Woman's Hour - Maggie Oliver, Music from the Alison Rayner Quintet & Mixed Weight Dating

Episode Date: January 18, 2020

Maggie Oliver, the former detective and whistleblower who exposed Greater Manchester Police’s poor handling of the sexual abuse of young girls in Rochdale, talks about the publication of the first part of an independent review into failures in the Investigation of the sexual grooming of children. She tells us why she thinks girls are continuing to be abused today.A mother tells us about her daughter being able to access around 30 cosmetic procedures despite being under the age of 18. Caroline Payne a plastic and reconstructive surgeon discusses how and why this might happen.We have music Alison Rayner Quintet.We discuss the term ‘Mixed Weight Dating, used to describe a couple with a noticeable difference in body size or shape, with Steph Yeboah a plus size and body positive lifestyle blogger and Ebony Douglas the CEO of her own marketing and PR agency.We hear from the heads of the UK’s only two women’s housing associations Zaiba Qureshi the Chief Executive of Housing for Women and Denise Fowler the Chief Executive of Women’s Pioneer Housing. How have women’s housing needs changed since the organisations were set up?Presented by: Jenni Murray Produced by: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Lucinda Montefiore

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast. Good afternoon. There are two housing associations in the UK which cater exclusively for women. How do they work and what's their history in the women's suffrage movement? Concerns about young people under the age of 18

having no difficulty getting cosmetic procedures. What we find absolutely staggering is that my daughter, who has had some very serious mental health issues, who is still actually a child, has been able to access probably 30 different procedures over the last 18 months. And I think the minimum that the industry must do is ask for some form of ID. A new term for you, mixed weight dating.

Why is there so much criticism of a big woman being seen out with a not so big man? And how upsetting can it be? When we would go out in public, we would get the stares from people. When I posted pictures online, I would have people saying, oh, you're so lucky to have him. How did you get him? And music played live by the Alison Rayner Quintet. She was 60 when she decided to form her own jazz band. Now, earlier this week, the first part of an independent review into failures in the investigation of the sexual grooming of children was published.

It made shocking reading. It was commissioned by the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and found the police and social workers were aware that children were suffering the most profound abuse but did not protect them. Maggie Oliver is the former detective in the Greater Manchester Police who resigned from her job in 2012 and became the whistleblower who first exposed the force's poor handling of the sexual abuse of girls in Rochdale. Why had Operation Augusta been set up originally? A young girl called Victoria Agolia had died actually in Rochdale. She'd been administered an overdose of heroin by a 50-year-old Pakistani man.

She was in care and she'd been horrifically sexually abused and raped. At the same time, Channel 4 were transmitting a documentary called Edge of the City, in which they uncovered a problem in Keithley of Pakistani men sexually abusing and grooming vulnerable white children. In hindsight, I believe that Greater Manchester Police set up Operation Augusta to head off criticism and the spotlight when there was public outrage about what had happened in Keighley. When the Ferrari died down, by that time we'd got over 97 men,

paedophiles, on a database. We had a list of well over two dozen children, but nobody had been arrested or interviewed at that point. And the report makes it very clear that the decision to close Operation Augusta was based on resources, and they just buried it. But if there were cases that stood a chance of success, 97 potential suspects, 26 victims, why were those victims not a priority? There is an attitude towards these kinds of children that come from difficult backgrounds, that they don't matter.

These children were being abused. The powers that be in Greater Manchester Police, the Chief Constables, the Assistant Chief Constables resourced a full major incident team when I wrote a report together with the other officers on Augusta, making it crystal clear what the problem was. But there was an attitude that these children were making a lifestyle choice, that they didn't matter. The resources weren't worth putting in to investigate it. And you know that the statements yesterday, what they're very keen to stress is that things have changed. Well, I've become a focus for people to contact when they have been abused, when they are being failed,

and I can tell you categorically that this has not changed. You seem to be implying that attitudes to vulnerable girls have not changed since your time in the force. Is that what you're implying? I'm not only implying it, Jenny, I am stating it absolutely. I'm currently involved in a case with the Centre for Women's Justice and Harriet authorities to deal with the offending against them in an ethical, in a thorough and in a proper way. That is today. Things have not changed.

