Woman's Hour - Maggie Murray, Melinda Simmons, Emma Beddington and Sandy Black, Tina Backhouse, Matthew Greenwood

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

A new exhibition, Photographing Protest: Resistance through a feminist lens, features striking protest images by women and explores how images of resistance resonate across generations from 1968 to the present day. Maggie Murray, a prolific photographer of protest, whose images feature throughout the exhibition. As a founding member of Format photo agency, she documented ground-breaking protests of the 1980s and 1990s and tells Emma about her work. Currently based in Warsaw, Melinda Simmons has been the British Ambassador for the Ukraine since September 2019. She left Kyiv on 19 February 2022 and only finally left Ukraine on 7th March 2022 eleven days after the Russian invasion. She joins Emma to discuss Putin, Ukrainian refugees and the support role she and her team are now playing for Ukrainian citizens from Poland.We talk about the cost-of-living crisis and the ends some women are going to to make ends meet with Matthew Greenwood head of debt at the Centre for Social Justice.Would you wear the same dress for 100 days? Could you do it? Emma Beddington made it to 40 days wearing the same dress as a challenge. We speak to her and Sandy Black, Professor of Fashion and Textile Design and Technology, about the power, sustainability and history of wearing the same item over and over again.Are you struggling to get hold of your HRT? Menopausal women are reporting being forced to turn to the so-called black market as demand for prescriptions in England has doubled in the last five years. We speak to Tina Backhouse the General Manager of Theramex, one of the largest suppliers of HRT to the UK market about what is causing the current problems.Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Tim HefferPhoto credit: Maggie Murray

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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. I hope your weekend's treated you well and you're enjoying, or at least able to appreciate, the official start of spring. But on today's programme, a striking new report which lays bare the extent some women are going to to help make ends meet as the costs of living continue to rise ahead of the Chancellor's Spring Statement on Wednesday. We try to diagnose why some women are having to turn to the so-called black market for their HRT medicine. And let me ask you this, could you wear the same dress 100 days in a row? Why thousands of women around the world are taking this particular challenge on?

More details to come. But first, my first guest this morning is our woman in Ukraine. Except she isn't in Ukraine anymore, a country she's called home since 2019. The British ambassador to the Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, held out there until the 7th of March, 11 days after the Russian invasion began. But then she joined the women and children, blankets wrapped tightly around them, queuing to cross the border to Poland. And that's where she joins me from this morning. Melinda Simmons, good morning. Good morning. Good to be with you.

Thank you so much for making the time at this time in your working life and what you're doing to support those, which we'll get to, I'm sure. But 10 million people are now said to have fled their homes since the war began, either internally displaced or now outside of Ukraine. You saw some of those scenes, you were part of it. What was it like to witness? Well, I think all of us who had to make the very tough decision to move from Lviv to the Polish border couldn't be otherwise than than um speechlessly shocked really because you never expect nobody expects not Ukrainians or us or anyone to be part of such a human exodus uh out of a country that has lived peacefully to another country in such a uh in such a kind of basic sort of wartime way. We passed thousands of people, many of whom had left their cars

because the queues were so long and were walking and it was bitterly cold. And of course, this is the case with many borders. It's quite exposed. And so people were wrapping things around them that they had in their backpacks. And we were watching this long, long line of people make their way to the border. And it was incredibly hard to process. We spent some time talking about it together as a group after we crossed the border because we felt the need to put words to what we had seen.

And most of us talked of it as things that we remembered reading about or hearing about from World War II. That the extent of that exodus, that was the clearest picture we could come up with. There is actually a lot of that, I have to say, in the papers today about history repeating itself, some of the particular images coming out of Ukraine, not least the ones that you're describing. And yet, as we've just been hearing in the news, Ukraine has rejected a Russian ultimatum offering people in the besieged city of Mariupol safe passage out of the port if they surrender.

Under the proposal, civilians are said would be allowed to leave if the city's defenders laid down arms, but Ukraine has refused. Do you have any sense of how long Ukraine can hold? I think the point about Ukraine and Ukrainians is that this is the biggest miscalculation that President Putin made. And the thing that people who don't know Ukraine will not can be forgiven for not knowing, which is that Ukrainians will fight for their country. They'll fight hard. They've had to do this over generations and they're doing it again. And I can't tell you what it would take for Ukrainians to voluntarily give up or cede or capitulate or leave.

But I can tell you that it would go a lot further than anyone else can imagine. So on the one hand, I'm so taken aback and so inspired by the bravery of people who were living with this incessant, deliberate shelling of civilians. Who else would, you know, would do that, would stay on? And part of me, of course, finds this heart-rending for the danger of the situation that people find themselves in. So I can't give you a timing, but I can tell you for as long as they take that stand, we'll be as close as we can geographically to try and help them. Is Putin a war criminal? I've commented on social media before now about the apparent deliberate targeting of schools and hospitals. And along those lines, I would say, yes, he has committed war crimes in this invasion.

Because, of course, that's the language that the the programme at the end of last week, who said, wouldn't go as far as that, but said that evidence was going to be provided to the Hague, but along those lines. But I think also striking in the last 24 hours, the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine says she believes genocide is being committed against the Ukrainian people. She's accused Russia of abducting thousands of Mariupol residents and taking them to Russian-controlled territory to be used for propaganda. What do you make of that and the use of that word? So I think we're going to have to understand all these different accounts that are coming out of Ukraine. And one thing that I experienced when we were in Lviv was that there's a cacophony of stories, of course, because this is a big country.

