Woman's Hour - Girls State, Author Holly Gramazio, First female prime minister of the DRC

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

In the run-up to local elections in England and Wales, the Local Government Alliance have called for the law to change around publicising local councillors' home addresses. This is after some councillors are warning that a recent upsurge of abuse and threats is forcing large numbers of women to quit their roles in local government. Emma Barnett speaks to viral lockdown star Jackie Weaver about being a woman in local government. Judith Suminwa Tuluka has been appointed the first ever female prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A former planning minister, she’s relatively unknown – so what does this mean for the DRC, and the women who live there? Emma finds out more about the new prime minister with BBC Monitoring’s Beverley Ochieng and the co-founder of a DRC NGO, Anny Modi.How did 77 women from the same Cambridge college end up working at Bletchley Park during the war? Dr Sally Waugh, an alumna of women-only Newnham College, has uncovered a previously unknown contingent of female codebreakers and other staff who were recruited to conduct top secret work as undergraduates. Emma speaks to her to find out more.A new documentary film, Girls State, spotlights the girls hoping they will become the first female President of the United States. It follows a real-life mock government programme attended by teenage girls in Missouri. The American Legion, who run the programmes, hold separate programmes for boys and girls in all fifty states in the US. Emma is joined by the film-maker Amanda McBain and Emily Worthmore, one of the girls who stands for Governor, the highest position in the mock government.Games writer and author Holly Gramazio’s debut novel explores a world where an endless supply of husbands emerges from the attic. But when you can change husbands as easily as a lightbulb, how do you know when to stick with the one you’ve got? Holly joins Emma, live in the Woman’s Hour studio. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lottie Garton

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. There's a bit of an unwitting theme on today's Woman's Hour. Sometimes that just happens here. Today I would describe it as firsts for women, ambition, leadership and politics. Today we will bring you a sobering update on local elections and the experiences of some female councillors in this country. Leaving these shores, we will share news and insights

about the very first woman to become the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, of the DRC. That's Judith Sominwa Tulaka. We'll be hearing about her and what we know of her. We're also going to hear from a young woman, Emily Worthmore, who states that her ambition is to become the President of the United States. Should she or any of her teen female cohorts on a mock government programme that's now the subject of a new Apple TV documentary achieve their stated dream, they too would be the first women to lead their country. But Emily also states that in addition to being president,

she wants to be a rock star and a broadcast journalist. Well, I can get on board with the last one. But that she could crucially, she believes she could do all three. So keeping with the idea of ambition and whatever yours might have been, what they still are, what you still dream of becoming, perhaps you're doing some of it now, or perhaps it is wildly different to what you thought you might do with your life, whether it was rock star, leader, I don't know, crafter, lawyer, doctor, creator of some description, whatever that might have been. Or maybe it was to have children, maybe it was more

on the familial front, maybe it was to help your local community, whatever that looks like to you. Have you done it? Are you doing it? How has it changed from when you were at a different point in your life? Perhaps when thinking about being Emily's stage and age, Emily, this programme that we're going to hear a bit more, this film is 19 at the moment. What was it like when you were at that point? Have you done it? Are you doing it? How has it changed? You can text the programme here, 84844.

Text will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour. You can email me through the Women's Hour website or send a WhatsApp message or voice note on 03700 100 444. So those are the numbers that you need. We're also on the programme going to be hearing from a debut novelist about husbands coming out of the attic. More of that very shortly.

Actually, or not, depending on how you view sliding doors moments in your life, which may also feed into our conversations about ambition. And there's some new information about the highly secretive female codebreakers at Bletchley Park during the war. So all that to come and more. Hoping to bring you some information on the local elections and some potential law changes around what information is disclosed. But I just mentioned husbands coming out of the attic. You you may think what are you on about Emma you may think that quite regularly if you listen to women's and to our daily conversations with me but I do have an answer or maybe maybe I do let's see what you think of this

have you ever played the what if game the what if you'd never met your best friend on that day that you did what if you'd missed the bus to your job interview and ended up working somewhere else? What if you'd never met your other half? Those sliding door moments are a big part of the debut novel of Holly Gramazio, The Husbands. It tells the story of Lauren who realises her attic is producing different versions of husbands each time a new one arrives. Her life changes a little bit too.

Who to stay with, how to make that decision, all some of the games and thoughts going through the mind of the protagonist. Holly Gramazio, good morning. Good morning. An interesting take on how to think about sliding doors moments. How did it come about? Well, I've always been very interested in this concept of different versions of your life quite nearby, the way that you could have caught this bus or gone to that party, and everything might have been quite different. And I think the idea of having husbands coming out of the attic as a way to make that real for the plot of the book, just came because I grew up in Australia, and we don't

really have attics there. And now you live here and you've decided to use it. I moved here. Everyone has these rooms where they say, oh, I don't really know what's up there. I haven't gone up there in a year. Oh, maybe there's some chairs. Maybe there's a Christmas tree.

Maybe there's grandma's old curtains. Not really sure. I mean, I don't have one, but, you know, lots of people won't as well, but they'll definitely know people who do. It definitely part of of housing structure in this country for lots of people. And I just encountered them as a kid in books where maybe they would be a magical attic that's a portal to another world in a book written in the UK or the US, or maybe in you know, a gothic novel where perhaps a wife would be trapped in an attic. But you are actually in the book saying different men come out of the attic, the husbands, in the way that I've described.

