Woman's Hour - Megan Davis, Cambridge Vice-Chancellor, Kate Lister on banning partners from social events

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

What makes women become whistleblowers? And what happens after they’ve brought wrongdoing to light? Nuala McGovern talks to lawyer-turned-author Megan Davis about her experience blowing the whistle on financial crime, how it inspired writing her new thriller Bay of Thieves, and how a whistle-blower can make the perfect character for crime fiction.When is it socially acceptable to bring your partner to hang out with your friends? According to academic and writer Kate Lister the answer is never. In her recent i Paper column, Kate explains that the presence of a partner alters the dynamic, and that friendships ought to be safe havens from romantic relationships. While some couples prefer to socialise together, Kate argues that time and effort should be invested into individual friendships. Kate joins Nuala for a frank discussion on the murky friendship politics of bringing your partner to lunch.It’s been just over a year now since the University of Cambridge appointed its first American vice-chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice. Before she moved to Cambridge, she was provost at Princeton, where she spent 34 years of her academic career as a psychologist specialising in the study of social norms that govern human behaviour, including gender stereotypes. She joins Nuala to reflect on what she has learnt since arriving in the post.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Laura Northedge

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, you're very welcome to Woman's Hour. Well, as you might have been hearing, online influencers like Andrew Tate are radicalising boys into extreme misogyny. That is according to a new report out today outlining the scale of the issue and also what's needed to tackle it, we'll discuss. We'll also hear from Megan Davis, a whistleblowing lawyer turned novelist

on what prompted her to call out the company that asked her to commit fraud. And after one year in the role, we have the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Deborah Prentice, on free speech on campus, on college funding, and also on her research into alcohol use and abuse at universities. Plus, the historian and author Kate Lister wrote this. I firmly believe that anyone who turns up to a girl's lunch with their husband in tow should be arrested immediately. We'll speak to Kate about

her pet peeve. What about that issue that she brings up? The cosy lunch or the night out with your close pals that is disrupted by a partner. Is it a sackable offence? Have you had that experience? Or maybe you've brought that outsider in. Maybe you

are the outsider. I want to hear your thoughts. Send a few of them in to me before I speak to Kate. 84844 is the number to text on social media. We're at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website 03700100444 for the WhatsApp.

Maybe you disagree with Kate. Maybe you think come one, come all for all situations. Do get in touch. 84844. Well, let me begin, however, with the first national analysis of the scale of violence against women and girls. It does make for grim reading this morning, I should say. Here are some of the figures that jump out from the National Police Chiefs Council report

that was released a little earlier this morning. The number of recorded offences against women has grown by 37% in the past five years. Crimes such as sexual assault, stalking and domestic violence now affect one in 12 women in England and Wales. The number of victims is estimated to be

2 million women each year. It has prompted police chiefs to call violence against women and girls a national emergency. Also included in the report are warnings against young men becoming radicalised by online influencers such as Andrew Tate. I was also interested to read that the Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blythe said that officers who focused on violence against women and girls are now working with counter-terrorism teams to look at the risk of young men being radicalised. With us, I have London Victims Commissioner Claire Waxman and also Graeme Golden, a leadership and violence prevention expert

who works with boys and young men to tackle misogyny. You're both very welcome this morning. Claire, let me begin with you. Can you take us through the threat areas that have been identified from the NPCC. Yes, absolutely. I mean, first of all, just to say we really welcome this report today. We've been talking for many years about male violence against women and girls and the scale of it. So it's absolutely welcome to see this in the report. So the five threats are around rape and serious sexual offences, domestic abuse, stalking and harassment, child sex abuse and exploitation and online and tech enabled fog. So these are the five threats. And it just coincides that today I published the first in-depth report in London on the police response to stalking. So our research today gives real insight into what's driving those behaviours and what we can do better

to tackle it. Because when I brought up these figures sometimes previously with politicians, they have said that there is more reporting taking place and that that can be part of the figure. What would you respond? Well, I mean, we have seen an increase in reporting. We have to acknowledge that. I think there's a better understanding of what constitutes VORG. We're not quite there in fully understanding. That's why I've called for a national public awareness campaign on stalking, because we heard from so many victims, and it took them a very long time to come forward, because they didn't quite understand and identify that what they were experiencing was stalking. Especially in our research we've seen young people more affected by the more serious offence of stalking which is showing us that they're almost accepting

a normalisation of behaviours maybe because of their online visibility that it sort of accepted this stalking and this level of criminal behaviours accepted within their life. So it's really something we need to look at and challenge. But I think why we're also seeing an increase is obviously we've got, you know, these new online drivers of misogyny. We've talked about Andrew Tate and other influencers that are really, I think, impacting these harmful attitudes amongst young men that can result in stalking and other behaviours and then escalating to violence. Well, let's talk about that in vogue, as you mentioned, is violence against women and girls.

