Woman's Hour - Grave Tending, Sisterhood, Second Generation Young Women and mental health; Accents.

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Marva Yates who lives in London got in touch because she wanted us to talk about the importance of sisterhood throughout history... Marva and her sister Sabrina – who currently lives in New York - started the @sistoryuntold podcast about it during lockdown. They wanted not only to learn more about those often forgotten women of history but to show that support, both good and bad, from the “sisterhood” can be a crucial part of success.Shortly after turning 50, Jo Hogger was made redundant from her corporate career. Her passion for flowers and personal and professional experiences of bereavement led her to a complete career change and she started a business tending graves and creating beautiful flowers to put on them. She explains the reasons people want this type of service, the joy she gains from it, and the meaning behind the flowers she chooses.Until very recently, very few people felt free to discuss their mental health. Even now, it’s not easy for everyone – and Listener Rochelle Fernando who is 29, and Sri-Lankan-British, wanted the programme to talk about young women of colour and mental health. She spoke to our reporter Olivia Cope, alongside Victoria Sanusi, a freelance journalist who’s 26 and Nigerian-British. Rochelle explained why she wanted the topic to be explored.Jessica, originally from Leeds, but now in Manchester, got in touch and wanted to speak to us about accents and was surprised that some of us still have to ‘posh up’ a bit to get on with our jobs. Have you had to deliberately change or kept your accent? Jane is joined by listeners Karen Jenkins, Bethan John and Dr. Melanie Reynolds, and Professor Deviyani Sharma, Professor of Socio-linguistics with the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film at Queen Mary University of London.Producer: Louise Corley Editor: Karen Dalziel

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. It is Wednesday the 26th of August 2020. Hi there, good morning. It's the third day of our Listener Week, which means that everything we're talking about throughout the course of the week has been suggested by you. And this morning we can meet Jo. She went from the corporate world to the cemetery. She's now set up her own grave tending business. We'll talk to her. We'll also have a conversation involving young women of colour

discussing their own experience of mental health issues and accents. Do accents still matter in Britain in 2020? Have I changed mine? What do you think? Yes, I think we all probably modify our accents depending on who we're with, where we are, where we've got to in life. Has that been your experience? Get involved this morning. You can email the programme via our website or contact us on social media at BBC Women's Hour. That's where you'll find us. So first of all this morning, we're going to discuss podcasting in the company of two podcasting sisters, Marva Yates and her younger sister, Sabrina. Marva is 26. She is originally from the States.

She's now in London and Sabrina is 23 and still lives in New York at the moment. But she's about to come to Britain to study at Oxford. Marva, Sabrina, good morning to you. Welcome to the programme. Let's start with Sabrina. How are you, Sabrina, in New York? It's very early there. Are you all right? Yeah, yeah, I'm all right. I woke up, I got like nerves. I woke up at like 3am. So I'm doing great though. Good morning. Happy to be here. Thank you so much for being so positive and willing to talk to us this morning. You and your big sister Marva are all part of a podcast called Sistery Untold. So Marva, who's in Wimbledon in London this morning, why did you want to do this, Marva? Yeah, well, we have definitely our own personal reasons for why we wanted to do it. But I think we started off, we were in lockdown, like everybody else all over the world, and needed something to do, kind of. And starting a podcast, it might not be the thing that first

jumps to your mind but I listen to a lot of podcasts and so does Sabrina and we couldn't do any more binging of Netflix reality TV so we wanted to do something a little bit more creative and so yeah we started a podcast. And what is yours about Sabrina? So Sister Young Told we are little catchphrase is we look at history through the eyes of sisterhood. So we decided to talk about this because we wanted to talk about women's relationships originally, either in media or in history. And then we realized that sisterhood was a really helpful lens to look at these through because just seeing how women like work together and push each other and challenge each other can be like a really interesting way to look at history where women usually are treated as like if they are successful they're treated as an anomaly or

someone who overcame the odds without the help of anyone else kind of or they're just viewed in the context of other men and so we really wanted to just viewed in the context of other men and so we really wanted to put women in the context of other women and that's how we kind of invented like quote-unquote sistery yeah well it's good yeah i'm surprised it hasn't been done before but congratulations to you um marva how do you decide who you're going to talk about um well we have our little we have like a little scientific method that we decided before we started the podcast where we have certain, I don't know if they're qualities or the people that we're going to talk about that they need to have. So they need to have like shared goals or a close relationship or influence on one another or like have gone through the same kind of trials. And also they have to have known each other and like met

each other at least once and so then we look for women that we want to talk about and look for the other women who they've had that kind either at least one of those kinds of relationships with and talk about them as well and we want to find people who have like really interesting and important like stories themselves like not just relationship, to make sure that we highlight them as individuals as well. So tell me, Sabrina, about some of the people you feature, because you certainly do talk about some women we've talked about on this programme. But Madam CJ Walker is someone who I think might not be known to all of our audience. So tell me about her. Yeah, so that's actually

