Woman's Hour - Joanna Chiu; Modern Stepmums; Angela Merkel's military farewell

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

The Women’s Tennis Association has suspended all events in China over concerns for the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai. Her safety has become a matter of international concern after she posted sexual assault allegations against former Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli and then disappeared from public view. She has since reappeared and has said she is safe and well but there are still concerns for her wellbeing. Last week China’s foreign ministry said it was not a diplomatic matter and the issue had been maliciously hyped up. In a timely new book, 'China Unbound: A New World Disorder', the journalist Joanna Chiu says that for far too long western societies have mishandled or ignored Beijing’s actions, out of narrow self-interest. She believes decades of wilful misinterpretations have, over time, become complicit in the toxic diplomacy, human rights abuses, and foreign interference China engages in today. Joanna speaks to Krupa Padhy about Peng Shuai, the #metoo movement in China and her work as founder and chair of NuVoices, which highlights and supports women working on the subject of China. Back in the summer a parliamentary report came out about women in the armed forces. It was put together by the Defence Sub-Committee on Women in the Armed Forces which gathered evidence from four thousand women involved in the army now and in the past. It made for very bad reading. Stories of bullying, harassment, discrimination came to light, as well as sexual assault and rape. That report duly went to the Government, which today makes public whether or not it's upheld the Committee's recommendations. Pregnant women say they are worried about catching Covid at work and not is enough is being done to keep them safe, that's according to a recent survey by the UK maternity rights charity Maternity Action. It recently surveyed just over 400 women who worked in different settings from offices to factories and chemical plants. Ros Bragg is the director at Maternity ActionA new podcast "You're Not My Mum: The Stepmum's Side" was launched last week on BBC Sounds. Katie Harrison is the host and she's passionate about raising awareness of the complexities and realities of being a modern stepmother. She joins Krupa Padhy to talk about some of the challenges along with Suzie Hayman who is a counsellor and spokesperson for the parenting charity Family Lives and author of "Be A Great Step-Parent." Today Angela Merkel receives her official farewell as Germany’s chancellor, it’s a position she has held for the last 16 years. A special ceremony will take place in Berlin this evening where music of the Chancellor’s choice will be performed by a military band. More than a few eyebrows have been raised after the Chancellor picked a track by Nina Hagen also known as the Grandmother of Punk Rock. BBC Berlin Correspondent Jenny Hill and historian Katja Hoyer join Krupa Padhy to discuss Angela Merkel’s legacy, her musical choices and Nina Hagen.

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

Hello, good morning, and thank you for joining us. After 16 years in office, Europe's longest serving leader, Angela Merkel, is stepping down as Chancellor of Germany. Her calm exterior has navigated a minefield of challenges and mighty men from the world of politics over the years. And as part of her military farewell this evening, she's chosen three songs, as is custom, to be played by the military band. One of them being by the punk rock singer Nina Hagen, not an obvious choice for Chancellor Merkel. Having heard the song last night, I am intrigued to hear what it will sound like being played by a brass band, but even more intrigued to find out what is behind that song choice of hers with our guests. And on the subject of rocky relationships, we're going to introduce you to Katie Harrison, presenter of a new podcast called You're Not My

Mum, The Stepmum's Side. Lots to get into about the language and stereotypes around stepmums. And on that, we've been asking you to share your stories about being a step-parent or having a step-parent. There is still time to get your messages in. We're at BBC Women's Hour on social media. Email us via our website or text us on 84844. We also want to hear from you about this research from Maternity Action. More than a third of pregnant women

fear losing their jobs due to safety concerns about COVID in the workplace. Now, this includes taking time off or asking for more to be done to protect them from COVID. So we're keen to hear from you if you've been impacted by this. But first, let's bring you an update on a story we brought you here on the programme back in the summer about a parliamentary report on women in the armed forces. It was put together by the Defence Subcommittee on Women in the Armed Forces, which gathered evidence from 4,000 women involved in the army. It made for very grim reading. Stories of bullying, harassment and discrimination came to light, as well as sexual assault and rape. Well, that report duly went to the government, which today makes public whether

or not it's upheld the committee's recommendations. The MP Sarah Atherton is chair of the Women in the Armed Forces subcommittee and joins us now. Thank you for your time, Sarah. You came onto our programme back in July to talk about the problems that you found. Can you summarise those concerns for us? Yes, and good morning. Thank you for having me on your show. Well, women have been overrepresented in the complaints system for many years. And the Defence Select Committee asked if I would chair, being a veteran myself, I was in the army in the 80s, whether I'd chair a subcommittee to look into really what was going wrong and why recruitment targets were consistently being missed. What we didn't anticipate was what then came.

We had four and a half, sorry, 4,200 pieces of evidence submitted about the lived experiences of women in the military, with some harrowing stories ranging from rape, bullying, intimidation and harassment, and all the way down to more minor issues like how women felt undervalued in their role in the military. So we decided to look into that further. And of course, the MOD have responded today, as you've mentioned. And as the only female Member of Parliament who served in the army, how shocked were you by these findings? I was shocked. I was a little disappointed that since I was in the army in the 80s, things hadn't really progressed. For example, women have been on the front line for many,

many years now, and yet their equipment and their clothing that they are issued to do the work of the government to protect our country are designed for men and are ill-fitting and actually compromise operational effectiveness. So I was shocked at that level that things hadn't progressed but what really impacted on myself was the issues around rape, harassment and bullying and how that was quite endemic within the military today. So we're at a stage where the government has agreed with most of your recommendations and we are going to unpick what their response has been. But how has their response left you feeling? I'm actually quite delighted. They've certainly shown a commitment. They've acknowledged there is a problem.

