Woman's Hour - Margaret Busby on New Daughters of Africa, sponsorship of women's football

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

'New Daughters of Africa' features more than 200 writers from more than 50 countries. Its editor, Margaret Busby and Candice Carty-Williams, who has contributed to the collection, discuss why such a rich tradition of writing by women of African descent has been overlooked and if this is finally changing. Children have always fallen out with their friends, but how can you support your child if you feel they aren’t fitting in? And can you help your child make friends? Tanith Carey, author of ‘The Friendship Maze’ and Dr Angharad Rudkin, Clinical Child Psychologist at the University of Southampton discuss what parents can do. Evidence is crucial when prosecuting domestic violence cases, but often survivors and witnesses find it difficult to remember exact dates and incidents of abuse. We hear about one app that has been developed to deal with this challenge with funding from Comic Relief. The England women's football team has set its sights on winning the World Cup. The players will be in a kit designed by Nike, who’ll also sponsor fourteen national kits, in the tournament in France this Summer. Adidas have said that all 2019 World Cup winning team mates will receive the same performance bonus payout as their male peers. Rebecca Myers, a Sunday Times sports journalist explains the significance of big brand sponsorship.

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 Wednesday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Today, the app that will record episodes of domestic violence. It's funded by Comic Relief and will help provide evidence in any legal proceedings. The future of women's football as the World Cup approaches, what will be the impact of big brands offering serious sponsorship deals? And for parents, how can you help a child who's finding it difficult to make friends? In 1992, the writer and publisher Margaret Busby edited a huge anthology of writing called Daughters of Africa.

It features work by 200 women from Africa and the African diaspora and included pieces by women who are now some of the most celebrated in the world. Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Angela Davies, Alice Walker and a very young Jackie Kay. Margaret has now edited New Daughters of Africa with another 200 writers from 50 countries, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mallory Blackman, Andrea Levy, and Zadie Smith. Candice Carty-Williams is also in the anthology and joined us together with Margaret Bosby. Why had she decided to do it again? Well, good morning, Jenny.

Good to be back. It's just amazing that it's that long ago. But I suppose it's the fact that there are so many people that weren't in the first volume that could have been, as well as all the new blood that has come to the fore since then, I couldn't not do another volume. How differently, though, would you say women writers of African descent have seen 27 years on? I think there is certainly more attention being paid to the younger generation. I mean, as you mentioned, people like Chimamanda and Zadie

have really opened doors and reached great heights. So that is undeniable. But I wanted to say that beyond the names that everybody will have heard of because they've made such waves, there are so many people, not only the younger generation. Oh, yes, there are lots of the young generation like Candice and all the others. But there are people who I didn't get in the first volume because I had to stop somewhere. I mean, it was over a thousand pages.

Now, Candice, we worked out you were all of two in 1992, which has upset Margaret and I somewhat. How come you were aware of the original daughters of africa so my godmother is a professor of race she's heidi safia mirza and she had this on her shelf and she was my only access point to feminism when i was growing up because my parents don't read i'm not from a family of readers at all or anyone who really understands feminism as it is. And so her shelves are where I understood my place in the world. And this book always piqued my interest because just to pick it up and to see the size of it

and to understand that there were so many contributors from the same place as me, that was amazing. How did you decide, Margaret, this time, who to include? And how willing were they all to say, yeah, sure, we'll do you a piece, even though you weren't paying any fees to the writers? Well, the reason that

the fees were all waived was because we wanted to do an anthology that this time really made a big difference to the lives of African women in some ways. So we thought this is going to be a charitable venture. So how did I choose them? Well, I started off with a spreadsheet of hundreds of possibilities.

