrified by the poaching statistics for the african elephants that of 96 elephants being poached a day, 35,000 a year, that I decided to use my background in design to come up with a fresh awareness-raising campaign to really raise awareness of the sheer scale of the African elephant crisis, but also to highlight the work of female rangers. And that's been the inspiration very much behind World Female Ranger Day.

Because it is that range of skills, and I'll go back to Colette shortly, but the education side of it, but also the patrolling. Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, there's lots of different models of female ranger teams out there. You've got the Akashing rangers in zimbabwe who are fully armed with ak-47s they come face to face with the poachers as colette's mentioned these guys have pepper spray and handcuffs and they're more like the eyes and ears on the ground the idea is that they don't come face to face with the poachers an armed response team will come in, you know, if needed. So both, you know, making tremendous impact, but consciously very, very different models. What are you hoping, though, with this first day, this first Female Ranger Day to achieve?

Yeah, so this is all about raising awareness. It's the first time that female rangers around the world have been brought together on a platform to share their stories and best practice. It's also about raising vital funds for these women. So they've set up their own pages on our worldfemaleraingerday.org and the money raised on each of their pages will go directly to that female ranger team. But you, with the pandemic especially and the current restrictions on travel worldwide, it's having a devastating knock-on effect to conservation organisations and communities. So we're really trying to do our bit to highlight the work they're doing and get much-needed funds to them. Colette, how has the last 15 months been in terms of your work and your

community? Our work in general, it was too much difficult because in the reserve, some of the workers were suspended because of this pandemic and we didn't have game drives inside the reserve. So we were more out to the reserve. Like we needed more ice to patrol inside the reserve because the pandemic affected us a lot. Because we didn't have people coming outside from the country to come here. So that was very bad. What are you off to do now? I mean, I'm sitting here in a studio in the BBC. Where are you going next?

Our next patrol will start at six o'clock at night for night patrol because we have morning patrol, we have afternoon patrol and then we have night patrol. So you're off onto that one and trying to protect. What sort of animals will you be trying to protect this evening? Paint us a picture. Okay, I will say all the animals, but because poachers, they're more focused on rhinos and elephants. So that's what we are doing. We protect the whole animals, but more specific rhinos and elephants. Colette Ngobeni and Holly Budge. Still to come on the programme, the new film Ladyboss about the life of Jackie Collins. And remember, you can enjoy

Woman's Hour any time of the day. If you can't join us live at 10am during the week, of course, just subscribe to the daily podcast for free via the Woman's Hour website. The free bit's important. If like me, you love a bargain. Now, this week, it was announced that Laurel Hubbard will become the first transgender athlete to compete at an Olympics after being selected for the New Zealand women's weightlifting team next month in Tokyo. She held national junior records in male weightlifting,

but left the sport in her mid-20s before transitioning in 2013. It's controversial and she'll make history. The International Olympic Committee made the decision that Laurel could lift for the women's side on the basis that her testosterone levels have been kept below a certain level for at least a year. But critics say that lowering testosterone does not fully remove the advantages gained through a male puberty, such as muscle mass and strength. Studies into this are few and far between, but research from Loughborough University, published in March this year,

has tried to bring together what we know so far. Joanna Harper is a PhD researcher at Loughborough University who wrote the peer-reviewed study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine with five others, which reviews the evidence on how hormone therapy changes the bodies and strength of trans women and what the implications might be for sport. Emma started by asking, why is testosterone as a measure potentially not enough? Well, testosterone is the single most important difference between male and female athletes, but it's certainly not the only difference. And in particular, with transgender women, after they've gone through male puberty, once they lower their testosterone down to typical

female values, not everything that they experienced during their male puberty will be completely undone. So like what? Tell us what other aspects you wanted to look at and did look at. The paper examines strength and blood factors. And we found two very different conclusions, depending on which of those parameters you're looking at. In terms of hemoglobin, which is a protein in the blood that's very important to help oxygen get to muscles and hence matters extremely for endurance events, the transgender women in the study went from typical male levels of hemoglobin to typical female levels of haemoglobin within four months. On the other hand, strength and related strength matters are also important and important for different sports.

