Woman's Hour - Ivana Bartoletti, HPV, STEM Winners

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

“Gendered power dynamics underpin the AI debate,” says Ivana Bartoletti. She’s an expert in data privacy and has set up a network called, Women Leading in AI. Ivana believes AI is linked to inequality and oppression. She talks to us about getting more women into coding, our addiction to being online and female cyborgs like Alexa and Siri.Why is the issue of HPV only discussed in relation to younger people? That's a question put by Helen, one of our listeners. The HPV vaccine is currently given to girls and boys in the UK, but would it help if older women got it too? We chat to Helen, as well as Imogen Pinnell from Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust. The Domestic Abuse Bill 2020 is having its third reading today in the House of Commons. It's taken two years to get to this point. Today we talk to Harriet Wistrich, Director of the Centre for Women’s Justice. She talks to Jane about the Bill’s significance, but more specifically about women prisoners who've offended partly because they've been victims of domestic abuse. She wants a further amendment to be added to the Bill which would give them legal protection. We also hear from Gisela Valle, Director of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service.And we meet Evie Mackenzie. She's part of a winning school-team, who've discovered a way to cut down on plastic waste. It involves mealworms! We chat to Evie and her teacher Thandiwe Banda.

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. It is Monday, July 6th, 2020, and it's the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, good morning to you. Today we'll talk about gender and artificial intelligence in the fascinating company of the writer and privacy and tech expert Ivana Bartoletti. We'll also discuss older women and HPV and decommissioned tanks, mealworms and the curse of plastic pollution. That's all in Woman's Hour this morning. First though to Parliament and the domestic abuse bill is still weaving its way through the parliamentary system. It gets its third reading today and there's been so much discussion about how much of a landmark this bill will be. But critics do say the legislation isn't perfect

and some very vulnerable women have been forgotten, including migrant women and women who may have been driven to offend after years of abuse. Harriet Wistrich is the Director of the Centre for Women's Justice and in a moment I'll talk to Gisela Valli who's Director of the Latin American Women's Rights Service which is part of the Step Up for Migrant Women Coalition. Harriet, good morning first of all and I guess we ought to acknowledge actually what the good things about the proposed legislation actually are. Yes, well it certainly is a landmark piece of legislation. It's the first time that we will have a statutory definition of domestic abuse, which is wide-ranging

and includes, for the first time, economic abuse as a form of domestic abuse, as well as all the other forms of sexual and physical violence, psychological violence and so on. So that is good. We have now a domestic abuse commissioner as well who will be overseeing and ensuring that domestic abuse is throughout government and local government being taken into account. So those are good things and there are a number of provisions

that are in EU which will provide protection and support for services. But there are also a range of things that are missing from the bill. There's been a lot of work, particularly by the women's sector, to try and improve, And there have been some amendments accepted, but there are some very important omissions, which we're trying as the bill comes to Parliament for its last opportunity to get change. Right. Not everybody is completely up to speed with how all this works. It does seem to have been going on a long time because all sorts of events have occurred, Brexit, elections

that have just derailed the progress of the bill. But it is likely to become law relatively soon, isn't it? Yes. Basically, the bill is now being rushed through, as you rightly pointed out. I think it's stalled twice because of elections. But I think the government are determined for this to be passed, possibly as soon as this summer or in the early autumn. And so they're racing through, perhaps almost too quickly at this stage, in order to ensure that these very important amendments are brought in. Right, but hence your concern that actually some important elements and some important potential victims could be forgotten in all this. Let's focus on, to start off, the action that might be carried out by some victims of domestic abuse who have been driven to offend. Why is this so important? Well, basically, there are well over 60% of women in prison are known to be victims of domestic

abuse. And many of the women in prison who've committed crimes, committed them in the context of being in an abusive relationship. And this proposal for an amendment, which has been worked with by the Prison Reform Trust, but Centre for Women's Justice are strongly supporting, would create a new statutory defence, well, in fact fact two defences, for those who commit crimes in the context of being coerced or compelled or subjected to violence, but who currently are not able to use defences that they should be able to use. So this is a really important protection. It would improve the criminal justice system

and basically recognise that some women and people are driven to commit offences purely because they are coerced or subjected to repeat violence. Anyone who listened to the interview on Woman's Hour a week or so ago now with Amanda Brown, who is the GP at Bronzefield Women's Prison, well, I won't have forgotten the interview for a start because she was a very compelling speaker, but Amanda very much echoed that and said that so many of the prisoners