I was actually struck as well, Clare, just as you were speaking, and I've noticed this, I think, changing in the media as well, that people use the language male violence much more. I think it's becoming more commonplace. Would you agree? How important is language? Language is really important. So when we talk about violence

against women and girls, we have to make it clear. We're talking about male violence against women and girls. Again, I pivot back to my research, but we saw that it was predominantly women impacted by male stalkers. Having said that, though,

and I do have to put this into the mix today, my research has also shown male victims, you know, one in 10 men will be a victim of stalking. So whilst it is predominantly, if we look at stalking, a gendered crime, we do have male victims. I think they're underreporting due to the shame and stigma around stalking. So I have to make that clear as well, because obviously I'm here to represent all victims. But we do have this epidemic of male violence against women and girls that we really need to get on top of and get rid of. I've just noticed that language over the past few weeks, really, if I'm honest, when looking at these stories. Graeme, let me turn to you. You've been on the programme before. You work with boys and young men to encourage leadership skills and prevent violence. Let's talk about that aspect of online influencers

being considered now part of the problem, people like Andrew Tate. I mean, how does watching that sort of content translate into a violent physical act, if you understand it? Yeah, I think it's important we really recognise the risks, you know, the media is the message and the messenger and a very, very powerful one. And I think it's really important that we develop a sort of media literacy, I suppose, for young men to be really aware. And, you know, we talk a lot about Andrew Tate and his influence. There's no doubt that man has an influence and needs to be addressed. But, you know, recent surveys suggest that the vast majority of our young men and young boys

in this country actually don't support Andrew Tate. They don't support his views. So we've got to be careful in how we speak to our young men. And for me, if we focus on the four and five, that was the research, four and five don't support Andrew Tate, then we run the risk of growing that one in five. We run the risk of flipping it a little bit and running the risk that people, because we know from lots of research that young men often wrongly perceive what their friends, their peers, colleagues think around these topics. And for me, as somebody who's really passionate about bringing men into the conversation, because Claire's right, men's violence against women and girls. That's the narrative. We need to get men on the page. We need to get men in the room talking about these issues.

So for me, we need to really talk about Andrew Tate, but we need to focus on the positive values, views, the background to when we developed the Don't Be That Guy campaign in Scotland was to really help young men see the support that they have, making it a little bit easier for them to speak up when they witness behaviours. And that was it. So one guy would call out another guy if somebody was behaving inappropriately. Yeah, but also using this phrase calling in as opposed to simply calling out, you know, calling out is scary. And we need to give young boys and men the tools to be able to have important conversations that hold their friends accountable. But in a supportive, non-judgmental way that brings them into the room and allows them to be curious about why they've been spoken to. How do you do that, though? I'm just thinking particularly, I don't know, a gang of 14-year-old boys, you know, your best friend or girls for that matter. You know the way your best friend or your group of friends has so much influence over you.

Yeah. You know, for me, I'm a real believer in, as you say, the positive. How do we build character? And what I mean by that, you know, in the work I do around the world, around bystandership, one of the biggest motivators is a sense of responsibility. And it comes from two places, from your internal moral compass, and also it can be given. And for me, it's about really developing that moral compass as early as possible. You know, parents,

carers, sports coaches, teachers, police officers, whoever, you know, when we develop that internal moral compass, then we run a chance of helping young boys and men when they see that harmful thing taking place in the schoolyard or in the workplace or the back of the policeman for that matter that they have that confidence and that courage to do something because it's coming from a place that's wrong I need to do something. So that's if you're talking to the child specifically but what about those others that you mentioned, the teachers, the parents, the sports coaches, whatever it might be?

I mean, how can you get them involved in trying to grow this moral compass as you talk about? I mean, it's a huge feat. It is, but let's link it to the purpose of school is to learn. No learning will take place without relationships in place. So if we address this in schools, the stuff that Claire's passionate about, many other people are passionate about,

if we address men's balancing in women and girls, then we can improve learning. Not just for girls and women, but for boys and men as well. In sports teams, if we, you know, I was working with the Chicago Cubs a few years ago, the LA Dodgers, the elite athletes in baseball, and we were looking at issues off the field becoming issues on the field, performance, and in workplaces, you know, productivity. So if we really, really focus on building relationships and all of these settings,

then we have that opportunity to really build a team. How do we, you know, tackle that false consensus? Because just now a lot of young boys and men think they're in the minority, and the reality is they're not. So unless we create a space for meaningful conversation and, you know, accept that we're going to get some views coming back to us, but as long as we were able to hold them accountable and deal with them, we have a chance to change the narrative, I think. I want to come back to you specifically on the issue of counter-terrorism. And Claire, I want to talk to you about this. The government has said they aim to have violence against women and girls in the next decade.

It seems like also a huge goal, particularly with some of the figures that we're talking about today. They're also talking about using counterterrorism strategies. So to stop, in a way, young boys, young men being radicalized. What do you think of that particular approach yeah so i think we're going to have to look at treating it like like terrorism if we really want to tackle it and address it um so i very much welcome their approach um what we saw in our research is again we're seeing high-risk repeat offenders really going under the radar and not being identified properly not being managed and monitored properly so there's also a gap there with policing and I call on on everyone and with government to look at how do we develop something

that aids as an additional tool police to really identify and recognize those that are perpetrating this behavior and there needs to be national join up around that. But we need to look at a different approach for tackling it because of the scale and picking up the points that Graham said. I mean, we've been leading on some of this work in London and the mayor has been really pushing this. He developed his Have a Word campaign, really trying to bring boys and young men into the conversation and he developed a violence against women and talk violence against women and girls toolkit to go into schools again trying to bring boys into the conversation to really help encourage you know good behavior and how do you as Graham said

how do you develop those skills it's not easy in a group to call out that behavior so what do you do to help them to achieve that so there's real focus on prevention um but also the work that i do unfortunately that when the crime has happened that we need to respond to it far more effectively and graham coming back to you also for our listeners that are not aware you're a former police officer um i mean what would the specific counter-terrorism strategies be in this particular sphere? I think when people hear that phrase, it's about robust, consistent enforcement. It's about intelligence gathering. It's about information sharing.

