Woman's Hour - #MeToo in the British Army, Dominic Cummings, Women & Art: How We Look, Geriatric Millennials

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

A former senior Army officer is calling for the military to have a “#MeToo moment” and is claiming that hundreds of female troops have been raped and sexually abused by colleagues. Lt Col Diane Allen, who served for 37 years, says the Armed Forces are being run by “a toxic group of privately-educated white senior officers” We talk to Diane Allen and also hear from the Defence Minister Baroness Goldie. Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s former chief advisor, will today face questions from senior MPs over the government’s response to the pandemic. Cummings is a controversial figure in Westminster, and since leaving his position as Boris Johnson’s top aide, he has not gone quietly, making a series of damning claims against the Prime Minister and government. But would the media and political coverage have been the same had he been a woman? Caroline Nokes, the Conservative chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, joins us to discuss. Art historian Catherine McCormack has just published an impassioned book, Women in the Picture: Women Art and the Power of Looking. She argues that women's identity has long been stifled by dodgy narratives and a limited set of archetypes. For art history to remain relevant, she says, we need to look again and reconsider many of the classics displayed in art galleries.What generation do you define as? The term 'geriatric millennial' went viral last week, after writer Erica Dhwan used it to describe the micro-generation born between 1980 and 1985. Erica believes they make particularly good employees due to their experience of life before the digital world. Rosa Silverman, a senior features writer at the Telegraph, says she is proud to self-define as one of the around 5 million UK geriatric millennials in the UK.

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. Hello and welcome to the programme. How do you feel about being labelled or defined by your age? I ask because last week a term went viral to describe those born between 1980 and 1985, an age group I find myself in. Apparently, we are the geriatric millennials. And that makes us amazing employees

because we understand life before and after the internet. Apparently, we differ to younger millennials who often don't like picking up the phone for a call, let alone thinking about a landline or knowing what one is, won't answer the door, open post, and can find punctuation in a text, rude. I'm generalising, of course I am, but that's the point. Can we and should we generalise about people's ages, whether it's Gen X, those in their 40s or boomers,

those over 55 or Gen Z in their late teens or early 20s? How do you feel about those labels of age? I'll be talking to the woman who popularised this term, geriatric millennial, we'll get into more what that is, and why she's done it. She says it's to explain the differences between ages to help improve how we live, work and play together with greater ease and empathy. I have to say personally I didn't mind this one because it was largely complimentary about my age group. Also prompted a few nostalgic feelings remembering the sound of dial-up internet and made me realise how lucky my generation can be compared to even the one below. But a lot of people do not like being put in boxes. I also usually loathe that and I understand. Plus I did notice when I posted about geriatric millennials

in quotation marks on social media, many women in particular got in touch saying they were appalled by the word geriatric, which in medical terms has been anyone over 65, and in pregnancy terms it was anyone aged over 35. I understand that's being phased out, but a lot of you seem to be talking about it still. How about you, though? These labels of age. What box do you tick? Do you actively defy expectations for your age and your so-called tribe? Text Women's Hour on 84844 or on social media at BBC Women's Hour or email us through our website. And speaking of tribes, the man who's left his, Dominic Cummings, the former senior adviser to the prime minister,

is giving evidence right now, as you heard in the news bulletins. But how might his treatment be different if he was a woman? Certainly in the run-up to this, Caroline Noakes, Conservative MP and chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, gives us her view and also speaks candidly about her colleague, the Conservative MP Rob Roberts, who faces a six-week suspension after repeatedly propositioning and sexually harassing his member of staff, but remains an MP. Also on today's programme, women and art.

Do we need to completely reframe how we see certain pictures, specifically featuring naked women? All to come. But first, a development in our top story yesterday. Following our interview here on Woman's Hour with Michelle Hadaway, the mother of nine-year-old Karen, one of the girls in the so-called Babes in the Wood case who was murdered in the woods near Brighton in 1986, she told me that she wants the BBC to investigate what happened to her daughter's clothes, which she says she gave to Martin Bashir, a reporter in 1991 who was working on a BBC documentary series. He had promised to get them tested for DNA evidence to help catch the killer, but never did, and never returned the clothing.

Well, in light of the Lord Dyson review last week, which found Martin Bashir was deceitful in the way he obtained his BBC interview with Princess Diana, transporting him from being a reporter to being a globally known name, Michelle wants answers about her case. After our interview, the BBC director general, Tim Davey, has now said he would be happy to meet with Michelle

once it's established how she wants to proceed. Here is Michelle speaking to me yesterday about how she tried to get answers from Martin Bashir. A few more years later, it came that we found the receipt. He was contacted and that was what his attitude was. I don't remember. I never took those clothes. Hence the reason why 35 years later, we're still trying to find out what's happened. You have shared that receipt, that note with us.

