Woman's Hour - Karen Gibson of the Kingdom Choir; British Gymnastic Culture and Abuse Allegations; Novelist Meg Rosoff

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

Karen Gibson aka 'Godmother of Gospel' shot to worldwide fame in 2018 after she appeared conducting The Kingdom Choir at the Royal Wedding of Harry and Meghan. She joins Jenni to talk about the choir's new single, her passion for gospel music and her recent experience on Celebrity Masterchef.British Gymnastics, the UK governing body for the sport of gymnastics, has announced that there will be an independent review following concerns raised by several British athletes about a culture of mistreatment and abuse. These allegations follow similar conversations that are happening in America because of a new Netflix documentary exploring the Larry Nassar scandal. So what fuels a culture of neglect? And what are people within the gymnastic community hoping will happen now? Jenni discusses with a woman called 'Sarah' who has four daughters, all of whom trained in gymnastics and experienced varying degrees of abuse, and Nicole Pavier, a retired member of the senior England gymnastic squad.A pair of glamorous strangers, a bunch of adolescent siblings and some distracted adults sharing a beach for one long hot summer. Sounds like the perfect recipe for sexual intrigue and disaster. Award-winning author Meg Rosoff joins Jenni to discuss her new novel The Great Godden.In her new book X+Y, A mathematician's manifesto for rethinking gender, Dr Eugenia Cheng – who has spent many years in the male-dominated field of mathematics – draws on insights from her own subject and personal experience to radically reframe the whole discussion around gender. Producer: Louise Corley Editor: Jenni Murray

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 15th of July. Good morning. Today, a new single from the Kingdom Choir. Their founder and conductor Karen Gibson on the impact of shooting to worldwide fame after the wedding of Harry and Meghan. A new novel by Meg Rossoff in The Great Godden.

Her family spend summer in their house by the sea. There's romance, intrigue, sibling rivalry and heartache. And X plus Y, a mathematician's manifesto for rethinking gender. What made Eugenia Cheng use her own subject to try and bridge the gender gap? Now, you may have seen the Netflix documentary Athlete A, which exposes the scandal in America of the abuse of young female gymnasts.

Well, British Gymnastics, the UK's governing body for the sport, has announced an independent review in this country of concerns raised by a number of British athletes about a culture of mistreatment and abuse. Well, what is life like for a little girl who wants to become an Olympic gymnast? And what's it like for the parents who share their ambitions and dutifully transport them to a daily demanding training schedule? Well, Sarah, it's not her real name, is the mother of four daughters who were all keen gymnasts. Nicole Pavier is a retired member of the senior England gymnastic squad. She now practices as a nurse. Nicole, what did you love about gymnastics

everything as a little girl i loved just being there doing gymnastics learning new things i think it can teach you so much about discipline and being brave and being tough because it's not an easy sport to do but when you start to excel and learn new skills it can be extremely rewarding when you're in the right environment now sarah four girls keen to do gymnastics what made them really want to do it and and enjoy it well as Nicole has already said it is a fantastic sport it's very exciting they had been spotted at school and in the playground as being very capable and you know if you go and try something and you're good at it you're inspired to do it all the more so Nicole what did your training consist of from as early as primary school? I picked up the sport when I was six and was quickly moved into a kind of squad type scenario

and throughout primary school that I would have afternoons off school to go to training, leaving school at lunchtime training through the afternoon and into the evening later on down the line in high school I would get to the gym for half six in the morning go to the gym for three hours go to school come back to the gym and train for another So, an awful lot every single day. Yeah, we'd have Sundays off. And what, Sarah, did you have to take your girls to as far as their training was concerned? You mean the hours that they did? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, Nicole, that sounds a lot, but that's quite typical. And it's not even if they are on the elite track. It's really, I understand that medical experts say that they're only supposed to do about an hour a week per year of age. But in gymnastics, they're typically doing twice or even three times this. So my 12-year-old, for example, was doing over 30 hours, including coming out of school. And Nicole, how would you say you were treated during both training and competitions?