It's the second biggest country in Europe with a lot going on in that invasion in several cities. And so you have to bottom out those stories and you have to get as good an understanding as you can of what is happening. But I can completely understand why Ukrainians would perceive it as an attack on them because they are Ukrainian, given that in each of those centres where this has been happening, civilians have been targeted, whether it's in humanitarian corridors or whether it's in domestic residences. So I understand it. It's the thing that several countries are, of course, deeply interested in, deeply engaged in investigating. And we need those investigations to happen, would be your point, before we can say exactly what's gone on. You talked about our support and your role now. What does that look like? And do you think we're doing enough as the UK?

So the UK has been involved on every level of this response. There is military support. There is humanitarian support. there is the diplomatic engagement, there is the scheme to take in refugees as part of a family sponsorship. There are so many different levels. I think the challenge for all of us, not just the UK, but all allied countries, everyone in the world who's helping is that this is an exponential crisis. So the challenge is to be ready at every stage. And so, you know, in humanitarian engagement, you can be ready for a certain number of people to be leaving the country. But these will come in waves if the invasion continues and, say, for example, potentially moves westward or uses bigger and bolder weapons. So this is a challenge that we're going to have to continue to rise to potentially over months and years to

come. Well, there is talk now also of the Prime Minister of Boris Johnson going on a fleeting trip to Kiev to show solidarity to Kiev. Do you think he should? Well, I think the Prime Minister has done a brilliant job of that solidarity, not least in the documented conversations he's been having with President Zelensky. It's going to have to be his decision to decide. And of course, we have to work out how secure it can be to go inside the country. But I think any engagement is important to help bolster that extraordinary morale that the president has been showing by rallying the country and staying himself in the capital. So if the security could be met, you would be in support of that because of the morale potential boost?

I'm in support of any conversation with the administration and with the president. There was a remark that was reported as part of the prime minister's speech over the weekend. The prime minister compared Ukraine's resistance to Russia to Britain's vote for Brexit. I don't know if you saw this. It was in a speech at the Conservative Party Spring Conference. This was the idea of, he said, Putin's invasion left the world facing a choice between freedom and oppression, something the people of this country could relate to via Brexit. Do you think those comments were appropriate and that comparison appropriate? Well, that was a party political conference. I'm a civil servant. I'm not going to comment on political statements made by ministers. It's just, of course, being where you are, being what you represent. Some

have felt it was tone deaf. There's been calls for apologies. And also other ministers haven't been able to quite defend the remarks. So I just wanted to make sure I gave you the opportunity to respond. Well, I just think that the Prime Minister has several times before represented the scale of what the Ukrainians are having to do here. I think it's up to him how he compares them. But I think he's absolutely right in the scale of what they're having to deal with. There's just a message here from Jenny, if I may put to you saying, could you please question how the decision, going back to what we were just talking about at the beginning, to reject the Russian offer to accept surrender in Maripol, how it happens?

Who is consulted? I hope that if I was sheltering in a basement with no food or water, no one would make this decision on my behalf and leave me to die. I suppose that's a question about how these things play out and with your knowledge of conflict and how the decisions are made at the top. What would you say to our listener who's asked that? Well, of course, I'm not there. And I'm not a member of the Ukrainian government. I cannot comment on how the decision was made. We do know that the mayor of Mariupol, who is closely engaged with what's going on, indeed has suffered himself as a result of what's been going on, has been communicating with the president and with his team. So I make that the assumption of those conversations. But I think it's also fair for the Ukrainian administration to treat

with caution any warning given to them by the Russian administration, along with any commitment that the Russian administration may make, given that they have broken those commitments previously on, for example, humanitarian corridors. I'm reminded that you're our woman in Ukraine and you are in Poland. And as you say, not an easy decision to take. You stayed a lot longer than some perhaps would have had it. What was the reason in the end that you decided to go? What prompted that? Well, when we were in Lviv, we were working full time, and indeed we are now. We were working around the clock in Lviv to identify where people

were and help them move to positions with safety etc. And when we first arrived in Lviv it was, to be quite honest, a pretty comfortable place to be. But we were there just before the invasion began and just a couple of days afterwards martial law was declared and that made an instant change to Lviv. There were checkpoints which then spread to every major road. There was an increase in people carrying weapons. There was a general air of aggression, even though it wasn't a specific, you know, specifically targeted or even culminating anything. There were air raid sirens that were going off fairly frequently. There was at least one occasion where we had to take measures to protect ourselves in case an air raid warning

became an actual attack. And after a couple of weeks there, we took the decision that we probably needed to do the work that we were doing in an environment that was both more predictable and safe and calm. But also we were getting increasingly worried that if something happened to Lviv or Lviv surroundings, we would potentially become a burden on the Ukrainian armed forces who would need to provide you know some way of helping us move out and I didn't want to be that burden Ukrainian armed forces and other authorities need to be able to protect their own so we took that very difficult decision to move to the other side of the border and we have been and I'm commuting back and forth now between Warsaw and the border. We have been based there

ever since doing the same work. And I realise this is not the only thing that will be going through your mind at the moment, but it must have been incredibly worrying for your family outside of the Ukraine that you were staying there because you're not with all of your family, I understand. You stayed with your husband. No, my family has been based in the UK throughout this posting. My kids are college age, My husband works in the UK, etc. But they've travelled out frequently and grown to really love the country. So they themselves have been devastated by this. But of course, they've been worried about me as all my colleagues' families have been worried about them.

I was able to make a whistle-stop trip back to the UK over the weekend. I went there for a day of business and then saw my family and they were all incredibly relieved to see me. It's really hard to imagine any relative being caught up and particularly in a place that even if it's not a threat itself, feels like it's part of a very kinetic moment. So, yes, of course, they're worried, but they also understand what I've been doing and what I continue to do there. And I think they're very proud of it. And you have a connection going back, don't you, within your family to Ukraine? Is that right? Yes. So it's back three generations.