The strength change was slower and less complete. The trans women did not go from typical male values of strength to typical female values of strength. So you're saying that these are the other things that should be taken into consideration, because I know also, not that you can say if it did come into your research or not, but your own personal experience of this has had some relationship. As a trans athlete myself, as a distance runner, nine months of hormone therapy was enough to reduce my running speed by 12%, which is the difference between serious male distance runners and serious female distance runners.

Eventually, I gathered data from other distance runners too and published a paper in 2015. But that paper only looked at distance running and no other sport and is not applicable to other sports. Is your experience relevant in any way? Because, of course, you wrote this with other people who are not trans. The Loughborough study, yeah, the other four authors are not trans, but they're scientists. It shouldn't matter whether you're trans or non-trans. You're looking at the science. So my experience informed the previous paper, but the work at Loughborough with the other scientists informed the current paper. Just important to distinguish which papers we're talking about there and the experience

bringing to it. But essentially, your argument is testosterone is not enough just to look at that on its own because there are other issues. But if looking at that paper in Loughborough, to quote it, you say, or the paper says, but notwithstanding these decreases, so you've talked about the decreases and all those parameters measured, strength, lean body mass, muscle area, the reduction in haemoglobin, which just to remind people, as you started to say, has an effect on how much oxygen you can transport to muscles to boost endurance. You say values for strength, lean body mass and muscle area in trans women remain above those of cisgender women, even after 36 months of hormone therapy. That's correct. Now, all of the studies that we reviewed are studies on non-athletes and in

cisgender or typical athlete studies, you'd never rely on data from non-athletes. And ideally, you wouldn't with trans athletes either. It's just that there's such a paucity of data on trans athletes that it was relevant to look at non-athletes. So when the International Olympic Committee made this decision, and I'll come back to your study in just a moment, they're basing it on nothing then. If they've not been able to do the studies yet on trans athletes, because as you say, this

is the very beginning of it. And you're also saying they shouldn't just base it on testosterone, which they seem to be. And I should say, we invited them on and have a statement. What they've done then with this decision with Laurel Hubbard, can it be deemed correct if it's not based on evidence? My earlier paper was published in 2015, so that was certainly there. But again, the Olympics take place every four years and they need to make rules on transgender athletes. So they need to do something. We had a large group of people meet in 2015.

There were approximately 25 of us in the room and we reached a consensus that this was the best way forward. But based on what? If you haven't got any data, you've just said that you didn't do this research. I know this is latter to that, but you haven't even done the most recent research on trans athletes. Again, we relied on research from non-athletes. And it's certainly less than ideal. But again, the games were happening and they needed some regulation for transgender athletes. And so we met, we reviewed the science that existed, and we made a decision. But you yourself have described the data as less than ideal. So if you were going

into that category, if you were coming up against Laurel Hubbard as a weightlifter, and this was your one shot, how is that fair to you? Laurel Hubbard is just one athlete. And I think that people are focusing far too much on that. She's not even going to be the only trans athlete in Tokyo. She was sixth in the most recent world championships. That's a good performance, but she's not going to win in Tokyo. But she might. No, she won't.

Sorry, you can't come on the radio and say, this is a completely different debate. You can't come on the radio and say, you know how somebody's going to perform at the Olympics. There is a Chinese woman there who is so far ahead of Laurel Hubbard

that unless this Chinese woman dies between now and August, that Laurel is not going to win that competition. Because she's not the best at the moment. She's nowhere near the best. But that's not the argument. The argument is about whether she should be taking part. And you can say it's unfair for me to focus on it, but she's going to make history by taking part. She's the first transgender athlete to compete after being selected at the Olympics for the New Zealand women's weightlifting team.

And if I was to just quote last month, the Belgian weightlifter, Anna van Bellingen, who's competing in the same category, said it would be unfair for women and it would be like a bad joke. She said that while she supported the transgender community, the principle of inclusion should not be at the expense of others. You're saying the science is less than ideal on this. And I'm trying to ask, how can that be argued then that it's fair and the decision has been made on the correct information when the information doesn't exist yet?