It varied from the different clubs that I went to, but the bad experiences, it was coaches didn't see you as a gymnast. y profiadau peiriannau, roedd yn dweud nad oedd y coefion yn eich gweld chi fel gymnasg, roeddent yn eich gweld chi fel nifer. Felly, nid ydynt yn bryderus os ydych chi'n cael eich llwyddo. Byddant yn sgwrsio aroch chi os ydych chi'n rhy ddifrwydd i wneud sgiliau. Nid ydych chi'n teimlo bod gennych chi'r pwer i siarad â nhw am beth sy'n digwydd. Ac yna mae gennych chi'r rhan o'r gwaethaf hefyd. Ac yn ddyn bach yn mynd drwy'r hwyr, roedd gwaethaf yn beth mawr a gafodd ei And then you have the weight side of things as well. And being a young girl going through puberty, weight was a big thing that was brought up. We'd be weighed every single day. If we couldn't do something, our weight would be thrown against us. And that would be both in competition and at the home gym. So what impact did that have on the way you dealt with food? Really negative, actually.

I didn't deal with it well. There was a lot of pressure to look and weigh a certain amount. And I ended up with a severe eating disorder starting at the age of 14. And I didn't really get a good handle on it until the age of 21 three years after I'd retired and what sort of things you said that they were not very patient with you if you were scared of doing something what experience did you have of that what what sort of thing might you have been asked to do and no you didn't want to do it but maybe you were forced to do it so I was slightly scared of going backwards on beam and when I was younger a coach physically picked me up and forced me to do the

skill which created a lot of trauma in my mind around it and later in my career towards the end there were skills on beam that were very painful for my back because I had two fractures at the time. And my coach would stand there and shout at me and video what I was doing and threaten to send it to my parents. Tell me I wasn't allowed to go to school until I'd finished what was on my programme and that I'd done what she'd said. So you were expected to continue even if you had broken bones? Yes. What did your parents make of all this? Because you were coming home injured.

They must have known. My parents knew about my back injury and there were constant discussions with my coaches who knew the extent of my MRI scans and they'd been talked to by the physiotherapist looking after us at the gym as well. And what did your parents say when you said they shouted at you and there was verbal abuse going on? It's not really a discussion I had with them. There's, you're scared of what the coaches are saying to your parents and it becomes this whole cycle of Mae'r coed yn ei ddweud wrth eich rhieni ac mae'n dod yn y cyfnod o gyfnod o gyfnod.

Mae'r rhieni yn cael eu cyfnod gan y coed, mae'r gymnast yn cael eu cyfnod gan y coed. Ac mae'r cyfnod yn cael ei ddiflannu rhwng rhieni a thlwyddoedd hefyd, oherwydd rydych yn treulio 7 awr y dydd gyda'ch coed. Felly, i mi, byddwn i'n mynd allan o'r tŷm o 6 oed ac yn dod I'd be getting home after eight o'clock in the evening and I just wanted to have some time to myself and rest and recover from what was going on it wasn't until I became an adult that I really started talking to my parents about what happened. Sarah what did you learn from your girls about how they were being treated in training? A lot of it you don't know at the time. Firstly, as Nicole has pointed out, the abuse becomes normal and you lose perspective as to what is abuse and what is not.

So, for example, if an athlete makes a mistake on beam, should they be given punishment exercises? You know, positive coaches say not, but that that is abusive practice. But that's perfect. That is normal in in gymnastics. And you learn to accept a lot. The children also hide a great deal and they will hide injuries both from their coaches and from their parents they will not tell you a lot of what's going on because they know and they are explicitly told that if the parents complain in any way and and try to talk about it with the coaches the children are directly punished for that in the gym and yeah

sorry what in the end made you decide to pull them all out of it oh it was it had become just a campaign of abuse um and i was you know i turned up once to fetch my children from gym. I had three sobbing children. They'd all been picked on in various ways. My second daughter in particular, I think she just turned 13 at the time we pulled her out. She was trying to ask to move to a lower group. She was suffering greatly from Sever's disease disease which is a growth plate um stress injury and she was on crutches in school yet um being expected to go to gym and to train fully on this you know and and was in desperate pain um there's there were so many things they were being shouted at screamed at belittled mocked

