Woman's Hour - Life for women in India, latest on the Windrush scandal, women and napping and access to therapy records in rape investigatios

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Nuala McGovern talks to Rosa Abraham & Rituparna Chakraborty about the fact that nearly half of the population in India is female, but the number of working women has fallen to record lows.We hear how new research shows napping is good for us and helps our brain with Dr Ivana Rosenzweig and Dr Maja Schaedel.The Windrush scandal began to surface in 2017 after it emerged that hundreds of Commonwealth citizens, many of whom were from the Windrush generation, had been wrongly detained, deported and denied access to healthcare and work. Most had no idea they had been silently affected by changing legislation. Five years after government apologised we talk to Human rights lawyer, Jacqueline McKenzie and victim of the scandal and advocate Glenda Caesars.Nalette Tucker is one of our Grassroots Power Listers. She set up Sunnah Sports, which aims to get everyone involved in sport in a safe and accessible way, including those like Muslim women and girls who often face barriers to joining in with sport normally. She joins Nuala to talk about how it felt to be on the list, and why she says sport is the reason she’s still here today. And we discuss whether the police, prosecutors and lawyers should have access to the therapy records of rape and sexual assault victims. We hear from Nogah Ofer from the Centre for Women’s Justice and the testimony of one woman’s experience of the system.Presenter: Nuala McGovern. Producer:Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Steve Greenwood

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, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. How are you feeling this morning? Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? Or on your third cup of coffee, trying to stave off the tiredness? Well, if it's the latter, maybe you need to plan a nap. The research out today shows it is good for us and it helps our brain. We do also know between pregnancy, new motherhood,

periods, the perimenopause, the menopause, there are many times that women could do with a little lie down, but they don't often get it. We will hear the latest signs, but I also want to hear from you. How and where have you napped? Share your most creative strategy with your fellow listeners about the most unusual place perhaps that you've taken 40 winks. And also, do you feel that there's a stigma attached to napping? Have you ever done it in the workplace, for example, and how was that received? Or maybe you tried to hide it? Or maybe you're working from home and this has opened up a whole new NAP environment. Well, you can text the programme. That number is 84844. Or you can get us on social media. That's at BBC Woman's Hour or email us through our website. And if you'd like to leave a voice note, that number is 03700 100 444, also the number for

WhatsApp. So we'll get into that in just a minute. Also today, we begin a new series on India, looking at how women fare in the most populated country in the world. Yes, it's overtaken China. We also want to follow up on access to victims' therapy records in rape prosecutions. We talked a little about it yesterday, but we want to go in more detail today. And we'll also look at where the Windrush compensation scheme is now. So if you'd like to get in touch, 84844. Some people doing that already. Let me see.

Charlotte, I love an afternoon nap. I work in a job where I'm on my feet all day and it's physically and mentally demanding so when I have my day off I usually have a snooze mid afternoon when I feel sleepy and it makes me feel so much better what about the days you're working though Charlotte you should be able to sneak one in no well as I was saying all reported that it's good for us um good for the brain in particular. This study was by University College London, and it says apparently the little daytime snooze slows down the shrinkage of our brain, which comes with ageing. But we also want to look at, you know, what about women across the different stages of their life and that stigma that I alluded to?

Well, I'm joined now by Dr. Ivana Rosenzweig, head of the Sleep and Brain Plasticity Centre at King's College London, and also Dr. Maya Shadel, who is a clinical psychologist and a sleep expert. Let me start with you, Ivana. Are you a napper? At certain periods of my life, yes,

but I try not to. so you are a napper um as i say in at certain periods of my life where there was just an extreme exposure to prolonged periods of weight loss such as night shifts as a junior doctor or when i had my little boy i did sleep one and two naps during the day. But I try not to. As a sleep physician, I still try not to. But why is that? Because what I'm reading today is that naps can benefit our brains. Sure. So very short nap, and we're talking really short, 15 to 20 minute circle power nap, enables the brain to get, if there is any

sort of, if you want, lack of or sort of there wasn't sufficiently good deep sleep previously, you can catch up on it. Any longer than that, what it does really it interferes with the quality of your sleep during the night. So that

that's really quite a big issue that we as sleep physicians are in. Okay, what really quite a big issue that we as a sleep physician see we're coming through. Okay. What I'm going to do, Ivana, is we're going to try and correct your line because it is a little bit crackly

just so people can hear you a little bit more clearly, particularly if they're a little bit tired, for example. Maya, let me turn to you. When do you think is a good time to nap and for how long?

