Woman's Hour - Mary McAleese, Isabel Hardman, Kitty Donaldson, Emma Reed Turrell, Viv Groskop, Dr Bernadette Jenner

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Starting today a Catholic synod will take place throughout October in the Vatican to discuss the direction of the Church. Delegates will consider the way in which all members participate and decide the future direction of key issues such as the role of women. Emma Barnett talks to the former Irish president Mary McAleese about the issues facing the Church. Rishi Sunak will today give his first Conservative Party conference as Prime Minister – but his moment in the spotlight is under threat from the women in his party. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has been called the “front-runner” for next leader after her speech, while Liz Truss became the surprise breakout star of conference. So is the future of the Conservative Party now female? Kitty Donaldson, UK Political Editor at Bloomberg News, and Isabel Hardman, Assistant Editor of The Spectator, join us from the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. And what can ordinary women learn from Liz Truss about bouncing back from a public failure? Writer Viv Groskop and Psychotherapist and podcaster Emma Reed Turrell discuss the lessons women can learn from Liz Truss’s return to the spotlight. The UK’s first and biggest study into pre-eclampsia which can affect the kidneys, liver and brain can cause seizures in women has been launched. The study will monitor women before pregnancy, during and after birth to find out why some women develop the conditions and the long term health implications.Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Bob Nettles

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, welcome to the programme. There's a paradox happening within the party of government, the Conservatives, which we wanted to bring your attention to this morning on Woman's Hour as the Prime Minister prepares to limber up to confirm that the HS2 line from Birmingham to Manchester will be ditched.

That is the expectation finally to be confirmed after days and days of news headlines and speculation. It's a bold choice of place to confirm this U-turn. Manchester. Yes, if you're going to confirm that a part of a train line is not going to go into a city, you might as well do it, I suppose, in the city where you are. That is the site of the Tory party conference. It should actually, though, be a woman making the big leadership speech today,

as it was a woman who won the Tory leadership race, not voted on by the public after Boris Johnson's departure, but by the Conservative Party members. But that woman, Liz Truss, you'll remember, only lasted 49 days in the job. So instead, it is a man who lost that race and has yet to face the electorate as Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, trying to convince his party and you, the voting public, of his vision. But let me come to that paradox. And it's this. Many of the headline making speeches at the event have been made by women. Most recently, yesterday, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who chose to use dangerous weather conditions to talk about migration. She warned of a hurricane of migrants coming to this country. And yet, despite a decent

number of women at the top of the party attracting the spotlight in all of its colours, the Conservatives are losing female voters in terms of voting intention, what we know of it now. The latest YouGov polling shows that Labour has a 28-point lead over the Conservatives among women, compared to a 21-point lead among men. My question for you then today, what do you want to hear from Rishi Sunak when he makes his speech, when he's on his feet today at the Conservative Party conference? Yes, he's talking to his members, but he's also talking to you as Prime Minister. What can get you perhaps to change your view of him and the party? Perhaps you're wavering in your support. Perhaps you're a lifelong Conservative voter and you are with

him all the way. But what do you want to hear from him today? And with that announcement around HS2, with that confirmation as we expect it, he's talking about, we expect, we've been told in some of the trails in the newspapers, that he will be talking about people being put off politics. Perhaps you also see an irony in people being put off politics when there are U-turns around key pledges. You will have heard of my colleagues today on the Today programme earlier this morning when we were hearing from the Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, formerly the Transport Secretary, that apparently it is Covid that is the reason. Changing use of rail and patterns since the pandemic, now one of the reasons given for a change to such an expensive policy by this government. Text me here. What do

you want to hear from Rishi Sunak this morning as we look at the gap between the lead of Labour versus Conservatives when it comes to female voters. 84844, that's the number you need to text me here at Women's Hour on social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour, or email us through our website or send a WhatsApp message or voice note, the number for that, 03700 100 444. All terms and conditions on the website. A few of you already straight in with your views on this in terms of the question of what you'd like to hear from Rishi Sunak.

Jackie says, I want him to call a general election now. Lauren, I want Rishi Sunak's party to stop pitching hardworking families against net zero policies. We are not. We want a livable planet for our children. Deb says that he's going to resign. That's some of the flavour of what you're saying. Tell me what you want to hear. We're also going to be talking about how to fail

like Liz Truss. That's coming up as well. Away from politics, though, and the players in that particular party, let's come to religion as well on today's programme. Women coming together around the world to try and change the direction of the Catholic Church, including the former Irish president, Mary McAleese, who's going to be joining me today. I'd like to know, have you ever tried to change the direction of your religion and its leadership? How did it go? Let me know. Same numbers, 84844. And an update for you. I always like to keep you abreast of things as they change or update. It's coming home. Glasgow Women's Library, Women's Library, let me get that right.

It's awful when people call this programme Women's Hour. Women's Library won the Suffragette Medal at that auction that we were talking about on yesterday's programme. You will have heard that the museum, which is the only accredited museum of women's history in the UK, was bidding on something like this for the first time after having sort of done fundraising for this. And it won the medal, a piece of Scottish feminist history going back home, a medal that was given to Maud Joachim, one of the first suffragettes in the country to go on hunger strike. They did it. The team did it. And we wanted to let you know the update on that. Now to after a standing ovation for the Home Secretary Suella Braverman, post a speech that seemed to delight the Conservative activists yesterday in Manchester at the party conference and the odds on the next Conservative leader looking very good for Kemi Badenoch, a

fellow cabinet minister. Why is the party hemorrhaging female support? Let's get into some of this and the performances of some of those top women in the party, of which there seem to be many at the moment. I'm joined on the line from the conference centre in Manchester, Kitty Donaldson of Bloomberg and Isabel Hardman from The Spectator. Good morning to you both. Isabel, if I may start with you, it's an interesting poll from YouGov. It's obviously very early out of the election. Things can change. Women matter in elections. I know that states the obvious, but they really do in terms of pushing things over one side or the other. What do you make of that paradox?