you know screaming that you could hear in the street it was just awful and although it was very hard to pull them out it sounds like it ought to have been easy but gymnastics was their entire life we didn't have any other gym to go to they all were in a different place about wanting to go or not but it was the only thing that could be done was to take them all out. Nicole I know you left when you were 17 what lasting impact has the training had both physically and mentally on you? Physically I am now a 20 year old person who has had two spinal surgeries and with my job going into it with a bad back is not ideal and from a mental side of things I constantly struggle with my weight I never feel like I'm good enough because we were never good enough in the gym nothing we did was good enough for the coaches that were ddim yn teimlo fy mod i'n ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oherwydd nid oedden ni ddigon dda oedden ni ddigon dda oedden ni ddigon dda oedden ni ddigon dda oedden ni ddigon dda oedden ni ddigon dda oedden ni d moved myself from the gymnastics world because being a competition or going and supporting old teammates of mine that are still competing is just very painful and brings up a lot of hard

memories. What Sarah would you hope will be the result of the investigation that's been announced? Well first I hope that it's an independent investigation and I have some significant concerns around that. That's certainly the intention, that it should be independent. Yes. Well, I can only see, I see success as being a complete change in the top executive at British Gymnastics and the coaching regime that there is. I think that's the only thing that could give us confidence that things are going to change. I'd like to see a cap on training hours.

I'd like to see the age lifted so that you're senior when you're 18, perhaps. Lots of things like that. I think people forget that gymnastics is, and women's gymnastics is about young girls, little girls training ridiculous hours and having just too much demanded of them. Sarah and Nicole Pavia, thank you both very much indeed for being with us this morning. We did obviously ask British Gymnastics to give us their view. They wouldn't comment on any individual cases.

Jane Allen, the chief executive, said, The behaviours we've heard about in recent days are completely contrary to our standards of safe coaching and have no place in our sport. The British Gymnastics Integrity Unit is set up to investigate all allegations when reported or identified by our national network of club and regional welfare officers. However, it is clear that gymnasts did not feel they could raise their concerns to British gymnastics, and it's vital that an independent review helps us better understand why, so we can remove any barriers as quickly as possible. So thank you both for joining us this morning. And if you're someone who's had

experience of this, either yourself or for your children, we'd love to hear from you. Do send us an email or, of course, you can always tweet us. Now, a star was born in 2018 when the Kingdom Choir sang at the wedding of Meghan and Harry. Karen Gibson, now known as the godmother of gospel, is their founder and their conductor. And this is their new single, Real Love. Let's set this party on fire With the power of love The spirit's lifting us higher And now everybody's dancing on the floor The gospel of real love

Can you feel it? Can you feel it? The gospel of real love Karen, that's got us all jiggling around. It's great. Thank you. What inspired you to release it? Well, we have always wanted to, you know, make a mark in the world and do something good for people who listen to our music. And in the event of COVID-19, we thought, well, what do we have in our hands?

What can we do to make people feel better? So we thought, why don't we release this track? It wasn't a new track. We toured it last year in the UK and the US and Canada, and it had always gone down the storm. So we thought, why don't we release this track as a gift to the world? And then why don't we give the proceeds to charity? So that's how Refuge came about.

You chose Refuge. Why did you choose Refuge? We'd always been thinking about which people groups do we want to affect for good? And we'd thought of a few. Children's groups was one, mental health was another, and domestic abuse and violence was also one. So we settled on that in the end because of COVID-19. Because we know that the incident has really gone up during COVID-19, don't we, of domestic abuse. That is right. That's right. Yeah, go ahead. How surprised were you when you were asked to perform at the Royal Wedding?

Very surprised. Very surprised. I had told I was going to get a call, but I wasn't allowed to know what the call was about. So when I finally got it on the bus, I was very, very shocked indeed. And my response was not my finest moment, but... What was your response you were on the bus when you got on the bus yes yes i think it was the number 87 and my response was something like you're joking right and the person on the other end very posh i have to say went completely silent and that's when i knew that they were not joking at all how nerve-wracking then was it to actually go there and perform on the day?

