Woman's Hour - Gold Digger, The Catholic Church and women priests, Chilli Tofu

Episode Date: November 16, 2019

It’s well-known that the Roman Catholic Church is struggling to find new priests. Sexual abuse scandals haven’t helped. But for some years, there’s been a movement to allow women to be priests. Will we see it happen any time soon? The writer Marnie Dickens explains why she wanted to focus on the life of an older woman for her new BBC One series Gold Digger.We hear from Kay, who went to an employment tribunal to fight for equal pay. How might the right to ask an employer what a colleague earns help combat unequal pay?What do you do when your child says they're too ill to go to school – but you suspect that they’re perfectly fine?Jade Wye and Melissa Rice are the first ever winners of the Rachel Bland Podcast Award. Rachel was one of the presenters of You, Me and the Big C, a 5 Live Podcast about cancer and after she died the podcast competition was set up in her memory. Jade and Melissa's podcast is called Hooked: The Unexpected Addicts. They share their stories of addiction, rehab and recovery.Food writer Meera Sodha’s new plant-based cookbook ‘East: 120 Vegetarian and Vegan recipes from Bangalore to Beijing’ uses British ingredients to create Eastern inspired recipes. She joins Jane in the studio to Cook the Perfect…Chilli Tofu.And poet Debris Stevenson – whose semi-autobiographical grime musical, Poet in da Corner, was on at the Royal Court last year – is back with a new show ‘1st Luv’. She explains why grime was such an important genre for her.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Rosie StopherInterviewed Guest: Miriam Dunigan Interviewed Guest: Soline Humbert Interviewed guest: Marnie Dickens Interviewed guest: Kay Collins Interviewed guest: Gemma Rosenblatt Interviewed guest: Rebecca Schiller Interviewed guest: Dr Angharad Rudkin Interviewed guest: Melissa Rice Interviewed guest: Jade Wye Interviewed guest: Meera Sodha Interviewed guest: Debris Stevenson

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

Good afternoon. In Weekend Woman's Hour today, Equal Pay Day was on Thursday. What's the most common way for a woman to find out she's paid less than a male colleague? Probably at the water cooler. And I said to him, are you on 22,000 a year? And he said, yeah. I said, I'm only on 16. What difference might a campaign led by the Fawcett Society make to everybody being open about what they're paid? The author of the new serial, Gold Digger, Marnie Dickens,

puts an older woman centre stage. The grime poet, Debra Stevenson, on the inspiration for her work. I think there's something about Mormonism and the house that I was raised up in that felt repressed, felt like we don't say things that hurt, we don't say things if we're angry, we don't, we just carry on. And I think there was something about Grime, that rage, that honesty, that just gave me a whole new vocabulary and permission to articulate myself. And we'll hear her perform a work called Hiccups. Pulling a sickie, how do you deal with a child who's pretending to be ill?

What is he or she really trying to avoid? Hooked is a podcast aimed at understanding addiction and maybe recognising it in yourself. And in Cook the Perfect, Mira Soder concocted Gujarati chilli tofu. It's 25 years since the Church of England first admitted women into the priesthood, but still women in the Roman Catholic Church who have a calling are asking whether they will ever have the chance to be ordained. The Church is said to be struggling to find enough men for the priesthood, particularly in Europe and America,

and sexual abuse scandals have clearly had an impact. There have been discussions about whether it would be permissible for married men to be ordained, and women campaigners held a protest in Rome last month. Miriam Dunagan is from the group Catholic Women's Ordination. She regularly goes to Rome to protest. Celine Humbert would like to be a priest. She's from a group called We Are Church Ireland. Jane asked Celine why she wants to be a priest. Well, that's a question I asked myself a long time ago. When I got that sense, I was 18,

and it wasn't something that I'd planned for my life. So to some extent, you know, it's a vocation, it's a call. You answer the call. You're not the one who takes the initiative. I could have done many other things with my life, and as I say, I was the first one disturbed. But that vocation has lasted from the mid-70s to now. And I would ask also, you know, why do we say in the future will women have Catholic priests?

Because I say the Catholic Church has already women who are Catholic priests. It's just a matter of recognising what God has already done in Catholic women. Sorry, what do you mean? You mean there are women within the church effectively doing the work of priests? Yes, women who have the vocation, who have the calling. The calling is from God ultimately. It has to be tested and recognized by the church. The church authorities have totally failed when it comes to both women and married people.

It's throwing away genuine vocations. But people like me in the margins of the official church live out our vocations. And women and married men have presided at Eucharist for decades now. Myself, I told my local bishop in 1998 that I had started presiding at the Eucharist. And more and more people in Ireland and elsewhere, Catholic people, recognize the leadership of women. So, Miriam, I know you don't want to be a priest yourself, but you believe passionately in this cause. Why?

I do. And yes, thank goodness I don't have a vocation to priesthood, because I think it's so demeaning the way that a woman like Celine, who is a beautiful priest, cannot fulfill that vocation, even though her congregation recognize that she is a priest. The reason why it's so important to me is because when you look at the way that the church works right now, Celine is right. There are women who are ministering. So they are in churches all across the world. And, you know, especially in the Amazon region that the church was just discussing, they are administering sacraments. They are leading parishes and they're doing the work of a priest. But we're just not allowed to call them a priest.

So it really is the institutional church, which is more than just a faith tradition. You know, it's a massive global institution. It really is institutionalized subjugation of women. They're okay to do the work. And the hierarchy, the bishops and the priests in these regions are allowing the women. They know that they are carrying out those ministerial jobs. Well, they know presumably that the whole thing would collapse without the women. It would.