Many of them I had email addresses for, some I didn't. I emailed, I don't know, 5,000 people. I mean, 5,000 emails passed through my inbox and so on. And I was just trying to get a spread of ages, a spread of countries, a spread of possible genres. So one of the really exciting things was that I would approach somebody who was known for being a novelist and she would come back with poetry. So it was, you know, I'd explained this and it was just amazing what came through. Candice, what did it mean to you to be selected

alongside Andrea Levy or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? So I would have paid to be part of this. But just for me, I mean, these writers are all completely legendary. And so I just, I think I think I mean initially we missed the first email because it was sent to my agent and months later she was like oh my gosh I've just seen this uh you should try and get involved and I was like if I had not been part of this there would have been problems um and so just all of these groundbreaking women and I've watched them and they're the reason why that I'm they're the reason I'm a writer and they're the reason that I know that I have a voice and a voice

that is valid. And so to be part of them as a collection is just next level. Why did you decide to put forward a piece about the politics of hair removal? It's something that I have thought about forever and it's something that I often feel guilty for thinking about, because I know that body hair is such a mystical thing. And it's so about the patriarchy and how women are meant to be seen. And again, it's about whose body is this about? Whose body is my body? So I shouldn't worry about what people think of it,

because I'm looking at it through my lens but actually I realised you're talking to my friends and I have friends who are white and I have friends who are black I have friends who are Asian and it's something that we all talk about and all think about and I grew up with my white friends having really fine blonde hair on their bodies and me looking at mine and being like oh my god I'm what am I and I come from a family of um south south Asian women and they are very hussy I'm gonna get in trouble for that um but I you know the the language around body hair was just it was the worst thing that you could ever have my aunt said that people used to bully her my mum said people used to call her a werewolf and so when you have this there is no way that you're going to grow up and not think about it and I really wanted people to understand that it's not just

something that you can take lightly it's something that I think about every single day and I feel guilty when I think like ah should I shave my legs in the summer should you um I do I still do I get them waxed. It's awful. It's so painful. For what? Margaret, women's anthologies, I think, are often seen as ways of honouring our literary foremothers. And I was fascinated that you decided to include a real mother and daughter this time, Zadie Smith and Yvonne Bailey Smith. Isn't that amazing?

Why did you do that? Well, one of the things that I love about this anthology is the sort of intergenerational feel, the fact that, well, Zadie apparently gave her mother, Yvonne, a copy of Daughters of Africa when it first came out. So now that Yvonne, who was a full-time therapist and she's now retired and is becoming a writer, it just seemed irresistible to have them both in the same volume.

And there are other sort of intergenerational things. I mean, there's a woman in the current volume called Attila Springer, and in Daughters of Africa, her mother, Ayn Tupel Springer, was. So there are these connections, which I love. Now, you've had quite a long career in publishing. And I know you once said, until we can't count the numbers of African women writers, our work is not done. What did you mean by that?

I think it means, well, for example, could you put together an anthology that had only 200 women of European descent, from Jane Austen to J.K. Rowling? It would be pretty impossible without leaving out people. So I could do an anthology this size every year and not exhaust the pool. I mean, in this volume, there are some women from the 19th century, as well as women who were born in the 1990s. But I didn't go too far into that because I wanted some space for the younger generation. But I could have put in so many more. So I wanted to say there is this great tradition that goes back that's not yet exhausted and that will continue,

that deserves more volumes. And I mentioned the prize. Well, because of this anthology being done in this way with everybody waiving their fees, there's this wonderful new award that's being done in collaboration with the publisher Myriad Editions and SOAS, University of London School of Oriental and African Studies

that will enable an African woman who's applied to SOAS for a particular course to have a free course and free accommodation which to me is just amazing. You Candice are still in the early years of your career, but there is a novel coming out next month, Queenie.

How hopeful are you that things are really changing in actually putting women of African descent right at the forefront? I think it's, I mean, the gatekeepers are still who they were before and that's something that we need to consider so and you had some problems at school didn't you oh I've always had problems at school I was yeah at school I was in all the lower sets I would always ask to be put in the higher sets but I asked a lot of questions and I spoke out quite a lot because I didn't quite understand what I was being taught. And so, yeah, I was basically penalised for being vocal about wanting to learn. And so I kind of see the same thing now in institutions.

So, you know, this novel is amazing. It's amazing that it's being published, but it's being published because someone, you know, a white woman and a white man have signed it off. And so until we have more people like me and Margaret as the gatekeepers, I don't know how much change can happen. So it's going to take a long time, but I think positive steps are being made.

