Woman's Hour - Knife crime, Women and Equalities Minister Penny Mordaunt, Waitress the musical

Episode Date: March 9, 2019

How do you keep your children safe from knife crime? We hear from youth worker Elaine Donnellon, and two mothers Yvonne Lawson and Rachel Webb whose sons died from knife attacks. The Minister for Women and Equalities, Penny Mordaunt on the government campaign to end period poverty globally by 2030. Katherine McPhee and Sara Bareilles on their new West End musical Waitress. The Israeli writer and psychologist Ayelet Gundar Goshen on her new novel The Liar.The former Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard and the founder and director of WOW on the progress towards gender equality around the world. The journalist Melanie Reid had a riding accident breaking her neck and fracturing her lower back in 2010. She's written her memoir, The World I Fell Out Of. How has Kylie Jenner managed to become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at just 21? Nyree Ambarchian, a founder of the branding agency Stand and cultural commentator Bolu Babalola discuss.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Dianne McGregor Editor: Jane Thurlow

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. Good afternoon. This week has been full of shocking events where young people have been the victims of knife crime. We talked to two mothers whose sons were stabbed to death about how parents might be able to protect their children. I always used to check my knives. I always spoke to the children about knives.

If one knife went missing, my house was on lockdown until we found that knife. The journalist Melanie Reid has written about the accident in 2010 when she fell from her horse. There were, though, surprising benefits to spending a year in a spinal injuries unit. We were there alongside each other, the professionals, the aristocrats, the people who were addicted to drinking drugs, the villains, the people who'd been stabbed.

It was like a maternity unit on steroids. We talked to the Israeli novelist Ayelet Gundar-Gorshan about her book, Liar. What fascinated her about the impact of telling a lie? The musical The Waitress, what's behind the success of a story set in an American diner? Kylie Jenner was dubbed the youngest ever self-made billionaire. But how self-made can a member of the Kardashian family be said to be? And for International Women's Day and the Women of the World Festival, the founder, Jude Kelly, and the former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard.

On Monday, on her birthday, Penny Mordaunt, the Secretary of State for International Development and Minister for Women and Equalities, gave a speech at Church House in Westminster. Her subject was period poverty and a government initiative to attempt to end it globally by 2030. Jane asked her how they plan to fund it. We're not offering money on this at present. I put a small amount of money in to support the work of this task force that

we're putting together. And that might involve us doing some more research where there's gaps. But it also will mean us helping schemes that are doing well. I confess I'm slightly confused now. There's a small amount of money. It's about a quarter of a million quid going towards a task force to start to deal with the problem. That is edging away from actually solving the issue, which essentially is poverty. People don't have the money to buy tampons and sanitary towels. Yes, it's about poverty, but I think it's a bit more than that. I think that it's not the same as being able to afford your bus fare and those sorts of things. There's a stigma attached attached to this and I think we need to have several schemes which address this for different people they can't be schemes which are very

complicated and have eligibility criteria and a bureaucratic nightmare it's got to be something that yes the public sector government but also society contributes to and I think that will involve a bit of a culture change as well. This is not a final amount of money. We're going to be doing some more things in the future. We had an announcement yesterday from the NHS that the answer to this is going to be a collaboration between government, between the manufacturers and the private sector, and the many fantastic organisations and groups who've been dealing with this issue. But obviously the real issue is the poverty at the heart of the situation. If people weren't

strapped for cash, we wouldn't have period poverty. That's the real truth of it, isn't it? Well, I think that is part of it. But I think that this is something in addition to that. There is a stigma attached to this. And so I don't think you can have a... The stigma is what exactly? Well, we know from, for example, surveys like the Girl Guides have performed that 21% of their respondents felt they were not able to discuss their periods.

They felt embarrassed by doing that. I, when I was growing up, had difficulty accessing these products because I was from a single parent family with a father who didn't really sort of understand these issues. So I think there are other issues that we need to look at in the round with this. With my other hat on as International Development Secretary, it's much more widespread. We know that about half of all women, for example, in low and middle-income countries don't have access to sanitary products at all. They're using things like grass, paper,

that sort of thing. And that has a huge impact in their ability to go to school, to participate in the workplace and all the other things we're trying to get done. We also are announcing today a campaign to tackle this issue globally, to remove that stigma, to talk about periods, and to make sure actually women have the information about their own bodies that they need. Can I just ask you a little bit about Northern Ireland, about the fact that women in Northern Ireland still don't have access to abortion? You can't be happy with that on their behalf? No, I'm not. I think this is about a duty of care that we have to individuals. And I think the work that the Select Committee is doing at the moment on highlighting cases and also allowing healthcare professionals to exercise, talk about their concerns is very important. We, I think, are in a very bad place

on this and Parliament has clearly given its steer that it is not content with the situation. But actually, although Parliament can initiate a change in the law, it's not best placed to actually set up services. People who are best placed to set up services are governments, and that either means the Northern Ireland Assembly or it means the UK government. If we are going to do this well... Right, I understand that there is clearly a complication here, more than one, but we are still in a situation

where in a country like ours, a 17-year-old girl who perhaps has been raped will still have to make that trip somewhere else at the most vulnerable time in her life. Is this going to go on for another couple of years or can we sort that out within the next six months? What do you think? Well, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has indicated, she gave evidence last week to the Select Committee, and she has indicated she's waiting on the result of a particular case. But if there is a declaration of incompatibility, she's said that's a significant moment. I think we do need to act, whether it is the Assembly or whether it is...

