Woman's Hour - Frankie Bridge, Women's Liberation 2020, 'The Gift'

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

Frankie Bridge is best known as one fifth of 'The Saturdays' and outside of music has established herself as a TV presenter & digital influencer. She became a Mind ambassador after opening up about her experiences of anxiety, depression and panic attacks, after her hospitalisation in May 2012. Having initially dealt with these issues in silence, she now sees that asking for help can save your life. She talks to Jane about her new book OPEN which features practical guidance and advice from the psychologist and psychiatrist who helped her.Fifty years on from the first Women’s Liberation Conference in 1970, Women's Place UK organised one last weekend. 900 women gathered to discuss ending violence against women and sex discrimination and to defend women only spaces and single sex services. We hear from some of the women who were there and Professor Sophie Scott and journalist, Helen Joyce discuss what they hope the event will achieve. And, Janice Okoh‘s new play ‘The Gift’ is directed by Dawn Walton and was inspired by the story of Sara Forbes Bonetta – born Omoba Aina in 1843. A Yoruba princess, Sara was taken into slavery, released to the Lieutenant-Commander of the HMS Bonetta, then offered as a gift to Queen Victoria. The play is set in both 1862 and the present day, and explores themes of cross-racial adoption, colonialism and what it means to be British. Janice Okoh and Dawn Walton join us to discuss the play.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Ruth Watts

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. This is the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, good morning. Today we have Frankie Bridge with us, talking very frankly about her own mental health and about a new book she's written on that subject. We'll discuss, too, the Women's Lib Conference that was held in London last weekend and discuss a play called The Gift, which I've got the programme here actually.

It says it's an outrageous play about imperialism, cross-racial adoption, cultural appropriation and tea. I saw that the other night. It was really interesting. So we'll discuss the play The Gift on Women's Hour this morning. Let's start with HRT. What's happening with HRT? What we know today is that the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the British Menopause Society and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare have all written collectively to

the government to ask it to set up a group to address the shortages of HRT and indeed some contraceptives. They say it's unacceptable that there are shortages of HRT, that they're harming women, while a struggle to get access to some contraceptives risks a rise in unplanned pregnancies and abortions as well. Well, the government has said it's been working closely with suppliers to reintroduce some of these products to the market. We'll focus in this conversation on the menopause products particularly with Diane Danzebrink, who's the founder of the Menopause Support Campaign. Diane, why write this letter now to the government? Well, I guess it's because they've tried sort of privately for a long time

to get information and haven't. So I suppose the way to do it is to write something that you're then going to put into the press. Maybe it'll get an answer because it's certainly what women need. There is a genuine shortage then. Do you understand why? Absolutely not. There is a genuine shortage. It's actually been going on since October 2018. So it's been going on a long time.

There's all sorts of excuses for the shortage we've heard all sorts of things about adhesive for patches about ingredients about changes to categories in um government tariffs that they will pay for certain drugs we've heard all sorts of things but to be honest the one thing that women have been missing is information from the Department of Health who, to be honest, have been woeful in what they have issued to women to let them know what's really going on. Of course, even those women who are going through the menopause or perimenopausal,

the vast majority are not on HRT. Do you know how many people are actually impacted by this shortage? Well, figures that I've seen are around a million. So we've got 13 million peri- and postmenopausal women in the UK, and it's roughly about 10% are actually using hormone replacement therapy. And again, some people, Diane, not going through it, would just say, well, what's the problem? I'm sure there's other sorts of HRT around. Just change the product.

Yeah, and it's not as easy as that, unfortunately. Not all products suit everybody. Not everybody can have all the products. And we've had women who, so I run a support group for 13,000 women, and we've had women who've had to change five or six times and you know sort of the symptoms of having to change can be both physical and psychological and the I cannot stress to you enough the mental health issues that this has caused the anxiety the huge anxiety that this has caused is, you know, frankly, outrageous.

And the fact that it has been essentially ignored, brushed under the carpet for such a long time, it just makes women feel as though, you know, the majority of these women are going to be in their 40s and 50s. And it just makes women feel that actually nobody cares and you know the Department of Health just don't care and we don't matter. Well I don't think I'm sure they would argue of course that most emphatically is not the case this is an issue that we have certainly discussed on Women's Hour over the last couple of months quite a few times and the RCOG is quoted as saying today that they believe that supplies will get better this month. Do you put any faith in that?

Well, we have heard from one particular manufacturer that products will be back in stock by the end of March. So I think, you know, there is reason to hope that that's true. But there are still other products that are out of stock and unfortunately it's it's really three of the most popular and most prescribed that have been out of stock for a long period of time and you know kind of have led to some severe distress it's also worth saying that we're not just talking about women in their 40s and 50s you know often those women who are in surgical or medical menopause those women in premature menopause those women can be in their 20s and 50s you know often those women who are in surgical or medical menopause those women in premature menopause those women can be in their 20s and 30s continued HR stocks are absolutely

vital not just for their symptoms but also for their long-term health. Thank you Diane. Diane feels pretty passionately about this as you might gather and I'm sure she's not alone. She's the founder of the Menopause Support Campaign. Over to you then. Can you get hold of the HRT that you need? Have you been forced to change? What was that like? Or are you going through the menopause and you've never been on HRT and you've no desire to take it either?

