Woman's Hour - Fleabag, Food allergies and Feminism in the Archers

Episode Date: April 13, 2019

As the second series of the comedy Fleabag comes to an end we talk about the appeal of female comedic characters. The author Erin Kelly, the TV Development Executive Danielle Dash and the Editor in Chief of Empire Magazine Terri White discuss.Katy Bourne the Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex tells us how she was stalked for five years and how this experience motivated to get her own police service inspected. The results found that Sussex police still has problems around investigating stalking cases and supporting victims.How feminist is the Archers? Academics Nicola Headlam and Cara Courage authors of, Gender, Sex and Gossip in Ambridge: Women in the Archers, discuss. Food allergies affect 3-6% of children in the developed wold. What do parents need to know about the diagnosis and management of food allergies. We hear from Holly Shaw a nurse advisor from the charity Allergy UK and from Stephanie Hulme whose son experienced an unexpected and severe allergic reaction when he was three.Heavy bleeding or flooding can be one of the symptoms of the menopause, what can be done to help women affected? Paula Briggs a consultant in Sexual and Reproductive Health for Southport and Ormskirk Hospital, offers some advice.Sabrina Cohen-Hatton was just 18 when she joined the fire service. She’s now a Deputy Assistant Commissioner and one of the most senior female firefighters in the UK. She tells us about her work and her book In the Heat of the Moment.The writer of the film Wild Rose, Nicole Taylor tells us why she wanted to write about a singer from Glasgow making it as a country singer in Nashville.Presented by Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor :Eleanor Garland

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 and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. In today's programme, the Archers. Gender, sex and gossip in Ambridge. Natasha Ednan-Laparouse died as a result of eating a baguette containing sesame seeds. What do parents need to know about protecting their children from food allergies? Sabrina Cohen-Hatton is one of the UK's most senior firefighters and hopes women and girls won't be put off by fireman Sam and think it's only a job

for a man. There are actually more chief fire officers called Chris than there are women chiefs. And the qualities that you need to be a good firefighter aren't determined by gender. It's not about brawn. It's about being calm under pressure. It's about seeing the bigger picture. The debilitating flood that can accompany the perimenopause. Why does it happen and what treatment might be available? Nicole Taylor is the writer of the film Wild Rose and it was a love of country music that inspired her. I discovered it by having a lot of insomnia as a teenager

and watching BBC Two in the middle of the night when they showed the CMA Awards, the Country Music Awards, and Mary Chapin Carpenter was singing He Thinks He'll Keep Her. It just blew me away. I couldn't believe that a song could cover that kind of material you know, a woman in her marriage that had gone stagnant and her hopes and dreams and her frustrations and starting over in like three and a half minutes

And at the end of a week that saw two great TV series come to an end what is it about the Derry Girls and Fleabag, flawed and funny, that has such appeal? Now, you may have seen some disturbing stories in this week's papers about stalking.

There was the murder of Shana Grice, who was killed by her former boyfriend, even though she had reported him to the police in Sussex for stalking her five times in six months. The Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner, Katie Bourne, had commissioned a report, published on Wednesday, which concluded that stalking investigations were not as thorough as they could be and victims of harassment were not properly protected. Well Katie Bourne has been the commissioner there for seven years but for five of those years she too was a victim of stalking. What was her experience?

It began just before I got elected to this position which was at the end of 2012 so towards the late summer of 2012 and it was started by a man who, first of all, decided he was going to stand as one of the potential candidates for the role of police and crime commissioner. He never actually went through with it and became an official candidate, but it enabled him to get access to all the candidates at various hustings in the run up. So that's where I first met him. He then, once I got elected, became fixated on being a sort of keyboard warrior, if you like, holding me to justice, holding me to account, which initially is fine because, you know, I'm a public figure. You put yourself out there, you expect the public to take an interest. And sometimes some of the attention you get is not always very positive. But it became quite obsessive and he became really fixated and it just wouldn't go away. And at what point, Katie, did you start to be frightened that he might do you harm?

Well, it all started online as much of stalking these days does. There's been a massive rise in sort of malicious communications. And then it transferred into the physical world. So, you know, online, he would call me a whore, a prostitute. He'd accused me of murder, being a paedophile, an abuser of the elderly, a Nazi sympathiser, everything. And then he started to accuse me of having an affair with a senior member of my team, which was very hurtful, very upsetting. And then one day I found out that he'd come to a dinner that I'd been speaking at in a pub room and he'd, unbeknown to me, filmed me at this event and then posted it online the next morning

whilst he walked around the town shouting at the camera as well. That was slightly alarming because I left the event late that night. I had to walk across a dark car park to get to my car. I'm unaccompanied. And I had no idea that he was even in the room, let alone filming. And then one of his group, there was a small group of them that started this harassment initially. And one of his team turned up when I was doing a charity abseil a few months later. And I knew he was there because he made himself known and I avoided him. But what I didn't know was that he'd not only been filming me, but when he posted the film on the well-known YouTube channel the next morning, he'd also filmed my harness that I had been wearing. He'd had access

to the harness and somebody had written underneath it, you should have slit her rope. Now at that point, I thought this is too much. We need to do something. I have to say, Surrey Police were fantastic. They did a really good job. Where I felt let down was that they pulled together a case to prosecute through the criminal courts. But the Crown Prosecution Service, when we eventually got them to review the case, they said there was insufficient evidence, despite five years worth of evidence. So what has been the result of your action? So we also went down the civil route. And of course, if you're a member of the public,

you have to pay for that out of your own purse. Fortunately, being a public servant, I was able to use my office to do that. We went down the civil route and the judge was fantastic and I got an injunction against him. And so he was allowed nowhere near me. And of course, he then breached it several times on numerous occasions.