That is a big step for the military, the MOD, to make. They've acknowledged it's a problem and they have made some serious commitments to the future of women in the military. They've certainly set a target of increasing recruitment to 30% by 2030. And this is all ringing good bells for me,

mainly because we really need to show our service women that they are valued. And I think the response we've had this morning from the Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, it's quite a thorough response and it certainly shows an ongoing commitment to our service women and veterans. Now, I said that the government agreed with most of your recommendations.

A key recommendation that they haven't agreed with, though, is that allegations of rape and sexual assault should be heard in a civilian court. They say allegations like that should still be heard in a military court. Has that left you disappointed? Yes, I think disappointed is probably a good word. You know, murder, manslaughter, serious sexual assault and rape will continue to be heard primarily in the military court. However, on Monday, the Armed Forces Bill will look at what they call concurrent jurisdiction, which gives scope for the service and public prosecutors to overrule this rule. So cases can, in certain circumstances, be heard in a civilian court. But this is something I'm going to watch very closely with interest. And the Defence Select Committee will be reviewing

progress on these recommendations as we go forward. That's encouraging to hear. And according to this report, the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, wants to see women as part of that court martial process. Does that make things any better? Yes, Ben Wallace has gone one step further and has added extra recommendations. So he's going to mandate a female on all court martial hearings relating to sexual offences. He's going to introduce a new sexual exploitation and abuse policy around transsexual sex workers. And he's going to hold an international conference to look at the issues that women face in the military in 2022,

which I'm very pleased about because I have been engaged with the Australian and US governments who are doing similar studies at the moment. It sounds like a wealth of work is about to begin. The report does not state clearly how it's going to deal with anyone found to have committed sexual offences or have behaved in an unacceptable way. A huge point of interest here. They say there'll be a review into how to dismiss offenders or discharge them. That just doesn't sound good enough.

Well, the response does say that it's going to look at and review how to dismiss and discharge personnel who are found wanting and are not meeting the expectations that they should be exhibiting. So there is some review in that. There's a lot of reviewing in this response. And one thing I want to do is to make sure that when they put something in place, it actually has an impact on the ground and it is making positive changes. So this is something I'll be looking at. This is something that I had requested.

I want to be able to have mechanisms in place that measure success of policies and initiatives they put in place. It's a little weak on that front. So this is something I'll be looking at to make sure that they are honouring what they're saying they're going to do. And when you say mechanisms in place, what do you mean? For the MOD or for myself? In terms for yourself. Yes, we are going, the Defence Select Committee is going to hold a review in 12 months time. Obviously, you know, my role to support women in the military is going to continue for as long as I'm in Parliament. So I'll be keeping a watching brief on this. I've got good relationships with the MOD and the ministers and we've been quite

supportive of each other going through this process because there's a genuine desire to improve the lived experiences of women in the military and our veterans. So we'll be looking at that within around about a year's time to monitor progress. Sarah, the last time we spoke to you, the complaints procedure and the chain of command related to that was of huge concern to you and the other guests that we had on. When it comes to complaints of bullying, harassment and discrimination, the MOD has agreed there needs to be more independence. Independence, that feels like a rather ambiguous phrase. I mean, is this another sign of progress? What does that even mean in practice? Now, this is where we have our main success because the chain of command has been removed

from all complaints and allegations of a sexual nature. So now a service personnel, not necessarily a woman, man as well, can download a complaints form. They submit that form to the single service service complaint secretariat. And this is all new ground that's going to be introduced. And this is going to be overseen by a diversity and inclusion directorate. This is a new directorate who are going to look at admissibility decisions. And that's going to be made within a centralised service team. This is all very new and progressive stuff. Investigations are now going to be undertaken by an independent outsourced investigations unit.

And this is all in addition to the Defence Serious Crimes Unit and the development of a rape and serious offensive strategy. So this is making very positive, progressive steps on behalf of the MOD to address some of the issues raised in our inquiry. I can hear how encouraged you are by that response, Sarah. Another area which at least comes across as progressive, this new target to get more women into the army, 30% more by 2030. I mean, it's easy to forget that it's only been three years since 2018 that women have been able to apply for all roles in the armed forces. What do you make of that? Yes, I'm a big advocate of women in the military. I think it's a great target to have. It's showing ambition. It is ambitious. It's showing commitment by the MOD and the Secretary of State, Ben Wallace. And for people like me in Parliament,

it gives me a target in which I can hold the MOD to account. I like the idea of this target. We need more women, we need more diversity, we need more inclusion. So, yeah, I'm reassured by the target. 30% more women. How are they going to achieve this, though? Well, I think they've got to start looking at, as they are going to do,

wraparound childcare, women's health issues, valuing women more. Most women tend to leave the army around eight to nine years into service and a high proportion usually leave within a few years of coming back from maternity leave. So they've got to embrace a modern military that is also of the correct standard and operationally functional. And they can easily do that. And they are doing that by looking at women's health policies. And as we said before, about equipment and terms and conditions of service. So this is going quite a large way to embracing that. And when all these recommendations are implemented, and the recommendations of the Wigston and the Lions

Review are implemented, it's certainly going to improve the lot of women in the military. And the military, as we go forward, is transformational. It's very progressive. It's very interesting. There are a lot of jobs now open, a new podcast. It's called You're Not My Mum, The Stepmum Side, which was launched last week by BBC Sounds. Katie Harrison is the host, and she's passionate about raising awareness of the complexities and realities of being a modern stepmother. Here's a little clip of some of the stepmum's experiences

included in last week's episode. A wicked stepmother has never, ever changed in any environment whatsoever, little clip of some of the stepmum's experiences included in last week's episode. The wicked stepmother has never ever changed in any environment whatsoever and some of us are not evil, some of us are absolutely, you know, a credit to these children. So the hardest thing I think in the last six years of being a stepmom has been having our lives somewhat dictated to by the birth parent in terms of not having certainty on our lives. What I found particularly hard as a step-mum is that another woman not of my choosing is dictating what I do in my own home with my own children. So interesting to hear these women share their views. Katie joins me now to talk about some of

the challenges along with Susie Heyman who is a counsellor and spokesperson to the radio and I heard about a podcast award in memory of Rachel Bland the presenter um from Radio 5 and the brief of the award was find a topic that really should be talked about but that isn't talked about because as I'm sure many of your listeners know Rachel was behind You, Me and the Big C um which is a podcast to really change the way that cancer was spoken about. So one of the things that was done in her memory was to launch an award to find topics to raise awareness on things that aren't really talked about. So I heard this when I was driving along in the car and thought, well, step mumming in my case is never talked about.