At BBC Women's Hour on Twitter and Instagram, or you can email the programme via our website. Now, Frankie Bridge is here, one fifth of the Saturdays, a very successful Strictly contestant, Frankie. I was really impressed by you there. And now a digital influencer and also a mind ambassador. We'll talk about that in a moment. You actually say you just want to stick your head in the sand about the menopause. Yeah, sorry. You don't want to know about that yet. Well, let me tell you, it'll come. So your book is called Open and it's a mixture of your own personal story and some

really good practical advice from a psychiatrist and a psychologist as well. First of all, you have been incredibly honest about your own mental health. As a little girl, what were you like then? I was such an anxious child. I often say I came out of the womb anxious. It just is. It's just always been ingrained in me. Because I think a lot of people assume that, you know, being in a pop group from the age of 12 and being in the public eye for such a long time that that was the cause. And it just wasn't. It's just a part of who I am unfortunately and of course the obvious question is well why on earth with those sorts of that sort of mindset why would you pursue a career in the most glaring of spotlights put yourself through that hell but

you would say actually the world of show business is full of people I think so yeah it's often a question I genuinely ask myself like why would I put myself up to scrutiny and you know but I think so yeah it's often a question I genuinely ask myself like why would I put myself up to scrutiny and you know but I think when you're young you don't you don't realize that side of it and you have to remember when I started out there was no social media um there was no online um you know newspapers that write about you constantly and so I had no idea what people thought of me or my band at the time but yeah I do think a lot of our industry is full of people like me I don't know if it's the need for recognition or or you know the the high you get from going on stage and that acceptance I don't know but um yeah it's an odd one one of the strangest parts of the book for me was the fact

that at one point you were you were really very very poorly indeed you effectively were starting to have a breakdown yeah and the deal was that you would finish doing a video and then you would be admitted to a psychiatric hospital yeah what on earth was that like um it was weird because i think by that point i i no longer felt in control of my own body and mind. And I'd got to the point where I felt like I didn't want to be here anymore. And that's quite scary. So I think for me, although I was terrified of going into a psychiatric hospital, it was a massive relief because I was almost handing over the responsibility of myself to someone else.

And doing the video, luckily for me, it was quite a moody video, so I didn't have to pretend to be happy the whole way through it. But it was like, OK, I can get this last thing done. I'd spent years of, you know, covering up my mental health so I could do it for this last two days and then everything was going to hopefully get better when I got back. What is that level of exhaustion like when you are masking day in, day out, how you really feel? It's unbelievable.

When I look back now, just the amount of things you can be thinking in your brain and just masking. So I could be having this conversation with you and be thinking, oh, she thinks I'm stupid or she thinks I'm a bad person or she probably thinks I'm ugly and but I can be having the conversation I'm having with you but still thinking all these thoughts and it it's draining well it's more than draining isn't it yeah I think lots of people have misconceptions about psychiatric hospitals would worry you know would cart back to one flew over the cuckoo's nest and other asylum images that were fed in horror films and all that kind of thing and it's still all out there yeah all those ideas what what was it like for you um it was it was not like that at all and obviously that was the only thing that i had to compare it to as well

so i was nervous but actually for, it was quite a nice experience. It was a really clean, it felt like a really safe place. And it was just a relief to be somewhere where you didn't have to hide who you were and what you were feeling anymore. And medication was spoken about really openly, your feelings, what you were going through. And the people in there were great. Yeah, for me it's one of those things, like I still think of it weirdly in quite a positive way. That's not weird because it helped you.

Yeah, it was a comfortable place to be and I hadn't felt comfortable for a really long time. What about the rest of the girls in the band? Were they aware of how you really felt about things? Not really. I think they were aware of that I had anxiety. But it wasn't really until I went into hospital. And I think that must have been quite a shock for them. But then also, when I came out of hospital, they saw me have my first panic attack. And I think that was quite scary for them because they'd never seen

that in person. What did they make of it? I think they were just quite frightened and quite worried about me but they were great because they had to hold down the fort you know if I was in hospital for a month obviously people were asking a lot of questions they had to alter all the performances and stuff so they dealt with it really well which also at the time I was quite gutted about. So I was like, oh, they can carry on without me. But obviously now, you know, it was great. But yeah, I think it was a big learning curve for everyone. But it was straight out of hospital and onto children in need.