My mother's great grandparents were from Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. I'm sure that, again, deepens the sense of feeling and commitment that you already have, perhaps on top of that. It does. It does. And it made me feel particularly devastated to see Kharkiv being carpet bombed and people being deliberately attacked there. It's a city that I had a particular affiliation with for that reason. You mentioned coming back, and I did see on your Twitter that there was a group of women with the Prime Minister. Was that part of the work that you're talking about, the Ukrainian Women's Diplomatic Battalion? Can you tell us a bit about that? What's the sort of group together that's come together? So this was a group of Ukrainian women MPs who came over.

In fact, they've been they have travelled a few times to different centres. They have been to the European Parliament, for example, and came over to London. I believe it was part of this was organised by British MPs who themselves have visited Ukraine shortly before the invasion and had a really fantastic visit. And I went to join them with the meeting that they had with the prime minister, which was really excellent. This is a group of incredibly focused, very, very hardworking MPs, but they are also incredibly brave. They are based in the centre of Ukraine. They have been travelling out of Ukraine, which is a really onerous thing to do. Big country, several hours to get from Kiev to the border and then across these various centres and back again.

And they are absolutely determined to continue that work. And what are they hoping to achieve as this group? So they both help people understand Ukraine better. You have to remember that before this invasion happened, most Brits would kind of struggle to pinpoint Ukraine on a map, frankly, and would know very little about it. And so they they use the opportunity to help people understand more what's happening. But they also come with specific requests that they may represent from different parts of government.

They have lobbied for humanitarian aid. They have discussed military requirement. They have talked about situations in different parts of the country. They are they targeted to raise awareness of issues that may not yet have surfaced, for example, sexual violence. So they play that role of helping to add detail. And I'm also reminded to mention that you're part of a generation of British female ambassadors. And I wonder, looking at the numbers, the rising numbers of women in those posts, do you think women bring anything different to these roles? No, I think they can do every bit as good a job as men do. And that is well overdue to show that that's possible. I think what's particularly interesting about this is there is a growing number of women, me included, who have interest and experience

in tougher environments. And although I signed up for a job in Ukraine, not imagining that it would get this tough, having people who are Ukrainian speakers or Russian speakers who understand Eastern Europe, who have a conflict and security background, that's an area where traditionally there have been far fewer women. So for me, it's much more interesting to see people come up through that in a sectoral interest and begin to take these leadership positions.

And that being the route that interest and begin to take these leadership positions. And that being the route that perhaps people hadn't thought about and that also now having more women in this as well. Yes. When do you think you'll be able to go back? To Ukraine? Yes. I can't wait. I mean, it's one of it's I have to admit that there's a there's a psychological element to being based where where we are. Right. I know of colleague ambassadors who have returned to their capitals. I'm not returning to London. We are the British Embassy in Ukraine, and we're going to have a presence as the British Embassy in Ukraine

wherever we need to be as close as possible until we can go back. I do not know when that is, but until that is, we are functioning as the diplomatic representation to that country. In Poland? For as long as we can in Poland, yes. Yes. So for you, that's really important psychologically as well as anything else to be as close as you can be without being in there.

We must be as close as we can to Ukraine, yes. Thank you very much for talking to us this morning. That is the British ambassador to the Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, at the moment in Poland, but of course hoping, as she says, doesn't know when to go back to the Ukraine. A message here, more messages coming in, I should say. One from Wendy saying, what's being done by the UN? Surely they should be going into the country to see what's happening and make every effort to make a peace.

Yes, he's a war criminal with regards to Putin's, reads this message. An execution of civilians, rape, murdering children, it's all war crimes. In fact, deliberately displacing 10 million by discriminant shelling is a crime against humanity. And more messages coming in to that effect with your reaction to that. Of course, anything you want to say, do get in touch. 84844 is the number you need to text me here at Woman's Hour. Text will be charged at your standard message rate on social media app BBC Women's Hour or email me through our website. Let me ask you a completely different question. What is the longest time you have worn the same piece of clothing for or the same outfit? Of course, maybe during lockdown, having just

gone through a lot of that and you may still be in some process or part of that for health reasons, it might be rather longer than usual. But it's thought around 3,000 women around the world have taken part in a challenge to wear the same dress for 100 days. Yes, the woolen dress company behind the challenge is also offering a gift voucher to buy another one if you do it. But a community of women have formed through the process and learned something about the power of a uniform. Well, the journalist Emma Beddington tried it and managed it for 40 days. And shortly, I'll be talking to Professor Sandy Black from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, based at the London College of Fashion. But Emma, I shall come to you first. Tell me, 40 days,

how was it? Honestly, it was fine. It was, I don't think I'm the most creative dresser anyway. So wearing the same thing for 40 days was frankly a relief, I think. Possibly the hardest thing I think was I'm not a dress wearer. I'm always a sort of trousers person. So if anything, it was the fact of having to put on a dress and having to deal with tights, which I think I probably haven't dealt with since I was sort of office based in my 20s. I will hear not a word against tights. As a woman who doesn't own a pair of trousers, I am a dress wearer through and through. But I understand if you haven't, because I think it's much simpler to wear a dress, of course, because you don't have

to think about anything else to put on once it's on. But just to describe, yours was a particular grey woolen dress. Yeah, so obviously, the challenge, I think, was a lot more successful than the company expected. So they had sort of real stocking challenges. There were very limited choices available. So I had this dress called the Rowena, which is like, I am wearing it now. It is a long sleeved merino wool kind of shift dress, slightly A-line. And it was great because that was all there was. and and you couldn't obviously there's not a rule about one then what you do with it you could put things under it around it