she treats at the prison are only there because they have committed offensive offences because of their circumstances. So I think a lot of people will understand the need for that. What about the offence of non-fatal strangulation and asphyxiation as a so-called standalone offence? Can you tell us more about that, Harriet? Yes. Well, we at the Centre for Women's Justice have worked with frontline support workers across the women's sector and we've also been made aware through many inquiries and other professionals we work with that non-fatal strangulation is a very common form of violence

in an abusive relationship. It's used often by those who are wanting to exert control over their victim to threaten them and basically say, look, it's this easy for me to kill you by putting my hands around your neck. And I'm warning you. And it's also recognized as an indicator of escalation towards homicide. And yet, there is no separate offense. It can only be charged as, and it sometimes is charged as common assault or assault occasioning actual bodily harm. But we believe the police charge this more frequently and it would provide better protection for victims of violent and coercive and controlling relationships. Right. I suppose I'm struggling quite to understand why making it a specific and separate offence is going to offer victims additional protection. Can you briefly explain how that works?

Well, basically, because at the moment, the police don't often recognise recognize it as as as a specific offense so if if a woman um reports violence and we know that women uh often don't report for for for months or years of domestic violence and then finally they do and then they're asked to provide a history of what's been happening in the relationship if if if strangulation has been something what's been happening in the relationship. If strangulation has been something that's been used, and sometimes used on a number of occasions, police may say, well, that's not that significant. Let's just focus on this last act. But it is very significant. And also, if they think it's only common assault, common assault is what's known as a summary-only offence. It can only be tried in the magistrate's court, and it can only common assault. Common assault is what's known as a summary only offence. It can

only be tried in the magistrate's court and it can only be charged if it occurred within the last six months. So by creating a specific offence, it will recognise the seriousness of this type of offending, which is sadly too commonplace in many violent and controlling relationships. Harriet, thank you. Gisela Valli from the Step Up for Migrant Women Coalition. Just outline, if you can, exactly why you're so concerned about migrant women. Yes. Hi. Because migrant women are completely absent from the domestic abuse bill. It is very striking to me that I keep hearing it's a landmark piece of legislation, while at the same time it completely ignores the needs of one of the most vulnerable groups

of survivors of domestic abuse that there is, which is women who are subject to immigration control. The bill in itself has no provision for safe reporting mechanisms. So essentially, migrant women who try to report to police and other statutory services get questioned about their immigration status very quickly. And once that happens, there is, in most cases, no further police action. So perpetrators are not being held accountable and victims are not being supported but more worrying than that there is a high likelihood that if you approach the police to try and report domestic abuse they're going to report you to immigration enforcement which means and it has, we have four documented cases where women try to report to the police and they become detained themselves. Can you give me some idea of the numbers involved here, Gisela? How often has that happened?

Well, we have four documented cases. Obviously, not all women end up accessing services like lawyers and other frontline service providers. But we know that there is at least a high degree of information sharing, which means even if you're not detained on the spot, immigration authorities are going to be made aware of your situation and might lead to detention and deportation. So your concern is very much that these women who are already suffering are going to suffer a lot more unless they are specifically included in this legislation? Yes, and it's an all-encompassing issue because they often have no recourse to public funds. They're not eligible for specific protections for men and women, like the destitute domestic violence concession and domestic violence rule. So they're very much in the hands of

perpetrators. And if I might give you a couple of examples how this actually works, we have seen women who have been threatened very specifically. It's a very specific form of coercive control that if they try to report the abuse to the authorities, they're going to be detained, deported and separated from their children. And we have had women who, when trying to access the support from the police, have been left in the street.

So basically they have not been believed. The police didn't follow up on this. They were sent to a home office for voluntary returns. You know, we had the case of a service user sleeping on the streets with her nine year old just because nobody would support her. Thank you very much for outlining your concerns. Harriet, do you think that the amendments that you would like to be part of the legislation have got any chance? What do you think that the amendments that you would like to be part of the legislation have got any chance? What do you think? I think there is a good groundswell of support for the non-fatal strangulation.