Yeah. And that's the bit that for those of us who are civilians. It's just a horrendous juxtaposition of life events. I just could not do it. and obviously what comes with a lot of depression and anxiety is always this sense of guilt and not wanting to let people down and that was a really big performance for the Saturdays and it was live on Children in Need, it was our new single so I really didn't want to miss it but it was weird going back into a situation where the madness of being in the dressing room

with all the people and everything I did have a panic attack before I went on to do that performance. And when I watch that back, I just see a really sad, lost girl who's very thin. But I was standing there in my sparkly gown and faking it all the way. Yes. The book is very clear that, and you are very honest about this, you had resources. There were people around you who could help you financially and allow you to have the best possible professional help. We seem to have reached a situation in this country now where, thanks to people like you who are prepared to be honest about their own mental health struggles, we're now able to acknowledge that this stuff is real and happens to hundreds of thousands of people every year, but not everyone can get your help.

No, and I mention it in the book because I wanted to be honest about that. I didn't want to act like I jumped through all the same loops as everyone else. But I have friends and family that are on waiting lists for therapists and psychiatrists and it's like six months waiting list and it's not good enough really because so much can happen in that time. And when you're feeling suicidal and you can't wait that. But people now, as you say, we have got to the point where people are talking about it and they are now reaching out for help. But when they reach out for help, they're not getting what they need. Yeah, which is really troubling. I know. And your husband, Wayne, he's a footballer.

Yeah. And now you've got two boys. And I don't imagine for one minute that life has got much easier in some ways well lord knows i mean children are a challenge aren't they oh yeah um i was gonna say footballer husbands are probably a challenge yeah well he's retired now so that's great um so he's at home um all the time which comes with its own challenges um but no with the kids um luckily for me with my first son so he's six now I've only had one panic attack since he was born which is amazing for me because I think they've made me realize I think a lot of my anxiety comes down to control and with kids you just realize you have none for one reason or

another you know they're going to get hurt people are going to be mean to them and you can, you know, help them and guide them as much as possible, but you can't control everything. And they also make you notice the small things in life. You know, they're naive, they don't know all the rubbish stuff yet and they enjoy the smallest things and I think that's really helped me. So are you, this is a dark question in some ways, but it is important, are you OK? I'm OK today, but I may not be okay tomorrow and that's kind of how I live my life now and that was a big part of my book is I'm not I didn't end it with I'm fixed now and you can be like me and everything can be amazing and um every day for me I have to manage my mental health. I'm on medication. I go to therapy still if I need it. And I know the things now that might trigger me, but I also know how to help myself. I know now I have to kind of lean into my feelings. If I'm feeling down, I just have to accept it, voice it to someone and kind of give into it because I think the more what we get into a

habit of is pushing feelings down and batting them away and you don't deal with them then and then they're only going to manifest in a worse way further down the line well I'm really glad that you were okay today and able to come in because I think a lot of people will have really learned from what you've said and the book is called open and I think it's probably I mean I'm you know I would recommend it because I've read it myself, but for young women in particular, there's some sound advice in there. I hope so. Yeah, no, there is. Thank you very much, Frankie. Thank you.

Take care of yourself. That's Frankie Bridge and her book is called Open. And it's not unconnected. On Monday's programme, we're discussing loneliness. Now, I mean, I've often said before that something or other is the last taboo. I don't think it's unfair to say that loneliness is still a taboo. It's quite hard to say, help me, I'm lonely now, not in the past, but right now. And on Monday, I'm already, in the interest of transparency, recorded some interviews with women who were prepared to tell me about their loneliness. And they are on Women's Hour on Monday. And we'll also have a wider discussion around that subject on the programme. So if that's something you can relate to, please make a handful of other women from all over the world. And at that conference, they came up with the first four demands of women's liberation. Equal pay, equal education and job opportunities, free contraception and abortion on demand, and free 24-hour nurseries. Well, that anniversary was marked last weekend by another conference.

This one was at University College London. It was organised by the pressure group Women's Place UK. We'll talk in a second to two women who were there. But first of all, I want you to listen to some recorded highlights of that conference. Here are some of the women who gathered at the conference and talked to our reporter. Here we go. Well, I've been coming to Women's Place UK meetings since I went to one in Reading because I heard about these meetings about women's rights which were being shut down by bomb threats and things and I wondered what could be so controversial. So that was how that started in a steakhouse in Reading because no one else was prepared to host it, which was shocking to me in itself. Because I'm very interested in quite a lot of the issues they're raising, like how to measure to take to reduce violence against women and girls,

and a whole lot of other things about the particular position of women in faith communities faced with self-ID and things like that. Well, I came here on the suggestion of a friend who said she was coming. I really didn't do my homework, but I'm absolutely fascinated by what I'm learning. I'm a lifelong feminist, but I didn't know that there were so many battles still left to fight. And I feel like I'm being given the opportunity to take some tools back to where I live and really start to put them into action. The track I'm following at the moment is the idea around women being included in policy making

and women's experiences being included in policy making. And that seems to be absolutely core to the issue here which is being raised about how we are counted, which means how are we identified, using the word sex rather than the word gender to identify us and then counting us properly so that we can actually check whether policy is applied in a way that actually is fruitful for everybody and not just just one group of people my expertise is IT so I would love to know more about about how we could get more women into IT, especially girls. I'm a lesbian. I'm really concerned about what's happening to lesbian visibility. I was just talking with a group of women next to me about saying I'm a lesbian