You know, one in 10 kids in the UK lives in a step family, but we just don't talk about it. And so sort of blindly entered this competition, obviously not expecting to win. And here we are. Well, congratulations on that win. Clearly a very important subject

that so many people want to talk about. We've also had some responses from our listeners who also wanted to share their responses. And I will share them with you in a moment but Susie let me come to you you're also a step-mom in fact you're now a step-grandmother there are so many myths aren't there linked to being a step-mom some link to age-old fairy tales that cultural narrative it's very hard to escape it's very hard yes the. It's very hard, yes, the wicked stepmother is absolutely in everybody's mind, you know, when you become this, and this is, I think, why we don't

talk about it much, because it's an area of shame, and a bit of a puzzlement as to who you really are. My stepson vividly remembers talking about me, he's always called me by my name, or his version of it, not Susie, but Sus, I'm Sus to him, he's always talked to me about about me in that way and was corrected rather smartly by uh in primary school by a teacher who said you know who is she what is this sus and he said well you know my father's partner that auntie suzy you call her auntie suzy well no i'm not an auntie i'm actually i'm a lot more and maybe a lot less but this is the whole point about labels sometimes are very difficult because if you go by stepmom as katie will know you find yourself with this freight of of of an expectation and myth and difficulties and one of the two things that i've always found with stepfamilies is that in a sense

a lot of the issues that we have are to do with being a stepfamily i have a list of all 14 chapters in one of my books if the heading of Everyone is one of the important issues that we face that are different from being in an ordinary family, in a first-time family. But an awful lot of what goes on is just family stuff. So when you've got a toddler kicking off or a teenager behaving in a teenager way, actually, it could be more about being a toddler or a teenager than anything to do with step family issues. And actually, what it also means, also means therefore in that family you've got sometimes to try and unpick what is actually going on here is it about this or is it about that okay so it's almost throwing a mirror on society and what we're making of the actual step families or but yes exactly so

let me bring you this response though that we've we've had from a listener, a texter, because some people do find that stereotype that we talk about is true. She writes, unfortunately, my children's experience of a stepmother has been very negative. They are young adults now, so have chosen not to go to their father and stepmother's house. However, when they were younger and stayed at the weekends, sometimes a warm welcome was never offered. They were made to say thank you for having me at the end of their stay. It fills me with pain that my children had to endure that. And Katie, reading that, I thought of a line in the opening of your podcast where you talk about your joy bringing others pain. Yeah, and you know, I'm also a biological mum and my own child has a

stepmom. So it's painful for everybody. Nobody expects their child to grow up having a step mum. So yes, it's a very, very challenging situation. And I think for various people who have grown up with a step mother where it hasn't always been easy, I have nothing but empathy I think what as society is important for us to understand is that there's a lot more often going on beneath the surface rather than a step-mom who seems a little bit grumpy so what what we hear a lot of the time from step-moms is you know they feel like they're treading on eggshells in their home they feel tense they're

very worried about sort of the things that might go wrong and they don't feel that they can relax and obviously then it's sort of a perfect cocktail because the children can pick up on that. The children maybe don't feel welcome, but it's because the stepmum's feeling anxious. And then suddenly you end up with a really dysfunctional family environment, which nobody feels comfortable in. You know, we know from research that consistently stepmothers report poorer mental health in terms of more anxiety and more depression than biological mothers or fathers. And it really, really is a difficult role. And for the person who contacted, you know, it's really, really sad that her children have been in that situation. But, you know, there's always a lot more going on beneath the surface.

We've had a message from this listener who writes, I've been part of my partner's two children's lives for seven years now. They were a tight unit when I came into it. The older boy welcomed me, but the younger one, more heavily dependent on his reliable parent, resented me. He excluded me from the conversation, often on purpose, talking over me and addressing just his stats. He's gone to university, though, and the oldest son has come home after university.

I must admit, I find the family dynamic much easier. Also, my relationship with the youngest has improved. Now we are no longer together much of the time. I have to accept, though, that he will never confide in me or tell me much about his life, as he does have his dad and brother. We can be friends, but it's better with him. I find if there is some distance.

Susie, what do you make of that? What can step parents do to make sure children feel comfortable and to make this relationship work? I think to begin with is actually recognising what's going on. I absolutely keyed into what Kate said about my joy is somebody else's pain. And that's one of the things you have to recognise, that when you come into a step family, whoever's coming in or whether you're joining a step family, the point is that the joy that you would feel as the adults, oh, it's a new start. We're happy. We're married. Yippee. You know, you often insult it happily, is the nail in the coffin to those children's idea of the original unit. can recognize at least it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be any more joyful but it's at least recognizing they have a different view on what is going on and therefore a different agenda for what they want and it's about talking about it it's about recognizing sometimes what you can do perhaps is at least recognizing this must be difficult for you you must have you know some feelings about this even with a very young child you can at least be managing to talk about the

fact that you have different attitudes and this must be hard for them and can they you can at least be managing to talk about the fact that you have different attitudes and this must be hard for them and can they you know at least maybe talk about it um there's some extremely good books around actually for young children on this sort of subject and i think that's a very useful thing to do is to have a book at bedtime which reflects their their reality not the traditional reality but it's it's recognizing walking in their shoes um talking about it that actually does make a difference and you know it doesn't detract from your happiness to at least admit the fact that what makes you happy is actually making them unhappy another message that has just come through to us being a stepmother is a thankless job i loved it and had my own kids too but the kids aren't appreciative as adults now with their own children.