interesting because Madam C.J. Walker in America is kind of like a household name. Like it's someone you learn about during Black History Month every year in school. Not every year, but when you're younger in school. And so we did an episode on her because there had been a recent Netflix show called Self Made about Madam C.J. Walker. But I wanted to explore like the rival who they portrayed in her show, which was based on this woman, Annie Turnbone Malone. And I found out that actually, like, Madam C.J. Walker is known as the first self made black millionaire in America. But actually, many people think that Annie Turnbone Malone was the first one. And they actually worked together. And Annie was Madame C.J. Walker's boss. And then Madame C.J. Walker like stole her company basically was a lot of drama. But it was just,

yeah, really interesting, because these women had so many different types of relationship, like a mentorship relationship, a friendship friendship and then enemies and then rivals um and it was just really fascinating because one of them history has chosen to be like the the epitome of success in america and the other one has been completely forgotten yeah that is what is so fascinating about the whole of history the people who make an impression but then are just lost for reasons that no one can fully understand I think it's really interesting uh Marva you also have a bit of a fascination with with English medieval history why is that um I think I've always been super interested like I

really like queens and royalty and all that kind of stuff and i really like medieval history uh like their queens because they're so like intense and that's one of my favorite things about doing this podcast is finding out about these like in super intense women that were often seen as like crazy or witches or whatever and um so yeah like they're always not always but a lot of the ones that we talk about on the show, they are leading armies and going into battles and fighting everybody who stands in their way. And they have their other friends and women around them that you can also definitely see a track between each one as you go through the generations, like what they've taken from the ones that came before them. And yeah, so I just really like the intensity of the medieval queens. Well, can I just ask you a couple of quite nerdy questions just about podcasting? Because there'll be lots of people listening who would love to make a podcast with or without their younger sister.

Marva, how do you do it what do you need um so you don't actually need that much for us we started with just our phones and we have an app that's called anchor with a free podcasting app and you just download it at the app store and then yeah it's like pretty simple you just then record whatever it is that you want to record and then submit it to whatever podcasting platforms that you want your podcast to show up on. So ours is on like Apple and Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, all sorts of random ones that I've never even heard of. All right. Well, all the usual platforms, as we say here. And Sabrina, it's important, actually, that particularly young women get themselves heard because podcasts tend to be yet another area dominated by men. Definitely. Yeah. And so I think the easy thing about starting the podcast is actually starting it. I think the harder thing is advocating for yourself and putting ourselves out there on social media and reaching out to different people.

So I think that's like what's really necessary in order to get your voice heard, since the dominant voice is like older men in the podcasting world still. But we found the podcasting community to be incredibly welcoming and kind and warm. And I'm just blown away by all the other female podcasters who have supported us. So, yeah, I think it's a really great community to be a part of and a really uplifting community. Well, congratulations to you both for getting yours up and running. Sistery Untold is the name of the podcast done by Sabrina and her older sister, Marva.

And our thanks to them both for coming on this morning. Good to talk to them. This is completely different. This is another listener, Jo Hogger. Jo, good morning to you. You're in Hadley in Suffolk. How are you today? Oh, great.

Yeah, good morning, Jane. I am, yes, Hadley in lovely Suffolk. Right. Now, you were made redundant from your corporate career. Just give us an idea of what you were doing. I was, yes. I worked for 36 years in IT and telecoms world in London, all around the country, global customers. And yes, I was made redundant about two years ago now. And then what? What did

you decide to do? Well, I did look for, tried to look for some other jobs, but I was over that magic age of 50, a woman in that sort of world and over that age of 50 so found it sort of a lot harder to find jobs and I just saw it as an opportunity to to do something different than what I'd been doing for 36 years I'd always loved flowers and thought what what else can I do well we can all love love flowers, but I wouldn't know how I could make a living out of my love of flowers. You have decided to do something that I confess I didn't know you could do for a living, which is professionally tending graves. Now, why? Why did that idea pop into your head in the first place?

Well, as I say, as you you say loved flowers and wanted to do something around flowers and i had tried weddings and things but it just didn't feel right and something came back into my mind and it was my aunt and uncle they they lived in yorkshire and they had lots of graves in hampshire and they used to every three weeks drive all the way down to hampshire to tend these graves go back and I remember one day them saying we can't go and they tried to find somebody that would be able to do that for them florists and there was just nobody and then I was in a similar situation myself my mum's grave is in Hampshire and I'm in Suffolk. My aunt used to look after it for me when I couldn't go

and unfortunately she died three years ago and you know I was in a similar so I was in an absolutely similar situation myself and thought do you know what that's what I think I want to do you know I could use my floristry skills and you know tend graves for people what does tending a grave mean it means uh so so first of all it's about a consultation with my clients to find out about the person that their loved one i like to make it very personable for them to share information and then tending means that I it's a completely fully managed service I'd schedule whenever they want me to go it could be anniversaries just Christmas or once a month once a year whatever they like and the tending means that you know I go along and and tidy it up so and I'd remove litter and debris weed it and deadhead if there are plants wash the stones