Our message when we were in Rome protesting at the synod that just was discussing the Amazon region and the shortage of priests was don't forget that without women, there would be no Catholic church in the Amazon region. And to now talk about a shortage of priests without recognizing that you need to end the injustice of constantly saying women are not allowed to be priests because you don't resemble the maleness of Christ, and then give the green light to married men, the rule against married men and the rule against women priests happened at the same time. Right. I mean, we should make it clear, of course, the Church of England hasn't entirely covered itself in glory here. Women priests are now allowed within the church, and bishops also,

but it took an enormous battle and the work of decades, didn't it, to actually achieve this. And the Pope recently, Celine, has not given you much hope. I gather he said pretty emphatically that the door is closed to women priests. Well, yes, but, you know, I'm old enough now to have seen Popes come and go. Doors get shut, but I also know from the history of the Church that the doors which are more firmly shut away sometimes are just springing open. The Holy Spirit ultimately can get through all those closed doors.

Change is a foot. Change comes from the ground. And I've seen it that it's the Catholic people, the faithful people, the people filled with the Spirit who recognize that God is doing a new thing. God is doing something in women. And ultimately, that will get through. Yes. I mean, you say change is coming on the ground. I think I mean, based on my Catholic friends, it would appear to be slightly dependent upon whom your current priest is. I mean, there are some priests who are more liberal in their thinking and may well allow and encourage girls to become altar girls, for example. But equally, Celine, there are plenty who think the exact opposite. That's true. At the same time, I have to say the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland,

which represent a large number of priests, now not all, recently has made a statement that they were in favour of the ordination of women. I think there is a realization across the board. But I mean, most of the people in the church are the baptized. The clerical church is a tiny minority. And the people on the ground, by and large, are the lay people, the baptized, the faithful, the one, as I say, confirmed with the Spirit. And they are the ones who want change because they know that change is already happening. And they know that the misogyny and sexism in the church cannot continue. It's an obstacle to the witness.

Yes, because if it does, the church won't continue. Is that your fear, Miriam? Yes. Well, you know, what's positive about what just happened in Rome is that it was priests and bishops who were talking about the role of women. And they were the ones that for really the first time in living memory who actually said, we must recognize women. They are doing the work. We can't keep passing them over and letting them exist in the shadows and constantly having to have a male authority over them. So it was actually, you know, yes, only 185 men were allowed to vote in any decision that came out of that meeting. But the majority of those men in authority and priestly and bishop roles, they said, what about the women?

Let's not, we cannot keep forgetting about the women. So that's a good thing. And that's a new thing in terms of that discussion. Are they doing it because they recognize the injustice and they're ashamed of the sexist teaching? Or are they doing it because they think the church won't survive if they don't? Does it really matter why they're doing it? We don't care.

No, okay. That's interesting. And you, I know, care passionately about this and have done for a long time. And I think there was an incident when you were a very young girl, wasn't there, that propelled you into this way of thinking? Yes, that's right. I started recognising the injustice of all this when I was age 12 at my Catholic convent school in North London. And I said to the nuns, you know, could Jesus come back as a girl? And I was accused of being blasphemous. No, Jesus is the son of God.

And I said, well, if God created all humans, he must surely have a daughter too. And then I was also told off for being blasphemous. My mother was called in when I said that, you know, the priest didn't turn up one Friday morning. And I said to Sister Alphonse as our head teacher, why can't you say the mass? I know you know the words. And we saw her as our priest, but she wasn't allowed to. She had to we had to sit there and wait for the man to come in. Right. And I suppose the question for me on behalf of the many people listening who are not religious, Celine, would be, why do you want so passionately to be a part of an institution that doesn't want you, actually, and treats you with contempt?

Well, for me, the church is more than an institution. The church is a movement of people who have been entrusted with the liberating message of the Gospels. And to me, the good news, that's what the Gospel, the good news is about the love of God for all of creation, on all of humankind. And it's a love which doesn't make difference, a love which is not racist, or misogynist, or sexist. And I am kind of entrusted with that message. And that's what it is. I also acknowledge that the institution will need drastic changes in terms of declericalisation. So a lot of injustices in the church on the touch dysfunction.

So it's not so much being a cleric as being a priest, which is quite a different thing in my view. Well, goodness knows I admire your strength, Celine. Thank you very much indeed for talking to us. Quick word, Miriam. Will it happen in your lifetime? You know, I think it might happen sooner than we think. I'm hoping that it's going to be

like the Berlin Wall. Out of nowhere, it's just going to crumble because the foundations upon which this ban on women rests is so fragile. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny and it has to be dismantled.

Right. So what will happen first? Women priests or married priests? Married priests. And then women. The men always get the green light first. We've got a little bit of an amber light. So let's just keep pushing. Miriam Dunagan and Soline Umber.

If you are watching BBC One on Tuesday evening, you'll have seen the first episode of the new drama serial Gold Digger. Julia has reached her 60th birthday, she's divorced and none of her three children is available on the day. She goes to the museum where she used to work and meets a man half her age and things progress pretty quickly. You do not look like my mum. Look, I've held off asking this because, well,

because I didn't want to know the answer but what exactly are you doing with me why aren't you with someone your own age what's wrong with you see we're done with the pleasantries i know nothing about you nothing concrete that's not true you know lots i don't even know your last name. It's a pretty bloody basic detail. My last name is Green. Hi. Julia Ormond and Ben Barnes in the roles of Julia and Benjamin. The writer and creator of the series is Marnie Dickens. Why did she want to bring a relationship between an older woman and a younger man to the screen?

Really, I began with wanting an older woman and to portray an older woman, and then the notion of the younger lover came in. I know there's brilliant things like Mum with Leslie Manville. But I just find older women fascinating that, you know, whether you've had children or not had children, there's just so much more, I think, to an older woman than an older man, which may make me desperately unpopular. Some of our older male listeners will be very upset by that. Yes, I'm sure. What do you mean, actually? Do you mean in terms of they've got different sorts of relationships, friendships, family ties, that perhaps complications that men wouldn't have?