There is so much emotion bound up in this. And I want to talk about the language around this as well. Katie, one of the ways often used these days to describe step families is blended families. Kate Ferdinand this week on Instagram, who has become a step parent through her own relationship with Rio Ferdinand, announced that she is launching a platform called Blended for other families in a similar position because she felt so isolated when she took on that role. The language around stepmothers is so important, so influential. And I know, Katie, you don't like the word blended. First of all, tell us why and how do you describe your own family? Well, interesting one. And so all the language tends to be problematic. And I personally don't really connect with the word blended for two reasons. One, it feels like you're trying to put a lot of pressure on something to make it perfect and make it all gel together really instantly. And, you know, families aren't like that. But the children might not want to gel instantly. They might be very torn torn about things so I think the word blended can put too much pressure on us and secondly it sort of um

it takes away from the fact that a lot of the time because stepfamilies tend to be formed from separation rather than um rather than death now it takes away from the fact that actually they have another home and they have another family so that why that's why for me the word blended is quite problematic however it's obviously important for everybody to use the language that they're comfortable with and it's brilliant that Kate's launched a platform to raise more awareness um about some of the challenges that stepfamilies go through um in terms of how I describe my family so you know I I never wanted to be called a stepmom. I mean, nobody kind of grows up and thinks, I really hope I'm a stepmom when I grow up. But when I kind of met my partner, his children were young and they wanted labels.

They wanted to understand, OK, well, who are you and what's your role? And as much as, you know, they call me by my name and as much as I didn't necessarily want that label, that's the label that I got. And I've always felt if I refer to them as my partner's kids, it sounds quite cold and detached, whereas if you kind of say my stepdaughter, it sounds a bit warmer. But again, I just say my family.

Everybody knows that my family's a mix of all sorts of people and that's great. But generally, it is quite problematic language wise. And Susie, how do you describe your family makeup? Well, the interesting thing about Step, you mentioned family lives and one of their strap lines is families come in all shapes and sizes. And in fact, originally, I was a trustee of the Step Family Association. And we merged because we were discovering that family work, parent line, as it was at the time, was getting as many more calls actually from Step Families as we were at the Step Family Association, and we merged because we were discovering that family work, parent line, as it was at the time, was getting as many more calls actually from step families as we were at the Step Family Association. I think most people think that. I absolutely agree with you, Katie. We're families. We might be families who are a different shape from what you think of as a

traditional one, but there are a lot of us around there. And so that's family. What do I call my, I call him my boy sometimes when he's now 50. He's not my boy anymore. He'll always be your boy. Exactly. But I sometimes call him my son. I sometimes call him my stepson. He calls me son, as I said. He doesn't necessarily introduce me. He sometimes introduces me as a stepmother just to be very, very clear what's going on. But I think the problem, I think, I absolutely agree with Katie that sometimes the labels actually cause more problems than just saying it's a family. It's a differently shaped family. it's a family with issues like all families have issues and some of those issues have to do with the difficulties that we're managing because we

are trying to bring people together and understand that everybody has these different attitudes and sometimes a lot of anger and upset and pain is involved but sometimes a lot of joy I mean my stepson will say to you that it was a second chance it was actually you know it made him have a much better relationship me being around with his father and it always has and you mentioned that i was a step-grandmother i'm not i'm a grandmother that's how they introduced it when when they said they were pregnant i'm a grandmother absolutely uh we've had a huge response to this. Kate's got in touch to say, years ago, I married a charming man who had five children. Not knowing what to expect, I found myself inventing life as it went along. I juggled a full-time job in TV, a home, plus a

varying number of residents. We then had two children of our own in the late 70s and early 80s. There was almost no info for step-parents. I joined the new Step Families Association, and I think you mentioned that Susie. I met a large number of similarly placed men and women and I regard myself and the time with my large family as a great blessing. Well let's talk about families and different shapes and sizes and the birth mother in particular because Katie we had a message from a listener who wanted to remain anonymous to say my experience of 12 years is the kids are fine. If you have a high conflict birth mother involved,

good luck. It's devastating, especially for the children. How important is it for birth mothers to give permission almost for children to like their stepmothers? It's vital. So, you know, as I said, it's very painful to send your child off

to spend a weekend with somebody else that's not what anybody sets out to do but that is the situation um that a lot of families find themselves in and if a mother wants to do something to help her child through that situation the best thing she can do is give them emotional permission to like their stepmother or to build a relationship with that and that can be through you know the things that she says um just being positive about the stepmother or it can be about the things she does and the way that she acts so kids will pick up on all sorts of things and my um my eldest son who has a stepmother sort of said to me the other day um I you know I always felt really guilty liking his stepmother he said because I just was

worried it would upset you but you always told me that she was really nice and you were always really positive about her but I just felt guilty about it and that sort of bond between child and biological mother is so so so strong and I don't think there's a stepmother out there who wants to kind of step on that I mean that's that's a whole other minefield of keeping on the right side of the line and not overstepping your mark. But yeah, it's vital for birth mums. We need to almost, as birth mums, acknowledge our feelings,

acknowledge that it's difficult and have that conversation elsewhere, away from our kids. And Susie, just briefly, there is a gender bias in this, isn't there? I mean, you don't really hear the same stereotypes associated with stepdads, do we? There are a few horror films about stepfathers, actually,

but you're quite right. There isn't that undercurrent of the family, you know, of the fairy stories about it. It's a difficult subject. We need to acknowledge that. But it's also a very, very prevalent situation. Lots and lots of people are in these different sorts of families and we need to actually speak up for it and say,

yeah, and I'm absolutely right, quite agree with you, Katie. Birth mothers need to welcome in. After all, the man chose both of you. So you have to have something in common and therefore you have to

probably have something that you can give your children. Being supportive actually brings the step parent in and makes the whole situation a lot easier for your children. Those are the important people involved, your children. And on those wise words, lot easier for your children. Those are the important people involved, your children.