And if we are to really prevent some of the issues we're talking about today, I think we're looking at sometimes the wrong type of violence. That's prevention. That's prevention. With prevention, we need to go early. We need to start focusing on words, language, attitudes, and behaviours. Because when I worked with the Violence Reduction Unit, we didn't call ourselves the Violent Crime Reduction Unit.

That's too late. As Claire said, she's dealing with the end result. We need to be brave enough as a society to sweat the small stuff. But I'm not saying words and language and it's small because that's a victim's right to determine that. But society, the people listening to this and society, we have the tendency to put the online stuff in the small box. We really need to sweat the small stuff, really build the knowledge, motivate our boys and men and society in general to act. Because just now we're playing a big game of whack-a-mole.

We're waiting for big things to happen and dealing with it. Policing is doing that, fire, society. That's terror. That's terrorist responses. That's whack-a-mole. We need to reduce the moles. And we do that by just, you know, creating conversations, building confidence in our young boys and our

young men, you know, helping, as Claire said, helping young people and women and men identify what's happening to them as abuse so they can deal with it quickly. That's prevention. You know, if what we're going to do is respond after the incident, then it's too late. We have a victim, we have an

offender and all the other issues that come along with that. Do you think that sometimes people don't realise they're a victim? I think that's the case. Look at coercive control. Some young women and men, I suppose, as well, because it's important we do talk about male victims, they sometimes don't realise. And something that we can all do as a friend, a colleague, a teammate,

is if we see something that we're not do as a friend, a colleague, a teammate, is if we see something that we're not right, point it out to that friend because that might be the first time somebody has said something to them. You know, bystandership isn't just about speaking to harmdoers and people who cause harm. It's about having the courage and the confidence and compassion to be able to speak to a friend who may be experiencing harm. And that intervention can be the first step on their journey of realisation, but also maybe leaving a relationship. Do you think having violence against women and girls in the next decade is feasible? I think we should be thinking about making it better.

Better, meaning? Just so we do no harm. Let's not make it worse. That was our philosophy in Glasgow, in Scotland, in the violence reduction. Are we ever going to prevent and reduce violence totally? That's a hard one, but can we make it better? If we are making it better, we keep doing what we're doing. If we're making it worse, we stop what we're doing and we do something else.

Because I think just now I see so many programmes coming in that, you know, really, are they making a difference? The ones that are making the difference are the ones that need to scale up. That's public health. If it works, scale it up, do more and more, rather than just bringing in new programmes for this and that. I'm interested in what you say there, though.

You don't seem to want to comment on whether having it is possible. I think anything's possible with the determination and following the evidence and the science. You know, I think the science is telling us how to work with our boys and men, but I don't think we're using the science. Okay, I've got you. So we need to really get better at using the science

because if we do that, you know, the work of Alan Berkowitz in America, social norms theory, all his research tells us what to do but we don't tend to do it so you feel yeah my fear is that we're ignoring the evidence and the science in this work that maybe they're not on that yet claire what do you think feasible have the violence uh i think just picking up on graham point i mean obviously we we need to do be doing far better at this sort of public health approach to tackling Borg. So in the prevention space, exactly as Graham said, following the science, following what works and making sure we scale that up and implement it.

From my side, obviously, when someone does become a victim and come into the system, the system needs to be much more effective at responding and protecting that victim. And an early intervention, because then you can disrupt that perpetrator's behaviour, especially in stalking. We know we've seen some really good signs from early intervention work with the NHS, really disrupting and reducing that re-offending the stalkers. But you have to get in early. So that comes from awareness campaigns,

people being aware that what they're experiencing, if it's stalking or domestic abuse, coercive control, coming in and reporting, but then the police and the wider criminal justice system needs to be working far more effectively. And unfortunately, there's a lot of work still there. We'll continue following at London Victims Commissioner, Clare Waxman, thank you very much, and Graeme Golden, Leadership and Violence Prevention, expert who works with boys and young men to tackle misogyny. Now you might have heard me say that Listener Week is coming up next month and it's your chance to discuss what you want to hear on air. So you can text Women's Hour 84844 on social media or at BBC Women's Hour or email us

through our website. Some of you have got in in touch this morning. I was about my next item about whether it's OK to bring a plus one to the lunch of your close mates. Here's Debbie in Abington. She says, as a lesbian, I would challenge

the heteronormative assumptions here. Didn't mean to have any heteronormative assumptions, Debbie. I'm just talking about the close friends and when the outsider is brought in. Debbie says,

if I had arranged to see friends of whatever gender who were my friends rather than couple friends, my partner wouldn't dream of coming along and vice versa. For me, this is about maintaining healthy independence within an intimate relationship and gender is a side issue. Here's another one. My daughter, Clover, made me a guest at her hen lunch 24 years ago. I was amazed as her father, but I became an honorary girlfriend for the lunch. So instead, he was the outsider. Brought in 84844. I have a feeling you're going to have a few things to say about this. I mean, the writer and academic, the academic and writer Kate Lister.

This is the quote that you had, Kate, and I'll speak to you in just one moment. I said it earlier, but I think it bears repeating. I firmly believe that anyone who turns up to a girl's lunch with their husband in tow should be arrested immediately. It was written in the iPaper and Kate explaining that the presence of a partner alters the dynamic and that friendships

ought to be safe havens from romantic relationships. You know, could be mixed genders as we're talking about. Let me bring Kate back to Women's Hour. Welcome, Kate. Now, thanks for asking me on. Well, do you want to tell our listeners a little of your experience in case they haven't read your article? Yes.