Which still isn't sitting, yes. Or whether it is the UK government. You mentioned 17-year-olds, 12-year-olds have been accompanied on this trip by the Northern Island Police. We've got women whose lives are being put in danger. I've spoken to a number of women who've been in that situation. And actually, the so-called chilling effect of the current situation, which means that even if someone is legally entitled to access these services for medical reasons,

sometimes they're not being given that information because healthcare professionals are unsure of what they can say. So this is not about whether these women should be able to access these services. This is about the quality of care that these women are currently not getting. Can I ask about your leadership ambitions? You are thought of, you are spoken about as a potential prime ministerial candidate. True. I think our current prime minister is going to be, that's not quite the answer, yes, but that doesn't really answer my question. No. I have to say that I am focused on doing my two jobs and supporting her. And I think that's what the country wants us to do. But you are, from a sort of background,

it might actually surprise people, you mentioned that you grew up, unfortunately, without your mum, and I think you've tweeted rather poignantly that it's your birthday today, is that right? It is my birthday today. Well, happy birthday. But you also make the point, and people will be interested in this, and it's extremely sad,

that you've now reached the age at which your mum died of breast cancer and I know you've also encouraged people to take up the breast screening offer do you think people know enough about you actually because I read all this and I confess I perhaps I began to change my view of you which is my own ignorance I'm talking about here. What would you say about that? I think that people are interested in your background and where you've come from. I think as a politician, I'm more interested in the front story than the back story. I understand that.

But I was actually very touched by the response to, for your listeners who don't know, there was a story about women not taking up breast screening. And today is my birthday, but it's significant because I've reached the age that she died at because she didn't access screening services. And I had a lot of people on Twitter who had exactly the same feelings as me. They were talking about the age that their mother died and how they were worried about reaching that age and what it meant to them. But I think these are the age that their mother died and how they were worried about reaching that age and what it meant to them. But I think these are the things that shape us. These are my experiences of being a child carer

and all sorts of other stuff. That's what makes us who we are. And I think that certainly in this role, when I'm looking at what I can do to support women, I'm thinking of people like my mother and the things that she had and didn't have. And that was Penny Mordant, the Secretary of State for International Development

and Minister for Women and Equalities. And Chris sent an email. She said, I'll be 60 in May. My mother died of cancer at 60 and I've just started treatment for breast cancer. I've been incredibly lucky thanks to a routine screening programme and it will all soon be over. Your indirect reminder to take up screening was very timely. Now this week there have been calls for the proliferation of knife crime to be regarded as a national emergency. And there are constant discussions

about what's causing so many young people to carry knives and be prepared to use them. Well, whatever the reasons behind the crimes which have taken the lives of nearly 300 people in the past year, it's become a matter of deep concern to parents. The recent stabbings have happened in open spaces when other people have been around and not necessarily in areas associated with brutal violence. So what can parents do to try to keep their children safe? Elaine Donnellan is a youth worker in North London who specialises in violent crime. Yvonne Lawson's son Godwin was stabbed and died in 2010. Rachel Webb's son Kyron was killed in Manchester in 2017. Another son was stabbed in London but survived. What were the circumstances in which Kyron was killed? We believe that a group of individuals in Manchester, they were a music group, had made a

song and I think on a Snapchat he said the song was rubbish allegedly. We have no evidence to sustain that that was correct because the Snapchat videos are not kept. On the day in question he was at home playing his console and it's believed that they reached out to him via snapchat and asked him to come and meet with them he left his home in mostan and went about 10 minutes away the cctv video just shows him speaking with the young boys there's no violence there isn't any sort of altercation nothing to be suspicious um the individual was texting on his phone at the time he looks up from the phone stabbed karen in the chest went back to texting on his phone at the time he looks up from the phone, stabbed Kyron in the chest went back to texting on his phone and then just silently walked away

Kyron sort of staggered around a bus walked around a car, sorry and leaned on the wall and then they came back stabbed him again in the back and then ran off And then not soon after your other son was attacked what happened there? That one was a case of mistaken identity so he was on his way to collect his younger brother and sister from a party it was three o'clock in the afternoon and he got off the bus and two boys approached him

believing he was somebody else he kept trying to tell them that he wasn't who they thought he was he was pushed around the corner and then a boy just pulled out a Rambo knife and then started to attack him with the knife. Yvonne, how did the attack on Godwin happen? At the age of 17, he had a scholarship to play football in Oxford. So he would come to London every fortnight to see friends and family.

On that particular night, he came, he met the friends, and these were boys that Godwin were used to. He had attended primary school with them and secondary school. And as they were walking, four boys saw Godwin's group. They ran after them. One of the boys had a knife on him, started to attack Godwin's friends. Godwin did run away from the scenery. However, for unknown reason, he decided to come back and stop the fight.

