Woman's Hour - Knitted Sandringham, Donna McLean, Language of reproduction

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

The celebrations to mark her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee have officially begun. with events up and down the country over the coming months. One woman who's preparing her own very special tribute to the Queen is 92 year old Margaret Seaman. Margaret made headlines last year with her 'knitted Sandringham' which painstakingly recreated the palace and grounds of the Queen's Norfolk estate. Margaret joins Emma from her home in Great Yarmouth.Imagine finding out the love of your life never existed. Donna McLean first heard about undercover cops having relationships with female activists in 2010 when Mark Kennedy, an undercover police officer who had spent years pretending to be an environmental campaigner, was unmasked. She didn’t realise until years later she was also a victim of the Spy Cops scandal. Over 40 years, British police officers were sent undercover to infiltrate left-wing activist groups. Over 30 women, so far, have found out the men they fell in love were actually spying on them. In 2015 a message from an old friend turned Donna’s life upside down. She found out the 2 year long relationship she’d had with locksmith Carlo was in fact a lie. He was an undercover police officer. She has written a memoire Small Town Girl: Love, Lies and The Undercover Police.You may have heard the term 'pregnant people' being used in place of 'pregnant women'. It's intended to be inclusive of trans men and nonbinary people who are having a baby. Today a global group of women's health experts publish an article in the journal Frontiers of Global Women's Health, arguing that there are unintended consequences to shifting the language of reproduction in this way. They say these include compromising the accuracy of some medical research and results, and the dehumanisation of women by using terms that refer to them only by body part or function - for example 'cervix haver' or 'birth-giver'. Jenny Gamble, Professor of Midwifery at Coventry University, is one of the co-authors of the article and joins Emma.The Gilded Age is a new TV series created by Julian Fellowes - of Downton Abbey fame - which follows the lives of high society women in 1880s New York. But who are the real historical figures who inspired the series? We speak to social and fashion historian Elizabeth Block. Lata Mangeshkar, one of India's most beloved singers, has died aged 92. Described as the 'nightingale of Bollywood', she had a career that spanned more than half a century and her voice was the soundtrack to hundreds of Bollywood films. Her funeral took place earlier today in India, attended by Prime Minister Modi and stars of the entertainment industry. Two days of national mourning will follow. To reflect on her extraordinary legacy, Emma is joined by BBC presenter Nikki Bedi.Image: Sandringham as knitted by Margaret Seaman Credit: Keiron Tovell

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, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to the programme. A new week has dawned, but perhaps that means for you doing the same thing again and again, and perhaps happily, or at least with contentment, because today I would like to hear your stories of dedication. Inspired by the Queen's 70th anniversary of assuming the role as monarch yesterday, marking the beginning of her Platinum Jubilee, what have you been dedicated to for years?

It could have been a job, a role, an interest, an association, a relationship. Why and how did it start? We're told Her Majesty spent the anniversary in Sandringham, a place that means something to one of my guests today, 92-year-old Margaret Seaman, who has knitted an incredible replica of the Queen's Norfolk estate and spent two years doing so. That is dedication to wool. It really is. We're going to be hearing all about that and her new project to come. But tell me yours what have you been dedicated to and why to whom tell me here at women's hour 84844 is the number

you need to text us text will be charged at your standard message rate on social media at bbc women's hour or email me through the women's hour website what have you been dedicated to and why and what does it give you and perhaps give others? Also on today's programme, language described as inclusive with regards to pregnancy is actually harmful to women. That's what one academic midwife is arguing. We'll hear her case. And a tribute today to Lutta Mungangeshkar, one of India's most beloved singers who died aged 92 yesterday

and is considered a true Bollywood trailblazer. All that to come on the programme, so stay with us. But let me put this to you. Imagine finding out the love of your life never existed. Donna McLean first heard about undercover police officers having relationships with female activists in 2010, when Mark Kennedy, an undercover police officer who'd spent years pretending to be an environmental campaigner,

was unmasked. She didn't realise until years later she was also a victim of the so-called spy cop scandal. Over 40 years, British police officers were sent undercover to infiltrate left-wing activist groups. So far, more than 30 women have found out that the men that they fell in love with were actually spying on them. Donna is one of them and is contributing to the government's

undercover policing inquiry, which is set to be one of the UK's most delayed and expensive inquiries. In 2015, a message from an old friend turned Donna's life upside down. She found out that the two-year-long relationship she'd had with a locksmith called Carlo was in fact a lie. He was an undercover police officer. His name, his traumatic backstory and his nervous breakdown that ended their relationship, none of it true. She's now written a memoir called

Small Town Girl, Love, Lies and the Undercover Police. And when we started talking, I began by asking how she first came to meet and know Carlo. I met Carlo on an anti-war demonstration. So it was 2002 September and the very first big demonstration that was called after the Iraq war had been announced by Tony Blair. And what was it like, that that meeting and how did you get to know each other? It was kind of an accidental meeting because I was meant to meet some friends but because the march was so huge I missed them and then I bumped into a friend from work who was

with Carlo and they were stewards on the march so they both had the kind of high vids on and that's how they stood out amongst this huge crowd. But'd actually met Carlo before nine months previously when I lived with my ex-boyfriend but he claimed to not remember he claimed he never remembered meeting me so as far as he was concerned that was our first meeting and I knew that I'd met him before but he didn't remember that at all. And you got close very quickly in your in your relationship. It was a very immediate intimacy. We spent that day together with our friends. We went for dinner with friends and then we went home together that night. So we were instantly in a relationship.