You know, as I say, I'm contacted every day about failures. I have felt forced in many ways to set up my own charity foundation now, in which I aim to give help and support to everybody who has nowhere else to go. I wish I didn't have to do that, but there is a desperate need out there for help. And my firm opinion is that without legal consequences for people in the positions of power in these organisations, legal accountability, we will continue to see this in another 15 years with another review.

And people are fed up hearing the same thing. You have called for prosecution of leading officers. Yes, I have. How likely is that to happen? I'm just one voice. I know that is the only thing that will change this pattern. If a chief constable today knows that if he knowingly neglects his duty, that if he closes down a job like Operation Augusta,

where we have over two dozen victims and 100 offenders, they knew what was going on. If the chief constable today knew that if he did a similar thing today, that in 10 years' time, he could face legal consequences for that he could lose his pension he could be charged with misconduct in a public office i believe then we would see real change but the the man who was in charge at the time when operation augusta was closed down was

mike todd he's no longer here chief constable today will say this was not his responsibility, and it wasn't. So we need accountability for the people who make the decisions at that time. There was an Assistant Chief Constable who was still in post when I was working with the review team for two years. He's now retired as well. So we keep hearing the same things. There has to be personal consequences for public servants. Why didn't they listen to you? I've asked myself that question many times,

but when you consider that the previous chief constable, Peter Fye, tried to dismiss everything I was saying by saying I was a woman who had lost the plot. I had become too emotionally involved. I had become, I was bereaved. Basically that I was a silly woman who didn't know what she was talking about. But he knew that what I was saying was the truth. This has in many ways destroyed my life, this journey. It's been 15 years, Jenny. Every day I have a different message. I have fought tooth and nail

to expose the truth. This report absolutely vindicates everything I have said officially. I always knew I was telling the truth. The people who have tried to cover up the truth also knew I was telling the truth. So it's vindication for me, but more than that, it's the kids who have failed. They will now feel that they have a voice too, but it's really too little too late.

How free are grooming gangs to operate now? They still go in very large swathes of the country unchecked because this report makes it clear that Operation Augusta was closed down because of the resources needed to investigate and prosecute these men. That is still the case today. And if you look at the national picture about the way that the whole criminal justice system is being squeezed, the CPS acknowledge quite openly that they are now only prosecuting the very easiest rapes to prosecute. None of these trials would ever come to court. We have high court judges criticising the criminal justice system.

We are at crisis point. There is no legal aid. These kids are trying to seek a little bit of compensation. It is like pulling teeth. It takes years. The girls from Rochdale in 2012, whose hand I am still holding, are still fighting that battle for compensation. The money that is wasted on those kinds of actions should be redirected at addressing the criminals need to be targeted and stopped. They know it's easy to get away with. They're very sophisticated networks. We talk about county lines and gangs. These are organised criminal gangs. When the men in Rochdale were charged with trafficking

and conspiracy to commit sexual activity with a child, that is not what they were responsible for. They are rapists. The man who got a 13-year-old child pregnant was out of prison within three years. That man who got her pregnant, he was having sex with her when she was 12. She met him one month ago,

walking around the supermarket in Asda, and bumped into him face to face, right in front of her, in sole control of another little child. These are the things that I want to change. And the authorities have quite clearly shown that if they can bury it, they will. I was talking to Maggie Oliver, and the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police told us that claims they had tried to stop the review of Operation Augusta could not be further from the truth, and that last year Operation Green Jacket was set up

and the scope of its investigation has grown from the original 25 victims to 53. He says the attitude towards investigating this type of crime has completely changed since Operation Augusta was concluded nearly 15 years ago. Now we recently had an email from a woman whose teenage daughter, without her mother's knowledge, had managed to have around 30 cosmetic procedures from more than 20 clinics without ever being asked to prove her age. She's 17, but had been asked to sign paperwork saying she was over 18. So what are the rules when it comes to cosmetic work?

Well, Jane asked why the daughter had wanted to pursue the idea of any sort of cosmetic procedure and to retain her anonymity, the mother's words are spoken by a BBC actor. I think it stemmed from when she was younger, when she had developed an eating disorder. She had anorexia, which she was treated for with an eating disorder clinic. She made a more or less good recovery. She was discharged. Then her thought processes, because she's quite a rigid thinker,

her thought process moved away from obsessing over food and became obsessing over her looks. It was particularly about her nose that she became obsessed with, really. And in the end, she did have a nose procedure? Well, what happened was over quite a long period, she was approaching various beauty clinics and having non-surgical treatments done. With your permission and...