There is some information that exists. The decisions were made upon the best science that existed. OK, so Laurel Hubbard is one of the 16 women selected for that category. And I don't think that having her in that field is a markedly unfair decision. But just going back to your own paper, if I could quote it to you, taking the strength parameter data collectively and in consideration, again, just say your paper was not of athletes, that doesn't exist, of trans athletes, in consideration of cisgender women demonstrating 31% lower lean body mass, 36% lower hand grip strength, 35% lower knee extension strength than cisgender men,

the small decrease in strength in trans women after hormone treatment suggests that trans women retain a strength advantage over cisgender women. That's in your paper. Correct. But we allow advantages in sport. What we don't allow are overwhelming advantages. Trans women who were in the study were also markedly lower prior to starting hormone therapy in terms of their strength related aspects. And so that needs to be taken into account too. There was another review that suggested that trans women maintained a 17% grip strength advantage, which is less than half of the grip strength advantage. And so that would mean that trans women were closer to cis women

in grip strength after hormone therapy than they were to cis men. And so if they're closer to cis women than cis men, then perhaps that's the right category for them. Additionally, well, let me finish. Sorry. One other study of importance, a study of U.S. Air Force personnel was published last year. They studied fitness tests. The trans women in the fitness tests lost their complete advantage in the number of push-ups per minute that they could do. And push-ups per minute is very important. Upper body strength is very important for that. So this is a strength related task and trans women lost their complete advantage.

And these women are more trained. They're not athletes per se, but they are more highly trained than typical. Everything you're saying, everything you're saying says trans women are getting closer to women, but they still have greater strength, greater capacity. They are stronger than the women that they're going to be now allowed to be competing against in the Olympics. And you don't have any data, not you, but the whole world doesn't have any data yet. The International Olympic Committee doesn't have any data yet on trans athletes. Just because they're closer doesn't mean it's equal, doesn't mean it's fair. It doesn't have to be equal to be fair. All that needs to happen is that the strength differences need to be mitigated to the point where we can have meaningful competition. But you aren't convinced, both as a scientist and as someone who has been through hormone therapy,

you're not convinced that it has been mitigated enough in your own paper. I'm not 100 percent convinced. No, but I think that having Laurel Hubbard and other trans athletes in the games is not markedly unfair. Hang on. Not markedly unfair doesn't mean it's fair. So it doesn't have to be equal. But we're in a situation, I suppose, you know, if I also just quote to you what Sharon Davis, the former British Olympic swimmer, has tweeted, we have men and women's separate competition for a big reason. Biology and sport matters. Separate categories give females equal opportunities, equal opportunities of sporting success. You're saying that the data a isn't there and b that the data we have still doesn't show we're at the point where it's been mitigated enough

i would say in most sports that it is probably true that hormone therapy mitigates the advantages enough now i would admit that of all the sports that I might be concerned with, Olympic weightlifting might be near the top of the list. So have they made a mistake? Have the International Olympic Committee made a mistake if that's near the top of your sports that you're concerned about? Because I think that's what people are trying to understand. Has a mistake been made? I don't believe so. If you would like to comment on anything you hear on the programme to get in touch with us you can go to our website or you can contact us via social media it's at BBC Women's Hour. Now we invited the International Olympic Committee on the show but instead got a statement saying it's committed to inclusion and recognises that all

athletes regardless of their gender, identity or sex characteristics, should engage in safe and fair competition. It said it's informed by new developments, data, research and learnings in the scientific and human rights sectors. But it recognises that there's a perceived tension between fairness and safety and inclusion and non-discrimination, and it's decided to work on a new approach to address this complexity. It said it's completing a series of consultations that will consider not only medical, scientific and legal perspectives,

but also that of human rights. We approached several female athletes, some former weightlifting champions and current members of the GB team for a comment on this, but none were available to take part. Now this week sees the launch of a new £50 note featuring the Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing. It will no longer be paper, which means the bank's entire collection of currently printed banknotes is made of plastic for the first time. But what work goes into making new banknotes? How do they pick who to put on it? And how do they make it easy to manufacture, but extremely hard for counterfeiters to reproduce? Well, Debbie Marriott is going to tell us. She's a banknote designer at the Bank of England,