I think so. And this is only going to make me more unpopular with male listeners. But I think women traditionally have had to put other people before themselves and have had to seek permission for nearly every decision they make in life. And so I think that that takes a bigger toll. And on older women, you know, they're kind of forgotten by society. And Julia Ormond always talks about this, that they're made invisible. And the whole point of the drama is that somebody really sees Julia,

not as a mother, not as a wife, as a person. Now, you also wrote at 13, that was the Jodie Comer breakthrough show that was on BBC Three, I think. That was, well, it was about a woman who had been incarcerated, but you focused on her escape. Was that a deliberate thing? It was very deliberate. There were lots of shows in development at the time because of awful real life events. And quite a lot of them, I think, you know, looked at the time of a person being in captivity. And I just naturally wanted to start where I suppose lots of other shows would

have ended with her escape, because I just wanted it to be kind of about a survivor coming into the world and also about how we as a society expect survivors to behave and questioning that. I just thought it was much more interesting and less voyeuristic than sort of being with someone in a cellar having an awful time. I mean, we have as women, women as female viewers been fed this relentless diet actually of women as just vulnerable victims and I must admit I go as far away from it as I possibly can. Is that something that you have you ever questioned your own viewing choices watching programmes like that? I do question my own viewing choices but it's very hard to get away from and I think Sally Wainwright talked about it a lot with Happy Valley. The most violence that's done is men doing violence against women.

So to completely shy away from it feels untrue. And as a dramatist, you're always searching for truth. But it's how you depict it. And I think that's what Sally Wainwright does so brilliantly. She doesn't shy away from the horror of it. And it's never, ever sort of glamorised. No, I mean, it is always worth remembering, remembering partly and i do drag this statistic out quite regularly men are much more likely to be murdered than women actually statistically but we don't we aren't fed that as an entertainment

diet are we in quite the same way but i think it comes down to what people think viewers want to watch and they think you know in our patriarchal society the thing we're going to watch is a woman in need and whether you know her moment for need has come too late because she's dead. I think that's just the narrative that we've always had. And it's bleak. It's a bleak narrative. No, it really is bleak. What I also I'm intrigued about, particularly in TV drama at the moment, and you have it to a degree in Gold Digger, actually, the beautiful, unnervingly pristine interiors. Have you honestly in your real life ever entered a place like that or ever i've never lived in one i know that much that's for sure i have to say my parents

do keep a very tidy house but you know we've we've all left um but but listen in america big little lies people want to watch that sort of escapist house there's something about us brits we don't like to see it too much we like a bit more mess a bit more yes a bit more clutter surrounding the heartbreak of the of the narrative yeah i would like more clutter um as as a female writer getting commissioned presumably after 13 you were told go please go and write for us was that what happened but how did you get that first opportunity i have to say it wasn't like that the second time around the door didn't fling open and it wasn't drawn inside the warmth of the broadcaster. But the first one is really hard. It's the hardest, obviously, because you're untested.

And it is a lot of money and it's a lot of people you're employing with your words, as it were. So I understand the sort of due diligence. And that's why you do your episodes of Hollyoaks and Musketeers and Ripper Street. Was Hollyoaks your very first TV experience? It was. But how did you get that? I got an agent with a lot of arm twisting and she set about getting me meetings

and then you just have to do the work and try and prove that you can marshal an hour or half an hour of TV. And Hollyoaks, is that a good, I mean, seriously, is that a good place to work? If you're wanting to learn, I guess that kind of continuing drama is the best place to be, isn't it? It's really the best place. I say this a lot.

Everybody sees soap as a bit of a dirty word in the industry. It's not. Millions of people turn in every night to watch the soaps and follow those characters through their whole lives. And in soap, you have to deliver four or five episodes of TV a week. So, of course, you're turning story around really fast. And I think it's the best learning curve there is. And Gold Digger is on BBC One on Tuesdays at nine o'clock and of course the whole series is available on the BBC iPlayer now.

Thursday was Equal Pay Day, the day in the calendar which in the 1990s was established by the Fawcett Society as the day on which women in the UK stop earning for the rest of the year because of the gap between men's and women's wages. They're calling for a change in the law so that all women can find out what their male colleagues earn. That way they can demand equal pay as their right. Well Gemma Rosenblatt is Fawcett's head of policy and campaigns, and Kay Collins has been to an employment tribunal to fight for equal pay. She was working as a chef for Compass and did the catering for Western College in Western-Super-Mare.

How did she discover she was being paid less than a male colleague? It was basically just a chat between my comparator, Christopher Hale, and myself, and he was just flicking through the college prospectus one day and he said that he didn't realise that a mechanic could earn 24,000 a year, and he said, that's two grand a year more than me. And I said to him, are you on 22,000 a year?

And he said, yeah. I said, I'm only on 16. Wow, that's a huge difference percentage-wise, isn't it? Yeah, it's a huge difference. I'd been there 10 years, and he'd been there about 18 months. Wow. And I was older than him, more experienced, and had more qualifications. So it was a shock.

Kay, what did you do? I went straight to my line manager's office, and she said to me, are you all right? You look very pale. And I said, I've just been told by Chris that he earns £22,000 a year. She said, yeah, that's right. I said, so why is he on £6,000 a year more than me? She just shrugged her shoulders, and she said, I don't know.

Gosh. You ended up going to a tribunal how was that process oh it was um a long process very very stressful very expensive how did you afford it um well first of all we contacted our house insurers um and we had legal expenses insurance for the which is included in the house insurance so they had a barrister look at my case and he said yeah you've got a good chance of winning this so they agreed to pay for the solicitor which was Lee Day and my solicitor was Nick Webster who was brilliant and after a while they, just before the court case, they decided that they weren't going to fund it anymore.