And on those wise words, we shall leave it there. Katie and Susie, an absolute pleasure speaking to you both. Thank you for your insights. And you can catch the next edition of that podcast, You're Not My Mum, The Stepmum Side, over at BBC Sounds. A few more messages to bring you. And thank you for all of you for sending in your messages. Anne says, I named myself the wicked stepmother

over 20 years ago. I love it. And she loves me. I live in Germany where they call us a patchwork family. And Ali writes, my stepmom wouldn't allow photos of my sisters and I in their home.

If we visited, she would always ensure that she was out. Such a complex issue. If you do want to get in touch on this subject or any of the stories that we have been talking about,

we would love to hear from you. You can text us on 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. And of course, we are on Twitter, on Instagram. You can catch us

at BBC Women's Hour. On to some sporting news from China now. The Women's Tennis Association has announced the immediate suspension of all tournaments in China amid concern for the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai. She disappeared from public view for three weeks after accusing a top Chinese official of sexual assault.

She has since reappeared and has said she is safe and well, but there are still concerns for her well-being. The WTA chief, Steve Simon, has said he has serious doubts that Peng was free, safe and not subject to intimidation. In good conscience, I don't see how I can ask athletes to compete there, he said. China's foreign ministry has said it is not a diplomatic matter and the issue has been maliciously hyped up. Well, in a timely new book, the journalist Joanna Chu says that for far too long, Western societies have mishandled or ignored Beijing's actions out of narrow self-interest. In her book, China Unbound, A New World Disorder, she examines the global implications of China's rise. And she's also the founder and chair of New Voices, which highlights and supports women working on the subject of China. Happy to say she joins me in the studio now. Thank you for coming in. We will get to your book in a moment, but let us start with Peng Shuai and the WTA's decision there.

I mean, this is a scandal that has embarrassed the Communist Party. Some think that the Winter Olympics are at risk now. How do you think the international community is handling their concerns for Peng's well-being here? So what is interesting about this case is that there have, I reported in China for seven years, and then in the year since, I reported on things like the detention of two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in retaliation for the arrest

of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Canada. A huge story at the time. Yes, and, you know, this isn't new. The idea that Chinese police would disappear certain people and they would not be heard from for weeks. This has been happening for decades. But what's interesting about this case is that actually the Women's Tennis Association has acted with a stronger response than many companies and countries have in response to some of these issues by immediately suspending

these terminements, which would have a significant economic impact on the association. Whereas we see luxury companies like Versace, Coach, Givenchy, airlines in the past apologize actually and change its actions, modify their businesses in response to criticism from the Chinese state or some of the nationalistic type of forces in China. This is unusual because people wonder, is tennis going to be the community that really finally, you know, stands up to these egregious Chinese human rights abuses? So my book does look at that and it does really criticize

and put under the spotlight Western societal responses and the way it has been complicit in seeing these things happen time and again. Actually, on the subject of Me Too, my friend, fellow journalist Sophia Huang Shui-Chin, she was instrumental in really propelling the Me Too movement in China. She helped women report cases of sexual harassment. She conducted a survey on how prevalent harassment was in China. She was on her way to London, to the UK, to study at the University of Sussex just two months ago. I was planning to catch up with her here on my trip to London, but she was detained days before she was planning to leave China to pursue her master's degree. And yet another case that actually, I only found one or two small items in UK media about her case. So a broader issue, like we know about Peng Shuai,

she's a major tennis player. And her disappearance was in connection to her accusing a former vice premier of China, very, very high profile. But so many cases I feel that are, I would say, as shocking, really don't get much attention worldwide. And I do ask why that is and why we're only getting to this point now where I'm speaking with many governments, many major high-level politicians. Well, let me pause you there because there is so much to unpick from what you've just said. First of all, your friend Sophia, I mean, Sophia Huang.

How is she? Where is she? What do you know about her right now? People don't know where she is. Friends and family say she's likely detained and accused of inciting subversion against the Chinese state. And this is likely related to her work on Me Too, because looking at her journalistic work, it's been very, you know, factual, and she was just a average journalist. And really the most, you know, so called subversive things that she has been doing in recent years is trying to help women speak out about their experiences of sexual assault and harassment. And with the concerns surrounding Peng Shuai's well-being, I mean, what does this scandal

reveal about Chinese power and how it's working? Yeah, so I think it really exposes, it was the first time really, there's a very high level accusation of a former senior Chinese leader and kind of exposes what, you know, anyone in China knows is that the Chinese Communist Party is in itself a very, you know, excessively predominantly male and patriarchal institution as much as it says it promotes equality. In many ways, in respect, it's very patriarchal. It's tried to police women's bodies with, you know, the one-child policy and then, you know, saying, okay, now you can have more children. It polices marriage, who can have children and who can marry. And I think it really is very sensitive and brave what Peng did because any criticism of especially senior levels of Chinese government,

it's almost always responded to with people being arrested. Well, we'll see how this response from the WTA impacts China's position on this. And of course, how it impacts the forthcoming Winter Olympics, because they are only a few weeks away, really. So that will be interesting to observe. You've spent a decade tracking China's rise based on many years in China as a foreign correspondent. What was it about the rise of China that you observed specifically that pushed you to write this book? I think what people kind of had in their heads was that as China got richer, it would become more liberal and the human rights situation would improve.

