Woman's Hour - Jackie Kay, Equal pay, Fussy eating, Period sex

Episode Date: September 7, 2019

In a week of extraordinary politics, how have female MPs and advisors fared? We discuss the “macho” culture and language of parliament with Katy Balls, deputy political editor at The Spectator and Helen Lewis, staff writer at The Atlantic.National Poet for Scotland, Jackie Kay, on a new production of her 1980's play Chiaruscuro.Sisters Maya and Gemma Tutton tell us about their campaign OurStreetsNow. They want to implemented a law like France has done to make verbal sexual harassment illegal and punishable by an on-the-spot fine. What is the impact of high-profile Equal Pay cases? Sam Smethers from the Fawcett Society, Charles Cotton from the CIPD and Paula Lee from Leigh Day Solicitors discuss.When does fussy eating become a danger to health? We get advice from Dr Victoria Aldridge, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at De Montford University, Dr Lucy Serpell, Clinical Lead for Eating Disorders at North East London NHS Foundation Trust and associate professor of Psychology of Eating Disorders at UCL and Clare Thornton-Wood, dietician and spokesperson of the British Dietetic Association.Research tells us women are responsible for the majority of consumer decisions and most of the final decisions on which clothing, food and family holidays to buy. So how much power and responsibility do women consumers have for sustainability? We ask Lauren Bravo, author of How to Break Up with Fast Fashion, Kate Cawley, director of Veris Strategies and Dr Lucie Middlemiss, Associate Professor in Sustainability at Leeds University.Why is having sex while you've got your period such a taboo subject? We talk to journalist Emma Barnett who's written Period, It's About Bloody Time and campaigner Nimko Ali, author of What We’re Not Told Not to Talk About (But We’re Going to Anyway).Presented by Jane Garvey Produced by Sophie Powling Edited by Jane ThurlowInterviewed guest: Helen Lewis Interviewed guest: Katy Balls Interviewed guest: Jackie Kay Interviewed guest: Maya and Gemma Tutton Interviewed guest: Sam Smethers Interviewed guest: Charles Cotton Interviewed guest: Paula Lee Interviewed guest: Victoria Aldridge Interviewed guest: Lucy Serpell Interviewed guest: Clare Thornton-Wood Interviewed guest: Laura Bravo Interviewed guest: Kate Cawley Interviewed guest: Lucie Middlemiss Interviewed guest: Emma Barnett Interviewed guest: Nimko Ali

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, good afternoon and welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. This week, some of our highlights include the impact that high-profile equal pay cases like that of Carrie Grace's have had on women coming forward on the issue. You can hear too from Scotland's national poet, Jackie Kay. She'll talk about growing up as a black lesbian in the 1970s. When I was growing up, I was 16 in the art class, and I remember the school bully going,

Miss, Miss, Jackie's a lessee. And the art teacher turning round to me and saying, Well, are you, Jacqueline? Are you a lesbian? I said, I don't know. I really don't know. More from Jackie Kay later. Why is sex during your period a taboo subject? Here's Emma Barnett on the lengths some women will go to avoid talking about it. Instead of telling the police officer why she's got bloodstained sheets,

he pulls them out, looks at her and she's thinking, I'm going to go to jail for a homicide here. And then she eventually says, I had sex on my period. More from Emma Barnett and the taboo of period sex on Weekend Woman's Hour this afternoon. But we're going to start with politics. It used to be really, honestly, when you think about it, Britain used to be quite a quiet place. When will we have a quiet hour, never mind day or week? Not in the very near future, the way it's going at the moment.

Katie Balls was a guest on Friday's programme. She's Deputy Political Editor at The Spectator. And I talked to her alongside Helen Lewis, who's now a staff writer at The Atlantic. So the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, calling Jeremy Corbyn a big girl's blouse, an unnamed MP shouting, sit down, love, to Joe Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, making a joke about police being called to the prime minister's house.

What is all this about and what does it tell us about the way language is used in political circles? Here's Helen first. I think language is a really difficult one because every individual instance looks very trivial and people are just waiting to pounce and say, oh god, you feminists get upset about everything. But what you're trying to say about big girls' blouse is that that is fundamentally an insult which relies on the idea that for a man to be like a woman is

demeaning and degrading. So, you know, I'm not burning my bra about it. You know, they're very expensive, actually. I need to hold on to them. But I do think it is worth saying that it reflects, actually, a misogynistic culture. It it absolutely does and before Percy Pedden gets in touch we do know that phrase was coined by the comedian Hilda Baker in the sitcom Nearest and Dearest that's where it comes from we checked um Katie does language matter are people just getting into a little bit of a tiz about which is in itself a word more closely associated

with the female of the species. Look, I think Boris Johnson particularly uses lots of phrases on all sides which people can take offence on. I think sometimes it's part of the tactic to almost distract by getting people having a row about a specific word and almost stop scrutiny on what he's actually doing. So I think that can be on purpose. I think that if you look at the reference to the row that John McDonnell made in the sense that, referring to what was reported in the papers some time ago

about police being called when there was a row between Boris Johnson and his partner, I think the idea that you would joke about that, I mean, no one knows for sure what happened, but I think everyone can agree it seemed fairly serious. And I mean, it was a private matter, but I don't know why MPs would be... I think it's a strange situation for a man to joke about that, to be honest. And it did. It was met with laughter.

Yeah, it exactly is. And I think that if you're going to start making jokes about those things, I think you're heading into tricky territory. But also there is the fact that I think Katie's exactly right to say that we can focus too much on language at the expense, particularly policy. One of the things that will happen if the Parliament is now dissolved, a new Queen's speech, is that the Domestic Abuse Bill, which is long delayed, will therefore drop off the parliamentary timetable. Jess Phillips has been trying to get to the bottom of what indeed will that bill's fate be. Do we know? Has anybody found out? So I've been hearing fairly encouraging things this week after. There are lots of reports saying that people are worried it's going to be dropped, that it's not seen as a key piece of legislation by Boris Johnson. Theresa May saw it as an

important thing, partly because she wanted to have a domestic legacy. But I do get the sense that people are fighting for it. I think you have figures like Amber Rudd pushing because she did things at a time in a home office. So I think that there is a Amber Rudd pushing because she did things at the time in the Home Office. So I think that there is a good chance it does carry through. Can we just talk a little bit about the prime minister's appearance yesterday, which if it had been made by a female politician, particularly one, say, of the same vintage as Mr Johnson, so 55, I know exactly how it would have been interpreted. What would you say about that, Katie? Well, I don't think it has been broadly well received, but I think if...