So this article came about when I was talking to a friend of mine who has been having a regular, what she called, lunch with the girls. And suddenly one of these friends had started bringing a new partner with her who had just sort of started turning up. And I also want to challenge the heteronormative things around this because it's not necessarily a heterosexual thing but in this case it was and she was just felt very awkward by the fact that there was suddenly a new partner there and she didn't really know what to do about it because she felt very like am I being bad here like he's not that he's a bad person it's not that he's not nice to be around but it's just disrupted the entire dynamic and then I remembered a few years ago when I'd been working over in Liverpool and I became friends with a woman in work

and we got on really, really well and we arranged to meet up outside of work and she kept bringing her husband. Like every single... And did you say anything? Well, this is the thing. Is it... Looking back, yeah, I should have just said

and what are you doing here? But that's... That's a weird thing to say, isn't it? Well, this is it. And we've had the conversations, I'm not going to lie, this morning in the office. And there are some that are more forthright about saying what's he or she doing here compared to others. But what is it at the nub of it? I think you alluded to it there that the dynamic changes.

Dynamic changes whenever somebody brings in a new element. And I think that if that element is a romantic partner, then we've got a whole load of nuance going on that perhaps you were unprepared for. Now, I'm not talking about if you've arranged to meet up with a coupley friend. That's fine. I do that a lot. I'm meeting up with a coupley friend tomorrow. I'm not talking about if you've arranged to meet up with a coupley friend. That's fine. I do that a lot. I'm meeting up with a coupley friend tomorrow. I'm talking about if somebody suddenly decides that their romantic partner is now their plus one for all social events. And for me, what kind of gets to the nub of it is I didn't want to spend time with him. I didn't want to see him for lunch or brunch or anything else.

I wanted to see you. You are my friend. Okay, let me read. The comments are coming in. Hold that thought. I bring my partner along to some things. I want my friends to know him, enjoy his company, and for them to get along.

It's very important for me that they can all share time with me together. Not all the time, but how will they bond if not through shared hangouts with me? That is true. That is, it's a fair comment, but I'm afraid I might still have to have that person arrested. That's hyperbole. I wouldn't actually want to do that. Yeah, you've got to meet your friends, partners, because friends and partners, there's a whole load of tension and stuff that can go on there. But I think it's

also really important that you prioritize your relationship with your friends that we don't forget that those relationships need energy and time and effort and focus as well and for me because maybe this is particularly important to me because i'm a single woman and i'm i'm child free and i love that for me i have a great time but my friends and my relationship with them are so important. And I want to invest in that. And if suddenly they have a plus one with them all the time, I feel that I can't quite be myself. I'm not quite getting that same relationship dynamic that I wanted. 84844 if you want to get in touch. Why do you think said friends that we've mentioned do bring along the plus one?

I was thinking about this. I was like, maybe they're time poor, you know, maybe they have other responsibilities. Maybe this is the one night out in, I don't know, a number of weeks. There are lots of reasons why they do it. And I know that I'm being very extreme and severe in what I'm saying. And I am very sensitive to the fact that there are lots of nuances going on here I did kind of ask my friend in Liverpool why their husband was always there and what I the answer I got was that he doesn't have any friends right he doesn't he struggles to make friends himself so they socialize together and then I felt kind of bad as well maybe I'm being

mean here then maybe maybe this is this is my fault which again I think is one of the reasons why it can be quite hard to vocalize this stuff so that was the reason that she gave and in the comments to the iNews article people are also were also saying things like sometimes their partner is also their carer so they bring them to social events and I think I should say straight away I'm not talking about that that. That's not what we're talking about. It's the sudden appearance of a romantic partner that you are unfamiliar with that is suddenly now within your friendship dynamic. I think Sarah on Twitter is in alignment with you, Kate.

She says it's better to bring along a dog. Dogs okay? Yes, Sarah. Yes, dogs are always okay. That's, yeah. Does it also come into whether you have a relationship with that partner?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's a whole thing, isn't there, about your friend's partner? Yes, that's another item. That's a whole item isn't it like what do you do when you don't like a friend's partner or what do you do if you do like them or how do you get to know them how do you suddenly account for the fact that they're a couple but it's um I still go back to this thing of like that that you have to in some you have to remember that

the friendship is really important as well and you've got to pour time and energy into that. Your partner might be lovely. They might be absolutely amazing and fabulous. And we can spend time with them and all that stuff. But don't forget your friends. What is it about women or close mates getting together? Not to be heteronormative. It can be women getting together.

Maybe they have a female partner or maybe you have a very close male friend that's there. You don't want them bringing their partner either. What is it about that particular space? You know, there has been research done on this. So it's not just me griping about it. There was a research paper in 2010 in the Handbook of Gender Research and Psychology about how group dynamics shift when you're in a co-ed space. And typically what happens is that women become quieter and more shy about what they're saying.

And the men in the room will become more authoritative. They will take charge of the conversations. So the research does bear this out, that the dynamics do shift. Now, the lesbians and the gays and the bisexuals, they can tell us how this works within their dynamic groups. And I'm sure that inviting anybody new into a space has an impact. But there is research that shows that gender does play a part in this. Right. The floodgates have just opened. Are you ready?