So we went back to court and the judge ruled and gave him a four-month custodial sentence, which was suspended for two years. So that was towards the end of last year. So if he breaches it within the next two years, he will go straight to prison. What persuaded you to have your own force in Sussex investigated on these matters? Well, it's not just because I've been a victim myself. And actually, it's given me an incredible insight into the mindset as a victim of this type of crime. You know, you live in a permanent state of heightened anxiety and it is like suffering PTSD in a way.

But it also made me think, actually, I don't want to take at face value. My job is to hold to account, to scrutinise the force, to challenge them. And whilst the chief constable and senior officers take this really seriously, and they are determined to change, I just wanted to make sure that they were actually improving on their processes. So I commissioned Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary to come in and do an independent inspection. It's the first time that any police and crime commissioner in the country has done this, and it's part of the powers we have.

But I just wanted to send a very strong message to not just my force, but also to all the victims of stalking out there, that we will take this seriously. Your report did conclude that stalking investigations were not as thorough as they should be and victims were not properly protected. And, of course, we then have the death of Shana Grice. Sussex Police say they are committed to improving how they deal with stalking. How confident are you that they will improve? Well, I mean, Shana Grice's murder, just tragic, 19 years of age and cut short such a young life

and not taken seriously by the police. And we've had other failings. You know, last year we had the family of Miss Michelle Savage and her mother, Heather Whitbread, who was shot in St. Leonard's by Michelle's former husband. and despite her calls to the police again this was missed you know I know the police aren't perfect and certainly Sussex police are acutely aware of the consequences if their response to stalking is not the correct one which is why the Chief Constable and his senior team are committed to changing they're on a journey of improvement but what the report did, which I think is more worrying, is that whilst Sussex are on a journey of improvement,

many forces nationally are not even on that path yet. They are failing to understand stalking. They're not recording it properly. And I think the fact is that there's no legal definition for stalking. So it's quite hard for frontline officers to understand. The government says it's given more than £5 million for tackling stalking. So it's quite hard for frontline officers to understand. The government says it's given more than five million pounds for tackling stalking and also says they're backing the Stalking Protection Act. How will that help Sussex and the other forces that you mentioned? Well, the law is strong. There are custodial sentences attached to stalking. So I think the law and the act are really positive.

What my concern is that forces nationally are not risk assessing victims properly. They're using a risk assessment form that's really good for victims of domestic abuse, but it focuses heavily on aspects of physical violence and explicit threats of harm. And of course, we know with stalking, some of the more common but equally risky behaviours can be covert, can be more persistent. And of course, if you're not able to assess those, then you don't have an accurate reflection of the risk that that victim is potentially in

and how quickly that risk can escalate. So you don't put the right care package around the victim and if it's not recorded correctly from day one that will affect the rest of the case going forwards. I was talking to Katie Bourne and we had a lot of emails in response to this but one of them particularly who didn't want to be named said I have been stalked for the past three and a half years by my ex-partner. We were only together for a year, but he became fixated and obsessed when we broke up. I've moved house twice and he's found me each time. Over the time since we broke up, I was subjected to up to 35 nuisance calls a day.

He followed me everywhere. He would turn up places where he couldn't possibly have known my location without having used some kind of tracking device. It has ruined my confidence and my trust in people. The police, Sussex, have, to be honest, been fantastic throughout. They never made me feel as though I was wasting their time and I've been very well supported. The only thing that really made it extremely I was wasting their time and I've been very well supported. The only thing that really made it extremely difficult was that for each and every report I made, I had to start the whole story from scratch, every time, despite there being numerous reports.

And I felt they could have used or referred to the previous case notes as it was the same person, the same incident, over and over again. He has a restraining order which has been breached several times. I don't think I'll ever be the same again. I feel as though my liberty has been taken and he has kept his. Now, it's a brave woman who appears on Radio 4 prepared to criticise the archers. We know the strongest characters in any soap are always the women. In The Archers, there's been unplanned pregnancy and a single parent as far back as the 60s, and then the gripping story in recent years of Helen and Rob,

domestic violence and coercive control. There's also a lot of baking and gossiping in the village shop, but a new book, Gender, Sex and Gossip in Ambridge, Women in the Archers, asks how feminist is the storyline? Well, the authors are Dr Cara Courage, the head of Tate Exchange UK, and Dr Nicola Hedlum, a research fellow at the University of Oxford. They began with class and how that influences how the women talk. Well, there's three chapters in the book that talk about this. And one of the people that talk about it is Charlotte Connor, who plays Susan. She's also a research psychologist. And the issues of class come up into it. And the other chapters as well are saying

the view of the gossip of the working class matriarch, it's easy to throw mud at that kind of character. But Susan is far more complex than that. It is right that, you know, if other women of a, as we perceive, higher class in the archers are gossiping, we don't call it gossip. But also something like Brian. Brian is a huge gossip. And we would never, ever think to call him that. But Susan gets that kind of flack very, very unfairly, I think. Alan on Twitter says, I think it was Tony Benn who once said the archers should be called the Grundys and their oppressors.

It was Neil Kinnock. We mention it all the time and we agree. Now, there is in my chapter in the book, I talk about informal labour in the archers and the way that women colonise the lower status connective bits of the village. So through voluntary work and speed watch and all those things. And that's very much about that, that the Grundy women really need to use any capital available to them in order to advance their position. And Susan's gossip is exactly that. The knowledge she has is power. She wants to advance herself. And I don't blame her for that at all.