Well, Alison Pearson is still very much on message. Lots of comparisons to Alan Partridge are seen in the various points of that delivery. I think if you look at the week that Boris Johnson has had, if Theresa May had had this week, I think we'd be hearing that it was the most disastrous week of her premiership. It was another example of the calamity. I think partly

what's happened here though is that Boris Johnson works with Dominic Cummings, he gets a lot of press and partly perhaps because he was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a film but also his role in the Leave campaign means that people really rate his strategy. So you have the sense where things appear to be

going wrong and then others say, maybe we just don't understand the strategy behind this. So there must be a genius at work here. I'm just too dim to follow it through. I think there is a sense of that. I think by Friday, I think that's getting harder to say, but I don't think you had that with Theresa May. And when you did,

it was when she had Nick Timothy around her actually and people were saying Nick Timothy is the brain. So there is something there. I think there's a lot about the way we make excuses for men and I do think it is a double standard. When they are scatty or haywire or they can't manage their personal lives, they can't get dressed in the morning,

they turn up with toast down their jumper and it is read as being a sign that they are so focused on the thing that they're doing. Their great genius means that everything else is just sort of secondary. And we don't, you know, if a woman turns up with a bird nest hair and like, you know, ripped tights, we don't, you know, if a woman turns out with a bird nest hair and like, you know, ripped tights, we don't go,

oh, no, she's probably just been solving world peace or, you know, coming up with the answer to Fermat's last theorem. You think, God, look at this old, you know, scatty old bird, right? And I do think that is a very, very gendered way that men get away with being chaotic because it is assumed they have a support structure of women around them doing all the kind of rough bit. I want to briefly discuss the special advisor situation

because it did look and sound dreadful, the idea of that young woman being escorted out, although I understand that's actually quite normal for the police to escort employees off premises. But the optics, which is one of the words of the week, and then there were other women as well. It wasn't just Sonia Khan, I don't think. There were three others who were also dismissed in that fashion. Didn't look great. Special advisors are in a really

difficult position in Westminster because they are employed directly by the minister they report to. They have essentially no job security. And you might say, you know, everything happening in the Westminster bubble. But this is reflective of a lot of how a lot of people experience the modern world of work, right, with no real employment protections at a whim. And it's one of the big things that came out of Me Too, actually, is, you know, if you're like an agency cleaner, how actually do you deal with workplace harassment? What is your venue to complain when your employment is so insecure? And there's a similar problem, I think, with special advisors, that, you know, their recourse is so low. And actually, the biggest structural issue, Alex Wickham of BuzzFeed reported that,

you know, there are more female special advisors in the lowest pay bracket, there are far more men than women in the top pay bracket. And there are women who think that they are being paid less than the man who did the job before them in Theresa May's government did. So there does seem to be a structural problem with gender and pay among special advisors. I know, that's the situation some men choose to interpret as women clustering in lower paid roles.

I think women actually don't even want to be paid. It would make them feel bad, probably. Yeah, I'd rather not be bothered being paid. It's a nuisance having money in the bank. Katie? I think the exit of several female special advisors, particularly reports of being escorted off of police, has caused a lot of unease in the Tory party.

I know that Amber Rudd said to me that it reminded her of when she'd worked previously for J.P. Morgan and people were women of frog march off the floor and you always had that hanging off you. And she said that she didn't think that's how the Tory party should be treating people. So I think there are people who are concerned about how it's handled. And it also just creates an unease. Now, clearly, working in government is a very stressful job. I don't think anyone expects it to be a cuddly workplace. But I think there are lines in terms of what you expect to do and just knowing the rules.

Katie Balls and Helen Lewis, and no doubt they'll pop up again on the programme in the near future. Jackie Kay is the national poet of Scotland. She's written poetry and plays and novels and a very successful memoir, Red Dust Road, recently performed in Edinburgh as a play and now touring the country. Her 1986 play, Kiriscoro, is being revived at the Bush Theatre in West London. That was written when she was 25 and it features four women all trying to understand who they are and where they come from as black women in Britain. How much then does Jackie recall about her 25 year old self? Quite a lot actually because

I still feel like the same person I don't feel like I've changed much at all but I do remember a theatre of black women who first did the production asking me to write a monologue and so I wrote one single monologue and then they said actually we'd like to we'd like you to write a monologue. And so I wrote one single monologue and then they said, actually, we'd like you to write a whole play. So they put on these workshops and supported me in writing a play. I'd never written one before. And so that was my first play. And I think, yes, I was about 23, 24 when I started writing it. Now, Beth, who's played by Shiloh Coke, one of the characters,

is about to start an affair with Opal. And she ponders, what does it mean to be a black lesbian? And when I was listening to her, I thought, how much is she Jackie Kay? Yes, she probably is a bit like me. She's probably the character that was the most like me because, yes, when I was in my early 20s, I was thinking about that because it was people sort of thought that you would either be black or you'd be a lesbian. But being a black lesbian wasn't really talked about that much then. And so I wanted to create a character who was a black lesbian and put her out there.

And so it's nice that Beth is getting this reincarnation. She's also thinking about having a baby. And I know that your son Matthew was born in 1988 so how much were you thinking about him or her I mean you didn't know he was going to be a him at the time in the writing? Yes I always wanted to have a baby so and I and I never thought that being a lesbian should preclude me having a baby so yes he's 31 now just turned 31. Yes, if you were in front of me, I'd say, tell me I don't look old enough.