I've got it in front of me, a copy of it, an image saying, this is to certify that I, Martin Bashir, have taken possession of clothing from Michelle Hadway, signed 15th of August 1991 with his signature. I wonder just to go back to when you did meet him and you handed it over, what was your impression of him? Well, I was told that he was a respectable journalist and that he was someone that could be trusted. So obviously I trusted him with the last piece of thing that I had to do with my daughter, which was her clothes.

They also sent a taxi out, well, a car out from the BBC to take me there. So I know that I'd been there and spoken to him at great lengths. And then for him to deny that, you know, it's like an offhand comment isn't it? I don't remember. I don't know whether I should say I actually called him a despicable rat. Over the years I've been so angry with the fact that this man has never apologised to me, never contacted me. The denials have been going on for quite a long time. That was Michelle talking to me yesterday. Yesterday, we did try to contact Martin Bashir through the PR company he's using at the moment,

but had no response. And the BBC Director General, Tim Davey, has now said after that interview he would be and will be happy to meet with Michelle once it's established how she wants to proceed. We will, of course, keep you updated with this story and are in touch with Michelle. But it was a year ago yesterday that Dominic Cummings sat in the Downing Street Rose Garden and explained to the British public why,

in the middle of strict lockdown restrictions telling people not to travel, the most senior adviser to the British public why, in the middle of strict lockdown restrictions telling people not to travel, the most senior adviser to the Prime Minister had seemingly ignored the stay-at-home rules to drive his wife and children from their London home to Durham. He maintained he did so for childcare reasons as his only option. Nevertheless, it's fair to say some people were furious. Twelve months on, and as I speak to you now, Dominic Cummings is once again talking in public, but this time under very different circumstances.

After leaving his post as the Prime Minister's most senior advisor in November, this morning he's telling the Joint Health and Science Select Committee what he knew and when about the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. The session's expected to last four hours. Already, he said, the truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has the right to expect of its government in a crisis like this. Have a listen to what he's just said about the government's preparations for the pandemic in February last year. I think this is a really important point to register. The government itself, and Number 10, pwynt pwysig iawn i'w adolygu. Nid oedd y Llywodraeth ei hun a'r nifer 10 yn gweithio ar

ffwrdd o'r llawr yn Ffeddwl i'r ffordd neu'r ffordd. Roedd llawer o bobl allweddol yn sgiio yn y cyfnod o Ffeddwl. Nid oedd yn ystod y wythnos diwethaf Ffeddwl February. It wasn't until the last week of February that there was really any sort of sense of urgency, I would say, in terms of number 10 in the Cabinet Office. And a damning blog post and a series of tweets before this session. He's already made damning accusations against the Prime Minister himself and the government, and more will be happening as I'm talking. This is a man who has not left Downing Street silently. Dominic Cummings is political Marmite. He's either seen as a rebel genius or a disruptive ideologue. If he was a woman, would we be having the same conversations couched in the same terms? I spoke to Caroline Notes, who's the Conservative Chair of the Women

and Equality Select Committee, just before coming on air. Dominic Cummings has sort of built up this entire persona of being some sort of Machiavellian creature, whereas women who were this disloyal to a former employer, I think would take an enormous amount of criticism and some really quite gendered language would be used to describe their behaviour. I mean, you should say special advisor when you talk about spads there. And yes, it's been put by the media, a lot of the different sections of the media across the whole board,

you know, evil genius or brilliant eccentric, the idea of maverick. And the whole Twitter streams that he's been doing, these whole threads before coming to today's testimony. I wonder if some may have described women doing that as unhinged, hysterical, those sorts of gendered descriptors. I think that's absolutely the case. And we've seen female special advisors treated very differently. There are far too few of them to begin with. But I remember when Sonia Khan was frog-marched out of Downing Street by the police without so much as an explanation for her sacking.

Don't forget that was at the hands of Cummings. And yet, as you say, he's being treated by the media as if he's some sort of genius, sort of a maverick Machiavellian figure. And not somebody who, to be quite frank, seems to revel in holding a sort of Damocles over the prime minister's head. And yet, at the same time, very different in levels there. He was the most senior advisor to the Prime Minister versus, say, somebody like Sonia Khan, who was much more junior. I get the comparison point you're making in terms of treatment and the way that they're described perhaps by the media

or even treated by employers. But there could be things that he's going to reveal today that he's revealing while I'm on air that we need to hear, that are important, that people who have had an incredibly tough time this year need to hear about how this government, your party, handled it. Well, I think it's absolutely right that he should be in front of the committees today and giving his evidence. I think the trailing via his blog to the media outlets that we all know Cummings used to speak to when he was in Downing Street, just smacks of somebody who wants the attention, who wants to dictate the way the

story is written about him. And to be quite frank, somebody who is just seeking to manipulate the situation to his own advantage. We all remember, this is the chap that ignored lockdown rules. He was swanning off to County Durham, taking a driving test to check that his eyes were OK on his way to Barnard Castle. And, you know, this is not somebody who I think we should have any trust in. He's somebody who has been shown to seek to particularly manipulate situations to his own advantage, ignoring the strictures that the rest of us live by. But does it make you and has it made you question the judgment of the Prime Minister? Because he was the most senior advisor to the Prime Minister. Oh, he was clearly very senior, right inside the trusted circle. But to be frank, for me, from the minute that I heard he'd gone to County Durham breaching lockdown,