Will there be another new edition in 25 to 30 years' time, Margaret? I'm not going to wait that long. I'm ready to do one next year or the year after. I think I could do another one straight away, but I think I'll give it a couple of years perhaps. Well, Margaret Busby, the very best of luck with the anthology, and Candice Carty-Williams, the very best of luck with your novel. Thank you both very much for being with us.

Thank you. Now, we know that if a victim is going to take an abuser to court, it's vital that there's evidence of any violence or coercive control. It's often been difficult for a survivor or a witness to remember exactly when and where such incidents occurred, but there's a technological solution which may help. The Citra Foundation is a domestic violence refuge based in Northern Ireland, and with the help of funding from Comic Relief, it's developed an app. It prompts the user with the kind of questions the police would ask and encourages the logging of dates, times, events and injuries, which will build up a body of evidence that can be used to prosecute the perpetrators of domestic violence.

Liz Gibbons devised the app and Catherine Harper founded Citra. How did the organisation begin? We set out to help victims of domestic abuse with the mind to have a place in our local, which is now mid and east Antrim area, for women and children fleeing domestic abuse because they need a safe place to live and a safe place to hide away. We then grew the organisation from there and we brought in support for people who are maybe not in the refuge

but living outside of it and who have been through domestic abuse. We also then developed a counselling service and we work with males, females, children and anybody else that wants us. We don't discriminate at all. And Liz, how did you come to work there? I started volunteering for Cithra. We've been trying to develop the first male refuge in the whole of Ireland. And then I began working on an internet project around safety for children in schools when they're on the internet. And then this project has come along to develop this app.

And so that's what I've been currently doing for about 18 months now. Because of course, your background is police. Yes, I'm an ex-policewoman, specialised in child protection and the paedophile unit looking at investigating online indecent images. Catherine, why did you think there was a need for a domestic abuse app? Well, Liz and I got talking and Liz, using her experience, said that, you know, when she took people to court or you went in to, you know, look into their issues and the incidents that they'd had, very often people forget. And because of the trauma of what they've been through, it's very difficult to hold on to those details of

dates and times and things like that. And having used my own experience in my first marriage I find it very difficult and still do to even try and remember dates or times when things happened. And knowing the courts as we do, taking women through them we recognise that when they go to court they ask those things when did this last happen, has there been other incidences and Liz came up with the great idea that it would be a good idea to record incidences as they happened but how could you do that safely so she basically developed the idea of the app and went through it and then sent out for funding and Comic Relief funded us. How helpful Liz were

Comic Relief at the outset? Comic Relief have been great to work with from the very beginning. They've been really supportive, really encouraging. They've listened to us, and a couple of times we had to go to sort of bat off ideas. They've been there to do that. So they really have been great to work with. The idea of the app as Catherine says was

so often for any victim of domestic abuse they seek help of any type and the first thing they're asked is what happened it's the most obvious question and it's also the hardest question how does somebody just answer what happened when it's often years of trauma as Catherine said and so the app was there to so people can record what's happening as it's happening their own words those raw events those factual deeds so then when they need their story their story is there which empowers women so much more to go and get the help they need down any avenue whatever sort of help it is they're seeking. So Liz how does the app work what features does it have in it?

Well, the app is firstly disguised. That's its first feature. It is formatted as 12 questions. That's very deliberate to ensure that the facts that we know someone will need are indeed recorded. And they're questions like what time, what day, where were you, what happened, how did it start, how did it end and so forth. At the end of that, there's the opportunity for someone to release their feelings you know where are you at how are you feeling because women told us they needed that they needed that release and then once that is complete and it's sent it disappears out the phone in the same way as a snapchat would so the phone is always empty of the details and they they're recorded, stored, sorry, in an encrypted form,

remotely and accessible via the website through a passcode. So it's as disguised and as discreet as we can make it be. And also, we're very aware that for a lot of people when they flee domestic abuse, just because they're no longer living with the perpetrator, the incidents and the troubles do not cease. They just change and they carry on, often through stalking and issues around the children and so forth.