on top of it i know you you sort of later in the process began to accessorize with it but the community that you found online was actually the revelation for you wasn't it what women were talking about on this facebook group that sprung up around it oh completely like i say the challenge itself was kind of a no-brainer for me. But the Facebook community was incredible because essentially it was women doing the challenge to have to post a picture every day. But a lot of them were also sort of participating in this Facebook group every day. And there was a thing they described as sort of the sisterhood of the dress where people would go on, their picture quite often you know in the course

of 100 days an awful lot of things can happen in your life either dramatic or quite ordinary um so you know people be having a bad day having sort of feeling a bit rough looking a bit rough or potentially dealing with much bigger things there were sort of people dealing with massive relationship crises we had births you know, terrible infertility worries, depression, all sorts of things. And people were very, very open on this group about what they were going through. And kind of the dress was just one tiny part of it. And it was this incredibly supportive community and people were just really, really open and sort of sharing their day-to-day worries. And I guess that was partly a pandemic thing, I think,

that it was this sort of really nice, safe space where you could discuss whatever was going on in your life around the dress. And it was sort of so different from sort of corporate body positivity that you get where it's all sort of, yay, girl, everybody looks great. And there was a real sort of acknowledgement that actually sometimes it's quite difficult to be in your body on a day to day basis. And I think when you pare it down with something like this challenge, it was kind of quite confronting for some people that, you know, you're faced with your body every day and what are you going to do with it?

Although comforting for some others, I was reading having a uniform, you know, taking away the pressure of having to think what to put that body in and how to feel about it. I'm going to take it from the deep to the extremely shallow. Did you smell? How was the cleanliness side of this? So I did it quite early in the year. So it was very cold. So it's very easy to put base layers underneath. So I was always wearing something underneath it, quite often two thermal vests. So that helped.

And then I would air it overnight. There's absolutely no reason you can't wash it, to be clear. You are allowed to wash the dress and you can just stick it in a cold wash, which I did. I didn't wear it for 40 days without washing it. Apart from anything else, I dropped a tin of tuna on it one day. Oh, nice. Fresh. Yeah, it was delightful delightful um but no it didn't smell I don't think it smells you'd have to ask my husband I think well I only 40 days somebody says I've I've got clothes I've worn on and off for years

on the trot reads one of these messages someone else taking issue with me not having a pair of trousers I have to say I did actually buy jeans recently just can't really wear them so I should correct myself but yes and you can wear trousers under a dress to somebody else. Yes, you can. But I don't. Let me bring in Sandy at this point, because I think it's, of course, this then speaks, doesn't it, Sandy, to sustainability and actually going back to perhaps how we used to dress, which would be that we wouldn't have that many options. No, we would. We would certainly not. We would cherish everything that we had and look after it, repair it and really value it and value what it's made from and what it

represents. Do you think this is helpful though to go back to this in any way? Because as I say, some found it very liberating to have a uniform? I do. I think it really helps increase awareness of what clothes mean to people and what the relationship is with clothes. So I think that's been lost over recent decades as clothing has, people have behaved as if clothing is disposable, which of course it certainly isn't. So I think cherishing the value of what clothes are and what they're made of. And this is your conscious, Emma, that it was made largely of wool. And that's a great fibre in terms of sort of smartness and keeping you warm, keeping you cool when you need to, and also being odour resistant and so on.

Odour resistant is also an interesting thing because i believe emma one of the other discussions or things that you were learning were different ways of cleaning because of course you don't just have to put everything in the wash the whole time some people put things uh sandy you're nodding nodding along here some people put things under their armpits i also was learning the other day instead of washing your whole dress some people put various products nice smelling products through steamers just onto the armpits. So there are these different ways of doing it. Sandy, just let me come back to you.

You're nodding with that. And do you think people should be thinking a bit more along those lines? Spot cleaning, as it were. I think a lot of the impact of clothing, particularly you think about underwear, I think that laundry is crucial. So much of the impact of our clothes is in the way that we look after them, the washing and drying. So just airing them and repair them. So I think that really is important if we can reduce our laundering. Emma, I love that you've put it on back today, put the dress back on,

have that relationship with it again. Were there any lessons you took away from it, whether it's to do with cleaning or your sense of self or style, having done it for 40 days? In a way, actually, for for me it made me be a little bit more creative I think in the sense that looking at how other people dealt with the challenge I was thinking actually no I don't wear any colours generally and I don't sort of wear accessories and I think it gave me a maybe a thought that it was actually possible to celebrate my body a little bit more, which is terribly corny.

But, you know, I'm 47 now. I was 46 when I started the challenge. It's not a time in your life when you necessarily think I can look really, really great every day. And I certainly didn't look really, really great every day. But it's just being sort of giving yourself permission to celebrate the way you look a little bit was quite nice actually I think and also you think about it yeah exactly I was going to say engage with it because you you can check out when you're having to do lots of other things yeah you do you don't necessarily think what can I do with this so weirdly having a I imagine a basis upon which to add a scarf put something else with it allowed you to engage a bit more yeah it was exactly that

I think it was that sense that you could actually go, oh, actually, what could I do with this? I do have this sort of scarf in my wardrobe or, you know, this little cardigan that I never wear or whatever. Coloured tights, yes. I came round to the tights in the end. Welcome, welcome. The water is OK here.

There's a message here. I love this that just came in saying, my immediate, possibly shallow thoughts on hearing this, says Anna, about the dress challenge. Does it have pockets? Does it have pockets? Did your one have pockets? It does. I'm just double checking, but it does indeed have pockets. And I think nearly all of the models have pockets. I have a dress on with pockets, too, and I'm putting my hand in one right now. Just in solidarity there, pocket solidarity.