No. No, she wasn't getting our permission and she was stealing my credit card. And she took my husband's credit card one time. It was generally my card she was going through my handbag for. And she was getting all sorts of non-surgical nose things like nose threading which I really still can't quite get to the bottom of what that even means all sorts of fillers in her nose to fill the bump and then to try and turn it up at the end and And then not only was she getting that done,

but some of the clinics were saying, well, actually, why don't you have lip fillers done as well, just to complement what you've already had done? So she was doing things like that as well. And she was still a teenager? It started when she was 16. So I think what has been the most staggering thing about all of this is that not one of these clinics,

and she's probably approached about 20 in the last 18 months. That you know about? That I know about. And the ones that I've been able to identify from my credit card, because presumably their finance departments don't necessarily put the name of the clinic on there when it comes up on your credit card, they have not once asked for any ID from her. So all she needed? Well she didn't even need

to present my credit card because every single time she's been able to book these appointments and pay for them either online through PayPal, through various apps that she's been able to download, through a couple of websites that set up the appointments on behalf of the clinics. So she's never actually had to present a physical means of payment. So actually our incredibly well-connected high-tech world has presented her with the perfect opportunity. Well it absolutely has and she's under 18. She's a child and they've never once, not one of these clinics have asked for any form of ID. And where are these clinics? Well, initially she started going to clinics that were local to where we live. And then the vast majority have been in and around Harley Street.

Harley Street is the medical street in central London. Well, I suppose you would think of it as reputable. Yeah. And the ones that I've contacted, the ones that I've seen that she approached, they all have doctors on as part of their staffing and they should have a duty of care and they should actually be acting in the best interests of a child. But because they don't know she's a child, because they've never asked for ID. What is it you'd like to change? What we find absolutely staggering is that my daughter, who's had some very serious mental health issues and underlying an Asperger's

difficulty, which makes her thinking very black and white and very, very rigid, so her perceptions about the world are slightly different, is that someone with such mental health issues, who is still actually a child, has been able to access probably 30 different procedures over the last 18 months and I think I think the minimum that the industry must do is ask for some form of ID you can't go into a supermarket or even the local corner shop to buy a bottle of wine without a formal ID can I just check the figures you mentioned you said. I think she's probably had about 30 different types of procedures, a lot on her nose. Total financial outlay? I think the last 18 months, it's about £15,000.

Well, they are the words of a Woman's Hour listener and a very concerned mother, as you can hear from that. But the voice there was that of a BBC actor. We just need to make that absolutely clear. Caroline Payne is here, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon and a member of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. What do you think of that, Caroline? It is quite astounding and it is not unusual. And that's really quite sad, is that this is not the first time I've heard of this sort of case. And it highlights the problems with the cosmetic industry at this time. So many questions. I mean, you yourself operate a reputable business. You operate out of Harley Street sometimes, not all the time. But there are, to put it bluntly, cowboy outfits in the same street, aren't there?

Totally. I mean, it's trying to understand what the cosmetic industry actually is and how people need to get more educated in what they're trying to seek, the treatments and the practitioners that are going to undertake those procedures. And there are lots of things that people just don't understand about the cosmetic, aesthetic and plastic surgery point of view. And the only thing that's regulated in this country, which is a specialist training, is in plastic surgery. There is not a GMC register for cosmetic or aesthetic surgeons. So when it comes down to many of these clinics, it's actually who operates out of them that needs to be looked into as well. The clinics are regulated if they are undergoing

surgical procedures by the CQC or the Healthcare Commission. Well, who actually is in charge here? Because I've been trying to work out. There are so many different bodies. There's the BMA, there's the General Medical Council, there's the department of health at some point presumably there's the cqc there's also the jccp that's the joint council for cosmetic practitioners there's the royal college of surgeons and you had a few more i do have many more and that is where all the confusion is about the regulation um when you look at regulation and say it's non-regulated, that means there's no rules, no permissions and no laws. Well, on the cosmetic surgery, the surgical procedures, then there are rules and regulations

that are associated with the Department of Health, the CQC, the Healthcare Commission, the GMC. So you should have these registers of people. It's the non-invasive, which... Can you define non-invasive? So, yeah. When you stick a needle in someone, that is, as far as I'm concerned, invasive. So what we tend to say is non-surgical cosmetic procedures. And this is the biggest industry. It's about 70 to 80% of all the cosmetic procedures that are undertaken in the country

are the non-surgical and this is a multi-billion um 3.54 billion pound um industry that is you can walk down a very average high street i'm thinking of my own and you've got people who'll do your nails and they'll do a good job and they'll also do a bit of botox and whiten your teeth. That's right. So where is the certification of accreditation? That is what we're looking for. And the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery is working hard with the government, the Royal College of Surgeons, the GMC to try and get certifications.