You know, countries like Germany, officials would say that they believed in change through trade, that China would change its political system or its treatment of its people merely with more contact and economic deals, trade ties with other countries. In a way, looking at these cajesais where I did travel around the world, looking at how different Western countries had developed this kind of similar attitude, it did seem quite in ways self-serving because senior government advisors were often members of the business elite who had a lot of vested interest in China, promoting this idea that you can talk about human rights on the side,

but really robustly pursue economic ties on a parallel track. And I think what people got wrong, not that it is unrealistic to work with China as a trade partner, but it's unrealistic to expect that China's growing authoritarianism would somehow remain siloed and only affect Chinese people in China, wouldn't affect populations around the world. But in fact, China's increasing policing actions are international. I met people, interviewed people in Canada, Australia, UK, who have received physical visits from Chinese officials who had monitored their speech online,

such as in defense of Hong Kong democracy protests, for example, or speaking out on the internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. And they've been threatened, or their family members in China have been threatened. You know, police have called students studying in China and Canada saying, I know where you live. I know that you tweeted this, you know, satirical tweet about President Xi Jinping. If you don't take it down, you will face trouble.

Your family will face trouble. Or so many instances, if people are living overseas, they find out if there's friends or family members living in mainland China and visit those people to put pressure that way. So really, China's authoritarianism is a global issue. It affects people around the world. Myself, I receive, you know, death threats from all sorts of sources, tried to report it to police. You know, you're basically ignored. There's no structures around the world that try to investigate. And I know that this is something that you as a wider family have been impacted by as well, because your father, also a former journalist, was impacted by this when he was working as a journalist in Canada. Yeah. So, I mean, that point of talking about my family's history of, you know, working in the 90s in radio in Canada.

Back then, people were talking about self-censorship, about pressure on international media organizations. At that time, primarily ones that, you know, had some programming in the Chinese language to self-censor. People, journalists were getting fired. So, my question is, you know, these conversations have been happening for decades. Many people of Chinese descent have been trying to complicate the conversation a bit more by saying that, you know, we do need to pay attention to and understand China's political system and how it is concerned with people, people's speech, trying to police international citizen speech around the world, because it is so sensitive about its perceptions,

the way it is, its image around the world, that it would go to these lengths to basically try to strike fear into many people's hearts, who do want to, you know, speak freely on what is happening in China. So and it's interesting what you say coincides with what we've heard this week on Radio 4 from the MI6 chief Richard Moore, he warned that China's debt traps and data traps were worrying. And he went on to warn that China has the capability to harvest data from around the world and uses money to get people off the hook. And I know this is so much of what is in your book. And there's so much more we could have spoken to you about because I know that you are one of the few female voices

who are challenging so much of China's ways. Often it's a very male-dominated narrative, but I'm afraid we do have to leave it there. Thank you for coming in, Joanna Chu, and her book, her new book, China Unbound, is available now. Yes, and thank you. And if you'd like to know more about what women are doing and working on China,

please do check out our organization, New Voices. And we try to complicate and provide more nuance into these conversations in China by celebrating women and people of different diverse backgrounds who are working on these issues, who can provide that nuance and context that I think we really need to make sure

that these narratives on China aren't so stereotyped and that we don't ignore many significant cases and only pay attention when, you know, the major headlines flash. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Joanna there. Pregnant women say they are worried about catching COVID at work and not enough is being done to keep them safe. That's according to a recent survey by the UK maternity rights charity Maternity Action. It recently surveyed just over 400 women who worked in different settings from offices to factories and chemical plants. Ros Bragg is the director at Maternity Action and joins us now. Ros, what were you trying to find out with this survey specifically? It was pretty clear to us from our advice lines that there

were quite serious problems with health and safety for pregnant women in the pandemic. So in the survey, we were actually wanting to check if this is a current problem. It certainly had been a historic problem throughout the pandemic. And I think this came through very clearly. We had a third of the women we contacted, who contacted us in the survey who said that they were worried about losing their jobs if they took time off or asked for measures to be taken to reduce the risk of COVID at work. Now, it's important to flag that you surveyed just over 400 women and some might say, well, how can you ensure

that this represents the majority of you here? We're not claiming it as a representative sample. As I said, we have 4,000 women we spoke to through our advice line over the course of the pandemic. So what we wanted to do with the survey is actually just to test out what we are seeing in that context. I think it's pretty clear that we were getting consistent messages back from the women we spoke to on the advice line and through the survey showing that there's quite serious problems with health and safety protections in the pandemic. And what is it about workplace health and safety rules that you think are the specific problems here? There's been problems since well before the pandemic. We were

aware of problems through our advice line and also there's the 2006 Equal Opportunities Commission research and the 2016 Equality and Human Rights Commission research, which said that things are really not working for women. Employers are not doing satisfactory risk assessments and they're not taking the action needed to be able to offer women safe working conditions. If they can't offer safe working conditions, then they need to offer women suitable alternative work or place them on paid maternity suspension. Unfortunately, that's just not happening. We had far too many examples on our advice line and through the survey of women who are expected to work in unsafe working conditions and who are first to take measures such as leaving their job or taking extended periods of sick leave in order to avoid