Yeah, I mean, I'm always curious about the gender difference in polls, because I often think it's that women are much more bashful about their voting intention and often men claim to have made up their mind when they haven't. And that's certainly something that polling experts seem to think as well, is that men can be full of talk about how they've decided to vote. So maybe it's just that sort of gender difference. But I suppose also just the way in which the party is talking, the issues it's talking about. I mean, again, this is possibly my own gender bias, but I suspect the endless talk of the war on the motorist may appeal more to petrolhead men than it does to women. I'm not entirely sure.

You're not entirely sure. It is hard to read at this stage. It's just good to get your take on that because we are getting also many messages of what people want to hear from the Prime Minister. I'll get your take on that as well in just a moment. But Kitty, that question to you, have you picked up on any differences in the appeal of the women who seem to be grabbing the headlines and to the women out there? It's an interesting point. And actually, I think within the context of the party, both Stella Brabham, the Home Secretary, and Kemi Badenoch, Business Secretary,

they are appealing to a largely male base. The Tory base, 175,000 people, is largely male, largely white, largely middle-aged. And don't forget, these are the people that will pick them if they decide to run for leader after the election. So there's a kind of male edge to what they're saying. I mean, you're talking about Suella yesterday. She absolutely wowed the hall.

She got a standing ovation. She picked on all the hot-button topics, immigration, small boats, hurricane. And actually what was quite interesting about it, I thought, was the kind of the language slightly strayed into some of the conspiracy theory tropes that we've seen. For instance, a hurricane is coming. It's very similar to the QAnon tag, which is a storm is coming. And actually we've seen that from other people throughout the conference, not just the women.

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, was talking about 15 minute cities, which are an absolute trope for conspiracy theories. And even Claire Coutinho, who is considered one of the sensible ones, she was talking about a meat tax. She was saying Labour's got a meat tax, which is not true. But meat tax is something that climate change deniers also talk about. It's interesting to pick up those themes on what's being said. I mean, to that point, there's a message, I think there seems to be a relevant time to bring this up. There may be a decent number of women, but are they decent women?

Reads this message. I think not. Some of these women are shocking in their lack of compassion and that's what's turning women away. Isabel Hardman, I know you've also been looking at Kemi Badenoch, who was just mentioned there, and a lot of attention on Suella Braverman. But it's Kemi that also seems to be a popular choice for the future. It may seem premature to talk about the future and the next leader, but you never know when another leadership race is coming sometimes.

Yeah, and I think part of this conference has been the division between those who are actually interested in fighting the next election and trying to win it, between those who are actually interested in fighting the next election and trying to win it and those who are much more focused on what comes after what they have decided is an inevitable election defeat and therefore a leadership contest to replace Rishi Sunak. Now my personal understanding is that the Home Secretary is probably one of the ones who is thinking more about life in opposition. The Kemi Badenock still thinks there's a sort of window for winning and isn't particularly attracted by the idea of being a leader in an opposition party, which I think we can probably predict with reasonable confidence may not behave entirely rationally for a few years after an election defeat.

But, you know, her speech was, it was also really sincerely welcomed in the conference hall. I've spent a lot of time, lucky me, in the conference hall this week. And it has been, you know, sort of perfunctory applause. I do think some of the activists

have been going in there for a sort of breather and maybe even a nap rather than because they want to be inspired. But when Kemi Badenoch spoke, like the Home Secretary, the applause was really sincere and people were really happy to hear from her. And she did have, regardless of her views on whether the election can be won or not, she did have a very personal section in her speech about her philosophy as a Conservative, about Britain being the best place to be a black person.

And that will have done her leadership prospects no harm at all. There's also, just speaking to those two strains, Isabel, that you're talking about, people getting ready to win or then life in opposition, there's also concern and commentary happening, concern within the Conservative Party, about what's going on on the fringes and the support around Liz Truss. What do you make about that? Because what does that tell you? We've seen

very striking photographs of Priti Patel, huge smile on her face with Nigel Farage. I don't know if they were dancing. I'm not quite sure what was going on in some of these images. Perhaps you can tell me. I don't know if you were just too busy in the conference hall, but what's going on on the fringes between the likes of Nigel Farage, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg and now Dame Priti Patel? Yeah, I mean, there does seem to be a sort of effort from the centre to say that Nigel Farage would be very much

welcome back in the Conservative Party. He obviously left in the 1990s. And I think that does say something about the direction of the party and the sort of voters they want to appeal to and where their activists are as well. In terms of Liz's trust, I mean, it is kind of fascinating, isn't it? Because this time last year, the conference was, you know, it was complete chaos. And I've never had more conversations about how to improve your CV with Tory MPs than I did after that conference, because they were all thinking about what was going to happen when they lost their seats. Now, I don't think many of them have actually changed their mind about that, which is one of the reasons I think this conference has been quite calm,

is that they've sort of priced in defeat in a lot of cases, which is why, again, I think the Liz Trust fringe had so much excitement around it, because there's a lot of activists who are like, right, we're sort of already in opposition, we're already having the, for comparison, the sort of indulgent Corbyn years that Labour had. Yes, there has been some comparison to that. We're getting messages in what people would like to hear from Rishi Sunak, you know, some straight requests. It's not saying, to your point perhaps, Isabel, not saying how our voters, our listeners rather would vote,

but what they would like to hear. Some action now, for instance, from SJ to safeguard our children instead of threats of fines for poor attendance and illnesses being recorded as unauthorised absence in schools. We're not another one. What is Rishi Sunak going to do about WASP women talking about pension issues and those who are slightly younger? There was going to be some sort of decision in summer, but now I haven't heard anything. Another one saying creating a fairer society. Another one I'd like to hear from Rishi Sunak about support for mothers who choose to stay at home with the children and therefore better tax reductions for one income families.