The last time I was a member of 89 MPs across all parties had signed it up. And we know it's being proposed today in Parliament. So we're moderately hopeful that it may just come past the point. In relation to the defences, that is not on the agenda at the moment, but we're hoping the House of Lords will look at it closely. It really, really would make such a huge difference to so many women. And we think it's so important. But just it's an obvious point to make. You can have all the most you can have the most perfect legislation in the world. But essentially, human behaviour will not necessarily change as a result of it being enshrined in law. That's absolutely right. And we must remember that for all the good things about

the bill and the legislation which is being sought, it will not provide a solution without a complete will to enforce the law and implement it. However, having those defences and having those pieces and defences enshrined in law will be important because you can cite it and you can push and you can identify where there are failures and challenge those failings in the police or the Crown Prosecution Service. For example, a couple of women who've consulted us in the last couple of weeks who are being prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service in circumstances where the crime they committed was purely as a result of being compelled to commit it as a result of violence,

we would be able to really push the CPS and say this is not, this should not be prosecuted. Whereas at the moment, the CPS is saying that they're going to proceed. And if those defences are enshrined in law, that will make a huge difference. Thank you for making that clear. Harriet Wistrich from the Centre for Women's Justice. You also heard earlier from Gisela Valli of the Latin American Women's Rights Service and our thanks to them. Now to Ivana Bartoletti, who's an expert in privacy and data ethics and the author of a new book called An Artificial Revolution on Power, Politics and Artificial Intelligence, AI, of course.

Ivana, good morning to you. Good morning. Now, this stuff, whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not, impacts on our daily lives. So just to nail this down for the benefit of a wide audience, and I include myself here, no tech expert, how does artificial intelligence impact on my daily life? Thank you so much. and thanks for this question

because a lot of people when we think about AI the first thing people think about is robots and Terminator and really futuristic things in reality artificial intelligence is in our daily life already so if you use your phone and if you use it to if you use Google Maps if you use it to arrive to a certain place, if you use, if you browse the internet,

you would have, for example, adverts being served to you or when you go to the hospital, sometimes you would have, you would see machines so pointing out if you have a particular disease or not. So artificial intelligence is here already. And it's not just the futuristic things that a lot of people think about. It certainly isn't. And it's to a degree disturbing. I, for example, regularly go for the same walk in the same park on particular days of the week. And on some of my social media feeds, I am regularly being asked

if I'm interested in losing weight through walking. Yes, well, that's not surprising. No, well, you say it's not surprising. It's quite disturbing, isn't it? Yes, it is. And I think it all depends on the limits, doesn't it? And it all depends on the control that we have, whether we do want to receive this kind of information or not. So I think the issue, the reason why you are seeing this, which is very similar to the issue why, for example, if I navigate, if I browse the internet, am I looking for a pair of shoes? And then two minutes later, the advert will follow me, and I'll be serving an advert saying, oh, do you still want this pair of shoes? The reason why

this is happening is because of the way that the digital world is being built, which is basically built on a lot of this is around tracking what we are doing. And a lot of this is positive, and I do recognise the positive impact, but a lot of this can become disturbing when it infringes upon our more personal and intimate spheres. Well, too right. And you actually go further than that. There's a great quote from you in the book. You say, we must be careful that we don't rush towards a future that instead of unleashing the potential of technology, we'll see our rights curbed by it. like it very much. I would like to get more women into tech and this is my passion. And I would like to get more diverse people into technology because we are seeing this huge call for diversity

and social justice at the moment. And I want to embrace it and I think that and I really think that technology needs to play a big part in it. But the problem is that we are a little bit I feel at a very difficult time and we could go either way. So we either say, okay, we want

technology to adapt to us. Or we say, you know what, we just sleepwalk into us adapting to technology. And I really don't want this to happen, because the potential is there. But at the moment, we've seen some really good things. we are also seeing some really really dreadful things and i always and then i've pointed in the right direction very simple things one is for example the fact that some adverts that we get online we receive them because some of the ways that companies really look at us when we browse the internet they really hack into our secrets they really hack into something which is really intimate. That's one thing.

But the other thing, think about things like everyday life or Alexa or think about the sort of voice assistants that we have and how they often have female voices and how we are used to treat these female voices as digital servitude. So we've moved from... So, I mean, the thing is, can we start for a second and really think, OK, what is technology for? What are we building this artefact for?

Are we building it because we want to improve society, making it better? Or are we building it and what is happening is that things that we thought were long gone are actually coming back to us from the back door. This is something, to be fair, we have discussed on Women's Hour before, but would artificial intelligence, would algorithms differ if more

women were involved in coding and tech? Well, this is something that I argue in my book. So, first of all, for the benefit of listeners, an algorithm is a set of instructions in mathematics. It's very simple, really simple. And the problem is, some people say correctly so, they say, if it's only men, and especially white men, sitting in a room and programming, that this code will have a set of instructions which be determined about one part of society. So yes, we do need more women into coding. But the problem is that it's not just about the code. It's not just about the perfect algorithm. Because the issue is, what are we using technology for? So I'm actually not into a crusade to get more women into technology. I would like that. But that's not my main objective. And I know I'm controversial here.

