Woman's Hour - Jacinda Ardern's leadership, Spring poetry, and Tomi Adeyemi

Episode Date: March 23, 2019

Jacinda Ardern New Zealand’s Prime Minister has been praised for her calm, clear and compassionate handling of the Christchurch massacre but do women leaders really do politics differently? Journalist Anne McElvoy and former special adviser Ayesha Hazarika discuss.How has the terrorist shooting at Mosques in Christchurch New Zealand affected Muslim women in the UK? We hear from Rabina Khan a Liberal Democrat Councillor in East London, Akeela Ahmed MBE a social entrepreneur and activist and from Nadia Khan the co-founder of a mental health charity The Delicate Mind. The author Tomi Adeyemi talks about her fantasy fiction for young adults set in the West Africa inspired world of Orisha - and tells us why it took her so long to write lead characters that reflect her own culture.What does the discovery of a database called Breedready in China mean? Is it part of a bigger plan by the Chinese government to halt the countries declining birth rates? We talk to the BBC’s Asia Pacific Editor Celia Hatton.Nice Nailantei Leng’ete tells us about the work she is doing in Kenya to bring about alternative rites of passage ceremonies to replace FGM.We have poetry to mark the Spring Equinox from Christine de Luca.Carol Morley tells us about her new film Out of Blue - a crime thriller adapted from Martin Amis’ novel Night Train.Presented by Jane Garvey Produced by Rabeka Nurmahomed Edited by Jane ThurlowInterviewed guest: Anne McElvoy Interviewed guest: Ayesha Hazarika Interviewed guest: Rabina Khan Interviewed guest: Akeela Ahmed Interviewed guest: Nadia Khan Interviewed guest: Tomi Adeyemi Interviewed guest: Nice Nailantei Leng'ete Interviewed guest: Christine de Luca Interviewed guest: Carol Morley

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, good afternoon and welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. This week, do women do leadership differently? The impact of the Christchurch terrorist attack on Muslim women in the UK and the young author Tomi Adeyemi on why, as a young girl, she didn't really think her central characters could be black. In everything I wrote from that point, I think I was around 6 till 18 when I realised I was doing this. I was still writing the things I wanted, but I was writing them as a protagonist who was white or biracial.

And it was because I subconsciously wanted to be white or biracial. And I know a big part of that was because I was erased from all the things that I loved. I didn't see myself in the stories I loved. I didn't see myself in the books and the movies or the television. Tomi Adeyemi will have poetry celebrating the spring equinox and the discovery of a so-called breed-ready database of young women in China. Is it part of a sinister plan to halt the country's declining birth rate?

There's a national campaign now called the Beautiful Families Campaign, which praises women who become the primary caretakers of elderly parents and also several children in the home. There are also many campaigns aimed at university-age women. After decades of telling women they should put off marriage, put off childbirth, they're now being encouraged to marry while in university. That's all coming up in this edition of Weekend Woman's Hour. First, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern's response to the terrorist attack in Christchurch has been described as warm, empathetic, calm, clear, decisive, compassionate.

Social media has been alive with suggestions that this woman is demonstrating a very different, a very female, you might say, style of politics. Others have said her authenticity is an example of a style to which politicians of both sexes should aspire. Will do or can women leaders really perform differently? Anne McElvoy is a senior editor at The Economist. Ayesha Hazarika is a journalist, a comedian and a former special advisor to Labour politicians. Here's Ayesha on Jacinda's appeal. I think it's because she's been very authentic and what she has done is obviously very true to her character it's not been a struggle

to do it and she's shown both as you say humanity and warmth and kindness but also steel and clarity so for example she said the m word straight away she talked about the muslim community she named what this was she said it was far-right terrorism. She went straight in to the ban. And I think sometimes when we talk about female leadership, there's a sort of cliche that it has to all be soft and gentle and sort of hugging out with people. She's done that, but there can also be real strength in female leadership. And I think at a time when you look across the world and we have the rise of the strong man, the sort of autocratic, tough talking, macho strong man, she has actually shown that you

can be warm, you can show love to people, but you can also be very, very strong and powerful. And I know you've met her. How much would you say gender enters into her thinking about leadership style? Well, I think that she exudes a kind of empathy that Aisha describes very well. I think she would see it as her character, whether she'd necessarily see it as because she's a woman. I simply don't know. She's centre left. So you'd expect she's probably a bit bit feminist. But I think it's also not always the case that it is to do with gender and we sometimes forget now particularly when we're in a world where we've got sort of strong men versus sensible centrist women who parade themselves as such as

angela merkel or her likely successor anna great karenbauerauer or Jacinda Ardern at the slightly more empathetic perhaps end of the spectrum that these were roles that men have carried out in the past Bill Clinton was thought to be extremely empathetic in his time he was always very good when there was a crisis he would get tears in his eyes he would open his his arms so I suppose I'm suggesting that I have a little hesitation to say well these are great characteristics because characteristics because women have them primarily. I just think the way that the world has gone and the way our politics has gone, the divide is much sharper. That said, of course, she was very impressive. And I think she is just someone who likes the close experience. If I met Jacinda Ardern, I noticed within minutes, really, she's locked on your eyes. She's talking to you as if you were her old best friend.