Some of the requests coming in for what people would like to hear. To come back to you Kitty Donaldson of Bloomberg, Isabel was mentioning there around what's going on around Liz's trust but there is just to take a moment on that, it was, as some people have described, a sort of standout star moment of the conference. What's your read of that? Yes, it absolutely was. I went to get into that French meeting and there was a tail of Tories up the stairs,

down the corridors, down another set of stairs, around another corridor. And, you know, once I pushed my way past 400 people and managed to get in there, it was standing room only. And she went down a storm. But then she only did that event. They bigged it up in advance. She didn't do any media interviews.

And she was talking to a home crowd. They absolutely loved her. And as Isabel says, they are having the debate. They've almost slipped into the in Duncan Smith years right after the election um and the the lots of people are saying lots of male MPs are saying actually it's very much likely that there'll be a female leader of the opposition after the election if uh Sunak loses um and that could be uh Kemi or Suella or even people still talking about uh Penny Mordant as well.

Thank you for that. We'll let you get back to it. How are you feeling ahead of this speech? Is there something you're particularly listening out for Kitty from the Prime Minister? Well we're going to hear a justification of the HS2 scrapping and you'll hear a lot of them along the same lines of I'm saving people money and I'm making

long term decisions for the country. Possibly something on A levels turning into international baccalaureates. Smoking ban, we're looking out for. These have been kind of trailed but not confirmed. There may be some other rabbits in the hat, we're not sure yet. Casey Donaldson, UK political editor for Bloomberg. Isabel Hardman, what are you listening out for? I'm just looking at more messages from our listeners. Patricia, for instance, has said,

how about keeping HS2, please, and rebuilding a new parliament in the north? The present parliament building's unfit for the purpose. It could be repurposed as a tourist attraction, maybe on political history. Isabel Hardman. Yeah, I mean, I'm expecting a spicy speech. That's how it's been described to me.

And I'm really interested in how he defines conservatism if he is planning to ban something that most youngsters aren't doing anywhere i mean i think vaping is the issue rather than cigarette smoking um for young people today generally um so it'll be very interesting to see what his philosophical view is i know he's got a passage in it uh on the nhs as well which i think is going to be quite challenging so i'm quite interested in that okay so so that's what you're listening for thank you very much uh isabel harden there got a passage in it on the NHS as well, which I think is going to be quite challenging. So I'm quite interested in that. OK, so that's what you're listening for. Thank you very much, Isabel Harden, assistant editor of The Spectator and author of books

including Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. More messages coming in. Another one. I very rarely agree with the Tories, but I do think we have changed our working habits. This is about HS2, taking into account how much more is now done online and the cost of living crisis, I'm surprised it's taken Rishi Sunak this long to consider scrapping a hugely expensive new railway.

However, in a scary global warming crisis, why is he championing the motorist? This government is terrifying. So some sympathy from the point of view of HS2, but not for the overall message. And another one here, I would like Rishi Sunak to say he's had a road to Damascus moment regarding the climate and ecological crisis and announced radical plans. I want him to announce proportional representation, a change of how we vote. And failing that, I want him to call an immediate general election and announce his retirement. There's more messages. Increase teacher pay to increase staff levels

and make parents responsible for their children. Children discipline and attitude, reads another message. Keep them coming in. What would you like to hear from Rishi Seenak? He'll be getting to his feet just after 11 o'clock this morning, so in about an hour's time or so, you'll be hearing from the Prime Minister and his vision for conservatism for this

country and i'm sure some insights into what he's decided to share with you the voting public about himself but as i say it should have been a woman on that stage liz truss resigned though as prime minister after just 49 days in the job last october today should have been that big day and you might expect her to have been in the audience or perhaps keeping a low profile but you've heard her speech was one of the star attractions. It depends though on what you think someone does after that sort of moment, on your approach, your view of failure. Liz Truss was in their papers as I say pictured smiling ear to ear after her speech and it was rapturously received by her loyal supporters, including Dame Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage. Some are now talking about how to fail like Liz Truss. Viv Groskopp is a comedian and the author

of Happy High Status, How to Be Effortlessly Confident. Be good if I could say that. She advises women on how to be more confident without being labelled arrogant. And psychotherapist and podcaster Emma Reid-Turrell is helping on the line and helps women overcome their tendency to people please and build the resilience to fail. So good guests to have on hand

when looking at the case of Liz Truss. Viv, good morning. I'll start with you. What do you make of the bounce back here of our very short-lived Prime Minister? Well, it feels curiously inevitable. You know, this is a person whose motto is, you have to put yourself forward, no one else will. And Liz Truss always exemplifies for me this incredible contradiction of modern feminism that we want women to overcome a lot of the limiting beliefs and limitations and structural inequalities that have been put over

on us over the last you know millennia uh but at the same time when they actually do it as this trust has and she has done it and no matter what you think of her or of her politics she became prime minister even if it was only for 49 days when women actually do it a lot of us say oh not that kind of woman so she's such an interesting case study for me of someone who has incredible self-confidence and as your guests were just saying it plays brilliantly to the crowd that she needs to play to she knows her audience that's how she's got where she is and I very much doubt we've seen the last of her who knows I don't say that as a recommendation but as an objective fact she's someone who doesn't let anything stand in her way. And that's something that we always encourage women to try to do. For me, she's an example of something I encountered when I moved

from journalism to comedy, which is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is where no matter what material evidence is placed in front of you of failure, you still believe you're a success. There were moments when I first started performing comedy when I had a great gig. And I would think, is it really a great gig? Or am I becoming delusional? And I would use as much objective evidence as I could of watching things back, getting feedback from other people, being really careful how I measured my progress to see that it was real. And you know for Liz Trust this is perfectly obviously a person for whom the expression imposter syndrome does not exist yeah well

listening to that Emma Reid Terrell uh who as I say is a psychotherapist the word delusional was used there and while Viv is making the point that a lot of our listeners have also made you know we want women to succeed then then they do it, then there wasn't success, and then what you're meant to do. What do you make of the case of Liz Truss, if you were her shrink? If I was her shrink, I would say she is therapeutically doing exactly what I would want her to do because resilience is not developed through succeeding and winning.