Actually, I don't remember feeling nervous and I don't think the choir were either. We were just very, very excited, really honoured to be taking part in such a prestigious occasion and just wanting to give a gift, you you know a gift of song and of music that's how we felt but your life has changed somewhat i think since then how has it changed uh it's very much changed things just went through the roof after the wedding uh we had so many wonderful opportunities we performed at the holly Bowl, the Invictus Games.

We sold out at the Royal Albert Hall and all the work that I was doing before because I was working with lots of choirs here and abroad. All of that had to stop just to work with the Kingdom Choir. And I think the same is for some of the others as well. How are you coping with being so famous? You must get recognised everywhere. I get recognised sometimes and it's not people are very nice. They're very yeah, honouring, very kind, lovely comments. It's still a surprise, you know, two years later to get stopped down the road. But it's lovely.

People are very, very nice. You're now known as the godmother of gospel. How long has it been a part of your life? Oh, for many years now. I'll give away my age. I've been singing gospel since I was about five, six. So we're talking over 50 years. So, you know, I grew up in the church, a black majority church, and music accompanies everything.

It's a very vital part of the service. So I grew up with gospel music in my ears, learning it orally, even though I'm actually classically trained. Gospel is my go-to I would say now Gareth Malone I think spotted your talent early why did you decide that you were going to make it your full-time career oh because um I really love the power of music and I love the power of singing in a choral setting. I really, you know, I used to think that I taught gospel music and then I realised that gospel music taught me because I could see the impact that it had on people's lives. And the events that I was being asked to do just increased and got more and more and more and more

until I realised this is really my vocation. I think this is what I should be doing. I think music chose me, to be fair. But how did the Kingdom Choir actually come about? Right. So I told you I went to a black majority church, Church of God of Prophecy, and we had a London-wide choir. And the leader was Noel Robinson, a very talented man.

He got involved with BBC Radio 2, their programme, The Gospel Train. This programme would go into black majority churches and record the services. Each service would have a choir. Sometimes the choir needed help. So Noel asked me to get some other people from this choir, from our choir, to help out. After a while, I was just curating a choir to go onto this programme. And so that's how we started singing

on radio and TV until Songs of Praise heard us and said, oh, we'd like you to come and sing in our programme. I said, yes, please. And they said, what's your name? And I didn't have one. When I listen to your choir, I kind of imagine that every single person in it is a potential Whitney Houston, you know. Do you have to be a truly great singer to be part of a choir like yours?

No, no, I wouldn't. No, absolutely not. That's not what it's about. It's of course, we always want to be excellent. We always want to sing well, but it's about the connection that we have with one another. Of course, in a choir like ours, you're going to have some people who are great, who are the lead singers, you're going to have some people who are better at harmonising and staying in the background. It's really about what we do together. It's really about that, I feel. How religious would you say the songs are that you tend to sing? Oh, that's a great question. Lots of our songs are, as you say, religious. We would call them worship songs, songs that we sing directly to God. There are other songs that we are singing to each other and to our listeners, songs that will inspire, songs that will encourage. They

don't necessarily mention Jesus, but they are very uplifting anyway. So we sing, I would say, a healthy mix of songs. Now, I'm sorry to have to mention this before you go, but you were on Celebrity MasterChef. I'm so sorry you didn't make it to win it. But how did you enjoy doing it? I tell you, it was very stressful at the time now that I'm out of it I'm actually very happy that I did it because I was really facing my fears here it was not faith-based and it wasn't music-based it was about cooking I was so out of my comfort zone

but now I've done it I'm really really glad that I did it and I didn't win but I think I can call it a life win I absolutely agree with you you were amazing actually do you actually enjoy cooking or is it a bit of a chore it's not that it's a chore it's time for me um I actually think I can cook quite well I'm very good with seasoning and flavours and make some very wholesome means. It's just time for me. Keep going with the music, Karen. We all absolutely love it. Thank you very much for being with us this morning. And I'll just mention again that the new single is called Real Love. Thank you very much, Karen. Now, still to come in today's programme, X plus Y by Eugenia Cheng, described as

a mathematician's manifesto for rethinking gender. And, of course, the serial, the third episode of Why Mummy Swears. Now, earlier in the week, you may have missed a discussion about plans for the United Arab Emirates' mission to Mars, with a predominantly female team.