A couple more comments here. Alan says, the way women are treated, I've always believed it depends on the writers. Sometimes Pat has been a militant feminist, but not so at other times. Now, I think that's interesting. We address this. In my chapter, I'm talking about her

sort of supposed activism being quite shallow. So actually, through the Helen and Rob storyline, I did get quite deranged by Pat because being a feminist isn't talking about burning your bra at Greenham Common. It's about being an ally if somebody else is going through something. And her daughter was taken from her

by a manipulative man. And partly because she felt that her radar weren't really working for him. But she stepped back and let a big space develop into which that whole storyline... But then you have Olmin come in later, which was her trying to appease herself with that guilt, to try and save this past friend of hers who was homeless.

It would be better just to explain. There would be some people who are just thinking, what are these women talking about? A character who came in, played by Alison Stedman, I think. Describe her. She was very opinionated, very, well, as you might classically... Pat's conscience. Yeah, Pat's conscience, absolutely.

But Olwen didn't let Pat off anything at all. So that part of Pat that has sort of mellowed over the years into something sort of quite perhaps safely middle class or what have you, Olwen did not let her get off on that. And Pat found it really, really hard. And in the end, just sort of, again, just had to step back from that. And she was trying to ingratiate herself all the time. I'm still that person.

It was horrible. One listener says, I don't like the fact that a woman can't just be in her own right. You've got to be paired up or there's something wrong with her. Can't you just be single with no kids? Absolutely, we so agree with that. Working women, my God. So we, yes, that basically is where we started,

was that we don't see reflections of us because we work long hours, do big jobs and all the rest of it, and are child-free. So, in fact, Charlotte, again, when she came to talk to us, said, oh, there's a really intense flurry of plot around you as you get sort of paired up and have children. And we were, oh, God. We had a paper about that at the weekend. We did.

The unplanned pregnancy and choices in The Archers. Absolutely brilliant. The Bechdel test. Do The Archers. Absolutely brilliant. The Bechdel test, do The Archers fail it? They pass, well, by episode over the five-month period of the research. It passes around 40% of the time. That actually isn't that bad. When you see, you know, pass rates in films are really decreasing at the moment.

The Archers isn't doing that badly. And when you think that there are so many family relationships in that programme, so the women will naturally just be talking about the men anyway. A 40% pass rate is pretty good. Yeah, it's not bad. Well, room for improvement. Oh, absolutely. Room for improvement always, but you may have seen in publications that we were accused of calling the show sexist and that's not how we would go.

It made for a good headline though, didn't it? It did. Can we talk about the Archer family then? No, do we? Patricia Green, who plays Jill Archer, one of my favourite guests on Women's Hour. I've also had Peggy, who plays June. No, got that wrong.

June, who plays Peggy. See? This is all very real for me. Was also on the programme. Two formidable acting talents, I should say. But you're going to tell me, I think, that Jill Archer is a terrible mother. She is. I mean, they both are as matriarchs.

They're really psychologically unhealthy, enmeshed families. OK, take that on, please. Well, I mean, the Hedlum hypothesis states that the archers should die, but long live the archers, right? So the actual main families are pretty insufferable. And yes, we lay and apportion quite a lot of the blame in the twin matriarchs of Peggy and Jill for various reasons, who at times can be interesting, but also at times are policing everyone's behaviour. And very passive-aggressive, that will not let their children flourish, have their own opinions, even just leave the house. So they're not great examples of motherhood. So please don't misunderstand. This isn't an ageist point. Just based on some of the slightly outlandish positions that they've taken in the last few years. Oh, outlandish? I think that's a bit unfair.

They're morally upright. There's no doubt they both taken in the last few years. Oh, outlandish? I think that's a bit unfair. They're morally upright. There's no doubt they both care passionately about their families. Yeah, get out the road, though. I mean, how can anyone sort of emerge as a functioning human out of either Brookfield or Bridge Farm? I mean, let's face it, some of this enmeshedness that you hear has to be coming from them, right? They have to set a tone.

Rebecca says, I'm absolutely behind Jim when it comes to Shula. But the response to Lily's job was ridiculous compared to the care heaped on Freddie and Natasha's debt, which had to be mansplayed to her husband. Yeah, well, these are the livest of the live issues. So lots of chat on Twitter about how some of the opprobrium for Natasha from Tom, I would have walked out of there straight away. I think that even if she has debts that she hadn't

disclosed, the fact that his immediate his go-to is condescension kind of just horrid way of describing and discussing. There was an awful thing as well, like his voice when she was saying it, her debts are from clothes and going and spending meals. That was so weighted.

But there was a thing on Twitter about how, oh, everyone's just down on her because she's the wrong sort of woman. So we kind of spent a lot of time, what is the wrong sort of woman? Well, the wrong sort of woman tends to get up and leave Ambridge and to seek their fame and fortune elsewhere. Yes, like Hazel, like Brenda, all gone but not forgotten. Women of property, women of means, they get out. They exercise the choice of the aeroplane out of there.

Cara Courage and Nicola Hedlum talked to Jane. It was the death of Natasha Edmund-Laparouse in 2016 after she'd eaten a baguette containing sesame seeds that made us realise how dangerous food allergies can be. Around three to six percent of children in the developed world are said to suffer and the problem seems to be getting worse. Natasha was aware of her allergies but it was later found the labelling on the baguette she bought had not mentioned sesame seeds. So what do parents need to know about the diagnosis and management of food allergies in their children? Well Holly Shaw is a nurse with Allergy UK.

Stephanie Hume's son William was found to suffer when he was three. What happened when William first had his allergic reaction? Well we were in a coffee shop that we'd been to several times and he wanted his normal treat which was this specific smoothie. He took a couple of sips and started saying that his tummy felt itchy and it felt like there was something sticky on his tongue. We having had no experience of allergies before this we actually thought he was being naughty and told him off. We thought he was just doing the normal typical three-year-old thing where he wants one treat and then changes his mind. So we decided just to take him home.