And as he was trying to stop the fight, the boy that had a knife actually turned and said, bruv, this has nothing to do with you, and stabbed him straight in his heart once and within two minutes Godwin had just lost his life. Elaine what do we learn from these incidents I mean for instance Godwin ran to help friends who were being attacked what should you do in circumstances like that I heard the police saying yesterday just run away. I wish I had a simple, clear answer for that. I think we all would like to raise our children, our own children and the children within our communities, to try and help someone in need when possible.

However, as a mother, we always tell our children, keep yourself safe first, whenever you can, because primarily they're our concern. I don't think there's really easy advice that we can look back on and say retrospectively, this is what Godwin should have done. When you get to this type of state situation that he's in, it's adrenaline. It's fight, flight, freeze. And Godwin or any other similar child is going to do absolutely whatever they assess really quickly in a matter of seconds to either try and save their friends or save themselves.

Now, Rachel, I know Kyron, you discovered later, was actually carrying a knife at the time, although not opened and he certainly hadn't used it. But what had you said to him about knives and the danger they present? To what extent was he trying to keep himself safe? So growing up, as Elaine said, I've always taught my children about self-preservation. They know about violence. I'm the mum that would tell you

if somebody stopped you because they wanted you on mobile, you hand over the phone and you just run. You don't stop and fight. We don't need to be the superhero because in real lives, superheroes do sadly pass away. I always used to check my knives. I always spoke to the children about knives. If one knife went missing,

my house was on lockdown until we found that knife. It wasn't something that we encouraged. It wasn't something that you perpetuated. It was very difficult growing up as well because for me is I never really saw any of my children to think okay you didn't have enough love or any self-worth or self-respect that you would even think to carry a knife so the continual dialect about knives and carryings and murdering things you didn't really

have we spoke about breaking a law upholding citizens and what to do if they were ever faced in a dangerous situation and even what conversations had you had about safety? Well, I remember sort of never having a conversation about knives with Godwin. We would talk about safety, not walking with strangers and always trying to support and help and just talking about your normal morals, giving, you know, supporting and being a good citizen. I think I was naive as a mum.

I, you know, knew about gangs, but I never thought it was close to my house. I never thought my children were at risk. I would look at my children and I would say they're on track. They're good citizens. They're doing the right thing. Never did I imagine that knife crime was going to hit my doorstep. What in your experience, Elaine, is the reason why a youngster carries a knife and is prepared to use it in what now often seems to be almost a random fashion? We do know and we are being reported back that a lot of young people now are carrying knives because they fear

leaving the house any day that they could lose their life and they don't feel they can use their fists against the weapon there's a lot of peer pressure going on it seems like some of it is inadvertently glamorized within the media a lot of images of knives it's a really complex picture some people do pick up knives with the intent to go out and cause harm and maim okay i'd suggest they're the smaller group i suggest there's a lot of people carry knives who don't think about the consequential behaviors that life could be taken off them they could be killed or they could end up in a conflict and kill somebody else now you have daughters we've been talking about sons so far how do you talk to your daughters about keeping safe?

That might be different from the way you talk to your son. My oldest daughter is 24 and my youngest daughter is 16. Traditionally, I've always raised my children in regards to evidence. Things that are likely to harm the most in London is traffic. I've always taught my youngest daughter, particularly because the climate has changed the last few years, to kind of think like a ninja, so to be aware of her circumstances don't walk down the road with your headphones on be very aware of your surroundings know what's going on and i think that's a high state of tension that we're now asking our children to actually be in to protect

themselves and i think it's far drastically changed now none of us are prepared and i'm talking to bereaved mums every day who never ever expected to be in this situation. Rachel what in retrospect might you have said or done to keep your boys safe? Even through the whole of the court proceedings there was no evidence that Kyron had actually got engaged in any anti-social behaviours or anything so the only change that I could really do from that whole situation is just never have allowed him to go to Manchester in the first place. Yvonne, what might you have said?

Call for help. If Godwin was alive now, I would have said to him, safeguard yourself and call for help and never put your life at risk. Yvonne Lawson, Rachel Webb and Elaine Donnellan. And there are links, by the way, to charities and organisations who can help if you've been affected by knife crime and they're on the Woman's Hour website. And Julie emailed,

just had to pull over while listening to the stories from the mothers whose sons have been fatally stabbed. My heart is aching for them and the task I have to keep my boys safe. How can we end this? Now, Waitress is the first musical to appear in London's West End that's been written, composed, directed and choreographed by women. It began as a film and started its life in the theatre in the States. It's set in a diner and pies feature quite strongly in the production. The woman who wrote the songs and music is Sarah Bareilles.

Catherine McPhee, who's best known for the American television shows Smash and American Idol, plays the waitress. The story focuses on a girl named Jenna Hunterson, American television shows Smash and American Idol plays the waitress. The story focuses on a girl named Jenna Hunterson, and she works in a diner with two other girls, and she is a beautiful pie maker. She has a big passion for it. It's her sort of outlet to the reality of her life, which is this marriage that she's in, and she's quite unhappy. It's implied that it's an abusive relationship, a little

physical, but probably more emotionally abusive. And she gets pregnant. And she doesn't want the baby, but she's going to keep the baby. And she feels like she's stuck in this life that she has, although she has this outlet of these wonderful girls she works with um but it's this thing of like what she's going to do with her life now that she's pregnant with a baby and a man that she's married to that she doesn't want to be with the answer is she meets a gynecologist a new gynecologist in town and things start to change well they really do i have to say i've met gynecologists most women have and um But it's a male gynecologist. Yes, and I've met some of them.