is seen to be quite problematic and has been for a little while now. I'm in my 50s and when I was coming out as a young teen I had lots of women-owned spaces. Speaking about being a lesbian was really seen as positive and those spaces just aren't around now. They don't exist in the same yn ystod y lleoliadau, a siarad am fod yn lesbig yn cael ei weld fel yn ddewisol. Ac nid yw'r lleoliadau hynny'n gweithio nawr. Nid yw'r lleoliadau hynny'n bodoli yn yr un ffordd. Ac rwy'n credu ein bod wedi colli rhywbeth i hynny. Rwy'n credu ein bod wedi colli rhan o'r debat ddynol rhaid i ni ei gael. Mae wedi bod yn bwysig iawn. Fe wnes i ymwneud â'r ffeminizm sy'n cael ei re-energizu drwy'r Instiwm i Gweddwch Feminist sy'n cael ei ddechrau gan Jane Clare Jones.

Fe wnes i wybod ysgrifennu Jane drwy Mumsnet, sydd â bwrdd ffeminist. Nid oeddwn i ar Mumsnet when my daughter was small. She's now nearly 30, so Mumsnet kind of passed me by. But I became aware of Mumsnet as a somewhat controversial organisation or forum that had become this hotbed of somehow bigotry and intolerance. So I was kind of interested to find out how that had happened and I just kind of started lurking, ei alw ar Mwnsnet, yn edrych ar ffyrdd gwahanol. Rwy'n dal i fyny.

Rwy'n cael fy nghyflawni ac yn dweud rhywbeth. Ac rwy'n dod o hyd i rywbeth newydd bob amser rwy'n mynd yno, bob amser rwy'n darllen ffyrdd. Byddaf yn mynd yn ôl i'r tŷ a byddai'n ymwneud â fy mab. Mae hi'n dod i'r oedol i gyd lle mae hi'n meddwl am gael teulu. Mae hi'n gweithio mewn amgylchedd sy'n arwain ar fferm. Felly, rwy'n credu bod hi'n dechrau dod o hyd i hynny. Ac gallwn ni sgwrsio amdano yn fwy cyffredin na chyfnod o flynyddoedd yn ôl. Rwy'n credu ei fod yn wych gweld llawer o dynion llawer hwynau. Roedd yna lawer o dynion ifanc y tu allan yn sgwyddo pan oedden ni'n dod i mewn

ac roeddai'n fwy naillai cael nhw'n eu gweld yn y adeilad a'u gwrando ar y sgwyddoion yn hytrach na'r slogain. Felly rwy'n credu bod hynny'n ddisgyblhau. rather than shouting slogans. So I think that's disappointing. My name is Leila Hussain. I'm one of the women who have been leading the anti-FGM campaign here in the UK, working with women who have experienced violence and discrimination in my clinic. I'm here today, one, I'm a big advocate of safe spaces, and two, I'm in a position where, as a woman, I don't want to keep apologising for wanting a safe space for me and the women who I work with.

And I will not apologise for protecting those women. So I think that's really one of the reasons I'm here today. I'm Hoda Ali. I'm a nurse. I've been doing a lot of work, violence against women and girls, especially FGM over the last 15 years and right now as an educator in primary schools and safeguarding including FGM so we actually go in the classrooms teaching children how to save themselves. I'm here today because anything that says women is empowering you know I'm here today because my sisters. But it's always good as well to have women around you who can take you out of your busy day to come and be part of what we are women doing. But I think for me, one thing is

I have a little bit concern of being here today. Never been here before, of course. But if we are saying it's a women conference, where are the black and the Asian women where are they spoken the spokes piece of people for that why don't I have black or Asian women on the platform today so it's a little bit of concern for me just to think but I'm still happy that there's over nearly thousand women who are talking and fighting for the same thing which which is, as a woman, just to survive and breathe on this earth. As great as this space actually is, but why don't we usually come to these spaces?

Because we're usually the only ten black women out of 900. And I think it's important we do voice that. And it's because we black women sometimes don't feel safe in these spaces. I just want when we create such spaces to be mindful of that and it's important that organisers are also mindful because we are still like a little group. I'm Louise Robertson and I work with Leila on violence against women and that makes me really mindful of the need for safe spaces for women and protecting safe spaces and women-only spaces. That was why I wanted to come today.

I've been to a previous Women's Place UK meeting on sports, which they held in London earlier in the year, and I found it to be really empowering and useful. But I did have concerns about it being a predominantly white, middle-class space. And I think they're trying to reach out but there's still obviously work to do which is why I was really keen to reach out to Leila and Hoda and other people and I think each of us has to take some responsibility for doing that. The organisers need to do more but we need to do more as well.