So we had to fund it ourselves. So the tune of about, I think it was around £13,000 to £15,000. Gosh, that's a lot of money. And in the end, did you leave the company? I was fired. And you won the tribunal, though? I won, yeah. I did win, which was good, but I didn't get anywhere near back what we paid out in legal fees.

And are you working now? No, no. Since I got dismissed, I applied for a couple of jobs, but I didn't get very far with that because of the dismissal. And also, my husband, who's got a heart condition had to have a defibrillator fitted through and it was just so stressful so now I'm sort of his full time carer really at home Kay would you do it again?

Probably I just didn't want them to get away with it I thought it was disgraceful that a company that size could treat people like that. OK, thank you very much indeed for sharing your story. Compass have said that they recognise the importance of equality and diversity and that they didn't deliberately discriminate. Listening to all of that is Gemma Rosenblatt,

who's Head of Policy and Campaigns at the Fawcett Society. Gemma, welcome. You've published research today saying that three in five women in work either don't know what their male counterparts earn or they know that they, the men, are earning more. You're calling for all women to be told exactly what their male colleagues earn so they can demand the same money. Is that what has to happen?

We're approaching 50 years of equal pay law and what we found out is that it's still treated by employers as a nice to have, an optional extra and the stories of Kay and Sam show the impact on individual women when they're not paid equally. So we think more needs to be done for the law to be taken seriously. Look this may sound like a facetious question, but why are women still paid less? There's multiple reasons that go into why there is a pay gap. Being paid less than men in the same job is one of those reasons. There are other reasons such as not being promoted or women's work not being valued so much.

But the reason that employers can get away with paying women less is because there is no transparency because it is all hidden away and all the um at the moment the kind of cards are stacked with their employer because once an individual woman calls out an equal pay she has to go through a very lengthy court case which has very detrimental impacts on her own income on her own well-being and it's very difficult for individual women to do that. But just going back to find out how you're getting paid what you're getting paid compared to a male co-worker you know either it's got to come about by chance or you've got to ask them that's always difficult isn't it? That's right we asked

individual women about their experiences and the examples that we found were, you know, perhaps a colleague left his pay slip on his desk or they went to the pub and somebody said something when they were drunk. Occasionally, some women have access, such as Sam did, to pay information. But otherwise, unless you have a colleague who's willing to share that information or an employer who's willing to tell you when you ask, it's really hard to access. And those employers who aren't paying equally are those who are most reluctant to tell you about it. So you're calling for this change in the law,

but is it only women that you're asking for that would be allowed to find out what they're paid? Under the legislation, anyone who thought they were being discriminated against because of their sex would be able to access this right to know. We've been here for almost 50 years after the first Equal Pay Act. Are we still going to be talking about it in 50 years time? I really hope not. There are a few simple changes such as this one that will tell employers that they can't hide it anymore.

And we're asking people to join our campaign for the right to know. We do have a petition. People can look it up and sign it. It's about time that change happened. Gemma Rosenblatt from the Fawcett Society and we also heard from Kay Collin and lots of you got in touch about this subject. Somebody who wanted to be anonymous said, I was the junior member of an interviewing panel for four posts in a public service organisation. The interviews were conducted quite properly in in my opinion, and we decided on four successful candidates, all very similar in circumstances. Job offers were quickly composed

for the first three appointees, but when we came to the fourth, the panel started discussing what their starting point should be on the salary scale. The other three had been placed on the bottom of the scale without any discussion at all. As you might guess, the fourth candidate was the only male. I was amazed. And Helen emailed, I think we need a general strike of women. A few days where hundreds of thousands of women down tools in their paid and unpaid roles might have some impact. Now, every parent knows it's not unusual for a child to pull a sickie and tell you, oh, they're just too ill to go to school.

But you suspect it's not a cold or anything serious, but might there be something else going on that makes them nervous about leaving home? And if so, what can you do about it? Well Dr Angharad Rudkin is a clinical child psychologist at the University of Southampton and Rebecca Schiller is a journalist who writes about family life. She has two children and she's had this problem. Yes I mean we're lucky they both really enjoy going to school but we've definitely had quite a few examples of their definition of illness not quite being the same as mine. And what happens what do you do? So my instinct is

not to just dismiss them straight off and to give them a bit of a test so I tend to take their temperature and then I offer them their favourite breakfast, lull them into a bit of a false sense of security while they're eating it and have a chat with them. And if they haven't got a temperature, can manage to eat a breakfast and can string enough sentences together, then unless it seems like there's something else going on, they're going to school.

And Anne Harrod, that's the difficult thing. There might be something else going on. How do you find out? It is really difficult, like Rebecca said. So I think the best thing is get to know your child, obviously, but also think about what else is happening for them in their lives. Are they not sleeping well? Are they not eating well in general? Is there something that's creating anxiety that might make you think,

I'm not sure if life is going particularly well for them at the moment? What about that? Do you prepare a breakfast, offer them food, see if they'll have it or not? I think that's a really good idea because what we do know is that having very clear boundaries is the best way forward. So as a parent, if your child says, I've got a tummy ache, I don't want to go to school. If you just say, oh, well, OK, you don't have to go to school. That's not useful for your child because they'll never learn to deal with difficulties as they arise. But what you don't also want to be is the other end of the spectrum where you're saying, don't be ridiculous. You're going into school, whatever. So somewhere in the middle where you're able to talk to your child and find out what's going on for them give them a nice breakfast if

you can but if in doubt and the temperature is okay and they're not vomiting on your shoes then get them into school and talk to them along the way what's happening is there something that's bothering you and if so what can we do so you can go in with a plan in in place that they can get through the day. Let me just read you some thoughts from the listeners. Anne says, I'm from a long line of Northern matriarchs and there's no illness my child can have that would warrant a day off school. Phil, I used to have to have a visible injury that plasters couldn't fix

or be projectile vomiting to get a day off school. My mum was tough. Another listener, if your child knows that the answer is too ill to go to school means you stay in bed all day with just a book, they won't bother if they're not really ill. Okay, you're both nodding. And Harrod, that's right. Yes, I think it is. Yes, we could talk about push and pull factors. What's pushing them away from school? And that's usually things like bullying or friendship difficulties or worries about school work. But also what are the pull factors, what's keeping them at home.