Of course you don't. Yes, and I've always been a lesbian mum. I mean, I remember when he was 14 saying to him, Matthew, it's quite cool having a lesbian mum. And he said, it's not. It's not cool at all. He said, it'd be cool to have a lesbian gran. I told this to my mum and she said, what am I supposed to do, change my sexuality at this late stage?

To which you said, no, Mum, you don't have to, of course. At the centre of the play, it seemed to me, is the difficulty the four women have in communicating with each other. Why was that an important question? Well, I just remember those early days of black feminism. I first went to the OAD conference in 1984, which was the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent. And they were very exciting conferences and groups, a black lesbian group formed out of that. But everybody was exploring differences,

differences in political persuasions, differences in opinions, and differences in consciousness and ethics and what to wear, how to dress. I mean, these were quite early days of feminism and particularly of black feminism. So there was lots and lots of conversations around identity, lots of arguments, disagreements,

people just trying to work themselves out, really. And I found that period of time very, very exciting. I mean, I'd grown up in an all-white environment, so just having black friends was new for me. So it was a kind of heady time. I remember when I went to Owe, not even knowing if I would be kind of accepted there because I didn't know if I was dark enough

and I didn't know what the differences were between dark women and light women and all of that. So these were the kind of issues that I was exploring in chiaroscuro and interestingly enough these are still current, these issues of identity people are still talking about them. Yes, that

comes over very strongly in the play, pointing to the issue of how skin shade means women are treated differently. I was a little bit surprised to find that that still stood after all these years. I know. Well, we live in a world that is very, very racist. And, you know, in that world actually seems to be getting more so in lots of ways. So I don't think it's necessarily, I mean, it's sad because in the 70s, I think we thought that racism was something that we could fight and win. But today in 2019, we see that that is an ongoing battle.

We still need to have hope and we still need to have a great deal of hope at the amount of people that are opposing racism but it's shocking to see the rise in racist attacks in our country for instance after Brexit. It was written around the time of the Clause 28 debate and I wondered from that perspective on the question of sexuality how much does it now feel very specific to its time?

Yeah, I think that probably the greatest change in our lifetime has been the changes in attitudes towards gay people. I mean, we're still experiencing homophobia and we still experience attacks, but there has been a massive shift in attitudes towards gay people in the just even in the last 20 years and particularly in Scotland I think Scotland's meant to be the one of the most gay friendly countries to live in in the whole of Europe which is kind of unthinkable and you know when I was growing up I was 16 in the art class and I remember the school bully going miss miss Jackie's a lessee and the art teacher turning around to me and saying well are you Jacqueline are you a lesbian and that kind of thing what did you say I said I don't know I really don't know and that's that shut shut Ann Kerr up she just stopped talking

it was the truth then I just really didn't know um but um and I remember saying to my mum you know when I was 17 how would you feel if I was to tell you I was a lesbian and my mum saying I would be very upset because you would be becoming something I don't know or understand, you wouldn't be Jackie anymore. And that really disturbed and kind of upset me. And I thought, oh, I would still be Jackie. So that kind of attitude has changed. My own mum's changed massively.

I mean, obviously people have negative experiences as well, but I think the shift in societal opinions has been vast. That's Jackie Kay and Keir Scorrow runs until the 5th of October at the Bush Theatre in Shepherd's Bush in West London. Now, back in August during Listener Week, you'll recall 19-year-old Gwyneth and her sister Betty and their mother Sarah talking about street harassment. That prompted two sisters, Maya and Gemma Tutton,

to contact the programme and tell us about their campaign, Our Streets Now. They are utterly fed up with the catcalls and the verbal abuse they've received and they want to change the law in a way that they've already done in France. In France, verbal sexual harassment is now illegal. There's a specific law against it.

It was passed last year. It allows for on-the-spot fines of up to €750 and over 700 people have indeed been fined so far. But of course, for an on-the-spot fine to be given, there's got to be somebody in authority, like a police officer, around at the time. I asked Maya, will it really work? Yeah, I mean, of course you can't guarantee that a police officer's always going to be there, but I think that is an issue with all on-the-spot fines. We're never going to get all the harassers.

But given that 90% of British women have been harassed before reaching adulthood, we're talking here about figures and numbers that could never all be caught. I mean, if we were all constantly catching harassers for harassing us, it would completely overpower our court system. So we need to figure out a way to address this problem that is going to work efficiently and quickly

and not put the labour on women and girls and the victims of this harassment, which I think is a really key point about the on-the-spot fines is that what we're doing is that we're not putting the emphasis once again on women and girls changing their behavior what we're saying is that the law needs to change that politicians need to speak out and that we need kind of as a society to be putting in these measures and these these preventative and then um finding actions against street harassment. We should say, of course, that in no way is harassing anybody on the streets of Britain legal. It simply isn't true. Sexual harassment is a form of unlawful discrimination under our Equality Act of 2010.

But you both believe that more needs to be done here, that Britain needs a specific law about street harassment of women and girls? Yeah so there's been a big wave across Europe of countries standing up and saying this is a specific issue and this is a form of sexist street harassment that is based on our gender you know I mean when I get harassed in the street the reason that I'm being harassed is because it's a power play and I think you can see that and prove that in in looking at the the age at which people are being harassed so we've had hundreds and hundreds of girls under 18 reach out to us with stories of them walking to and from school and being harassed there is no way shape or form that that would ever lead to someone dating or it being a normal relationship we've got to ask ourselves why people are doing

that. And I think it's to do with a society that doesn't value women, a society that has these kind of underpinning structures of violence against us. And I think that given that the government this year recognised that street harassment is a form of gender based violence, it now needs to act and put in specific legislation like in France that is protecting us. Gemma you are only 14 now and you say that the harassment started for you when you were just 11 so that presumably was the point at which you started secondary school. Yeah well so I think it was actually in the summer of year six so I would have been still in primary school but it's the first time that I remember that has stayed into

my mind um to this day and you know I don't really remember many things about being 11 and that has stayed in my mind because it was terrifying it made me feel intimidated scared and I didn't understand why it was happening to me um you know it was it was summer as I was saying so I was wearing shorts and I felt bad for wearing, you know, my favourite. I just bought a new pair of shorts and I felt so ashamed about that. I think that is it's terrible that young women, you know, as young as 11 are feeling bad for wearing what they want to because they are being sexualised by men. And I was very clearly underage then. Maya, to what degree should we focus, if at all, on what the woman or young girl is wearing?