It's developed through surviving loss and trauma and getting up again. And I often use the gym analogy with clients, but with women in particular to say, you go to the gym, you lift weights, you shred muscle fibers, they grow back stronger, you lift heavier. Women are really good at lifting heavier when they find themselves up against a challenge or a difficult situation. And I think Liz Truss is doing that. She's, whatever her motivations are, she's showing that she can lift heavier. But the point about using evidence to know what's just happened and being able to process what's just happened. And in her particular case, you know, sort of, you can make jokes about this, how to fail like Liz Truss, fail upwards, you know, all of those things or make lighthearted remarks, putting almost, you know, that to one side for a moment. There were some serious implications for people with her tenure. If you happen to be buying or selling a property in the 49 days that she was in charge. Yes, her economics might be hugely appealing to some of our listeners. They are, of course, to the Conservative Party members who support her. But there is also, just using her as a case study here, and I'd love to have her on the programme. I've had her on before. I haven't had her on since she was Prime Minister

or since she is no longer Prime Minister. That's an open invitation, Liz Truss, if you or your advisors are listening. There you go. You know it's always going well when I have to say it on the radio. But the point is, you also have to own things, don't you? And you have to process things. And you have to take responsibility. And I wonder for those people who were affected by her economic plans, I'm not asking you to comment on that, Emma. But how do you move forward while owning what you did? I think it's about taking exactly, as you said, responsibility for your actions. But again, if I take it to a therapy situation, a lot of my work is about encouraging women and people pleasers to not take responsibility for someone being disappointed with their choices. That's not to say that someone can't be

disappointed, of course they can, but it's whether or not you can take on that responsibility. A big part of people pleasing is about trying to avoid failure by organising the reactions of others and keeping other people happy. And we think that if people are displeased with our choices, that we have failed. So I think sometimes we see women perceiving themselves to have failed more often than men. But that might be because they've taken more than that 50 percent responsibility. I mean, you're talking more generally, I accept, in how you speak about women, because there's a very specific case of responsibility when you've been the prime minister. And those decisions really do have real life effects. I am. You know, at the same time, we like, don't we, as a society to shame people. We like people after something's gone wrong to never see their face, see the sun again and crawl away.

But that's not actually, especially in this era of cancellation, that's not actually an option for a lot of people, is it? Well, I think Liz Trust, to some extent, can benefit from some kind of redemption story. And I imagine that's what the narrative that she'll attempt to craft whatever happens. I think what's interesting here is the difference between women in politics or the role of being a politician or an elected official and what we think in general about women and confidence and work and how they present themselves. As you say in politics you've been elected. Someone has voted for you.

You have a specific accountability that is very different to the accountability that lots of us face in our lives, which is much more subjective. You know, you may well have a boss who tells you that your work is rubbish, but you actually know that it's really good. If you in politics, then there are obviously real life consequences. And obviously different people have different opinions about that, but those consequences are undeniable.

So I always think we have to perhaps judge that there are different categories and politician always falls into a specific category. And there will always be people, just as there are in show business or in the arts where we love someone just because we really like them and clearly there are people out there who love mistrust um yes there are we've seen we've seen that in comedy like you don't find every every comedian funny you know but they still can be materially successful and

and it sounds like it is about subjectivity. If we take it away from the actual subject, like you're saying, about politics, it seems like, Viv, from your perspective, and then I want to get Emma into this, is you feel like there is something to learn from Liz and her approach to this post-prime ministership role? There's always something to learn from any woman who's achieved something unusual. We've had three

female prime ministers, all of whom have been conservatives, and all of whom are actually quite similar in their style of self-presentation. I mean, I would argue that Margaret Thatcher probably was recognised as the strongest and most popular of these leaders and the most adept at presenting herself as confident in a way that most people would acknowledge, even if they didn't like her or support her, they would say, yes, she's a confident, strong woman. I'm not sure the same is true of Liz Truss and Theresa May. And that in itself, I found really fascinating that in the modern era, women who have this power and this leadership aura, that people don't have a consensus about that.

And I think it's because, as your previous guests were discussing, in the current era, they're playing to a certain crowd. And that crowd in the right wing press, amongst conservative voters, amongst an ageing electorate, people who are willing to vote, they get older as time goes by, a fewer young people vote, fewer young people engage with politics. They're playing to a smaller crowd. And that's very interesting to me that they don't seem to have that consensus of the kind of confidence that they have in the way that someone that Margaret Thatcher would have done. Emma, on what regular women can learn

from, let's say, you're not going to necessarily have been Prime Minister for just a few days, but you may have had something happen in your life and you need to resurface, you need to come back. What do you say to anyone listening who is struggling with that at the moment? I would say, do the work. And that's why we don't know whether Liz trusts and time will tell what the motivation is here. But by do the work, I mean, see if you can actually do that incredibly skillful female task

of leaning into how that feels, understanding what the meaning behind that emotion was, taking action that gets you something different so that whatever brought you here won't get you there there will be something to change about what's happening but we need to feel our feelings first and obviously that's my bread and butter as a therapist but whether or not Liz Truss has felt her feelings or just worked out how to bounce back for a Tory audience we don't know. But your point is you need to do some work beneath the surface first before you can what show yourself,

your best self out there again. Or at least your you-est self. Maybe it's not about your best self and maybe what you were aiming for and what you think you failed at wasn't what you needed to be doing. So there's something about tuning into what happened and why, because there might be more to learn from it than how can I succeed in the way that I thought I needed to.