It's a very, very old trick, but not many people can carry it off with conviction. Ayesha, what would you say all the praise she's received signifies? Is it about her or is it about the times we're living in? I think it's a bit of both. I think she has risen to the occasion. And I think her clarity, I think, is one of the reasons that people have been so positive about her. Because I even noticed when, for example, our own foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, released his statement, and of course, you know, Donald Trump, it was almost like a sort of natural disaster had happened in the air. There was, you know, our thoughts and feelings got to the people of Christchurch. There was nothing saying this was a horrible kind of terrorist attack on Muslim people.

So she cut through all of that. And I think that was quite a shock for people because we haven't really had a prominent leader since 9-11 who has said, you know what? I'm going to treat the Muslim community like they are human beings, like they're one of us. In fact, she said, you are us. And I think for a lot of leaders, the Muslim community, and this is a very sort of sensitive issue, they've treated the community as something to sort of keep at arm's length. And she's the first leader publicly who put an arm around the Muslim community. And in a way, what the terrorist wanted is probably a strongman approach

because extremism feasts on division and if political leaders sow division, but she love bombed everybody. And I think that's been the antidote to the horror of the situation. I mean, we shouldn't forget that she is actually in a coalition with quite a very conservative party. So she, you know, what she's doing is often kind of, in this particular case, I'm sure she wasn't thinking, well, I've got to balance this out and I'll do something different in the next spending round. But I would only point out that sometimes when we give that kind of credibility or that praise to someone, it only works if they can make their coalitions work. And that also means that they sometimes have to trade away some of their values. So you can't only

indulge whatever your particular view is. I think Angela Merkel's been very good at that. It's possibly getting towards the end of the line of that style of running Germany. But she's been very, very good sometimes at saying, I will do my empathetic best on one side of the political balance sheet, but I'm also going to have to bring in considerations from the other end. You do need to be able to trade. There does seem to be something of a contrast

between Arden and leaders of an older generation, such as, let's say, Theresa May or Angela Merkel. Is it personal, cultural, generational, or a combination of the three? Oh, that's a really interesting point to think about now that you put it to me, that the female leaders that I often covered in the early part of my career as a political journalist, I think whether they were

on the left or on the right, had something of a Thatcher complex. I think more than many wanted to acknowledge, she set the tone and the handbagging and the, I'm in a man's world, I have to be tougher than them. And I have to show that I am the power jacket, etc. And I think what happened subsequently was a generation who had their own views on Thatcher and Thatcherism but they didn't feel so tied to it. They could evolve a way of speaking that was more off the cuff. They didn't feel they would be judged perhaps as weak so readily

and I think Jacinda Ardern is absolutely of that generation in her delivery, in her clarity. She's not really trying to look like the old kind of power frow. I do think that has changed. And we see it also. I'd just like to throw in the fact that there are women in powerful positions, perhaps in countries whose politics, whose human rights record, whose authoritarianism is really present as well. You know, it's not only like women only run the good stuff. And I'm thinking of someone who I personally think

is a fantastically good politician and communicator, Anna Brunabic in Serbia, whether she should be putting herself at the service of the regime that she's in, which is sort of toughening and I think, you know, on the human rights score, is not in a good place. It's very questionable. She also communicates in this very open, generationally different manner. It's just I still have some doubts about the politics.

I think you can't just say because of somebody's gender, they're going to be a good leader or a soft leader or do the right thing for women. There's plenty of women that argue that, you know, Margaret Thatcher, you know, didn't exactly leave a feminist legacy. And I think to go back to Anne's earlier point, sometimes men can be fantastic in this situation. Barack Obama was famed for his ability to reach out to people and to emote. And let's be honest, we have a female prime minister right now,

Theresa May, who is not famed for her ability to reach out and have emotional awareness. I mean, if you compare Jacinda Ardern's response to this to Theresa May's reaction to the Grenfell situation as well, I think what it comes down to is authenticity. You cannot force yourself as a political leader. And having been an advisor behind the scene, the worst thing to do is to try and persuade somebody

to fake emotions at times like this. You have to do what comes naturally to you and your authenticity makes you a strong leader i think in this particular instance she is emotionally equipped to be this way but do we allow someone like theresa may to be herself i mean putting aside pros cons you know where are we with this week? Do we allow women perhaps to be as stiff, just a sort of podium-focused politician? And I was thinking about Theresa May last night, not so much what she was saying,

but that sort of shot when she turned and walked away. It was almost like a Hitchcock framing of this sort of black suit going away. And I just thought, gosh, that felt very harsh to me then I checked myself and thought but if that was a man would I have just thought well he came out and said what he had to say and then he went away again I think they have a double standard. I'm not sure but I think it depends on how well they're doing

and we don't want this to turn into a Brexit thing but take Angela Merkel, she's never been seen as a particularly sort of warm person but because of her record and actually what she's done and her consistency, her kind of slightly dour I'm in my pants suit and I've sort of got person, but because of her record and actually what she's done and her consistency, her kind of slightly dour, I'm in my pants suit and I've sort of got a kind of, you know, I'm not a very warm person.