That's just an idea then of some of the women who went to that Women's Liberation Conference last weekend. Also there, Professor Sophie Scott, Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. Good to see you, Sophie. And in Ireland this morning, Helen Joyce, who's writing a book on gender identity issues. She's on a sabbatical from her day job as the editor of the Economists, Economics and Finance section. Helen, good morning to you too. Good morning. Let's start then with the point raised by several of the women we heard from there,

that this was an overwhelmingly white event, Sophie. What would you say about that? Well, I think the organisers recognised, you know, you're starting from a university. We try, but we are not the most diverse. There's lots of different faces along which we could improve diversity. But we had Pragna Patel, one of the first speakers, who gave an amazing speech. We try, but we are not the most diverse. There's lots of different faces along which we could improve diversity. But we had Pragna Patel, one of the first speakers, who gave an amazing speech.

And she was one of the founders of Southall Black Women. And she did an amazing speech. And she took a very global perspective. What did she talk about? She was talking about women around the world and how we've made some strides in some pockets in some countries, and then there is so much more to do and different kinds of inequalities. And the fact that you're always dealing with an intersexual situation, you know, it's important to think about women,

but that is by no means the only way in which people suffer and have limitations put on their lives. So we can definitely do more. I think the amazing thing was part of the problem was the thing sold out so quickly. I don't think anybody anticipated we were going to get, you know, we will sell out so fast. We could have filled a room three times the size. And I think, you know, thinking about how you could be marketing it, how you bring other people into the audience is a big part of that. But that it happened at all and that it was completely full of women was already extraordinary.

Can we talk about age? Helen, what was the average age of the person who attended that event? Well, it was overwhelmingly, say, 30s, 40s, 50s, I would say, but there were some younger women, some of whom really didn't want to say their names because they felt that they would, they were scared. You know, so younger women have very much taken the narrative that Women's Place UK is a hate a hate organization you know it gets called an anti-trans organization where it's just pro-women there were some protesters i think outside i mean let's be clear about this not a huge number no no they were very sweet actually there were about 20 good points they didn't like the terms they said sister is wrong and i was like yes you're right that's yeah they had they had very funny banners and they provided a lovely backdrop for our photographs.

And it was sort of, it's added to the jollity of the day, actually, I think. And, you know, absolutely fair play to UCL for hosting this event, for being able to advertise it in advance. Because mostly when women meet to talk about their rights these days in Britain, we have to say, not say where it is. So the venue doesn't get barracked. We can't just let that one go so 50 years since the first women's liberation conference in 21st century britain you're praising a university for allowing this event on their premises doesn't doesn't that tell you where we are that's why i'm writing about this topic it really is you know i actually i burst into tears when i hugged the

representative from ucl uh brad blitz his name is, after the first event, I actually cried because I was so proud of UCL. I was at UCL 92 to 95 doing my PhD. And I have been at other events. So, for example, the launch of the D-Trans Advocacy Network in Manchester, a group of women who transitioned, took testosterone and so on, very badly damaged by the medical profession. And they are not able to say where they're going to be meeting for fear of protests until a couple of hours beforehand. So here we were, UCL took it on the chin. It ignored the open letter saying this is going to damage your reputation, damage your reputation, letting women speak 50 years after

women's lib. I mean, for crying out loud. Sophie? Well, I was hugely proud. I mean, UCL has always stood up for properly robust academic debate. You are, you know, Jeremy Bentham's principles included this idea that we would not be sort of policing thought. Academics at UCL really are encouraged to have interesting views and pursue interesting courses of research. And you're very rarely told don't do that. And it flourishes in that environment. So if there was a university in the UK that I would want to see saying, we will let women talk, and there is a debate to be had, we will not have that debate if we shut women up. So it was wonderful for it to take this position.

Lesbian visibility, which was something else mentioned there. What about that? Well, it's a strange place to find yourself in. When I think back to when I was doing my PhD at UCL 30 years ago, to think that 30 years later it would be harder for a member of staff to describe himself as lesbian than it was in the 90s seems extraordinary. Is that true? That an academic couldn't own their own lesbian status? Well, I'm sure they can absolutely own their lesbian status, but at the moment, right now, you are likely to attract some grief for it. So the women who are overwhelmingly getting attacked in academia for standing up for women's rights and for discussing women's rights are gay

women. And it doesn't seem random to me. What do you think, Helen? It's absolutely true. I mean, I should say I'm straight myself, but I've met so many lesbian women through writing this book and working, and they are really under attack. I mean, there's an extraordinary mixture here of misogyny and homophobia. And so these women, I would say that, you know, bad things that happen to women often happen to lesbians first, because they're the women who assert their right to be same-sex attracted, assert their right to organise their lives around intimate relationships with other women and not with men. And there's a large class of men who've never much liked that. There was a brief period when

they couldn't really say it. But now, of course, you can shout things like TERF and bigot and transphobe and so on at those women. And what fun that appears to be for a certain group of men. Do you think, though, honestly, that minds can be changed, either of you, when the attendees at events like this are a particular sort of individual. Sophie? Oh, yes, yes, yes. I think it can. I think when we say a particular sort of individual, what we mean is women who are older.