Another one just coming in saying, which I think a lot of people could relate to, I wear three identical reversible tunics and black leggings for six months in winter. Add a brooch, a gilet or a fleece, liberation from clothes decisions for half the year round. Fantastic. So you're not alone with

this and it didn't obviously have to come from this one challenge. Emma Beddington, thanks for telling us about everything, including the tuna spill. We needed to imagine that. And Professor Sandy Black, thank you to you. Your messages coming in with regards to this and how you're living your lives and identity, I suppose that's what it all plays to. But looking ahead to Wednesday of this week, the Chancellor, of course, due to announce his spring statement, there is a new striking report which shows the rising cost of living could be forcing more families to use illegal moneylenders

to make ends meet with more than a million people in debt to loan sharks. The research also revealed illegal moneylenders using a range of coercive, violent and underhand tactics, including demanding sexual favours in repayment contracts with borrowers. The Conservative think tank, the Centre for Social Justice, which focuses on tackling poverty, is behind this report. And I'm joined now from the head of debt at the organisation, Matthew Greenwood. Good morning. Good morning. To take us through then a bit more of what your report found, what do you wish to highlight today?

So I think that what we wish to highlight is ultimately that we realised across a year's project that there are people across our country today who owe money to illegal lenders. We've heard about these hidden debts from charities across the country and it's just a lot bigger than we expected. And I think the thing that comes across the most is the misconception that we face about illegal lenders. Ultimately, we tend to think of illegal lenders as looking something like Phil Mitchell with a baseball bat and some knuckle dusters. And actually, an illegal lender is far more likely to damage your mental health than your physical health. And we find people borrowing for the everyday cost of living, paying their electricity bill, their gas bill.

Things as small as a pram, school uniforms or trainers. And they pay back far, far more than they borrow. Well, I mean, a pram, I suppose I get what you mean. It's not a house or something, but a pram is obviously a huge purchase for a lot of people. And that's what they they need the help with. And there's some of the detail in your report is particularly distressing and also wanted to ask, of course, around women and women being potentially more vulnerable to resorting to these illegal money lenders. What have you found on that front? Well, we know that by and large, women are still largely responsible for running household finances in a lot of households.

And we know that women are more likely to take their kids to school. So let's just talk about Michelle, for instance. Michelle was a lady in the northwest of England who met her lender on the playground. It was just another mum. And this lender persistently offered Michelle money until eventually she said yes. And the lender advanced her a small 50 pounds

to test her repayment to then lend her more and more and more with the intention that she would always pay back double and i think you know that's an example where women particularly can find themselves in trouble and another even worse is when they can't repay. We've seen cases in which female clients have been asked to repay in kind by providing sexual favours to the lender. One lender went even as far to write that into their contract, stipulating a kind of payment in sexual favours at that lender's pleasure. And in terms of this, as you say, it's more detail, it's more eye-opening, it's worse than some people may have thought this was, because as you say, people have an idea of what a lender is like. Now we have some of this detail, what now are you proposing needs to change, especially in light of, as we talk about, the cost of living? Well, so I think that the timing of this report is that it's released on Monday and on Wednesday,

the Chancellor is living his spring statement. And I think there's an awful lot that the Chancellor could be doing to ease the cost of living crisis. There is the opportunity to cut fuel duty. We know that those in the lowest incomes spend an awful lot on their cars. We know that there's an opportunity to reduce the amount clawed back by universal credit. And we know that there's the opportunity to upgrade universal credit more in line with inflation. And I think those three things are key to easing the cost of living crisis before we

begin a wider package of reforms to urgently renew the fight against illegal money lending. But I suppose those things ease the context for which you may take a loan, but then it's not necessarily that the targeting of these people who are lending the money in the first place and putting the sort of worst possible imaginable conditions in place, it's doing nothing to target them, is it? No, the cost of living crisis is immediate. And these are things we can do now to ease that crisis. And beyond that, we need to do three things to urgently renew the fight against illegal money lending. We need to clamp down on those illegal lenders. This is quite clearly illegal lending. It is a crime. And the illegal money lending team, England's primary body in England responsible for that.

And we're proposing that we increase their budget to enable them to arrest and prosecute more lenders. But I think what we also need to do is we need to build financial resilience and we need to provide the alternative. There is a dearth of credit providers across the UK at the moment, particularly for those on low incomes. And the government has a huge opportunity to rewrite the Credit Union Act and expand those affordable finance providers. With these people that you followed and you heard about what was going on with them and how they were being targeted, were they able to get out of these situations? How did their stories come to a close? So the people we spoke to were people that had been supported by the illegal money lending

team England. They are people who had been through this process and had emerged at the other end of it. But there's an awful lot of people that are still stuck in that process and the primary way that people get out of it is usually when they are contacted by the team because the team has detected illegal lending in the area. We found that when asked, the main thing victims said would help them speak out sooner was nothing, nothing at all. And that's because of the fear and the pervasiveness of these lenders over their lives. Well, it's something that, of course, you've drawn attention to. We'll see what the response is. Any response on it so far that you are able to say with regards to this detail? Well, I mean, I think that the main response is a bit of shock, really,

that this is something that is taking place in England quite a lot and is a lot bigger than we thought it was. And like you said, happening in playgrounds, not necessarily where you think, not always, but as an example that you gave. Yes, absolutely. Illegal lending takes place in plain sight. And I think that's the main takeaway from this report is that illegal lending is everywhere. It is across the country. It is in playgrounds. It is in local parks.