And very quickly, a marriage proposal. Very quickly. So he moved in after six weeks because he was basically in my flat every day anyway. He was there after work every day. When I got home from work, he was either cooking or we went out. And then we had a party for Hugmanay or New Year's Eve. And he proposed then. So that was three months after we met, almost to the day. And how happy were you? I was over the moon. I did not believe that after the end of a very long relationship I was going to meet someone

A so quickly and B even have that kind of that feeling for someone that they'd be a life partner I was very I was surprised but I also wasn't surprised because it felt incredibly normal and natural and it just felt like it was meant to be felt like we were meant to be together

and you know you were walking around doing what couples do planning your future talking about what you'd name your children we did all of that we spent a lot of time with other friends we spent time with my family he'd met my family twice by the time we got engaged and we were planning a future you know into the kind of a decade ahead, talking about the name of our dog, talking about where we might live in the future. How old were you when he proposed? I was 30. Okay. And was there anything about his story, his personal story, that he had told you that would have, could have made you suspicious? I wasn't remotely suspicious.

There was a story about his family that he told me there was trauma in his background he told me that pretty much immediately and I never met his family but I didn't disbelieve any of it it felt genuine it all felt very genuine

and I think the surrounding people my friends, my family, my work colleagues they felt he was really genuine as well. So there was nothing particularly at that point that made me question it. It was a long engagement. How long were you engaged? Well, we were together for over two years. So that was the kind of the length of the engagement. Because you never did get married? We never did get married, no.

What happened when it ended? When it ended? So it sort of ended initially when he moved out and he went to live with a friend who was an activist. And then he appeared back two weeks later and said he wanted to give it another go but didn't want to live with me because he really needed to sort his head out. He had a lot of psychological problems at that point.

And again, that related back to stuff that had happened in childhood. So we kind of continued for another six months. He'd moved all his stuff out, so I came home from work one day and he'd basically gone. Two weeks later he came back, and then six months of continuing to see each other, we maybe stayed together two or three nights a week, and then he ended it one day by sending me an email to work,

my work email address, because that was the only email address I had at that point. It was back in those days. So that was the end end of it and I never saw him again after that that was just over two years after we'd met. And what was the impact on you? It was a really horrible horrible time in my life because the the six-month period where we'd still been together but not fully together was extraordinarily draining and the time prior to that when his mental health had apparently started to become an issue that was that was also exhausting so I felt like a bit of a carer at that point

but it consumed me so it got in the way of work and my friendships and by the time he actually finished the relationship completely I was in quite a bad place really psychologically and physically and I needed a bit of kind of TLC at that point so I went to live with a friend for a while because I also was homeless then so we'd been looking for a place to live the place where we were living was coming to an end and we didn't sort anywhere out so when he when he left I was effectively kind of sofa surfing for a while. How did you find out that he wasn't who he says he was or said he was? So 10 years later so we kind of fast forward to July 2015 I got a message out of the blue from a friend

from that period of time I'd moved away since then. I'd kind of left London, gone to the seaside, had children, and I had no idea. So I wasn't really in touch with people. But they'd been doing some background work because a lot of stories had come out about spy cops at that point. We knew about Mark Kennedy. We had the whistleblower, Peter Francis, Rob Evans, and Paul Lewis had written their book, Undercover.

So a friend got in touch and just sent me a message saying, we need to talk about Carlo. Can you come and meet us? And from there, it sort of became a huge part of my life. It became almost like being a detective. So I was trying to reconcile the fact that a huge part of my life didn't exist. It was a lie. It was a complete fake, but also find out the truth at the same time.

What was the moment though that you were told definitively and you believed that he wasn't who he said he was? When I went to meet the group, so very shortly after that first message, I went to meet them, actually met them in King's Cross, travelled up from the seaside on the train, feeling quite anxious. And they said, we know he's an undercover cop. We're trying to find out his real name, but we know categorically he was an undercover cop. And they'd been doing quite a lot of work with researchers and with journalists.

And they'd started working with the BBC as well, actually. So Newsnight had already started to look at the story as well at that point. What was your reaction? I think this thing happens and it's just happened again. I always get these hairs come up on the back of my neck because you suddenly realise you're part of this story and it's not, you know, what you thought wasn't real, what you believed wasn't real, none of it was real.

And then you kind of step back and it becomes a little bit disorientating. So I was trying to process it. But also, I couldn't quite work out why me? You know, why was I chosen? Why was I targeted in this way? Because you weren't that active politically. You were going on marches and were friends with people. I was very good friends with a lot of activists. I was a trade union rep at work. I came from a fairly politically active family. But my, you know, my job kind of consumed me. I was really busy with work. And that was one of the, you know, the focus at that point. So I couldn't, I wasn't a professional activist.

I wasn't involved to the point where I thought anyone would have any interest in my life whatsoever. And that just didn't make sense to some to some degree it hasn't made sense ever since because no one actually knows why they were targeted because we've never seen the files so we don't know what's written down about us but i suppose also you know some listening to this will say you know that's not the focus you know why you were picked it's just the fact that it happened and and some of the detail the fact that you you know, he was married and he, I believe, was having or had already had children and was then going to have another child while he was with you, with his wife. Did she know? No, no, none. The wives didn't know. The wives were

completely in the dark as to what their husbands were doing when they were at work. So when he was with me, he was at work. And then when he was with me, he was at work. And then when he was at home, he was at home. And I believed he was at work when he was actually with his family. So he had two families and he had two lives. And they managed to, you know, Carlo and the others managed to sustain this for really long periods of time. So you're talking about five, six years of being undercover in a really, you know, immersive role, actually. It's almost