Just on a lighter note, Emma Reid-Torell, thank you for that, I should say, as a podcaster and someone who works with people's minds as a psychotherapist, very helpful and very useful advice. Viv, just on a lighter note to finish with you, I know you look at how people stand. I'm always quite interested in the postures of people when giving speeches, not least within the political realm. And I know you've looked at how women should present themselves. What are we seeing? What's the trend at the moment? Are women standing with their legs very far apart like certain men do at these things?

Or how are we standing? Well, I always see when conference season comes around, and it doesn't really matter which party it is, the power pose comes back. And lots of people will know the famous Amy Cussey power pose TED talk. It's also a brilliant book, Presence, which talked about using power posing, which is standing like Wonder Woman or like Usain Bolt crossing the finishing line with your head, with your arms held high and with a strong open stance. But the point of power posing is that you do it in private to give yourself confidence, inner confidence. You don't stand in that very aggressive, self-loving, self-aggrandizing

pose in front of other people. It's supposed to be private. But there's always been this mistake about this, that you need to stand like this in front of other people. And in all of the speeches coming out of the conference, I've seen almost that falling into the power pose coming back again. And I just think, no, no, it's supposed to work on your mind. We don't want to see the power pose. The power pose should be internal. Internal power pose. All right, I'm channeling it now for the rest of the programme.

Viv Crosscock, thank you very much. Comedian and author of Happy High Status, How to Be Effortlessly Confident. Annabelle, and a few other messages I have to read out here. Annabelle says to the point about lifting. She's not lifting upwards. She's delusional, Liz Truss, and lacks logic, as evidenced by many people who've worked for her.

Another one, Naomi wants to discuss misogyny in politics. Naomi feels Liz Truss was only elected as it was known she would fail. Now Tories look to fail. They're going to let a woman lead. There's a theme here we need to discuss. I'm not sure. I mean, a lot of people were very much supportive, they said, certainly, of her economic policies and views.

There's a message here, though, from Kate, which is interesting, because I was talking about if you're changing your mind or where you want to go when we do get an election. We don't know when that will be. We expect next year, but we don't know exactly when it will be. I have always been a Conservative voter, says Kate, listening in Cheltenham, but I'm absolutely horrified by the decision to delay the ban on petrol cars for another five years.

Trying to gain votes in exchange for decreasing the chances of human survival on this planet is unbelievable. However, I cannot switch my allegiance to a potential Labour government because of its short-sighted policy on private schools. I feel caught between a political rock and a hard place. Thank you very much for your honesty. Keep your messages coming in. What do you want to hear from Rishi Sunak today? Or what may be, to Kate's point here,

have you heard already that is making it very difficult for you to perhaps vote how you usually do? 84844 is the number you need to get in touch. But let's tell you about some research that sounds very important indeed. Placental complications like preeclampsia, high blood pressure with kidney, liver and brain involvement can infect one in 10 pregnancies. And if left untreated, it could lead to strokes, heart attacks and fits in women and stillbirth in babies. Now three and a half thousand women are being invited to take part in a UK study the first of its kind which will monitor women before pregnancy, during pregnancy and after birth

to find out why some will go on to develop preeclampsia and how it affects long-term health. The POPEY study that stands for Preconception to Postpartum Study of Cardiometabolic Health in Pregnancy, is being led by a team at Cambridge Addenbrookes Hospital and will involve women in Glasgow and up to four centres in London. Dr Bernadette Jenner is an obstetric medicine registrar and one of the doctors on the study in Cambridge. Good morning. Good morning. Could you give us a bit more detail for people who don't know what preeclampsia is, what the placental conditions are like preeclampsia that you're trying to look into? Absolutely. So preeclampsia is something that occurs only in

pregnancy, generally after 20 weeks of pregnancy. And what happens is that your blood pressure becomes raised. And really, the only way that we can treat it is by delivering the baby. So we can offer blood pressure medications to try and bring blood pressure down. But unfortunately, it can lead to liver complications, kidney complications, and as you mentioned before, seizures. So it's a life-threatening condition that occurs in pregnancy and as you said affects about 10% of pregnancies. This study is the first of its kind and you're looking I just wanted to make this very clear you're looking for women to come forward for tests before they're pregnant? Yes absolutely so we want to get women before their first pregnancy

and the reason for that is that we want to see what their heart and vascular health is like before a first pregnancy and then we follow them through their pregnancy and we look at them afterwards because we know that women who develop preeclampsia or any of these placental conditions and so any blood pressure problems in pregnancy they have a long-term health risk of cardiovascular disease so that's heart attack or stroke or diabetes. And so what we want to know is, do they have a worse health baseline before going into that first pregnancy, or is it the pregnancy itself that's causing the problem? Can you prevent preeclampsia in a second pregnancy if you had it in the first?