But is it sort of a metaphor, really, of different ways your life could go? Because I'm just trying to think if a man came on here and talked about wives, many, many wives coming out of the attic, it would sound perhaps not that great to our listeners in some ways. Yeah, it's very much a metaphor for thinking about different ways that your lives might have gone, particularly different people that you might have ended up with, but also relationships you might have with your neighbours, what your friends would be like, what your job would be like. And it's also a little bit of metaphor for, you know, the swiping of online dating, this carousel of faces that you're meant to look at and decide whether you're interested

and go, yes, no, yes, no. You are interested in gaming, aren't you? I am. You've got a bit of a background looking at that. And you've had good experiences, I believe, with community online around that. Tell us how that's fed into that. Oh, well, definitely my background in games fed into the novel a lot. I'm a game designer and a games writer for my job before I started writing a novel. And I think something that happens a lot when you're making a game is that you spend a lot of

time thinking about what people are going to do in the course of that game, what choices they're going to make, what they want to try out. And that definitely fed into the structure of the novel, thinking about when people reading the book would be wanting the main character to be trying out different things, but also how might she make those choices in that situation so so where you when you design a game um because i know you enjoy them in your personal sense but you've obviously got this professional link as well you do you draw it out how do you how do you design that it really depends on the game but for me often where i start is with a a moment or

an emotion that i want people to have or an interaction that I want to happen. I've designed sort of physical games for museums and festivals as well and maybe the image of a huge bunch of balloons going down at the end of a street that you see and know that you have to rush to get there can be the idea that sparks the game that kind of forms around that. What would the rules have to be? What would people have to be trying to do

in order to bring them that moment of emotion or interaction? Well, it's certainly a great premise and it's fascinating to link that experience of designing games to how you generate a plot in a novel and so some of those choices. Do you have a moment in your life where you think, if I'd done this, maybe this would have happened? Do you think about those sorts of things? Yeah, absolutely. There's a few, but I would say for me, the most significant one is in my late teens, when I went to a local secondhand bookshop in Adelaide, I was looking

for a particular poetry book, looked in the poetry section, couldn't find it. But I ended up picking this misfiled book that was a collection of essays on maths and games. And I thought, oh, that sounds interesting. I guess I'll buy that instead. Bought it, took it home, read it a couple of years later and found this discussion of a game called Gnomic in it where players vote to change the rules i thought oh that sounds neat i would say that found an online community a mailing list that were playing it and i got to know people through that that were the reason that i started designing games so my current job my husband most of my friends all of that leads back to this misfiled book in the O'Connell's books in Adelaide in, you know, 1998. Well, it's interesting because it links a bit to what I've

been asking our listeners already, and we're getting some messages this morning about what did they have as their thought for their life, you know, their ambition and where have they ended up and how have they got there? And I suppose what you're thinking about is those roads that perhaps you didn't take, as well as the ones that you did and where that comes from. I'm not sure. I don't know. Maybe people do think about this, if they trace it back or not. It's interesting to think what has led to that moment. I think most people don't have something that's quite so starkly obvious as this one book in the wrong position is why I do what I do, why I know the people I know. But it might well be that there is something like that for them. But it's just harder to

pinpoint that you can't necessarily go, oh, it was that bus I didn't catch in the same way that I can with the book. Do you gamify options in your life? Do you think I might do this, or I might do that, but that might lead to this, and I'm not sure sure I want to do that and then people have paralysis around decision making a lot of the time anyway but I wonder what it's like inside the mind of a games designer and now someone who's written a novel with some of those themes I am so terrible at making decisions which is part of why I wrote this book right to to explore being bad at making decisions and and what that feels like so I do all sorts of things. I'm a big spreadsheet maker. I do lots of spreadsheets.

And when I'm trying to... I don't like, I can't do spreadsheets, don't like them, but can make decisions. So you do this to help make decisions. I do, I do. I'll go, well, where should I live? I'm going to make 10, at least 10 different cities, do all of the different criteria that I care about.

Is work there? Are my friends there? What's the coffee like? All of this different criteria that I care about. Is work there? Are my friends there? What's the coffee like? All of this different stuff. And then I give them scores. What's the attic game like? Yeah. And then I'll be able to get a number that tells me where to live. But actually, because there are so many different things that I'm scoring, it's kind of a chance for my subconscious to worm in there and wait the things a little bit, right? But you must drive yourself mad a bit at times if you're trying to really,

I suppose, go through every element. Oh, absolutely. It's a terrible idea. Awful way to make decisions. Do not recommend it. Well, isn't there a school of thought, and I was reading about this only recently, that there's no such thing as wrong decisions. You've got to make the decisions you make right. And I think that's quite liberating if you can get on board with that. I think so. And the idea that if you're really torn between two decisions, that's probably because they're roughly equal in how good they are. Right.

When I was little, I was still very bad at making decisions. And occasionally my mum would take me to the ice cream shop for a special treat. And she has this story of the times that she would drag me out of the ice cream shop 10 minutes later in tears. Oh, no. Because I had been unable to decide whether I wanted raspberry or lemon. And so I ended up getting nothing just because I couldn't pick one of them. And they would both have been fine, right? It's not that important and it's not that difficult.