We were hearing Ivana's thoughts there. I mean, I think everybody should get a nap every day if they can, but maybe I'm in the minority. Yeah, no, I think naps are fantastic. They can really, really help people. But as Ivana said, not necessarily if you have a sleep disorder. That's usually one of the first things that we suggest to people to skip

if they've got something like insomnia, because actually that can really get in the way of trying to maximise your sleep at night. But generally, for people who don't have sleep disorders, it can be really beneficial to have naps in the day and even just a short nap of sort of 15 minutes. I think this particular research said that actually just less than half an hour worked really well. And there is some other research that shows that just 15 minute naps can have a really positive impact on cognitive activity. And but why is it that they push towards that shorter nap instead of an hour, for example? So I think it's partly to do with what sort of processes that your brain goes through during a whole sleep cycle. So often sleep cycles last about 90 minutes in total. And actually, if you're having a whole sleep cycle,

that really might then confuse your brain that you're actually in it for the long haul. And it might make your brain think, hang on a minute, this is this daytime, is this nighttime, it might get a bit confused. And actually just having 15 minutes 20 minutes of a short nap can just be enough to kind of take the edge off the tiredness boost that kind of cognitive stimulation and it also goes hand in hand with what we know about our arousal and our alertness throughout the day which really ebbs and flows so often sort of after lunch we might have a period where we're feeling a bit more sluggish. And that can be a time where people often like to have a nap. Well, lots of people

getting in touch. Here's one. This is Tina. She says, when I was pregnant with my first daughter, the tiredness in the first trimester was so extreme that I would scatter fake meetings in my work diary throughout the day. Then I would go and sleep in the photocopier room next door, laying on a wooden pallet with my legs up the wall. It was just a cupboard, really. I never got caught and I couldn't have survived without those naps. But poor old Tina there. I mean, shouldn't workplaces be accommodating this woman who is, you know, those first months when that extreme tiredness hits and yet no accommodation, Maya? Absolutely. I think that's a really interesting one because, of course, there is such a stigma

to naps and often people do hide naps. You know, I've got, I know two women in their midlife who nap and one of them, I think it's often to do with whether or not you can speak about it if you have paid work or not. So I know one woman who doesn't have paid work and she she hides it from her partner when when he's working from home. Whereas I've got another colleague who who naps and does feel that she's able to kind of own that. And I think there is something about, you know, what is it about naps? Is it that it goes hand in hand? So traditionally, do people think that it goes hand in hand with laziness and of course that's absolutely not the case of course for tina poor tina who's you know had her her baby and was absolutely exhausted um i think there was just pregnant actually at that point that first trimester yeah and that's exhausting isn't it and of course um you know actually workplaces really

do have a responsibility to ensure that that their employees are well rested and taken care of. And of course, we now know that well-being in the workplace actually is beneficial for companies. So I think that it's really in their interest to be looking at this. But I think we're still holding on to this old stigma about naps and sleep in general. Like the more sleep we get is somehow hand in hand with being lazy in some way. Here's one. My alarm goes off at 4.45am. So I try and sneak a 20, 30 minute nap around 3pm just before school pickup.

But my wife always ribs me for it. Now I can say I'm growing my brain. So the stigma there, and I love this one because I was asking people, you know, how do they get creative with their napping, their napping locations? I'm a landscape painter and I've napped in many places outdoors. My rucksack makes a very good pillow.

Warm weather makes me drowsy sometimes when I'm painting. That's Claire. Thanks for that. What about this one? Sleeping used to be my superpower. I've been able to sleep in the bath, on trains and in cars. It was like time travel. I'd get in the car, close my eyes eyes and when I opened them, I'd arrive. Not driving, I imagine.

I've also slept on the back of a horse coming back from the pub with friends. Luckily, the horse knew the way back. I mean, I think this is probably my superpower as well, if I'm honest. So I don't feel I have any stigma around sleeping, but it's definitely there.

Do you think there's at all a move towards trying to remove that stigma? I know Arianna Huffington, who founded the Huffington Post, she was very much trying to push for that in the workplace. But do you see a change, Maya?

Absolutely. And I think now that there's also a bit more of a focus on the needs of women in the perimenopause and going through the menopause transition, there's much more understanding of how actually fatigue can really affect women, especially as they get older. So I think that there is more that's being done. And there's also more sleep research and more focus on sleep and the benefits of sleep, not just the benefits of sleep on our mental health, but actually on our physical health. And of course, now there's this really clear evidence which links sleep with dementia.

And of course, I think there's a real argument to say that actually we should be protecting our sleep in terms of improving and protecting all aspects of our health. So it's actually something that I think we should be thinking on a much bigger scale in terms of workplaces, but also sort of in how are we setting up our culture to allow this to happen? You know, of course, on the Mediterranean, there's the kind of siesta lifestyle where people have these sort of plans and acceptable maps. You know, this seems to be something that's OK. So why is it in the UK that we're not allowed to do that? Yes, there was a Japanese word I came across in the Mori, I think, about sleeping while present. So at work, for example.

But is it, Maya, particularly women that put pressure on themselves to keep going, do you think? Yeah, and I think there's this really interesting aspect of how women manage their sleep and their rest. And I think one of the difficulties is that actually women are often seen still to have the role of the household manager. So I think there's a lot on women's plates often. And I think that what can happen is often people, women are finding that they don't have time to really prioritise their sleep. It's quite interesting how many people I meet and women saying, I don't have time for sleep.

You know, I don't have time to prioritise that, that really important aspect of health. So what is it that we, why is it that we still feel that we're not able to prioritise this extremely important aspect of our health? And I think that that is to do with how women go about, you know, thinking about themselves in society and the expectations on them and actually how they're perceived by others. So putting that secondary, Dr. Maya Scheidel, clinical psychologist and sleep expert, giving you the go ahead there to take that nap. I want to also thank Dr. Ivana Rojanswag, who was in touch. One last one.