I've never, well, it is a slightly bizarre conceit at the heart of the story, Sarah, as you'd be the first to admit, that she forms a passionate relationship with her gynecologist. And indeed, you know, and I know, that such a thing is not really permissible, is it? No, they don't advise. No, they really don't romantic relationships but it's a part of what is so genius about Adrienne Shelley who's the writer director of the film which is the our source material for the musical is that she was such a maverick of her time she was I mean this is a deeply feminist story and was really sort of radical ideas for that time to have, first of all, to have the protagonist be a woman stepping into motherhood who is very verbal about,

I don't want this baby. That's sort of sacrilegious to have a mother be admitting that it's a complicated relationship or that they're not excited about motherhood. Now, the story ends up being a really beautiful journey of her finding herself and finding her voice. But it's not the quintessential fairy tale. You know, the doctor is someone who's sort of unlocked something. Can I just point out, we haven't mentioned the pies. No. I mean, neither of you look as though you eat a lot of carbohydrate, I have to say.

But this is a West End show rich in carb. I want to know a little bit, Sarah, about how you write songs for musicals, because you're a really successful singer-songwriter outside musical theatre. This is very different, isn't it? Writing a song for someone like Catherine to perform brilliantly in front of a live audience. Thankfully, writing a song for Catherine to perform is about the easiest thing in the world to do, I have to say. She liked hearing that. I'm such a huge fan of this girl right here. But the biggest difference for me was about trying to shift the perspective of who the storyteller is. I'm so used to writing autobiographically.

I write from my own perspective. And so getting into the psychology of each character. Writing for Jenna was slightly easier than writing for the abusive husband, for example, you know, but it was an exercise in, I call it radical empathy, where it's trying to find a way into the psyche of someone who you may or may not feel like you relate to. Can we just hear, we're going to hear the song, She Used To Be Mine in a moment. Can you just set it up for us, Catherine? What's happening in the part of the show where you sing this? I think this is sort of what they call the 11 o'clock number in a musical. She is quite pregnant now, towards the end of the show. And she's been saving this money from her husband.

She's been secretly stashing all this money to try and find a way to escape. And it all blows up in her face. Her husband finds all this money stashed in the house. And it's this sort of big argument. And he takes the money and she's left there on the stage by herself and it's kind of that moment where she realizes like she's not gonna be able to make the escape that she thought she was gonna be able to make let's let's hear it let's hear that song now Of the life that's inside her Growing stronger each day Till it finally reminds her To fight just a little

To bring back the fire in her eyes That's been gone But used to be mine Well, I'd had a drink and that was the point at which I began to well up in the show. It is fantastic. What does the 11 o'clock number mean? I don't know. You know what?

I might have... It's a showbiz term. I know I didn't make it up. It's sort of like the number towards the end of the show that's like the big showstopper, big ballad. It's like the... An expression. And I'm telling you. You know, those are the big...

Showstoppers. Yeah. Can I just ask, are they real pies? They are real pies. What do you mean some of them? Not every pie on stage. The ones that get thrown around. Yeah.

But there is definitely, there's a lot of real food. Do they look real? I felt I could smelt them at one point. Yeah, that's actually true. They bake a pie in the lobby. This is something that started in Boston when we did our out of town tryout. They started baking a pie in the lobby because that visceral reaction to like a fresh baked pie. We couldn't replicate it artificially.

So they actually bake a pie. Right. Well, if that hasn't encouraged you to go, I don't know what will really. But just a quick word on the whole idea of the female empowerment aspect of the musical and the fact that so many women are involved behind the scenes. I was really surprised this was the first time

that this, with that many women in prominent positions in the West End. Why has it taken so long, Sarah? I think we're just in the middle of a movement. One of the things I'm so proud about in terms of being a part of this all-female lead creative team is that it wasn't a casting agenda we were well into the process of making the show when someone sort of looked around and said I don't think this has happened before so it wasn't on purpose and that to me is sort of my hope for

the feminist movement is that we get beyond you you know, making a thing about it. Yeah, where it's just like we were just artists at the top of our field that got brought together and making a project. And we happen to also be all women. Yeah. And, you know, I stepped into it after the show's been going on Broadway for a long time and I was brought to my attention. I thought, oh, that's funny, because I didn't have that like, oh, I'm surrounded by women thing. I was just like, oh, I'm just surrounded by people who really know what they're doing. Waitress is at the Adelphi Theatre in London. Ayelet Gundagoshan is an Israeli novelist and her latest book is called Liar.

It begins in an ice cream parlor in Tel Aviv where a teenage girl, Nofar, works in the summer holidays. One of her customers is a Z-list singer who's been in a reality television programme. They have a bit of an argument, she runs from the store, he follows, and a misunderstanding occurs which will lead to Avishai Milner being wrongly accused of a sexual attack and Nofar confirming that it really happened. Why was Ayelet keen to write a story where the main character is a liar? It's based on a real story that I heard. And the story fascinated me so much that I felt that I have to dive into it to understand it. And it's a true story that happened in Israel when an Israeli girl, a Jewish girl, accused a migrant refugee from Eritrea in sexually harassing her.