I think a really key point here to make is that whatever you're wearing, you can get harassed. You know, that kind of worry and that horrible realisation when you have women in your life. You know, I've had this with my little sister of, do I let my little sister wear what she wants? Because it's not fair to say to an 11-year-old, you don't get to wear your favourite pair of shorts. It's not fair that we live in a society where you don't get to make decisions about your own body and your own clothing. And I think that a lot of this has got to do with,

yeah, those same structures about shaming women for their decisions. And as a woman, you're in public space and you don't get to make a decision about navigating that. You don't get to wear what you want. You don't get to make a decision about navigating that you don't get to wear what you want you don't get to go where you want and you in your in your life and in your kind of day-to-day behaviors have got to think about how other people are sexualizing and objectifying you and yeah i really really want to emphasize that with jemma she was being sexualized before she started her period and we've had girls as young as eight saying that they're being harassed

i mean that is just ridiculous. It does. I mean, it's fantastic to hear you speak so passionately and thank God you are doing it, by the way. But what about the fact that we are sitting here now, we're all in agreement, I'm not going to disagree with anything you're saying, why would I? In a way, we shouldn't be having this conversation, because we're much more likely to be or have been victims of this

or be victims of this than to be perpetrators. We need the conversation to be happening somewhere else. I totally agree. And I think that that's what we've been doing. You know, the last four months we have been amassing signatures on our petitions. So that's on change.org called Make Street Harassment Illegal. And we've got 110,000 people who have said this is wrong. And we've decided to reach out to about 40 MPs and say, this needs to change. These are the facts.

And these are the young women who are saying that this isn't an issue in their lives. And now I think this conversation needs to spread from our campaign into kind of men's circles, into spaces where I think we just need to drive home the message that this is having a really, really big impact. And I think MPs have got to act. So please email your MP and tell them about your street harassment in their constituency. Tell them about our campaign and ask them to act because this conversation can't just be happening, you know, behind closed doors in our friendship groups.

Maya and Gemma Tutton, both really impressive young women. An email from Peggy. I recently reported an incident of street harassment that I saw to the police and very little interest was shown by the officer. I was told that it needed the victim to report it, but she's not going to do that, is she? Women are programmed to put up with it. I felt a fool for bothering to report it

and had the distinct feeling that I was being regarded as a bit silly. If I feel this as a middle-aged woman, how on earth do young women feel who are the victims and then pluck up the courage to complain? Thank you for that, Peggy. From Wendy, old women, not in the first flush of youth, experience this too. It is again power-based, it's distressing, and it has a heavy impact on our sense of ourselves.

I've experienced shout-outs from teenage males, and sadly the young women with them, and from men of all ages. The comments are always negative and sexual, like, Cor, would you have a go at that? I don't think so. Usually accompanied by raucous laughter, which is highly threatening, upsetting and always demeaning. From your reaction to this subject, the problem is a very real one and it appears to be exceptionally widespread. So I don't know what to say about that. It is, on the face of it, somewhat depressing. Now, who will have forgotten the case of the BBC's former China editor,

Carrie Gracey, and the way her equal pay story highlighted the problem within this very organisation about women and what they're paid compared to men. Carrie Gracey has now written a book called Equal, a story of women, men and money. Here's what she said on the 29th of June last year when her settlement with the BBC was agreed. I love the BBC. It's been my work family for more than 30 years and I want it to be the best. Sometimes families feel the need to shout at each other

but it's always a relief when you can stop shouting. I'm grateful to the Director General for helping me resolve this. I do feel that he has led from the front today. In acknowledging the value of my work as China editor, the BBC has awarded me several years of backdated pay. But for me, this was always about the principle and not about the money. So I'm giving all of that money away to help women who need it more than I do. After all, today at the BBC, I can say I am equal. And I would like women in workplaces

up and down this country to be able to say the same. Carrie Gracie. Well, Sam Smethers is chief executive of the equality organisation, the Fawcett Society, and Carrie donated her BBC money to the Fawcett Society. Charles Cotton is a senior reward and performance advisor at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. And Paula Lee is a solicitor at Lee Day. She represents the Tesco workers in their case of equal pay for work of equal value. Paula was asked what impact high-profile cases had on women's fight for equal pay in the more general British workplace.

I can think of three things immediately. The first thing about Carrie's case, which has impressed me hugely and I think is a potential North Star, is that she has raised the possibility that a woman can bring an equal pay issue to her employer and keep her job. The received wisdom out there is as soon as you put your head above the parapet, you are going to be shown the door under the terms of a settlement agreement. So huge thanks for Carrie for showing it is possible to bring that issue to an employer and retain your job. The second thing the high profile cases do, such as we do at Lead Day, the group claims, each part of the litigation is hard fought. And so what that means in reality

is that the cases go up to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, they go up to the Court of Appeal, they go up to the Supreme Court. And in the case of the Tesco case, we've now made a reference to Europe. So what that does is that that creates a settled feeling. Points of dispute are settled, we get settled law. Settled law is important. What the law rule of law requires is certainty. So the more certainty we get, the easier one hopes it will become for women to bring these claims. The third thing just to come is that when the large group claims as well is that you get safety in numbers. The high profile cases, they attract women, women want to join and they want that safety that's provided.