I would you know if there's pots or the memorial I'd wash those give them a good clean trim the edges of the grass and then place flowers so and that could be a bouquet it could be a wreath it could be an arrangement depending depending on the particular, you know, needs of the family or what they would like me to do. And then I take a photo before and after. And I send that email that to the whole family group to let them know that I've been. Yeah, well, which provides enormous comfort, I imagine, because some people will, well, they'll be abroad, won't't they in quite a few cases yeah absolutely um I have clients in Canada and have their parents graver in in Ipswich and you know and so yes um for them you know it is great comfort I go at anniversaries or Christmas and you know they say to me that it means so much that I pop up in their email

and their photos are there of what it looked like and a grave that is tired and then when I go away it's a grave that's cared for with beautiful flowers. Yeah, can you, I suppose not, this is an area of enormous importance for some people and frankly not important at all to others who might really miss or will really miss a loved one, but won't have much of an interest in tending graves or visiting graves. We are all very different, aren't we, in this respect? Oh, absolutely. Very, very different. As you say, some people want to go weekly and get great comfort from it. And others don't, but they still want it to be done. They want it, you know, and they're doing it because their mum and dad, you know, or family members, their loved ones, it meant a lot to them.

So for me to do it on their behalf, you know, it gives them great comfort and helps them. So it's a service that is going to help people. I know you also work as a bereavement counsellor, and I'm interested how that feeds into what you're doing now, that there is a real connection, is there? There is, yes. I work, I volunteer for Cruise, which is a fantastic organisation. And I guess it sort of doesn't really feed in, but it gives me an insight.

So my clients, my bereavement clients, I can understand from them, you know, that there are different reasons for if they want to go to a grave or if they don't. But they are grieving people. So my clients are people that have been bereaved and so it sort of fits in it all works in sort of you know what quite nicely really um you know and at the end of the day you know people people have very very different reasons for for why they would like somebody to to tend the graves for them, their loved ones. And it could be, as you say, they live away, they're busy, they're disabled or it's too painful.

For some people, it just means nothing. And I hear that from my clients, that it absolutely means nothing to stand there. They're not there, but at the same time, they don't like the fact that the grave is uncared for and unloved yeah now that that's a horrible thought i know for lots and lots of people um you get help i know from an organization called wire just tell me a little bit about this because i gather it's been a real help to you yes it is yes why women in rural enterprise uh they're networking um and it's a national

organization and that's where i first heard about cruise quite honestly and a lady called jane hammerton fantastic lady and wire is a fantastic networking organization so it's women in women in rural enterprise yeah national and it's very different to other networking organizations it's very much about supporting each other. So we go there and it may be talk about, you've got a problem and you say, can people help? So it isn't just about swapping business cards and what business we can do for each other.

So Helen Oldfield, Lynn Turner run the branch. So it's not about scratching each other's backs, but real practical help on occasion. Absolutely, yeah. helps yeah it really really helps now lots of our listeners briefly if you don't mind they do love flowers as you and i do i should say um what are the best flowers or what are the meanings behind certain flowers in terms of graves well some flowers that i use um i because also i have to sort to think about rabbits as well. So I do use quite a lot of flowers. What do you mean you have to think about rabbits?

Rabbits eating the flowers. Oh, I see. So rabbit-resistant flowers. Carry on. So I may use flowers like alliums and acrolegias and irises and lupins and dahlias. So I take that into consideration. But also the meaning of flowers is that, first of all, the most important thing is what flowers. I ask my clients what is important to them. What do they like? What do their loved ones like? So that has a big influence on the

flowers that I actually use. I'd love to use seasonal local british flowers wherever possible but things like tulips tulips are a declaration of love so all of my packages um on my website are all named after flowers something so tulip is a declaration of love jasmine sweet love and strange enough red roses i don't use too much because they're more about passion rather than compassion. Compassion rather than, yes. Yeah, well, we'll leave it there. I think I know what you're getting at. Thank you.

Thank you very much indeed. I did not know about rabbit resistant flowers. Part of doing this programme is that you are educated as you go along. Thank you, Jo. Jo Hogger, who turned her redundancy into something very important to that new role tending graves. That sounds really interesting, doesn't it? Loads of great

emails from you this week. Thank you very much to everybody who's just been affected or affected by or interested in something that another listener has said on the programme. I wanted to mention Annette, who said, listened to yesterday's programme, heard Daisy telling her story of her surprise pregnancy. My mother was told she was having a baby in July and I was born in September.

It was a tremendous shock. She had no idea. This, I should say, was in 1942. She'd been married for nearly 20 years and my parents had already adopted my sister a decade earlier. It was her first pregnancy. She was 47. I had a very happy childhood, says Annette, with my lovely family. Now have a wonderful family of my own.

Thank you, Woman's Hour. Best wishes to Daisy. P.S., says Annette, the last time I wrote to Woman's Hour was when I was 10 and it was read out. Well, Annette, you've got a 100% strike record. Well done. Email again in another, what, 20 or 30 years. We'd love to hear from you. Hope you're around on Bank Holiday Monday

because that day's edition of Woman's Hour is going to be really interesting. We're celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Willie Russell play, Educating Rita, and the impact it had on many of you who contacted the programme. Really looking forward to that. That is on Monday, Bank Holiday Monday.