And then yesterday, Jane talked about the court ruling which made it illegal for landlords to refuse to rent to people on benefits. Don't forget, if you ever miss the live programme, all you have to do is go to BBC Sounds and you can find us there. Now, Meg Rossoff's The Great Garden is the story of a family who set off for their summer staycation in their house by the sea. There are the parents, four adolescent siblings, one of whom tells the tale, and a little way away there's Dad's cousin Hope, who's planning her wedding to Mal.

Then the sons of a famous film star turn up to spend the summer with Mal and Hope whilst their mother is away filming. They're the rather surly Hugo and the much more interesting Kit. Kit Godden was something else. Golden skin, thick auburn hair streaked with gold, hazel eyes flecked with gold, a kind of golden Greek statue of a youth. He wore an ancient white polo shirt, baggy cocky shorts and flip-flops. His longish hair sprang from his head like Medusa's snakes. Occasionally,

he raked it backwards with his fingers. In my memory, he seems to glow. I can shut my eyes and see how he looked to us then, skin lit from within as if he'd spent hours absorbing sunlight only to slow release it back into the world his voice was golden too low and intimate not squabbly and peevish like ours kit garden turned his gaze on each of us in turn smiling a smile full of light there was self assurance in his voice in the requirement that everyone lean in a little to hear him. Matty was introduced first, and Kit solemnly offered her his hand. I expected a flash of lightning from the collision of hot and coal, or an earthquake at the very least. Within four seconds, he had charmed her practically to death.

Meg, how familiar to you is this idea of spending the whole summer with your family every year right by a beach? Well, I grew up just outside of Boston and we never had the whole summer, but we used to spend a month on Martha's Vineyard, which people may know now as a sort of very posh island where Obama and Jackie Onassis kind of spend the summer. But in those days, back in the 60s, it was just a kind of dusty, sort of deserted little island. And because it was an island and because there were four of us and I think our parents were just sick to death of us, we just disappeared. I mean, we would have breakfast and then the rest of the day we'd be gone and nobody cared where we were or whether we were drowned or lost or kidnapped or anything.

And then as an adult, I missed that time so much that I fell in love with the Suffolk coast, which reminded me so much of of that area of cape cod and um i bought a little house here with a friend on the beach and we've been here ever since now the teenagers and and the adults in in your novel as we've just heard are all sent wild by the arrival of this kit why does he have such a powerful impact on everybody well there's the question i mean i i think uh he you know without giving too much away he he's a he's a bit of a narcissist we think um or or something there's a line in the book where uh narrator says that maybe he just needed everyone to love him. And he is a very beautiful boy. He's obviously used to the idea that people

will fall in love with him. And for some reason, which we, I suppose, have to figure out, he needs to use that power. And everyone does fall in love with him. And, you know, the consequences are, shall we say, difficult. Now, you very carefully there mentioned the narrator. It's unclear. I grappled with this right the way through the book, asking myself, is this narrator a boy or is this narrator a girl? Because the narrator is completely seduced by Kit.

We don't know a name. There's no description of clothing or physical characteristics. Why did you make the narrator so ambiguous? Well, I think you get a picture of the narrator in your head. And maybe everybody's picture is slightly different. But you know, I began this book in 2011. It's the only book I've ever abandoned. And I went back to it about 18 months ago, trying to figure out why I hadn't been able to make it come into focus. It felt dead to me. And I realized the that I'd switch when I looked back at all my drafts I realized I'd switch between having the narrator male having the narrator female having it in the first person and the third person and I

think what I realized when I went back to it was that the the the character was actually trying to tell me something that he or she wanted to stay hidden. And so when I allowed the character, that freedom to stay hidden, the book came into focus. So what is the narrator to you? Is it a boy or a girl? Well, I think if I say that, then it's going to affect how anybody else looks at it. I found that people over 50 almost invariably think of the narrator as a girl, and people under 40 split about 50-50. So I did have a very particular idea of which way I wanted it to go. But you have to work very carefully as a writer to make sure that you don't give any hints. And I wanted just that gender neutrality, which back in 2011, I mean, I don't think anybody was really talking about it, but it is something that I've always been interested in.