I'm ready. Let's do it. Right. Me and my friends play golf. It's a ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. Right. Me and my friends play golf. It's a great escape, but my friend has started bringing his girlfriend. She's nice, but the dynamic has changed. My friend distances himself from us

and doesn't join the banter as much as he has to be on his best behavior. Here's another. I always ask if I can bring the romantic partner du jour for a party or dinner, but girls or a men's get together, I suppose women often call ourselves girls, whatever,

women or a men's get together is sacrosanct. So there you go. Oh gosh, they're coming in so fast that actually I have to jump ahead. If prearranged, it's okay. Otherwise I'd view it as a red flag. Yes, I'd agree with that. Prearranged, fine.

Another one. My straight male partner was invited to my gay friend's birthday party at a gay club. He enjoyed it for a few hours. All my gay friends love him, but he was respectful enough to leave me and them dancing when it got too much. Nice.

Good morning. Maybe you need to think about controlling behaviour if a male partner starts coming to a girl's lunch. That's from Kate. I think it is a red flag, you know. I think that I'm being quite lighthearted in what I'm saying. But I think that if you can't socialize without your partner, or if your partner is insisting on going with you to socialize with your friends,

I would be quite alarmed by that. And there's another couple coming in along those lines as well, that they had a partner, it was a red flag insisted on coming to every event that they had, which were colleagues or friends. Another, what sort of man would want to go to lunch with a bunch of women? I can see you're laughing, Kate. Sorry, that tickled me.

Another one, what about cats? If you can get a cat to come to a lunch, I have huge respect for you and you're always welcome to socialize well obviously 84844 lots of people getting in touch with that you must have had a huge response to this though i'm thinking i did yes it's a proper like because everybody's got something they want to say about it ranging from the people like no time with your friends is absolutely sacrosanct through to other people probably the people that are bringing their partners to social

events going oh well maybe i just i know we that are bringing their partners to social events going, oh, well, maybe I just, you know, we just wanted to be nice to socialise. I'll tell you something, Kate, I don't think anyone is ever going to do that to you again. I think my friendship pool might have got significantly smaller after this. So great to have you on, Kate Lister.

She has written the article in the iPaper. Oh my goodness, they continue to come in. It's extremely annoying when friends insist on bringing their partners to everything. I'm friends with them, not their partner. Lovely to see them, but it means the dynamic is instantly different. I'm concerned for those people

that their partner has started to become a core part of their identity. Ooh, all about the codependence and whatnot. I'm going to leave it for there, Kate. I will keep an eye on the comments that are coming in. 84844, thank you so much for speaking to us lots of food for thought

obviously something that tickles you if there's something that you'd like to debate on the programme maybe Kate has got your creative juices flowing or there's

something like that's my pet peeve it has triggered maybe something that really annoys your friends family or work colleagues let us know

Listener Week is coming up next month, 84844, on social media at BBC Women's Hour. Email us through our website. We also have a little post up on Instagram as well. So that is another place you can post your comment. Lots of people did yesterday. Thank you very much for them.

We're enjoying reading them and we're very much looking forward to getting some of them on air. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year, them on air. 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. If you saw something suspicious taking place at work, would you speak out or would you look the other way? What if there was big sums of money offered to become involved in the wrongdoing?

Well, it's the dilemma that's posed in a new novel, Bay of Thieves. It's something that happened to the book's author. I spoke to her earlier. Her name is Megan Davis. She's a lawyer turned author. The novel, Bay of Thieves, follows two women, Vanessa and Kate, that are lawyers who get sucked into a glamorous but dangerous world of financial crime and corruption,

spanning London all the way to Monaco. I started by asking Megan how she became a whistleblower. I was working as a lawyer in an investment firm and I was basically essentially asked to commit a fraud to to correct something that had you know a mistake initially I refused to do that but the pressure was building over some weeks and then I was I was sort of enticed to do it by by with a financial incentive I refused to do that as well and things became increasingly tense in the firm. I then, you know, became aware that it was going ahead, regardless of whether I was going to be involved or not. And junior members of the firm were being dragged into it as well. And so then I was I was sort of fixed with knowledge

of this. And, you know, as well as saw other people sort of foundering around wondering what to do. So I realised I had to, I had to act and do something to stop it. So you were being asked basically to falsify or create documents, which is really interesting because reading your book, Bay of Thieves, the characters go through something very, very similar. You said that you were watching other people being pulled into it. Did you ever think about doing what they wanted you to do? I'd never considered that, but all of a sudden the sum of money popped into my head and I considered it probably not because of the money at that point, but because the pressure had built. So,

you know, it just became like the easiest thing to do. And I think, you know, often with financial crime, people think it's a difficult thing, but it's often, you know, the easiest thing to do. It's very easy to, you know, to bribe someone. Easy to bribe someone, easy to carry out that actual work. I mean, in the sense, thinking that you mightn't be caught. Yeah, it would have been very easy to do, very easy to actually, you know, carry out the fraud. I think it would have been, it could have come out later, which is why they wanted me to do it and didn't want to do it themselves. So they wanted a fall guy. But frankly, at that time, you know, just getting that, getting it out of the way and doing it felt like the easiest thing to do.

I didn't really think of the consequences too much at that point. I was so worried. But, you know, that was when it struck me that this kind of thing is so easy to do. So that was if you were going to go down that path, but you didn't. You decided not to and blow the whistle. What was the catalyst for that, if there was one? The catalyst was other people being dragged into it that were more junior than me that came to me and asked me what was going on.