It was a big story because at first she was considered the ultimate victim. She was hugged by everyone. And then when she eventually confessed lying, she in one split of a second became from the hugged victim, she became the predator. And she was publicly denounced. And she was called in names, she was referred as a psychopath and as a monster. And I remember I heard this story. And I thought, what if she's not a monster? In a way, it's too easy to call her a monster. When you call somebody a monster, it's like saying he's not part of mankind or humankind. And it's much more difficult, but also much more interesting instead of calling her a monster to try to understand her. So as an author, I said, maybe I can make up such a lie or maybe I could get caught in such a lie.

But given that you were drawing on a real story, it still seems incredible to me that you decided to make the theme a lie about a sexual assault when all the focus recently has been on Me Too and women telling the truth about such matters. How worried were you that this might be too controversial? I used to wake up in the middle of the night asking myself, am I a bad feminist? So I was very bad, much concerned about this, especially because when I started writing The Liar, I just had my first baby and it's a girl. And when she was very small, just a very young baby, I remember I was looking at her thinking, she's just a child right now. I don't know what she's going to like, what kind of music she likes, what kind of books she'll read. But I already know, given it's a girl, that at some moment

in her life, she will be sexually harassed, either verbally or worse. I mean, to look at a baby girl born today and to know for sure that somewhere in her future she has this coming, it's terrible. And for me, Me Too is the one hope that maybe it won't happen. So as a feminist, I was concerned by the fact that I might be writing something that undermines Me Too. But then I thought, well, if it was a man sitting here, writing a story about a man pedophile, like in a book of writing Lolita, nobody would think that because the protagonist is a pedophile, it means all men are pedophile. Or Dostoevsky writing Crime and Punishment, nobody would dare to think that because we write about a man killing a lady, it means all men are killers. But when you write about a woman, people automatically assume that one woman resembles all women. And then if one girl makes up a story about a sexual assault, it means all women are liars. I think in itself it's a chauvinistic approach. You are a psychologist as well as a novelist.

And looking at the way everyone around this incident behaves, why does everyone involved jump to the conclusion that a sexual assault has taken place, even though some of them actually know it hasn't? I think there's something about stories, about the way we consume them. It's almost like the way we consume chocolate. You like chocolate to be bittersweet, and we have a story here which is bittersweet, and then we just eat a whole lot of it, even though we know it's not really healthy and we don't really care how it's manufactured and how many people suffer to get it ready for us. I think people are, in a way, junkies of stories with good and bad characters.

You have it in fairy tales, you have it in Disney films. When we read the news, we automatically search for the good guy, search for the bad guy. Well, in reality, you don't have this division of the forces of good and the forces of evil. You have the good and bad embedded in each one of us. So it's not that clear anymore. Is this girl a victim or predator? And is the man assaulting her? Because he did assault her, not sexually, but he crashed her to pieces with his word. And I do consider it assault. And I do think this is something that men do much more easily to women than women do to men.

Like in the public sphere, it's much more easy to men to crush a woman to pieces using words. And this lie, which is, of course, bad, is also her only way to get acknowledgement for her suffering, which is real. Yeah, why does she become so emboldened and kind of improved by the lie? You know, she's admired, she's described as unattractive at the beginning with a bad skin and a rather dull girl, but then she becomes more beautiful when her lie is believed. Why? Well, I think some people look good wearing the truth and some people just look better when they wear a lie. I mean, we have this, we like to think that when somebody is lying, we can see it on his face as a sort of bad way. But I think for her, the lie is like the blush on her cheek.

She actually lies better than she tells the truth. And I think the moment she realizes that is the moment she's born as a woman and perhaps later as a writer. To what extent does everyone just continue to be complicit in the lie? in The Lie. There's a moment when the beggar who did witness what happened tries to tell the truth and he is ignored. Is that because of his character or is it that people don't want to hear that a lie has been told? I think mostly he's one of those invisible people walking the streets of Tel Aviv and as far as I've seen London, also the streets of London, people who are there, but nobody bothers to look at them. And because they're invisible, they can see everything. But as you said, nobody really wants to see what they have to see, or to hear what it is that they have to tell us.

But we also have another character that finds out and that's the mother. And I was very interested because as I wrote it, I became a mother myself. And I asked myself, had I discovered that my own girl made up such a lie? What would I do? And then you have the first moment you think, well, of course, I would drag her to the police and force her to confess. But then you think, well, think about the consequences. Am I supposed to protect my girl from the world? Or am I supposed to protect the world from my girl? Because I feel today in Israel, people are much more concerned in raising a child that feels good than raising a child who is a good person. I was talking to Ayelet Gundar-Gorshan. Now, yesterday was International Women's Day and time for the annual WOW Festival,

Women of the World in London, where it began eight years ago. It's now extended its reach to 17 countries on five continents and has included more than 2 million people at more than 60 festivals. And the theme for this year's event at the South Bank is where are we now and where are we going in our moves towards equality between men and women? Leadership is one of the subjects up for discussion. I spoke to Jude Kelly, who led the South Bank Centre for 12 years

and is the founder and director of WOW, and to Australia's former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. She's now chair of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College in London. She's also remembered for making that speech in 2012, addressing the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott. I say to the leader of the opposition, I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man.