In the car, he then went extremely pale and started acting really sleepy. So we started dozing. We didn't think anything of it. And it wasn't till we got to the house and he vomited everywhere. We took off his clothes to clean him up and that's when we saw the huge amount of angry red hives. It was only then that we realised something was seriously wrong. So presumably then you took him to the hospital. What did they say at the hospital? Well thankfully when we were at home my husband gave him a dose of antihistamine and then we took him to the hospital. And it's there that we learned that that dose of antihistamine bought him time. When we got him to the hospital, they realized it was a severe allergic reaction to an ingredient in the smoothie. And he was monitored for 24 hours, given two further doses of antihistamines.

It took him about a week and a half to recover properly but it was the scariest moment of my entire life. Holly how common are the kind of symptoms Stephanie's just described? They are common but what I would say is I can understand why initially Stephanie didn't recognise that they were signs of an allergic reaction because age-appropriate allergy symptoms, children of that age aren't able to verbalise what they're experiencing. So there's often a very immediate and obvious sense of an allergic reaction with regards to things like swelling to the lips, eyes and face, skin rashes.

But there can be more subtle signs such as an itchy mouth mild swelling inside the mouth etc and children of that age aren't able to express what they're experiencing so they may say things like you know I feel like I've got a frog in my throat or I've got you know you see them moving their tongue around inside their mouth because their mouth is itching. What are the main food groups that are found to cause problems? Common culprits include cow's milk, egg and peanut in children but there are many different types of foods that can cause allergic reactions. Stephanie I think you found that William has other food allergies. Yes. How have they been diagnosed and what are they? Well in the smoothie William has an unusual allergy it's flaxseed for William

that was the added health ingredient into that smoothie which caused him to then go through his anaphylactic shock and since then he's been diagnosed with allergy to peanuts, tree nuts, mustard and sesame three of which we did introduce to his diet when we were weaning him so I'm not sure, I think no one really understands how all of a sudden he's become allergic to these items as well. What did the testing involve, Stephanie? We went through a skin prick test where they take tiny drops of the allergen and dab it onto the skin and measure it at the hives

to see how severe the reaction is. We are EpiPen carriers because William's allergies are very severe, and we have been told that he's not going to outgrow them any time soon. What was William's reaction to the testing process? The first time he was petrified, he didn't understand it, and that's when we realised as parents that we have to be completely honest with Will, and we've spent the last three years working with him. He's very aware of his allergies.

He knows what he's allergic to. He now reads labels. We are advocates of the Always Carry 2 EpiPens, and he knows how to use them. Anna emailed that she has a four-month-old baby. They're going to be weaning the baby soon and she says what could she do to reduce the risk of any future allergies as they go through the weaning process? My best advice to her would be to introduce one food at a time and that way it's clear if it is that food that is a problem and to introduce foods at home on a

day that the child is well a day when there's two two people at home two adults at home having some antihistamines in the first aid kit wouldn't be a bad idea and but just be mindful that not all adverse reactions to foods are down to food allergy. Sometimes infants have very sensitive skin, for example, around the mouth and might react to things like eating citrus fruit or berries and get a localised red rash. Or sometimes children are just unwell with other illnesses that might mimic symptoms similar to those of allergies. And if you do find something like, you know, you might have some lemon and you get the reddening around the lips, what do you do about that?

Should you go and get it checked out to see if it could get worse or just accept that it's there? If you are concerned, I'd encourage you to have a conversation with a health professional. Your GP would usually be the first port of call for a concern over any symptoms suggestive of food allergy. We're not asking parents to know the difference, but just to be mindful that not all reactions to food are due to allergies. And Stephanie, what do you and William do now about how to keep him safe? Are there foods that you just don't allow into the home? Since he started school, he's had a bit of a learning curve. There's a lot of treats that he can't eat.

We found a lot of foods now have may contain warnings. So for a child like William, we've taught him that whatever he, if he'd like to try something new, we make it at home. So we make our own pasta sauces or pasta or ice cream so that he always knows he might not be able to buy the foods out, but there's options that he can make himself. And he's happy with all that, is he? He's lovely. He's a very strong little boy. He's embraced it all. I think there's only been

twice when he's become quite upset about having allergies, but the rest of the time he embraces it and he knows that we're just trying to keep him safe. Stephanie Hume and Holly Shaw. And there are, of course, links on the Women's Hour website with more information if you need it. Rhiannon emailed and said, my 11-year-old son has multiple allergies to dairy, egg, nuts and sesame. Being the parent of an allergic child is hard work.

Just trying to keep them safe every day is exhausting. The most ordinary things are stressful. When he was little, playgroups, parties and basically anywhere there are other children were so stressful. Especially when you see other children walking around with food and drink, then touching toys. And all you can think is that this could be a very scary situation for your child. It must seem crazy to someone who doesn't have an allergic child. Nothing is spontaneous. My husband and I always breathe a huge sigh of relief following a successful meal out or holiday.

None is ever an entirely relaxing experience. Now still to come on the programme from the wife of Bath through Emma to Fleabag and Derry Girls, what's the appeal of the funny female character with a flaw? The heat of the moment, one of the UK's most senior firefighters is Sabrina Cohen-Hatton and Nicole Taylor explains the inspiration for her film Wild Rose. Now we often talk about hot flushes and night sweats and the other little difficulties that can accompany the perimenopause, but the heavy bleeding that can occur is rarely spoken about. Around 25% of women will have flooding,

which can be extremely debilitating. Why do some have it whilst others don't and what can be done to help? Well Paula Briggs is a consultant in reproductive health at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust. I think it's really good that awareness is being raised that heavy menstrual bleeding is a very common symptom of the menopause transition. I think it's really difficult with bleeding for women to understand what's unacceptable because they don't know what other women are experiencing. What happens in the menopause transition is that ovulation doesn't occur regularly and so the lining of the womb becomes too thick.