It is there is nowhere that you might not find an illegal lender. And that's something that we have to be acutely aware of. Matthew Greenwood, head of debts at the Centre for Social Justice, which carried out this research. Thank you. Messages coming in with regards to our previous discussion about wearing the same item again and again, sometimes as many as 100 days with this particular challenge. A message that says, how many people get their favourite clothes copied or make them themselves? Fast fashion dictates that the wonderful dress you bought and which fits one year won't be on the racks next year. Think about that. Another one. Good morning, Emma. I wear the same look pretty much every day. Tailored trousers,

long short sleeve shirt and a waistcoat. I'm a tailor and it's a really easy look for me and super practical for work. I just change it up with colour and fabric because all the trousers

and waistcoats I've made. So it's a perfect billboard for my business too. To be honest, I feel naked without a waistcoat now, says Antoinette. Thank you very much for this message. Hang your garment, says Margaret, in the fresh air, outside

or in a room with open window. Stale smell blows away. No need to wash. There's a lot of tips I have to say coming in along those lines. This message says, I used to love wearing a different outfit every day when I worked. As someone who's retired now, I truly miss the pleasure this gave me. I also got great

pleasure from other people wearing interesting or nice outfits. i odd says jackie no not a bit a lot of people also saying things along those lines and another one from elaine he says my sister was born in 1933 she used to tell me about wearing some sort of cloth protectors under her arms in dresses as a young woman no washing machine then some people still do that now they stick them in a kind of modern version of them another one here here, I'm also a dress wearer, wearing trousers only occasionally. I even wear a dress with my walking boots. If Victorian ladies could climb down mountains in skirts, then I can take a country walk in a dress. Hear, hear, Linda. I too find dresses easier. No coordinating top and bottom. They suit my petite frame really well. Not sure I could wear the same one though for 40 days,

let alone 100. And so those messages continue. But I'm sure we're also going to get some messages on this next discussion. Because if I ask you, are you struggling to get hold of your HRT medicine? What would you say? Menopausal women are reporting being forced to turn to the so-called black market as demand for prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy in England has doubled in the last five years. Many different products have faced shortages in the past, but it's oestrogel that's in low supply at the moment. And the company that makes it, Bezins,

say that increased media coverage of the menopause has actually led to greater demand and that they're working with their wholesalers to coordinate supplies across the country. In a moment, we'll hear from a different HRT supplier who can talk to us about why shortages occur and also about this. But just to remind you, the Department of Health announced in October that women would be able to get a year's supply of an HRT drug for £9.35, the cost of a single NHS prescription.

But at the end of last week, the government minister, Maria Caulfield, said this would not be implemented until April next year. Well, we wanted to try and get to the bottom of what is going on with this shortage. Tina Backhouse is the general manager of Theramex in the UK. Theramex is a specialist women's health company based in the UK and one of the largest suppliers of HRT to the UK market. Good morning, Tina. Good morning, Emma. What's your understanding of the supply issues at the moment then?

My understanding, obviously, we haven't got supply issues, luckily, at Therm-X at the moment for our products. But my understanding is that several products, not just Easter gel, are having problems at the moment supplying to the UK market. Why is that? I think it's a mixture of things. And I think it's quite a complex thing. First of all, you know, it's making pharmaceuticals obviously a complex process. There's you know, you have to get raw ingredients, you have to get manufacturing, you have to have packaging, you have to have transport. And if any parts of those that process breaks down, then that has an impact on it. We also have to forecast massively into the future. It's not like saying, oh, you know, we're at Sainsbury's, we might run out of bread next week, let's put another order

in for bread. It doesn't work like that. We're forecasting demand based on 12, 18 months into the future. And we work with the Department of Health, British Menopause Society, NHS England, to try and manage that demand. But i think if you look back into the into the past you know when 20 years ago and you'll be too young to remember this i'm sure but i certainly can remember it when the women's health initiative a deeply flawed study was published in and um it talked about you know and it it frightened women that they were all going to get cancer because of the, if they took HRT and the headlines in some parts of the lay press did that. And overnight, you know, at least 20% of women in this country stopped their HRT and the market, the market just dropped, basically. The HRT market in this country continued to deteriorate.

Now, in the last couple of years, there's been some amazing work done by people. You know, the, you know, Carolyn Harris, the MP, Louise Newsome, the British Menopause Society, pharmaceutical companies. And now, you know, the Women's Health Strategy, which has actually tried to alleviate that. And more and more women are um having hrt but we know that you know that you know from our point of view at thermex when the divina program went out last may and you know doctors will often talk about the divina effect you know the month following that we had a a 30% increase in uptake of HRT. So you're talking about Davina McCall there for those who have not perhaps followed that.

Yes, it's a Channel 4 programme. Yes. And just we'll come back to that in a moment. But just with reference to what you were saying about for those who are on HRT or then potentially were put off. The NHS website says recent evidence says that the risks of HRT are small and are usually outweighed by the benefits. The benefits of HRT usually outweigh the risks for most women. The risks are usually very small and depend on the type of HRT you take, how long you take it, and also your own health risks.

And the advice always is to speak to a GP if you're thinking about starting HRT or already taking it and are worried about any risks. I just wanted to say that at that particular point, but there's an email that came in just to get back to, so I take the point about demand and supply, that's one element of this. But what about price? There's an email here from a journalist called Emma Hartley who said she was on the programme in December 2019 explaining HRT shortages in the UK can occur when the price the government is prepared to pay for them on the NHS drugs tariff drops below the price on the world market. What's your understanding about how that's impacting things at the moment?

No, I don't think I personally, and I can only speak for my own company, and we are one of the largest suppliers, that doesn't have an impact because a lot of HRT in this country is on the banned export list by the Department of Health so it can't be exported. You agree a drug price for the pharmaceutical with the Department of Health and that's what is paid. These are not expensive products. Most HRT products cost less and cost the NHS less than the prescription charge that women pay for it. That's the reality. There's very few that cost more than that. So even newer therapies, we come in at very cost effective. You know, most of them are less than £10 a month.