For very few children it could be about concerns about their parents and wanting to keep an eye on them, but for most of them it will be eight hours of fortnight and eating snacks all day. And they're not ill, are they, if they're up to that? No, they're not ill. And I think as a parent, if you've got your tick box in your mind, push pull factors, what is going on for my child here, it might help you figure out what decision to make.

Those friendship issues, Rebecca, I don't know if they've cropped up with your kids but they actually the hardest issues of all to fix aren't they as a parent absolutely and I can remember the first time that my daughter who's now nine said that she didn't want to go to school having loved school because she was having some difficulties in her friendship group and I absolutely panicked I sent an email to the head teacher and it all blew over in 24 hours. But we have had a few examples when she's had a mysterious tummy ache that turns out to be her way of telling me something's not right with her friends at school.

And I feel that on one of those occasions, I have let her have a morning off and it was convenient for me she was pretty tired it was the end of term and she was obviously quite upset and I know that there are times when I have been upset and I have had to clear my day in order to get my head around something and I feel like I'm really lucky to have been able to do that for her but actually giving giving her that time to talk about what's going on and to know that it will probably pass and that there are some options. We can talk to her teachers. We can, you know, look at getting her a book to help with this kind of thing has given her a bit more confidence to

go back to school and deal with that. And of course, the next day, everything's been fine. That's interesting. So actually, Anne Harrod, is the basic rule of thumb to take everything quite seriously? Don't dismiss your child ever? If there are, say, changes around behaviour or sleeping and eating. And resilience, you know, it's a very trendy concept at the moment, resilience. And we can talk to our children all we like about resilience. But at the end of the day, you build up resilience by going into difficult, tricky situations. So arming your child to go into school when they've got no one to sit with at lunchtime or they've got no one to play with in break time. That's tough when you put it like that. It is tough. It is tough. It is. But we've all been there and we all grow by getting through those situations so we can't over protect our children because they will grow up to be adults who can't deal with

tough times so there's a real balance to be had. Yeah and when a child moves to secondary school actually that can make everybody feel a bit more vulnerable so what do you do at that stage because as a parent you're actually lesser. You might not know other parents and you might be more reluctant to go into the school. That's it. As parents of children in primary school, you're far more networked, really.

So you more likely know the parents of the children in your child's class. You get to secondary school, your child doesn't want you within a mile radius of the school. They certainly don't want you getting involved or interfering with their friendships. But at the end of the the day they're still learning how to deal with them so they have to accept if they're not going to school or if they're saying every day that they don't want to go to school you are going to get involved and you're going to figure out ways with them

of helping the day get a bit better whether that involves talking to the head of year or whether it involves texting a friend's parent. Right, but don't be afraid to get involved. But do you, though, tell the child what you're doing? Absolutely. You do? Absolutely. I think when it comes to any school refusal or any issues around anxiety, working together as a team is always the best. So don't do it on the sly with that?

No, no, don't do it on the sly because you will get found out, just as when your teenager does something on the sly, they will get found out. So open communication is the best and letting your child know I know this is embarrassing for you and it probably feels a bit awkward but I am going to go and email your head of year just to figure out what's going on and see if there's anything that we can do to help make going to school a bit better for you. Right and you did say Rebecca that you have taken time out yourself when you just haven't felt right the The concept of mental health, particularly with very young children, it's still not something that many people are all that comfortable with.

What do you think about that? And how would you express it to your children? Because they are very young. They are. And I think part of that is modelling, modelling that behaviour yourself. I'm not naturally someone that's good at cutting myself some slack. It's a learned skill, something that I'm trying to be better at. So just trying to talk about, you know, I'm feeling really stressed out at the moment. I've got a lot on, so I'm not going to be able to do this thing because I need a bit of time to do some gardening

or just watch some TV to make myself feel better. Rebecca Schiller and Dr Angharad Rudkin. Still to come in today's programme, the work of Debra Stevenson, who'll perform her grime poetry. And cook the perfect, Mira Soda makes a Gujarati chilli tofu. No meat involved. And when we are, we'll again be discussing sex. This time for those of you in your 40s. what's it like for you now the children are growing up you're not as young as you were and it's still too early to abandon contraception we'd like to hear some of your experiences get in touch through the website confidentiality assured

if you want it and let me remind you that you can enjoy Women's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at 2 minutes past 10 during the week. All you have to do is subscribe to the daily podcast. It's free and you find it via the Women's Hour website or, of course, on BBC Sounds. Now, Jade Wye and Melissa Rice are the hosts of a podcast called

Hooked, The Unexpected Addicts. They're the first ever winners of the Rachel Bland Podcast Award. Rachel was one of the presenters of You, Me and the Big C, the five live podcasts in which three women shared their stories about their cancer. After Rachel's death, her husband, Steve Steve launched the competition in her memory. Well, Jade is a former mental health nurse and she's in recovery from drug addiction. Melissa was a primary school teacher and is in recovery from alcohol addiction. Jane asked them about their time in rehab, which is where they met. I'd been in there probably a couple of weeks, I think,

prior to Melissa coming in. That said, I wouldn't say I was remotely settled by the time you got there. Were you in a place to meet? Were you interested in making new friends? You've got no choice. You are more or less locked in there, aren't you? Yeah, I mean, it's by no means like a prison,

but it's all very... Well, for me anyway, it was very new. It was the first time I'd been in treatment and everything's communal. Like, you're not really allowed... Peer-led. Yeah. What does that mean?