Well, really, because a lot of Germans didn't think that when they voted in large numbers against her and for the far right. But in terms of her trajectory as a leader for a long, long time, she has earned people's respect because of how she's been. And so in a way,

the fact that she's not particularly warm and hugs it out with people. You have to earn it. Yes, exactly. You have to earn it. Aisha Hazarika and Anne McElvoy. So what impact has the shooting at the mosque in Christchurch had on Muslim women here in the UK? This week, some prominent Muslim figures signed a letter condemning systemic and institutionalised Islamophobia. I talked to Rubina Khan, who's a Liberal Democrat councillor in Tower Hamlets in East London, to Akilah Ahmed, social entrepreneur and activist, and to Nadia Khan, co-founder of a mental health charity called The Delicate Mind. Nadia's from Leicester and felt she just had to go back

home after the news of the shooting. I was in complete and utter shock seeing a place of worship becoming a shooting ground for somebody. I just felt so unsafe and I was frantically messaging my friends, messaging my family, checking to see if they're OK. And this is something that I've been doing since that day, because it's just that fear of what if it happens again? You know, there's there's been some stabbings. There was an incident yesterday in the Netherlands. It's this weird kind of fear of, you know, not knowing what to expect the next day. So I just felt compelled to go and be with my family because it just made me realise like life is so short. Well, Akilah and Nadia, you each have three

children. I know you also have young children. In fact, Akilah, your youngest is only five. Yes. What kind of a conversation have you had at home around all these events? Well, to be honest with you, I haven't spoken to him about it. I've tried to shield him from it. So when I woke up on Friday, I was just so shocked by the news. And when my son woke up, then I just turned off the TV because I didn't want him to hear anything about it. I didn't want him to kind of pick up on just how unsafe this world can be. It's probably relatively easy to keep it from your youngest child,

but your older teenagers are, well, they are teenagers and they're bound to be aware of what's going on and asking questions about it. They are. And the really sort of troubling thing is, is that even though, you know, I switched off the TV, obviously they're on social media. And so they're on Instagram and they've been seeing all these different images and some of it has been very touching, but there's also been a lot of hatred as well. And it's been horrible for them to see that and then I've spoken to them about it and what they can do and why there is that hatred online and why we're seeing much more of it. Can I just ask about you personally you travel around London I know every day and you wear the headscarf how is it for you? I feel vulnerable and And I know lots of my friends who wear headscarf or

who or people who wear women who wear the niqab also feel particularly vulnerable. I think after this incident, actually, I have to say I noticed a few smiles on Saturday, and that was really heartwarming. You mean people seeking you out for a bit of eye contact? Yeah, so just passersby, people who I don't know, you know, who are looking at me and smiled. And, you know, it kind of took me a while to realise actually there was smiling solidarity. At first I thought, oh, am I wearing a particularly colourful hijab today or something? But then I realised, no, actually they're showing solidarity.

And that helps. It does. It really, really helps. Because in the past I've had the opposite. Robina, tell me about you and a similar question. I know that there's probably too much emphasis actually on the headscarf, In the past, I've had the opposite. Robina, tell me about you and a similar question. I know that there's probably too much emphasis actually on the headscarf, but I do think it makes life harder for Muslim women at moments like this or around heightened tensions that we have now. What do you say to that?

Well, I think initially on Friday, it was my eldest daughter. She's 23. She was about to go to work. She said to me, when you go out, because I wear the scarf and my older one doesn't, she said, are you going to be OK wearing the scarf going out? And I said, we're fine. We have to be strong. And when we look around, when we see people who are extending the hands of friendship,

and we can only look at people all over the world, we need to look at the Prime Minister of New Zealand. She's actually given us hope to many Muslim people all over the world. We need to look at the Prime Minister of New Zealand. She's actually given us hope to many Muslim women all over the world. For me, when someone says about the headscarf, do you feel as though you're going to become vulnerable? Actually, yes, there is the vulnerability, but there is hope with it. What would you say about the contrast between the coverage, I think most notably in the Daily Mirror,

they have since apologised on Saturday morning, where attention was drawn to the supposedly angelic nature of the man accused of one murder and likely to be, of course, facing many more charges in New Zealand. He happened to be a blonde toddler. Of course, Shamima Begum had also been a toddler, but we were not shown images of that nature. Nadia, did that get to you?

Absolutely. Shamima Begum's baby was reported as being a jihadi baby. That's not correct. By definition, he can't be, he doesn't have the cognitive functions to decide, I'm a jihadi baby. That's wrong. She was 15 years old, lost three babies by the age of 19. And the way the press dehumanised her, and even the journalists, when you look at the way she was spoken to, it was wrong, it was inhumane, the treatment that the press had towards her. And then you contrast that with this boy who had issues with his life because he lost his father.

You don't need a GCSE qualification to see that there is some major disparity there between the way one person was treated and the other. And obviously, when you look at what Shamima Begum did, she was essentially a housewife when she did go over to Syria. But this man was a terrorist. He committed a crime. He killed many people, but he's still presented as this angelic baby that could have somehow been saved. But the same

cannot be said for Shamima or her baby. They were just written off by the press. And I think that does play into the public fears and also causes divisions, this is something that we're going to have to deal with to undo for many years to come. And I think that's why the media institutions really need to take responsibility when they're reporting these issues. I did mention that the Mirror did apologise, and they make the point both far-right and Islamist terrorists are the enemies of decent people everywhere,

which I think everybody would agree with. But just to go back to Akilah's belief that there was a bit of something extra going on when she went out and about. Rubina, would you actually ask people, we can all do this, we can all play a part in this, when we're walking down the streets of Britain over the next couple of days,

look at people and smile at them. Make that bit of extra contact, because it doesn't do any harm. Absolutely. And on that note, on Sunday, my mum rang me and they sent me a photo, which I actually tweeted, and it was a photo of a bouquet of flowers that had been left in Chatham Mosque. And in 1975, I came to this country and there were no mosques in Cairns.