Many of them are less than £5 a month. So you put it purely down to supply and demand at the moment? Yeah, I think it's down to supply and demand at the moment? Yeah, I think it's down to supply and demand. I think the market in the past was not a viable market in the UK. And over the, you know, there's more women on HRT to this time today than there was this time last year. And, you know, for us, six months following the Davina McCall programme on Channel 4, we saw 130% increase in demand for our products. So, you know, we I think there is also another aspect to this. And it's about, you know, the variance in access to different types of HRT across the country. So if you look at studies, they show that in some regions, there's a 45% lower rate of women be able to access transdermal HRT than oral HRT.

And by transdermal, I mean patches, I mean gels, I mean sprays. And a review of local formaries show that almost half of them did not provide equal access to transdermal therapy. And this is quite contrary to what NICE and the British Menopause Society are talking about when they talk about individualised access to HRT. Now, if you limit the amount on a local health economy, the amount of products that can be used, as soon as something goes out of stock, then that's going to cause big issues. So who's not done the necessary planning to make it that there are stories out there at the moment that somebody's hearing somebody's friend has got a spare bottle and they're willing to pay 50 quid, which is what's in the papers at the moment. I mean, that's just devastating, isn't it? so and i can't speak for bessons obviously and i wouldn't speak to bessons but so i don't know what what their issues are with it but this should not

be happening because there are plenty of other hrts that are out there and women should be given alternatives to that who should be who should be giving the alternatives you're saying the doctors should be the doctors pivoting to a different, so I know you're not speaking for Bezins. There's a statement from Bezins saying, and of course we invited them on, in recent months the number of women seeking HRT, such as oestrogel, has significantly increased due to media coverage on the menopause and other factors. This exceptionally high demand has meant that our safety stocks of oestrogel has become depleted. All new deliveries into the country are being used immediately

and we're working with wholesalers to coordinate supplies across the country. That's the result of that particular conversation. But in terms of the planning, you're saying it's about doctors pivoting and suggesting different medicines. Is there also an issue just about how this is distributed and how it's prioritised by the powers that be? Because that also has been an issue that I know you've personally looked at and faced. Yeah, I mean, I do think that there needs to be prioritisation. And for example, when new

products, and there are new forms of HRT that come onto the market and they are approved by the MHRA. The clinical benefit is seen by the British Menopause Society and the MHRA and a price, an agreed price is reached with the Department of Health. It's extremely frustrating that we have stocks of those products in place, but people can't access those because each local health economy has to take a formery, has to go through a formery where somebody has to fill in a form, a gynaecologist has to fill in a copious form and get agreement to have that used on local guidelines,

even though the British Menopause Society may have it on their guidelines. I suppose you're giving a window into some of the bureaucracy behind the scenes of potentially supplying alternatives. But is your view, and I know that some will say you would just say this because you work in this world, in the pharmaceutical world that supplies this, but is your view right now that nobody actually needs to be going onto the so-called black market because we do have enough it's just whether you are able to get access to it yes i do believe that and um i think you know we need to listen

to the british menopause society we need to listen to what alternatives there are people aren't going to get their you know new therapies and guidelines through formulary committees who are already two years behind because of covid gy Gynaecologists have one of the biggest backlogs of any department. So they're not going to fill in forms to get new therapies, but there are other therapies out there. So nobody should, and it horrifies me. You know, I'm a woman of 51. I'm on HRT myself. It's a passion of mine. You know, I know you'll say, I'll just get paid and I work in the pharmaceutical industry but you know what this is my passion and the passion for with the people I work with that women have the choice and there is choice out there and we just need to the real scandal

of this is we need to stop the bureaucracy and we need women to be able to have equal access to all types of HRT that they can you know know, they can make the choice whether they have HRT or not HRT and they have educated choice. Yes, well, let me read out what would the latest statement that we've got. Tina Backhouse, thank you very much. The latest statement, I should say, from the Department of Health. I understand that the Minister for Women's Health, Maria Caulfield, has said, I understand how distressing an HRT shortage is for women who need these medicines, and we've been doing everything we can to ensure women can access HRT. Most HRT products, including alternatives to the limited number experiencing supply issues, are available. So if you are going through that, of course, you can also get in touch. But some context there,

and also some of the background with regards to how the supply chain works when it comes to HRT medicine. Many thanks to Tina there. But a new exhibition, Photographing Protest Resistance Through a Feminist Lens, has just opened at Four Corners in Bethnal Green in London. Featuring protest images by female photographers, it explores how images of resistance resonate across generations from 1968 to the present day. Maggie Murray is a prolific photographer of protest and her images feature throughout the exhibition. She documented groundbreaking protests from the 80s and 90s, including at Greenham Common. And there's a particularly iconic photograph in the exhibition of hers. And I asked her to describe it.

Well, the photograph of mine that's in the exhibition was taken at Greenham on seven o'clock in the morning on New Year's Day, 1983, when the Greenham women climbed over the fence, the 10 foot high wire fence, ran across the airfield and danced on the silos of cruise missiles. And it was dark, it was wet, and it was one of the most wonderful events of my life.