So it's based on... So it's a community. So everybody that's in there, we have to support each other, challenge each other, be each other's strength, call out people on the behavior it's it's about promoting accountability and taking responsibility and when they said it was peer-led i was mortified like a bunch of other addicts and alcoholics like you can't get me wet yeah well is there a kind of hierarchy in these

places melissa um don't get me wrong when i when i was in there there was a bit of hierarchy in these places, Melissa? Don't get me wrong. When I was in there, there was a bit of a snobbery. You know, you've got... The first time I went in there, within the first couple of hours that I was introduced to the community, after the tears had stopped, it was like someone said to me,

are you a bedwetter or a junkie? And I was absolutely horrified. I was, excuse me? And he said, you know, where are you? What's your poison? And I was just like, vodka. And then that's when I realised, oh, okay, there's a bit of a divide here. And I think when you first go in, you see that snobbery.

But as the weeks progress and the time progresses, you know, we're all in it for the same reason. We all ended up in the gutter. We all ended up in the gutter we all ended up broken but yeah the the i think there is a bit of a there is a bit of a hierarchy and i think there's both in a setting like a rehab and also in society because i think for a long time i thought you know i'm not really an alcoholic i don't drink cider in the park i don't look like one i drink spirit you know there's all of that And you had a proper job? Yeah, I had a career and you know

I can't, you know, not me you know, I'm an intelligent educator all of that is just arrogance really, arrogance and denial massive. What you do in the podcast I've heard quite a bit of it,

is that you really do talk, frankly, about your worst points. The very first episode is called Rock Bottom, isn't it? Just for anybody who hasn't heard it, Jade, what was your rock bottom moment? So my rock bottom, I had found myself in a really desperate situation um as a result of of a place I'd gone to because of drugs um and it felt like everything was crashing down around me and I was losing all the all these things externally um I'd been reported to the nursing council um and I thought

I was going to lose my job at that point and lose my nursing registration plus a whole load of other things going on for me and my mental health just really deteriorated and I made the decision to end my life and I found myself, I woke up, I look back now and I'm thankful for that. But at the time, I really wasn't. And I couldn't understand why people couldn't just accept that that was where I was at. And I didn't want to live anymore. And I think the real rock bottom, when I look back now, was the fact that I was still using drugs in that hospital at that time I just

my reasoning was well I'm in a really dark place it makes sense for me to be using drugs I couldn't understand like the enormity of that and where my drug using had taken me Describing it like that that was really desperate wasn't it that period of your life

the picture you paint is a truly desolate one who if anybody is best placed to help somebody in that situation? I mean I look back now and there was a whole number of people around me that I could have turned to um I've got some amazing people in my life um but I just felt so desperate and um and I think it's really hard to distinguish a lot of the time between addiction and mental health and they're so intertwined and and my mental health really was poor but because I knew all these buzzwords, being a mental health nurse, I was saying to people, my catchphrase was,

I've got capacity, I'm making an informed decision. And you would parrot all this stuff. Yeah, and I just, yeah. I can see that. I don't know from personal experience, I've been very fortunate, whether addiction is always the same. So do you think, Melissa, there are similarities between alcohol addiction and drug addiction? Or is it all about the individual? What would you say about that?

I think what I've come to realise is that the pain, the behaviours, a lot of the behaviours are so similar and since doing this podcast and speaking to other people with other addictions I've realised that regardless of the substance the powerlessness, the lengths we go to to get that fix if you will to put it in a very crass way or the hiding, the reasons why it's all the same.

Melissa Rice and Jade Why. And you can find Hooked, the unexpected addict, on BBC Sounds. Mira Soda is a food writer who produces The Guardian's vegan column and comes from a Gujarati background. Her new cookery book is East, 120 vegetarian and vegan recipes from Bangalore to Beijing. And she uses British ingredients to create Eastern inspired recipes. She cooked the perfect chilli tofu and Jane asked her to explain exactly what tofu is. Tofu is bean curd and you

make it by making milk out of soybeans and then curdling it in a similar fashion to the way that we make cheese okay and no no beans are harmed in the um beans may be harmed right slightly but for delicious purposes yes all right now you are not actually you're not vegan are you yourself i'm not vegan no but% of the food that I eat comes from plants. Has it always been that way? It has always been that way. I come from a Gujarati family. Gujarati is on the west coast of India,

and Gujarati is a famously vegetarian, and the Gujarati cuisine is thousands of years old. And so I'm used to eating vegetables and loving them. I love vegetables, but I think there's a small amount of room in my diet for ethically responsibly sourced meat. Yeah, OK, so you would eat the occasional bit of chicken or something like that. I do, yeah. OK, and there are some really intriguing recipes in this book,

and I know that you could make this recipe just as easily with paneer. You could actually use that, could you? Yeah, so this is chilli tofu, and it's a spin on chilli paneer which is a much beloved dish both in India and within Indian communities in the UK and it's essentially tofu that's crisped and then it's doused in a sauce of tomatoes, soy, chillies and garlic. There's some amazing smells in here right now I have to say go on. It's everything i want in a dish it's sort of sweet sour salty it's addictive is this because tofu presumably as a substance is good at soaking up other flavors because it doesn't actually have any taste well that is that is the joy of it really and this this is the one