Now Carrie mentions in her book what an emotional toll the whole dispute created. How do you manage to help your clients through it? The emotional toll is extraordinary. What happens in my experience is you'll get a high profile case will hit the press. A woman will contact you and say, I've been nudging this issue for a few years now. Things are starting to coalesce. I'm starting to feel the balance tip in that I'm ready to launch. So actually, by the time a woman presses the trigger, a lot of the emotional feeling has been gone through that they seem to be more angry when

they're ready to go. What we find with equal pay claims is that they are historic, you're looking back to see if there is an issue there. And once you've made that decision to put your head above the parapet, unlike other employment claims, they can be less emotional because no one is saying you're bad at your job. And Sam, how, with the money that Carrie donated, how can you deal with this kind of thing? I mean, Carrie says quite clearly in the book, the emotional toll was terrible. Absolutely. And one of the things that's coming through with the individual women who are coming through the service is that I think there needs to be a bit more peer support we need to do more to put these women in touch with each other and some of the other cases that have been fought recently I know those women like Sam Walker

for example whose cases was against the co-op you know she's going out there and helping other women and that is really powerful I think the other thing that we want to change is this issue about having any kind of remedy for injury to feelings. Now, in equal pay cases, there is currently no entitlement to injury to feelings compensation, but in other discrimination cases, there is. Charles, how are you working with employers to encourage the implementation of equal pay policy? We are ensuring that we kind of show the advantages. I mean, not only is it the law and there's a moral argument, there's also a business argument. If you have fair pay policies, people will be more motivated

by those. They'll be more likely to join an organisation if they can demonstrate that their policies are fair. The challenge is how do you become open and transparent about your pay systems, especially if you're dealing with legacy issues. Your organisation may have grown by acquiring other companies and the pay practices in there may not have been fair. So you need to kind of look at it on a regular basis, think about why are we paying what we're paying? Are we spending the money in the right places and for the right things?

And how much are employers fearing that they could go bust as a result of this kind of thing? I think for many it's probably around reputational risk. If your investors or your clients and consumers start to question why are you treating people that you employ poorly then that is going to have an impact. With the danger of going to court, it's a case where there are more legal challenges for the individual to go through, so they're perhaps less fearful about that than compared to what investors and public opinion may think. Sam, how have policy makers reacted to these kind of cases? Well, there's more interest in doing something about the gender pay gap and equal pay than

there has ever been. You know, when we were talking about these issues 10 years ago, we didn't get the traction we get now. We think, you know, with 50 years of the Equal Pay Act next year, it's high time that we reform the law. So one of the other ways which we're using Kerry's money is to do some work on changing the Equal Pay Act. We're going to come up with some new legislation in the next session. And that is really about addressing some of the shortcomings that we currently have. So giving women access to the information they need to bring a challenge, you know, making sure that we address these gaps in remedies that I've been talking about, including pension contributions, which are really important for women, particularly low-paid women, and trying to streamline the process a bit more.

And then also doing something about moving us on from just reporting gender pay gap figures into actually having action plans in place that we can hold into account. Paula, what would you say is most important for policymakers to be looking at? The sex equality clause is what underpins all equal pay legislation and it's an invisible clause which is in everybody's contract of employment and I would put that in bold writing so every contract says you have a right to be paid equally equal work for equal pay and I think if it was highlighted in that contract women would feel more bold to put their head above the parapet it's invisible at the moment and I think if it was

made express and human resources people, pay decision people were sending out offer letters to multiple people at the same time of different sexes on the same job, they would notice those rates of pay more. Carrie mentions how important male colleagues and allies can be. What, Paula, should men in the workplace be doing? Should they be saying, oh, I earn this, oh, I earn more than you do, we should do something about this?

110%. The first equal value case was the Camelhead shipyard case, Julie Haywood, and she was massively supported by all the men at the Camelhead shipyard. And she had huge union support and she had huge yeah Birkenhead massive male support um men don't need to fear this the equal pay provisions of the equality act they work by leveling up pay no one is saying that men should be paid less no one is saying that men have to take a hit in their salary all the women are saying is oh can you give me a hand up to level your app because I think I'm entitled to that too. There's nothing to fear here. This is not a female issue. This is a community issue. It's a society issue and it benefits everyone. There's nothing to fear. Paula Lee, Charles Cotton and Sam Smethers, an anonymous emailer, contacted the programme to say thank you so much for raising the issue of

equal pay. It's heartening to hear that these issues can be resolved amicably. As Paula was pointing out there, it is relatively rare. I am currently on maternity leave, says Anonymous, and my employer decided to mark down my bonus payment for the year, despite us agreeing on a performance level before I went away. Their justification? Because I hadn't been there to perform. Listening to the piece, I am hopeful this can be resolved positively and provide some education to colleagues that people on maternity leave are still employees of our company. Thank you very much for that. And as ever, I just want to reiterate, we do need your involvement. We don't just welcome it. We actively wouldn't be

the same without you. So please do contact the program via the website if there's anything you want to fling into a debate we've already had on the program or there's a subject you want us to talk about every week can be listener week here on woman's hour bbc.co.uk slash woman's hour for an email or you can contact us of course on social media at BBC Women's Hour on Twitter and Instagram. A young man of 19 made headlines this week when his story appeared in a medical journal. He had lost his sight because of a diet of nothing but chips, crisps and sausages from the age of about 10. He had what is known as avoidant restrictive food intake disorder. How does a parent or carer distinguish between this clearly very serious problem and a much more common spate or bout of fussy eating?

Claire Thornton-Wood is a dietician who speaks for the British Dietetic Association. Dr Lucy Serpel is an Associate Professor of the Psychology of Eating Disorders at University College London. And first, you'll hear the voice of Dr Victoria Aldridge, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at De Montfort University in Leicester. We expect that eating is a fairly simple behaviour, but actually it's quite complex. It involves interactions of psychology, biology of social integration and experience. And if anything goes wrong at those stages, so if children aren't exposed to a range of foods

or they have a temperament that makes it particularly difficult for kind of cohesive meal times or sensory sensitivity is particularly common in children with ARFID or picky eating at that sort of slightly more extreme end of the spectrum. Then that can make eating and exposing new foods very, very difficult because of the experience of eating. We actually require that you gain experience in touching foods and putting them in your mouth, getting them around your face. And if a child or an individual is very sensory sensitive then that's going to be a really unpleasant experience for them. Claire, what's the root of a fear of food?