I thought he should have gone. I thought he should have had the decency to resign himself. And I was very sorry that the Prime Minister chose to stick by him then and relieved when he went at the end of last year. Do you have any truck with anything he has to say today? Will you believe anything he has to say? Or have you been tainted by those events that you've just described? I'm trying to understand from the position of our listeners what they should feel or think about today and using their judgment accordingly. Oh, I will listen to what Dominic Cummings says today through the lens of knowing that this is being done

for the aggrandisement of Dominic Cummings and nobody else. He will love his moment in the sun in front of that select committee. And I think I'm going to be very cynical as to what he says and what he does thereafter. I think this whole situation has been manipulated by Cummings drip feeding information, leaking things, using his trusted buddies to leak information to the press. And now he has his moment in front of the select committee. But to be quite frank, he's not a man I trust a single word of what he says. Well, the prime minister did for a very long time.

And I'm sure he will be listening in terms of you. You and I have spoken before, especially as your role as chair of the Women and Equality Select Committee, about the idea of this particular administration being a boys club. And just coming back to what you said right at the beginning of our conversation today, around the language that has been used, the military terms that have been used, launching of grenades, he's going to napalm this government, all of that. Do you think anything has changed? Or has it remained a boys club, just albeit with a shifting of a few deck chairs? I think that's a really valid question. I have been concerned from the outset that this government is too heavily dominated by male ministers right at the top, by male special advisers. I think you get a better perspective when you have much more balance and much more diversity.

So I will continue my calls to the prime minister to make sure that he includes more women in his cabinet, to make sure that there are more female advisers. And I think it's great that we are seeing more women appointed at the top of the civil service. That's really encouraging. But we need it across the breadth of both Westminster and Whitehall. So I'm not going to rescind my view that this is a boys club. It clearly still is. There's a long way to go yet. But I think with the departure of Cummings last year, we saw the first glimmer of hope that we could perhaps move away from this really macho, stereotypical language of war the whole time. And just talking in your role as the chair of that committee, the Conservative inquiry into Islamophobia has just been published.

It's also said, of course, because you look across equalities, has said anti-Muslim sentiment remains a problem within the party. Your reaction to that? Well, I really welcome the work that has been done on this. I think it's absolutely crucially important and it's incumbent upon the party to make sure that it stamps out racism and discrimination of whatever type. I think it's really worrying, particularly for Muslim members of the party to read this report. And what we want to see is concrete steps to get rid of those sorts of attitudes. They should have no place in any political party. And if there is anything that I can do to play my part in helping the party get rid of attitudes like that, then I am absolutely ready and willing to help. But the man right at

the top of the party, Boris Johnson, this is often referred to and was referred to in this inquiry, caused outrage when in a column for the Daily Telegraph, he compared Muslim women wearing a burqa to letterboxes and bank robbers. In the inquiry, he said, Mr Johnson said, in journalism, you need to use language freely. But he said they were not words he would use now as prime minister. People say he has stopped short of even just apologising for those terms. Look, I've criticised him in the past for using those terms. They're wholly inappropriate. They should not be used, not in politics and not in journalism. And I think it is absolutely incumbent upon the prime minister, whose tone has changed enormously since he became prime minister,

to make sure that he distances himself from comments that he's made in the past, which are offensive, unnecessary. How about apologise for them? As I was about to say, an absolutely need an apology. So, I mean, in the inquiry about Islamophobia, the prime minister has stopped short of apologising for that. Is that a missed opportunity? I absolutely think it's a missed opportunity. In politics, a sorry is sometimes the hardest word,

but it gives you the opportunity to set the record straight, to apologise for what you've done previously and move on. And I think he needs to do that. You can't keep dragging something out because every time this occurs, it will be used against him and he needs to apologise for it. Well, speaking of conduct and also apology and perhaps taking even further action for being in charge, if you like, of your own actions and facing the consequences. The Conservative MP, Rob Roberts, faces suspension for six weeks over sexual misconduct allegations.