like being a state-sponsored actor, I think. Yes. Because they were able to sustain these two lives for such a lengthy period of time. You met others who this had happened to, and how important was that in your fight for justice? In terms of the fight for justice it was hugely important because that introduced me to the cases that had happened already. There was a case a huge case settled just as I kind of found out so that was 2015. The first eight women who discovered that their ex-partners were undercover police officers had won a case against the Met. They introduced me to my lawyer Harriet Westridge who is wonderful, and who is, you know, extremely well known for the work she does in fighting state corruption

and working for women. She's a regular guest on the show. She's wonderful. The other thing that they did was they gave me that support that otherwise, I think it would have been an incredibly difficult thing to navigate. It is an incredibly difficult thing to navigate. But when you have other people who've experienced it, you have this kind of core of peer support and understanding and just this sort of care around you that you wouldn't get anywhere else because it's such a bizarre unusual experience and it's really hard to actually it's hard to describe it it's hard often to describe the process of how you come to understand what's happened to you um so to have people around who've experienced it is is probably the most important thing in in surviving I reckon and and you did win your

case I did yeah so I settled a case after five and a half years that was last year so that was a civil case um and the undercover policing inquiry is still ongoing. It is, and I will come back to that. Yeah. And at that point, it was a big moment for you as well because you decided to come out, to have your identity public. Yeah. So I'd had a pseudonym for almost five years.

I called myself Andrea at that point. And when I did interviews or when I wrote articles, that was all under that assumed name. But it came to a point for me where it felt like that was an additional weight. It felt quite exhausting. And it felt that I could, for me personally, in order to move forward and in order to kind of bring my life back together, I needed to just be myself.

And also, why should you have anything to hide I think that's the other thing it felt like it was a forced double life I felt like I'd been forced into that situation for no reason because I'd done nothing wrong and actually you know the people who had done something wrong would would have to be held to account if I stood up and spoken my own name much more so that was a massive thing for me I was a bit anxious about it obviously because you kind of have this you have you can have this this privacy but I think in terms of dropping the the anonymity and being myself it's been hugely hugely beneficial. I presume those closest to you had known before? Yeah apart from my

children who I felt at that point they were the right age to kind of try and comprehend and process what happened so telling them the story as well in a in a simplified fashion but it felt like that was the right time. If you don't mind me asking and feel free not not to answer but how was that for you and for them? It felt really beneficial for me. It felt very cathartic because I'd been hiding a chunk of my life. They were very pragmatic about it. And one of the comments one of them said was, so when you spent all that time with Lush,

you weren't actually teaching them mindfulness? I said, no, I wasn't teaching them mindfulness. As in, are you talking about going to do a client job? Yeah, Lush did a huge campaign, Spy Corps campaign, and every single one of their shops had the window campaign it was incredibly controversial um but i used to come home with bath bombs all the time and they'd be like oh what are you teaching them mindfulness again mummy and i was like yeah i'm going to teach mindfulness to lush but i think they've you know they've known about it for over a year now so they've really

sort of got their head around it as far as you can as far as anyone can get their heads around it because it's such a bizarre and unusual thing but I've you know I felt that in terms of how I processed it and writing the book that's been part of the next bit of the journey really in order to actually move away from it and start to take my own life back because a lot of it consumes you and the case consumes you and the way that you're scrutinized in a civil case consumes you so it's been able to kind of take that forward and move on to the next bit I think. How did your immediate family the the ones who were old enough to hear about it how did they react? Well they were shocked because they knew him really well and they'd welcomed him into their life. They'd really, my mum especially and my sister had, you know, they loved him. They thought he was wonderful.

My uncle, my stepdad. So my closest family thought he was a great person and thought he was the right person for me. And they had their own relationship with him. So, you know, they would have conversations on the phone. He would send them presents. And they felt betrayed, very angry on my behalf, but they also felt incredibly betrayed because he'd infiltrated their lives too. It's a duping of a whole group of people. It's huge and there's the whole friendship circle. So my very close friends, my oldest

friends from Scotland, my work friends from London at that point, all of them just had this huge, again, the same disorientating experience that I had, because they believed and trusted this person and invited him into their homes as well. You still got to give evidence to that undercover police inquiry. It has been delayed. Eventually I will give evidence. 2025. It's been delayed because of COVID this time time but it has been taking a long time. It has taken a really long time so I should have given evidence last summer that was the original schedule for it but it will be. Well it's been described as one of the most complicated expensive

and delayed public inquiries ever in British legal history so the hearing you hope will be soon. Well that if it's 2025, I will be surprised. I think it will probably delay further. I think that's been the history of it. And the process itself is incredibly frustrating because it's supposed to be a public inquiry and it's actually very secretive. It does not deliver on the public part or the transparency at all.

So I mentioned earlier, I've not seen any files. I know there's files, but I've not seen anything, nothing to kind of indicate why, why what happened happened, why I was targeted, what was written down about me. So will Carlo be there? Yes. So when you give evidence, he will be in the room? Yeah. That's your understanding?

Theoretically, that's what's going to happen. What are you going to say to him if you get the chance? I really don't know, Emma. I cannot. I can have scenarios in my head, but I think it will depend on the day, on the time, on how I feel. I think seeing him will be very odd. It'll be incredibly odd. I've not seen him him for 20 years and there's a huge part of me that just thinks well I would not believe a word you said to me anyway so if I asked you a question I don't think I could believe the answer so I think that's quite it's quite hard but I think you know we're human and it's incredibly difficult to know how you will react in a situation like that especially when this this whole you know deive relationship, this whole state-sponsored lie

has taken up such a lot of my life now that it's almost, you know, it's 20 years if you count the relationship, the aftermath, the finding out, the cases, you know, the law. It's a long time. Has it been hard to not be anxious and to have faith and trust in people? It was hard for a while, but it's not like that anymore. I think there's been a process. There's been a process of recovery.