It's all really linked to sensory behaviour so children might have a feeling that the foods that they regard as safe are those foods that are dry, that are crunchy, so perhaps they'll only eat crisps and crackers and dry breakfast cereal or they might only want sweet foods that are beige. They can be really particular about the types of bread that they eat. So, for instance, you might do a piece of toast, but the toast has to be cooked in a particular way. It has to be brown all over. It has to be a certain level of brownness or they won't eat it.

Other times that we have problems are for instance around Christmas time some manufacturers will change their packaging so they might have some biscuits that exactly the same biscuit as they were previously but they've got a Christmas wrapping on and the child will perceive that as something completely different and won't want to eat that because it's not one of their safe preferred foods. Lucy how might a worried parent differentiate between the fussy eater who's not at risk which is so common won't touch broccoli won't touch fish and one who is in danger like this boy was? I think that's a really really important point because we all know children who are fussy eaters and I would say that fussy eating is a kind of normal childhood stage. Most

kids with fussy eating are healthy. They're not underweight, and they're not malnourished. And they can eat, you know, a fairly restricted range of foods and still thrive. So if your child's thriving, but they don't like broccoli, I don't think you've got anything to worry about. Certainly if your child's failing to grow or failing to gain weight in the way that children should be doing and if you're worried about your child you know really lacking in energy eating a very extremely restricted range of foods and you're worried they might be malnourished then I think it is worth talking to your GP about it. What happens if a parent tries to force a normal eating pattern on a child who is going in this direction? I mean, I would never recommend that parents force their children to eat.

We do come across this, that parents are obviously really, really desperate and they'll do things like try and spoon-feed their child. But as you know, if somebody sat you down in front of a plate of food and tried to force you to eat it, that's a really unpleasant mealtime experience. And we'd encourage parents to make the mealtime experience as pleasant we'd encourage, you know, parents to make the mealtime experiences as pleasant as possible and not to force children. But perhaps rewarding children for eating a broader range of foods would be, you know, more useful approach. Claire, how easy is it to get vitamin and mineral supplements into a child with these kind of

problems? It's actually generally can be quite difficult because the vitamin and mineral mineral supplements they come in various forms you can get powders chewy ones drops um liquids but obviously they've all got a taste and a texture um so it can sometimes be be quite quite difficult to to do that i mean we would sometimes look at trying to add them to foods but you do have a problem with that because these children have a very, very heightened sense of taste. So if you then put something into the food, change the taste, they then will potentially reject that food

as no longer one of their safe foods. Lucy, I can just hear people saying, oh, come on, this is the fault of the parents. They're not feeding their children properly. how much stigma attaches to this whole question yeah i mean i really hate hearing people blame parents who i think you know in almost all cases are doing their absolute best and i think we shouldn't underestimate the impact of having a very very extremely picky child or a child with any kind of eating disorder on families this isn't bad parenting and you know anyone who has children will know that if you have more than one child they have different temperaments and different attitudes towards food so this isn't something

that's caused by parents but parents are obviously incredibly important in supporting their child to to recover from these kinds of eating disorders. What sort of impact does that actually have on a child's social life if you can't go to your friend's party because you can't eat one of the buns that might be provided at tea time? Yes I mean I think that's really really distressing for children but it is also something that can be used to help children to become a bit more adventurous and we know when children get to middle childhood they're more influenced by their peers than they are by parents. So it might be that parents have been spending years trying to get a child to eat, I don't know, a vegetable, and then they go to a party with friends and everybody's eating something and they try it. So I think peer influences can be really

helpful. Dr Lucy Serpel, Claire Thornton-Wood and Dr Victoria Aldridge. Now, researchers are always telling us that women are responsible for the majority of consumer decisions, making an estimated 80% of purchases and most of the final decisions on everything from clothing to cars to family holidays. We're also told that women are more concerned about the climate and more keen to make environmentally conscious decisions. Why is this? And is it simply that women have more of a burden placed upon them in these areas? All products have got an environmental cost to one degree or another. Is it increasingly a woman's responsibility to limit a household's impact? I talked on Friday to Lauren Bravo, author of the upcoming book, How to Break Up

with Fast Fashion. Lauren hasn't bought clothes for the best part of this year. Kate Corley was there too. She's the owner of Varis Strategies, a sustainability agency advising people who make and package food products. And we heard from Dr. Lucy Middlemiss, Associate Professor in Sustainability at the University of Leeds. Here's Lucy. We're very familiar with the idea that women will choose kids' clothes, their own clothes, sometimes husbands' clothes. They will buy often food for the family and other households' goods. But obviously the gender pay gap means that women have actually a lot less money available to spend. And the gender

housework gap makes us question whether this is a power in terms of the amount of money they have to spend, or actually it's a form of inequality. So I think we risk further reinforcing gender inequalities by implying that it's women's responsibilities both to shop and to shop sustainably. All right then, so in simple terms, women get lumped with this responsibility. We haven't necessarily chosen it. I mean, the statistics would say that women are more environmentally conscious and more environmentally concerned,

so they are thinking about these things more. And then also, since they are making a lot of those kinds of more day-to-day decisions, perhaps it's being brought to their attention more. So, you know, the movement around trying to reduce waste from supermarket shopping, or if you are on that front line, and you're making those decisions on a day to day basis, it's a bit more in the front of your mind when you're thinking about these things. Now, Lauren, women and fashion are inexorably, they're always going to be linked together. And

it is true that women are not only more likely to buy clothes, they are expected to buy more clothes, aren't they? Well, absolutely. I mean, I think when we, we know that women overwhelmingly buy more clothes than men. I think it's actually very hard to find statistics for this. But in the global supply of secondhand clothes, there are more than seven times as many women's items as men's. But I think we have to think about why that is. And surely it's because most of us sort of from almost from the get go have been told that our value is in our appearance primarily. And for a lot of us that translates as believing that we are only as good as our last outfit. So inevitably, we shop, of course we do. And I think it's interesting when we're talking