So I definitely think there's something to be said for if you're that important and it's not that difficult so I definitely think there's something to be said for if you're that torn by it they're probably both roughly equally okay and it's going to be okay yeah you just have to you just have to pick one you have to say the plunge then do what you can with it Holly before we our time together is over and your novel is called The Husbands there are many husbands or would-be husbands appearing in this woman's life, Lauren's life, your character's life. You mentioned a partner. Are they okay with the idea of many exes and men crawling out? We don't have an attic, so yeah, he's fine with it. A relief all round. You do need to get yourself an attic when you next make the spreadsheet, I think, after this book. Holly Gramanzi, the book's called The Husbands. Thank you.

Thank you. Messages coming in about ambitions, paths perhaps not travelled, paths gone down. My daughter, age six, asked if there was schools for bright children who love singing and music. She auditioned a year later, aged eight and three quarters. She left home to fulfil her ambition to be a

chorister, albeit four hours away from home. My goodness, she's on some amazing track there and seems to know her own mind better than perhaps any of us at the ages we're at. Yes, I've done it, I'll read here this message. I've always wanted to have a career in a family, didn't go entirely to plan, ended up as a single mum, but I am established as a credible, educated,

capable professional working to maximise people's potential within organisations. to plan, ended up as a single mum, but I am established as a credible, educated, capable, professional, working to maximise people's potential within organisations. Current job title, European Culture Director. I think I've got that right here. In a global business, says Alex. Hattie says, I always wanted to be a writer. I was 19 in 1993, but the gatekeeping of traditional publishing meant I never even tried to get a book published. Nearly 30 years later, I am a successful independent author. And it is brilliant, but also sadly not something I could have done age 19 as the technology just wasn't there. My whole life from age 14 to age 23 was about getting into veterinary school, work experience, exams, everything. That

was great until I got to the third year of studying and realised I wasn't interested in science or medicine and I've had to rethink. I've now been a primary school teacher for over a decade and reflect now that a veterinary career would have brought me none of the joy or social life that primary education does, says Sam, listening in Boston, Lincolnshire. Good morning to you. Fascinating. What a thing to get to your third year and then have that realisation. You can think one thing and another thing comes along. Well, I'll be hearing a bit more about some of those stated ambitions of teen girls in America shortly. But let's stay here in the UK with politics and even closer to home in the form of local elections,

soon to be upon some of us. If you live in England or Wales on May 2nd, you'll be able to vote in at least one election as around 2,600 local council seats are being contested. But there are some downsides to putting yourself forward. It's been reported ministers are being urged to amend a law requiring councillors to publish their home addresses amid rising concerns about the scale of intimidation and abuse in local government and the impact it's having on women in particular. Ahead of elections to councils across England, the Local

Government Association has argued that a 1972 law setting out that addresses are given by default is out of date and has left councillors feeling under threat. Some councillors have warned that a recent upsurge in abuse and threats, often fuelled by social media, is forcing large numbers of women already in a minority in local government to quit as councillors, often after one term. Here's Talia Marrington speaking to The World Tonight about her experience. She's a Liberal Democrat councillor for Mousehole, Newlyn and St Berrian in Cornwall, but isn't standing in the upcoming local elections.

It seems to be so much worse post-pandemic and people are so quick to blame and to judge. And I think as councillors, you know, there's so little trust in politicians, in people in representative positions that we seem to be, we're more accessible, we're more visible, we do a lot of stuff that does affect people day to day, like planning and things like that. And we're less protected. And I think people are just so quick to judge, they're so quick to blame. Social media, of course, is there. In the old days, if you had a problem, you would probably write to the address of your councillor but nowadays um you know it's it's messenger it's facebook it's whatsapp it's it's everything

you're sort of getting bombarded and people are very quick to write things there's no fact checking necessarily there's you know things can stay up that are misinformation um and and at the heart of it we're disadvantaged i didn didn't have my address for the elections. But then you could be from a huge area. So it doesn't look like you're local. Talia Marrington speaking to the world tonight. Listening to that, Jackie Weaver, of course, sheer viral lockdown fame from that Hanforth Parish Council Zoom meeting in 2021, where she was told she did not have the authority in case you needed any reminding but Jackie also a local government sort of specialist very passionate about it and provides

guidance and support and training to town and parish councils in Cheshire. Jackie what do you make of this and good morning good to have you back on the programme. Thank you and yes good morning yeah it's I'm afraid it is something that we certainly hear all the time. I mean, this is specifically about addresses, but I noticed that your previous speaker was talking mainly, really, about online bullying and harassment. And that is absolutely rife at the moment. And do you think that is something, because I know you're passionate

about especially getting women involved with local politics and and being councillors do you think that is a problem right now more than it's been before oh absolutely um in fact it's something i've been i've been talking about since lockdown um i mean so much so that in cheshire and we've been working closely with the um with the police and the police and crime commissioner, actually developing a protocol for how the police will manage meetings of parish councils when they get out of hand with members of the public that are so aggressive. And what sort of thing? Can you give us an example of the sort of thing where it becomes difficult

in that way? Because it is shocking that you might need the police. Yeah I mean we try to be very transparent and I'm sure that's true of the other tiers of local governments as well so we always have a section at the beginning of meetings where the public can engage with the council

in the room but they are so aggressive like your previous contributor said in terms of personally holding those councillors to account for things that have nothing to do with them at all. I mean, it's not unusual, you know, for a parish council meeting, you know, for the members of the public to be vitriolic about potholes, which I know are always a seasonal topic. But parish councils have nothing to do with potholes.