He's harassed two interns, but he won't face a recall. He won't face the electorate over a loophole in the way sanctions are applied. What message do you think that loophole sends to other interns working in Westminster who may have concerns over their boss's behaviour? That loophole needs to be shut. And I'm really quite clear on that and was discussing it with colleagues first thing this morning, is that it is a question that I think if the independent commissioner had a mechanism where they could then afterwards report to the Standards Committee, and I know that Chris Bryant, afterwards report to the Standards Committee. And I know that Chris Bryant, the chair of the Standards Committee, is looking at ways that the loophole can be shut. It should be shut. There must be no place here for sexual harassment and misconduct of that sort.

I'm pleased that the independent commissioner found that action should be taken, must be taken, and it is being taken. But I am, to be quite frank, fed up with the number of young staffers, male and female, who will approach me because I'm chair of the Equalities Committee and tell me of horrendous incidents that have happened here and are still happening. And the reality is, is that we have worked incredibly hard and Andrea Leadsom, when she was leader of the House, put in place the independent grievance procedure. I would argue that that still doesn't go far enough and that we need to make Westminster a workplace fit for the 21st century, where it is abundantly clear, whether it is to staff, to members of Parliament, to House staff, that we will not tolerate

harassment of this sort, whether it's against male staffers, female staffers, whether it's against fellow MPs. Do you think Rob Roberts should be an MP still? I have a really low opinion of any individual who sexually harasses anyone, whether it's their staff or a random stranger. There should be no place for that in politics. And I'm incredibly disappointed that this sort of incident... Do you think he should resign though? Well, I think that's one of the huge challenges we face in this place is that in politics. And I'm incredibly disappointed that this sort of incident... Do you think he should resign, though? Well, I think that's one of the huge challenges we face in this place is that you... Come on, you're not short of opinions. You can't force an MP to resign. There is no mechanism to force somebody to do the right thing.

He said it was completely improper what he did, completely improper, but he won't resign. Do you think he should? Yeah, yeah, I do think he should resign. I think that that's completely unacceptable. You can't have people roaming around the Palace of Westminster where we should uphold the highest possible standards, harassing their staff in this way extensively, horribly. And I think that this breach of trust in the MP staff relationship was completely improper and shouldn't have happened. I apologise at the time and I do so again to the complainant, but also to my colleagues, family and most importantly, my constituents. I will continue to do my utmost to serve my constituency as I have over the past 18 months since my election. And this judgment will not alter my resolve to ensure that the people get the assistance that they need with pressing local issues. That's from Rob Roberts.

A message here from Lee says, the hypocrisy of Caroline notes on Woman's Hour, just bad-mouthing Cummings for being disloyal and claiming now that she thought he should have resigned post the trip to Barnard Castle. Pity she didn't say so at the time. There's some concern there about this, of course, all being from the Conservative side.

Would this spokesperson for the Conservatives been talking about Cummings in these terms before he fell from favour? I seem to remember them all supporting him back in the day. And so what continues in terms of your responses, obviously keep coming in with those sorts of messages, but you have also been getting in touch

about age labels, because I did have a bit of an awakening on Sunday morning. I saw a photo of myself in the Times as the illustration for this new term being used to describe my generation, geriatric millennial. If you are too one of the five million or so people in the UK born between 18 and 85, welcome to the club. The term went viral last week after the American writer Erica Duan used the phrase while arguing that 36 to 41-year-olds

could be the ideal employee due to their experience of knowing life before and after the advent of the internet. I'm going to come to some of your actions in just a moment on this. Just to address though, Patricia says it seems women in their 70 and 80 year old bracket and do not count for women's at a question mark. Patricia, I'm very sorry that you seem to feel that. I don't know why you would feel that, but I would like to clarify that is not the case. Perhaps when I was reading out the list of Gen X or Boomers or Gen Z, maybe I didn't quite say your age range, but you are very much included. And I have to say a lot of the feeling here is you do not wish to be put in any such box and you will not let yourself be put in such boxes. Erica Dwan is on the line, a leadership expert and author of Digital Body Language and

fellow geriatric millennial and senior feature writer at The Telegraph. Rosa Silverman joins us too. Rosa, I'll come to you in just a moment. But Erica, good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Why did you go for this term? What were you trying to achieve by explaining it to people? And perhaps I'll let you go a bit further with the explanation. Geriatric millennials are a unique micro generation born in the early 1980s. This is a micro generation that remembers landlines and dial up connections, but is also quite savvy at Clubhouse and Twitter. Now, I just published a new book, Digital Body Language. And in my research, the differences in micro generations were impossible to ignore. There is a unique quality of geriatric millennials. They straddle digital natives,

those that don't know a world without technology, but they also straddle digital adapters who feel like immigrants to the world of remote work. And this cohort can be the bridge builders as we think about hybrid work here to stay. And so that's a very important part of what you're trying to do with this, because I did say, for instance, Gail's got in touch to say the world seems obsessed about the difference and putting people into different groups, making them or other to our own. Although I could easily be classed as disabled and a boomer, I think that people have far more in common, which then makes us different. The world would be a much better place if we focused on humanity rather than difference. And another one here, I have no truck with ridiculously recently minted marketing