I could see that they were confused. And I thought, well, you know, I can't sit by and let this happen for my own purposes as well. I mean, I was fixed with knowledge of it. I felt culpable. I felt like I would be liable if it went ahead and I knew about it. But you then blew the whistle, left the company. My understanding is that your legal case with them was settled without going to court. But it did last over a year. And I'm wondering what that time was like. Yeah, it was a very difficult time. When I blew the whistle, which is quite a technical process, I wrote a letter to them. But that afternoon I was excluded from the office.

And so I was suddenly thrust into this situation where I was no longer sure of whether I had a job, money coming in, and suddenly I was also hemorrhaging money because I had to to how I got myself in this position and, you know, started to blame myself for it. You know, then I entered in this sort of very deeply sort of psychological spiral of self-blame and doubt, really. And I just kept going over, you know, it would have been much easier to just not necessarily do it but just to look the other way really or you know just just leave. Were you able to speak to people about that about how you were feeling about what you were going through? No I couldn't actually because you know my lawyer advised me not to and so the only people I could speak to were my family and and my lawyer. So that was very isolating as well. I wasn't able to speak to anyone at work. I didn't actually know at that

point whether the thing was going ahead or not. So I was worried about that. All my colleagues were prohibited from calling me. So it was incredibly isolating in that way where you're suddenly kind of worried about your future as well as not really knowing what you've left behind as well. Yeah. And at the same time, dealing with a lot of threatening letters and bullying and harassment to sort of essentially, you know, get me to back down and to not enforce my sort of legal rights, which is to take them to court for suing, yeah. As part of the settlement, you signed a non-disclosure agreement or an NDA. Do you have any reservations about doing that, as some would see NDAs as protecting the company and silencing you? Yeah, absolutely. I thought about that a lot. And, you know,

at the time I signed the NDA, I think that the whole ordeal had gone on for about 18 months, I'd lost about a stone in weight. And I was really at the end of my tether. And also, my lawyer told me that only about 3% of cases that go to the employment tribunal, whistleblowing cases, are successful. So, you know, it's a massive lottery. So I could have lost. I could have, at that point, I'd rung up about, you know, 40 or 50,000 pounds worth of legal bills. So, you know, the stakes were really high and the chances of winning were very small. So it was the only thing to do at that

point. It's interesting the way you talk about it. The word risk is coming into my mind, but that's also, I think, kind of what led to this point as well. It's about gambling and risk taking in a way with white collar crime. But you've explained a very difficult part of your life. I'm wondering why you decided then to write about it, to fictionalise it, because But you've explained a very difficult part of your life. I'm wondering why you decided then to write about it, to fictionalise it, because everything you've told me, I feel I've read already in Bay of Thieves. I think because these whistleblower stories are really fascinating from the point of, you know, they're real sort of, you know, David and Glad struggles. You have, you know, a very powerful individual with all the money and the

power, and then the whistleblower who really only has their conscience and then stands to lose absolutely everything. And I think it feeds into this fear that we have as a society that the fight for justice is a bit doomed. So I think those sorts of stories are very interesting. And also, I just wanted to explore that that point of decision that I had, which was, you know, do I do I do this fraud just to get these people off my back? Or do I, you know, blow the whistle? That to me was a very interesting point, because, you know, in this country, in the UK, there's no real incentive on whistleblowers to do that. So it's really only your conscience that does it. And I was very fascinated just to where that comes down for people. Where does people's conscience tell them to do the right thing? And what does that mean? So that's what I wanted to explore in the

book. These two women who deal with the same thing. So this is Vanessa and Kate, two characters in the novel that are faced with the choice. Do you think female whistleblowers are treated differently to male whistleblowers? I think they are. I think there are studies that show that women suffer more retaliation than men. And that's, I think that's perhaps because the female whistleblower is not really fulfilling kind of stereotypes of the way that women are sort of conditioned to behave. A lot of women, you know, are expected to sort of, to be agreeable and to sit down and be quiet, whereas, you know, whistleblower, whistleblowing is exactly the opposite to that.

So I think one of the things that they say about female whistleblowers is that they suffer a lot of retaliation from their colleagues because they're not complying to these sorts of stereotypes. But I think it's very interesting that particularly in the tech space, we've seen a lot of female whistleblowers there. And I think that's a really fascinating development because women are not very highly represented in tech world, about 30% of tech workers are women. But then there's a disproportionate number of whistleblowers. So you wonder why. You found another job, you received a settlement. But i know some talk about whistleblowing being potential career suicide was that something that went through your head oh absolutely yeah i thought

i'm never going to work again um and actually i think for a lot of whistleblowers they they don't really want to go back into that environment anyway so it's a it's a it's a sort of form of ptsd PTSD that some whistleblowers suffer. It was definitely, I didn't think anyone would employ me after that. And I didn't really want to as well. Do you think there is a perception that fraud within various companies is somehow more victimless than other types of crime? Yes, I think people think that financial crime is fairly victimless. I think because it happens on a spreadsheet, on a computer, it's not really, you know, there are no victims, but actually,

you know, the victims are countless in terms of, you know, the inequality that it leads to. But I think people generally think because there's no body, there's no damage. It's everywhere. It's all around us. It's invisible, but it's everything from fraud, burglary, online scamming, money laundering, corruption, procurement fraud. It's everywhere.

You can't pick up the paper without seeing it. Well, actually, I did pick up the paper this morning and one of the headlines in the times is britain's no longer think honesty the best policy and they talk about the government saying that there is more fraud and theft that is the new government saying that they want to clamp down on it there is tolerance of tax evasion and benefit fraud. Apparently, that has also risen. Officials citing a report study, citing a recent study suggesting that one in five Britons can now be classed as having low integrity, up from one in 14 over a decade ago. That stat struck me when I heard it this morning. What do you think?