There's been a process of healing. And I'm really, really glad and I'm really grateful that I've gone back to being a very trusting person again because I would hate to have to live in that way. I'd hate to have to be suspicious of people. Does that trust extend to the police? No, no, it does not. Donna McLean, the book is called

Small Town Girl, Love, Lies and the Undercover Police. Well, here's a statement from that undercover policing inquiry. The inquiry is conducting its investigations into undercover policing in broadly chronological order starting in the 60s. The inquiry has held two public oral hearings already, November 2020 and April 2021, where it heard evidence from former undercover officers

of the Special Demonstration Squad and civilian witnesses affected by their deployments during the period of 1968 to 1982. The inquiry's next set of evidence hearings take place in May of this year and are open to the public. At those hearings, the inquiry will primarily hear from special demonstration squad managers active between 68 and 82. Of course, we'll keep across any developments with the undercover policing inquiry that Donna is also looking ahead to giving evidence to. But our conversation with Donna, my conversation there, followed on from a series of reports and insights

we've been carrying on the programme about the conduct of certain police officers and the police's attempts to rid various forces of misogyny, abuse and racism. Many conversations to which you have also contributed, if you want to catch up on any of that, do look back up on Woman's Hour on BBC Sounds. But the celebrations to mark Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee have officially begun. We'll be seeing events up and down the country over the coming months and we can all look forward to the extended bank holiday weekend in June. One woman who's preparing

her own very special tribute to the Queen is 92-year-old Margaret Seaman. Now Margaret made headlines last year with her knitted Sandringham. It's incredible, it's painstaking and she has painstakingly recreated the Queen's Norfolk residence and the grounds of her estate. Margaret joins me now from her home in Great Yarmouth where she lives with her daughter Tricia. Good morning Margaret. Good morning, how are you? I'm all the better for talking to you. And having had a good look at your knitted Sandringham, it really is glorious. And what inspired you to do it?

I just tried to think of something that everybody would enjoy looking at and something that interests most people, the royalty, doesn't it? And where is it now? It's in store in Norwich and it will be on exhibition again at the Makers Festival in Norwich at the Forum on March 9th. Amazing. And it will be there till the 20th.

I mean, if we are on the radio, and I do wish to try and pay tribute to this, we will post some pictures, I hope, on our social media account and on our website. But it's so beautifully detailed with all the flowers and there's individuals that you've created. And I wonder what you could say about that detail. How did you decide what to leave in and what to leave out? Well, when I first thought about doing sandringham

um i'd been to sandringham for the weekend with my grandson he took me there for my 90th birthday as a treat so i'd had a good look at it and i thought about it a lot and i thought i'd like to go up again take some more pictures of it so i had a couple of days in Sandringham and took lots of pictures of it and then studied the pictures and thought, yes, maybe I can do the big house. I'll try that. And that's what I done first. After the big house was finished,

we then went into lockdown. So I thought I might as well continue doing the other buildings. And that was how it all happened. And what is it actually around is what's inside the buildings because obviously you've got the wool on the outside yes yes the buildings are built with polystyrene blocks they're all about four by six inches square like a house brick only about half the size and i get the shape of the building

with that for the bay windows and the pieces that jut out and the extensions and things. And then I knit the wall to cover them, make sure the knitting fits them nice and tight. Is there a knitted queen? Is there a Her Majesty on the grounds? There's a little knitted queen and the Duke on the balcony at the front side of their house. There you go. You've got to get that right. Have you met the queen? I believe you have. I did, yes. Yes, I did meet the queen. When we were displaying, we took Sandringham, the knitted Sandringham, to Sandringham House.

And we were in the ballroom there for several weeks raising money for three hospitals, local hospitals. And that's when I met her. I had no idea she was coming. She just walked in and spoke to us. It was absolutely wonderful.

Highlight of my life. I was going to say, that's maybe the best way to meet her if you don't know you're about to. Probably. If I'd have known, I could have been a nervous wreck. And what did she say to you about your creation?

I think she enjoyed it. It was a private meeting and I'm not allowed to comment on it. Sorry. It was lovely and I'm sure she enjoyed it. There you go. I'm told. But as a journalist, I've always got to try and ask the question. And a highlight of your life,

and you're not stopping with the knitting. No, no. I'm knitting a new one for this year. It's not so big, but I think people will be interested. Tell us what you're creating. It's to do with the Platinum, yes A celebration for the Queen

Yes And we're keeping it under wraps until that's uncovered at the Forum Okay, so this is at the Makers Forum in Norfolk The Makers Festival at the Forum, yes It's March the 19th to 20th Okay, and there'll be a reveal So is it another one of the palaces, or is it something totally different? No,

it's to do with one of the palaces, but it's not buildings. It's nothing like last year's. Nothing at all. Well, last year's was absolutely incredible. Congratulations again. Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's just amazing. I squealed with delight when I saw

the pictures of it this morning. I somehow had missed it when it was first reported last year. We've got lots of messages from people coming in about what they've dedicated their lives and their time to, inspired by the Queen, of course, with the 70th anniversary officially being yesterday, but also with your dedication to wool. What does knitting give you? The satisfaction of filling my time in. It gives me something to do when I've got nothing else to do.