And because women don't release an egg, they don't have any progesterone, which would balance the situation. And so when they do bleed, it's fairly chaotic, often with flooding and clots. And it's embarrassing for them and makes it difficult at work. And there are lots of different treatment options available. Are you more likely to have to go through this if you have fibroids or have had them in the past? Yeah, so for most women the bleeding is dysfunctional it's hormonal but for other women there are physical causes and you know that

highlights the need for proper investigation and management of bleeding at this time. Right so what can women do? If a woman thinks her bleeding is heavy or unacceptable, she should go to her GP in the first instance. There are really clear, nice guidelines about management options. Mirena is first line, and not all women want to have a Mirena fitted. That's a coil. Yes, a hormonal intrauterine system, but there are also non-hormonal drugs which can be used and other hormonal treatment options but other methods of managing this time which are not dependent on drugs things like endometrial ablation which is is a way of destroying the lining of the womb and that would all depend on the right investigations

having been done beforehand things like ultrasound and hysteroscopy. In your experience how long do women put up with this before they seek help? Far too long and I think you know that's because they don't know that it's a specific problem that occurs around this time. It happens at extremes of reproductive life. Young women when they start having periods again don't always ovulate and sometimes have very heavy bleeding and then it happens again towards the end of reproductive life. So in the end, it is actually tragically still all about education, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah.

So I suppose it slightly boggles my mind that we're still at the point where women are still not being told the facts about what might lie ahead for them. Yeah, and I think knowing what might lie ahead means that women will go for help much sooner. And I think, sadly, also sometimes women go for help and they're told, actually, that it'll be going away soon because they're almost menopausal. And that's not right. And we have, as I said, very clear guidelines now from NICE about how we should manage these problems. Here's one listener who says, I've had a period for the last three weeks intermittently so heavy that a super plus tampon lasts less than an hour. A couple of weeks ago, I had to give a lecture,

I am a lecturer, she says, about anatomy theatres, revenge, tragedy and the body. And I could feel the blood soaking into my tights before the end of the lecture. Not a good day. There's just one illustration of somebody, a woman essentially at the peak of her professional powers, who is worried sick about this.

You just feel so vulnerable, don't you? Yeah, and there's nothing good about bleeding. Women who have chronically heavy periods will often become anemic and that can lead to depression and along with the other symptoms of menopause make it virtually impossible to cope at work. Paula, what practical steps can you take? Just having a tampon in at all times isn't really a solution, is it?

No, definitely not. I think being aware that it's not just Mirena, there are other treatment options. In the past, we all knew a family member who'd had a hysterectomy, but we hardly do any hysterectomies now because there are such fantastic alternative treatment options. And I think also having the message that this is really common, we all, I think, are aware of hot flushes and night sweats

as being common menopausal symptoms, but raising awareness that heavy menstrual bleeding is also a common presenting problem that can be managed to improve quality of life and it's not just about the woman herself it's about her family and her colleagues who you know would also suffer as a result but obviously the woman is the most important. HRT helpful or not? Can be helpful so what women who are in the menopause transition would be provided with normally would be sequential hormone replacement therapy

that induces a withdrawal bleed. So it's not a period, but it's often lighter and more manageable. And that's an important choice for the woman who don't want Mirena with ADVAC oestrogen. And I think this is all about choice, and as you said, about education and information raising awareness but nobody should have to suffer like that and it's a case of going through the treatment options and at the at the very end of that there will be a small number of women for example who may

have very large fibroids who do need to have a hysterectomy, but they're few and far between. Paula Briggs spoke to Jane. Now, it's been a bit of a sad week for fans of two brilliant television series. Derry Girls on Channel 4 came to an end with hopes of peace for the future for the four wild and wacky teenage girls. And then on BBC One, Fleabag came to a close after two series made for BBC Three.

Just in case you haven't watched the last episode, I won't spoil it by telling you what happened with Fleabag's father and his fiancée and the gorgeous Catholic priest played by Andrew Scott. But what is it about such flawed female characters that fascinate and delight us? There must be a reason why it's the gap-toothed wife of Bath in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, who's his best-remembered character, or the meddling, often thoughtless Emma,

who's a favourite of Jane Austen's work, or that Bridget Jones lasted for so long. Why do we love to laugh and sometimes cry at the woman who gets so much wrong? Well, Erin Kelly is a novelist. She's just published Stone Mothers. Danielle Dash is a television development executive and writer. Terry White is the editor-in-chief of Empire magazine.

What did she love about Fleabag? It's not just that she was flawed, because I think flawed women existed in television and film for years but it was handled in a really positive way she wasn't just a chaotic mess and she looked like women we knew she spoke like women we knew the writing was impeccable by any standard whatsoever it was brilliantly smart brilliantly funny but just the recognition of it being a really well-drawn female character and it not all just being a chaotic mess. Danielle, what did you love about Fleabag?

I really enjoyed her relationship with her sister. And I think that that is important, just the idea of two women who are completely different, knowing how to love each other at the right time. I think that's important in representation in TV. Erin? What I loved about it was that it combined some incredibly broad humour. So the kind of wink to camera is nothing new. We've seen it in Up and Poem, we've seen it in Miranda,

with incredibly profound issues that affect women. So Fleabag takes in divorce, baby loss, adultery, grief and guilt and shame. It addresses shame in a way that makes us laugh and I think that's what's compelling about female characters. When I'm writing if I feel that I'm niggling at something in my own experience that I find shameful or awkward or embarrassing I know that that's a rich theme to mine and that's what Fleabag does so brilliantly. Who's your favourite flawed female of them all, Danielle, would you say? I think right now, Michaela Cole in Turingham is one who stands out.