Now, until very recently, few people in Britain felt really free to discuss their mental health. And even now, it isn't easy for everybody. And listener Rochelle Fernando, who's 29 and Sri Lankan-British, wanted Woman's Hour this week to talk about young women of colour and their mental health. She talked to our reporter Olivia Cope, alongside Victoria Zanussi, a freelance journalist,

who's 26 and Nigerian British. Rochelle explained why she wanted this topic to be explored. For me, because I've always dealt with it my entire life, but I think more people coming out about it now kind of made me look at myself and things that kind of had been dusted under the carpet because especially coming from an Asian background people just don't they just don't talk about it you just kind of get on with it and until you really understand what's going on your thoughts your feelings you're not

gonna ever really move forward so and I'm 29 now so I'm kind of coming in I'm the later part of my 20s and coming to 30 and I really want to I just want to move forward yeah so how would you describe your mental health now and the impact it's had on your life yeah it's had a huge huge impact ever since I was little I'd say going back as far as seven I just remember always feeling not good enough not good enough for anyone around me I was little I'd say going back as far as seven I just remember always feeling not good enough not not good enough for anyone around me I was very scared to meet people make friends because I just thought they're not going to like me they're going to think I'm weird or I'm ugly and then it affected me later on in life in even relationships because I wouldn't approach people

it was always this self-doubt lack of confidence and now I'm 29 I mean I haven't really been in a proper relationship I've never been intimate with anyone and again that's all because of my own my own confidence and I'm constantly having family telling me oh you're 29 you know you should you should be with someone I mean my family pray for me to to be married and it's just kind of like being with someone isn't gonna fix your confidence it isn't gonna fix any of the feelings that you're having that all starts with you so I wish they would rather rather than praying for like you to be married um kind of having that self-love that security but yeah that's something that I've

dealt with my whole life just feeling not good enough basically yeah you mentioned that you're of Asian heritage both your parents were born in Sri Lanka is that right yeah they were yeah so being second generation you know and being a Sri Lankan woman what impact do you think that's had on your understanding of mental health growing up I think it did the opposite of giving you understanding because especially coming from a Sri Lankan background we don't talk about mental health we don't talk about kind of how you're feeling it's just kind of like oh you're kind of just going through a rough patch you're just feeling a bit sad it's not you know it's not things like self-esteem or you know it just doesn't ever get talked about and we've had so many issues within our own family and again it's just oh they

were just going through a hard time but it doesn't fix the issue so I think coming from the background that I do and people not really talking about it and there being that sense of shame it doesn't get dealt with it doesn't get dealt with directly at all. Vic you're also second generation born to Nigerian parents and something we've spoken about on Women's Hour before is this the negative effects of this strong black woman trope and that somehow we're just meant to get through everything and anything is that something growing up in a Nigerian household did that attitude feel close to home yeah definitely I've been raised to to be like you know you need to be strong you know as well as me being a girl

I'm also the oldest so it's kind of like you are basically like the second mum you know you need to be strong you need to you know you need to kind of firm your feelings and I'm an emotional person and I cry a lot so when I was growing up I remember my dad would be like to me just be strong be strong and I'm just like I can't I physically cannot and like and I feel like even me crying at some things but I would just suppress it and I think that that in itself makes you tired and exhausted having to always having to put on a front like I'm a black woman I can carry the whole I can carry everyone's problems and struggles and everything on my back whilst also dealing with my own stuff. It's really exhausting.

So I think I've kind of made a point when I turned about 25 to just be like, do you know what? I'm not superhuman and that's okay. I'm just going to deal with my problems. And it's weird that I even look at it as being selfish, but I'm going to be selfish, put myself first, put my mental health first. And I saw a quote recently that you can't help anyone else unless you help yourself first.

So, and I really strongly believe that, like, you know, even with me going to see therapy and being on medication for mental health, I need to put myself forward to be the best me if I want to help anyone else, like, around me. And, yes, it's been a long it's been a long journey and growing up I mean were you expected to to look after your your younger siblings because that can be a common theme with the eldest yeah yeah yeah definitely um I've got three brothers and I had to look after them and like my parents would go to work but then there's this like conflict because it's like I also feel very grateful that my parents you know they're working both of them

are working and they're working like jobs that didn't really pay that well but they were able to provide a life for me and my brothers that was like what we thought was amazing but when you look back we were very like working class literally quite, but they never made us feel that way. Like we, we, do you know what I mean? So I felt like I was kind of like stepping in, helping. But I did feel like from the age of 10, I felt like there was a lot of pressure. Like from the age of 10, I knew how to like wash, use a washing machine, wash the pot. And from like 11, 12, I knew how to like cook.

And I do think there's a lot of pressure i do think you know having to look after your younger younger ones especially being the oldest girl and i know in in the nigerian community there's a lot of like embedded sexism so my parents would be like oh you have to learn to cook you have to clean you have i remember one time my dad was like you need to clean after your brothers blah blah blah blah, blah. And I'd always challenge him and I'd be like, I don't think this is right. This is very wrong. And I used to say to my dad a lot, and I still say it to him now, like I challenge him a lot. And I'll just say, what if, you know, my brothers go out there and they want to find a wife?