The problem is, I want more women at the top of businesses and more women at the top of politics to decide what we are going to use technology for in the first place. Because I'm not there to solve a problem. The issue is, historic data, which has been

put into these algorithms and thus generating a lot of bias, it's a social problem. Well, yeah, I mean, there's so much we could talk about, Ivana. The book, by the way, is absolutely fascinating and readable. Anyone who thinks, well, I wouldn't be able to understand this, I understood it. And believe me, I am no expert. I just think you ask some really important questions in the book. There's something I really wanted to mention.

You talk about the enormous salaries paid to some people largely men in silicon valley but also part of this whole business are the women in india who spend hour after hour in windowless factories looking at images of for example in your book polyps just explain that yes i mean this was an article in the new york times where um kate metz really looked into this. The problem is, again, when we talk about artificial intelligence, we immediately think of super salaries, amazing jobs and incredible things. In reality, underpinning all that, there are thousands and thousands of people vetting what's been posted online and training this machine so there's algorithms with loads and loads of information and this is done very much manually so everybody thinks about all this digital technical work but there is a lot of unseen manual labor underpinning

all this and again why did i mention this the reason why i mentioned this is because when we talk about artificial intelligence we keep seeing one aspect of of the transformation that is happening the other aspect is the unseen labor the other aspects are the fact that we're creating a lot of products and we are creating um they're being focused on surveillance and and um and not on what really matters in society, tackling the environmental issues, tackling the healthcare emergencies that are happening. So the reason why I'm saying this, I mention all this is because we really need to understand that AI is much more than five or six people in the Silicon Valley or five, six people working in the Silicon Roundabout in London. It's really a lot of human labour and working that is happening in the background.

You also reference smart fridges and make the point that however clever your fridge is, telling you that you've run out of cheese or whatever it might be, it's usually, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, it is usually the female in the household who will have to go out and buy the... But totally, but also I don't know you, but I feel that with all this bombarding about smart things I feel that the pressure is increasing

not decreasing. So it feels as if we can do everything in a smarter way, in a quicker way. And we can look after the house and do the shopping. But in reality I feel that we, not people we as women we have to be even more wonder women than before so I do wonder I mean I know the relationship between women and technology is a complicated one because many different reasons including our own

bodies but but we really have to think for a second and this is where I would like more women involved in this debate and this is why I try to write a book which is as simple as possible so a lot of people could really discuss these things at the kitchen table. I mean, artificial intelligence is not technology, it is partly technology,

but it is a lot about power and if it is about power, then, you know, it's also related to oppression. So I want the power and I want to get rid of the oppression. You're right. Well, we've got to ask who's got the power, haven't we? Exactly. Just be watchful. It's so, so interesting.

Thank you very, very much, Ivana. Oh, thanks to you. Thanks to you. Take care. Ivana Bartoletti, an expert in privacy and data ethics. And honestly, it is a readable exploration of some really important issues. It's called An Artificial Revolution on Power, Politics and AI. Tomorrow on the programme, I'm going to be talking to the novelist Claire Chambers.

I really enjoyed her novel, complete contrast to the previous work, but her novel, Small Pleasures. I lapped that up a week or so ago and Claire is on the programme tomorrow. It's about a virgin birth, which should intrigue you. I hope it does.

Quick mention to Helen, who I hope is either listening live now or will be listening later to the podcast. She's in Malaysia. She moved there a year ago to teach abroad and says life has been somewhat challenging, particularly in lockdown, but she takes a woman's hour with her

on her daily walk and it's helped her. So Helen, I hope you're all right. Thank you very much for that email. You can email the programme whenever you like via our website bbc.co.uk forward slash womanshour. Now, why don't we talk more about the issue of HPV and older people, particularly older women. HPV, as you'll know, they're common viruses, they affect the skin and they're very easy to catch from skin to skin, skin to skin contact or sex. Now, some viruses, some HPVs can cause genital warts or cancer. Of course, condoms are a good protection.