I'm talking about myself, I suppose. When someone mentioned Mumsnet earlier, the grief that gets thrown at Mumsnet and the ease with which, oh, it's a load of women, shut up, wind your necks in women. And it's awful that we would take a group of people and say, well, none of them count because they're the wrong age. And they can't they just shut up and they keep complaining about things that happen to them because they're more likely to die in hospital because they don't give them give them pain supply in hospital the same way men are. And somehow it's wrong of us to complain about this or even just raise it as an issue and say this is a sexed issue,

this is something that happens to us because we're women. And I think discounting it by saying, well, you know, do you know what, they were mostly middle class, they were mostly white, and they were, but they were not only middle class, they were not only white, there were more trans women in that meeting than there were outside demonstrating, which is some. So I think it's easy

to discount it because it's women because exactly like helen says that if you want to ding on a group of people ding on women because everyone will enjoy joining in even other women so i think we have to be very careful before we say something was wrong in that room right and i just want to pick you up helen i mean on sophie's last point sometimes it's other women who are giving women a hard time we can't i mean it's one of my endless frustrations it's so annoying so i said i said that there was i said that there was misogyny and homophobia mixed in here there's also ageism i really don't see what's wrong with saying that women who have had some time in this world who've gone through the experiences that it takes women some adulthood to experience having children being discriminated against at work being talked

over being discounted because they're no longer attractive, that sort of thing. You know, those women have had experiences that younger women have not. And I think a lot of younger women are also afraid. They may not admit it to themselves, but they're afraid of turning into that unattractive old witch who gets talked over. So that's one reason I think that younger women are outside and older women were inside. That said, whenever I talk to people about this issue, I used to because I was afraid. I was afraid that they'd, you know, spit at me or something. Now when I do, when I just say to people, you know, I'm very concerned about the teenage kids who are being told that they're in the wrong body. I have not had somebody not agree with me yet.

Even people I would have thought wouldn't. I'm forever getting emails from people saying, I don't dare say so, but I completely agree with you. So yes, we can change hearts and minds. People don't understand what's happening. They think it's just meanness. They think it's just bigotry. And then you say to them, do you know that there are male rapists in women's prisons? Do you know that men can identify onto women's sports teams? And they go, no, you're kidding. That can't be right. Sophie, you are presumably speaking to young women all the time in your work. Yes. And I think that's the important part where we can start changing minds. It is through having conversations.

Get it off social media. Social media is great for some things, but it is useless for nuance and detail and actually having a proper conversation with somebody where you can share views. So that's where I'm pursuing it. More and more, it's deeds, not words for me. We go out and we talk to people, and that's where we can start having a proper conversation and address the stuff around these areas that we need to address. So will there be another conference like last Saturday's,

somewhere outside London for a start? Well, the Women's Place are very keen on organising things all over the UK, and whenever people let them, they tend to have very interesting meetings. So hopefully this will continue. OK, and we won't have to give special credit to the venue plucky enough to host it Oh let's keep giving credit Okay alright, yeah let's. Helen

thank you, I appreciate, Helen was in Ireland, is in Ireland so it was slightly difficult for her to get involved but thank you very much I hope she feels that she got a fair crack of the whip there and Sophie thank you very much to you as well In coming weeks we're going to go back to the themes of sex and gender and we will look at all sides of that debate

and you can get involved it's not social, well I am, yes I was about to say it is social media, I would like you to tweet about this if you want to contact us this morning but the Woman's Hour social media feed is a lot more refined and far more sensible ish than most others. At BBC Woman's Hour

on Twitter and Instagram. Every single day a man tweets to ask why there has to be BBC Women's Hour on Twitter and Instagram. Every single day a man tweets to ask why there has to be a Women's Hour. Every single day, Sophie. When is that going to stop? Do you know what? I think probably it's not. And that's probably why you need to have a Women's Hour. Thank you, Sophie.

You. That's kind of my thinking as well. Thank you very much. Now, The Gift is a play I mentioned at the start of the programme, inspired by a story I hadn't heard of a woman called Sarah Forbes Bonetta. Her real name was Amoba Eina and she was born in 1843. And she was a Yoruba princess taken into slavery, released to the lieutenant commander of the HMS Bonetta, hence her name, and then offered as a gift to Queen Victoria.

Now this play, The Gift, is set in both 1862 and the present day. It's written by Janice Oko. Janice, welcome to the programme. And also here, Dawn Walton, who's the director and founder of the Eclipse Theatre Company. You directed this play, didn't you? I did.

And you actually founded Eclipse. I did. Alright, we're going to hear a short clip from the play. Here we go. How do you have your tea? As the hostess, you must be the heartbeat of the conversation. You mustn't ever let it go flat because it's your responsibility entirely as to whether it will be a failure or a success.

And there will be talk of the unkind variety, if the former. Remember, if there is a guest who begins to lead, which is clearly an indication of ill-breeding, you should allow him or her to have their way. But you must regain your position as hostess at the very next opportunity. How do you have your tea, Mrs. Davis? Your Majesty, do you think Africans can be more? More than what? More than what you say we can be.