those very unsafe working conditions. And of course, that's a significant financial cost. If you drop your income during pregnancy, you not only lose that money, but you may also find yourself ineligible for statutory maternity pay. And that's a significant cost for women. And I don't think that's been given sufficient consideration. And in line with what you've just said, a trade union Congress survey conducted back in June 2020 found that pregnancy and maternity discrimination increased at the start of the pandemic as more pregnant women and new mums were more likely to be made redundant and furloughed. So that ties into some of what you're saying. Ros, talk us through some of the stories that you've been hearing and are continuing to hear. Some of the worst stories are for women working in COVID testing units. We actually had

a woman in the late stages of pregnancy, so therefore at significantly increased risk of serious illness if she became infected with COVID. She asked her employer to make adjustments to offer her suitable alternative work and was refused. She had the option of staying in unsafe working conditions or leaving her job. I think that's a particularly extreme example. But we have a consistent passion of women not being offered working from home, even when that's available or when it's necessary for employers to offer paid maternity suspension for this, simply not being on the table. And so women who are in public facing roles in retail as care workers often working with people who are COVID positive and not being offered the measures that are necessary

and in some cases risk assessments are done but it's simply not nothing made to implement that in practice so women are left with directions not to have contact with certain people they're providing care to, but no one else is there to do that. So they're forced to engage in unsafe work practices. And as I said, what women do in these circumstances is ask for change. And if they can't get it, they cobble together some combination of annual leave and sick leave and unpaid leave to get them to the point where they can go on maternity leave. And it's part of this, Ros, because women just don't know enough about their rights when it comes to being pregnant and health and safety, especially in the time of a pandemic. There is a problem with information.

The information provided by the Health and Safety Executive on Risk Assessments is actually wrong in law. 2017 case law requires employers to undertake an individual risk assessment if a woman's notified them that they're pregnant. The Health and Safety Executive advice suggests this is optional. And I think also the guidance online from the HSE and also the Royal College of Midwives and Royal College of OBS and Gynae, it's incomplete. We need guidance not just for pregnant women but also for their employers.

But having said that, it's an actual practical question of what you do in particular circumstances that we know employers and women are struggling with. And we'd like to see the HSC, the Health and Safety Executive, set up a dedicated advice line to assist pregnant women because it's a very specific set of risks and this is a group who have significantly greater risk of serious illness if they do in fact contract COVID. Ros Bragg, Director at Maternity Action, thank you for bringing us up to speed with that very important report,

that report out today, those findings on pregnant women being concerned about their job security in the time of a pandemic. Thank you so much for your time. And many of you continue to get in touch with us about being a stepmom. And I want to share some of those with you. And my computer has just frozen. No, it hasn't. It's just come alive again. One listener writes, being a stepmom has been ultimately a hugely rewarding experience. At times very challenging, but I feel that myself and my two stepdaughters have grown and benefited from having one another massively. I have learned so much about being a parent

from having stepdaughters. And Megan writes, my stepmom is absolutely incredible. I can't imagine what our lives would be like without her and feel such gratitude every day. My dad has three children, all from different mothers, not my stepmom, but she has been a true angel and a dear friend. Please do keep those messages coming in. Now, one of the most powerful women in the world, Angela Merkel, will receive her official farewell as Germany's Chancellor this evening, a position that she has held for the last 16 years. A special ceremony

will take place in Berlin this evening, where most of the Chancellor's choice of music will be performed by a military band. Not most, but where three pieces of music will be performed by a military band. Now, more than a few eyebrows have been raised after the Chancellor picked a track by Nina Hagen. And Nina Hagen is also known as the grandmother of punk rock. Right, here goes my German pronunciation. And I'm glad that Jenny Hill is standing by our correspondent to correct me if I said this wrong. But that is the song Du hast den Farben vergessen by Nina Hagen. Angela Merkel, she is not known for her love of pop music or for discussing her early life in East Germany. So she's really revealed her private passion for punk rock.

Or was it, you know, a chosen song that is there to send a message? Joining me now is our correspondent in Berlin, Jenny Hill and the historian and journalist born in East Germany, Katja Heuer. Firstly, Jenny, let's talk about this ceremony before we unpick the details of that song. What is this ceremony about and how is the day going to unfold? Yeah, sure. Tonight's ceremony is called a Große Zapfenstreich and the word itself really defies direct translation. It's essentially a military tattoo, a military parade. It's the highest honour the German military can bestow upon a civilian. And it's a military parade in front of her, and then the band will strike up. The person being honoured gets to choose these three songs. And apparently, her choices have indeed raised eyebrows, but actually amongst the military band themselves caused a fair amount of confusion, because had to scramble to try and find arrangements. Apparently, a clarinetist had to write a specific arrangement of that song you talked about earlier in order to make it work for them as a military band. So it's going to be very colourful, but it's an unusual thing, isn't it? We're not really, I don't think Germany, modern Germany, isn't known for its military prowess on the world stage. And neither, of course, is Angela Merkel known for her love of pomp and circumstance.

Nevertheless, it's going ahead. And I think one of the big questions here in Germany this morning is, is she, like her predecessors, Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Kohl, will she have a tear in her eye as they play those songs for her? Interesting, because she's known for being rather unemotional in her public appearances as well. We've been following Angela Merkel's career closely here on Women's Hour. 16 years in the job, that is rather impressive. And Jenny, there is a generation of Germans who really have

not known another leader in their time. I mean, how much of an icon for women is she in politics? And can Germany see a future without her? Well, whether they like it or not, they're going to have to, aren't they? When you talk to women here, in all walks of life, most people say to me, you know, if anything else, she has been a really big example to us of what a woman can do in politics and in any walk of life. But what a lot of women also say is, look, she could have done more. You know, politically, there aren't that many or not as many women as there ought to be in the higher ranks of German politics. That's not necessarily Angela Merkel's fault. Some commentators would say, look, she tried, you know, she tried to groom Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, her outgoing defence minister, to be the next chancellor candidate. So she also had a lot of close female advisors. So maybe we don't blame her too much for that. But the pandemic has, like in so many other countries, really shown