So the app is also there for them, who maybe don't have the same security issues, but they need to be keeping a record just the same. How can you be absolutely certain, though, Liz, that logging these kind of details on a phone is at all times absolutely safe that an abuser can't get in there and find out what you're up to. We don't claim that it is absolutely safe.

We know that some abusers are just so many steps ahead of the game. We know of a lady who had something on her phone that even the experts identified there was something on her phone tracking her and they couldn't identify what. So for some perpetrators, it wouldn't be safe. And we're not claiming it's absolutely safe for everyone. We're claiming it's very safe for a high number of people. That's what we would say.

So Catherine, how have sufferers from domestic violence responded to the app? I've responded very well. I mean, I have permission to speak from one of my clients that I've been working with. She's now out of the abusive situation. But as Liz has said, the abuse continues, you know, through children, through courts, through following them, tracking them, all the rest of it. And she has given me permission to say that she has found it really, really helpful because she does suffer from anxiety post-trauma and she finds it difficult to remember details. So she records when he doesn't turn up for the children or he sends her

like 30 texts in a night. She can load those texts onto the app and she can send them off. And then when she needs to see her solicitor, because he very often takes her to court. She can print those out and take them with her and show him, you know, or there was an issue where he did harm one of the children a little bit and was taken to court for that. And she was able to record all of that and keep it there safely and be able to remember what happened. So Catherine, what difference are you already finding it's making then? It's giving them more confidence and it's giving them a place that it's their own and they own it, they keep it, they look after it and they can see it when they need to. We can't see it, we can't download it, we don't know who has downloaded the app to be honest

but we know, I know anecdotally from her that this has really really helped her and given her confidence which is something that she really really needed. And Liz in what other ways might technology help sufferers of abuse? I think technology obviously is always there so any time of day or night it can be accessible there's so much information sort of through websites and apps I think that's that awareness that domestic abuse is so much more than just a physical issue. It can be a physical issue, but the whole area of coercion and control and emotional abuse, sexual violence, all those other areas also constitute domestic

abuse. So it's hugely informative, I think, technology. I think also technology is something that other people can help you with. So maybe you can't access it yourself or you wouldn't feel safe to. But a friend or trusted friend or family member, maybe someone through work, you can have a second phone at work and be keeping records. It gives those avenues for support that perhaps aren't there without that technological advantage. I was talking to Liz Gibbons and Catherine Harper. Now, we haven't named the app to protect the people who are using it, but if you'd like to know more about it and how to download it,

you can contact Cithra, that's C-I-T-H-R-A-H, through their website, cithra.org.uk, or the Cithra Foundation through Facebook. And if you'd like to donate to Comic Relief, you can go to bbc.co.uk forward slash red nose day. Now still to come in today's programme, the future of

women's football. What will be the impact of big brands getting involved in sponsorship as the World Cup approaches? And for parents, how do you support a child who's finding it hard to make friends? Now you may remember that earlier in the week, Jane spoke to Wendy Mitchell, who was diagnosed with dementia when she was only 58.

You can now watch a video on the Woman's Hour website of Wendy giving advice about how to cope with dementia, whether you or a relative is affected. And you may have missed a discussion about the 25th anniversary of women winning the right to be ordained. We heard from one of the first to become a priest and another who's just beginning and if you missed the live programme you can catch up by downloading the BBC Sounds app. Just search for Woman's Hour and you'll find all our episodes. Now this week on Late Night Woman's Hour, Emma Barnett is joined by The Daily Record journalist Anna Burnside, the writer Chidere Egeru and Heta Howes, who's a lecturer in medieval literature at City University London. They talk, amongst other topics, about crying.

I love a good cry. I think I'm the kind of person that if I feel a bit sad, I lean into it. So I'll kind of have my melancholy hits playlist and I'll sort of listen kind of in the dark and feel my feelings. But I'm also kind of interested in researching crying. So as part of my research into medieval women specifically, I'm interested in how crying can be used as a tool of power, how it's perceived culturally and in terms of gender. Is it different when men and women cry? What does it mean? How comfortable do we feel?