My dad actually founded that particular mosque and the bouquet of flowers that had been left there, what the couple had left was that we stand with you we are saddened by your loss and that act of gesture that act of kindness the acts of smiles that sends a huge message to people to particularly muslim women who feel very vulnerable and i also think because the older muslim women we don't often talk about them as well they're're very vulnerable. Their first integrate, to learn English. And the Islamophobia and the racism she endured at the time. And she spoke about that and she said,

to now we have to look to hope and faith and to be able to come together. And it's that sense of togetherness which must instil today. Robina Khan, Akilah Ahmed and Nadia Khan speaking on Women's Hour on Tuesday of this week. Now to the award-winning young adult author Tomi Adeyemi, who was on the programme on Friday. Her first novel, Children of Blood and Bone, is set in the West Africa-inspired world of Orisha, and it is very, very different from the usual male, pale world of fantasy fiction.

Here's an extract. I try not to think of her, but when I do, I think of rice. When Mama was around, the hut always smelled of jollof rice. I think about the way her dark skin glowed like the summer sun, the way her smile made Baba come alive, the way her white hair fuzzed and coiled, an untamed crown that breathed and thrived. I hear the mist she would tell me at night. Saints' laughter when they played Agbon in the park. Baba's cries as the soldiers wrapped a chain around her neck. Her screams as they dragged her into the dark. The incantations that spewed from her mouth like lava. The magic of

death that led her astray. I think about the way her corpse hung from that tree. I think about the king who took her away. Tell us exactly what is going on in this world of yours. Yeah, so that is actually the very beginning of the book. And the whole book, I pitch it as Black Panther with Magic. It's this West African fantasy about a girl fighting to bring magic back to her people. So that's where the book opens up. And the reader learns that that's an event that occurred 10 years before the, you know, chapter one begins. And in this world, which is, you know, it's is this epic fantasy, it's this big adventure, but it's also an allegory for the modern black experience. I think this is really important. And I've read the author's note at the back of the book,

in which you say, although riding giant lionaires and performing sacred rituals might be in the realm of fantasy, all the pain, fear, sorrow and loss in this book is real. That is so important, isn't it? Yeah. I see my mission or at least my mission with this book, but sort of my mission as a storyteller is just creating empathy. I think books uniquely, art uniquely can create empathy, but books is like the one chance you have to step inside someone else's head. And so the more personal it is, you can step inside someone else's heart. And for me, I was like, in the black community, we weren't talking about what I call the emotional PTSD

of living in this realm of police brutality, at least in America. I know there's problems worldwide, but really in America, there is this constant cycle of this unarmed black person got shot by a police. This person who was shot by a police six months ago, you know, that police officer is not getting indicted. They're still on the force. You know, this girl who is exactly your age was assaulted in this target. you know, like you see, it's just constant. It's constant. The themes of racism and police brutality and colorism are absolutely embedded in this book. Is it easier to discuss those topics in a fantasy world then? I think it's easier to get everyone to the same playing field. And the reason I say that is everyone, from any background, any race, any marginalization,

any gender, we all come with our own prejudices. And so when you're trying to talk about already really complicated, nuanced topics that are also extremely heated for some people, it's so easy to go in and not be able to communicate because you see the world in one specific way. It's going to be very difficult to get you to see it differently when that's how you've seen it for probably decades. Whereas if we go into a fantasy world where the rules are brand new, so you see the world the way I see it. So for me, I see it as creating this like level playing field. And now I'll put situations in the real world inside this level playing field, so we can experience it the same way.

You have taken elements of West African culture, in particular, one sort of Yoruba culture, is that right? Yeah, so I am a first generation Nigerian. So my parents were born in Nigeria and I was born in America. And the first seed of inspiration for this book was discovering the Orisha, which are like West African deities. And when I found out that the Orisha were from like not only West Africa, but Nigeria, not only Nigeria, but Yoruba, which is like the tribe that my parents are in, like the language my parents and family speak. You leapt at it. Yeah, I was just like, oh my, you know, I felt like I discovered this treasure in my backyard. And it had excited, it like created this fantasy world in my head.

But it also meant like, okay, writing this story, I get to build it from my heritage. And that was a really exciting, like opportunity that I hadn't had before. Now, I bet the young Tomi wrote all the time. She did. All sorts of stories. But is it really the case that you would always make the central character white? Yeah.

And that's one of the reasons I'm very, I would say, militant about representation. It's like I don't waver and I don't shy away from it. There's other things I'll be polite about or softened It's like I'm not I don't waver and I don't shy away from it. There's other things I'll be polite about or softened about, but I'm not polite about that because in the very first story I ever wrote, I had just watched The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan. I really wanted a twin and I gave myself a twin. And in the people in the story were Tomi and Tomi. So it's like I saw myself enough, I loved myself enough to put two of me in the story. In everything I wrote from that point, I think I was around six till 18 when I

realized I was doing this. I was still writing the things I wanted, but I was writing them as a protagonist who was white or biracial. And it was because I subconsciously wanted to be white or biracial. And I know a big part of that was because I was erased from all the things that I loved. I didn't see myself in the stories I loved. I didn't see myself in the books and the movies or the television. And so some I'd subconsciously internalized that I couldn't be in my own imagination. So I could write a story about dragons and portals, but a black person couldn't be in that story, you know, and that is that's what happened in my mind. And so I, it's just right, very intensely

with that notion that I can save the little version of myself. Yeah, but it took you until 18. You feel able to do that? Even it wasn't even that I felt able to, I just realized, then because I was writing my college essay. And I was like, Okay, let me look at my writing, because that's something that's more unique to me. And then I saw the pattern. And I was like, OK, let me look at my writing because that's something that's more unique to me. And then I saw the pattern and I was like, well, I have to start this journey. I have to adult in your household who you think would enjoy immersing themselves in this world, you can get them a copy now. Now, it's hardly a secret that China has a shortage of women. Now we hear that a Dutch ethical hacker, a man called Victor Gevers, has come across a database of nearly 2 million fertile Chinese women, so-called breed-ready.