It's not their responsibility. But that doesn't stop Mr Angry or Mrs Angry really giving forth and just totally disrupting the meeting. So in effect, either the police are called or the meeting is closed. Do you see equality in who's angry and most angry when it does turn in that way between men and women in the audience? I think when it's face-to-face, it is more often men who are aggressive. And that might be you know my experience i

don't know if that's generally true but wine it is often women online yeah that's interesting because that you know it's trying to get a picture of who's doing what and how we are having these conversations about how our areas are run our local areas, and what stake we have in them. Because we know, you know, women and men care deeply about their local area, but we also know, just from work we've done on here before, and a lot of the time, for instance, it's women who go litter picking and try and, you know, keep areas at least looking nice.

And then there are different passion projects you can't usually divide by the sexes. but it's just interesting to get a sense from you about what you see around um how people behave to each other and whether it's women or men and or both i would say my experience is that when it's face to face it's men um and when it's online it is often women um i think the other thing for me that's really interesting is that those very angry, those people who want to criticise what our council is doing never

put themselves up for election. They would much rather sit on line or sit in the audience and bitch from the sidelines. You've got a big smile across your face as you say that. A wry smile, I should say. Yeah. It's all right complaining about your local council.

My local council is a waste of space. OK, well, how would you do it better? Come on and show her. And I think the fact that we had elections in part of Cheshire last year, part of Cheshire this year. And actually, we have more vacancies on councils than we've ever had before. Really? Yeah. So it's not attracting as many people. And part of that, I think, comes down to conversations like we're having this morning, where if you're really trying to encourage different people to come forward to sit on councils, we have to be able to say to forward to sit on councils we have to be able to say to them you are at least going to be in a safe environment and frankly at the moment

in some instances we can't even say that what do you think are the solutions you talked about having police at local meetings where necessary what is there anything else that you and others have been thinking about who who work in this space care about this space yeah i mean i think for me it's all about training it's all about giving people who who are counsellors and who are perhaps chairing meetings the confidence to do it i think we in some instances we're so afraid of being um distant from the public or unaccountable, that actually we take a lot of bad behaviour that should be stamped out really early and it grows. So that if you tolerate bad behaviour from one person,

then it's contagious. The next person thinks it's okay to behave like that and you have now completely changed the tone of that meeting. So it's about calling out bad behaviour. I think all of us have a duty to do that and stamping it out really early before it begins to really get hold that's how we got to know you wasn't it trying to chair a meeting i have to say when we were thinking about this conversation this morning, and your name came to mind in the office, we all were taken back to that moment in lockdown, where we met you, Jackie. It's something that you were trying to deal with, I suppose, as you were being told you didn't have the authority.

I think for me, the other thing is that, you know, as women, we kind of don't like, you know, sort of, let's say challenge, I mean, aggression, that kind of thing. You don't have to meet aggression with aggression. You can meet it with warmth and with humour and kind of, you know, head it off at the pass. So you don't have to change your own personality in order to stand up to poor behaviour. Well, you've retained some authority and some, right? Well, in my mind, certainly. No, no. In all of our minds, Jackie.

It's good to hear you on one of your specialist subjects, though, and I know you care about it. And there's a challenge there for people to try and take it and take up their roles if they can in their local communities. But there's also a challenge for those facilitating it to, as you say, provide the training and make people feel if they do take that step that they will be looked after. Jackie Weaver, thank you very much for talking to us. Always good to have you on the programme. And I suppose if you're listening to this and you're thinking about my initial question to you about things you wanted to do, where you wanted to be, perhaps it does include politics, or at least not necessarily on a national level, but perhaps on your local council or closer to home. A message here from Paula says, I worked in HIV for 15 years and I left and then wanted to...

I'm Sarah Treleavenvan and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. Be a baker. I told my daughter I wanted to be like Little Miss Hedgehog out of the Sylvanians. So I ended up volunteering and now i have my own bakehouse in the countryside and i may not have much money but i'm very rich in life so yes i managed to change and do something completely different with no regrets paula well done you thank you very much indeed for that well let's go to then and hear a bit more about this documentary that's prompted

this conversation about ambitions certainly from when you were younger and what you have become what you wanted to become where you are now. It's a documentary film that spotlights the girls hoping they will become the first female president of the United States. Since the office of the president was established in 1789, you will know no woman has held the position. The film's called Girls State and it follows a real-life mock government programme attended by teenage girls in Missouri. During the week-long residential, they elect their own leaders, including a governor at the very top of the tree,

Supreme Court justices and an attorney general. The American Legion, which runs the programmes, holds separate programmes for boys and girls in all states of the US. Previously, a film following the Boys Programme won several awards and now the film following the girls launches on Apple TV later this week. Joining me now, the filmmaker Amanda McBain, who's behind both of those films on the boys and now the girls and 19 year old Emily Worthmore, one of the girls who stands for governor, which is the highest position in this mock government. A warm welcome to you both.