With crying in public, right? And what does your research show into history? Has it changed how we feel about crying? Yes, we're in an interesting moment now because for the first time we're much more comfortable or at least talking about being comfortable with men crying, whereas I think for at least most of the last 200 years, stiff upper lip and being manly means not showing your emotions.

Outpouring of emotions with both genders, though, is quite common in the Middle Ages as a sign of devotion to God or deep feeling. And that's not just women, that's women and men. I mean, there are some notable weepers that are women, Marjorie Kemp being the most famous, who devoted her life to God and went around disrupting everyone by crying very loudly. When was Miss Kemp doing the rounds?

14th century. And she disrupted everyone by crying with her message? Yes. So she would go into a church service and, you know, everyone else would be just sort of praying. I mean, you know, at that point in England, in medieval England, most people go to church on a Sunday. It was what they did. And she sort of disrupting the services was very loud attention seeking or some people saw it as attention seeking tears but she claimed that she couldn't control it and it was her devotion to God that just made it happen and it was out of her control I think we're quite suspicious of crying now and I think they were quite suspicious of her crying then. Chidera let me bring you in at this point because

that's interesting what we're just hearing there from Heta about. We're now talking more about being comfortable with crying, but I'm trying to think if I've seen anyone cry in a different way or a different space of recent times, maybe we don't do it as much as we talk about it. Think about the amount of times you've seen someone crying in the street and then think about how many times

you've actually stopped to ask them if they need a tissue or if they're okay. And I can honestly put my hand up and say, I rarely ever stopped to ask them if they need a tissue or if they're okay and I can honestly put my hand up and say I rarely ever stop to you know ask someone if they're okay or if they need any of my help for me personally my reason is being that if someone is crying in the street and I've been a street crier many times and public transport crier as well love a good train cry very you know music video so worrying when you're sat opposite someone and I am really worried anyway when i see someone crying in the street my instant thoughts are this person is releasing if they're crying on

their own and there doesn't seem to be anybody who's in their immediate space who's posing any kind of active danger then i need to give that person room to release because nine times out of ten when you approach a stranger in the street and they're crying you can't really help them through what they're crying about but also it's really hard to be the support you want to be for that person. So I honestly think it's better to let them cry because for me, as someone who is a public transport crier or street crier, I want to be left alone. I think there's something really liberating about being able to cry in London.

As someone from Yorkshire, if I was crying on the bus or in the street in Yorkshire, people would come up and ask me if I was OK and I wouldn't want that either. As a fellow cheap crier, I don't want would come up and ask me if I was OK, and I wouldn't want that either. As a fellow tube crier, I don't want people to come and ask me if I'm all right. And I kind of love the anonymity of it. You can just have a good cry on the tube, everyone's doing their own thing, and you get on with it,

and then you can kind of go home and just kind of feel a bit better after that. And you can, of course, find Late Night Women's Hour on BBC Sounds. Now, England's women footballers left America in triumph a couple of weeks ago, having won the She Believes Cup, and that was in the country that's treated women in football seriously for a very long time. The World Cup looms this summer,

and suddenly the team is attracting some serious sponsorship. Nike will design the England kit and plan to sponsor 14 national kits for the competition in France. Adidas say that for the first time, all the athletes on the winning World Cup team will receive the same performance bonus payout as their male peers.

So what's the state of the women's game given big brands are getting on board? Rebecca Myers is a sports journalist at the Sunday Times. Rebecca, how significant is it that brands like Nike and Adidas are getting involved? Good morning. Hi. I think it's absolutely fantastic and it's a hugely significant move, especially with brands with names like these. These are massive names in the world of sport and they bring with them authority and they bring power with them

that means that naysayers and people who don't think that the women's game makes money or has impact can't really argue with a brand like that coming on board and adding weight to it. And what does it do for the image of the companies? How much do they actually need to be seen to be involved in women's sport?