categories which refer to ages or tribes and the absence of punctuation. Slightly separate point here. Any form of written communication is both rude and lazy. Proper punctuation is not communication. Excuse me, proper punctuation is not only courteous but also effective communication. Doing better to communicate myself here. But isn't that the point? Are you not trying to have a marketing term here? You're trying to help explain the differences. I think these comments hit at the heart of my argument, that it is wrong to see an entire generation that spans 20 years as being the same. We do have differences. And it's important to talk about those differences as well as the commonalities. I, for one, grew up as an Indian immigrant in the United States, and I never

resonated with the millennial label. I wasn't an entitled kid. I remember if I got a B on a science test, I wouldn't be able to go on sleepovers for a year. And so this is an opportunity to actually shut off these labels and think differently, that we all have something to bring to the table. And do you think by people like myself now knowing this, we can use this in some way that you can think about those who are perhaps allegedly in the same generation, but feeling differently or behaving differently at work or when socializing? Absolutely. I think that what is unique is that the speed of technology adoption really shifts our interactions and how we like to work. And the most important indicator is how many years digital communication has been your primary means of communication. And if we can look at some of those differences, we can understand deeper nuances and individual working styles. Or not using punctuation or picking up the landline or a phone call. Rosa, these are

generalisations, but you are a fellow geriatric millennial. I'll just add that word quickly. And very proud to be so, I believe. Yeah, I think it's nice. I know that people object to having labels put on them and rightly so a lot of the time. But there's been something unifying about this one as well, because I think, as Erica touched on, a lot of people in our age bracket don't feel that that millennial label really applies to them. You know, for a long time, we've been sort of wondering where we fit in when we hear these labels like Gen X, millennial, Zuma, there was this term exennial, which was supposed to describe those born between the late 70s and the early 80s. But I think this geriatric millennial term, whatever you think of, you know, the inclusion of the word geriatric, it does encapsulate a unique experience that our micro generation had, which was, as Erica says, being on the cusp of that transition between the

analog and the digital age. And that's something very unique that our generation experienced just as we were coming of age, which I think has had quite a formative experience for us. It's been a formative experience. Obviously, it doesn't fully shape our identity but it does feed into who we are how do you i was gonna say how do you think it's made you perhaps different then to those just just below you well we remember a time when we didn't operate online we remember growing up without social media but then very quickly adapting to it as soon as it came in so i think i got on facebook when I was 22 and there weren't many people on it but it was very exciting and we felt like wow this is the

beginning of something new and lots of people who you know our generation we started off finding partners in real life how old-fashioned and then once people got into their 20s and online dating came in, there was an immediate ability to just quickly switch and go, OK, yeah, Internet's here. We were young enough to very quickly adapt. But it's nice to have those cultural memories of a time before, because I think only by having those memories do you fully understand what has changed. And it has been a profound change. It has indeed. And not quite feeling like you fit into that category. It's an interesting feeling that I'm seeing across how other people feel in different age groups. And I think geriatric

is actually a real flashpoint here, Erica, for people if they've been called it in other circumstances as well. Is that what you've been finding? Because you had a huge response to this when you've written about it and posted about it on social media. Yes, the phrase geriatric millennial did elicit a large response. And there were individuals that felt offended by the term. And one of the things that I'm reflecting on, given that response is, what's wrong with being old? You know, even just thinking about the way there were reactions to that term allows us to reflect on how we view elder members of our society. I think for the last 20 years, we've been told we are kids, you know, that we are trophy generations or entitled. But this is an opportunity to remember our wisdom, our experiences in this unique reset of a moment where analog reading eye contact and lean ins and furrowed brows just as

much as communicating on Twitter is important. Although I have a message here saying how much somebody loathes being called a pensioner, anything to do with that. And this message says, it's from Christine, who says, I'm 70. I regularly play tennis, cycle 20 miles. I can still stride around the coastal path for several hours at a time. I'm fitter now than when i was in my 20s when i sat at a desk five days a week please stop these generalizations erica this is an opportunity to to talk about these generalizations and and look at what's different and what's similar i i'm a believer that these themes are ways to unite us, to understand our commonalities, but also to acknowledge that we are all not the same. And while generations can really help us think about the way that the world is changing, each individual has their own unique attributes. And Rosa, now that you've got your label, I mean, we've both been labeled with it uh and if you're going to do anything differently do you feel do you feel

you're going to swagger around with more confidence with some of your behavioral uh tactics of the way that you are oh yeah definitely it's just nice to um it's nice to feel seen that's what that's what people were saying online there was a lot of positive um response to this that a lot of people were saying oh my god yes this is me I feel seen because like I say we languished in this kind of hinterland without a proper um demographic identity before and and now I feel like we don't need to apologize for who we are my younger colleagues like to laugh at me because I'm not I don't know how to do TikTok and these kind of things but I also do like to go well I remember a time before and And I like that. I want to own that.