They're not going to have someone waiting on them hand and foot. I mean, some girls want to do that and that's their choice. But majority of the time, who wants to do that and who has the time to do that? So it's always just challenging my parents where I can on sexism but then I do recognize that this is how my parents were brought up so for them to change their thinking and they have they have changed a lot like a lot but of course some some things are just embedded some things are still there and how is your relationship with your mental health now? It's gone a lot better. Initially, it took a massive blow because I got made redundant.

And like, when I first heard about lockdown, coronavirus and everything, I was kind of like worried because my parents are key workers. And I was just like, I don't really want them to work because they work a lot with face to face with like patients. My mum's a nurse, and I know she'd be working with coronavirus patients. And if possible possible I wanted them to kind of stop working for like a few months and then I would just take care of the bills and stuff and then when I got made redundant I was just freaking out because I was like what am I going to do how am I going to take care of the family and and then my mental health started to just kind of it it just took a toll. And I just stayed in bed all the time because I didn't know what else to do. And I think what I realised was being occupied is very, very important for me.

So even now I'm working from home as a freelancer, even little things like getting on the train, escaping, just like escaping your room, because I do everything in my room. And I think that can also be a source of depression when you're just in your room with a think that can also be a source of depression when you're just in your room with a bed I had to get a beanbag so when I'm relaxing and watching tv I'll do it on my beanbag because if I'm just in bed all the time it just kind of manifests and I just want to sleep all day and making sure that I do work either on my beanbag or making sure I do

work at my desk and leave in my room and and I feel like I'm able to take it at my own pace so I'm able to deal with like the um the symptoms and withdrawals at home which is really beautiful and um Rochelle I meant you mentioned that um you know even though your family find it difficult to talk about mental health it's something that has been there for a long time and affected other relatives so do you want to just talk about that yeah I mean in my dad's side of the family there's been a number of suicides and there's never been anything about you know it the reason for it was always that oh they were just feeling you know down they were going through a tough time they had they had problems but it was never no one ever directly spoke about it and even with me I've had feelings and thoughts where I don't want to exist.

And it got so bad where I didn't tell my family about it because I didn't want it to be a big, you know, I didn't want to worry them. And again, it was that whole thing of, oh, they have their own problems. I can't talk about this. But it just got so, so bad to the point where I had to tell my employer and then I had to tell my family that I'm feeling like this um they still wouldn't call it as a mental health issue they wouldn't I don't think they would call it that because I think there's still that kind of stigma attached to them to that particular issue they just won't they won't talk about it but it's been in our family and yeah even now even with more people talking about it is it is something that they don't like to talk about directly a lot of a lot of my depression comes

from like trauma that I've experienced when I was younger and I didn't know that I only realized that until I was about 21 so as a teenager I couldn't even explain to him why I felt the way I was feeling and obviously you have you have other other teenage problems like appearance and stuff and and and weight and and how you look I remember telling my parents and they were just like this is not a problem at all and it wasn't it wasn't for them it wasn't like you're beautiful it's not a problem it was more of a you're not paying bills so why but but in their mindset they've just come from another country and they busted their butts off to to come here and provide like a decent living and i'm worrying about my my looks which i think i'm valid to be

but i think in their minds it's like we have bigger issues bigger issues to fry but but yeah i do i do get i do get like sometimes when i complain about stuff all my brothers my parents are just like well we came here with nothing and you know and it's true they did and and it's true I do have a completely better life than what they like when they were my age they came here and you know it's true I can't I can never uh what's it downplay that or even disregard it but I think my feelings and concerns are still valid if that makes sense. Rochelle is that something you relate to as well? Yeah no completely even with my family like they do they do a lot of comparisons and then that's why I started to compare as well because they'll be like you haven't you haven't gone

through what we went through and it's kind of like and then you almost feel bad for feeling the way that you do because you're just like oh yeah do you know what I haven't I haven't been through this I haven't lived in your sort of times I don't pay bills and it invalidates how you're feeling but and so then you start to think that you shouldn't talk about it because it's it's silly and then that's how the problem just grows and it grows and it grows so I completely yeah that's the exact same. What advice do you think is important to pass on when it comes to coping with your mental health and being a young woman particularly being a young woman of color I think first it's like jotting

down how you feel like how you really feel like all the stuff that you suppress on a day-to-day basis when you put on a smile jotting down how you really feel what what are your concerns what issues do you think you have and then going to see a doctor and another thing I would say is if you have the funds to definitely see a therapist because I think a lot of the times in the black community we associate seeing therapists with oh wow that person is sick oh wow they're you know it's very taboo there's such a huge stigma attached to it but I think a lot of us actually need it like and I don't say that you know in an awful way but you know it's very taboo there's such a huge stigma attached to it but I think a lot of us actually need it like and I don't say that you know in an awful way but you know you could see you could go see a therapist to discuss all your achievements as well you know it's just talking