Let me see. This is Ciarán in response to the other comment we had about the person in the cupboard. Tina, I was caught fast asleep in the stationary cupboard by my boss showing some visitors around. I'd taken the precaution of bringing my Pilates mat to sleep on, so I held my chest, had a big exhale and intoned,

and out, pretending to sleep. Thanks for all the comments. Keep them coming, 84844. Right, I want to turn to India. It has very recently become the most populated country in the world, overtaking China.

They now have a population of over 1.4 billion and growing. Now, on Women's Hour, we want to take the opportunity to find out more about the experience of women in India, in this huge country. And over the next couple of days, you're going to hear from an organisation that are training women who are blind to detect early breast cancer. You're also going to hear from a female pioneer in skateboarding. But today we're looking at the economy and women's place in it. Nearly half of India's population is female. And yet the number of working women has fallen to record lows in the past two decades.

Figures show that the proportion of Indian women in employment fell from 35% in 2004 to just around 25% in 2022. So with this huge population, why are women disappearing from the workforce? Well, we can discuss with Rosa Abraham,

economics professor at Azeem Premji University, who focuses on women in employment. Also, Rita Parna Chakraborty, who is co-founder of the staffing agency Teamly Services, which helps get people into work.

First to you, Rosa, how do you understand those numbers going down so quickly? Thanks. So in fact, the number is actually lower if you move one year before. It was actually, it has increased since COVID actually. So in 2018-19, the number was around 20% compared to 25% now. So one of the reasons, I mean, there's been a lot of analysis of why so many women have withdrawn and so many women are not employed. So one of this, the main reason is the nature of change, economic change that the Indian economy has undergone. So India was typically an agricultural economy. So about more than half its GDP came from

agriculture, about 70% of the workforce was employed in agriculture. But over time, the agricultural sector has contracted. And that has meant that there's less possibilities for employment in agriculture. Now, for men, what this has meant is that they've moved out of agriculture into construction and into services. But for women, unfortunately, the same kind of mobility has not happened. They've either remained in agriculture or been just pushed out of the workforce entirely. But it's so interesting. And let me bring you in, Rita Parna, because we see women's education in India is increasing. So you would imagine then there would also be that increase in the workplace.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's one of the interesting things around which we are definitely losing sleep over, given that you started today's conversation. This is something keeping us awake, that why education is going up and nonetheless the women labor workforce participation and sometimes even in urban India. So I think while there are various reasons, but some of the reasons that I can talk about is that while there is economic prosperity, essentially the males in the households, when they have started earning more more essentially there is a

social pressure which is getting created that women cannot doubt because the women is the men in the house essentially are taking care of the economic well-being of the family that's probably one of the reasons secondly education interesting in many cases are being used to find a better groom in India. So if a woman has better education qualification, the chances of getting a better qualified groom is higher. So essentially somewhere education is a substitute of that as well. Then there are other factors like in urban India, the ecosystem of transport, commuting to workplace is extremely cumbersome because of which women prefer to stay back at home. The ecosystem of child care is

extremely weak. It's not safe because of which the women end up essentially taking up some of these responsibilities. Yes, post-COVID and because of COVID, some of those situations have probably been challenged because now workforce or workplaces are much more welcome to having remote work, which has contributed marginally in terms of the improvement, where women essentially can stay back at home and still be part of the employment or the workforce. But I guess there's a long way to go to kind of address the current situation. It's so interesting, because, you know, I did see there was government data that an increasing number of families are actually headed by women. And I thought that was quite an interesting headline coming out of India. Over the past three decades, their proportion is almost doubled. So about 45

million families now. Of course, that's not a huge number when you talk about 1.4 billion people, but it is a change. Let me go back to you, Rosa. I mean, what would it take instead for that to become a much more acceptable form of family in society? So I think perhaps looking at female headed families may not, I mean, it may not be an outcome that we want, that we should aim for, because a lot of female-headed households are indicators of households where the men have been abandoned, they've been widowed, and hence they are sort of forced into female headship. So some of the increase in numbers could also be that because the man no longer resides with them, he may have migrated to better opportunities. So I'm not sure if the parameter that we want to go by is having more female headed families. But of course, having households where women are equal contributors, if not higher contributors to employment as well as earnings, that is something that we need to work towards.

And of course, there's a lot of research to look at why this is not happening. And I think I want to just add to what Deepu has said, which is that, you know, in India, most families educate their girls for the marriage market. They educate their sons for employment, but they educate their girls for the marriage market. Which just, sorry to interrupt you there, Rosa, but just really to underline it for my listeners. So it is that a very well-educated young woman is a much wanted potential match for a marriage, even if she is not going to use that education in the workforce? Absolutely. So it is to say that having higher levels of education secures you an entry into a better or an equally matched household. And to add to that, there's also some recent evidence by this

researcher called Diva Dhar, who finds that, well, education does give you a leg up in the marriage market. But if as a prospective bride, you indicate that you want to work and you want to stay employed or you want to start being employed after marriage, that can act as a penalty. So, I mean, she did this really simple study where, you know, in India, we have these matrimonial sites where you can put up your portfolios and people who are interested can reach out and you kind of, it's like a Tinder, but for marriage. But then basically she put up these fake portfolios and one portfolio, one set of portfolios of women who did not want to

work after marriage, and then another set which indicated women who expressed a desire to continue working or to start working after marriage. And what you find is that for the women, for the portfolios where women expressed a desire to continue working, they were far less likely to get either acceptances or responses from potential suitors. And then if they're marrying that suitor, obviously there'd be pressure within the family to not go back out and work even if they wanted to. Absolutely. So it is, there's also this cultural stigma because sending your women out to work is seen as a sign of lower social standing. I understand.