Amanda, if I could start with you, tell us a bit more about Girls' State. What is it trying to do? How does it work? Morning. Hi. Girls' State's a program that exists in every state in America. It has for 80 years. I grew up in California. I did not know about the program, but it's a robust program. It's gender segregated, always has been. But the core value, I think, behind the program was this idea of civil discourse. of the attendees to come together and talk politics face to face with the idea that people will have different politics and what, you know, what will happen when they do come together face to face and have these conversations. That was something that was very interesting to my husband and I are co-directors. we started this project with Boys State back in 2017 after Trump's election and recognizing how divided America was and wondering what what could happen in these spaces. In this in the boys space, was it very conservative state. And what was so interesting is we followed a number of kids through the week, two of whom were fairly progressive. And to watch

their trajectory and transformation through the week was sort of one of the great delights of nonfiction. And unexpected things happen. So there was more coming together than I think we had previously thought. Maybe to, I think we thought there was going to be more of a Lord of the Flies situation than it actually ended up being. And what about the girls then? You know, a sort of sibling film of this. How did it differ? A slightly different time, slightly different moments,

and obviously looking at girls instead of boys. That's right. It's a different time. It's four years on. And I think to some degree our country is even more polarized. So we're also dealing with the emotional legacy of COVID. And there's a quality to gathering that was beautiful. Actually, I think people were ready to come together. And I will also say just Jesse and I have two teenage daughters.

So I think there was something more personal in making this film. Your partner in life and in work. He is, yeah, we co-direct and co-parent um so girls seemed to be looking for ways to connect looking for ways to find common ground um and looking for ways to get things done um That's also partly how the boys program was set up very much into two camps. And they it was sort of tribal warfare from the get go. There was two parties that were built. And that dynamic was slower to get started at Girls State. For good and for bad, and there was some frustration, girls very much wanted to talk politics immediately. That's why they'd come to the session. But they had a number of days to get to know one another first.

Let me bring in someone who went on this particular, was part of this cohort, Emily. Good morning. Hello. Good morning. Why? Thank you for having me. Lovely to have you um and i i've watched the film and others will do now uh this week why did you want to go along to

this program i had known about girl state since my sophomore year of high school because they it's the summer after your junior year and so my counselor knew i was into politics they talked about it a lot and she had told me don't plan anything for this week of your junior year. And so my counselor knew I was into politics. They talked about it a lot. And she had told me, don't plan anything for this week of your junior year summer because I have this program I think is perfect for you. And so I said, okay, I won't. And I looked into it.

I had a lot more time to look into it too. I had known someone who went. And overall, it just seemed like a really good opportunity to get to start talking more politics and get to experience that little mock politics setting that was so exciting to me. I did talk about your ambition at the Star Safari program, the idea of becoming the first woman to run the United States, a rock star and a broadcast journalist. And you say you could do all three. How are you doing with them? I'm still on track for all three, I i believe i'm in a college band right now um called bethany lane and we play like indie music so still play electric guitar and then

i'm going to school for broadcast right now and the election is 16 years away so overall we're on track for all three so um so keep going there so so you've scheduled when the election is for you from your point of view yes why i've had that down since fourth grade um i think i looked at the first year possible to run um i'll be 36 in 2040 and the minimum age here is 35 so since fourth grade i was like I want to do it and I want to do it young because I also think that that really sets you apart from a lot of the candidates that we see now um being so old all men like front runners are mostly men and I think that that would be a nice stand apart as well just being young okay I like the fact you know straight in the first

possible moment uh to to throw your hat in the ring and go for it. You do throw your hat in the ring in Girls' State. I mean, I don't want to ruin the film. You obviously know what happens, but it's pretty tough. You know, you also struggle with something a lot of people struggle with is you're not sure how you feel about. And you tell me now how you feel about it now. Public speaking, you know, it's not everybody's favorite thing to say the least yes public speaking was my biggest fear at girl state just because writing a speech and having a script it feels really forced to me i love doing

interviews like this and i love maybe panel discussions and things like that i think i've gotten a lot better and more confident in the past couple years but my body just gets so shaky whenever it's time to give a big speech and so I think I had wound myself up so much around that and that was definitely one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the week for me and yet you still want to go into a job that is largely at times defined by how you speak to millions and millions of people you know I think that people who run for president get really amazing speechwriters to help them write really amazing speeches. And I think that if you ask me to talk to people and just like we're doing now, that's much easier. And I can definitely be

personable and have a real conversation with people. Speechwriting, I might need a little help with, but I think that, you know, I can grow a lot in 16 years as well. OK, all right. Well, it's good to it's good to get it out. I'll go back into Amanda in just a moment. But you also have to think, which is, you know, a part of being in politics or also just being in the world. You in the film, it shows you thinking quite carefully about whether you will mention that you're a Christian and what your your political views are I suppose for the benefit of our audience probably right of center would be the way to to describe it and you you do share you do go there how was that for you? I think it was the first time that I had