to somebody about your life and having an outside perspective it's so powerful of course it doesn't work for everybody but I strongly think it's amazing and I think with black people in the UK like there's so much embedded stuff that we have to deal with like microaggressions racism and when you're dealing with these things on a day-to-day basis you don't understand how much this kind of seeps into your your self-worth or your the way you see yourself and and sometimes it's great to just talk to someone and just unpack all of that and even as a black woman with like hyper hyper sexualization and and colorism I'm able to to talk to my therapist about all these things and not feel judged and

and and really feel validated and feel listened to because I feel like I don't really have much spaces to do that but it's just it's just working on you because you kind of have to remember that you are your own person and you just got to do what's best for you I think for me it's about being really honest in terms of with mental health it is something that's really scary to face because you feel like does this make me crazy does does this mean that other people are going to think I'm crazy but you can't really feel better and progress until you're really honest and it's scary especially from our backgrounds where it's not talked about enough, but then you have to think that change has to start somewhere,

progression has to start somewhere, and you could be that person to help someone else whilst you're helping yourself. So not giving up on yourself and keep pushing until you feel like you're in a better place and not kind of just striving to be better, basically. That was our listener, Rochelle Fernando and you also heard from the journalist Victoria Sanussi and the reporter there was Olivia Cope and there are links on the Woman's Hour website

if you want some help and support sources of information there for you now bbc.co.uk forward slash Woman's Hour. Now another another item suggested by a listener, Jessica, who contacted us on Instagram to ask, are women taken more seriously in the workplace if they have an RP accent? I was disappointed to hear Jane admit that she poshed up for Women's Hour. I suppose that is true, up to a point. Devyani Sharma is Professor of Sociolinguistics at Queen Mary's, University of London. Devyani, good morning to you. How are you? Good morning. I'm fine.

Can we just determine to what degree your accent, the way you speak, still matters in Britain today? What do you think? It definitely still matters. We just recently did a national survey to see what people think of that question. And we asked for opinions about more than 30 accents. And then we compared the ranking that we found to surveys that have been done over the last 50 years. And we found almost exactly the same hierarchy with RP at the top and the same ranking across all 30 and the only difference was that the distances were slightly smaller so the lower ranked ones had come up a bit so that's a positive but unfortunately yeah it seems to be quite an established kind of prestige ranking. Right. But this is about, it's not about being liked, it's about being taken seriously. Right. Yeah. So what we were asking about was prestige

specifically. So yes, in the workplace, RP will probably still get you further. And there is research that shows that strong accents are associated with masculinity and standard RP-like speech with femininity. So women might come under pressure to accommodate a bit more to RP. But that's exactly, as you say, that's about the workplace. In the pub with your friends is a completely different story. All right. We'll come back to you. Karen Jenkins is a listener, grew up in Surrey, now lives in North Wales. Karen, that's right, isn't it? Good morning to you. Yes, that's correct. Good morning.

And you're married to a scouser, you lucky thing. Yes, I am. What happens when he tries to book a restaurant table? Well, it's our experience. I don't know whether it's because of our accents, but very often Steve will go into a restaurant to book a table, be told that there aren't any tables available. And then he says, he always says to me, well, you try. So I go in and it's just been our experience that I've been able to get a table or been able to book a room in a hotel where we've been told there's been no vacancies.

And I've been able to secure a room. Yeah, well, he's been told there are no vacancies, but you're fine. I mean, I can't believe that's a thing. Karen, would you acknowledge that you have an accentless accent, actually? Yes, I would say that my accent is fairly neutral, much like yourself, Jade.

Steady. It would be hard to say where we were from yes yeah um and it's helped you you're a teacher and so have you modified your voice in your line of work um not in my line of work um but i i guess like um debbie sharma was saying that sometimes in a social situation, you will modify your accent depending on where you're going, who you're meeting. Yes, when I was at school, I went to a large comprehensive in Surrey. And I would say that it was more of an estuary accent that, you know, in order to fit in. Right. That was probably the order to fit in. Right. That was probably the way that we spoke. OK, let's put a different spin on this.

Bethan is in South Wales and Bethan, you went to work as a doctor in Liverpool. And what reaction did you get there? So, hi, Jane. Yeah, I had pretty much the opposite experience to the last listener. So I'm from the South Wales Valleys. I moved to Liverpool seven years ago for work and I'm still here now. I absolutely love Liverpool. But yes, I distinctly remember on one of my first days on the ward,

speaking with a very thick South Walian accent, which I was very proud of, and a patient looking at me and turning to my colleague and saying, sorry, what language is she speaking? And I realised that obviously I was speaking English in a very thick Welsh accent and just genuinely could not understand a word of what I was saying. And then I've noticed over the past seven years that my accent, the Welshness of my accent has certainly toned down a bit. And I've even picked up then a little bit of a of a scouse

trying at times as well yes and it just it helps your professional life along for you to behave in that way certainly does yeah certainly does it just it makes i think patients just find it a lot more understandable um and colleagues also obviously in the nhs we're lucky to be working with colleagues from all backgrounds or all ethnicities and I think having maybe a bit more of a generic accent has certainly you know certainly helped in that way. Thank you very much Bethan and Melanie is originally from Yorkshire. Melanie good morning to you. Good morning. Now you live in Oxford and what happened to you in terms of the way you speak? Well, when I did my PhD,

it was put to me that I should change my accent in order to teach and present well, to fit in with academia, to fit in with the student body, and to challenge patriarchy better, to be seen as a capable feminist. I see. So that would actually back up what Devyani was saying right at the start, that in order for a woman to be taken seriously, women must change their voices. So what did you make of that at the time?