Let me turn to you, Ruta Parna, again, because obviously for the Indian economy, which has been, of course, so many people talking about it, particularly over the past decade and the growth that it had, it could turbocharge that if it had more women in the workforce.

And I'm wondering what the messaging has been from the government to companies or companies to women about trying to get them back into the workforce or is there any? Oh yes so of course there are messaging going on I think there are some organizations and specific industry sectors which are taking the lead in terms of creating a workplace which is far more diverse, and they're essentially taking up diversity targets as well, especially with regards to getting more women back at work. But even the government has been taking

a set of initiatives. The challenge sometimes remains that the initiatives which are coming from the government, public policymakers, probably not so much in sync with what actually women want. So I think somewhere there is sometimes a dissonance between what essentially women need to kind of get them back into the workplaces. One of the recent examples, for example,

just to share with you, it's the Maternity Benefit Act. The Maternity Benefit Act in India, it's the one and only in the world where six months maternity benefit that is being paid to women is essentially 100% borne by the employer of the woman, which means that it essentially

is a huge disincentive. Yes, there are few organizations who are progressive, who are looking ahead, who understand the importance of or the need behind this maternity benefit, but enhance the ability to kind of manage that cost. However, for many employers, it still isn't. So it has ended up becoming a disincentive for women to get into the workplace. Organizations, especially in tech,

in terms of financial services, are going out clearly to ensure that they're able to attract more women in many ways. We are seeing even sectors as male-dominated as e-commerce are also kind of taking up diversity targets to kind of be more welcoming of women. So I think we are making progress right now. It's just that we think that, I mean, I think there's a long way to go. Like you said, India is probably the most populated and having 20-25% of the workforce only as women is just not acceptable. Yeah, and it sounds like the change needs to happen inside the home as well.

Rituparna and Rosa, thank you both so much for speaking to us. We are going to continue our India series tomorrow where we'll be looking at how one organisation is training women who are blind to detect early stage breast cancer. Really interesting, so do join us for that. Also, I just want to let you

know, if you want to get in touch with us, as many of you are, about NAPS, 84844 is the number. Also, have you unretired? According to the Office for National Statistics, 300,000 people retired early during the pandemic, but nearly 100,000 have since returned to work.

Is this you? If it is, we want to hear why you decided to go back to the day job, with or without the nap. Was it the cost of living, boredom, something else? Email us or text us your stories. We would love to hear from you. Where did I see it? This was one. Carol getting in touch. My husband naps every day

and I'm always resentful as I find it indulgent, even though I seem to be permanently tired these days and could do with one. I've taken a nap occasionally over the past few months. I don't feel much better. May well be to do with the quality of my night time sleep, which is not great

like the couple dynamic about napping Helen says your section on naps has made me wonder why I'm using my baby's nap time to make muffins for my in-laws visit this evening rather than catching up on sleep myself we put so much

pressure on ourselves yes Helen take that nap. Forget the muffins, but don't put them in and then go for the nap. OK, let us continue with those 84844. Now, if you were with me yesterday,

you'll know we spoke to the Victims Commissioner for London, Clare Waxman, about the Crown Prosecution Services announcement to give rape victims the opportunity to meet face to face

with prosecution teams involved in their cases. Now, a specific issue which Clare raised was fear that victims have about getting therapy in case the police or the CPS then get access to those records. So we want to take a look at that now in more detail with Noga Offer from the Centre for Women's Justice and also a woman we're calling Michelle who's here with me in studio and she's dealing with that issue after making a complaint to the police. But first, let me start with you, Noga. The Victim and Prisoners Bill, it's being discussed in the Commons, it's at committee stage.

You have submitted evidence specifically about this issue with therapy records. What is the issue? If you could explain it to our listeners. Thank you. Yes, the issue that we see is that in many rape investigations, police officers are asking for women's therapy records to be handed over. And that's really having an impact on women's being able to sort of progress their recovery. Can I stop you there? A couple of things, because why would they need, why are they asking for their therapy records? What is the reason that they are giving so there is um a view at the moment that um you know if a woman has discussed what happened to her for example during the rape then uh police want to sort of trawl through that to look for any inconsistencies between that and any other accounts that she has given and this can mean that the records are then handed over to the abuser and

be used in court um so you know it's really kind of an invasion of the therapeutic space. So women are afraid to open up or afraid to access therapy for that reason. So then it becomes the decision for some people on whether to get the therapy before that court case goes ahead. That's right. I mean, some people are put off from getting therapy. And we're talking about investigations that literally go on for years. I mean, one year, two years, three years is not that uncommon. Other cases, women do report to the police and they progress their criminal cases. But then when they're asked to provide their therapy records, they're having this sort of feel like they've got to make a choice and they end up dropping out of the criminal justice process.