dish that converted me because i wasn't too sure about tofu um but I had never had tofu like this you know it was really crispy and it's kind of porous so it does absorb any flavor that you want to throw at it and that's the joy of tofu it's you know it's it doesn't have its own voice you can you can give it a voice with any other ingredient now the recipe is on the website right now or we'll we'll tweet it out as well and it'll be on instagram too is it a main course this or is it a side dish um and we eat it like a chat like a sort of snack um and so i just eat platefuls of it in one go but if you're not indian you might want to have it with some chapatis which i've brought for you well it's interesting you mentioned if you're not indian i suppose the truth is that that some of us might be resistant

to the idea of vegetarians if we're not vegetarians ourselves we don't understand the idea of vegetarians as the big thing as the as the star of the show we think of I mean if I have a curry I'll always have a saga loo or bombay aloo yeah but I won't think of it I'll think of it as an additional extra well I think that's why I started to look east for inspiration, because I had just written, you know, I was asked to head up the new vegan column at The Guardian. So I wasn't essentially I wasn't looking to write this book. It happened by chance that an editor of The Guardian weekend magazine called and asked me if I'd be interested in heading it up. And I think you just had a baby, hadn't you? I had just had a baby.

And so I was planning on taking time off to get to know her when I had this call. I think you just had a baby, hadn't you? book um and so i knew how easy it was to tempt a beetroot hater into eating a plateful and so i suspected that if i looked east to you know to india and beyond that i would find much more inspiration for the home cook of communities and cooks that put vegetables in the center of the plate with creativity and ease and i discovered just that extraordinary ramen um dishes from japan incredible kimchi pancakes from korea yeah pillow soft bao from taiwan say that again pillow soft bao bao buns those those balls i don't know what's a bao bun i keep seeing them advertised but i don't know what they are they're like white soft gorgeous buns that fit perfectly in the nook of your hand and they're steamed and then um filled no is that a snack or is that a meal depends on how many you eat good answer but um a snack

really i mean it's street food uh i mean i i know that heavens above i mean there's brilliant food all over britain these days thank goodness um But you have used London as your inspiration, haven't you? Largely just because the abundance of choice here is just incredible. Yes, because my daughter was she was still only weeks old when I started writing the column. I couldn't travel because I didn't want to leave her. And that opened my eyes to how many incredible cooks and communities that we have in our own city and in our country. So I was taking the tube to Thailand via Kiln in Soho, this incredible Thai restaurant. A friend of mine's Sri Lankan and we traveled on the train to Margate, the Riz, which is another great restaurant.

My accountant is Malaysian, Ben. Shout out to Ben. Asked him if he could take me to go and eat incredible laksa in London. And I realised that if my family are cooking authentic Gujarati food here in Lincolnshire, in Leicester, then I could find other communities. And certainly I did. Yeah, well, that's good to hear. And I'm listening to the sound.

Is that sizzling tofu I can hear in the distance? It is sizzling tofu. Now, it's a regular joke here about the speed at which the Woman's Hour heater thing heats, she said, not especially eloquently. It can be quite slow. So what stage are you at now, Mira? tofu in corn flour in a pan and that gives it a really, just it's really crisp on the outside and sort of soft and yielding on the inside. So that's happening in one pan. In the other pan I have just, I'm just frying the holy trinity of Indian ingredients. Gold. Onions, ginger and garlic. I'm throwing in some chillies to add a bit of spice and the onions are looking like soft little golden jewels and all I'm going to do now is add some tomatoes and soy

sugar, salt, pepper and then I'm ready to put the tofu and some peppers in and just toss it all together This is absolutely delicious chilli tofu Thank you Just very quickly run through the basic ingredients because I could eat it actually without the tofu. And that's not an insult.

It's absolutely lovely, Mira. Without the tofu? Yeah, I'm just loving everything. Without the chapati? No, I want the chapati and the sauce. Okay. And the tofu, probably. But the other ingredients are peppers.

Peppers. Garlic. Garlic, onions, ginger um soy chili tomatoes i think that's it but a cumin black pepper delicious mira soda cooking the perfect chili tofu you can find the recipe on the woman's hour website where you can also download the cook the perfect podcast through bbc sounds now debbie Stevenson describes herself thus, a grime poet, a working class dyslexic academic, a playwright, a pansexual and an ex-Mormon from East London. Well, with all that going on, maybe it's not surprising that she thought there was enough

material in her early life to write a semi-autobiographical grime musical around it. What was more unexpected was that that musical, Poet in Da Corner, took the Royal Court Theatre by storm and received rave reviews across the board. Here's a taste of it. Round one. Lonely Tesco value, Bourbons in a library I'm stuttering primary, I am my own audio book.

But I'm all chewed up like an exercise book. Unpacked lunches, pre-cooked. The playground I overlook. Are all omnipotent, the rate of shook. I mutter to myself with no notebook. But then wrestling finds me Smackdown book from a year 13. WWE status teams, enemies. Favorites Matt and Jeff Hardy.