I will not. And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a motion in the House of Representatives. He needs a mirror. That's what he needs. It had a tremendous impact internationally. What impact did it have in Australia? Not the same. I think now the same impact and I have women, girls, men

rushing across roads in airports to come and talk to me about that speech in Australia and many women talking to me about how it's given them courage in difficult moments. So now I think it's equalised but at the time it was received by the federal press gallery as a big mistake, something that would cost me votes by men, the start of a gender war, which I ought not to have engaged in. So it was actually quite dimly viewed. And as the couple of days went on after the speech, the real extreme difference between that domestic reaction and how it was being received internationally just got clearer and clearer.

Now, Jude, at a WOW gathering yesterday, you said this is a defining moment in gender justice. What did you mean that this is a defining moment? Well, it relates, actually, to Julia's speech because I think the reason that you got this overwhelming response from around the world was, I would call that was the moment when you came out as a woman. Something I've referred to about myself when I started the WOW movement, where you no longer are prepared to be complicit or compromise the reality of what you

actually know to be true, and you say it. And what I've found now across the globe is that the voices of so many women who used to separate themselves deliberately, either politically or because some were in commerce or someone wanted to sort of, you know, define themselves as good housewives. I mean, all the different splits that made women very careful about how they talked about equality. I think those have evaporated almost entirely. And now you have this deluge of voices.

And I'm not just talking about the most active from the Me Too movement or the Black Lives Matter who have been critically important, but also the disabled women's movement. Women speaking about working class voices being necessary. Women from right across the world and being joined up by corporate women, political women, and everybody saying, this is enough now. And I have to say that it being legitimised and supported by boys and men, finally, in a way that isn't about, well, good on you sisters, we'll stand by until you get equality, but actually them saying, saying genuinely we need to change

and we're prepared to. But Julia, you've suggested recently that progress on gender equality is not just slow in some places, it's reversing. Why? The truth is the picture is very differential. We've got regions of the world where of course having girls being able to choose when and who they will marry being able to complete a full cycle of schooling they are still the big challenges in our nations Britain Australia obviously equal pay sexual harassment continue to be big challenges but we do know that the amount of time that will need to pass by at current rates of progress to get to economic and political equality are measured in the hundreds of years. The World Economic Forum has told us that. And the World Economic Forum told us this year that in Western countries, progress for women

had slipped back. Now, I think, you know, we've got to see whether that's a trend before we overreact. Inevitably, it seems to me there will be some years where progress is quicker than others. But generally, you know, I eat a lot of vegetables, but I'm not going to make it to 260. And so we need to really speed up the cycle here. And I think it relates to what Jude was saying. You know, the frustrating sense that women and men have is, you know, aren't we there yet? Why aren't we there yet? Let's speed up the progress.

But Jude, you seem very positive in what you said. And yet we know that more than 30 female world leaders and former leaders have called recently for a fight back against the erosion of women's rights. Susan McCorrer, the former Argentinian foreign minister, actually made that warning that women should guard against thinking their rights are safe. How justified is the concern that we really have to be attentive to it? Totally justified. The concern is very real because we can see in Brazil already

rights being rolled back. We can see in other places that they are contested rights because the world has not got an agreement that gender equality is something that is within our bones, within the natural order of things. That has not been agreed.

So we're still struggling for that to be the case, which is why all rights are basically contingent on people giving us those rights and they can take them away again. The reason I'm optimistic is because I see an acceleration of the voices who are prepared to be courageous. I see an acceleration of the voices who are prepared to stand up and say we will come together to fight anything that takes away our rights and to accelerate the rights going forward.

And I haven't seen that scale of courage before. And I can see it in very young women and I can also see older women returning back or changing their minds and saying for the first time, I'm in this fight now. Julia, you said in a recent article that women are often assumed to be too soft, emotional or hysterical. Why do you think such myths persist?

I think these unconscious biases are in all of us. And if we're honest with ourselves, there would be times when we've had whisper in the back of our heads, stereotypes about gender, about race, about a whole series of things. I've talked to many women about this and they have said, you know, yes, when I first went to work for a female boss, I did worry that she would be, you know, ruthless and hard bitten and not very likeable. And yet we know from psychological research now that, you know, that's a stereotype many people hold. And it's partly because when we see a woman become a leader and sort of become commanding, we think she's given up on the empathy bit. So we expect her to be, you know, ruthless and unfriendly. So we can all succumb to these stereotypes. What I think we've got to do is analyse and surface them, name them

and talk about them. And then instead of just succumbing to the whisper in the back of our heads, when we're in a situation where we're starting to listen to that whisper, we can stop ourselves and say, am I dealing with the facts here or am I allowing some unconscious bias to be a gloss over reality and I'm falling for something that isn't actually there? You are the only woman to have been Prime Minister in Australia so far. When will Australia have another female Prime Minister, maybe an Indigenous one?

Well, I hope I see in my lifetime many women serve as Prime Minister, including an Indigenous Australian. It's not on the cards in the immediate term. We have an election due in May and the Prime Minister's a man and the leader of the opposition's a man and one of them will emerge as the next Prime Minister. Obviously, being from my side of politics, I'm barracking for a change of government.