So women are sort of caught between a rock and a hard place. They're told if you don't give access to your therapy records, your case can't go forwards. But if they want to protect the privacy of their therapy space, you know, they end up feeling like they have to drop out of the criminal justice. Now, the Met Police, we asked for a statement and they say police must obtain the victim's consent to gain access to those therapy records and enable disclosure where appropriate to take place. Also, the CPS, going back to the Crown Prosecution Service,

their guidance states prosecutors must not encourage police to pursue speculative inquiries and so police must never be advised to seek access to therapy notes simply because a victim has received therapy. So what about that? I mean, if the victim says, no, you can't see my therapy notes, what's the problem there? So in many cases, victims are told that if you do refuse, then your case may not go forwards. It also makes it look as if they have something to hide and they want to be cooperating with the police and seen in a positive light. So a lot of people do end up consenting when they don't actually really want to consent. They don't really want to open up that sort of private therapy space.

It destroys that trust that they have with the therapist and in terms of the speculative requests unfortunately the way that the law is at the moment if there's any discussion of what happened in you know during the offence then the law does enable them to make those requests that's not considered speculative and that means that basically a lot of people have therapy where they can't actually tell their therapist what happened to them. And it's very difficult then to see how you can have kind of really, you know, the full therapy that you need. And therapists happen to kind of work around the law and it's holding back people's ability to recover. And you have to remember. Sorry to interrupt you, but therapists work around it.

How? Not keeping records or? Well, for what's called the official term of pre-trial therapy, that is done on the basis that the therapist will not discuss with her client what actually happened to her. So that's considered to be a sort of, if you like, a safe therapy to have when you might have a criminal case pending. But you can't talk about what happened to you. That's right. And that's the way that a lot of therapy is conducted during the criminal investigation, which can be over a couple of years. Wow. And sorry, I was interrupting you as you were telling us a little bit more about why this matters.

Yeah, I mean, I was just going to mention that, in fact, it's only around 3% of rapes are reported that are actually charged. But all those other women whose cases are not reported, many, many, not charged, many, many thousands of them, they are still affected by this. So they might be holding back in their therapy. They might not be accessing therapy and actually all for nothing because their case will never go to court in any event. So I think it's a wider issue for the whole of society in terms of how we balance these rights. It's not just the rights of the two people in the trial.

It's also the rights of all those many thousands. I think it's 67,000 reports of rape last year. You know, it's more there's many, many thousands of people who are being held back from getting on with their progressing their lives because of this kind of hanging over them. Yeah, it brings up so many issues. I understand that you're calling for an Australian type system, you're calling it the New South Wales option. So they have excluded the inclusion of therapy records from criminal trials. Do you want to explain a little bit more about that to our listeners? Yes, so what they have in New South Wales is not an absolute ban. And we absolutely do recognise that you need to have a balance between the right to a fair trial, you know, for the accused on the one hand,

and then the right to privacy on the other hand. So we're not calling for an absolute blanket ban, but we're calling for this higher legal threshold that they have in New South Wales. So it makes it less likely or less easy for therapy records to be allowed to go through. A judge would have to approve it, and it would have to be something that is highly relevant to the trial. And that has been in place in New South Wales since 1997. They haven't had any miscarriages of justice in that time. So we think it is actually the right balance to have between the two sets of rights. I mean, there are some places, for example, in Tasmania, they do have an absolute blanket ban. So, you know, there's different models all around the world, also

in America, in other Australian states. But we think that's the right balance to try to strike is the threshold that they have in New South Wales. I want to bring in Michelle, a woman we're calling Michelle here. You complained to police about an incident of sexual assault, not rape to specify,

but inappropriate touching. And I understand you were asked to give a victim statement and the police and the CPS then asked for access to your therapy records. When you heard that, how did you feel? And welcome. Thank you. I was devastated. I felt immediately compromised. I think it's important to say the therapy that I was having was for childhood vulnerabilities. It was absolutely nothing relevant to the case. So to even request the therapy notes

was not a relevant line of inquiry to start with. And I felt totally compromised. I felt that my most vulnerable parts of myself were going to be made public to somebody who had abused me and with no control over who would see those. And as a consequence, you withdrew your complaint? I did, yes. Yeah, I withdrew the complaint and I started a complaint against the Met Police and the CPS for having requested those records. For that procedure that they were going under. And when you hear Nogat talking about some of those wider aspects,

which, of course, can look at the therapy of people and how it might stop them doing it. I mean, do you think a bill would have made a difference? So I am aware that there are lots of policies already in place that are very good. There is any change in the law wouldn't have affected my case because there's already a law protecting people from unreasonable lines of inquiry. So it's about how those policies are then being applied in practice. Essentially, everything's in place, but it's not being delivered. You know, you bring up something that I hadn't thought about, Michelle, going back to you, Noga. Michelle, there was like historical therapy, so to speak, that she was going through,

you know, for whether it was childhood trauma, not to get into any of the specifics of it, Michelle. But, you know, so it's not even about the case. It could be people's whole life that they are going through with this access to these records. That's right. I mean, we see lots of requests for therapy records that are to do with, you know, other adverse experiences they've had. It might be to do with other sexual assaults that they've, you know, that they've suffered in the past, not to do with the one that's under investigation at the moment. You know, it can be any aspect of their life that is requested.