the first ever female banknote designer at the Bank of England, no less. So what does the job involve? My job is really to make sure that the banknotes are aesthetically pleasing, that they look good. But also, most importantly, that the design optimises all the security features that are required on the banknote to make it more secure and difficult to counterfeit. So things like the foil hologram, the see-through windows, etc. ground the seed through windows etc they all have to be integrated within the design to make sure that the design can function well for its users and it can and it looks good at the same time. So what was your involvement with the new £50 note that's coming out or some people call them the pinkies? So my job was one of a team of women actually who helped to produce the £50 and get it out into the public as it was this week. So we had a woman designer myself. We had a woman technical advisor who was a scientist.

We have the chief cashier, Sarah John, who's a woman who signs the notes. And there was a large team of individuals and specialist individuals to carry from the design right the way through to production and launch the note but but my job is really at the first starts once the character has been selected so once we had the the chosen character valentine ring for the 50 um it was my role to produce the concept design which which for us shows who and what and how the note is going to look like and when it's actually out there in the real world. And once that's been approved by the governor, it's really a job about making sure the detailed design stages and that the artwork can be produced for mass production. Do you have any say in who gets to be on the notes? Are you part

of that process? No, since 2014, there's been a character advisory committee set up, which has individuals from within the bank and external, and they choose a field that the banknote is going to be. So for the £50, it was clearly Turing. And then there's a specialist group on the committee that then works through the nomination, because part of that process for the bank is to invite the public to nominate characters for the £50.

The committee then will work on the short list to decide who would be the best possible people to be on that banknote. And Turing is a great candidate to have on there, you know, what he represents for the LGBTQ plus community, really important figure to have on the new £50 note. But there was a huge upset when people realised we had so few women on banknotes. We've got, well, Florence Nightingale was the first notable woman. In 1975, she appeared. And then we've got Elizabeth Fry and Jane Austen. That's right. So I think out of the 13 notes that had characters on them from the Bank of England, three of them have been women. So it's still an important part of my job is to make sure that the

design carries significant sort of elements of the character's contribution to their field. So in order to make the note more interesting, we try to incorporate little snippets of their life and work to incorporate within the design so that the more people look and become interested in the banknotes, the more they're likely to spot accounts of it. So for Elizabeth Frye, for example, I've got one here where your readers can't see it. If you the old paper five pill fiver yeah right there we have elizabeth fry who was the prison reformer during the victorian time and there's lots of small images around that within the design for example there's a key um that rotates behind uh she was awarded a key to new gate prison and similar in the way to um jane austen on the 10 we have lots of snippets relating

to jane austen on the back just as we do with alan turing on the 10, we have lots of snippets relating to Jane Austen on the back, just as we do with Alan Turing on the 50s down. So if you can look at the Polymer 10 in your wallets now, we have references to the books, to the quill, we have a small vignette of Elizabeth Bennet writing at her desk. And, you know, it's funny you've got the notes out in front of me because when I knew I was going to be talking to you, Debbie, I thought, oh, I'll have a look at some notes and really pay attention because we don't pay attention.

We sort of look at them, but none of us really study them. And guess what? I had no notes in my wallet. Are you concerned that we are moving away and becoming, I mean, the pandemic has certainly sped up this idea of a cashless society. Are you concerned that we won't be using notes? So there has been a reduction in cash use um over the past few years and obviously covid has intensified that but uh but there are still roughly about one in five people in the uk that prefer to use cash for for payments and

transactions and as long as there's the need for cash they need to be designed and we hope to include the most diverse selection of our society on our banknotes going forward. Debbie Merritt. Now, Jackie Collins was often dismissed as the Queen of Sleaze, yet she remains one of the most successful female authors of all time. It all started with her 1968 novel, The World is Full of Married Men, and she went on to sell more than 500 million books worldwide. Several were turned into films and TV specials,

such as Hollywood Wives, The Stud and The Bitch, starring her older sister, Joan. Jackie died of cancer in 2015 at the age of 77, just days after promoting her latest novel. But who was the woman behind the glamorous leopard print facade? A new film, Lady Boss, the Jackie Collins story, seeks to set the record straight. But before we hear from the director and her daughter, let's hear from the woman herself.