Not a pleasant term, but nevertheless, that's the one that's being used. The women's phone numbers, addresses and Facebook profiles were also included. So could this mean that the Chinese government has radical plans to halt the country's declining birth rate? Celia Hatton is the BBC's Asia-Pacific regional editor. This database was found by a man who describes himself as an ethical hacker. He searches for databases all over the world that are unprotected and he does what he thinks is a good turn.

He alerts their administrators to tell them to seal up the database again so that individual information can be protected. He stumbled upon this database in China, but was unable to uncover who was the administrator. It's a bit of a mystery. And so there are two competing theories out there. One is that this is a government database. The women on this database who are listed, as you said, as being breed ready are between the ages of 18 and 39, although the women on the database as a whole fall between the ages of 15 and 95. And so it's possible that the government database could be looking as to whether these women are indeed able to have children, are breed ready. But it's also possible because the database that this man uncovered was listed in English, it could be a

very crude translation to show that these women are able to have children, are willing to have children, or indeed have already had children. It could, of course, be an online translation, couldn't it? So it didn't really work very well. Yes. But I mean, there are suspicions of a bit of a handmaid's tale going on here. How justified is that? It's difficult to know. Some people have said, look, this could be a dating website database. That's what it could be for. Because all of the women listed on the database are unmarried. And the Chinese government actively discourages single women from having children. Despite its efforts to grow the population, it doesn't encourage single women to have children. Therefore, there are theories that

this might not be a government database at all. But China is experiencing declining birth rates. The one-child policy we know has officially ended. So how much is anxiety about that just playing into the narrative here? Oh, indeed, it's playing to a huge degree. The database didn't get a lot of reaction inside China, but that's because the Dutch researcher released his information on Twitter, and Twitter is not allowed in China. However, yes, Chinese women are used to their fertility levels being monitored. For the 35 years in which the one-child policy was put in place, China held a complex state network that was set up to limit population growth, and individual Chinese women, their fertility levels were monitored. It

was monitored by the state what kind of birth control they were using. After a woman was allowed to have one child, she was then encouraged, almost forced to have an IUD device installed. And if she broke the law and had two, she would then be sterilized. So what family planning measures might the Chinese government be considering to deal with its problem of a falling birth rate? Well, so far, it has started a policy to reverse its IUD policy it held for 35 years. It's now encouraging women to remove their IUD devices, and it's offering to have surgical operations to remove those devices, much to the fury of many women who didn't want the devices in the first place. It's also unleashed a propaganda campaign. There's a national campaign now called the Beautiful Families Campaign, which praises women who become the primary caretakers of elderly parents and also several children in the home. There are also many campaigns aimed at university-age women.

After decades of telling women they should put off marriage, put off childbirth, they're now being encouraged to marry while in university. They're being warned of birth defects if they put off having children for too long. And so there are also many propaganda campaigns. But I've already mentioned campaigns involving forced sterilization. There were also campaigns of forced abortion during the one-child policy years. Many are now worrying that as the government grows more desperate to grow the population, that it will now turn to more coercive policies to force women to have more children.

How worried is the government about its missing women problem? That means an awful lot of men will never find a partner because men were preferred when only one child was allowed. That's right. I mean, at the heart of the one child policy campaign, we had 120 boys being born for every 100 girls. So I would say they're not as worried about the missing women, they're more worried about the unmarried men. We can see that trafficking is becoming a massive problem in China. Women who are being trafficked from one part of China to another and sold as brides, but also many women in Southeast Asia being trafficked into China

to make up for the lack, the missing women, the missing brides in China. So what's been the response? I mean, if there's an anxiety about women concentrating on their education and their careers, what are women saying about that? Well, women are very upset because for decades, they were limited to only having one child. Now, almost overnight, really, it seems that the government is changing its tune and it wants to encourage married women. We should specify only married women are being encouraged to have two children. Women are upset because they're saying, look, I can't afford to have more than one child I like many other families are pouring all of my resources into the one child I have to pay for

very expensive education to pay for health care but also to look after my aging parents I simply can't afford to have a second child women are also increasingly reporting discrimination by their employers so employers who once thought, okay, if I hire a woman, she will only go on a maternity leave once. Now employers are increasingly suspicious of women and asking openly in interviews, are you going to have more than one child and what are your plans? And that's not illegal in China. How healthy is the Chinese feminist movement in this climate? It is surprisingly healthy. Many women are very frustrated with the government's family planning policies,

but there is a very active young network of young feminists, very well-educated, university-educated women across China who are connected over social media and who are unafraid of speaking out on social media. It's a surprisingly vibrant movement. Celia Hatton, the BBC's Asia-Pacific regional editor. Now, if you missed any of the live editions of the programme this week, of course, you can catch up via BBC Sounds. Mary Berry made a limoncello, as I've learnt to call it, trifle on Tuesday's edition

of the show. We also learned there about ketamine. If you have teenagers in your family, you might well be interested in that conversation. And also included in Tuesday's show actually was a gynaecologist, loosely a feature in which we ask people to ask a gynaecologist anything they liked. And we got some interesting questions. So if you want to revisit that, that was Tuesday's programme this week. Now, as a Maasai child in Kenya, Nais Nelente Lingete refused to have her culture's ritualised female genital mutilation. And she's gone on to work with Amref Health Africa, an organisation based in Nairobi. For the last decade, it has been trying to change attitudes in the Maasai communities in Kenya and in Tanzania, and it claims to have stopped an estimated 17,000 girls from being cut. NICE told me how she'd escaped FGM.