Well, I thought about it and then I thought, well, how is this going to happen? Because I haven't got any cultural, you know, middleclass cultural capital. I left school when I was 15, and I just thought, well, I can't do it. I didn't know how to do it. I just had no clue, so I thought, and then I thought, well, what happens to these students, you know, who come after me, who speak like me? Yeah. What about them? Do they, well, are they going to have to do it? I just felt it was really fake because to me when people change their accent it comes out in some time you know and you're just seen as fake and I just

I didn't want to do it No I take your point because you felt that people like yourself because I know you left school and you went to night classes did you and got all your exams No I went to Ruskin College at first which which was fantastic. Because that was a working class college.

It was great. There was no problem there with my accent. It was just when I went to do my PhD and my doctorate and then start teaching and fit in with academia, if you like, it was put to me that I should change my accent. Well, isn't that interesting and frankly quite insulting? And as you say, it robs those people like yourself of hearing people like themselves

doing jobs that they might want to do themselves. And I also thought, well, what does that say about working-class women? Are you saying that working-class women aren't capable? And I knew my research had shown me that working-class women are more than capable, which challenges all the stereotypes. Yeah, really interesting. Thank you for that, Melanie. So Devyani, I think you're right. I

shouldn't have doubted you in the first place. It would seem that women are the ones who are obliged to change their voices. And perhaps I've fallen foul of that as well after. What do you think? Well, I think it's difficult to judge individuals for the choices they make, because you come under so much pressure. I think the thing that we try to communicate more widely is for people to be aware that they use accent as a kind of shorthand for guessing social information about people. And it's often wrong. So it's, you know, you kind of use accent as a stereotype, and you make assumptions of people before you've given them a chance. So even though people, you know, have every right to adjust their accent or not, it's actually a very difficult thing to do.

Your last speaker said something so important, which is not everyone has the opportunity, the attitude, the desire to do that. And if everyone else, you know, if there's a norm of changing how you speak towards a kind of middle class standard, then we don't hear the other voices. And when someone brings that voice into a certain situation, it's heard as an outlier, an exception, as problematic and risky. And so that's one of the dangers of having, you know, an expectation, well, just do your best and try and get rid of it because then we just don't hear the rest. That is Professor Devyani Sharma, a professor of sociolinguistics with the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film at Queen Mary's University of London, just one of the contributors to that discussion on accents, which was the one

that got you going really this morning. Kate says, I retired as a teacher 10 years ago. In 1969, on a teaching practice, I was told I would fail the course if I didn't lose my black country accent. It affected my confidence throughout my career. And it's only recently that I've been able to be proud of where I come from.

I will never forget that judgmental lecturer. Oh, isn't that a shame? Jenny says I had a broad West Yorkshire accent in my early teens before I went to a girls boarding school. My accent was a source of intrigue and some gentle ridicule. By the end of the first term, I didn't have an accent left. I'm now an accent sponge. According to my now adult children, they could tell who I was talking to on the phone by how my voice had changed. I believe it demonstrates a deep level of empathy that I reflect back what I'm hearing.

Yes, I get that. Susan says, I'm an American and I've definitely changed my accent. It's about being understood and being able to communicate. It has always occurred for some people. And it's interesting, I have a friend who's been here as long as I have and their accent hasn't changed. I'm not sure if it has to do with confidence or the desire to fit in. I'm not ashamed of being American.

However, with the current president, and Susan then includes about eight question marks. So we'll just leave that there. We don't do politics here, Susan. Jury says we all know or we all knew when growing up in my working class part of London that if we wanted a good job, we had to speak properly. And I'm sure it was the same in other areas. To some extent, most of us still adapt to make ourselves understood, which is a matter of politeness. Paula says, I'm one of two local councillors representing a quite affluent ward in the UK. I myself am Irish and a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and my fellow councillor is an Oxford graduate. In a recent conversation with a

councillor from a more working-class area, I was told that it must be more difficult for me to deal with residents in my ward, as unlike my co-councillor, I... I get this... I wasn't educated. I was surprised that hearing my Irish accent made him deduce I wasn't educated.

The days of the Irish coming over to build the roads has long passed. I mean, that is absolutely incredible and pretty appalling, to be honest with you. Jenny says, I have a strong Geordie accent and I'm a building surveyor. I've worked in Lincolnshire, London and Buckinghamshire and everywhere I get accent discrimination. My partner was shocked the first time he witnessed it. Somebody made a comment that I had misread a sign because I was obviously stupid because of my accent. At work, I had an incident where I missed a phone call, but the person didn't leave a number.