That, I think, is a really important point. And increasingly, what we're going to see is this sort of arms race almost, where, especially with brands like Adidas and Nike, where they're in kind of direct rivalry, one really needs to be seen to be doing what the other is doing. So, you know, you get this kind of arms race where they don't want to be seen to be being on the wrong side of history. And they don't want to kind of look back in five years time and think oh gosh it looked really bad that we hadn't got anything in this marketplace and and i think we should welcome that too i mean we need to look at the longevity and obviously we want them involved for the right reasons but there's no bad thing that they're saying we need to now have a have

a women's kit or have a women's sponsorship deal because it looks bad if we don't. Are they drawing in any other big companies now that those two have made a commitment? Yeah, so after the She Believes Cup, Lucas Aid announced that they would form a deal with the England women's football team. They have an arrangement with the men's team already, so that was fantastic. And again, you have that element of why wouldn't they get involved with the women's team? They're doing so well, they could be in line to win the World Cup. And it's the right time for Lucas Aid to come in on that.

The World Cup, as a kind of whole competition, has got companies like Visa and EDF Energy involved. These are big name companies. And I'm sure we'll see many, many more. What about investment from FIFA in the World Cup? How much parity is there there between the women's and the men's team? We'll see many, many more. What about investment from FIFA in the World Cup? How much parity is there there between the women's and the men's team? Not a huge amount always. I think it's important that we recognise and have an awareness of where we've come from. So certainly even just kind of a few years ago, back in sort of 2011 to 2013, it was estimated that 0.4% of sport sponsorship was for women's sport so that's

you know that's the bar it's very low bar um fifa have tripled their investment from the last world cup um which was four years ago so it's gone up to around 23 million pounds um and they'll also put 15 million pounds into kind of travel expenses and things that smaller nations might struggle with um but the total prize pot for the men's world cup last summer was 312 million pounds um so you're still looking at you know thousands of percentage points in difference um so that there is a long way to go what about that old argument that women's sport just doesn't draw enough support has that gone all together now it certainly hasn't gone and there are plenty of people who will come out with that argument but i think increasingly it's becoming a hard one to to rely on and it's a lazy argument

um but it's often used i think you know we've had some amazing recent examples of women's sport just selling you know like hot cakes the the women's world cup selling, you know, like hotcakes. The Women's World Cup final sold out in about 30 minutes. The Women's Six Nations, which has been going on recently, they sold 10,000 tickets last weekend just for the women's game. You know, this weekend, they'll be doing a doubleheader with the men's. But last weekend, that was just just people coming to the women's game. We've sold out Hockey World Cup last summer. The Netball World Cup this summer is fast selling out. And these are tens of thousands of spectators who just want to see women playing their own sport.

And what's happening to individual players? How much support are they getting? This really varies across different sports. And certainly this is part of the reason why the battle is not won, as it were. Women's footballers, for example, could be earning up, you know, hundreds of grand a year at certain clubs, but smaller clubs might only be earning sort of 20 grand a year. And they will have to supplement their income with other sponsorship deals.

But you're seeing, especially in football and sports where players can have an individual profile, they'll look a bit outside the box for sponsorship maybe they'll go to local companies or you've I've heard of athletes working with jewellery companies in the same way that a lot of athletes in tennis for example get watch sponsorship or watches so people are thinking quite outside the box in women's sport and I think that's that's a really positive thing. So what do you predict for the World Cup for the home nations? England and Scotland will be going through, but playing in the same part? Yes, it's a tough group.

So it's England, Scotland, Japan and Argentina. It's not an easy group by any stretch. Japan are a very strong team and it's Scotland's first World Cup. So I think it will be a tricky game for them. But they've got so much passion, such great spirit, and they've been playing brilliantly. So I'd like to see them get through to kind of quarterfinals. I think that would be fantastic. And England, I mean, dare we say it, they could go all the way.

You know, it really could be coming home this summer. Are you serious? I mean, they were in the semis last time. Are they actually going to win the World Cup cup i think they've got every possibility i mean the she believes cup is certainly a real massive moment for them they've they've played in that tournament for years and never come more than than second place and this year they won it and that was a real statement of intent um you know and brilliantly they came away from that and sort of said well well it's still not good enough. We can still do better. And when you have that mentality, I think, yeah, we'd be foolish to write them off at this stage as anything more than in that final.