And as Michelle pointed out there, that there are some laws in place that should be protecting victims from some of this intrusion. So what's happening? Is there a different interpretation of how the guidance is understood and applied? Yeah, so there are two different things going on. One is that the laws that we already have are not actually being sort of implemented on the ground. So as in Michelle's case, police officers are asking for records when actually under the laws we've already got, they shouldn't be asking for them. And then separate from that,

we also think there need to be additional further protections to change the law just for therapy records, not the laws that we have at the moment apply across the board to any kind of records that are held about you. It could be medical records, not, you know, not the laws that we have at the moment apply across the board to any kind of records that are held about you. It could be medical records, could be education records, social services records. And we think they should be implemented properly. But on top of that, therapy needs, you know, special protection because therapy can only work if you have that

trust and that confidentiality. And so for therapy to be effective, it needs to be treated separately. Just as I let you go, Naga and Michelle, do police or the CPS ever access the therapy records to try and help the victim for something for the prosecution to use in a positive way within that case? That can come up in some cases, but the majority of cases um that we see uh the records are requested you know in order to sort of trawl through to see if there's some

unreliability um or you know something that undermines her credibility so it's part of that feeling where it's sort of victims and survivors themselves are feeling under investigation, you know, rather than the investigation focusing on the suspect. So that is the vast majority of the requests that we see. Now we've got Ofer from the Centre for Women's Justice and also one more column. Michelle, thanks so much for coming in and sharing your story as well. I'm sure it's not easy. We continue to take your comments that are coming in on text about lots of different things,

particularly naps today seems to have got you chatting. Here's one. My father's 101 in pretty good health. He's a painter and still working. He puts his health and energy down to his daily nap. It used to be half an hour.

It's 45 minutes now, he says, because he is getting a little bit older. Right, let us move on now to Windrush. We were talking about it a little bit yesterday. We spoke to women from the Windrush generation who answered the call from the British government to help rebuild the country after World War II. Here's a little of former nurse Alison Williams, who was my guest, explaining how her immigration status was verified. Even being part of the Windrush generation, when I trained and qualified as a midwife,

the personnel department in my hospital were very good and collected passports and got our status properly verified. And so we had an indefinite leave to remain in England with just very few stipulations. And I assume that that is what happened to all of us in the Windrush generation. I was truly scandalised to hear that it was such a huge problem and that, you know, this situation ever arose. I think that's really quite unacceptable. That is Alison that you may have heard

yesterday. Well, today we're going to reflect on the difficulties currently facing the Windrush generation, including compensation. What is called the Windrush scandal began to surface in 2017 after it emerged that hundreds of Commonwealth citizens, many who are from the Caribbean,

had been wrongly detained, deported and denied access to health care and work. There were three key commitments that were put forward by the Wendy Williams Inquiry that were dropped by Suella Braverman. They had previously been accepted by former Home Secretary Priti Patel. So five years after the government

apologised, why has there been such slow progress in assisting those affected by the department's mistakes? Human rights lawyer Jacqueline McKenzie and victim of the scandal and advocate Glenda Caesar join me to discuss those issues. You're both very welcome. Glenda, let me begin with you. You were last on the programme in 2020. You had just rejected a compensation claim at that point. What's your situation now? Well, I've been validated, I'll call it that way.

And I'm presently helping other claimants or people who are trying to access the compensation scheme. A lot of them are of the elderly cohort and some don't know how to access the compensation scheme and some are afraid to come forward also because there's still the fear of not having their status regulated and fear of deportation. And why do you think they still understand or believe that that might be the case? I think it's because the scheme has not been explained properly or there hasn't been no major big campaign to let people be aware of what's going, of what it actually involves. And there has been some sort of misrepresentation about the scheme

so people could know that they could come forward. So you find that there's advocates like myself and obviously Jackie McKenzie, who we're trying to say to people, look, you are entitled to it, come forward. If you were affected in this manner, then you can come forward and obviously put in a claim. It is a complicated scheme.

I'm not going to say it's easy. It's not. It is very complicated. The form is not as simple as it should be. And you do need some form of help, either from an advocate or from a legal representation. Your son attempted to travel, Glenda, I understand. Can you tell us what happened? Well, he was actually born in this country, but, you know, in december 88 and um he wasn't allowed to have a british passport because obviously they had classed me as being illegal um in this country and um i had to

obviously make an application for a dominican passport because that's where i'm from so he has some form of id he managed to do a two-week holiday to Dominica Republic. And whilst coming back into the country, he was then told that, you know, we won't be able to, even though he had his birth certificate, had his driving licence with him, they were adamant that they were going to send him back. They did, I think, after doing checks,

they had seen where I tried to obtain passports for him on the system. They let him come home about two hours later. I was threatened that time. I'm classed as illegal myself. And when he did come home in his passport, they had stated he's got two months to regulate his status. You know, where was he going to go? How does that feel, though, as a family to, I suppose, have your identity totally transformed? Definitely how the government sees it.