And of course, in the intervening nine years, it's it's become a huge subject um sociologically and uh psychologically emotionally yeah which of the siblings in the family is most like you oh my god most like me you know i always say that that all my characters have bits of me i would say matty who is the beautiful one is least like me because i was not a beautiful child. And in fact, my younger sister, there were four of us as there are four in this family. And my younger sister was considered the beautiful, dumb one. And I was considered the ugly, smart one. So there is that awful, I mean, she wasn't dumb and I wasn't ugly. But, you know, there is a kind of tendency to categorize when there are four of you, especially in my family, there were four girls in five years. So, you know, my mother

always said she couldn't get the hang of birth control. And there probably would have been 15 of us if the pill hadn't been invented. But, you know, so you sort of grab a territory, which is something I talk a little bit about in the book, you know, trying to differentiate yourself. So which I mean, I would say none of them is really me, but there are bits of me in all the characters. There's a lot about the teenage girl and self-esteem in the book. And Mattie is so tied up in her looks and the attentions of kit what's going on with matty but you know i was really moved by a friend of mine years ago telling me when i was said something contemptuous about the the daughter or son of a friend of ours i can't remember which

it was and he had more experience than I did with older children. And he said, look, you know, kids who are 13 or 14 look very two dimensional, you know, turn out perfectly fine most of the time. And and I'm kind of quite interested in that idea that Mattie says she wants to be a doctor. Nobody takes her seriously because all she thinks about is shoes. But of course, you know, eventually she won't be 16 anymore. And, you know, she'll be thinking about other things. It is kind of a stage people go through and, you know, doesn't necessarily mark them for life.

This is, I understand it, the first of three books that have been commissioned to be set in summertime. Why are you so interested in this particular time of year? Well, you know, summer for me, well, in America, where I'm obviously from, summer is 10 or 12 weeks long. In England, it's only six weeks long. But, you know, I have a bit of trouble with plot generally when I write. And I loved the idea of this summer arc where time is just out of time. You know, there's a sense of a kind of a gulf, a moat, something between real life in the spring and real life in the autumn when you go back to school. And, you know, I'm 63 years old. I still think about the year starting again in September. So summer is a pause.

And, you know, when I think back on the summers of my youth, they seem to stretch forever. And so I really kind of wanted to look at that arc, you know, that shortish arc of a period of time where life is more intense than it normally is. And with two then still to go, how far into the next two novels are you? Well, for me, Lockdown has been amazing because I've written the whole first draft of the second one since the beginning of Lockdown. The third one, I don't even have a clue.

So, you know, answers on a postcard, please, if somebody would just write in an idea for me. But, you know, I have a lot of summers in my life to, you know, to troll for material. A lot from my youth, a lot from my early adulthood, you know, when I lived in New York City. And yeah, there's a lot of material there. Meg Rossoff, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. And the title of the book is The Great Garden. Thank you. Now, it's not uncommon, even today, to hear comments about girls and boys and their suitability for maths and sciences.

How often have you heard, oh, no, girls don't really do maths, or, well, he's a really clever boy, so of course he'll be a brilliant scientist. It was her awareness that such stereotyping still exists and often influences the way men and women work that led Eugenia Chen to write X plus Y, a mathematician's manifesto for rethinking gender. Now, Eugenia, the cover of the book asks a couple of questions. Why is the groundbreaking statistician Florence Nightingale best known as a nurse? Why do men rise higher and get paid more? And how can mathematicians help us find the answers? So these incredibly difficult questions, how can you help as a mathematician find the answers?