Well, I think, you know, we take our examples from on high. And I think there has been, you know, lots of lots of examples of corruption in the system everywhere. We see it all around us. But I also think that there is a sort of a real ineffectiveness of sort of enforcement of laws because of the draining of funds to do that. So I think there is a real need to encourage people to come forward with fraud, for example, to incentivise whistleblowers rather than to disincentivise them. And the US has a scheme to do that. So I don't think we can rely on people to be honest, particularly. I think we need to actually encourage them to be honest

by giving them incentives to be honest. Yeah, well, I'm wondering, because you've talked about what you went through and you did find another career, but did you ever regret blowing the whistle? I never regretted it, but I don't think I'd do it again. Really? Yeah, I think it's the kind of thing you only ever do once. I don't think that it's, it's so traumatic that you wouldn't, you know, there must be another way around it. And I think, yeah, I don't think I'd do it again, for sure. What could be the other way around it, though? You know, whistleblowing needs to be changed, that we need to have a different view of it so that it is it's easier for a whistleblower to blow the whistle and not to be victimized.

You know, unfortunately, it just happens too often. And, you know, and I think, you know, whistleblowers are made victims of for a reason because people don't want them. People don't want them in their businesses, in their companies. So you make an example of a whistleblower and you can be sure that you're not going to get any more. So that needs to change. And I think taking it out of the sphere of an employment issue, because it's not an employment issue, it's an issue of public policy and making it into something that's, you know, that's valued. were discussing from her own life thanks very much to her lots of comments still coming in about bringing the partner or the romantic partner to um the get together of pals here's one for

michelle how on earth are you going to let off steam about your household uh with your friends if partners and kids come along it's your safe space that one from nottingham um let me see i agree with kate lister here and my catch-ups with friends are usually partner-free. I genuinely like the partners of most of my friends but sometimes they just don't fit the occasion. Another from Amanda. My husband does not want to

come to all women events as he wouldn't want me at all men events. 84844. Now, it has just been a year since Professor Deborah Prentice took up her role as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge. Before that, she was Provost at Princeton, where she spent 34 years of her academic career as a psychologist. Her expertise is the study of social norms that govern human behaviour,

including gender stereotypes. I have to say, thinking about some of her work with the conversations we've already been having this morning. Well, Deborah took a role in the UK at a time of deep, deep funding crisis in higher education and increasing social inequality. She's with me in studio to reflect on what the past year has been like in the UK and also the plans for moving forward. Welcome. Thank you. So, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, what does that role involve? It involves internal to the university. It involves, honestly,

chairing an awful lot of committees. But it involves making sure that Cambridge as a whole functions well and making sure that all of the fantastic students and academic staff at Cambridge can realise their full potential in this incredible place. Incredible place, also a difficult time, some would say, when it comes to higher education, as I alluded to there.

There has been, of course, the cost of living conversations, a lot of financial pressure in many sectors of the UK. The university and college union warned just over this past weekend that universities faced a catastrophe without an emergency rescue package from the government. The new Labour Education Secretary just told the BBC yesterday that universities as independent institutions should put their own finances in order

before looking for help from the taxpayer. Is that something you'd agree with? I'm very glad we're having this conversation. I'm very glad to hear these voices because, in fact, there is a crisis, if you will, a funding crisis, a financial crisis in UK universities. And there's no question that some kind of joined-up conversation is very important. Coming from the U.S., as I do, I've seen what happens when a funding crisis is not, in fact, dealt with in a joined-up way. I mean, it's interesting.

In the U.S., one college or university, one higher education provider goes bankrupt or merges every month. Every month? It's like one a month, right? And it's not regulated in any way. So you can get a letter saying that your college or university is going to go belly up in a week's time. And there's no safety net for all of the wonderful academic staff, for the students who've invested in this place and who have their credits at risk. The university is then gone. We can't have that. We can't have that kind of unregulated market correction. We need the conversation. We need the planning that's going to prevent that from happening. Yes, because the Office of Students,

the higher education regulator, said 40% of universities here were predicting deficits. So do you feel that can be curtailed with a sort of, I don't know, is it a safety net? It's not the taxpayer, I don't think you're saying? No, what I'm saying, I think there needs to be, there needs to be some investment in the sector from somewhere. There needs to be some kind of a correction to the financial situation of the sector from somewhere. There needs to be some kind of a correction to the financial situation of the sector.

I don't actually know what it needs to be. I have to say Cambridge is a bit of an outlier here on the positive side. We have sources of income. We have sources of revenue that others don't have. I'll just do those figures. Last report in November of 2023 showed that it had hit a £1 billion in revenue for the first time.

Yeah. So we are in a very fortunate position here. The sector is heterogeneous. And I think it's true. I mean, universities do very much manage their own budgets. And we're all a little bit different from each other. But the sector as a whole is facing a financial crisis that really needs to be understood as a whole.

When I was thinking about this, and I suppose Cambridge is a specific example, but thinking about American universities, I mean, they milk the philanthropy, right? And the big donors. And that's sometimes how they plug the holes. Still going buckling, as you talk about there each week, various institutions. Is it that sort of model? No, I don't. I mean, philanthropy is part of the answer. I think philanthropy is part of

the answer for some institutions. I think there are different answers for different institutions. And I think in the US, there are different answers for different institutions as well. But I think what's most important is that we have a conversation about the sector and make sure this, the higher education sector in the UK is brilliant. It's really incredible.