One can only be what one is capable of being. No more, no less. Now, in the early part of that clip, Sarah was teaching her servant Aggie how to serve tea. It's the first scene in the play, isn't it, Janice? And it is quite comic in some ways, but also quite unsettling. Was that your intention? Well, I think it's interesting because you see two black women

and you're not sure who they are. So I think that's unsettling. You normally think they're servants. That's right. I couldn't work out what was going on here. Anyway, sorry, carry on. Yes, and then from then you get to see who Sarah really is and the relationships. So yeah, I thought it was, yeah,

I think it's very intriguing and keeps the audience, you know, guessing. Yeah. Now, Dawn, you directed this play and you founded the Eclipse Theatre Company because stories were missing. British theatre just wasn't presenting the stories of our population properly. was really about taking on the single narrative that was being shared in theatre for black stories. There was a kind of a narrative which essentially said you were slaves and then there was this lovely chap called Wilberforce,

stopped it all, we disappeared off Britain's landscape, we arrived back on a ship called Windrush and now all our grandchildren are gangsters. And that's kind of the narrative and it was very frustrating. That conversation was bubbling massively amongst black artists. And the second thing that happens, I think, as well in the sort of British narrative, black British narrative, is that the idea that black stories come from somewhere else.

They don't happen here. They're not our own. They're not our stories. So they would invariably come from, you know, a sophisticated, you know, narrative on race. You'd have to go to America for that story. And of course it's wrong. And then the third thing is we don't know our own history

because so much of our own British history has been erasured. So that's part of the reason why people kind of lose their minds when somebody of color is in a costume drama yeah because the belief is we didn't exist then and i confess that's what i was confused about at the beginning and i should know better but you're part of the attempt to teach me better um janice how easy was it or not to find out about sarah who's at the heart of this story? Yeah, it was difficult because where did I start my research? I had Queen Victoria's Diaries, but there were only a few bits in there. She had some letters, which was really good.

So she'd written letters to Mrs Phipps, people in her world. So you could paint that world. There was one book that was written that was based on her letters, her correspondence. And there was also press, actually, because they were really famous. She was really, really famous, like as famous as the Royal Family.

So there was lots of stuff about her. This is what I'm interested in. Was she used in a way, or was she sort of trotted out to illustrate the benevolence of queen victoria what was going on um i from the press i didn't see it like that i think she was just you know a famous person um yeah i didn't get that from from my research but um it was interesting with regards to the American Civil War.

They did use her to show that black people could be more than just slaves. So, you know, so she was famous like that. And was she really taught to be a so-called proper English lady and tutored to be? Because she was royalty anyway. She was upper, upper class. Whether she was taught that was how she was raised. So, you know,

yes, she was proper upper class. She has to be. She was in those circles from her correspondence, from the way people treated her. I think it's fascinating. And there was a thing, I mean, if you read the press cuttings,

they do say, like, oh, it's nice to see black, she had black bridesmaids and white bridesmaids at her wedding and it was nice to see them mixing. It was really eye-opening how they felt about race back then. Yeah, yeah. The second part of the play is, that was when every part of me was cringing um because this is a meeting it's it's in the present day and it's kind of social commentary really isn't

it on on the ineptitude of some people white people to acknowledge what's really going on and what they really think did you have fun writing that because i didn't have much fun watching it i was i was um no go on I so much fun I love the characters I mean I was laughing all the time when I was writing it and so when people say they feel uncomfortable like why you know well I was meant to feel uncomfortable wasn't I I guess I don't I just I wrote what I saw that's it and and wrote it in a funny way I wasn't actually thinking how you know people would feel by that so it was interesting when I got the response that people feel uncomfortable. Quick word from you Dawn.

Yeah I think it's uncomfortable to see I mean that that that play that part of the play is about microaggressions and most people don't read those microaggressions that's our daily as a black women we we read that all the time we We see that behaviour all the time. And my challenge was to kind of raise, you know, raise my game to Janice's writing, to put something like microaggressions, which work on the sort of, by its very nature, underground, up onto the surface. And that's what's uncomfortable about it, because people are being lovely. And there's a particularly brilliantly British thing about that act. The whole play is British and we're lovely and we're beautiful and we're lovely people. And we drink tea.