Well, yeah, I think the other thing just to say, though, around the positive side of this, which, Erica, you really brought out, is that actually this particular age group can also think about how lucky it has been in reference to slightly younger, though, with the timing of the economic crash, also with what's happened with the pandemic, where you were up to with your life. And how important do you think it is, Erica, to take stock of the luck of your generation at times? I think that we are an extremely lucky generation.

We were young enough to use these digital tools in their primitive stage and value the uniqueness of them. But we were also old enough that maybe we weren't in college, especially during this pandemic, we had spent at least 10 years in the workforce. And so timing is a unique opportunity here. It's also a bit similar to the fact that CEOs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are within a few years apart of each other as well. And I think that this is a moment where Geoactive Millennials can lead the way and help others bridge these differences.

Rose, I'll just give to you, Jill, who's written in to say, I'm annoyed, just she's written in, I'm an annoyed Jill here. Why do we need labels? Who labels us? What right have they to do so? I can't tell you the sort of anger and fury on the other side of this, Rose, that it's not feeling as sanguine as you. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be a negative thing. I do understand that rejection of labels, but you can't deny the year you were born in and you can't deny that the year you were born also does shape who you are. I think there's a Napoleon

quote that to understand the man, you have to know what was happening in the world when he was 20, or we could add to the woman as well. It does influence us, it does shape who we are, including our cultural attitudes, you know, we didn't grow up being conversant in mental health, being able to speak about that openly, but we are actually really good at that now because we were again sort of young when that came in, that ability to speak more frankly about that, about gender, about sexuality, all those cultural norms around us as we grow up do shape who we are, even if they're not the full picture. Well, I'll bid both of you farewell in your geriatric millennial state that you both seem

happy to at least own or talk about, whilst channelling some of the anger that seems to be here coming through on the messages from our listeners about such boxes. Erica Dewan, the book's called Digital Body Language, and Rosa Silverman, the journalist at The Telegraph. Thank you for your time. Messages also still coming in, and I'm aware that as we're talking, Dominic Cummings, the former most senior adviser to the Prime Minister, is still giving evidence about what happened at the beginning of the pandemic

and how the government handled or didn't handle it from his perspective. More messages coming in saying, would this spokesperson from the Conservatives have called him out at the time to resign? And we should say that actually Caroline Noakes did do that alongside around 40 other MPs at that time. So just to make that clear, but those messages still coming in and welcome to hear and also about the gendered language used with regards to these advisers.

And another one here from Lynn, just about this discussion. I'm 69 and I'm finding this debate such an absolute pain. We used to just grow up and smile at different ages as we grew through them. And I have to say, I also seek out women and men of different ages to be friends of because of that different experience. So lots of those messages still welcome, still coming in on 84844. But a former senior army officer is calling for the military to have a Me Too moment and is claiming that hundreds of female troops have been sexually abused, harassed and raped by colleagues.

Lieutenant Colonel Diane Allen, who served in the army for 37 years, says the armed forces are being run by a toxic group of privately educated white senior officers who are in denial about the extent of the problems she has been hearing about. Diane resigned from the military last February, citing its failure to tackle sexual assault, harassment and everyday sexism, and joins us now, as does the Defence Minister, Baroness Goldie, who I'll come to in just a moment. Diane, you have your own website, Forewarned, calling for testimony. People have been getting in touch with you from serving and former service personnel.

You resigned last year, as I mentioned, because you were unhappy with the situation you were in and you were the first person to give evidence to, we've been talking about this this morning, the current Parliamentary Committee on this issue. I just wondered if we could start with perhaps an experience from your own time in the military that could perhaps

illustrate this for our listeners? Yeah, good morning, Emma. Thanks very much. My own stories, as I said, were perhaps in the 80s and 90s of sort of sexual issues and so on. But I described when I called for the military Me Too last year, stories of how effectively you would find men in your rooms, on barracks, and also how if you left the bar and wouldn't engage with the men they would follow you back to your rooms so one story I gave was how I'd gone to a room and realized I felt threatened and had to go to another room and