When I was eight years old, my circumcision was organized for me and my sister, who was two years older than me. She was ten and I was eight. But because I've been seeing other girls undergoing female circumcision in my village, that's why I really say this is not something I wanted to do because I wanted to continue with my education. But it was not easy because, you know, it was a must for every girl to undergo female circumcision. This is a rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood. So when I was eight, our circumcision ceremony was planned by my uncle together with her three daughters. And we woke up at 4 a.m. because that's when you're supposed to wake up and shower with cold water.

The cold water now is supposed to work as anesthesia. Because remember, they're not giving you an injection. And that means you're not allowed to cry or even move your body. If you do that, you're called a coward or there's no man from that community who is going to marry you. So we had already planned together with my sister on how we are going to run away. So after showering with the cold water, we went outside our uncle's homestead and we climbed a tree. You know, I climbed first and then with the support of my sister, she climbed. And then it was again very early in the morning. There was dark. We couldn't go down.

So we had to wait until there was light. And when there was light, we came down. We went to wait until there was light and when there was light we came down we went to our mother sister's place and later on when they found that we were there we were beaten and threatened so we had to promise that next time we'll not run away but we'll proceed with the cut we went back to school closed our schools and our circumcision ceremony was planned again and we woke up the same time and this time around I told my sister we need to run away because that's the only way we can get our education but she said nice we can't be running away every time the other time we were beaten maybe this time they'll do something worse

to us and because I'm two years older than you let me stay and I will not tell anyone so you can just go to the same tree. So my sister was not lucky. She got circumcised at the age of 10 and later married. And why I'm doing the work I'm doing right now is because she sacrificed herself so that I be left out so that I don't undergo the cut. And from that tree, I didn't go to my mother's sister's place. I went to school. I stayed there.

And later on, I went to my grandfather. And I talked to him and I told him I'm still young so that I can have time to continue with my education. But later on, I came and I talked to him and he agreed to support me. And he called my uncles and he said that I'd be left alone. How unusual were you? Were there other young girls like you? It must have been so difficult. Yeah, it was difficult because, I was the only girl who did not undergo circumcision at that time.

It's not like now that we have many who have not undergone. There was pressure from the girls and again I was seen as a bad example in this community, as a girl who disrespected her community. So it was not easy for me growing up. But I think again that toughened me up and that's why I'm doing the work that I'm doing right now. But you continue to live in the community. Yes, I continue to stay in that community

because, one, that's still my home. You see, you can never run away from your home. But I realised that if I'm the only girl who has not undergone circumcision, I will have problems. They will still laugh at me or give me all the names that they give uncircumcised women. But what if we have a hundred girls or a thousand girls or, you know, a hundred thousand girls like me who have not undergone circumcision? I think that is the only way I will be comfortable staying in that family or staying in that community. And that's why I decided later on to come and talk to my community and find a solution.

Because remember, running away is not a solution. We have girls with disabilities who are blind who cannot even see where do they run to. And again, there's no kid who would want to stay away from her home. Or there's no kid who would really want to be seen like she's disrespecting her family. So to me, what is important is just to talk to our parents because they are not doing it because they hate us. That is our culture that is saying

you can't be considered a woman if you have not undergone the card. And that is why later I decided to come and start having conversations together with men, together with women, but morely to these girls. Because remember, changing culture, again, is not easy. You need patience to give people time to change, but you also need to be talking less and giving people to talk more. Can you just explain how you've been able to do this work? When I was 17 years old, that's

when I met Ambre Feld Africa. They came to my community and they said they need a girl and a boy who can read and write. At that time, we had so many boys who had been to school, but I was the only girl who had education. That's how I got selected to undergo a peer education training. Right. And just to make this clear Nice you were only able to continue your education because you hadn't undergone FGM is that right? Yeah right and I went a one week training on peer education whereby I was trained on different things on topics on sexual and reproductive health and rights including issues of teenage pregnancy, effects of female genital mutilation, child

marriage. And from that training, I was now equipped with skills and knowledge. So I could now go back to the community and talk because I had more information. Because remember, before I was also a shy girl, you know, I didn't believe like probably someday I could talk in front of elders, you know, I could talk in my community. The alternative ceremony, NICE, what does it consist of? What happens? What we do is that we try to raise awareness and raise sensitization among the community members. Because remember, this is a process that takes so much time, you know, like four or three years. We have different forums whereby we have the

mother-to-girl forum whereby mothers and daughters sit down together and talk about these issues. Father-to-son forum, you know, the elders forum, then the morons forum, the young warriors. And why we are also teaching boys the importance or the effects of female genital mutilation and men. Remember, we cannot assume the position of male leadership in these communities. They are very powerful. They make all the decisions. And this is a community whereby we are not only talking about issues of female genital mutilation or child marriage. Even wife beating is a way of showing love, you know, to your wife and all that. How do we teach our boys from when they are young, when they are growing up,

to respect women, to take care of their sisters. Because in future, these younger boys again are husbands. You know, they'll be fathers to their own daughters. So we are simply saying, let us retain the beautiful part of our culture and replace the cut with education. Because investment in education is very important when you're trying to change any kind of

gender-based violence. But the beautiful dances, songs, they are all kept, you know, the way we dress. So after girls receiving a three-day training, there is a one-day ceremony whereby the whole community comes up together because they are now celebrating these girls who are becoming women without their card. Among the Maasai community, you see female genital mutilation is at 73%. Still? Still. And we are only working with the Maasai community in Kenya and Tanzania. So I will say the number has gone down, but there is still so much to be done.