I'm afraid I'm past work and I either hoover or do the garden or do things like that now because I can't. But I can sit and knit. You really can knit. I mean mean it's amazing i live with my daughter and anywhere i need to go she takes me if i need wool or glue or wood or anything that i need she takes me to the shops to get them and she helps me with the trees and that that we make there's over 100 trees on sandringham and she helps me with those so I'm very fortunate. Well good luck for the next project. We await with bated breath.

Margaret, lovely to talk to you this morning. Thank you very much, nice to talk to you. Margaret Seaman there who knitted Sandringham and now working on something else. Your messages coming in about dedication, what you've dedicated time, energy and anything else you want to share. A message here. Hello, Emma. I'm 61. I've been dedicated to the life of an artist from leaving

school. I've been a graphic designer, a children's book illustrator, portrait artist, now a wildlife painter. I am, as I speak, or as I write, certainly in my cabin, in the garden, varnishing a heron. Have always managed to make a living and evolve through life to keep on working, sometimes needing to believe and definitely a dedication. I've dedicated 22 years of my working life to the probation service, reads this message. I have felt I found my vocation when I started as a trainee probation officer all those years ago. Now I'm training new officers and passing on my passion for a job I love, despite the challenges of working in the public sector and with a lot of trauma. I feel privileged to be in a position to help people change their lives for the better

whilst making the public safer. That's from Sarah in Worthing. And a few other ones coming in with regards to jobs, but also relationships. Dan says, I've been dedicated to my two sons. We all know children are a lifelong dedication, but even if children are unplanned, they are the most rewarding and joyous of experiences.

Keep those messages coming in. And there's a huge range there about the dedications that you wish to tell us about. And of course, it could include crafting. It could include things just inspired by that conversation you heard with Margaret Seaman. And we will post those photos. But just to tell you about something coming up that we would really appreciate your contribution to if you felt you could. In April, no fault divorces come into effect in England and Wales. And the aim is to make divorce a more amicable and straightforward experience.

More than 40% of marriages do end in divorce. Most of us would have been affected by one, our own, our parents, our children, our friends. But we don't still really speak very easily about the process or the fallout. So if you can, could you get in touch to tell us about how divorce has shaped your life positively or negatively? Perhaps you had to leave, maybe you were in danger, maybe you're in the middle of getting divorced right now. You can email us via the Woman's Hour website and of course i should say you can be anonymous or text 84844 and we will come back to you if we can but thank you very much in advance

for contributing some of those discussions or to that discussion and so your stories there because they're not easy a lot of them or you might feel you want it out there do get in touch but in terms of language and also we just heard from Dan there about children and the lifelong dedication, let's talk about the language around all of that, because you may have heard the term pregnant people being used in place of pregnant women in recent years. Indeed, it's a phrase used by some guests on this very programme. Sometimes it's intended to be inclusive of trans men and non-binary people who are having a baby. Sometimes people

just say the phrase unthinkingly. But today, a global group of women's health experts have published the final version of an article in the journal Frontiers of Global Women's Health, arguing that there are unintended consequences to shifting the language of reproduction in this way. They say these include compromising the accuracy of some medical research and results and the dehumanisation of women by using terms that refer to them only by body parts or function. For example, cervix haver or birth giver. I'm joined by one of the co-authors of that article, Jenny Gamble, professor of midwifery at Coventry University. Good morning. Good morning.

Thanks for being with us. Now, just to start with some examples in a medical setting that have given you cause for concern, what are they? Well, I think you've already given some, but the notion that the word woman and women is being replaced with person, people, families, which sound very innocuous, or the words mother and mothers being replaced by parents or family. Or, as you quite rightly said, sometimes vagina owners or birthers,

sometimes in fact non-males or non-men are used to denote women. The famous one, of course, one that really hits big time news was the Lancet medical journal, which talked about bodies with vaginas have been neglected. Now, that was in a journal. And I suppose some of the examples you've given will be drawn from a range of places. But are you seeing this in use across the NHS, for instance? Yeah, absolutely. So in fact, it is that move quite rapid, we and extreme to change the language without really thinking through the implications of that and the potential negative consequences. So yes we are seeing that

in the NHS as well. I'm sure your listeners will be able to provide lots of examples but we've also provided some examples. Let's come back to that as well in just a moment. But to stay with the idea of the impact of this potentially, and specifically about communicating the results of medical research. One of the examples you've spoken about, you've written about, is those who are pregnant and their babies have significantly higher risk from COVID than non-pregnant people. What's the problem there?

I think, well, non-pregnant people is everybody is not pregnant, which includes men and women, of course. So it was an early version of a vaccination guide and it needed to contain language. So we think they just did a finder, a place, women with people. But it incorrectly represented the research on COVID, its severity for women, for breastfeeding women. So it distorts the meaning of the language. If you put in pregnant women with other people, for instance, it just distorts the whole meaning of it. Non-pregnant, it should be non-pregnant women.

You know, sorry, I'm getting myself a little bit confused here. But if you go back to your example, if you start to group up people that shouldn't be in the group by using language that was intended to be good language, like to be kind and considerate, then what you end up doing is, of course, confusing the message. So that's the concern here about the impact on the message not getting through or being diluted or not being understood. No, that's one of the negative consequences. So we detailed eight potential negative consequences.