Hello. Well, mathematics isn't just about numbers and equations. It's about thinking more clearly through situations and also using our imagination to create new worlds in which new things can be possible. And I think that we've been stuck in a one-dimensional trap of gendered thinking, where we're stuck in this one dimension of either thinking that men are better than women or that women need to become more like men or that men need to become more like women and that this is unhelpful to men and women and non-binary people and so I put my my abstract mathematical thinking hat on and thought well we need to break free of one dimension by going into higher dimensional thinking. Now, what of your own experience had led you to that very acute awareness of the stereotyping? Well, when I was a PhD student and then an early researcher and then a young academic,

I was always a extreme minority as a woman in a male dominated field. And I really tried to hide all signs of femininity so that I wouldn't give people a chance to stereotype me. And then once I felt secure and had a permanent job, I felt like I wanted to be more feminine. And I realized that that didn't really make any sense because I am a woman. Everything I do is feminine. And I realized that we associate character types with gender, and that that's really unnecessary and actually obstructive and prescriptive, because there's no reason that different characters should go with different genders.

You're not keen on masculine or feminine as words. Why not either of them? I think that it prescri prescribed behavior on people and oppresses people men and women both then feel under pressure men feel under pressure to be masculine in a certain way and we're seeing that at the moment with the idea that wearing a mask is somehow not masculine whereas wearing a mask shouldn't really have anything to do with gender and then at the same time women are told that they need to be more ambitious or confident in order to be successful. But then when they are ambitious and confident, they're criticised for not being feminine. And none of this makes any sense. I think what we should do is decide what character traits we value, and then not associate

them with men or women. I think we've been overvaluing the traits associated with men. Now, you suggest the use of two other words as better ways of defining these things. One is ingressive and the other is congressive. What's behind the meaning of those two words? I decided that we needed words that are new, that don't come with all the gendered baggage so that we can think more freely about what we value and I wanted to come up with words that had some sort of etymological basis to them so ingressive is to signify going into things and congressive is about bringing things together and I think that ingressive character traits include going into things without really worrying about what's around you, thinking as an individual. And congressive is about thinking about the community and bringing people together and making connections

between things. So to what extent are you actually looking for gender blindness? That's a very important distinction because I'm not asking for complete gender blindness i think that what we should do is think about gender when it's relevant and not think about gender when it's not relevant and sometimes it's really important to think about gender because some prejudice is specifically gender-based and then it doesn't help for us to pretend to be gender blind because we'll never overcome the specific gender prejudice if we're gender blind but in other cases I think it's not about gender when it's about character types and self-confidence and ambition and the idea that women need to be more self-confident and more risk more risk-taking in order to be successful which I don't think is true I myself

am not a risk taker and I'm not self-confident either but I do think I'm confident and I think I've been confident, successful and I think I've been successful in a congressive way rather than an ingressive way and I want to help other people who feel like they don't just want to be self-confident but can still be successful in the world. So how has adjusting your own way of thinking and convincing yourself that you are congressive actually turned your life around? It's completely turned around my life how I interact with other people and especially how I teach because education is typically very ingressive and I've been creating a much more congressive classroom environment,

I resigned from my tenured job because I felt that the job I was in, the academic profession, was so ingressive. It was pushing me to be as ingressive as possible, or I felt I had to make myself as ingressive as possible to be successful. And I think many people feel that society rewards ingressive behavior, even though congressive behavior is better for society. And I just didn't like myself the way I was becoming. So now I've built myself a career where I can really be as congressive as I want to be and help more people and I think make a better difference in the world, as well as being more happy myself. How do your students respond to that? My students respond really well.