That is somebody that has passed a proposal, have an application, has done a course in professional standards. And also that is really pertinent to this particular case is a psychology. There's a psychology course. I was going to say that is absolutely at the heart of all this. And we should say the young woman involved here is a vulnerable young person. She'd been through a really, really rough time. But her experience tells you all you need to know

about how easy it is to get this stuff done. And sadly it is. I mean, there should be a very rigorous consent, and I do totally agree with the proof of identification. Why should you have to show identification to get a bottle of wine? Or a tattoo, for example. So the tattoo industry is something that I don't understand is why so regulated. What is the harm in a tattoo, for example. So the tattoo industry is something that I don't understand is why it's so regulated. What is the harm in a tattoo?

When it comes down to it, you don't like it, you use the fixes, you go and get it redone. But that industry has actually got itself organised. Yes. So you have to have, it is absolutely against the law to tattoo an under 18 year old. And also every tattoo parlour has to be a local authority accredited and they have to show that certificate in their parlour. Why not every single cosmetic unit has to have the same accreditation? Caroline Payne was talking to Jane and we had an email from someone who didn't want us to use a name. My sister who has emotionally unstable personality disorder and who has self-harmed very seriously throughout her life has had countless procedures on her face

over the last three or so years to the point where she looks like a completely different person. I absolutely believe that every woman has the right to do whatever she likes to her own body and we should respect each other despite differences in appearance and taste. But I fear that the desire for these procedures has come out of a place of trying to fit in to a lifestyle that's originated in Beverly Hills for socialites and millionaires and has since trickled down into our everyday lives because of globalisation caused by social media. Still to come in today's programme, a new term, mixed-weight dating. Why is there so much criticism of a big woman being seen out with a not-so-big man? And the two housing associations which provide homes for women and their history in the suffrage movement.

Alison Rayner's instrument is primarily the double bass and throughout her life she's made her living from music. She's played with other people and she's taught, but it was not until she turned 60 that she decided to set up her own jazz band. They are the Alison Raya Quintet. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. There's a crack in everything by Alison Rayner, who played double bass with Deirdre Cartwright on guitar, Dan McLaughlin on sax, Steve Loder on piano and Buster Birch on drums and percussion.

Now, you may be hearing this for the first time, although there is an American television programme which uses the phrase as a title, and it's mixed-weight dating. In the show, the woman is hugely obese and the man is slim, and it is generally the woman who is fat and the man is not, when the term is used. Is it just a short phrase that simply states the obvious, or is it upsetting and possibly offensive to those couples who fit the description?

Ebony Douglas runs her own PR agency, and Steph Yeboah is a body-positive blogger. What does she make of this term? I think it's just another way to other plus-size women, because we do not see this happening the other way around with plus-size men and slim women. In fact, it's almost celebrated via the means of TV and TV shows. It's almost completely normalised. But it really offends me because I feel like plus size women can't be in happy, healthy relationships with people that are conventionally attractive without society thinking,

why is she with this attractive man? She shouldn't. She should be with people who look conventionally attractive, without society thinking, why is she with this attractive man? She shouldn't. She should be with people who look exactly like her. And I really do not like the whole aspect of the TV show because it's almost voyeuristic in the way it seems to treat plus-size women like zoo animals with people looking and speculating on this relationship. So I am completely against the term. Ebony, what's your experience of it? When I thought about the first stages of me and my partner because he's very into fitness

and he's really into health I remember when I first introduced him to some of my friends one of them said oh you're lucky he's a catch kind of thing and then even over time even in my relationship now you'll get other friends saying, oh, he'll be able to help you. You know, I didn't ask for help in any way. So it can be disheartening. It can knock your self-esteem sometimes because of the outside comments

based on the fact that I am plus size and he's... What do they mean, he might be able to help you? In terms of helping me lose weight. That's what... So he might say, to help you? In terms of helping me lose weight. That's what... So he might say, shall we go to the gym together? Or maybe when you go to the cinema, no, I don't have the popcorn. That kind of thing you're thinking about.