It's the worst thing that could have happened. I mean, to myself as a mother, as a single mother raising four children, I would face difficulties and I could overcome them. But when you see the effect it has on your own child and being in this country and being rejected, you know, it was like straight depression for him and then straight depression for me, because I felt I had put him in a situation that he shouldn't have been in in the first place. So I blamed myself. And obviously he blamed me. But this had nothing to do with us. This was government legislation putting us in this position. You know, you mentioned as a single mum, do you think the scandal has affected women differently? I think it has. I think because the men will sit back a bit, but they do feel it. But I think the women take it on a little bit more because it's a lot more stressful for us because we're having to deal with the family side of

it as well as having to protect our men as well, you know. So it is a little bit more stressful. That you're taking on the mental labour or the emotional labour with that. Let me turn to you, Jacqueline. The unit, we were reporting on this yesterday, there were leaks that the unit handling reform

of the Home Office to prevent a repeat of the scandal is to be disbanded. When you heard that or read about that, what did you think? So that's in relation to the department called the Transformation Department that was set up. And it's not quite clear whether it was set up in response to Wendy Williams' Lessons Learned Review, because it's not actually stated in there, or just in response to the scandal itself, was set up to do a number of things. And one of the things it was meant to do was to look at the ethics and the culture of the Home Office. And that's certainly something that was in the Lessons Learned Review. In fact, it deals mostly with changing the culture of the Home Office. And that's certainly something that was in the Lessons Learned Review. In fact, it deals mostly with changing the culture of the Home Office. It was also meant to train and monitor

the staff. And very recently, I understand that staff there had some training called the face behind the case, you know, the more humane approach. You don't just say computer says no, when someone says, well, I went to this primary school in 1960 and the other thing was engagement community engagement which ties in with one of the recommendations that the home secretary has decided to drop from the 30 windrush lessons learned review recommendations which was about engagement and reconciliation events so it's really quite disturbing that this is the one the department's going to be cut and two, that some of the key recommendations are being dropped. And the reason why I say it's disturbing is because the Home Office or the Home Secretary herself says that, you know, it's time to move on. But my view, as someone who's been very involved from day one, is that we're only really just beginning.

So few people have availed themselves of either the scheme, which deals with documentation, or the compensation scheme. Because Simon Murray, the Minister with Responsibility for the Windrush Compensation and Status Schemes,

has said the compensation scheme is being improved. We also hear that they have paid out, they feel, with the compensation. Let me see. They talk about £41.1 million

between 2021 and 2022. And they also talk about that's £25.1 million to 768 victims and 12.7 million to 572 people who were wrongfully detained in immigration centres. But I'm wondering with those figures, what does it tell us about the people on the ground?

You know, how many people still have not signed up or, you know, how far does 70 million really go to try and compensate the people that were affected? Yes, I mean, that's a really good question, because the truth is nobody really knows. At the outset, the Home Office said the modelling and the statistical modelling that they used, that there was likely to be about 50,000 people affected by the Windrush scandal. And when it was realised that so few people were coming forward, and from my work, I meet particularly elder Caribbean people, and it was interesting, you know, we're on Women's Hour, but particularly elder Caribbean men,

who you might find in some of the colloquial places like betting shops and so on, aren't bothering. Then there's a whole cohort of people who say, we don't trust the Home Office, we're not giving them our data, we've been here for 60, 70 years and we don't need a job and we don't want to travel, so we don't need a status document. So nobody really knows how many people are affected by the scandal. What the Home Office has done was to revise the figures down to 15,000 and we now know, and there's some new data coming out tomorrow,

so that might change considerably, but we know that over 16,000 people have availed themselves of documents. But that in itself doesn't really give you the full picture because half of them are EU citizens. The actual Windrush scheme that deals with status documents is open to everybody who was in the country before the 1st of January 1989. So that's not just people affected by the Windrush scandal. But if you look at the compensation figures, where you have quite a large number of people who are people affected by the scandal, so the people who lost their jobs or homes or were detained or removed, that sort of thing, that's about 7,000 to 8,000, and only 1,600 of them have had any compensation. So that's

really quite woeful. And there have been changes to the scheme, improvements. That's mainly hard won improvements as a result of the work done by people like Glenda and other advocates. Changes have been made. The scheme has continually been improved. That is true. There was a time when the lowest impact on life tariff was actually £250. I mean, what on earth could have impacted your life that would only be worth £250? That went up to £10,000. So there are improvements, but we actually can't really ascertain what it is the data tells us. So, for instance, we put a freedom of information request to the Home Office about the number of people who have died waiting for compensation. We haven't had that information. At one stage, the Home Office was saying it had 90-something

claims, estate claims, for those of people who have died. That figure's now gone down to 53. So, what is that? Why has that figure gone down? We all know, they told the Home Affairs Committee that 23 people had died waiting for compensation. But in our cohort, so that includes myself, other lawyers working on this, the community advocates around the country, we all know at least one person who's died waiting for compensation. So that takes you above 20, and I know three. So the data isn't really giving us an accurate picture, I'm afraid. So obviously, if you're asking for freedom of information,

that's what you're trying to get is the information to then proceed and see if those people could be compensated that are due it. I want to thank you both very much for updating us, Jacqueline McKenzie and also Glenda Caesar,

as we follow the generation Windrush. And tomorrow is the 75th, or Thursday, forgive me, is the 75th anniversary. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has spoken out. She says, I and the whole government remain absolutely committed to righting the wrongs of the Windrush scandal. We have paid or offered more than £72 million in compensation to those affected. We continue to make improvements so people receive the maximum award as quickly as possible.