us here in Germany, that actually you don't have an equal society. A lot of women complaining that they were the ones left at home doing jobs, but having to look after the kids, homeschooling and so on. And of course, if you look across the board in German industry and business, you know, women are not well represented in boardrooms, for example. So, you know, yes, a big example. Has she done much to really promote the cause of women across German society? It's debatable, of course, but a lot of people would say not quite enough. Katja Hoyer, let me bring you in here. I mean, Angela Merkel has been a constant really over the past 16 years amid a sea of big egos often and leading

male politicians. What do you think has kept her in power so long? Well, she said herself that she learned how to deal or how to cope in a male world quite early, really. As a trained physicist, she worked in a very male environment, she said herself in an interview this year. There were about 80% males when she was working as a physicist in a lab and complained that they'd always taken the equipment before she could get there because she sort of liked to sit down working as a physicist in a lab and complained that they'd always taken the equipment before she could get there because she sort of liked to sit down and plan her experiments very carefully

while she said the men would just rush in take all the equipment and then there'd be nothing left for her so she's always maintained that that's really helped her and I think also the fact that she grew up in East Germany where they had the highest female employment rate in the world before the war came down allowed her I think to grow up in a world where female employment rate in the world before the war came down, allowed her, I think, to grow up in a world where female employment was just a bit more normalised than it was in the West, and perhaps that's got her more used to the idea of working alongside men.

Let's talk about this song choice now. For those of us who don't know much about German punk rock, which I imagine is a lot of us, tell us who Nina Hagen is. I wouldn't personally, because I'm an East German myself, I don't see that song as a punk song at all. And to me, Nina Hagen has later become obviously a bit of a punk icon. But she started off as a state-sponsored, state-trained artist in East Germany.

So, you know, her education as a musician was sponsored by the state. And that song actually itself, so Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen, you forgot the colour film, is actually quite a poppy, kind of everyday type song that people would have listened to on the radio. Everyone that I know knows the lyrics to it, it's a bit of a cult sort of song in the East, because it was kind of quite catchy and concerns and, you know, concerns sort of everyday problems on holiday, really. So there's nothing particularly edgy about it. And it's actually not raised as many eyebrows, I would say, in Germany, more so the fact that she actually chose an East German song because she hasn't made much of a profile as an East German politician.

And so whilst you say it's not a big conversation out there, what do you think the song choice might be suggesting here? I think she's a bit sentimental now that she's leaving office, to be honest, because the other two songs also suggest that going back to her earlier years. So she's also chosen a church song as her second one. And then there's the Hildegard Knef song about, you know, roses should rain down on me, which is also very sort of, you know, old fashioned, very sentimental song about growing up and the expectations you have of your life. Very high expectations in that song.

So that tells a lot, I think, about her looking back on her own life and her own youth, I think, more than anything else. Jenny, we have this ceremony later in the evening. Is this her final appearance as Chancellor and really what next for her? No, it's not her last appearance. Of course, she's still technically in charge, although post the elections, because her party no longer has a majority in the Parliament here, there's not much that she can actually affect.

We're waiting for the new coalition government to be sworn in next week. Their parties are still actually having to, if you like, sign off the coalition treaty before that can go ahead. We expect her to play some kind of role in the handover of power. So, you know, you're not going to see her suddenly disappearing in the next few days. Having said that, we don't know what she's going to do next. She herself has said she wants to retire from political life. A lot of people don't believe her. She's also said that what she'd really like to do is curl up and read some books,

although she actually said whilst she's reading those books, the likelihood is after 16 years in the German Chancellery, there's a good chance she'll fall asleep. Yeah, well, we'll wait and see what happens later this evening as well. There'll be full coverage over on the BBC as well. But just back to you. Sorry, I've lost my train of thought here. Back to you, Katya.

It's just come to mind that Angela Merkel and Nina Hagen, they once met in a TV debate, didn't they? Yeah, they did, and that didn't go particularly well. Tell us about that. That was back in 1992, and Angela Merkel was in her first ministerial role as Minister for Women and Youth. And she was on a political panel together with Nina Hagen, who by then had become a bit of a punk icon and had kind of started to style herself in this sort of outrageous way that she's known for.

And they were both sat there side by side and Nina Hagen started talking about sort of neuroelectric stimulation as a way of curing heroin addicts and all sorts of topics like that and then suddenly started screaming as she does and then the host tried to calm her down and she said no she'd scream for as long as she liked and she carried on basically just screaming and Angela Merkel was sort of sat there next to her looking a bit awkward and forlorn. But she seems to have forgiven her for that and chosen the song in any case. Well, that is quite the story and quite the image

that you leave with us ending this half of this hour of BBC Women's Hour here on Radio 4. My thanks to our Berlin correspondent there, Jenny Hill, who will be bringing us more coverage on the events that are taking place in Germany. And, of course, Katja Hoyer, a journalist born in East Germany. Thank you so much for spending some of your day with us here on BBC Women's Hour and for all of your messages that have been coming in. Hello, I'm Professor Stephen Pinker. We all want to reason more clearly and to make better choices about everything from life

and love to medicine and money. But even the best of us get things wrong. I would have twice as many billions if I just made a different decision. I mean, of course, one can always learn from other people's mistakes. It's ideal to do that. Each episode is a conversation with an expert on rationality and someone who deals with our corresponding irrationality in real life. Rarely do we sort of walk around living out probabilities. Oh my God, wait, 90% prevalence. It's hard to sort of hold on to that in real life. I hope you'll join us as we try to make sense of making sense

and hopefully to make better decisions. That's Think with Pinker from BBC Radio 4. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. was somebody out there who's 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.