Climbing buildings, mounting dreams. Ladder stacked high as a bright sunbeam. Round three. Debra's tag team ladder match from Poet in the Corner with music by Mikey J Asante. Well, now she's back with a new show, First Love. Andrea Catherwood asked Debra if romantic love was the only inspiration behind it. No, it's very much about, it was inspired by watching my godchildren and them connect with my

best friend through Soka at a very young age. It's a type of Caribbean music. They'd not been to Barbados or Montserrat where their parents are from and it felt like a real formative way of understanding love and communicating about quite complex systems of love without saying anything. So it's this sense of how our formative experiences of love

with our parents or carers or at that age that we don't even really remember then impact our first, very, very first romantic experiences of love. Now it's put on at the Big House, which is a theatre company that works with young people who've been through the care system how did that come about? So when I did Poet in the Corner I worked with the Royal Court for a good 18 months with the entirety of the team that worked on Poet in the Corner which includes Mikey Jayasanti and Jams and everyone to really bring new audiences to the building and change the way that they worked so the big house were part of that movement they had a relationship with them already and they came

a big group came to see the show and I had to meet a lot of people you know after the show every day and I was always really exhausted but they really stood out to me these young people as just intelligent and feisty and honest and real and And I think to an extent I saw bits of myself in them and it was such a joy to have them in the building. So even when I was absolutely shattered after the show, I made sure I went and saw Bullet Tongue, which was their last show. And they just really struck me, their passion. And I think also, though I didn't grow up in care,

I felt this sort of resonance that there are versions of myself in terms of the clothes I wear and the accent I have and the music I like it often feels like the stories told about me always oscillate around gang culture and gun and knife crime and drugs and stuff and I'm not going to say those things weren't entirely out of my peripheries growing up but I feel like I want different stories to be told. And I just see so much love and joy and beauty and dreams in these young people. It felt like doing something about love and music would feel like something really different, but also really fit in the tapestry of the work that Big House are producing.

Now, we're going to hear a little bit of that performed by you today. Tell us a bit about it. It's based in the last week of term in a primary school and we follow Bethany B who doesn't talk to anyone, spends most of her time hiding in a tree writing music to herself but she's always been in love or what she feels is love with Blakey, a very charismatic year six and she watches him all the time and is trying to work out with her best friends a way of speaking to him. But every time she tries, she gets hiccups.

And I think the bit you're about to hear is the first time that Blakey speaks to her. Great. Let's hear it. Stinging nettles and stitches, idiots and snitches, detention and riches, skittles flood, ditches, satsumas and bicks. Sneezing fits, oh flip, I forgot my Pee-yit, hiccups every day, hiccups every day, hiccups every day, hiccups every way, hiccups every day, hiccups every way, hiccups every day. And that's the moment he walks up to me. I can feel hopscotch right through me. Train is brighter than a star in a movie. Oh wait, is he talking to me?

I want to scribble my head into his chest, turn my body into his vest. Feel his hands big as a bed, as oak trees yawn from green to red. Realise I should be saying something. Not entirely sure what he was asking. God, his face is so distracting. He's a year six with a gold tooth. Mad ting. Mad stood there for a good two minutes. I'm stood here thinking about my lisp. I'm stood here thinking about my lisp when I finally start to move my lips. When I finally start to move my lips. It hiccups every day., hiccups every day, hiccups every way, hiccups every day, hiccups every day, hiccups every way, hiccups every way. And he treads his fingers across my shoulder, I'm not sure what to do. The hopscotch that was running through me trickles into dew. Each of his fingers squeezing softly as PVA glue.

Calm, calm, he says it's calm. Calm, calm, he says it's calm. Calm, calm, he says it's calm. His fingerprints removed. And with his palm he takes my hiccups. Like suda cream dissolves a bruise. Wow, thank you very much for that. Now, take us back a little bit and tell us how you got into grime.

Actually, it was before secondary school. My brother was just bringing a lot of tapes home, whether it was clashes on Deja or snippets on the radio. And because it was happening in East London live at that time you know and Grime didn't even have a name yet you know just bringing these things home and then when I went to secondary school I didn't know anyone there and it was at a similar time that I was struggling with Mormonism at home which is my parents religion what I was raised in so very much feeling like I'd been kicked out I guess out of the community in the home that I once knew. And then watching these emcees around me, I'm profoundly dyslexic.

I didn't actually find that out till I was 21 when I was told that I had the clearest case of dyslexia they had ever seen, which was fun. So I couldn't I was struggling with reading, but I'd always enjoyed speaking. So I'd often talk to myself or say things to myself on my way home, which went down in year seven, I'm sure you can imagine. But yeah, there was something about these lyricists that were, you know, speaking from the textures around me, the concrete things around me, telling stories that felt so local, that made so much sense. But also, I think there's something about Mormonism and the house that I was raised up in that felt repressed, felt like we don't say things that hurt. We don't say things if we're angry. We don't, we just carry on. And I think there was something about Grime, that rage,

that honesty that just gave me a whole new vocabulary and permission to articulate myself. That was really my access route to writing. You talk about your strict Mormon background. Do your parents come along? That's been a really long journey for me. When I was making Poet in the Corner, one of the first things I did was start seeing a counsellor

because it felt so, it's so intrinsic to me, to my experience, to what I'm trying to say and trying to play with fact and truth you know knowing what i feel i'm allowed to say about my life and that being intrinsically connected to my brother's lives to my parents lives and feeling like i can be truthful to that experience but not on fringe of facts that belong to them if that makes sense and since it's going back up i did speak to my counselor about what i felt and you know i feel like there's such a thing as church standards church standards in the mormon

religion and the show itself isn't church standard so it feels like it might be disrespectful to invite them to that and also might be hard i come out to my mom as queer in the show i've never done that in real life so that would be quite a meta situation. Might not be the time to do it. I think it would put a lot of pressure on me. Of course. I have used it as an impetus to say, actually, I wrote the show

because I want to be more honest with my parents. Well, First Love is at the Big House London from the 20th of November. And in the new year, Poet in the Corner is coming back to the Royal Court before going on tour now on monday a phone in about relationships at work is the workplace romance dead after hashtag me too do you know where the lines are between harmless flirtation and harassment or has it all gone a little bit

too far are you avoiding getting to know colleagues for fear of repercussions? We want to hear from you on email through the website. And don't forget to leave your telephone number so that we can contact you and speak to you. That's Jane on Monday morning from me for today. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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 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.