That kind of thing. And that can affect your self-esteem because you may already... I already notice that I'm bigger. So, you know, I don't need outside sources kind of making a comment on the help I should need so it can you know it's definitely there um and and then I wonder why it's such a a big thing that you know I'm the bigger one and he's into fitness and that's like

why can't we just be different but be happy with our differences because it doesn't bother him it doesn't bother you obviously no no health bother him. Obviously. No, no. Health-wise, obviously, health is important, but that has nothing to do with my image. And he's never had a problem with me. Steph, why do you suppose it tends only generally to apply to a fat woman with a thin man? Because of the patriarchy, I think. It's because of the patriarchy. I mean, when we see see we saw the same thing happen with tess holiday when she was on the cover of cosmopolitan in a bikini there have been so many plus-sized men um topless on the covers of magazines music magazines uh all of these things but you don't hear a peep but as soon as it comes to women's bodies women's bodies are more policed

within the media and within society because we're automatically supposed to perform femininity and be dainty and perform these traditional sort of femme roles and being plus size falls outside of the scope of what people consider to be feminine and so when people see a plus size woman happy and thriving and confident they don't like it because sometimes i think especially if you're smaller sometimes it could be like i've worked so hard on my body and i'm slim and i'm fit but i hate myself and i see this fat person with a good looking man and she loves herself i should be that that way not you so i'm going to project my insecurities about my thin body onto this fat woman because she's happy and she shouldn't be in that position because society has said that you are disgusting

what experience have you had of this mixed weight dating question so with my experience I was in a relationship a few years ago with somebody that was quite sort of athletic and tall and again he didn't mind about my weight at all in fact he liked it he preferred it um but when we would go out in public we would get the stares from people when I posted pictures online I would have people saying oh you're so lucky to have him how did you get him and I would reply saying actually he's the lucky one because I'm great and I'm an amazing person and I would like to think that I'm attractive too and so um it was just really the cause of a lot of anxiety for me because it almost made me feel like I shouldn't be with this person or I don't deserve to be with somebody that is

that fits the westernized standard of beauty because of how I look but luckily I was at a point where my confidence was quite good and my self-esteem was was was really getting there so I was able to kind of handle it when people would be quite horrible with their backhanded compliments so it didn't last the relationship didn't last no no eventually no it kind of just fizzled out what's been the impact on your relationship do you think of this what's quite interesting it's quite interesting because as I mentioned before in terms of outside comments it can knock your confidence so there may be times when I think I was explaining to Stephanie that even down to yesterday I think I was making um I was making lunch and then I think

my boyfriend just made a comment saying oh did you eat already and all he meant was he didn't want me to make food for him for him only um because he didn't want me to waste my time but I took that immediately to think based on childhood experiences and people making comments in the past I automatically went to uh kind of being upset about it because I thought hang on a minute doesn't matter if I eat already I might want to eat lunch again but that wasn't his intention at all so sometimes your insecurities can get the better of you based on other people's comments and if you bring that into the relationship it can cause a friction that wasn't there in the first place um so that's been my experience how much Steph would you say weight and race are connected on this dating scene?

It kind of depends, really. It depends on the kind of dating sites that you're on. I think sometimes when you do exist within certain intersections, you become somewhat of a fetish for some people, depending on race. So in my experience, I do tend to get a lot of messages regarding my race. So men saying, oh, I've never been with a black girl before. Oh, you must be really aggressive. I've heard you guys are really sassy. Using all of these sort of racially,

racial microaggressions to sort of paint all black women as the same in this kind of like animalistic, feral kind of way, which is just disgusting. And then I also get a lot of messages from people that have fetishes for feederism or feederism so feederism is a fetish where men and women can get sexual pleasure from watching their partners eat and gain weight so that in a sense is kind of promoting sort of getting bigger. And that's something that I've never been into. But I tend to get a lot of messages sort of dehumanizing me and objectifying me and yeah, just seeing me as a vessel as opposed to a person that