And the HPV vaccine is now given routinely to teenagers in the UK, but not to older people. So Helen Fenton is somebody who emailed the programme about this. And Imogen Pinnell is from Joe's Cervical Cancer Trust. Imogen, in a moment, first of all to Helen. Good morning to you, Helen. Morning, Jane. How are you? I'm good, thanks. And yourself? Yes, very well, thank you. Now, just tell us briefly what happened to you after your most recent smear test. Right, so about a month after my recent smear test I received a letter in a post telling me that the test showed that I've got high risk HPV and

borderline cell changes on my cervix. Right. And I then tried to make sense of what that means to me and how I can live with that information. Particularly I want some good clear information about how to keep myself and my partner safe and healthy. But what I found is there's been no real support or counselling about how to live with the impact of having a sexually transmitted infection that I could pass on, certainly at the moment. And you are, forgive me, I should have asked how old you are, because that isn't insignificant here. I'm 51 and I'm perimenopausal at the moment. Right. Stay with us. And I'm very grateful to you for being so brief and so clear.

Imogen, the plain fact is that the HPV vaccine, which is relatively new, is only given to teenagers. That's right, isn't it? That is correct. Like you said, it's given at school age because it's most effective then because our young people are less likely to have been exposed to HPV. Right. So what does somebody of Helen's age do? Well, it is possible for those of us who are a bit older to get the HPV vaccine privately, but it does come at a cost. And there is evidence to suggest that there may be some benefit to people over the age of 25 getting the HPV vaccine but it's very much on a case-by-case basis and it's about assessing your individual risk because there's no way of us knowing which types of HPV we've been exposed to or may be active in our system at the moment. So if someone's considering having the vaccine we would suggest they discuss it with their GP or their practice nurse as well as reading up on HP generally, so they feel comfortable in their understanding of the virus itself. And that's

where our helpline can help if Helen would want to give us a call. Sure, I'm sure she can. But let's just get to the nitty gritty and the money. Is it 20 quid? Is it 25 quid? How much is it? It's quite expensive. So on average, we're looking at about £150 a dose, and there are three doses that you would need. So not insignificant. No, well, that isn't insignificant. And Helen, I guess you'd say that the way the system works at the moment is it's welcome. It's brilliant that teenagers are getting this vaccine, both girls and boys now.

But, you know, life has changed and people don't marry and stay with the same partner at the age of 22. Not anymore. Absolutely. So I separated from my long term partner 10 years ago. And that was when I was in my early 40s. And since then, I've been dating and I've been looking for a new long term, loving, stable and sexual relationship. And in hindsight, I wish I'd had the HPV vaccine 10 years ago and I think so many women in my age group we find ourselves in a similar situation we're searching again for love and for sexual

pleasure in middle and in later life and we've often had many more sexual partners over our lifetime than our mother's generation which does put us at greater risk of HPV and I think the fact that STIs in our age group are going up at the moment suggests that we are having unprotected sex and we are putting ourselves at risk. Yeah, I mean, most women, most women, I know it is a generalisation, do visit the GP relatively regularly, Helen. Did no one at any time suggest that you might have the HPV vaccine? Was it never brought up? No, no, neither my GP has offered it or suggested that I went out to find it for myself. And also I've also attended, because I'm someone who tends

to be quite responsible about my sexual health, I do go for routine screenings at my local sexual health clinic. And not once did anyone ever there say, have you thought about this? Or maybe this is suitable for you or appropriate for you, you know, given where you're at. I think there seems to be a real lack of joined up thinking about our sexual behaviour and our health care. Yeah, that's interesting. Imogen, why do you think we haven't changed our attitude to, because people don't behave the way that our mothers and grandmothers did. Life has changed. Your opportunities are greater. Absolutely. And this is something that at Joe's Cervical Cancer Trust, we're very aware of, that we want to open up this conversation about HPV with all age groups.

What I would say is that often with a vaccine, it is based on that evidence, like I mentioned, that it may be less effective as we get older. And that might be why we're not having those more open conversations about it but it's great to hear that you're going for screening because that is really where we're looking now to pick up the virus first so the test has changed recently so we now look for HPV first and then we'll look for cell changes if someone has HPV. Go on Helen. The problem is is that I've been screened I've been told I've got this virus but now I've not been told

what I can do about it I mean for example I asked I said what does this mean for my sexual behaviour what does this mean for my sexual practice

and people have said to me it makes no difference I said well surely what about condoms they said well you can use them if you wish to it's a personal choice okay well let's put that to Imogen.