What was it about her that you loved? I just loved that I could see myself. And that's where, for Fleabag, it doesn't quite go all the way with me, is that I really enjoyed it, I love seeing it, but I don't know that experience, I don't know those problems. I know what it is to be a woman and I share that with her, but in terms of actually seeing who I am as a black queer woman, that wasn't represented.

And I think with Chewing Gum and with Issa Rae's Insecure, you get to see, for me, I get to see myself and the women that I know and their experiences. Fleabag Terry was at times really shockingly overt in her sexuality. Why were we never shocked by her carryings on? Well, I think, you know, there has been some progression over the last decade or two in terms of showing women just having sex on screen, whether you're talking about Sex and the City, whether you're talking about Girls. But she handled it with such kind of relatability.

And women have sex, you know. Spoiler, women have sex all the time. We know what it looks like. What we haven't seen is realistic depictions, which are it's not always pretty. We don't always have perp boobs. We do sometimes have sex with more than one partner who we're not in a long-term relationship with.

We weren't shocked because we know that's reality i think girls broke ground for that as well showing sex in its messy awkward clumsy sometimes quite unattractive glory yeah where the way the woman didn't have to be thin absolutely i wasn't i i've had problems with lena dunham in terms of like her feminism so i had made a stance that i wasn't going to watch girls right and then I started my job and everybody at the office was watching it and so I had to get on board and it was the last season so I had to binge it quite quickly and I found that I'd always cried in the changing rooms but the first time I went shopping after watching girls for so much I didn't cry and that was because the normalisation of a big body is important. And I think that really, really helped.

And that's where she was revolutionary, was Arlena Dunham. Erin, when we look back to characters like, you know, I mentioned the wife of Bath, Emma, Bridget Jones. Why do they stand out as characters, women in particular, just love? Because, well, we're talking about flawed characters, but what I would say is we're talking, when you talk about a flawed woman, you're actually talking about a truthful woman, because there is, or truthfully depicted woman, there is no such thing as a woman without flaws. I mean, I write thrillers about people whose flaws

lead them into terrible places. We're getting a lighter version of that in comedy. My grandmother was in some ways no less liberated than I am because I am now stifled by Instagram in a way that she was stifled by the social mores of the 1950s. And flawed women are just people who are real and truthful and that's what we respond to. And also it gives you agency. If you're making a mess of your life, you are creating things, you are creating the action and you're not sitting passively waiting for a man to kick your story off. Stifled by Instagram. That is fascinating. Of course we are. We're stifled by, you know, opinions are policed in a way that we, I certainly 20 years ago, didn't see. Sometimes for the greater

good. Sometimes, you know, we've all seen a Twitter mob in a pile on. Whereas we used to, you know, two generations ago, people were worrying about what would the neighbours say. Now it's what would the strangers say. Danielle, obviously, Chaucer was male, we assume. Emma, Brigitte, girls, Fleabag, Derry Girls, all written by women. How much difference do you reckon the gender of the writer makes? It makes a huge amount of difference. I think that when women are in control of their stories, you see the way it connects with the audience,

and you see the way that we're able to all feel included in that and so if we look at Shrill with Lonely Adephopian and A.D. Bryant you're seeing representations of not just you know a black woman and a white woman but big black women and big white women and just about the realities of what that is navigating the world and that's something that men can't assume to know or even have any clue about when I think that when men are in charge there's a lot of assumptions about what women do and you watch it and you can immediately feel that this doesn't actually happen and so I think that that kind of confidence that comes from white men always having opportunities to see themselves

in everything that they do. I think that now that more women are in charge of their representation on TV and how we are consumed, I think that's where we start to see a difference. As a development executive, Terry, what difference does the gender of the author make? Well, I think the gender of the author is massive. If you look at Phoebe Waller-Bridge, she also writes, for example, Killing Eve. Killing Eve, I think, has some of the most real, brilliantly detailed female characters on TV going. And I think it's not that men can't write women, but they just can't write from a singular personal experience. And when you have women writing women, you have them creating real women that you recognise. That is where the recognition is born from.

Erin, female writer, obviously, so the gender matters? It's a generalisation, but I have noticed that when men write women's bodies, they tend to internally sexualise them. So when I inhabit my body, I do it in terms of, you know, my bra hurts, my period is due, my jeans won't do up, I'm walking alone with my keys in my hand because I'm scared. Men, there's a quote that you see, it does the rounds on Twitter all the time, somebody wrote about a woman breasting boobily down the stairs.

Men tend to write as though we're so turned on by inhabiting this gorgeous curviness that we can't think about anything else. That's where it can sometimes fall apart. Erin Kelly, Danielle Dash and Terry White. Now I think we all know only too well how much we depend on the fire service because things can go wrong at any moment but I doubt any of us have thought as seriously about the dangers firefighters can face as we have since the terrible shock of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton joined the fire service when she was 18 and has risen to Deputy Assistant Commissioner, making her one of the most senior firefighters

in the UK. She's written a book called The Heat of the Moment. Why did she decide to join the fire service at 18? I had a quite an unusual start in life. I was actually homeless at the age of 15 and I went through some really, really difficult years, as you can imagine. One of the things that I found when I was sleeping rough is I'd wake up every day and I'd think, well, life really can't get any worse than this. And I'd go through the day and things would happen and you kind of get get to the end of the day and you'd think, no, it's got worse. It really hasn't got any better. And when I was living that life, one of the things that struck me is that I really wanted to do something to help other people who are experiencing their lowest moments, their rock bottom. And the thing about the fire service is that people trust us to know what to do when they're having their worst possible day.