is awesome. I was talking to Steffi Boer and Ebony Douglas and Charlotte emailed, I know of a couple where the man is in his 70s, decidedly overweight, you could call him obese, and his girlfriend is slim, slightly younger, probably in her 60s. The difference, and why we don't much question the mismatch, is that he is a well-off retired company director,

so has what you could call pulling power from money and status. The UK has two women's housing associations. Both are based in London and both have their roots in the women's suffrage movement in the early 20th century when housing was a vital concern. Well, how's much changed? Denise Fowler is the chief Executive of Women's Pioneer Housing

and Zeba Qureshi is the boss at Housing for Women. Denise, explain the link between getting the vote and secure housing. Well, I'm Chief Exec of Women's Pioneer Housing, which was established in 1920 by a group of suffragists and suffragettes. And I think what it really shows is that the women's movement at the beginning of the last century was not just about getting the vote. The vote was a means to an end to tackle the other issues that were relevant to women's disadvantage in society. And so by 1920, though, all these women who thought, well, we've done this, what's next? And some of them were personally finding it difficult to find affordable, safe, secure accommodation in London.

And so the driving force behind Women's Pioneer, this Irish suffragist, Ethel Dred Browning, got together a group of passionate campaigners who'd been involved in the women's movement or in the Garden Cities movement because she was employed by the Garden Cities Association. From there, they set up Women's Pioneer and they got money in from people with more money in the suffrage movement to buy houses and do them up for women. Right. Let's just drill down a little bit to this. You say that getting the vote was a means to an end. And what people need to understand is that the paucity of women's rights before the vote is just extraordinary. They didn't actually have their own children. They belonged to the father.

And in terms of when was it women could get a mortgage in Britain? In the 1970s. I mean, I was already, you know, a teenager before women could get a mortgage. It's incredible. It's incredible. And the situation's not much better today, to be honest. Women can get mortgages,

but women are still locked out of the housing market. We've been doing some research with the National Housing Federation and with the Women's Budget Group. And they've shown that on a women's average income, women couldn't afford an average private rented flat in any region of the UK. In any? Any region. And for men, men on an average male salary can afford a private rented flat in every region except London. And even in London, it's less affordable for women than it is for men. And this is why I suppose it's so important that women's pay is sorted out to make sure that everybody is equally treated.

Yes, and it's important that when we look at the gender pay gap, we don't just look at the hourly rate, which is still 17.8% per hour, but we also look at the overall salaries because women are much more likely to be working part-time or taking breaks. So we did some work which showed that women's actual average salary difference with men is 34.3%. So a third less than men. So their ability to access housing on their own,

even rented, not necessarily, it's really difficult for most women to buy on their own anywhere in the country. But even to access average private rented flats is very difficult for women. When your organisation was set up then, put very simply, who was it designed to help? Working women of moderate means. The government, I think Lloyd George, had made a commitment to housing for heroes. But that was aimed at men. Did women get chucked out of places then?

Landlords preferred to let men rather than women, partly because they felt that they should go to men returning from the war, but also because women on lower incomes were less likely to pay for laundry services or to have their meals cooked and all the additional services which made money for the landlords. I see. I'd never thought about that it all comes down to money in the end. It does and also an awareness so the London County Council for example produced hostels for men but didn't do any for women so the whole issue of

affordable housing for women workers and 40% of women were working before the First World War and then that was increased after the war Women who'd become nurses and ambulance drivers and other things were more likely to also stay, partly because their fiancés or their husbands or their fathers had been killed in the war. Sabah, you're the Chief Executive of Housing for Women. How do you differ from the work that Denise is doing at Pioneer Housing? Well, I think in terms of our histories, they're very much aligned. We were set up in 1934 really to focus on the needs of single women who were considered to be older and elderly in those days. The name of our organisation was the Over 30s Association which sort of indicated how old

you needed to be to be considered to be old in those days which is very depressing. So we were set up primarily to provide respite for women who were single who perhaps didn't get a hot meal but also may need to have some clothing or just some advice really around how to get back into the employment market because they were considered to be on the shelf or unemployable essentially looking at sort of let's say waitressing sort of looking for younger women who might be doing some of those jobs or even secretarial sort of let's say waitressing sort of looking for younger women who might be doing some of those jobs or even secretarial sort of work. But the fact that you still exist and still have to exist is very telling. Yes I think it's I think it's quite sad in a way in some respects because

I think you would expect that the situation for women should have should have improved quite considerably over the last hundred years essentially But that's not the case. So let's talk, if you don't mind, about the, there probably is no such thing, but the average woman you help today. So, but describe her if you can. So I would say a lot of our women come through housing allocations. From what does that mean? From the local authorities.