So we know that a second pregnancy, your risk of preeclampsia is higher than if you had it in the first? So we know that a second pregnancy your risk of preeclampsia is higher than if you didn't have preeclampsia in the first but it is lower overall in a second pregnancy and you can take aspirin from 12 weeks of pregnancy and so the benefit of the POCIE study would be that if we find a particular person or group of women that are at increased risk. Maybe taking aspirin before a pregnancy would be beneficial. But we don't know enough about preeclampsia yet. And we haven't had this preconception, so pre-pregnancy investigation before. And that's the part of copy that's really important. This is currently running in Cambridge, but you're also going to be inviting women to take part in London and Glasgow.

When will this happen and how? So Glasgow and Imperial will be opening imminently. So if you look at our Poppy website, which you've kindly got the link on Women's Hour webpage anyway, that's poppyuk.net, you should be able to see that and it'll ping up when other areas start to open. Yes. And in terms of what you're hoping to get from this and what your colleagues are, what would be the ideal outcome in terms of learning and development? So if we can pick up those women pre-pregnancy

and we know the risk factors that they have, then we could aim antenatal care or pre-pregnancy care at those women so we can try and prevent it. We know that if you have preeclampsia in your pregnancy, the woman obviously has complications in the pregnancy, also the lifelong cardiovascular complications, but the baby of that pregnancy as well also has cardiovascular risk. So if we can prevent that right from the beginning, then we can save essentially not just the mother, but a whole family. Yes. And because I don't think a lot of women perhaps before pregnancy even know about this condition you know they don't necessarily know things until they go into that situation

and they certainly in in you know anecdotally but also from reading around this they don't know how um important and actually sort of how threatening to the health to mother and child these conditions can be. Absolutely and it's something we need to talk about more so if somebody is pregnant and they develop a headache that doesn't go away they get stomach pain that's that's not going away or they're getting any funny visual problems they really need to see their midwife or their GP or their doctor that day to get their blood pressure checked. This is, as you say, very important to do so. We are showing that link on our website if you wish to be involved or put yourself forward or follow the progress of the trial. Dr Bernadette

Jenner, thank you very much. The links for Poppy Study are for women taking part all on our website and also help and advice for women who've already experienced pre-eclampsia. Also check out the Women's Hour website. I've been asking you this morning, ahead of the Prime Minister, getting on his feet to give his conference leadership speech in Manchester at the annual Conservative Party conference. What would you like to hear from Rishi Sunak? Message here.

I want simple, genuine honesty, not Trump-like populism, with lots of exclamation points from Kay, who also signs off at the end of her name with a lot of exclamation points. I want to know that there's hope for our children, that they will be able to afford a house one day, feel safe to have their own children, that there won't be huge ecological destruction caused by decisions made in the short term, and that our children can feel hopeful of fulfilling employment and of fulfilling employment excuse me and happiness in the future reads this message no name on that one laura says tackle climate change and tackle climate change by investing in green jobs and get real about the urgency and so the messages continue a more general one here i'm not sure i want to hear anything at all as most statements of intent and promises are surely there to try and win over certain segments of the electorate in the months before an election and then the

politics promised are duly delayed watered down or abandoned entirely well we're hearing that the prime minister it's been trailed this morning will be talking in his speech about people being disillusioned with politics and turning off it um Kerry says, though, I'd like the government to take action regarding the breakdown of law and order. People have lost confidence in police and courts. There are census stabbings, the brazen shoplifting, often with threatening behaviour towards shop workers, the removal of guards on trains.

People feel anxious and unsafe. Another message here. What would I like to hear from Rishi Sunak? The same as I would like to hear from anyone, MP or not. Honesty. I'm still waiting for this from almost all MPs and wouldn't trust most to give a straight answer at the moment to the question, tea or coffee, if asked.

Another one. Jules says that Rishi Sunak, I'm waiting for him to say that he will put money saved on HS2 into health and social care. There's been concerns lately, I'm sure you've seen some of this in the papers, that there aren't going to be any specific new announcements on the social care. So that is one that the politicos, the journalists are watching. And to reassure that everyone, it will not be used to scrap inheritance tax, that the wealthiest will not benefit at the expense of working people and those at a disadvantage. I have cried in frustration

at the right-wing takeover of the Conservative Party. That's from Jules. And I suppose if you're crying in frustration at it, that would, I hope I'm not inferring wrongly, show, without you actually having said it, that you are a supporter of that party,

but you don't support that particular wing, as you call it. Keep your messages coming in. The Prime Minister will be on his feet just after 11 o'clock to give that speech and you're saying what you would like from the Prime Minister and

as we spoke about it and as I showed you and revealed to you, you may not have known at the beginning of the programme, very interesting data from YouGov talking about a lead with the Labour Party over the Conservatives. A 28 point lead with those female voters saying they're going to support the Labour Party over the Conservatives, a 28-point lead with those female voters saying they're going to support the Conservatives

over Labour at the moment. But you were hearing from one of our political commentators of The Spectator that sometimes women can be very bashful about saying that they are going to support maybe the Conservatives or another party and also might not yet know who they will vote for. Maybe you don't yet know. Maybe you're waiting to see more.

That's always interesting to hear. Do get in touch. But talking about leadership, talking about change or lack thereof, today clergy and lay members from the Catholic Church will meet at the Vatican for the start of a global meeting about the future direction of the Church. Known as a synod, delegates will look at the ways

people participate in the Catholic Church and are set to discuss the future direction of key issues, such as more inclusivity for Catholics who identify as LGBTQ, how to bring more young people into the church, as well as the role of women. vote in that official meeting. But alongside that official event, a group of 45 pro-reform Catholic organisations will be running their own gathering. The likes of Cherie Blair, KC, will be one of the keynote speakers, as will my next guest, the former Irish president, Mary McAleese. Mary, good morning. Morning, Emma. Good morning to all your listeners. It's being described as a crunch time for the Pope and his cardinals and bishops in terms of women and the church.