Rebecca Myers, sounds like a good summer of sport for you coming up. Thank you very much for being with us this morning. Parents, we kind of assume our own lovely children will have lots of friends and there'll be playdates and sleepovers galore to accommodate. But what if they don't? What do you advise if your daughter comes home and says she's the only one in the class who doesn't have a best friend or your son says he's known as Billy No-Mates? Well, Dr. Angharad Rudkin is a clinical child psychologist at the University of Southampton. Tanith Carey is the author of The Friendship Maze. Tanith, what most worries parents about friendships? Well exactly what you've said Jenny that they're going to come home and say they don't have friends because parents find that incredibly painful to deal with the thought that

their child might be socially isolated. And what we've been led to believe is that there's nothing we can really do and that we have to kind of watch them from the other side of the school gates. And it's just something children should magically know or not know how to do. And now I think we're realising there's a whole body of fantastic social science research which can actually help parents decode and understand the dynamics of their children's relationships and then also teach them the social skills, if they need it, to form better peer bonds.

And, Harrod, some people, some children just seem to have it sorted. What makes a child popular? Well, there's many, many factors, but I think the most important factor is having an easygoing temperament, being someone who can take the rough with the smooth have a thick skin I suppose we would also describe it as and being someone who is able to communicate what is going on for them so if you've had a bad day at school you can come home and say to mum I had a rubbish day they were really nasty to me or you can say to your teacher I'm a bit bothered by what they're doing in the playground so that you've got

lots of different skills that you can use to both deal with the friendship difficulties, but also be able to talk about them as well. Now, Tanith, you include a kind of who's who of girls' cliques in the book. What sort of stereotype characters did you spot there? Well, it's really interesting that whenever humans get together into groups, they start and organize themselves according to their sort of talents and temperaments and what the research out of america shows that within cliques girls kind of cast themselves in different roles within their friendship groups so at the top obviously we'll have the queen bee who is probably the most charismatic or the most influential or the socially powerful most socially powerful or the most feared girl then she'll be accompanied by her sidekick,

who basically does her bidding. Then you'll get the messenger, who will transmit bits of gossip and information about the girls between them. You'll have the wannabe, the girl who's desperately trying to stay on the inside of the clique. So, I mean, I think these sound brutal, but actually when girls start to understand

how they're part of this machinery, they can understand how to cope with it when things go wrong and then it's not something personal to them, but it's something that just happens within all sort of human interactions. We've all been girls and we know that girls can, at school, be absolutely horrible to each other. What about boys, Angharad? Do they have cliques and be horrible to each other. What about boys and Harrod? Do they have cliques and be horrible to each other?

Yes they do but they do it in a very different kind of way. I mean when we think about the research which says that the more laid back you are the easier it is. Boys in general at least for most of childhood are a bit more laid back than girls so actually the conflicts won't bother them quite so much but also boys are very active in their place so whereas girls in a primary school you'll look around a playground and you'll see girls huddled together near a wall and you'll see boys off somewhere in the field running around playing with a ball so actually all of these differences mean that they play together differently and they have different kinds of friendships but just as tanith was saying we all tend as humans to categorize we like the shortcuts that categories give us. So even within boys, you'll get the sporty boy, the nerdy boy, the funny boy, the

alternative boy. So it still cliques, but I think it comes with slightly less edginess than it does with girls. Tanith, you describe a group of mothers who deliberately set out to make their children be friends because they are the same type of family, same sort of house, same sort of holidays and all of that. How good an idea is it to try to engineer your child's friendships? Well, I think the thing that children love about their friends is that they get to choose them. It's the first piece of autonomy they really get.

A chemistry of friendship is something very intangible and is impossible to create. So I think that if a mother does, or a parent indeed, feels the need to do that, I think they need to search their reasons why. I mean, is it because they want to protect their child? Is it because as a child they had difficult social experiences and want to buffer them in some way?