What would you say to someone like Helen, Imogen? It's a really tricky one, HPB. I'm going to be completely honest with you. So there is no treatment for the virus itself. And for most people, so we're talking for nine in 10 people, they are going to clear that virus within two years. Now, we know that doesn't happen for everyone. And in this case case there's not really

a lot you can do to get rid of the virus itself. Using condoms, yes that does reduce your risk but it doesn't completely protect against it and that's why we have again those screening results in place so we can make sure you're getting the right care, you're being monitored to check if it's doing anything inside your body and hopefully it will clear it but if it does start to make any changes then we can send you on for more monitoring or treatment. So somebody should tell a new sexual partner that they have got HPV then that's a given is it Imogen? It's really up to the person so and like STIs where you might be advised to go back and tell past sexual partners that isn't the case there's no guidance like that around hpv and that's because again it's

incredibly common we can't fully protect against it and in most cases we will clear it eventually so it really is up to that person to make the decision. So what I would say, yeah. What I'd like to do is give my body the best chance to be one of those women who clear it. And I'm not being given any information to help me do that. Right. I'm aware that I don't want to get reinfected as well. No. OK, that's another good point. So very briefly, if you can, Jo, what can Helen, sorry, Im imogen what can helen do as she says to give

herself the best chance of getting rid of it to give yourself the best chance going for those regular screening appointments is a great thing because we can monitor it if you smoke giving up smoking can really help because it makes you more able to clear that infection and again using condoms can reduce the risk but it it does sound scary, but there really is nothing you can do to completely protect against this virus. And that's why, again, with screening, we're now looking for it because we just want to identify who might be at higher risk so we can just keep an eye on them. And really, really briefly, Imogen, can I just ask about why smear tests do stop? And we've got another email here, which I'll keep anonymous

from a listener who says, I think women over 60 who remain sexually active and increasingly meet a partner later in life need to carry on being allowed to have smear tests. Why have we stopped giving women smear tests? So screening at the moment goes up to the age of 65. And after the age of 50, it's every five years. The evidence shows that when we screen after that age, there's not much benefit to it. So if you've had clear screenings up to that age, you're much less likely to go on to develop cell changes or cervical cancer after that. If you have an abnormal screening result, whether that's HPV, whether that's cell changes, whether that's both, before the age of 65, you wouldn't just be phased out of the programme on that abnormal result. They would keep bringing you back until everything was clear.

So we are still making sure that we are looking after our older women. But at the moment, the evidence isn't there to suggest that we need screenings that late in life. OK, thank you very much indeed. I suspect a lot of people will have been interested in that and you may well have a point to make via email. That was Imogen Pinnell from Joe's Cervical Cancer Trust and you also heard from our listener Helen, our thanks to Helen too. Now if you've been somewhere absolutely idyllic in the world and perhaps you've been fortunate enough to spend a bit of time on a beach, it can be gorgeous and then you spot those plastic bottles bobbing around, some products you might well recognise. So congratulations to pupils from the Beacon School in Banstead in Surrey, who are winners of an international competition to save our shores from plastic pollution.

They have been using decommissioned army tanks and mealworms in order to do this. Tandi Banda is a science teacher at the school in Banstead and Evie McKenzie is the writer of this award-winning project. Evie is 17. And now Evie, I gather you were, was it Croatia you were on holiday in and you spotted a load of plastic junk? Yes, that's right. On holiday and I was around on a paddleboard and I spent my day picking up a load of plastic. And I think everyone has a similar experience of plastic pollution these days. Yeah, it is a really horrible thing, isn't it? When you see it, especially when you recognise some of the stuff and you think, well, I've used that stuff, but I've used it thousands of miles away. Definitely. You see all the photos, but then when you actually visit it yourself, it's awful. It is. It's an absolute curse. Tandi, how did you come to get involved in this competition?

I think you were also quite successful in it last year as well, weren't you? Yes. So when I teacher trained five years ago, I decided that I would focus more on STEM. So I have a master's in education with a STEM focus. And so I started my first ever STEM club in my NQT year. And then that became really successful. And then I moved on. And every school that I've worked in since then, I've run a STEM club. And organizations just send you a lot of information about STEM and what projects you can do.

So I stumbled upon the BIEA competition. And we tried it last year, we got through, we came third overall with our drone. And then this year, we were really fortunate to win the grand prize. Yeah, with your tank project. So Evie, simple question. How does this work? And how are the mealworms involved exactly? Yeah, so we've made a biofuel-powered amphibious vehicle that, like you said, it looks a bit like a war tank. It collects plastic with a hydraulic arm

and then they're separated into one of six tanks for the six types of plastics. And one of those tanks contains mealworms, which can break down polystyrene with the microbes in its gut. It converts this currently non-biodegradable plastic into carbon dioxide. Keep going. Yeah. And then? And then we would send it to recycling centres and it could be reused. It currently takes, oh, it's non-biodegradable,

and this process takes 16 days, which sounds a lot of time, but in comparison to 500, you know, infinite years, it's a great solution to plastic pollution. Right, and this is genuinely something that could be used in countries, for example, in the Far East, which actually end up with a lot of our junk. Yeah, we were trying to focus our vehicle to be used in Asia and Indonesia, where most of the world's plastic is recycled.