Here is Jackie Collins on Woman's Hour in 2008 talking to Jane Garvey about her first novel, The World is Full of Married Men. I think I was one of the first women who would write openly about sex as far as women were concerned. And The World is Full of Married Men very much took the double standard and turned it on its head. Because women were like, you know, having nervous breakdowns and harrards. That's what all the female writers were writing at that time. And it was a book that really women loved

because I had a woman that was married to a man and he would go off for the weekend and have affairs all over the place. And his friends would say, OK, you know, a man can do that. It doesn't mean anything. It's just sex. She should just accept it. So she accepted it for a few years. And then eventually she turned around and did it back to him. And what did he do?

He was outraged. He was outraged. He went to his beautiful girlfriend and he said, I'm going to divorce my wife and marry you. And the beautiful girlfriend looked at him and said, I don't think so. I just like sleeping with married men. People think there's a huge amount of sex in my books. It's because you're vested in the characters that you're kind of interested in what they're going to do in bed. And I think that a lot of men write like gynecologists and I never wanted to do that.

I wanted to write sex that was erotic, sex that would get the reader's imagination fired up. And sex that the women enjoyed. Exactly. And strong women. And equal sex. So I've always been very much a feminist, but in a different kind of a way. Well, Emma spoke to her eldest daughter, Tracy Lerman, and to the director of Lady Boss, the Jackie Collins story, Laura Ferry.

And she started by asking her, why does she describe the film as political? Jackie Collins put her brand of feminism at the heart of what she did. And, you know, she was constantly dismissed and sneered at throughout her life about the books that she was written and which she was never given the respect or recognition that she deserves. So, you know, for all those reasons, I saw the film as a political film. On that point, Tracey, she was regularly having to defend herself quite a lot, wasn't she? Absolutely. I mean, I think she had so much thrown at her.

And she really rooted and grounded herself in her belief that she was entertaining millions of people. I mean, not just women, but certainly back when she started with The World is Full of Married Men, there was a certain proportion of women who may have thought, oh, reading books, I'm not even really up to that. That's a sort of something that I don't do. I'm not a reader. I don't read Jane Austen. And somehow somebody would pick up one of her books and they would be engrossed within two or three pages. They'd get completely swept up in this amazing world that wasn't necessarily their world, but it certainly created a platform for women to believe that there was more out there for them, potentially. And how does she cope with that

behind the scenes? Because she did have great responses when put on the spot. And she had this wonderful kind of armour, didn't she, with her shoulder pads and her leopard print and, you know, big hair before there was big hair, as it's referred to in the film. Did she cope with that behind the scenes? She did. She coped really, really well, actually. But I think part of the armour that you've talked about was developed over a number of years. I mean, she was very young. You know, she was 28, 29 when she wrote The World is Full of Married Men. Very, very beautiful. You know, was on all these chat shows with men who kind of slightly sniggered at her, sort of behind the scenes that she was a one-off and that actually yeah that's great you know you can be an attractive woman that's why you've got the book published you know

we'll never hear from you again and you know I think for her when she finally broke through with Hollywood Wives which was her sort of big breakthrough book in America there was almost something about okay I have to kind of inhabit this Jackie Collins character, which will give me a sheet of, you know, a sort of protection around me. And that and I think that enabled her to really go on and take on the sort of critics. And she laughed a lot. She had a great sense of humor and she didn't take, you know, you've seen that clip with her and Barbara Cartland. She was very, very clear that a lot of people who were jumping on the band work and hadn't probably even got past two or three pages of reading.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's the point, isn't it? You know, your critics, you can't take them seriously if they haven't read your work. And that's a big lesson for everybody, especially in the social media era if they haven't actually bothered to engage. And that clip that Tracey's talking about, Laura, is in the film. It, if they haven't actually bothered to engage. And that clip that Tracy's talking about, Laura, is in the film.