I mean, I'm not even sure people here realize how strong it is. And I, you know, I'm used to seeing some very good universities, but really university for university in the UK, the sector is very, very strong. We want to keep it that way. And that's going to require a sector-wide conversation about finances. I'm sure some of my listeners will be thinking, well, should it be tuition fees that go up?

Would that be something you'd approve of? Look, I don't know what the answers are. I think we have to look at all of the sources. It's very complex. I mean, universities get funds from for grants. They get tuition, domestic tuition, international tuition. They get some get philanthropy. Some don't get philanthropy.

I mean, it really is a very complex picture. You know, one way that universities also have funding, but it intersects with another issue of immigration, and that's visas. We would have seen in the debates the previous government talking about how they had barred most international students from bringing family members with them or dependents. Also plans to review post-study work visas. The new Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Philipson, said that Labour, and I quote, will welcome international students to the UK. She also said they will maintain the graduate route so international students can come and study with certainty and confidence. How did you hear that statement? Bravo, with great applause. No, we welcome that statement. We've always had a large number of

international students, mainly postgrads, at Cambridge, 9,000 a year. They're brilliant. They're brilliant. They're absolutely fantastic what they bring. And then what they take away. I mean, education, higher education is one of Britain's great exports as well. Do you think that's not recognized in the way that it should be? I don't think it's recognized as much as I would have expected.

I really don't. I mean, coming in, I haven't heard as much recognition of the value of the sector as I would have expected. Now, Labour is making some very positive noises about it now. And I welcome the opportunity to work with them going forward. Let's talk about free speech. We also had your counterpart, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, who is also a woman, also very steeped in STEM. I think it was about this time last year, actually, when I spoke to her.

And free speech continues to be an issue on campus. There were several well-documented protests, including at Cambridge over the situation in Gaza. I happened to be in New York in a few months ago just before the term broke up in Colombia covering those protests there and when you were appointed you said you would create new forums for expressing controversial views that the public forums will be designed to create a free speech environment for possibly controversial views. Is it a different environment between the UK and the US as you've seen it? It is very different, actually. It's different both legally and culturally, I think. You know, legally, there is no First Amendment in the UK,

whereas in the US, I mean, the First Amendment, freedom of speech is inscribed. In the UK, it's free speech within the law. So it is a more carefully regulated kind of environment. That said, I think freedom of speech is just as important here. And I did go ahead and create those spaces, actually, at Cambridge. We had two vice chancellor's dialogues on contentious issues in which people disagreed publicly and in front of an audience who could participate in that on the topics of assisted dying was our first one. Straight in.

Yeah, right. Exactly. And then democracy,. Yeah, right. Exactly. And then and then democracy actually, is democracy dying? It was our second topic. So we've experimented with that. And I will continue to do so. Is the tenor or tone of the conversations different? Yes, I would say I would say it is. So what I would say about free speech in the UK is that, first of all, I think, I mean, there's free speech in the form of protest. I would say that protest is a more common kind of political voice in the UK. And people, everybody on all sides has an investment in staying within the boundaries in order to achieve their aims. I mean, it's a much more regulated and familiar territory in the UK.

Whereas in the US, when there are protests, it means something's terribly wrong. And it's a much less familiar kind of political voice and therefore much more likely to go over the edge, honestly. So there are cultural differences as well as legal differences. So interesting. Just you're the first American vice chancellor of Cambridge, the daughter of a single mother. Do you think you would have arrived where you are now in your career without, I don't know, your mother's influence?

She must have been huge to you. My mother was a huge influence on me. I mean, no, I think even though my mother could never have imagined my path, I could have never taken my path without her. You know, she was a pioneer in her own way. She was very atypical for a mom in those days. Well, just she worked and she made it on her own at a time when that was very, very uncommon. And I learned a great deal from her.

I learned the value of work. I learned how to get up every day and go to work. We heard about moral compass at the very beginning of the program. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. I was listening. Yes, indeed. No, and I certainly learned that.

I learned the value of education. My mom felt that, in fact, not having had access to higher education limited what she could do. And I think she was definitely right about that. And I just learned about being, charting one's own path, being atypical which I think it's challenging, it can also be freeing Really great to have you on First American Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, Deborah Prentice, thank you so much

We didn't get into your research on alcohol, we'll have to talk about that another time, about pluralistic ignorance, which was a new term I had learned about kind of going along with the crowd, which feels like that was a theme that was going through today's programme. Thank you so much for coming into us here on Woman's Hour.

Lovely to have you. Do join me tomorrow. I'll be joined by Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Walfish, a new documentary which focuses on the moment eight decades on when Anita came face to face with the man who was the camp commandant at Auschwitz.

Anita and her daughter, Maya, join me to tell me what that was like. I will speak to you then. Thank you so much for spending some of your time with us here on Woman's Hour. And thanks so much for all your messages that have come in about bringing partners to lunch. I think we have a consensus. See you tomorrow. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time.

Home Sleuth is a brand new podcast. Tales from citizens taking justice into their own hands. Trying to solve crimes. Catching bad guys. Living the double life. Not the police. I really wanted to find that person. Can you just tell me where she's buried? Not a victim. What is ethical? What is the boundary that I should stay within? An ordinary person compelled to investigate a crime or a mystery. There was no one else who seemed to care about what was happening.

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