So in a funny kind of way, I wanted to try and do something where I could rescue people in a way that no one was able to rescue me. Now, when you joined, you were the only woman on the team. Yes, I was. What was that like? Honestly, it wasn't great when I first joined the fire service. And I'm going to qualify this by saying I don't think it's anything like it was then now but when I first started I experienced some pretty horrendous sexism to be honest with you and I would be doing all of the women that joined at the same time as

me a disservice if I pretended that it didn't happen. I was sexually harassed, I received un-solicited and inappropriate pictures although in the guy's defence it was a very small phone screen. And I was told that things had to be different for me because I was a woman. And I didn't call it out at the time because I was 18 years old, I was young, I was insecure. And I wanted to be accepted and I felt like this balance of power was completely against me. But you know what? It's completely different now. We've worked so hard to change the situation for women that join the service today. And one of the things on a personal level that I will always do is call it out when I see it, because I've got a nine-year-old

daughter and I'm not daft. I know that we're not going to fix years and years and years of social conditioning overnight. I know she's still going to face years and years and years of social conditioning overnight. I know she's still going to face challenges. And I want to be able to look her in the eye and say, yep, you know what, it is unfair, but this is what you can do. But how attractive is the surface now to young women? I know there was a lot of discussion recently about Fireman Sam. And people saying, oh, it's Fireman Sam, it's putting girls off. They think only men can be firefighters.

Is it putting people off? Well, do you know what? Language is important because those messages that you hear around you every single day become part of your internal narrative. They feed that little voice in your head. And, you know, kind of regardless of any particular character, that concept of what you refer to yourself as, I think is important. And we can see this in the service now, there are only 5% of firefighters that are women. And there

are actually more chief fire officers called Chris than there are women chiefs. I've got nothing against Chris's, by the way, but it's quite stark. And the qualities that you need to be a good firefighter aren't determined by gender. It's not about brawn. It's about being calm under pressure. It's about being decisive. It's about seeing the bigger picture. And I would love more women out there to think of the service as a career. I really would.

Now, you began to specialise in decision-making in the force and researching it as a result of an incident where your husband very narrowly escaped being badly burned. What happened there? Oh, my God, this was the most harrowing incident I've ever been to in my life. So, basically, me and my husband were both firefighters at the same time, and we worked on neighbouring stations.

And one day I was called to an incident where a firefighter had been badly burned, and there was a one-in in four chance that it was him and I can remember just feeling absolutely torn between the role of a loved one and the role of a responder. Anyway we arrived there and it transpired not to be him it was our colleague but he very nearly had been burned and as much as I felt this overwhelming sense of relief that it wasn't him, I also felt an incredible sense of guilt because I'd felt relieved when our, not just a colleague, but our friend had been burned. And I found it really difficult to live with myself for a long time with those kind of internal feelings. And it was actually that incident that started me

looking at how people get hurt. And what I discovered is 80% of accidents across all industries happen from human error, which was an incredible statistic. And so I started researching what we could do to improve decision-making to reduce that human error. Now, you don't mention Grenfell in the book, even though it's in everybody's mind still. Why not? Absolutely.

So from my perspective, firstly, as a serving fire officer, I can't talk about Grenfell. I'm sure you'll appreciate. However, there's another point for me. I wasn't there on the night. I was involved in the aftermath, as were many, many firefighters. But there are still lots and lots of grieving families and survivors that need answers. And the inquiry is the most important thing that can give them those answers. So even if I could talk about it from a personal moral perspective, I don't believe it's my story to tell. Just briefly, Sabrina, you know, firefighters witness terrible trauma all the time, whether it's fire or road accidents how do you deal with the risk and the trauma day after day yeah well it's a really good question um and it's

true our every day is made up of everybody else's worst ever days really and it does take its toll and i i write about this in the book and I talk about a colleague of mine Ron who suffered from PTSD after a particularly harrowing incident where he came across a young girl who died in a fire and he had some really severe symptoms but actually lots of us will experience trauma day after day and what you find is people in the service find it quite difficult to talk about because we like to see ourselves as rescuers and there's still a stigma attached to it that we need to really try to deal with. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton and you can see a film of Sabrina on the Woman's Hour website.

One of the films available to see in the cinema this weekend is Wild Rose. It's about a 23-year-old mother of two children who's just been released from serving a year in prison. She goes back to her mother's house and wants to make it as a singer. The writer is Nicole Taylor. Wild Rose is her first film, although she wrote The C-Word and Three Girls for television.

It's country music that inspired the film, and Jessie Buckley is Wild Rose. Country girl, take my hand, lead me through this diseased land. I am tired, I am weak, I have sinned Oh, my soul is unclean Country girl, got to keep on keeping on That's Jessie Buckley in Fine Voice. Julie Walters plays her mum in Wild Rose. This is a film, it's not just, it is about country music,

it's also about mothers and daughters and hopes and dreams, isn't it? I hope I'm setting it up for the audience. Perfect, yeah. Couldn't have done better myself. So tell us, first of all, about your love of country music. Is this a lifelong thing? It's a lifelong passion. I think if I could sing, I would probably be a country star rather than a screenwriter. Ever since I was 12 or 13, I've just loved country music.