that opportunity to share in a setting where it felt comfortable to share or not maybe not comfortable but more acceptable since politics is something that I had I'd like talking about running for president and all this but I didn't dig into the politics since it was something that we're almost conditioned not to talk about since you know don't upset people at the dinner table with Thanksgiving or all that kind of thing so I was really personally nervous to talk about it at school I go to a mostly progressive high school um at the time and so I didn't want to upset my friends or anything like that. If anybody asked me, I would tell them, what's your opinion on this? I would tell them, but I wasn't going to

be the one to bring it up necessarily. But Girl State was that turning point for me where I'm like, you know what, I'm going to be the one to bring it up. And a lot of these people I might not see again. So if they, you know, hate me because of it, that's one thing, I guess. But I didn't want people to hate me. I wanted them to listen and I wanted to listen to them. And I think that mission was overall accomplished. So I'm happy with the way it worked out. Amanda, you do see people coming together

who have different views, girls coming together with different views in this. And I wonder, do you feel you saw some people, some women and young girls' political views change? I'm not sure people's – we did not see people's views change. It's a week long. What I'd say is that they achieve – there's exposure to people who are different from them. And that kind of humanizing of the other side

seems to me sort of the recipe for a kind of change, right? For us, we're from San Francisco, California. Our political views are different than Emily's, but I think meeting her, finding all the ways that we are similar and talking about those ways that we're similar. We do a lot of talking about how different we are, and there's value to that. But I think at times we need to also remember some of the things we have in common. So Emily and I have common cause on representation of women and the halls of power in our government. We have common cause in how much we care for our country.

We have common cause in, well, I think she's a great, she has a big heart. And I like to think I have a pretty good-sized heart, too. So there are a lot of things that we share. And I think that's pretty important. I mean, just hearing Jackie Weaver talk about her experience, that's the sort of thing that I think this program helps, even at the age of 17, just to have that exposure. Again, some of these kids are coming from towns of 300. Some are coming from huge cities, they've never met each other before, to have that

experience, even at that young age, when you're still kind of elastic, flexible, growing, seems to me that you're you're setting a path for understanding that you would carry forward with you into potentially a career in politics. Well, Emily, I've also got to bring up the fact that you do a bit of journalism at the end of this, which is the end of this film, which is really great to see that you dig into the funding structure of this programme, that you look at how the girls bit works according to its rules versus how the boys bit works. Do you think, I mean, it's a long running program this in the US, we've heard about some of the goals for it. Do you think that the boys and the girls state should come together?

Because there would be some who argue, it's not realistic to have girls doing politics on their own and boys doing politics on their own. Yes. So I'm one of those people who does point out that it's not realistic to separate you know the genders like that because that's not what we see today so um strategies that might work within that area might not work in society if we just you know focus on issues that are important to one of the two genders you know that might not go down so well in real politics but i do think that there is a beauty to having these rinks um and avenues for discussion i think that it's tradition so i like that idea but i do like what missouri girls state and boys state are moving towards which they have this combined session um where you know the boys and the girls sleep in different dorms obviously and

they have their own assemblies and things like that a lot of times. But their schools of education are combined now. And I think that that's very good, because at least then you're taking a journalism class, and there'll be male peers next to you. And I mean, why are we necessarily like segregating resources and things like that? I just think it's, you know, it was an interesting structure in the first place. But I'm glad that we're now moving towards more of that combined session I think that for the sake of tradition and girls and boys state it's kind of beautiful and it does help bond people really well so I would keep them separate but combine classes combine assemblies and have the opportunity for the same speakers and things like that throughout the day as well and I think that

would open a lot of doors for funding as well. You've got a lot to do, Emily. I don't want to keep you any longer, you know, becoming president, a rock star and a broadcast journalist. So you better crack on with that. Emily Worthmore, lovely to talk to you. Amanda McBain, congratulations on the documentary. Girls State is available on Apple TV Plus from the 5th of April.

It's called Girls State. Just sometimes you tell me I haven't said the name clearly enough again at the end of our discussion. So there you go. But from girls who want to become the first female leader of their country to a woman who has done just that. Judith Saminwa Toluca is to become the first female prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was appointed by the president and replaces Sama Lukonda, the previous prime minister who's been in post since 2021, but resigned in February. Well, let's find out more about Prime Minister Toluca,

what her appointment could mean for women in the DRC. I'm joined now by BBC journalist Beverly Ochieng and Annie Modi, feminist activist and executive director of Afia Mama, an NGO set up to help women and children in the Central African country. Beverly, good morning. Let me come to you first. What do we know about the new prime minister? Well, Judith Toluca is an accomplished economist. And just before she was named prime minister earlier this week, she'd been the minister of state for planning in President Felicitas Sikedi's government for just over a year. Before this, she'd been in the banking sector. She worked in the UN with the development program. She did community projects in eastern DR Congo,

which has been the epicenter of activities by hundreds of rebel groups, which has led to one of the world's biggest mass displacement crisis. And while she was in the Ministry of Budget, Toluca did some work around establishing an emergency fund for low-income and vulnerable households. It's off the back of this and all of this exposure and experience that she has been appointed in this position, DR Congo's security situation is quite precarious. And although there is some external support, there are UN peacekeepers who are preparing to leave at the end of this year. The Southern African community is deploying forces. The East African community did support them with forces. That needs to be supplemented by a strong government, a strong leader.