One of them was around decreasing overall inclusivity. So this works against the plain language principle. The common understanding is more difficult, especially for people who are young or with low literacy levels. We talked about it dehumanising women by talking about their body parts or their physiological processes. Is there any research on what women think about this? Or are you looking at this now at the beginning of it, trying to figure out what the impact will be? So we're looking at the broader impacts,

the broader impacts across the whole process. So I think I need to go back to a few first principles for your listeners. It's that notion of talking about sex as a reproductive category versus gender as a societal role versus gender identity, an inner sense of self. And they're being used synonymously when they're not synonymous. So really what we're trying to argue is it's important when you're talking about things that are essentially part of the female reproduction that they are inherently sexed and you should use terms in their sexed sense.

So woman should be in terms of a sex sense as a reproductive category because if you do that then all women are the ones that get pregnant give birth and you know breastfeed babies some women don't identify with being a woman trans men don't identify with being a woman and of course there needs to be compassionate respectful care for. But we're talking about changing terms used for the population, not at an individual level. So if you're a trans man, biologically female, coming in to have a baby, of course you should have language

that is respectful and compassionate and tailored to your needs. But what we're seeing is wholesale change of language and that's bringing about a range of different problems for everybody, quite frankly, including trans men. I asked about if there's been research to show how women feel about this or their response to receiving care, or if it has led, for instance, to not receiving care that they should have done because they maybe misunderstood communication.

Is there any? So years ago, there was research where we tried to get rid of the word patient and women told us that they wanted to be called women but no I haven't seen any research from individual women or women say in a survey where they are arguing against the this de-sexing of language around women. But you can speak to any women's group. You can look on social media. You can read reports about it, comments to our paper, for instance, in three different countries now, and see that women are distressed about the dehumanising nature of it.

I don't tend to do my research on social media for reasons you will understand. If we did that, we'd go down a tunnel in lots of ways that would not necessarily be representative. I ask that because it's understanding about where we are up to with this. Because there was a headline last year that when you actually look behind the headline, wasn't quite the case. So Brighton and Sussex University hospitals generated a lot of headlines last year for apparently introducing gender inclusive language for midwives that included chest feeding and birthing parent. But behind the headlines, there was something different. At the time, the trust said that midwives would be asked to use language reflecting people's own identities and preferences so they can choose, essentially. And I could go on a bit more about that.

But you just said it should be tailored to the individual. So those headlines have actually been perhaps unhelpful, you could argue, because they were misleading. Oh, I think any headline that is misleading about the intent of what's gone on behind it is unhelpful. Yeah, of course. So people should... It also revealed what was going on, which was that individuals were being given choices to how they spoke to individuals. And some people may feel, some women may feel, that that is the right approach. Oh, we argue that that's the right approach. That's entirely the right approach.

That on an individual level, people should have compassionate, respectful care. And you should use terminology that fits and tailors to their individual needs. Of course. Because otherwise, you're going to alienate people from health care. Yes. So on that point, there's been research carried out last year that showed over a third of trans men and non-binary people with a cervix were unaware that those registered male with their GP would not automatically be invited for cervical screenings, which, of course, contributes to a low attendance in that group. Some have argued that's a good reason for being inclusive in health language. We would definitely argue that, in fact, that causes a whole lot of poor health care because people miss out that needs care tailored to them.

So that's the problem with recording gender identity as opposed to recording sex. So we'd argue that you should be recorded with both at your GP so you can be treated accurately and sensitively. And that isn't happening, not as both? Well, I'm relatively new to the NHS, so I don't know if that's a universal policy or not. But you gave the example of a trans man who wasn't identified as a female, wasn't correctly listed as a female and therefore didn't get information about cervical screening,

cervical cancer screening. Jenny, just to say, we invited professional bodies onto the programme, such as the Royal College of Midwives, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and also others who would have and have shown an interest in this in the past. No one was available or willing to take part in this conversation. What have midwives told you? I recognise you moved here, I believe, from Australia last year. But what are you hearing from midwives about language

and what they want to do in this area? I think it comes back to the same old, same old, that what we want to be able to talk about is reproductive health, careful women having babies, using sex-based language. We think that it helps in terms of overall inclusivity to do that. We think it's a humanistic approach. We think that it avoids people who who should be so if you use sex language it avoids it avoids inadvertently including people who should be excluded so um it and it's a common

biology like it's the biology using it as a sex term but they all of the midwives i've ever spoken to across this country or any other completely think that, or completely believe and practice that individualised language needs to be individualised. But that's not just for trans men. That's for women from different cultural groups. What's the problem? You're not saying there's a problem,

but you've said all the midwives you've spoken to are doing what you're thinking should be right anyway. The problem is there is censoring coming in at a broader level. We've got two supplementary files to the paper. One of them, as you know, gives examples of using desexed language and the implications of that. We talked about pregnant women with COVID having a higher risk of certain complications compared to non-pregnant people with COVID of the same age. We've talked about the chance of getting pregnant if you have unprotected sex within the first year. And if you lump women in with people, then in fact, those figures are distorted.

So in fact, we've got quite a lot of examples where things are happening. That last example that you gave, just to say has been updated, it's been changed. It was updated because people raised it with them, wasn't updated because they raised it with them wasn't updated because they thought through the issue oh people like um members of the um team team who's published a paper so we talk about the bosses of the nhs at different trusts

oh sorry are you talking about the covid one in australia or are you talking about the one here at nhs no i'm interested in the nhs here i'm trying to understand. You're talking about censoring. You're talking about this is changing. It's not about what individual midwives feel. I can give you a direct example of being asked, of presenting on a midwifery conference that my findings were tweeted out and the terms were changed to de-sex language. So what I was talking about is women fearful of birth and the tweet from the conference organisers talked about people fearful of birth. So sorry, because that's a conference organiser

and I'm not going to name names here, but it would be good to follow up, I suppose, on this. It's in the paper. Fine, that's fine. But what I'm trying to say is are you saying this is a culture-wide issue or just NHS? Because a conference organised is also different again. Sure. Well, it is NHS, but it is a culture-wide issue as well.