I watched from that room in sort of at midnight as three men tried to kick down a door and find me but of course I wasn't in that room I'd moved to manage my own safety so that was my own personal stories of an incident but there were a few others. Yes well there was one that also caught my eye when you were serving in Northern Ireland and you've been invited to a secure military base with around a dozen other young service women and what happened there? There was a I believe something happened on stage a man ran on naked yes now again this is some time ago i was back in my 20s and if you guys are geriatric i'm a little bit concerned but yes we're all we're all in different boxes and labels with this so yeah i

was back in my 20s um the problem was that at that time in northern ireland if you went somewhere you were you were you were constrained so we couldn't leave the barracks. And I found myself as a young officer with a group of women who I was in charge of, but I was stuck inside this area. And we'd been invited to go to a function with all men, can't name the unit. But the function ended up being effectively a review. And the first act was a naked man came on stage and bit the head off a chicken and it didn't get any better effectively that just became the threat level just got increased so all the women were very nervous and eventually towards the end we could just feel the tension rising we actually felt the surge forward of the men to grab us and all of us collectively just struck out

and ran and found a room where we could lock the door and actually keep ourselves safe. It would be tempting. It would be hopeful to confine that sort of horror story to the history books. But you have been collating testimony. And if I was just to read a couple of of the examples here, all anonymised, of course, that you have received on your website. I only served four years, humiliated sexually, photo shared, very sexist. I wouldn't have joined the forces if I'd known how bad it was. I left in 2019, reads another, due to sexism. I remain repulsed by the cowardice of senior officers

who wouldn't deal with it. Another one, I'm still serving. I experienced recent sexism on tour. It has changed my desire to serve. It needs to change. And another one here saying, it's not just about serving. The veterans charities are run by the same retired sexist senior officers.

They just bring the same attitudes across. Since giving evidence, has anything changed? Not to my knowledge or not anything significant. I think there's been some twiddling at the edges, but my experience is it hasn't. What has changed which I'm delighted about is the current Women in Defence inquiry. We are effectively having a military me too moment which was triggered by my actions but also by some of the charities who've also called for this. So there's a Women in Defence inquiry being led by Sarah Atherton MP at the moment which has done some excellent evidence gathering. Over 4,000 women spoke up when the agging order was lifted by the MOD to allow them to speak up publicly.

We'll come to what else could be done in a moment with Baroness Goldie, but I suppose what I also wanted to understand with these horrific accounts and horrific stories is if it's about having the systems in place to report it, which will then make things change, or if it's about having the systems in place to report it, which will then make things change, or if it's actually about the culture, if it's about something outside of that, and how do you think you can change that?

Because, of course, the very dispiriting thing in there is people presently serving, the attitudes they're experiencing by some, not all, which we must say, are pushing them off. Yes. So I agree completely. It is the classic of the behaviour you walk past is the behaviour that you accept. And too many, even the good people in the military, are feeling coerced not to speak up when they see poor behaviour.

And that's the bit that concerns me. There was a big report in 2019 led by now the head of the Air Force, Mike Wigston, called the Wigston Review, which also described this toxic behaviour. And it very much recommended that we needed to make some significant changes. And there was a very poor leadership. Senior leadership was, if not the cause of the problem, it was the driver that wasn't allowing the change to happen. Let's bring in Baroness Goldie at this point, the Defence Minister.

Good morning. Good morning. We've heard now there's a review coming out shortly in July. There was the Wigston review two years ago. It's not changing, is it? Well, yes, it is changing, Emma, although I don't for one moment diminish the horror of what Diane was describing. And it is sad to say that in the past there has been an appalling culture. And Dan and her colleagues experienced that. And I can only apologise for that. I think it was a dreadful personal encounter for Dan and her fellow soldiers.

But change is happening, Emma, and I want to be very clear about that. And I also want to make reference to the House of Commons Select Committee inquiry under Sarah Atherton. The Secretary of State took the brave, but in my opinion, absolutely correct decision to say to female serving officers, yes, you can appear before the committee. And that's because we were very clear that we needed to know what was happening. We needed people to feel they could speak frankly. And we felt that that would add an important dimension to improving our understanding. But just to reassure you that I'm not trying to give you a cosmetic gloss over improvements, Diane referred to the Wigston

report. I would say the Wigston report was a pivotal change of direction for defence because it was a very forensic report. It didn't pull its punches. And it was a very forensic report. It didn't pull its punches. And it was a wake up call. And MOD said, right, well, we've got to we've got to address this. And all Wigston's recommendations were accepted. Now, the important thing then to ask Emma is, yes, but what happened? Did it lie on a shelf? The answer is, I'm glad to say, absolutely not, because we had a review of Wigston again. The Secretary of State asked Danuta Gray. Now, Danuta is not an MOD

employee. She's a powerhouse from the city, and she sits on our defence board. But she carried out this review. She was very positive. Very good progress was being made. And I think what has happened, I have seen since I became a minister in July of 2019, an absolute, tangible, visible change of pace. Now, that's nothing to do with me, because what we've got is a team effort. But Diane's absolutely correct. You don't change without leadership. And I'm pleased to say that I was able to engage with the Chief of Defence Staff, Nick Carter, with the former Permanent Secretary, Stephen Lovegrove, have an amazing conversation with them that we had to stand shoulder to shoulder driving this forward. And I'm delighted to say that Stephen Lovegrove's successor, David Williams, who we've already met, is absolutely 100% behind this. But they are going to say that, aren't they? I mean, I'm sorry to say this. Let's bring Diane back in. Was it a pivotal moment? Has all of this been implemented?