And we drink tea. And there's this, but underneath it all, that's what's going on. So putting that on the surface is an uncomfortable experience, but also hilarious. Janice Oko and Dawn Walton talking about the play The Gift which is currently on at a theatre in Stratford in East London but it's going all over the country if you live in Bury St Edmunds for example, Oxford, Southampton you'll be able to get a chance to see that as well and Sophia on Twitter says I hope to be well enough soon to see The Gift, well I hope you do get better Sophia,. Microaggressions,

she says, are part of everyday life for black women in the UK. Well, get well soon, Sophia, and I hope you do get the chance to get to the theatre. To your views on our conversation about HRT. This is from Kim. I'm really glad you're discussing

this. I've had to change from Eleste Duet Conti tablets, as these are unavailable. I'm really glad you're discussing this. I've had to change from Elest Duet Conti tablets as these are unavailable. I've changed to Kilofem but my breasts are really sore and I'm just not enjoying these HRT tablets. That's Kim just drawing our attention to the fact that changing

medication can be slightly troublesome, to put it mildly. Joanne says, thanks for talking about this. I've been on the patch form of HRT for several years and my supply ran out in December. I haven't been able to get a further prescription. My GP has informed me they're unable to prescribe any patch HRT at the moment as it's unavailable. This is one of the safest ways of having it and I'm therefore reluctant to move to another form of it despite the fact that I haven't been able to sleep since coming off the medication because of my flushes and I've also got aches

and pains and I generally feel pretty low. I've stopped drinking alcohol, coffee and so on and I've got a healthy diet and I exercise regularly but I feel very strongly this is something that should be quite easy to sort out and I can't understand why these products are not available. Well, you're right, Joanne. Nobody seems to be able to offer a proper explanation as to why this undoubted UK shortage is happening. But we are told things should get easier sometime this month. That's the view, certainly, of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. But we're relying on you, our audience, to keep us informed.

And it's also, if you are going to email on this subject, actually, maybe a good idea to tell us whereabouts in the country you are, because I think that might be significant as well. Lisa says, every couple of weeks I'm scrambling around for more oestrogen patches. I'm ill at the moment, and I'm

considering driving 160 miles in total to get my patches in another county. So there you go. That's significant, obviously. Kath says, I'm 56. I'm on my way to hospital this afternoon to see a gynaecologist about my symptoms. I've been on six different HRTs since the January of 2019 and I bleed really badly. I had a small investigation last Friday to see if it was all OK and I've got a polyp being removed tomorrow. They took my successful HRT off the market and they're not bringing it back until 2021. The symptoms of the menopause are utterly debilitating. Once again, I'm thinking I'll try anything to stop the sweats

and the feet pains and the mind fog and everything else. Kath, my sympathies to you. What I've learned, if I've learned anything about the menopause, and I'm obviously going through it myself, is that every single woman seems to be slightly different. There are no constants. Everyone has got a different set of symptoms. And yes, it's true. Some people have appeared to have no symptoms at all. Claire says, I was widowed in

December 2018 and I've got two teenage kids and I suffer really badly from menopause symptoms. I can't believe the way this subject has not only been ignored, but is sometimes thought of as a bit of a joke. My doctor has only just woken up to this problem. I was offered sleeping tablets and antidepressants to help me sleep. I have recently bought some Everil Conti online because I am desperate. Men don't understand, but more annoyingly, nor do some women who say they've breezed through it. I hope your programme will help people, especially doctors, take this more seriously. Thank you, Claire. And I'm so sorry you're having such a tough time.

An earlier listener did mention not drinking and that was Joanne, in fact. And I've got to say, I don't think alcohol helps. I mean, I'm clearly not a doctor, but I am a menopausal woman. I'm not more than one woman. I'm only one woman. And I would say, actually, that in my experience, and this is my personal experience, alcohol isn't great at all. And I've learned just not to bother drinking at the moment. Fiona says, it seems like a trite comment,

but if this sort of issue arose in relation to a product used by a million men I cannot help thinking it would get sorted quickly. I slammed into menopause at 44 as a result of chemo for breast cancer. Because of the link between breast cancer and HRT I have never felt able to take it and I still suffer all sorts of menopausal symptoms eight years on. In fact, my cancer wasn't sensitive to oestrogen or progesterone, but there seems to be no information out there for people like me about whether any kind of HRT is safe. Could that be something for your programme to cover in the future? Well, we'll do our best.

Good point, Fiona. Thank you very much. Tomorrow, the Weekend Woman's Hour edition will pack in all the highlights of the week. That is two minutes past four tomorrow afternoon. Or, of course, the podcast will be available too. And then we're back Monday morning live on the radio, two minutes past ten, with a focus on Monday on loneliness. If that is something you're currently going through, I hope you're able to join the programme live and possibly get involved or get the podcast later.

You can always send us an email via the website. If you're listening to some other podcasts, then stop now and listen to a good one because The Infinite Monkey Cage is back for a new series and we're doing loads of things, aren't we, Robin? We're going to be dealing with the science of laughter, conspiracy theories, coral reefs, quantum worlds

and finally UFOs. I love UFOs. It's also, by the way, the UFO one available to watch on iPlayer. In fact, all of the series that we've done are available on BBC Sounds. I must say that I wouldn't bother with the first series. I don't think it's very good. I wouldn't bother with the first two. Yeah. But we were played by different people

then, I think, weren't we? Yeah. Melvin Bragg was you. And, um... You were Debbie McGee. Debbie McGee. Bragg and McGee. Now that is a 1980s TV detective series that I will be making. 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.