Like The Lancet, that's a journal. You can see that's an example where it's a culture-wide thing. Some of the authors are being asked to de-sex language when they think that sex language is important. So what would you say about just solutions then? I'm minded of an interview I interviewed Nancy Kelly last year, the chief executive of Stonewall, the LGBTQ plus campaigning group. And she said additive language.

So in this case, pregnant women and people was something they said to organisations they work with trying to promote inclusion. Is that the solution or not? Well, two things. As soon as you do that, what seems to be my experience of being here for a relatively short period of time is that the women bit gets dropped very quickly, especially when you're in word-constrained environments

like papers or tweets. But when you use an additional word, say going from women to women and birthing parents, the addition actually changes the meaning of women from a sexed word that includes adult female people to a gender identity. And there are flow on effects. It can be inappropriately include male people as a gender identity, and you would have seen that, and not see themselves as included in the gendered use of the term. And it's confusing. For instance, one of the examples in the supplementary file, the paper speaks of women and pregnant people being underrepresented in research, seeming to suggest they're two different groups of people,

women and pregnant people, when in fact, when you read the research, there's just one group, women, a subset of which are pregnant. So I can get a long-winded example, for instance. Yeah, no, well, I think those examples do speak to what you're saying and what you're arguing in this paper. And also, it also loses girls in this, I have to say. Girls don't get a look in at all. Jenny Gamble, Professor of Midwifery at Coventry University. Thank you. Some messages already coming in on that I hope to return to say. Girls don't get a look in at all. Jenny Gamble, Professor of Midwifery at Coventry University.

Thank you. Some messages already coming in that I hope to return to shortly. But to something else to take your attention to, some of you may have been watching The Gilded Age, which is a new TV series created by Julian Fellows, he of Downton Abbey fame. He swapped the British aristocracy for New York's high society. It's safe to say the critical response, the TV reviewers, they've been mixed.

But set in the 1880s, I should say, it dramatises the glamorous lifestyles of the Manhattan elite society, hostesses try and outdo one another with parties and extravagant displays of wealth. But it also explores the social tension between the old moneyed set and the social climbing nouveau riche. But who are the real historical figures who inspired the series? And why should anyone care? Well, I spoke earlier to

Elizabeth Block, a fashion and social historian and senior editor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She's also author of the book Dressing Up, The Women Who Influenced French Fashion. I began by asking her where the term the Gilded Age comes from. It is a historical term. The Gilded Age comes from a story, a satirical story that Mark Twain wrote in 1873. And it speaks to this moment of gilding the lily. So 1% of the population had such massive wealth and they took it to such extremes, spending furiously on every single possession that they could possibly have. But at the same time, there was this discrepancy where we also had massive waves of immigrants coming in from Europe. The inequality is nearly unspeakable.

And there are certain families, certainly in America, that we're talking about. Tell us some of the names. Sure. We're talking about the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Roosevelts, the Skirmerhorns. Probably the two household names are Astor and Vanderbilt at the moment, and we speak them in the same breath. These were millionaires, titans of industry. The husbands were making making money in railroads, in silver mining and in petroleum and just really controlling most of the country's wealth at the time. I mean, of course, huge amounts of money had been made before, but as I should clarify, not quite in this way. And there was also rivalry and discrepancies between old money and new money. Old money and new money. So when we think about the Astors, we think about the blue blood New York families. So the families that came over during the colonial era, coming over,

making their money very early in these very colonial industries of like fur trading. So that's the Astor family. And then it just passes down generation after generation. And then you have the upstart families, the nouveau riche, if you will, like the Vanderbilts. So Alva Vanderbilt came from Mobile, Alabama. She was from a Southern family that was a sort of middle standing, but then she marries into the Vanderbilt wealth. So she marries a real estate magnate and they come to New York and try to break into society. And all Alba Vanderbilt wants to do is win the approval of Caroline Astor and of the old money families. There'll be some people quite understandably listening to you and I talk thinking, why on

earth have I got to hear about these two? Did they do anything for anyone else? Did they do any good apart from building as bigger mansions as possible and throwing an even more luxurious party than the next one? You know, as I say in my new book called Dressing Up, where I focus on the women's spending, you know, we need to recognize the impact that these women had. So there's an arc to their story. Yes, they were women who were spending there's an arc to their story. Yes, they were women who were spending their husband's money and their father's money and their brother's money to an extent, but they were doing it with intention. And that's one of the main themes that I look at in the book is that they were buying fashions from the most premier houses of fashion in Paris, especially.