It's Barbara Cartman sitting down next to her and essentially saying, you know, because of work like yours, the world's coming undone, almost, to paraphrase it. You can say more, but there were also, you managed to get a clip of men doing it openly. Clive James, for instance, sneering about her books. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it's kind of extraordinary to think that Jackie Collins was being told throughout her life that she wasn't a feminist or what she was doing wasn't a positive thing for women. I mean, it's extraordinary that she was dismissed in that way and that she was being told that what feminism should be when she was defining it herself and she was sharing her idea about what her brand of feminism was with with millions of women and empowering them through her stories and her characters and hopefully when you watch the film you know one of the big sort of messages from it for all of us is that we don't need to be told what feminism is you know as women we can define it for ourselves as Jackie did and we can live our lives in the way that we want to with freedom at the heart of it and you know Jackie feminism is. You know, as women, we can define it for ourselves, as Jackie did, and we can live

our lives in the way that we want to with freedom at the heart of it. And, you know, Jackie so brilliantly observed what was going on around her as a young woman, and, you know, put those stories in her books, but change the endings to the outcome that she would have wanted for herself and for women, and shared that wonderful fantasy idea of feminism with her readers. I think the other thing that's incredibly powerful and that I certainly didn't know and others will learn, Tracey, is, you know, she had an enormous amount of heartache and hardship very early on when she was having you, didn't she? Which in our social media era, again, a big part of people's lives today is to let it all out and share everything.

Yes. I mean, I absolutely agree. I've often thought that had there been social media, somebody would have, that would have been out there in the public domain that she had got married very young to a man with extreme mental health issues who had committed suicide. She did talk about it, but, you know, it wasn't defining for her. And so, yeah, she was able to keep that very private. Yeah. I mean, she was able to keep that very private. just an extraordinary love story there. Really beautiful. I, you know, really made me smile watching the film. And, and actually he was one of those men, rarer at the time, who not only loved her success and encouraged it, but he, he got her to actually finish the first manuscript, didn't he? Absolutely. He thought she was amazing and he was very comfortable in his own skin and

he championed her all the way. And she auditioned how well he could cope with you and how well he could fit into her life. Yes, but so the story goes. I don't remember, but we went away on holiday and she took, she had one very young suitor who she had to see which man was going to be most suitable to kind of settle down with. So she took two holidays, one with the unsuitable suitor and one with Oscar, who she married. Very pragmatic, very pragmatic.

I've also got to ask you, Tracey, about a lot of people saying they get, they and they got their sex education from your mum. Were you aware of that? Was that a thing at school? Not so much. I mean, yes, certainly at, I was probably 18, 19. Yeah, it was funny. It was, she was so divorced from the two elements of herself. So on one hand, she was this kind of very down to earth mom. She really was.

I mean, there was sort of no airs or graces. On the other side, she was Jackie Collins and she would put on the hair and the makeup and the clothes. And so, yeah, it was an amazing kind of juxtaposition that we all, me and my sisters, grew up with. But there was certainly an element of being 18, 19. You're like, oh, especially with young guys telling you they've grown up, you know, reading your mum's books under the covers. That sort of cliched thing. But, you know, the older you got, the more it was like, yeah, great.

Did you read your mum's books? I did, yes. I've read all her her books was that mandated or was that by choice that was by choice yeah no I was I'm always an avaricious reader and I read everything and I love that sort of you know comparison to thinking about feminist novels whether it's Jackie Collins or you know um Zadie Smith or Margaret Atwood, you know, they all talked about, they all authors who drew on what they knew and she really drew on what she knew and she knew Hollywood really well. So that didn't make it lesser than

just because it was seen frivolous and, you know, to people who haven't experienced what she was able to witness. And what a powerhouse she was. And if I was Jackie, I would own that title of the Queen of Sleaze. Have a lovely weekend. I'm going to spend mine reading Jackie Collins novels.

Hi, I'm Matthew Side, and I'd like to invite you to see the world differently with my podcast, Sideways. Those societies and social networks begin to act as a brain, a collective brain unto itself. Sideways is all about the ideas that shape our lives. And in this series, I'll get to grips with the myth of mind control. This is your subliminal programming tape on smoking control.

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