But remember, alternative rights of passage, that said, it's not a solution to every community. Because each community has their own reasons and myths behind female circumcision. For us, it's a rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood. Go to the Muslim, it's because of purity and hygiene. So now what we managed to do two years ago is Amref launched a pan-African movement to bring female genital mutilation to an end by 2030, whereby we are scaling up to other sub-Saharan countries like Ethiopia, Senegal, and Uganda. Because now we have so much experience with the Maasai people, we have seen what works and what is not working. But now we want to go to those other countries whereby we can invest more in research, get to understand why they are doing it,

but more least to empower those communities members to be able to solve their own problems. And I think that should be the way to go. Nice Nelente Lengete on Woman's Hour this week. It was the spring equinox on Wednesday. And as part of Radio 4's Four Seasons Poetry Project, we heard from Christine DeLuca. She was raised on Shetland, now lives in Edinburgh, but still writes poetry in the dialect of her homeland. Here she is with her poem Soonscapes

in Shetlandic. Soonscapes. It a dizzied hoose, a strum of flax, bit endless drums fornance the frenzied window, belligerent, they want neither in nor out. Up at the brew, a hant a whisted chapel, two windmills spin new sunskips over the land, kert wheelin' alleluias. Cloistered granite, had the orchestration of birds, a oory whirr of vimerno whaps and peewits

the wind through the grind is a spicking in tongues with a brocket feed hoop tuning in eitherworldly intimately insistent ah this music to lute, to slap into, a old organ nunen,

a hushy hubbleskew upon the hull, erm's turn, the hurt lofts. Christine, that's really beautiful. And some of the words are familiar. I suppose Soonscape isn't far away, belligerent, tongues, chapel. What's the origin of Shetland's dialect? 1500 and the language spoken at that time for many hundreds of years was Norn which was I suppose a bit like Faroese perhaps or Norwegian and then we became part of a marriage settlement the Danish princess the Scottish prince and he pledged the Danish king had no money so he pawned us to the Scottish Crown. And we became Scottish by default because he never paid back the pledge.

And so Scots came in, old Scots, and it became the language of power, of course, of the business community and the landowners and the law. And so it really squeezed out the Norn but it still lingered and so you might describe the Shetland tongue as sort of old Scots with a strong Norse influence. Can we have another poem Love in a Cold Climate which I think you're going to read first in English and then in Shetlandic. Okay this is about my parents. They were inveterate gardeners. Love in a cold climate. It wasn't his wooden paling, nor the lattice of stones set to break the wind, nor the heather he packed tightly between fences, Nor the seaweed he tore from the foreshore and turned and turned.

Nor his fingers breaking clods. Nor was it the sun squinting gently. No, it was the dream she planted and the praise in her look as she staked it, willing the one rose to open to hold the long dusk. Love in a cold climate. Had Wisna his wooden paling,

now the open wark of stain set to break the wind, now the heather he prammed between fences, now the tang he tore for the ebb and turned and turned, Now his fingers bracken clods, Now was it the sun screaming pity-wise, Now it was the dream she planted, And a rose in her look as she staked it, Willing the one rose to open the head-markning. The poem reflects the difficulties of growing plants in Shetland.

What are the actual signs of spring in a landscape that is mostly grass, no trees from my memory. Well, it is pretty treeless, but global warming is... We're getting definitely a little bit more in the way of shrubs and low bushes growing. But I think probably the birds more than the plants seem to signal spring. When they come, I mean, the first curlew that you hear or the first arctic tern, especially where they're very excited, and your head turns and you think, ah, turrics are back, as we call them. All the birds have Norse names.

And that's a great moment. Light, of course, the longer light, because it's been a long, dark winter. And by the time you get to midsummer, of course, you're almost light all day around so the seasons and the light will have a tremendous effect on people in shetland i think so yes they do and the first peats you see cut there's not nearly so many peats cut now but there are still significant numbers and the first lovely peat bank that you see cut, that's significant. And the first hill lamb, perhaps in May, struggling to its feet.

I have to ask you, because I'm afraid I've been a bit of a fan of it, the last episode of Shetland was on television last night. What did you think of the dramatic portrayal of the island? Well, I tried to watch it several times, and I just, I really can't. It's not the Shetland I know and love. It's all this grim and gruesome stuff, a lack of the local culture and sort of attitudes of people

and the lack of local voices. It's just, to me, a very useful background for crime because it's an island and you can't get off the island. So I'm afraid it's not for me, Jenny. Was there not a crime reported recently that someone had had some washing stolen?

Well, that was some years ago. There was something, a poet I knew who'd gone to visit Shetland and was amused by the fact that in the newspaper, on the front page, the local newspaper, it reported that a child's clothing had been removed from a washing line.

So nothing that we've seen on Shetland on television. Christine De Luca, talking to Jenny on Woman's Hour. Film director Carol Morley has a new film out. It's called Out of Blue. It's released next week. And it's a crime thriller adapted from a book by Martin Amis, Night Train. The central character is a female detective, Mike Houlihan, played in the film by Patricia Clarkson.