And it's presumably why she was appointed to this position. And I suppose now her appointment is a milestone because in 64 years of independence in DR Congo and more than 20 prime ministers, she is now the first woman in this position. And do you think that will have an impact in the country? Do you think that will mean something? And do you think it will mean anything differently perhaps for the women of the DRC? I think it's a welcome change from what I've seen with some of the reactions and it improves the visibility of women in a dominant government position. There's one website that said that Toluca is a woman of exceptional and wavering intelligence, some described as a fierce woman. There's a lot of

focus on her academic and professional credentials and how that will complement DR Congo's development needs. There's a newspaper that talked about how she needs to focus on the economy. In terms of the total population, I mean, women are only marginally more than men in Diakongo, about 50 million to about 49 million men. Sekedi has been described as a president who is a feminist. The current central bank governor is a woman in the dissolved government, women at the helm of the mines ministry, which is the backbone of the economy and the labor ministry. But the political scene is still largely dominated by men. There were much fewer women who were running in the election in December compared with men.

Out of nearly 20 candidates, there were probably just one or two female contenders, if I remember right. And that says a lot about visibility. But the truth is, it's still quite a long mile towards that because women's rights are sometimes not very well known in communities. People are still taken advantage of because they're not aware of their rights, whether it's maternal, freedom of speech, education, and even the accessibility to all of these services, given that a lot of the social disenfranchisement has arisen from those inequalities, from the conflicts, and from systemic, long-term systemic issues around representation.

Let's bring in Annie at this point. Annie, good morning. Good morning. Thank you for being with us. What do you make of this appointment? And, you know, how do you think it may or may not impact women's lives in the DRC? Thank you very much. First thing, I'll join my voice with Beverly, what she was saying. For women and girls, this historical appointment of the woman for the first time as a prime minister,

it means that there is acknowledgement of women's capacity to contribute in governance, to contribute in development, to contribute in peace building, conflict resolution, and you name it. It is extremely important because for the past 64 years, the glass ceiling was set that women were only going to be deputy prime minister. For the first time, it came only with this regime. Women, most of them are deputy ministers, deputy directors, not as head of institutions. So for the first time, this will open up girls' ambitions. This will give them hope. This will motivate young women to not limit themselves. And the next step, the next milestone will be to have the first female president for the Democratic Republic of Congo. Why not? point because we've been fighting for years and years for decades now to just get that

acknowledgement because this was one of the reasons most women were not being appointed. The excuse was we do not find women with capacity. Now having a woman as a prime minister is just taken that away. But then on the... No, no, please continue. On the other hand, we have to acknowledge and being very, very, very cautious on the challenges that are awaiting

our first female prime minister of the high expectations that is put upon her while we know very well that as one person, she will not change much if not other changes or cures in the system itself. Because if the DRC has reached the point where it is, be it in security, economy, or other challenges, social situation. It's because we are being in, I would say, a failing system. We're being in a country where corruption is taking over good governance.

We are fighting for it. And now, if expectation is extremely high and then the judicial system does not work independently and corruption is not being led strategically, the expectation on her will not be reached. And at the end, all women will pay the price. Because as we have noticed, if one man fails, it is the failure of that man. But if one woman fails, it is the failure of all women. And it might take us the next hundred years because it took us 64 to have the first female. If she did not respond to the expectations, the next waiting period might be even longer. Annie Modi, thank you very much.

Feminist activist, executive director of Afia Mama, which is an NGO set up to help women and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Joined there by my colleague, the BBC journalist, Beverly Ochieng, reacting and hearing a bit more there about the first female prime minister of the DRC, Judith Sominwa Tuluka, which is fascinating to hear about. And talking about women in politics at all levels, coming back to this country,

I have to say we've received a whole load of messages from women about the appointments to local councils, ahead of the local elections, of course, but also around potential law change, imploring this law to change, ministers to change it around the publishing of councillors' addresses. Zoe said, I'm a female town councillor. I have zero abuse from the public.

Other councillors though, dot, dot, dot. Councillor Liz has written in saying, I'm proud to be an elected member of a female majority parish council and a female majority district council. I truly hope it will bring more local girls into participating in local politics. Another one, I'm a local councillor. I fully agree with the wonderful Jackie Weaver.

There are various times where I've grumbled about the vocal minority who love to complain from the sidelines. Incidentally, one of my male colleagues was left a threatening voicemail recently, which we think was connected to a recent litter pick. It appears that someone's drug stash was inadvertently collected and is now in the local tip. While we've laughed about it, there is nonetheless a safety issue. The matter has been reported to council bosses and the police. I'm a female town councillor. Let me just quickly share this one, another one, and I will not stand

again due to the ostracisation and abuse from my fellow councillors, many of them female. Members of the public, meanwhile, mainly make contact to thank me. Now, just before our time is up, a code to break and a pattern to notice. How did 77 women from the same Cambridge college end up working at Bletchley Park during the war? My next guest, Dr Sally Wall, has uncovered a previously unknown contingent of female code breakers and other staff who were recruited to conduct top secret work as undergraduates. Sally, tell us more. You went to Newnham College, which is female only yourself, and you started this research. Tell us what prompted it. It was an entirely accidental conversation. I was having coffee after lunch and a colleague said, did you know a code breaker? As it happened,