I discovered it by accident. How? I discovered it by having a lot of insomnia as a teenager and watching BBC Two in the middle of the night when they showed the CMA Awards, the Country Music Awards. And Mary Chapin Carpenter was singing

He Thinks He'll Keep Her. And it just blew me away. I couldn't believe that a song could cover that kind of material. You know, a woman in her marriage that had gone stagnant and her hopes and dreams and her frustrations and starting over in like three and a half minutes and I just loved it and from that moment on I became immersed in this kind of 90s country almost feminist canon uh with her and Wynonna and Patti Loveless and I think it's

something that just lodged in me and I've always wanted to write about it. And also I should say in this film Casey Musgraves who's my current country favourite makes makes an appearance a brief cameo towards the end when our heroine gets to well where does she get to? Oh no spoilers please but you will see Casey Musgraves pop up and another amazing woman of country at the moment Ashley McBride also has a cameo yeah and Casey's wonderful yeah. So let's go to the heart of this story then, which is set, most of it is set in Glasgow, with our heroine, Roselyne, coming out of prison. Just tell everybody a little bit about Roselyne and what she's been through.

So Roselyne, the very first line I ever wrote about this character a good ten years ago now is that she's thrillingly, glitteringly alive, more alive than you. She's an absolute firecracker. She's got no self-control. She's got the emotional intelligence of a brick, but she's warm and she's funny. And all she wants in life is to get out of Glasgow

and make it to Nashville as a country singer. And she's got the chops musically. She's incredibly talented. She's got charisma to burn, but she's also got two young children and she's been in jail for a year and she's got a mum, played by Julie Walters, who's just fed up with this nonsense and not unreasonably

wants her to get a proper job, settle down. Partly because she's left looking after the kids. Quite, yes, exactly. And I wonder whether there's ever been a film in which a man, you can tell me, in which a man is torn between his fatherly duties and his desire to pursue his talent.

Yes, exactly. There hasn't, has there? No way. I was trying to think. No way. I'm surprised there's not even been other films about women in this situation because it seems such a universal...

I think it probably is a universal. I don't know. I mean, do I feel guilty sitting here when I could be at home with two lumbering teenagers? No, not particularly. I'm perfectly happy. But in the past, certainly, I bet a lot of women listening will have had that conversation with themselves about whether it was the right thing to do. What do you think?

I've got a two-year-old, so it's something I think about very often. I think, you know, it's not even just for women. I think for anyone dreaming of something, it's always in context. There's always a context of existing responsibilities and through all these years where the x factor and all those things were so popular I was always more interested in people's reality and what it actually felt like to have a talent like that because it could probably be a bit of a double-edged sword it would make your life much more difficult because you just probably wouldn't be able to settle what's interesting about the

film is that the Julie Waters character the mum she does want her daughter to have a go but at the same time she also doesn't and I wondered whether there was a kind of element of jealousy that her daughter might be having the opportunities she never had. All of that's going on. She's so ambivalent for exactly those reasons and it's all under the surface because the mum is as bad emotional expression as the daughter. And it's all churned up within her, that character of Marion, which is why it was so wonderful to get Julie Walters to play her because somebody who can't access their emotions to speak. I mean, she's perfect because you don't need to give her any dialogue. You can understand just by looking at her face everything registers yeah on her face and I think that conflict between mothers and daughters where there's you're ambitious for your daughter but you also somehow feel rejected if they are pursuing a life that's very different to yours that's something I relate to massively and I really really wanted to write about it so are you from a show busy family gosh not at all not at all no I mean I was a solicitor till I was 27 I always wrote and I always really wanted to write.

But I would never say I want to be a writer because growing up in Glasgow, it would be like saying I want to be a model. You just wouldn't just be ridiculous. So, no, my my family are not showbiz in any way. Right. And how long did you did you work in the law? Very miserably for, yeah, till I was 27. Yeah. I went to law school and I read law as an undergraduate. And, you know, I did that thing to death until I finally had the courage to try and write. Yeah, but that's a big, big career move and a big change. And I don't, I actually just don't understand how you did it. So can you explain? I think I also had to ensure myself against failure. I'm not particularly, you know, reckless person. I think I'm quite risk averse. And I don't think I would have been able to give it a go unless I knew that I had something solid to go back to. And that's very much my background.

You have to be sensible and you have to... My mum left school at 15 and through her hard work, she'd given me so many opportunities. So it would have felt like taking the... If I'd just gone off to be a writer, first of all. So there's a lot of that, of my relationship with my mum in this relationship between Rosalind and Marion. It's very different, of course, writing a film compared to writing for telly. Well, I say that as though I know, I've got no idea. What is the difference?

Do you know, it's not the writing so much as the process. The process is so, so different. In television, once something's got the green light, that's you, it's happening. Whereas with this film, I first had the idea for the character nearly 10 years ago. It was getting made ago it was getting made then not getting made then getting made it's just the financing in film is so precarious in independent films so there's that um but when it comes to the writing I I suppose I didn't feel that that was any different from film and tv my process is always

the same which is just to do one project at a time and just fully immerse myself and just dissolve until those characters feel real. Now, Jessie Buckley's character, Rose Lynn, has tattooed on her arm and something I'd never heard before, but it's so true. So good as well. Three chords and the truth. Is that a well-known motto for country? It certainly is. Yeah. It's a quote from a song by a songwriter called Harlan Howard, and it's the very definition of country music. Nicole Taylor and Wild Rose is in the cinema now. On Monday, we'll be hearing about the Shatila refugee camp in the south of Beirut, which was originally built in 1949 to house Palestinian refugees.

But after the outbreak of civil war in Syria, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon, often taking refuge in the Shatila camp. So on Monday, Jane will speak to the publisher and author, Micah Seafogel, about the work she's doing with 100 Syrian refugee women who've set up the Shatila studio. Join Jane, if you can, Monday morning, two minutes past 10 from me for this afternoon. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. 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.