Why was it one of the most wonderful? It was just so exciting, you know, to be there and to see those women confronting the state. It takes such determination, such courage and such imagination to do something like that and to be there and to experience it firsthand is something very special. And in terms of how to know when the moment is to take the photo, how do you make that decision? because it's so different when you were training you know there was film and you had to make a lot more choices I imagine than having

endless uh space to store it data wise yes well it's a very good question as people always say and I I don't know that I know the answer to it but it is about having done a lot of photography and in some way knowing what it is that you want to say what it is that's important you know the mood of the photographs the people that are in it what does it mean for them and in this case does it convey something about what went on and what the issue was well and also I suppose how important is it for a woman to be taking those sorts of photographs at what have been largely, and what we're talking about here, feminist protests? Well, you can't always tell whether a photograph's been taken by a man or by a woman. It's more to do with the body of work and with the sort of things that get chosen to be photographed, the issues that are chosen.

And also, who do the women trust? I mean, there were three of us there. There was a journalist and three photographers. We were all women. And that was because the Greenham women trusted us not to, I don't know, let other people know that this event was going to happen. I mean, we had to drive out to Berkshire and there was nobody else but the women and us. And they trusted us not to then sell them out in some way. I suppose that's what I'm driving at, you know, not in regular scenarios, not in all scenarios,

but I suppose for a feminist protest or protest where women are driving it, there's a feminist lens, if you like, and that trust that goes with it. Yes. And it's often a trust which has been built up over months or years because these protest photographs were often not, that wasn't all that the photographer had taken. Sometimes they were almost embedded in an issue or a story. For example, Brenda Prince and Ray Sopage have images of the women in the miners' strike and the Battle of Albury,

but they spent months taking photographs of what the women protesters went through in their everyday lives as well as on the protests. Did you ever want to be the protester, not the photographer? Could you divide yourself like that? It's a very difficult thing to do. You know, when you're a photographer, you spend a lot of the time thinking,

perhaps I should put the camera down and just get on with the protest. And then when you're doing the opposite, you feel the opposite as well. It is very difficult. And I do go on and have been on many demonstrations where I didn't take any photographs at all. I haven't regretted it. Itching, itching to be on the other side of it.

Yes. That's an interesting tension. I also understand you were a founding member of Format Photo Agency, the woman-only photographic agency. Tell us about that, why you chose to do it. Basically, Val Wilmer and I had a conversation where we had to confront a thought

that if we wanted to be in a photographic agency and we were already established in a photographic agency, and we were already established photographers doing quite interesting work, but if we wanted to be in one of the new agencies that was being set up, nobody was going to invite us. They were all boys' agencies, men's agencies. And so if we wanted to be a member, we were going to have to set something up ourselves so we did. And how was it? Oh it was great. Sometimes they're not, sometimes there are

difficult moments. I'm not saying it was all great, it was partly a collective so there were weekly meetings, you can bet your life there were rows, there were real discussions. It was an education as well. When are we talking about? When did you found it? We found it in 1983. Okay, wow. And in 1983, it was still that you needed to do that because it was the men's clubs, the boys clubs. Oh, yes. And I dare say it isn't completely different now. Really? Yes. You'd have to ask some of the younger women, but I understand it isn't, it's by no means perfect, shall we say. How do you feel about working in digital, you know,

without the dark rooms, without all of the life that went alongside it? Oh, I missed that at the end. I never gave up the dark room. There was something about the whole process. I mean, it's much more terrifying because, I mean, some jobs you went on, you might be abroad for six months, no, six weeks anyway, and you wouldn't know until you got back exactly what you'd got.

And then you'd have to see that moment. Yes, yes. Quite a lot of drama, I imagine, and stress. Very dramatic. I mean, when we went back from the event at Greenham, three of us got in a car, drove back, went and processed it. In fact, I think we tried to sell some of the pictures to the Daily Mirror. And you really don't know whether you messed up on the photograph you think you've got.

It was very different. I imagine. But also maybe something that we lack a bit more time perhaps as well to get back, have a look at it properly. Not everything have to be immediately on a website straight away. Yes, I think there is that. There's time for reflection because there are some photographs which you might not want to release, for example, or which you might feel you are certainly only going to let certain people see. Has it ever been very frustrating when you've taken great care

to represent the women that you've photographed in a certain way, then to see it with a headline or with words around it that you wouldn't have put there? Because I'm trying to think, you know, headlines around women protesting and how women are characterised are not always positive. Oh, it's infuriating. Absolutely infuriating.

Yes, well, I think I was putting it mildly with some of the headlines around, especially women protesters. Hysteria comes to mind as a word as well. And I should say you're retired now, mainly looking after the archive. But I wonder, are there any recent events you would have liked to have been at with your camera? Oh, there's a couple. I really have loved to have been there when the Colston statue came down in Bristol. That was a wonderful moment.

And also at the Sarah Everard vigil when the police broke it up. At the vigil itself and also what happened to the vigil. I really wished I'd been there. Well, the images that did emerge from that particular event are very striking and kind of burned into people's minds. And I suppose that's the power of photography. Is there another image that you would particularly highlight from this exhibition that people should look out for? Well, there's an image of Brenda Prince's from the miners' strike of women protesting as strike breakers tried to go in and do a shift. And they're standing there shouting in the snow and in the dark at night.

And it's wonderful to see. It brings something extra to the image, the lighting, the darkness. And it's an important event. But there's also aesthetically something that draws you to it. Maggie Murray, photographing protests resistance through a feminist lens opening for free and is open in East London. You can check it out. Thank you for your company today. Back 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. Since the war began, my inbox has been flooded. People from Ukraine, Russia and Britain are getting in touch with me.

They're telling me about a very different battle, but one that's also having real consequences for the people caught up in it. I'm Marianna Spring, and in this new podcast for Radio 4, War on Truth, I'll be reporting on the extraordinary information war being waged over Ukraine and hearing from the ordinary people sucked into it. This blatant denial of reality is being waged by trolls, state media, influencers, online and beyond. From BBC Radio 4, War on Truth. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year,

I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.