Yes. And so just tell me again, how would it work in that? I mean, how can you possibly know, with the greatest respect, from Banstead in Surrey, that your product would be able to do the business thousands of miles away on a beach in Asia? So we also used a drone with our vehicle that has an infrared spectrometer on it so that detects the plastic tells us where to go and we used infrared because it gives us global validity the heat signatures that will be good given off will be the same all the way around the world and we were also highly inspired by a project called the Interceptor which is a very similar vehicle to ours. It uses biofuel and solar panels and they focus mainly on using it in Asia as well.

So we did a lot of research before we came up with the idea. Yeah. I mean, also, I'm really intrigued as to how, Tandi, you managed to do this when actually you've not been in school, have you? No. So we started the whole project during lockdown when I got the email from the BIA that they were extending the deadline I thought it would be a good opportunity for some of our students to actually use lockdown time effectively so I pitched it to the students in Google Classroom they were really good at accepting the challenge and then we met over Zoom every other day we spent every day of the half term researching and making sure that this project is actually something feasible yes okay a few

problems with the lines there so i apologize to any listeners who are having trouble picking up everything you're both saying but thank you for persisting um evie the mealworms um just for people who will be concerned as to whether they've suffered at all um are they they're keen on this are they they like this this line of work mealworms yeah so it was a study done by mit and beijing university and they basically found that the mealworms after they're just as healthy as the mealworms before very little is incorporated into their body and a lot of it is converted into co2 or excreted um and then they can be uh released back into the wild after and they're absolutely fine to use and we

replicated this study with our stem club a group of year eights did it and they seem to love the polystyrene what the mealworms genuinely they can't get enough polystyrene because polystyrene i mean how they're just able to process it somehow are they yeah it's due to the microbes in their gut if there's no other food sources readily available they will biodegrade it right that's just it is just incredible genuinely um it sounds a remarkable idea i mean tandy is there any chance that it could go into production yes so what we plan to do is we plan to make a CAD design and a 3D prototype of our tank and then we'll contact different organizations that are already into

in the amphibious vehicle design business or industry and then we will contact the original scientists that did the mealworm study to see where they are with that as well and how feasible it would be on a large scale and i would predict that it's not just mealworms there must be a lot of other organisms that will have a similar set of enzymes that they can then can then use in order to biodegrade plastic i think there's a few projects already in the pipeline okay well it's just an area i knew absolutely nothing about it sounds genuinely fascinating just a brief word tandy on how life as a teacher

has been for you over the last couple of months not the easiest part of your professional life I'd imagine. It hasn't been easy but I think we've adapted really really well I think the students especially at the Beacon School have been absolutely fantastic and we've had a lot of support from our MAT our Multi-Academy Trust as well and so we've managed absolutely fine and we're so proud of what the students are doing and how much they are doing. So I think it's thank you to all the teachers and all the students and all the parents for all the support that they're giving the students

in this time. We're almost there and hopefully in September we'll get back to normal. Yeah, well, I'd say so all of us, quite literally, I'm sure. Tandi, thank you very much and congratulations to you. And also our very best wishes to Evie McKenzie, who is the writer of that award-winning school project. That was potentially a really exciting project, wasn't it?

Tandi Banda, who is a teacher at the Beacon School in Banstead. And you also heard from the very impressive pupil, Evie McKenzie, who was the person who wrote the project, which has won that award. And lots of love for mealworms. I see a lot of people are just generally amazed to hear people, Evie McKenzie, who was the person who wrote the project, which has won that award. And lots of love for mealworms. I see a lot of people are just generally amazed to hear that mealworms really genuinely like polystyrene and can't get enough of the stuff. And who knows, they could be on the verge of a major breakthrough. And it's really, at the moment, I think we all need a bit of good news and some inspiration. And I think we got it there from Evie and from Tandi. And yes, Siobhan has put up on my screen in front of me a tantalising image of five litres of chubby, dried mealworms.