But we know there is more to do and we'll work tirelessly to make sure an injustice is never repeated. Now, I want to turn to the Woman's Hour Powerlist, Women in Sport. We've talked about Leah Williamson

captaining the Lionesses, Jo Tung representing female sports broadcasters and my next guest, Nalette Tucker. She has been making sport accessible and safe for Muslim women and girls. She's one of our grassroots powerlisters.

Almost a decade ago, she set up the Sunnah Sports Academy Trust, a charity offering sports lessons and coaching to people from all communities in Bradford. Judy Murray has described her as one of the most inspirational and influential women that she's ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Well, I get to meet her now and so do you. Nilesh, welcome. Hi, how are you doing? Really good. How are you doing this morning? How did it feel to be on the Women's Hour Power List? I'm still in shock a little bit, to be fair. It's amazing to be on a list with all of those amazing people,

some of which that I've looked up to as well for a very long time. So, yeah, absolutely fantastic. You are a Muslim woman. You grew up in a Christian background. But then as you became a Muslim, I think you realised some of the challenges that Muslim girls and women were facing when it came to sport. Tell us about that. Yeah, I went from playing a number of different sports.

I became Muslim when I was 20 and then all of a sudden was not able to play those sports due to how I dress as a Muslim woman. You have to cover certain parts of your body and within a lot of the rule books, and that is still the case today, you have to wear a skirt, for example, or shorts or a t-shirt. For a lot of Muslim women, that excludes us from the game. So I went from playing seven days a week

to not being able to play at all in the sports that I loved. And you have then tried to make it a mission seven days a week to not being able to play at all in the sports that I loved. And you have then tried to make it a mission to get more Muslim girls into sports by coaching, a wonderful coach by all accounts. What would you say is the biggest barrier at the moment? You talk about clothing, but is it really about the sports industry not doing enough to make it accessible? Or do you think the reluctance of time is coming from the girls to actually play sport? It's a fair question, but I teach on average, sometimes a week it can be over 500 girls.

So I genuinely don't believe that it's that the girls don't want to step forward and play when the opportunity we create safe environments that are um removing the barriers once that's in place the girls flock and they come week in week out and we have girls on training programs to become coaches themselves we have them competing in in tournaments and so on we have them doing day outs we just went went to Birmingham yesterday with the LTA and did an open day there. They come and they take part and they want those opportunities. So I think there needs to be a lot more done

within the sports industry to help overcome those barriers. There aren't many of them. There are only a couple, but there could be a lot more that could be done within the industry. And I know you also talk about Muslim representation. Do you feel that's changing? Slowly we're getting there. Anshabah made a massive impact last year at Wimbledon and hopefully Eid as well she congratulated us and celebrated Eid herself at Wimbledon

so I think that representation is definitely, there's a step in the right direction but there's a lot more to come I'm astounded at how much you managed to fit into a day with all your coaching sessions do you take a nap ever? We were talking about this at the beginning of the programme.

Definitely. I have a sofa in my office. And I go and have a nap on there occasionally. But equipment cupboards, all sorts. So I was laughing and I was trying to think of where the weirdest place that I've had a nap. And I think I'd say in the woods. I teach outdoor ed as well. And we've all, as coaches in between groups,

we've had that like half an hour before the next group comes. We've all definitely gone off into our own areas and had a quick nap. The sports bag probably just as good as a rucksack, as a pillow, as we were hearing from one of our listeners. But just in my last minute, Nolette, you very much push how important sport is for the mental health side of things as well as the body? Definitely. Sport saved myself when I was a teenager.

It was my safe space, somewhere that I could go. I felt amazing. My coaches, my team players did. And I think that the environment, we shouldn't underestimate how much sport can do, whether it's just making new friends, the endorphins that you get from playing sports, the feel good factor of winning and taking part and all of these different things. There's so much that sport can do for mental health. It has done for me and I see it every day in the young people that I teach. So yeah, definitely has a big impact. You might like this, Nalette, going back to the naps, you were talking about where were the most creative places you slept. This was Lynn saying, I used to work in a lab and after lunch, I would rest my head

on my binocular microscope and have 40 wings while looking like I was working and no one ever noticed. Now you won't get away with that because you're a woman watching you command those dozens of girls as they work on so many sports tennis but many other ones as well thank you so much for joining us on Women's Hour and congratulations again of being part of our power list. Thank you very much Now lots of you

that have been getting in touch do keep them coming I'll keep an eye on them 84844 Naps definitely touched a nerve go and take one say that I said it was alright today. And join me tomorrow for the second part in our India series where we will be hearing from one organisation which is training

women who are blind to help detect early stage breast cancer. That's tomorrow from 10. I'll see you then. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Jason Manford here. And I'm Steve Edge. We just wanted to tell you about our new podcast from

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