about the women's kind of being more like women be more likely to take on the responsibility of sustainable consumption. Because I think a lot of that as well is because these days it does feel like self-optimization is an inherent part of womanhood so we're always being told we ought to be better healthier shinier you know more virtuous and i do think the sustainability comes into that as well i think a lot of my friends are constantly wracked with guilt over how sustainable or otherwise our habits are in a way that I don't see male partners being, you know. The cost to the environment of, say, and I admit to this, I've got a bit of a white t-shirt habit. Stupidly, it only just occurred to me that even a white t-shirt has got to be

dyed white. Yes, I mean... Has it? Well, no, I think it would be it would be bleached right there you go to achieve that perfect that box fresh whiteness and cotton as well i think people don't perhaps realize that cotton if it's not organic cotton is also um it's one of the thirstiest crops in the planet it uses a lot of water to grow the crops and there's a lot of humanitarian issues around the growth of cotton as well so there are no kind of silver

bullet solutions i know kate was saying this earlier it's very um very hard to find one answer to give people that satisfies everything in ticks or boxes we have to find our own roots steve the vegan asks kate what about the discussion on diet anyone for veganism well this is you yes this is a very hot topic at the moment and i think um it's confusing about what to buy and what to eat. And I think food is a basic human right that everybody has access to. I think clothing isn't so essential. But I find it's frustrating the situation we find ourselves in that to buy sustainably is currently really only accessible to the wealthier parts of society.

And that's, you know, people that have the luxury of time and also money to buy high welfare, more sustainable products. That isn't something that is available to those on a tight budget. And yeah, that's a system change that we need. And I think this needs to come from a governmental level. But I think we are all becoming much more aware of the impact of our diets. And obviously, it's a very hot topic with some reports that have been released recently. And the general message is that we do all need to eat less meat and dairy that we are used to and embrace more of a plant based diet. Mary, this is back to clothes actually, says, how we look is judged.

I still buy most of my clothes secondhand and people are often surprised by this. Can I just, I mean, I think class is significant as well, Lucy. I know you feel strongly about this. If you're rich, you can afford to look poor, actually, because people will just think you're a raging eccentric. However, if you're genuinely poor you can't yeah and just to pick up on something that kate said so sustainability only being for the

wealthy is really misled actually because um if we if we go back to this idea of rich people having more impact than poor people what that means is that the the um ecological footprints or the carbon footprints of the poorer members of society are much smaller than those of the more wealthy. However, we kind of associate the agenda with the middle class. We associate it with solar panels, organic food. And actually, practices going on in sort of daily life for poorer people are more likely to have a lower impact than they are for those of us that earn more. So to give you an example, many people in the UK, one of their biggest impacts is taking flights. And when the statistics are done, usually only about half of the population flies in any one year.

And then there's about 10% of the population flies multiple times. So that means most people are taking one flight or none. And actually that 10% of the population that's flying multiple times a year and then perhaps also flying in a work context is having the most major impact on the environment. So we should really be celebrating poor people as quite environmentally friendly. But Boohoo, the online fashion retailer, their profits have soared up nearly 40%, Lauren.

So for all the blether and the discussion about fast fashion and what young people can do to change the way the world works, I'm not accusing Boohoo. I'm sure they're a decent company and they're paying their taxes and all the rest of it. But people are saying one thing and perhaps doing something else. Yeah yeah I think it's partly a trickle-down effect I think it is sort of you know these ideas take a while to catch on and they take even longer for us to feel confident enough to put them into practice something that I write about in the book is I feel like we do need

a bit of a collective mindset shift that almost allows us to kind of you know put our foot on the brakes a little bit and wear the same outfits again and again so social media I think is a big culprit in this you know young people we look at social media we look at the influences that we admire they have a new outfit in every single photo and the accessibility of social media has given everybody this feeling like they should be a celebrity with a single wear wardrobe to match and then we wash our clothes in their time Yeah so this is something else that people can do if they want to be a bit more sustainable quite easily is to not wash your clothes as often. So actually one of the best ways to prolong the lifespan of a garment

which in turn is one of the best ways to stop clothes entering landfill and not buy as many is wash it less. Stops it fading, stops it losing its shape. It's interesting, Boohoo apparently have a recycled range, so it's not as if they're not trying. And you imagine that long term, that might have an impact and change thinking. Yeah, I think it's very important that a lot of the most accessible fast fashion brands are seen to be making a difference as well.

And I think actually we've seen since 2013, the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, which was one of the biggest catalysts for change in the industry. We've seen a lot of those names, the high street chains, the sort of Zara's and H&M's, the online retailers. They have had to buck up their ideas considerably because the heat has been on them. But actually, when we talk about perhaps, you know, more wealthy consumers, one of the things people don't realise is that a lot of the more premium brands, those kind of lovely mid-range, you know, £150, £200 for a dress kind of brands, they are no more sustainable. No, no, I mean, they're not. I think that's clear. A brief word, if you can, Kate, on what we can do. I'm doing a food shop tomorrow. What don't I do? I think it's really important to be conscious about what you're

buying. Yeah, but does that mean I say no to anything in plastic? No, not at all. I think you need to be conscious not to buy over-packaged product. But I think what's actually more important, and for some reason this is the issue of food waste, hasn't quite connected with the consumers in the same way plastic has, which is something around the blue planet effect. I think it's about buying what you need and not being sucked into this buy one get one free and

buying too too much and then it going to waste because a third of all food is wasted around the world and yet we're having these conversations about how are we going to feed the world sustainably by 2050. Some advice from you Lucy very briefly. I would say that sustainable living isn't just about spending money so for instance showering which we now daily, we use a lot of water to do that. We take long showers. That uses a lot of water and a lot of gas for heating. And so those kinds of things are worth thinking about as well. Dr Lucy Middlemiss, Kate Cawley and Lauren Bravo,

and loads of reaction from you to this one. Anna makes a good point. Am I the only one who buys budget clothes but then wears them for years? I've got tops and pants and dresses and skirts that are over a good point. Am I the only one who buys budget clothes but then wears them for years? I've got tops and pants and dresses and skirts that are over a decade old. They're still going strong and I look all right, I think. From John, will guilt-driven consumer choice ever change the world? It's true that only the middle class can indulge. We need systemic change from strong, committed governments. Our votes will have more

impact than our wallets. And the final word, I think we'll go to Joe, who says, I have long realised that my environmental impact is much less since becoming poor. I haven't bought new clothes for years. Thank you very much for that, Joe. Now, we're going to talk about sex and we're going to talk about periods. So if you don't want to hear about either of those two subjects, and certainly not in combination, then you know you can turn off now. So Emma Barnett was our guest on Monday's edition of Woman's Hour. We were talking about her new book, Period. It's about bloody time. Also with us was the anti-FGM campaigner Nimco Ali, whose book is called What We're Told Not to Talk About But We're Going To Anyway. I asked Emma why she'd chosen to include a chapter about period sex in her new book.