I teach art students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and they are typically students who have not done well in normal mainstream education. And in particular, they've been put off maths, definitely, by the repeated rounds of tests and hierarchies and filtering and the non-inclusive environment. And they tell me that this is a revelation to them that if maths and education were done more congressively all the way from the beginning, then they would have felt like they could have taken part. How do you suggest then, because you do offer tips what tips do you offer for making the kind of changes that you propose yes i wanted to write a practical book that can actually give people things to do to

change themselves and their interactions in the world and we can do this at all levels so maths works at close-up levels and also global levels and we can change the way we talk to ourselves and i think there's a lot of self-talk that we do where we say to ourselves, oh, we have to do better or stop being so stupid instead of encouraging ourselves and being more congressive in the way that we talk to ourselves. And also in the way that we have interpersonal relationships. I think that especially in society these days, arguments tend to become very competitive, where one person has to show that they're right. And in order to show they're right,

they have to show that someone else is wrong in an unnecessary zero-sum game. And I think we can get much further in our understanding if we just try to understand and all learn things together. And I think that anyone who's in charge of some kind of group situation, either a classroom, a family, a business, an organization, can nurture a congressive environment because I think that's better for everybody. And that if we nurture congressive behavior, then everyone can bring out their more congressive sides instead of making themselves contrived in uh to be more ingressive than they really want to be and i think it's i think it's actually more productive for everybody eugenia i suspect that it might be a bit late for me in my mathematics i think i was taught in a very ingressive way and i was not very good at it i think i need to find a congressive mathematics teacher like you and maybe it's not too late for me to learn.

I was talking to Eugenia Chen, the author of X plus Y, a mathematician's manifesto for rethinking gender. Now, we had a huge response to the testimonies we heard about the teaching culture in gymnastics. Here are a few of your emails. We've kept all of them anonymous. I totally relate to your future on gymnastics for children. My son was identified as an elite gymnast, age six, and by age seven was training 12 hours a week in an elite club, 45 minutes drive from our home in Edinburgh. He missed mealtimes three or four days a week to get to training

and all the abusive behaviour talked about rang so true. And he was only seven. One time I arrived to collect him and found him being prodded by the coach using a large stick. I completely identify with the struggle to withdraw. Your child has been identified as a potential international athlete and you don't want to ruin that chance. But it was so definitely the right thing to do. And my son grew about six inches in the two months after we took him out, aged nine. I think the intensive training was stunting his growth. This one says,

my daughter attended gymnastics classes when she was seven. I would sit in the village hall while she and the other girls were being trained. I had concerns as to where the coach was putting his hands when adjusting the angle of my daughter's legs. I felt they were getting too close to her bottom but it was very difficult to say anything as I couldn't say for sure that it was inappropriate and couldn't quite see how close his hands were. It made me very uncomfortable as

a mother wanting to protect my daughter. Several years later that man was convicted of child abuse. Parents should be given the same set of guidelines that are laid down for gymnastic coaches so that they know exactly what is and what is not allowed during training. And the final one, listening to your programme on the systemic abuse found in training British gymnasts reminded me of my experiences training as a dancer in the 90s where there was a similar identical culture of behaviours that didn't safeguard children and young adults physical or psychological well-being. I believe that some of these bad practices still exist although much has changed in some dance institutions. It's really important that correct safeguarding and ethics in training is under scrutiny within all major dance and

gymnastic establishments, as it would be in any other educational environment. Well, thank you for all your responses to this morning's programme. Tomorrow, I'll be talking to Natasha Gregson-Wagner, the daughter of Natalie Wood, who was best known for her roles in films like Splendour in the Grass, West Side Story and Gypsy. Natalie died suddenly by drowning when she was only 43, and Natasha has now produced a documentary and written a memoir in which she describes their relationship and coming to terms with her grief amid rumours and speculation surrounding her mother's death. Join me tomorrow, if you can, two minutes past ten.

Until then, bye-bye. Bloodsport is the story of how the Russian state doped the 2012 Olympics and everything that followed. 2012 was just a bit of a bit of a kick in the nuts. I don't know how to explain it. A lot of us naively

believed that we were through the worst of it. That had been placed here by the Kremlin to try to find Dr. Rechenkov. City of London. They could have stopped that. They had the information.

The smoking gun. They had the sources. No, I'm just clarifying. The most extraordinary sports story of all time. How many people were working in the laboratory then, though, at that time? We were working in shifts.

Russian doping control is like fake doping control. So join me, Matt Magendie, as we tell the complete story for the first time. They're incredibly brave people, aren't they? That's Bloodsport, how Russia doped the 2012 Olympics. You can subscribe to it on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now.