So they're seen as being in housing need. We're seen as a sympathetic landlord I would say so a lot of those women have experienced domestic abuse and that might be combined with mental health issues either as a result of or you know something that they were suffering before they escaped domestic abuse there might be complex needs I think what we're seeing coming through is women who have much more complex needs, perhaps, than previously over the last 10 or 20 years, really. Is that the same for you, Denise? We get 50% of our nominations from local authorities, and those are women who've been homeless.

And often, at the point that they come to us, they've been through a lot of trauma. But what they're looking for is a long-term, permanent home that they can make their own. And your focus is on women on their own? Yes, largely single women. Is that true for you too Sue? No, we've got women with families but we also provide specialist services for women who are escaping domestic abuse, women who've been trafficked and women coming out of prison. So they're very specific projects that are aimed to meet a specific gap that isn't provided

for through statutory bodies. I really am interested in how affordable the rent is. I mean, you still have to pay your rent. This is not charity, is it? So how do you make sure the rent is affordable for everybody you help? Well, the target rent is set by the government. So we offer social housing tenancies, so not the affordable tenancies, which can be about 80% of the rent, although in future we might do a few of those for women who are locked out.

Why don't you do them now? we haven't developed new ones so the existing properties are all set at the social housing rents which are very low but we've realized that there is an issue for women who will never get access to social housing could afford to pay a bit more but can't afford to pay the market rent so at the moment we're developing some properties for those women i think a good comparison is the median earnings for women in London is about £25,000 a year and the average private rent is £1,700 a month and our rent on average is something in the region of £500 a month so you can see quite starkly that it's you know significantly more affordable. I mean affordable rents should be 30% of an individual's earnings. So the majority, lots and lots of the women who come to us,

because we get some from the nominations, some from referrals from specialist agencies, which is largely around domestic abuse, honour-based violence, homeless women, and then we still have a waiting list for 25%. And the women who come there are often women who've lived in really poor accommodation for years, like in their 50s are still living in shared housing, arguing about the milk.

Yeah, it's a grim, as someone who's done that in the past, that is a grim prospect. But we don't want to focus too much on London. I know you're both based in London. What about rent affordability elsewhere in the country for women? Well, as we've said, the work we did with the NHF and with the Women's Budget Group shows that there is no region in England where a woman on average earnings can afford an averagely priced rental property. So what we have here is the realisation, and it can't come too soon, frankly, that housing is a women's issue. It is. Housing is definitely a feminist issue.

And the gender pay gap leads to a housing affordability pay gap. There's structural inequality in the way that housing is set up, essentially. I think the work of the Women's Housing Forum is really there to raise awareness for other housing providers, both in the social housing sector but also in the private housing sector, as to what some of these issues are, because between our two organisations,

we're providing some less than 2,000 properties. And they're massively oversubscribed. We can fill them all ten times over. So there's a massive demand which we could never meet. I think also, critically, we empower women through the tenancy. So we issue the tenancy. Although we provide family housing, we will issue the tenancy to the woman as the head of the household,

which isn't really the usual state of affairs in regular housing associations. Really important in issues of coercive control, because women will always keep the power. Denise Fowler and Zeba Qureshi. And we'd like to hear about your experiences with housing, where you're living now or where you're hoping to live in the future. Are you able to plan for the future or are you just trying to find somewhere for now? Let us know because over the coming weeks and months,

Women's Hour will be looking at the many ways women are affected by the current housing crisis and hearing from people who've tried to come up with their own solutions. You can email us through the website or, of course, you can tweet at BBC Women's Hour. On Monday, Jane will be hosting a phone-in on the question of overpopulation and saving the planet.

The number of humans on earth has doubled since 1970 and is heading for 10 billion by 2050. Meghan and Harry have said they'll only have two children for this reason but what about you? Would you consider restricting the size of your family for the greater good or are there other better solutions to the world's climate problems? Let us know by email or of course you can call on Monday morning. From me for today, that's all. Bye-bye. Have a lovely weekend. Bye.

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.