Do they feel that there are children who are going to be bad influence which are going to influence their child negatively? I think that as parents we rank social status as increasingly important as a way to get on, but I think that if we interfere too much we take away a child's individual choice, which is really important to their maturing and their growth. Angharad, you've been full of praise in endorsing Tanith's book. What do you make of parents who try to engineer friendship? Like Tanith says I can see where it comes from all parents are trying to do their best for their children but I think what's very difficult sometimes as a parent to do

is separate your issues from your child's issues. So if you were someone who had real difficulty with friends, found that you got in with the wrong group, for example, or that you were quite isolated as a child, you are more likely to try and manufacture positive relationships for your child or push your child into friendships that maybe they don't particularly want, but because you think is going to be the best thing for them. And we know with children, the more you try and control them, the more they're just going to rebel at some point in childhood. And if you see a child's kind of childhood and adolescence as a move towards independence,

you're trying to build them up to be an adult on their own two feet, that actually them choosing their own friends and getting on with the good and the bad bits of the friendship is all an essential part of that growth. Tanith why is it that some children always seem to be on the sidelines? Well that's a really really interesting question and I think we understand more about that than ever. It seems that some children have real difficulties understanding social cues as quickly as others so while the average child may take one second to understand the body language

of a kind of invitation to come and play or a comment, it seems that other children take longer to kind of decode those signals. So they may come over as awkward or they may make the other child feel uncomfortable. And when children feel uncomfortable, they tend then to call that child weird. But I think what's really the encouraging message of the book is that there are ways that we can really teach those

children ways to interpret those cues quick more quickly and also how do you teach that well it's very it's with practice really there's lots of different ways great ways to practice the first thing is we need to do is think about what skills what unwritten skills it takes to be a friend for example it really is important to see the world from the shoes of other people so maybe talk to your child about seeing the perspective of other people say oh how do you think johnny felt that he couldn't play football because he broke his leg or how do you think your auntie feels now she's starting a new job let them kind of develop that theory of mind where they think about how the world looks to other people and then they can play better, they can learn to compromise, they can meet in the middle rather than just see the world from their fixed perspective.

I was talking to Tanith Carey and Angharad Rudkin and that discussion will be next week's podcast for parents. You can of course find it on BBC Sounds. Someone who didn't want to be named sent an email. In my daughter's third year at senior school, she was left out of a party which included a large group of girls who I thought were her friends. This was a tipping point and she explained very tearfully how unhappy she was and had no real friends. It was awful. There were a couple of girls she did see, but she was very lonely. We talked about it. There was one girl who I had noticed seemed to be a good friend of all

the girls in that group, had known them a long time, but wasn't one of the super cool girls, but seemed very genuine. I suggested she call her and tell her how she felt. To my amazement, she did just that. It took a lot of courage on her part. She's never looked back. I'm sure it wasn't quite as straightforward as it appeared, but it worked. She has a fabulous group of very good friends who've lasted well after school. I don't think the girls were being deliberately unkind. It just hadn't occurred to them to think about how those on the periphery were feeling. We also discussed in today's programme a new app,

which is helping domestic violence victims to collect evidence anonymously. We had this email. Speaking as a male victim of domestic assault, I think this is an excellent idea. anonymously. We had this email. can be victims of domestic abuse committed by female perpetrators. My partner diligently and consciously deleted evidence of her actions from computers, phones, emails and internet, making it harder to prove what had happened. An app like this should be given to every child in school, just as every child in school should be told about the warning signs of domestic abuse,

what to look for and where to go for help. And someone else emailed, this is an absolutely great idea. I'm a survivor of domestic abuse. I left my son's father six years ago and up until a year ago when my son ceased contact with his father, I kept a diary of everything. I did this for legal requirements if needed, but also my own sanity. Fantastic. Keep up the good work. Now, tomorrow, I'll be talking to Zahra Balfour, who's one of the directors of a film called Children of the Snowland. It's a documentary that traces three children born in remote parts of Nepal, high in the Himalayas, who had no access to education. So together with some others, they're sent away from their families to a charity boarding school

in Kathmandu from the age of only about four. Often they don't see their parents and siblings again for a long time. The documentary traces three of those children as they return to their families for the first time in more than a decade. Do join me tomorrow, if you can, two minutes past ten. Bye-bye. Hello, I'm Greg Foot and I'm hosting a new Radio 4 podcast called The Best Things Since Sliced Bread. Have you ever wondered what's fact

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I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.