But what gives me a lot of optimism is my political party in Australia way back in the 1990s adopted an affirmative action target and it's on its way to 50% men, 50% women. And if you get there, that the parliament is equally shared, political parties are equally shared, then it becomes far more likely that a woman will come through to the leadership position. Julia Gillard and Jude Kelly. You may be familiar with the work of Melanie Reid and particularly the column she began for the Times magazine after her accident on Good Friday 2010 when she fell from her horse. She was 52 years old and broke her neck and fractured her lower back. She was paralysed from the top of her chest down and spent almost a year in hospital. She's written a memoir. It's called The World I Fell Out Of. I always felt, say it like it is, because disability is, it can be grim, it can be funny,

and it's largely hidden to the happy, shiny world that most able-bodied people exist in and see reflected back through the mirrors of TV and radio and the media, you know, advertising hoardings. They don't feature people with problems. How soon after the accident did you know how seriously hurt you were? The doctors informed us very early on that the likelihood was a wheelchair. I think Dave was told very quickly. That's your husband? My husband, sorry. Yeah, and it was only after I'd sort of come out

from the worst of the morphine, maybe a couple of weeks later, that they told me this. And, of course, I made denial an art form and I decided I was going to fight it. And that helped in a way. Of course, false hope is better than no hope. I've always believed that. I continue to believe that. And so I just fought very hard at rehabilitation. And I did improve. My condition did gradually improve because my spinal injury was such that I did get a little bit of nerve recovery and a little bit more mobility than I might have expected. So I think my condition was better

a year later than it looked at the time. You met a lot of people in that spinal injuries unit. You were there for a year, which is an enormous chunk of time, in a life that had been very rich and full of people and good times and all sorts of experiences before then. And you write brilliantly well about the mix of people and the mix of circumstances that have brought them there. It's unmakeupable. It is beyond fiction. It's true. There is the whole mix of people to whom disaster happens, and it's so random, so it's everyone from the highest in the land

to the lowest and the most unfortunate people. And we were there alongside each other, the professionals, the aristocrats, the people who were addicted to drink and drugs, the villains, the people who've been stabbed. It was like a maternity unit on steroids because you met absolutely everybody and you shared the same problems

and you got along with each other and you had to laugh at the same grim stuff and you made friends with the most wonderful people. It was great. I mean, it was one of the upsides was the black humour. But there's also a lot of very, very bad times. The nights at times just sound truly hideous. Well, they're grim because you have time to think. There are no distractions and you can't move very much. So you just lie there. You exist in your own head. And it's not a great place because you're

churning over your future and everything and the future is toxic. And I had good advice from other people who'd been through the experience who said just try to live in the moment and focus on getting through the next day and just do not dwell on what's going to happen because it's too grim to think about and you'll spoil the moment now if you if you do that so you do write in some detail about uh your bowels and about the importance of

of going to the loo it's it's incredibly important yeah bowels bowels matter yeah yeah and i know you also had a string of of infection bladder infections didn't you which have largely now been been dealt with but bowels um when you can't do a poo on your own, you have to be helped. And that's a, well, it's a complicated business at times and time consuming. It's a crash course in total rock bottom reality, doubling continents. Because when your bowels and your bladder are paralysed, you have to make them work artificially. And that means taking bucket loads of laxatives. And every morning in the hospital, you're hoisted onto a shower chair, wheeled over a loo, and your bowels are trained. Through bowel management, you're

trained to do a poo every morning. And then the nurse with the skillful index finger and latex gloves comes around. And these are wonderful women. They kneel down and they just put a finger in and they check that you're ready to go for the day. And upon them depends your happiness and your confidence and your ability to go out and live that day. Because if you live in fear of having an accident, you're not going to go out. So if you get your bowel management right, that's wonderful. But if you don't, then it's awful. And you learn to live with that. Longer term spinal injured people are blithe about it and can handle it. But I didn't get that far. And you now have a colostomy bag, don't you? Which I think has been hugely helpful. I had a colostomy and I wear stoma bags.

And for me, it was transformative. I can change them myself just with my damaged hands, but I can do it myself. And therefore, I don't have to go in a shower chair every morning. That was like getting half my life back. That was almost as good as being able to walk again because I could live again after that. Your relationship with Dave, who you mentioned, he features very prominently in the column in The Times. being able to walk again, because I could live again after that. Your relationship with Dave, who you mentioned, he features very prominently in the column in The Times.

He's also a big part of your memoir, The World I Fell Out Of. Your relationship with him is obviously changed by this. It can't be any other way, can it? No, it's like a nuclear explosion. You have to rebuild relationships after it. But he is a wonderful man, blessed with the most profoundly funny, great sense of humour. And he's very blunt.