So we think about the Maison Félix, the House of Worth, the House of Ducey, Paquin. These were designers, men and women designers. And the American patrons were really upholding this economy. So they could make or break a designer's career. I mean, that's power. And I suppose the power again, is also a lot of people like still today, like to follow what these people did, what these women did, they were powerful to others, you could buy, I understand, postcards of them or pictures of them in whatever they were wearing. At the biggest parties, which were the costume balls, we call them fancy balls that took place in New York. Alva Vanderbilt very famously had one in 1883. It was a costume ball and she had a thousand invitations go out. We think 600 people attended. She did not give directions as to exactly what people

should wear. So men and women came in costumes from all different ages. And she spent, you know, thousands of dollars on the food and the flowers and all. And the impact of that was that these women who came dressed as hornets, bees, chocolate sellers, you know, porcelain figures from the 18th century, They were the trendsetters of the period. They were really the first generation of influencers. And there were photographers who came to the parties and took pictures of them and would reproduce them in cabinet cards. And these cabinet cards would circulate. So we have these terrific black and white, of course, photographs from Jose Mora was one of the main photographers who came to the vanderbilt party he set up sort of a drop back setting and and could swap it out and then these cabinet

cards would circulate in um multiples and women could take a card to their local dressmaker and say i would like to look like this yeah and so i'm you know i think i think there's a bit of a template now for extremely rich women, and some of them, I'm generalising, not all of them, that they are philanthropists, or they set up philanthropic boards, and they give out money, they sit on the boards of art galleries, perhaps, cultural institutions. Was that in the beginnings here? Or was it just, I have so much money, I need to spend all of it and look as fabulous as possible? We do see the beginnings of philanthropy in this period. So late 19th century is when all the museums in the US are starting to open.

And 1871, the Metropolitan Museum opens. We have donations coming in from the major families. We still document them in the lobby, the main hall today on the wall in gold. So you have Astor, Vanderbilt, Schirmerhorn, all the names are on the walls. They were donating their art collections. They were also donating money. And this was a charitable cause. So, you know, bringing art to the masses, bringing art to, you know, the people downtown who would need to travel uptown to go and see the artwork, which they never would have seen in the private collections. And we also see charity balls, charity fairs to raise money

for hospitals, education. Those were really where you see the women's philanthropy happening a little bit, you know, smaller scale than what the men are doing. But in the end, it is the family names that come through. And what I like is that the fashion, it was just as meaningful as the paintings on the wall. And we have so much of them in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They donated through the descendants of the Astor family. So Carrie Astor was the daughter of Caroline Astor and her sons and nephews donated her40,000 on a dress, the equivalent today. And we have them because of the foresight that the generations had to donate them. I mean, you know, what's changed is, of course, there's still extreme wealth,

there's still extraordinary parties, but we, you know, some bemoan we don't dress how we used to, or certainly the dressing up levels have dropped. And I just wondered, as someone who's studied this, do you ever wish we were a bit more like that? Well, here in New York, it does happen once a year with the Met Costume Ball. So we have the great costume gala once a year. It's always in May and we have that costume gala coming up. And that's the one where we see Kim Kardashian wearing the latest fashion. So, you know, last year she came in Balenciaga and the year before she came in Thierry Mugler, who has passed away. But again, like this, this sense of, you know, masquerading, I think is very much around today. It's not every Monday night like it was in the late 19th century.

For a very small group of people, but yes. For a very small group of people and the Met Gala. For a very small group of people, but yes. For a very small group of people, and the Met Gala's for a very small group of people too. It is indeed. That was Elizabeth Block, and The Gilded Age is available to watch on Sky Atlantic and Now TV. But Luta Mangeshkar was one of India's most beloved singers. She died age 92 yesterday, described as the Nightingale of Bollywood. she had a career that spanned more than half a century and recorded thousands of songs in 36 languages. Her voice was the soundtrack to hundreds of Bollywood films. Her funeral took place earlier today in India, attended by Prime Minister Modi and stars of the entertainment industry. Two days of national mourning will follow the funeral. I'm joined now by my fellow

BBC presenter Nikki Bady to reflect on an extraordinary legacy. Nikki, tell us more. So what you just heard in Gia Jaleh is a perfect example of Lata G's vocal talents because she was 68 years old when she was performing that for a 23-year-old actress, because Lata was a playback singer. So for people who don't know, in Bollywood, the actors and actresses don't sing their songs. Playback singers perform the songs, and then the actors and actresses lip-sync. And she was able to create the voice of a teenager,

a mother in her 30s, and an old woman. She was extraordinary. And you just mentioned she sang in so many different languages. And she touched hearts in all those languages as well. And I think one of the things that has helped her cut through to all those generations is that each decade, because she had a career of seven decades, each decade meant something to someone else. The sounds that she was making, the characters that she was evoking. What does she mean?

And in her real life, Yes, go on. she was just incredibly, she was the woman of her age. She was pious, humble, incredibly private and fair. Well, it's fascinating here. Throughout the programme,

we've been talking about dedication and how people's lives have been shaped by it and what they've dedicated themselves to. What does she mean to you? What's your connection? Well, I have a weird, not a weird connection. My real surname is Mulgauker. And the ker on the end of Mulgau means that my family's heritage is from Mulgau in Goa. She is Mangeshka because she's from Mangeshi, or that's the family's ancestral home. So we had this Maharashtrian link. And my grandmother, Leela Mulgauka, who was a social worker,

adored both Lata and Asha Bosley, her sister. And Lata did a huge amount for charity without ever saying anything about it. She just quietly went about things and really helped people. She was also the woman who fought for playback singers to be credited. She believed in justness and fairness. Well, that is something to think about and a woman to have in our minds today. Nikki Bady, thank you so much for talking to us and also being able to share that music with you was very special indeed. Thank you for your company today.

I'll be back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Hi, I'm John Ronson and I want to tell you about a new podcast I've made for BBC Radio 4. It's called Things Fell Apart.

If you've ever yelled at someone on social media about, say, cancel culture or mask wearing, then you are a soldier in the culture wars. Those everyday battles for dominance between conflicting values. I was curious to learn how things fell apart. And so I decided to go back in history and find the origin stories. There was this ping, and there was a bullet flying around the house. I had no idea, but I've uncovered some extraordinary people and the strangest, most consequential tales. Subscribe now to Things Fell Apart on BBC Sounds. 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.