I did. I had moved home in the late 1980s and when I joined the new community, somebody said, oh, you need to meet Jane. And it turned out the aforesaid Jane was a lady called Jane Monroe, born Jane Reynolds. She went to Newnham in the mid-1930s. She read maths and she became a codebreaker by invitation of a man called Stuart Milner Barry. And we didn't know anything about Jane's background until the said Stuart Milner Barry published an essay in the 1990s. 1993, it came out in a book of a series of essays. And Stuart Milner Barry helped to set up Hut 6 at Bletchley Park. And Hut 6 was where Enigma code from the Army and the Air force came in to be broken and alongside Jane Stuart mentioned three other women and I was intrigued because if Jane was there were the other three women there so I settled on it for a little while and then went to the archivist at the college who is the one who's in charge of helping people find records, Frieda Midgley.

And I said, can you help? Where do I start? So I looked into it. And funnily enough, all three of the other women were at Newnham. They could have been at Girton. They weren't. They were at Newnham. So this was intriguing. So I looked a bit harder. And in the records, there was a giveaway, temporary clerk, foreign office. So I had a further look and eventually I got to about 20 temporary clerks, foreign office. And I had connections with Bletchley Park. So I went over, looked them up in the records. They have a role of honour. And those ladies were known, but not all of them were known to be at Newnham.

So we got in touch and augmented the records. And we went on. We got to 30. We got to 40. Here is the story. And so at this point, I dug out all sorts of other women, women who had invented chaff in the wall, a lady called Joan Curran, was famous for inventing ships in the Channel prior to D-Day. But I was intrigued most about Bletchley Park, so I needed a historian.

I needed context, and I needed to know a bit more about the college. So I asked Jill Sutherland, who is a historian of some repute, and also knew a lot about Newnham, we unearthed a story we got to 77 as you said and we got to three important ladies one of them was the sister of the said Stuart Milner Barry she had been a vice principal but we also had connections with Oliver Strachey. Oliver Strachey was a career codebreaker. The Strachey's were a big family and everybody probably has heard of the more famous brother who was Lytton of the Bloomsbury fame. Yes indeed. But also we had Pernell Strachey, who was sister. And it just happened that Oliver's sister was also principal at Newnham at the outbreak of war.

Ah, so there was a link there. There was a link. So we had two women. But we had a second link with Oliver. made us all smile because Oliver had married a woman called Ray Costello, who had been in the suffragist movement in the early part of the century, and had then gone on to found a women's employment bureau. And so we had three women who could be described as powerful in the sense that they could determine the futures of other women and they had employed this to very good effect they had managed to quietly recruit a large number of Newnham women and they just made their way from Newnham to Bletchley just what the war required we didn't

need to know it was happening in fact the first thing they did when they got there was sign the Official Secrets Act. So the fact that we had a very nice, quiet recruitment method was ideal. And did this just in terms of with our time slightly coming towards an end, do we know what happened? Are we able to say if their careers and their contribution to the war, did that then lead to, you know, different ambitions, perhaps, and different lives for those women? For some of them, yes, it did. One example would be Fiona Eade, who had started code breaking in the First World War, and worked in Barclay Street in one of the operations to start with,

then went into teaching, became a school inspector because that's what was expected. And then was one of the first women to be recruited back on an emergency list. And she eventually made a career out of that, although she'd had the interruption to go back and be what women were supposed to be shall we say yeah and a lot and a lot of them obviously couldn't actually ever tell anyone what they had done so a sort of gap on the cv as it were it wasn't quite the linkedin days where you listed everything you'd done anyway but but i imagine um quite quite a difference between the men who still obviously had signed an official secrets app, but it wasn't the same

for the women. No, it wasn't. Society expected that the women would subside basically back into obscurity. So men would come out, couldn't say a lot about what they'd done, but would have jobs. They expected a career. Women were not expected by society to have one. And it must have been a terrible burden in many ways to keep the secrets and, you know, just find a way to explain what they have been doing during the war. Yes, they couldn't say what they did, so they couldn't argue for a job. Yet they carried some of them the guilt of knowing that things like the bombing of Coventry were going to happen and not being able to prevent it because they couldn't give away that the code had been broken. And they married. They promised in those days in church to share everything they had.

And yet they knew they were not going to share part of their life. Dr Sally Wolfe, fascinating to hear about 77 women from the same Cambridge College ending up working together at Bletchley Park during the war. We'll put some details on the Woman's Hour website as I believe there'll be an exhibition later in the year. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Hi, this is Kirsty Young. I just wanted to let you know that Young Again, my podcast for BBC Radio 4, is back. I'm telescoping two bits of the story together. That's okay. It's only memory. It's only show bits. We can say what we like. In Young Again, we're joined by some of the world's most intriguing people.

Bill was the CEO at Microsoft at the time. And I ask a simple question. If you knew then what you know now, what would you tell yourself? Be very, very careful about the people you surround yourself with. I gave too much power to people who didn't deserve it. Subscribe to Young Again on BBC Sounds. I'm looking forward to your company. 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.