He says it like it is, and he's very loyal. And he has evolved into the most fantastic, wonderful friend and lover and companion. And our relationship has developed into something which I'm very lucky to have. I know from other women who've had spinal injuries whose partners have not been able to cope and have left, just quite how I know how blessed I am. Melanie Reid and Felicity emailed, I have followed her column and found it enormously inspiring, even though I have not got a spinal disability. She has got me through my difficult times and given me hope too, even though my situation is not as bad. You can't have missed the fact that Kylie Jenner, at the age of only 21, has become, according to the Forbes list, the world's youngest self-made

billionaire. She's made her fortune from her cosmetics business and it's only recently been in any shops. The success came from her visibility on social media. 128.5 million followers on Twitter, the most watched person on Snapchat, with 4.1 million subscribers to her YouTube channel. But how self-made is she when she spent her life as a member of the Kardashian family, all of whom had extensive coverage on television and across the internet? Nairi Ambachan is one of the founders of the branding agency Stand. Bolo Babalola is a cultural commentator. What does she make of the self-made tag? I think the term self-made kind of implies that it's a rags to riches story where somebody you know struggled to build their business and started off with a small loan. I think that's the contention that a lot of people have.

So the self-made I understand the principle because technically she has made her own brand and her building a business and a name for herself separate from her family. But at the same time, she has been in the business since she was nine, essentially. She was on that reality TV show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. She watched her sisters and their businesses and essentially they themselves as individuals were built to be brands themselves so she was always going to be rich she always has been rich on the flip side of that though there are loads of heiresses and people who are born into rich families who don't manage to build their wealth into a brand that's worth billions. Billion dollars. Noreen, a lot of people have been very dismissive,

saying, oh, it's only her sister's sex tape that launched the family in the first place. How justified are those kind of criticisms? I don't think it's an easy thing to do, what she has done. I think you can look at Rob Kardashian, who had a similar platform similar kind of opportunity and I think he did have some socks at one point. You don't hear about Rob's socks she has done something very different and she has been the sister who has best monetized that brand so yes she had a platform she invested her own money into it but it was money she couldn't have

made without the bigger Kardashian-Jenner brand. But she has carved out her own brand, and I would say she's actually a brand within a brand within a brand because Kylie Jenner's lips are a brand in their own making. But why? What is it? Yes, she's a brand within a brand within a brand, and she does admit that she had very thin lips when she was younger and she's had them filled out but what

is it about the look that she presents that so appeals to so many young women she knows her audience she knows her audience and it's a very um for lack of a better term instagram look it's perfection and it's features that are kind of built to be ethnically ambiguous. You know, every kind of era has its own idealized image of beauty. And I think now it's ethnic ambiguity. And I think it's the tan and the bigger lips and everything that just seems so attractive to people. And I think with her building a makeup brand, it's made that look seem attainable to them, even if they can't afford those cosmetic procedures that she's had. But she does keep it.

This is going to sound slightly ridiculous, but she does keep it real in a way. She has authenticity because of things like it's starting from an insecurity. And I think people buy into brands that have a story and an authenticity. What do you mean it's starting from an insecurity? Because you look at the pictures of her with the hair looking amazing, the lips, the eyes, everything looking amazing. But the first thing she came out with was the lip kits. And that started from her insecurity about her own lips being too thin. Definitely.

And she kind of built it from there. And she also has the scar on her leg, which is kind of imperfect beauty. So I don't know whether it's genuine authenticity or the appearance of it. I mean, it took a while for her to admit that those were lip fillers. It was like years of people being like,

those are lip fillers before she came out and said it. And there was a whole episode about it. And you know what? I don't really blame her for not even coming out about it because she grew up in a family where looks were it looks were their brand and their looks were their identity and why they were famous so I can't even imagine being nine years old and growing up in that kind of environment and there's that pressure so it kind of makes sense that she would come out with something that was so linked to external beauty. So how much is it, Nairi, about her?

And how much is it about the family? I don't think you can separate the two. I think she has done something different and she has carved out her own brand. But she has undoubtedly used the platform that the Kardashian clan give her. But I do think they are too easy to knock. And I know we always say it started with a sex tape,

but actually Kim Kardashian, my dad would be impressed because the Kardashians have Armenian heritage, same as me. So I've kind of followed them. But Kim actually spent a lot of time building up a brand of her own around fashion and beauty, which whether you agree or disagree with it,

she did do some kind of legwork. And yes, the sex tape kind of is what propelled her. But they have all capitalised on that kind of brand and that that moment and who knows how much it is kind of chris jenner behind the scenes but they've all capitalized on it but kylie has done it better and she's done it differently and and she does say that she hasn't actually inherited any of the money with which she started the business yes and that she pays her mother to manage her yeah do you believe that yes yes i think christiana definitely takes a cut and i think more successful than a sister's because she's crossed over to a new generation the older kiddos are more millennials and she's gen z which is i have a young sister she's 20 so yeah that's

the that's the generation that comes after millennials so my sister reminds me that i'm millennial she's gen z so that's why I know that. But they are social media savvy. They live on social media. Everything is social media based. And that's why she has the most followers. And that's why she's able to cross over to that demographic is because she's of that time. So I suppose she is the ultimate influencer.

She is the ultimate influencer, yeah. I was talking to Bolo Babalola and Nairi Ambarchian. Now, on Monday, Jane will be here and she will be talking to Wendy Mitchell, who five years ago was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She was only 58. She tells Jane what it's like to live with early onset dementia and how she wrote her memoir, Somebody I Used to Know. That's two minutes past 10 on Monday morning. Do join Jane if you can from me for today. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who'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.