Thanks for that. Yes, I think that can go now. But I appreciate your efforts. I mean, the dried mealworms are past caring about polystyrene, but it's good to know they're out there. One sure thing about listening to this programme or indeed presenting it is that you live and learn quite literally every day. Now, to your thoughts on the programme today, we had this anonymous email. I experienced abuse in my first marriage, including not long after I'd left him, an incident of attempted strangulation. I did go to court and a non-molestation order was in place for a while.

This was over 40 years ago now. He went on to badly abuse his second wife and indeed served a prison sentence at one point. This has made me wonder if subsequent behaviour would have changed in any way if at an earlier stage there'd been some legislation to take the abuse more seriously at the time. I would support this change in the law, but that is because of my personal hindsight, says that listener. And yes, thank you, because you were basically answering the question I asked,

which was how would a specific offence protect women? And there's your answer, or there's my answer, so thank you very much for providing that. Now on to the question of smears and HPV and vaccines. Quite a few people have got experiences or just points of view to make here. Loreley on Twitter said this is part of a wider problem where the medical profession simply struggles with the idea that women stay sexually active after the menopause. And here's another email this time from a listener who says, interesting conversation this morning about HPV.

I'm 52 and I've been diagnosed with it for the past eight years. I sympathize with your listener, Helen, as it's taken a huge amount of time and effort to research how to support a fast recovery for myself and not to pass it on to my partner or even identify if he has it now, which isn't possible. And this is the crux of the problem, which wasn't discussed. You end up passing it backwards and forwards to each other. Essentially, it's your immune system that needs to work to rid your body of the virus, which is why Imogen from the Cancer Trust mentioned stopping smoking.

Other than that, the only option is the vaccine, which, as discussed, isn't readily available for mature women and may not cover all types of the virus, as some are more dangerous than others. My partner is aware I've had the virus. We don't use condoms, as it can be transferred through skin-to-skin touch and not just semen or vaginal fluid. My body's taken eight years to get rid of the virus and I've worked very hard

to improve my diet and exercise to promote my immune system's effectiveness. So I welcome the conversation today but I felt you didn't get to the real issues for mature women. So please have a follow-on conversation with a professional willing to talk through all the details. Okay, point taken. Thank you very much for that. We'll try and get back to the subject in the relatively near future. Another anonymous emailer says, I'm 36 and for two years in a row, I've had an HPV positive result in a smear, but no abnormal cells. So I've been offered no other follow-up, just told to come back in 12 months. I'm married and I've had no new sexual partner for five years. I've got young children

and would like to have another one soon so I can't always use contraception. I got the standard letter saying most people clear the infection within two years but that hasn't happened with me yet no one has thought to ask when I last had a new sexual partner or has given me any information about longer lasting HPV infections and what the risks are. It seems quite likely to me that I got the infection from my husband, in which case we may just be passing it backwards and forwards between us, but I don't know because my husband can't be tested. I feel a bit like a sitting duck waiting for the HPV to cause changes in my cells, but not able to do anything about it. There we are. There's another somebody else who's caught up in all this.

And from another listener, I found the discussion interesting, but I belong to a group with even more difficulty in this area. My story is that I had a full hysterectomy before I was 40 and so I never had cervical screening after that. Then last year at the age of 75 I was diagnosed with VIN3, a condition that can lead to vulval cancer and may be related to HPV. There is little information on this condition and no way could a circumstance like mine could have been picked up earlier. These issues are definitely a problem for older women and more needs to be known about them. Thank you very much for that. I think it all goes back actually to the point that our listener Helen was making, which is that women's lives have changed and our sexual lives are just not like they used to be or like our grandmothers were.

It just isn't the way people work or women work in the 21st century. So we need to just realign everything, don't we, to make sure that it all joins up and makes sense for the good of health in all areas. So thank you for that. And thank you for being willing to share your experiences with us. We'll definitely return to the subject.

Tomorrow on the programme, I'm going to be talking to the novelist Claire Chambers about her novel Small Pleasures. This is set in the late 50s and I enjoyed it very much. It's about a reporter on a local newspaper investigating a possible virgin birth. Emphasis there on the possible. So Claire joins us tomorrow on the programme and on the podcast, of course. Hello, I'm Tim Harford, the presenter

of More or Less. And I believe that if you want to understand the world, which is a very big, very complicated place, then numbers are an absolutely essential tool. They're like a telescope for an astronomer or an x-ray machine for a radiographer. Numbers answer questions we can't answer in any other way, such as how safe is a home birth? And yes, we check the facts. What are those lying politicians lying to us about this week? So please subscribe to More or Less and let numbers light up your world. 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 World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.