And she is charged with investigating the murder of a leading astrophysicist. How easy then was it for Carol to get funding for a film with a central character who is a middle-aged woman? My eyes were open because I think every actor has a value and you realise that a woman has less value in terms of financing a film, an older woman. It's as simple as that. It's a simple economics and that's when you become really frustrated

because you realise it's simple economics, which you can't control because it's sort of invisible. Those sort of things are invisible. But I certainly never wanted to make my central character younger. I was always going to have her as an older character. People do say if she was younger, you'd find it easier to finance. But no, because it's so brilliant to have an older woman leading a role, having that agency,

and it's so enjoyable and so important. Do people actually, the finance people, do they actually expect you to cast someone you think is totally unsuitable and possibly not as good, but at least would bring in the dollar? Well, we only have to look at many films to know that's true. Yeah, that's true. I have seen some films. Because you see a lot of films and you feel they're miscast

and it's a bit wrong and they're too young and how have they had these experiences? So I think that is visible, really. So the invisible and what we, you know, as filmmakers we're continually contending with is people that aren't in view that make decisions that alter what we see and what we're able to see. Yeah. A lot of people listening will have seen and enjoyed isn't quite the right word,

but that incredible film Dreams of a Life. Now, just for anybody who isn't aware of it, this is about a woman called Joyce Vincent. Just explain exactly what her story was. Well, I came across Joyce's story in The Sun and they got her age wrong and there was no photograph but she was 38 died in her flat in london and wasn't discovered for three years and she was so invisible i had to find out about her and you did you did yeah i did i spent five years piecing together a life it was a very tough film to finance the question along the way was who would want to see this film when the the film came out, everybody wanted to see it. It was a story for our times.

And for me, the characters I like to make films about, like Mike Houlihan in Out of Blue, are kind of marginalised and on the edge, but they're very important to tell stories about. So Joyce Vincent was somebody that we needed to hear about. She said something about her life. She wasn't what we expected either, for somebody to be needed to hear about. She said something about her life. She wasn't what we expected either for somebody to be left for three years.

It was important to tell that story. But I think when you said enjoyed, I'm glad people enjoyed Dreams of a Life and enjoy my films because I don't want to make grim films. I want to look at the dark side of life but throw light on them. So you come away feeling invigorated.

And I think people were quite surprised with Dreams of Life or Outer Blue that they come away feeling upbeat when it's actually gone into very dark material. Dreams of a Life it was that I don't know why in particular but I know I'm not the first person to have mentioned this it's the fact that the telly was still on in her flat. Yeah and I found out that it was on BBC. So I was sort of thinking of all these programmes going over her dead body. And TV is like the, it represents modernity. And she lived above a shopping centre. It was all these sort of things about the modern age.

And yet in this modern, the modern age, we left her. We all left her. We were all responsible for her being there for three years. Is it true that a lot of your films feature elements of missing, missing people, missing emotions? Is that fair? Yeah, I think absence fascinates me. What we don't know fascinates me. And I think I am in my filmmaking a bit of a detective, which is probably why I wanted to make a film about a detective now. So I love detective work. I love trying to figure out why somebody isn't in view, isn't visible. And I think the history of women in art, cinema, whatever, literature, there's a lot of invisibility.

So I'm particularly interested in girlhood and womanhood and bringing that to the fore and creating complex characters not just strong women because I hate all that women have to be a role model it's like bringing women to the fore and really exploring the stories so people on the edge and in in the margins I think are far more interesting to me because their stories don't get told. You haven't spared yourself either have you because the alcohol years which I know you did make some years ago was really, I mean you couldn't have been more honest about your

ramshackle adolescence and early twenties. I mean just in case again if nobody's people listening are not completely aware of that that was pretty brutal. Yeah it's now available on the BFI player so people can see it which is brilliant it still exists you know for people to see.

But it was looking at girlhood, really. I was 16 when I looked, you know, at the time I look back at, it looked at promiscuity. It was quite transgressive, I suppose, and it looked at things that people disapprove of that aren't respectable, but it looked at it through the lens of my own life. So I felt that I could do that.

The people involved in the film, which were a lot of men that were in it, in fact, one guy said, I thought if you were going to finish the film, I wouldn't have been in it. But it's actually very revealing about male attitudes towards young female sexuality and towards women. That's what amazes me. Why did they agree to be in it at all? Because I think that they knew I would never put them in a position of taking their voice away.

I was letting them speak. So it wasn't like, this is how I'm going to edit you or put you in this film. So I think they felt very free. And I did let them express their opinion and then put them in. I didn't alter their opinion. So it is what they thought. They didn't think what they were saying was in any way wrong or in any way strange or in any way misogynist so it was like here you are so

yeah well here they certainly were and there were you of course but you're you're a different in a different place now and a different person well only in in the essence that um i am constructing things from my life and from other people's lives. So it's a beautiful life to have as a filmmaker. It's a struggle because you're trying to raise the money. But I can put ideas out there and construct other people's lives in my own life. And it's very powerful. That's why more women, we have to have more women in film.

They're out there. We just need to bring them in and make sure that different stories are told by different people. But that's my privilege now. I get to make films. Carol Morley, Out of Blue, is released in cinemas on the 29th of March. Next week on the programme, we'll be looking ahead to World Earth Day on the 1st of April, talking to campaigners and women in environmental and conservation work, and also to those in the tech industries working to develop some solutions.

Until then, have a very good weekend. See you Monday, just after 10. 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.