I found an article online by a brilliant journalist in America, Maureen O'Connor, who coined the terms for men who particularly liked it. She coined the term bloodhounds, which is, you know, something you'll remember once you've read it. And I spoke to her and she said to me, you know, there is this fetish and it's not something that is talked about. And then I talked to her about who she'd spoken to and I started to then interview women and men about how they felt about it. And I actually felt this was almost the apex of shame

because a woman could feel like having sex at that time of the month and yet she would deny it a lot of the time. Why would she deny? She would feel she was dirty and the man wouldn't want to go near her or if she had a female partner not necessarily a man would want to go near her either because that shame that you speak about Jane is so deeply buried it's made to feel like you're dirty. And if I could just pause for a moment, because another part of the book is about religion, but I think religion plays a major part in our attitude towards period sex. Leviticus says,

if there is a man who lies with a menstrual woman and uncovers her nakedness, both of them shall be cut off from among their people. And the idea of it is so deeply embedded into the Abrahamic faith that you are unclean on your period. How on earth do we start to unpick that in 2019? First of all, we should say some women, and I think you actually say you're one of them, you don't feel like having sex when you're having

a period. I mean, I particularly have endometriosis. I have a period disease, very painful periods, affects actually some women, I should say with endometriosis, one in seven women have it, we think, can't have sex at all because of endometriosis, not one in seven, but of the number of people who have endometriosis. I'm very sensitive to that. But no, there's no way at that time of the month I could do it. But I think the idea that you think you shouldn't, I mean, some of the names for periods, some of the euphemisms, up on blocks, mistress week, from a man's point of view, you on blocks, mistress week, from a man's point of view, you're out of service. But from a woman's point of view, I think it's really interesting that it could be the week that you pay the period sex debt. So women I spoke to said,

well, that's the week I do something just for the man. And that means oral sex for the man, presumably. Yes, it does. That week. On a guilt trip? What is that? It's feeling like you can't service the other. And in one way, that's very generous and that's right. And if you want to do it, fair enough.

Go on, Nimco. I was going to say, I think it might be a sense of not being wanted. And I think the other taboo, not just the period sex, is the female orgasms. And one of the key things is that just before you ovulate and also during the second or third day of your period you are the most heightenly sexual and and women do want to have sex so those are the conversations about female sex and pleasure because I think we're also looking at this reality of the fact that if you feel uncomfortable if you don't feel that you might be wanted and

desired then you're unlikely to actually reach orgasm and actually enjoy that so a lot of women have kind of stopped the idea of trying to have sex during their period because of the fact that they know it's not going to be and it could make them feel better yeah but it could make them feel better and i think it's one of those things that you have to be able to if you are on your period if you want to have sex it's just one of those things that you should be able to do and i think it is about the liberation of women and i think that's a first world conversation that we're having but ultimately again in the fact about the religion and so on, there are places in the world where women, when they're on their period, they're shunned into huts. So the idea of even thinking about sex is not even on the plates, really.

Of course not. No, it's not. And I'm sorry, can we just do a shout out, though? There are men that I did find out about and hear about who don't particularly love period sex but do it to help that partner to help them feel better It can be brilliant for alleviating the symptoms of PMT an orgasm is going to help you isn't it? Yeah and the endorphins that are released and the way it makes you feel Orgasms will always help you through anything

stress, insomnia Just put that on a t-shirt Orgasms will always help you Okay, there is without a shadow of a doubt depending on the kind of periods you have and the point of your cycle you're at, the day of your period, it can be really messy. There is a great story in the book, Emma, about the woman who has a very energetic and extremely satisfying one night stand in the States, is it? No, it was actually here. Oh, was it? Well, just tell the story.

Yes, no, she's newly single. Oh, sorry, this is the one in the States. Excuse me, that was in the States. Thank you. There was another one who's newly single. Got one over Barnet, though. Sorry, you did. There's another one who's newly single, and she does wake up in a sort of crime scene as well.

It's quite a common theme, it seems. But yes, the woman in the States, Gillian Welsh, she gets together with her Amdram acting partner, who's very attractive to her, and they have sex, and she wakes up afterwards, and he's gone for a shower and she turns the light on. And she doesn't know how it's happened, but literally her blood's all over the walls. There's handprints, there's everything. And instead of just dealing with this, maybe with laughter or talking to him about it,

she tries to clean the wall with her own spit and then she gathers up the bedsheets and she puts them into her rucksack and goes off on the subway and escapes without saying goodbye and while she's on the subway there's a random police check because it's not long after 9-11 and instead of telling the police officer why she's got bloodstained sheets he pulls them out looks at her and she's thinking I'm gonna go to jail for a homicide here and she still doesn't find the words and then she eventually says I promise you it's innocent I just I had sex on my period and he just doesn't believe her and marches her to the man's house and he opens

the door and says yeah we just had sex on a period like it was completely normal. So he's the period hero. But a woman so ashamed of her night of passion and love did consider a bit of time. Emma Barnett and Nimco Ali. Monday's programme, I'm looking forward to this. I think I am anyway. It's a live phone-in about the impact of Brexit on family life, on friendships and on relationships. Just how polarising has all this been for you? That's Woman's Hour live just after 10 on Monday morning. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've

ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.