Why now? And what are you hoping with this alternative event alongside? I think it's more than a crunch time for the Pope, frankly. I mean, I think it's a crunch time for the church. But what we're hoping is, as you know, Pope Francis' synod meets, it's meeting at the end of a two year process that started in diocese, a dialogue in diocese and a national diocese, a continental diocese with hundreds of thousands of people taking part around the world. And honestly, what's remarkable about it is the consensus that has emerged. Doesn't matter

what continent you're talking about or what culture. The message very clearly from all the people, all the Catholics who took part, is that they want the church to reform on the issue of the inclusion of women, particularly the exclusion of women from ordination and the exclusion of I was going to say. of governance in which decisions that are made, particularly around teachings, are made as a result of discussion with the people who are going to be impacted by them. That is not the case in the church. If I may just break in at this point, there's a lot of information there, but it's really good to have that overview. There's a couple of things coming out. One is about leadership and direction and being able to decide. That, you tell me, is that being debated because, if it is being debated, because the Pope and his cardinals

and those around him do not see it as, how do I put it, accurate in terms of how they understand how the power structure should be in terms of the Bible, that women should play that role? What is the resistance to it? Well, the resistance is largely cultural and historic. The Catholic Church's system of governance is pretty much 19th century imperial in style. And there aren't too many of those empires left.

It's probably one of the last standing where you have a very, very, very narrow top level of an elite. And in our case, it's an elite that is celibate and compulsorily celibate and male. A very tiny elite governs a mass organization. talking about an organization that is 1.3 billion people in the world, the biggest NGO in the world that has permanent representative status at the United Nations. It's a key influencer on five continents. One in six people in the world are members of this church. So it is a hugely influential body. It teaches millions and millions of people. It has 200,000 schools.

So you can imagine the conduits that it has to influence people's thinking, laws and cultures. That's been ongoing for a very long time. And unfortunately, it has over these generations, it has accreted and secreted embedded attitudes to women, which we are still suffering from. At the moment, women, and we are half the Catholic Church, I mean, you're talking millions and millions and millions of people, we are excluded from being not just priests, but also deacons. Now, the church reinstated a number of years ago what it calls the permanent diaconate. These are men, both married and unmarried, who can be who perform a role of ministry that's kind of like a sub priest level. And we're not even we're not even allowed to be part of that what gives you excluded from that which is and if we look if we look at the the so-called

theology on which this is based it is ridiculous drivel frankly i mean i've studied it is it is it i don't even i wouldn't i don't even i don't even bother any longer to take it seriously it is so thin um it is so it's so really um very very poor what it is essentially is that sorry is can i just break in at this point sorry if you go back to the days i'm a lawyer there was a time women couldn't be lawyers not that long ago when they couldn't be doctors the same old reasons were rehearsed and the university that i currently am involved with one of our most eminent former provosts said that women would get into the university over his dead body, which thankfully they eventually did. But look, the Catholic Church is still rehearsing all that nonsense. Yes, but may I just break in? I know you're a lawyer,

you're the expert on this, in what you're trying to do here. But is that, you've just touched upon something which I'm interested in. Is that, as you call it, drivel, is that actually what's still being used to justify the exclusion? Oh, yes. I mean, let me give you a very, very good example from last week, no less. The Pope was answering a question about women's ordination and he said that the teaching in the church,

now you have to really think carefully about this, that it's not a dogmatic definition. It is merely a definitive statement. But that definitive statements, their exact nature is not fully developed. But meanwhile, while they're developing it, we, the faithful in the church, must, these are his words, not mine, must be adhered to by all. And we cannot publicly

contradict it. I mean, seriously, I'm contradicting it right now publicly because I think it's drivel. And I certainly will not be told that I must believe something that I simply cannot believe. Thanks be to God, I have the human right to freedom of conscience, belief and opinion and also freedom of expression. How does that affect your faith with the Pope? It doesn't affect my faith in God in the least. It makes me very frustrated as a member of the Catholic Church. But you obviously feel you can change something, which is why you're doing this.

I feel it has to change. And I do see some movement. The very fact that this synod is taking place, the very fact that out of the 450-odd people, there will be, for the first time, 54 women and they will have voting rights. Now, the important thing to say about them is they are not there as of right.

If they were equals, they would be there as of right. They're there by grace and favour. So that's something that has to change. On the other hand, there is a process of change happening. It's not happening from the top down, Emma. It's happening from the bottom up. The faithful are, bit by bit, they are dismantling the old architecture of unacceptable teachings by just ignoring them or walking away, as many people do, challenging them, critiquing them. Now, the Pope did say last week that we are able to study

these teachings, particularly the teaching that excludes women. And we've been doing that for decades and presenting him with the evidence that he's wrong. What makes you think you can change this? Oh, I don't. I'm not sure at all that we can. I'm just

hoping that we can and hoping that the powerful voices of educated Catholics and in particular the voices of very committed Catholic women will eventually lead to the ending of the tin ear that we have been used to for decades. What do you say to Catholic women? The answer is very simple. It's either listen to us or listen as we walk away. I'm trying to get a word in here with you to understand it, but what do you say to those Catholic women who are listening who don't think it's drivel? Who don't think it's drivel

to try and listen to the Pope's explanation as to why he thinks there shouldn't be ordination of women and women in those positions? I think if you had listened to me, I didn't say that listening to him is drivel. No, no, but you said this. Well, if you are listening to him, you've said some of what he said is drivel. I said what he said is drivel.

I do think it's worth listening to and it is worth critiquing and it is worth bringing scholarly views to bear on it. And having brought those to bear, I think, you know, we're entitled to say, actually, this stuff doesn't hold water. It's poor. It's poorly argued. So are you trying to give people confidence to listen critically? Correct that isn't always part of religion is it you like to challenge critically and to use their critical skills i mean i belong to a church that does not acknowledge that we have the human right as individuals to challenge to critique to use our conscience, to use our own brainpower, to form our own opinions.