When I asked if there was anything they could remember about the call, all the colleague could remember was that he had an educated accent. I replied, as opposed to what? My accent? I have a master's degree and I'm chartered through two professional bodies, says Jenny. Sarah says, I have moved 27 times and first moved from the southeast of Scotland to the south of England as a child. And I moved school a lot and learnt early on how important it was to fit in. I moved back to the northeast when a student but married somebody who grew up abroad and was in the army so that went moving again. I think a bit of my head got very interested in sounds. I'm good at languages and I pick them up quickly and I attribute this

to the listening and imitation sounds that I learnt early on. It can have disadvantages. I sometimes unconsciously mimic interesting voices as if I'm trying out the sounds. This doesn't always go down very well if people think I'm teasing them. But I do think I've completely lost my original voice and I'm a bit sad about it. Beth says, I was astonished to hear a man with a scouse accent being refused a bit sad about it. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, I'm with you there, Beth, because the Liverpool accent is not necessarily the accent that you associate with it in comedy and in the public sphere,

she says carefully in her BBC Radio 4 Scouse accent. Julia says, I moved to Glasgow from Liverpool when I was five. The teacher did not understand my Scouse accent, so I quickly adopted a Scottish one in school. Then I went back to English at home. Another listener says, actually, this has affected the direction of my life. I married an Italian. I lived in Italy and France as an expat, loved travel, and that meant actually that I avoided being labelled as posh, rich, swanky, etc. due to my accent. I think I've led a wonderfully rich life, absorbing Italian culture, living in different societies, and I'm proud of being born in England and being brought up with down-to-earth values, but I genuinely feel,

even today, that some English accents provoke labelling. It has even affected at least one of my three trilingual children brought up in Italy who went to university in the UK and have had to adopt a Mid-Atlantic accent. There you go, there doesn't appear to be any escape at all. And in response to the item about young women of colour and their mental health, we had this second-generation Indian woman who has spent a lifetime in the mental health system and in and out of psychiatric hospital. And it's taken me over 50 years to come to the understanding and awareness that this insightful young woman has come to in her 20s. What an inspiration she is to us all, young and old. What we do with that is up to each of us, I guess. And some may just knuckle under to cultural expectations for a quieter, easier life. But at least people like Rochelle encourage us

to take a wider view of our own often severe mental health issues. More power to your elbow, to both women, and love and hope, says that listener who has clearly been through such a tough time herself and i just want to thank her for taking a moment to email us and just to offer my support to her i hope she's all right and i'm i'm so sorry that she's had such a such a very tough time and i'm glad that she was comforted by in particular what rochelle had to say and that really is the whole point of Listener Week, so that listeners can share their own experiences and you can perhaps gain a bit of strength from them.

I'd also, on that note, like to mention some people who emailed in about walking because the women we spoke to yesterday, Helen and Rhian, really, really hit a chord, struck a chord with so many of you. And Siobhan said, I just really enjoyed hearing Helen and Rhian discussing walking the Wales coastal path together. Walking as a woman alone is an incredibly empowering experience. In 2019, following a period that included relationship breakdown, illness and acute mental distress,

I walked the whole of the Pembrokeshire coastal path on my own. I completed it in the month following my 30th birthday and it was the best thing I have ever done for myself. Siobhan, congratulations on that one. Also earlier in the week we talked about taking the pill back to back and I asked whether anybody honestly enjoyed their periods. And yes, somebody does. This is Polly. I was shouting at my radio. My menstrual cycle is very important to me. I'd be very happy to say more. I really feel that you need a more balanced view. You should celebrate being female in all its glorious power. It should be a fantastic thing. Okay, Polly, who enjoys her periods. I do take it. I know there are people, women out there who do enjoy the whole business or part of their femaleness. So more power to them.

And much more seriously, bulimia was something that we talked about on the podcast yesterday. I know there were issues with yesterday's podcast, by the way. So if you tried to listen and it gave up after about 33 minutes you can revisit yesterday's podcast now because it's back up and it's the full edition unfortunately it came to a halt during a conversation about bulimia and we've had another email on that subject from a listener we'll keep her anonymous but she is somebody who has been through this. And she says, actually, I developed and practiced anorexia from about 14 to my early 20s. And whilst I was at university,

I also started sometimes making myself sick after eating. The person who helped me stop doing that was my dentist, quite a young man who was very respectful towards me. But when I went for a general checkup in my hometown, he said it was none of his business how much or what I ate. But please, he said, as my dentist, could he ask me not to make myself sick? Right. His intervention was extremely tactful and because of that, most effective. There you go. Well done to him.

Thank you very much indeed for taking part throughout the course of this week. There'll be more from you in Listener Week tomorrow. Join us then. Are you still there? Good. There's someone I want you to meet. Their name is Sean, they're 16 and they're in trouble. Follow Sean's journey by subscribing to Power Up on BBC Sense.

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