We're told we have to obey the magisterium. That is the teaching of the bishops. Well, nowadays people just say, oh no, hang on a minute. I don't accept that teaching. In the past, it was much easier to have that kind of generals and conscripts relations, the generals spoke and the conscripts reacted by doing without thinking passively. But those days of passive obedience are long over. I mean, we know, for example, from the clerical child sexual abuse scandals, what happens when people are passively obedient and silent, that terrible things happen and are allowed to happen. And we simply cannot let them continue to happen. We've got a few messages. Let me read a couple out because it's important to talk about not just religion and faith,

but how you react to your faith and how you interact with it, which is what you're coming to here. You know, listening to the Pope, but being able to critique and have a scholarly response. And it's a good opportunity. There's a couple of messages here. There's a lovely one from Reverend Elise Harding, who's now in Dorset, but she said she was officially the first woman priest to be licensed to officiate in Tenerife. And she said, being a Spanish island and Roman Catholic,

it was quite groundbreaking. They didn't know what to call me, so they called me father. She was talking about what to actually talk about when we talk about changing religions. Marian's in touch to say, as an ex-nun, I'm continually trying to change many issues in the Catholic Church, especially in relationship to women. And there's one here which I wanted to give you the chance to respond to. You know, you're a former politician, lawyer. Paul says, I'd like to remind Mary McAleese that the Catholic Church is an apostolic church. Let me get that right. And

Jesus chose 12 men as apostles. Jesus was not afraid to infringe the customs of his time. So he would have appointed female apostles if he'd so wished. If an all-male hierarchy is good enough for Jesus, Mary, then it should be good enough for you. What do you say to that? Well, he didn't create a hierarchy that's the first thing nor did he actually appoint any Italians or Irish men or Americans or yes so there's a question for you yes how do you how do you explain then how do you explain a priesthood that has expanded now to tens and tens and tens of thousands who are not just people born and raised in the Middle East. You know, it's nonsense.

Seriously, I mean, honestly, I just don't want to waste my time anymore on silly stuff. I just wanted to share with you some of the messages that come in when you speak, because I think it's interesting, not you, all of us get to speak, because I think it's interesting to hear what people are responding to in real time. You're taking this on, this fight. You aren't sure if you can change anything.

You know, you're also trying to broaden who's included in the church. Do you expect to see progress on both of these fronts in your lifetime? I have seen some progress already. I mean, this week, for example, the Pope completely backtracked on church teaching on the blessing of gay same-sex marriages by Catholics. Back in 2021, very firmly he said it was simply not possible ever for the church to offer a blessing to a Catholic married couple who are gay. Not possible. He said that would be blessing sin. But whereas this week, he completely contradicted that. And I believe he contradicted that because he has listened to the powerful voices coming from among the faithful overwhelmingly and as it doesn't

matter what continent overwhelmingly people are saying that church teaching on homosexuality is unacceptable it's nasty mean and unloving and un-christian and it has to go and i hear in the pope's latest statement on that um I hear that he is hearing us. Well, there is a very live debate, as you say, on that. And your hope is that there is that progress, as you see it, in that direction. I just wanted to, while I had you as the former Irish president, if I may, we have a lot of messages coming in about politics as well this morning. I'm not going to get you to draw on the specifics of Rishi Sunak, worry not. There is a message about powerful women

and how women present themselves. And just if I may, and I hope you don't mind, we have another question that's come in here, not to you, but generally. Why do women politicians always wear high pointy shoes? Why do they, so many of them, wear these anti-feminist instruments of torture? Did you kowtow to this sort of thing when you were on stage?

I mean, really, there are serious things to talk about in this world of ours. Really serious. That's not one of them. It isn't, but it's a message. That's absolutely fine. You don't have to answer it. But I suppose there's a bigger question about how women present themselves and have their voices heard. And I wondered if you had a take on that as we were talking about that as well this morning. Have you yourself seen progress

in women being taken more seriously in positions of leadership? Do you think we're going forward or backwards on the global stage? No, I think we are going forward, but bear in mind that we are still only in the opening chapters. It's not that long ago that women were excluded

from one of the most famous universities in the world, Cambridge University. We're only talking a couple of generations in which women have been admitted I'm talking my own my own in my own country we're trying very hard to encourage women into politics sometimes the shape of politics is quite discouraging particularly for young women I think social media today is very discouraging of everybody from politics. It's just so harsh and raw and nasty. But we are trying very hard to encourage. But I take great heart from the fact that when I started law school way back in the 1960s, there were only where I think in my own class, there would have been about 10 women out of, say, 50, 60 people in the class. Today if you go into

any law school those numbers will almost be reversed and it's the same in medical schools, it's the same all over the world women are beginning to have opportunities that were cut off to them in the past. I like the idea of opening chapters and talking of being cut off, I will be cut off in a moment because it's the end of women's hour.

Former Irish President Mary McAleese there being drawn upon power and the church and what's going to happen there. Join us again 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. Have you ever wondered who you really are? It clicked in my mind suddenly. I was like, why have I never done this? I'm Jenny Kleeman, a writer and journalist. In my new series, The Gift, from BBC Radio 4, I've been uncovering extraordinary truths that emerge when people take at-home DNA tests.

He said, what do you know? You don't even know that your father's black. So I'm like, Jeff, we got him. And he's like, what are you talking about? And I go, we got him. Obviously, it was a completely unintended consequence of a gift. Join me as I investigate what happens when genealogy, technology and identity collide. Listen to The Gift 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'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.