No, I think there were 37 recommendations. And Sarah Aston asked this question to the head of defence people at the recent evidence. And I think he admitted that only one of 37 recommendations had actually been carried out. And I think my other point would be that if this were an issue of the past, I wouldn't have resigned. Over 163 women came to me, and over a third of those are currently serving,

and the stories remain the same. Baroness Gordon? I would just like to update the position. Much of Wigston has been implemented, not least. We've got now a stand up directorate within MOD for diversity and inclusion, led by a very talented woman, harassment and discrimination helpline with trained advisors to support personnel. We've seen the production of a sexual harassment booklet for both civilian and military personnel. And we've also... Has anyone read it? I'm pretty sure they have. And I'll come to an interesting anecdotal piece of evidence I received yesterday.

We've also got mandatory online course on inappropriate behaviours and that's called active bystander training. So we've got we've got a lot of those mandatory training sessions here at the BBC. You have them everywhere. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's actually any cultural change. For instance, if you read a newspaper article about the Atherton Review, just go and look at the comment sections. I'll read you a couple, Baroness Goldie. Sad situation, but rather inevitable when you convert an armed forces from an entity to defend and win wars

to a social service employment opportunity. Another one, yes, stamp out the laddish culture all ranks within the military should be sensitive little shrinking violets. The army could perhaps invite the Taliban into a discussion within a safe space. You've got to get people to take this seriously. And if you've got a culture like that, from which our army is drawn, you know, a booklet and a training course and a helpline,

how's that going to sort it? Well, I would agree with your analysis, if it were accurate, Emma, but it's not with all respect, because I can only go on the evidence we've got. And I can tell you that on our survey since 2018, incidents of people who've experienced discrimination at work has reduced from 50 percent to 11 percent. In 2020, the incidence of bullying and harassment reduced from 40 percent to 10 percent. But that's self-selecting. The point is, we've got Diane with us here on Women's Hour, who's saying something completely different to you. And I'm trying to bring you together. It's not self-selecting, Emma. These are people within the armed forces who asked for their opinions and nobody tells them what to say. No, no, no. I'm not saying that. Let me clarify. For instance, Diane, I will bring you back in.

Thank you. Diane, I will bring you back in. But for instance, I know that you've made this point, Diane, that people have alleged that they're encouraged not to put sexual discrimination and harassment down as a reason when they leave the military, because that would require a lengthy investigation, which could delay their departure date. Diane, I'm sure you've got other examples of where if you're asked to fill in a survey, what will your response be? Yes, exactly. And the other one is that when an incident does occur, what is coming up as an incredibly common theme, both for Athens 4000 who came forward, but also the 160 that I read personally, is that effectively they're being coerced not to report it. So that if somebody has a sexual incident on camp, on a base, on a barracks, they're too often finding the chain of command is coercing them not to become a statistic, being asked not to report it and to effectively go back in their box.

And that's very complicated. And Diane's saying it's common, having just left the forces or relatively recently. Baroness Goldie, what do you say to that? I'm not saying you need to have the silver bullet here, but it's not as simple as you're making it seem, perhaps. I don't wish to make it seem simple, Emma. I'm merely pointing out that there's been a pace in the progress within the last 18 months, which I find everyone within defence has recognised.

And I received yesterday, I remember, referred to anecdotal evidence. I was addressing a conference, nothing to do with defence. But the man chairing the conference turned out to be a reservist, had been a reservist for 30 years. And part of my remarks to this conference concerned diversity and inclusion. And he said, I have to tell you, he said, I have seen a very sharp change in attitude and in environment. And he said, I'm aware of the mandatory training. I'm aware how this is at the forefront of what we have to do. What I would say, Emma, is that Diana's absolutely correct. The cultures which existed, and they were not just negative, repugnant, they were corrosive. And that has had to be turned around. But I'm absolutely satisfied from the conversations that

I'm having, both at the top of the organisation and with the others who actually work within the armed forces, that very tangible and welcome progress is being made. And that is actually being understood. And I'm pleased to say it's been reflected in recruitment. We're seeing the proportions of women joining the armed forces go in the right direction. That's systemically increasing each year. There's a whole other conversation to be had, which we don't have time for now, about retention of those women

and how they feel about it when they leave. And if we do even get the real reason sometimes why they do leave, not least not just to do with this, but also how it is to manage families while within the forces. Diane, final word to you. Do you share that enthusiasm?

I'm very aware I'm talking to you on the day it's front page news that the Royal Navy has appointed its first female adm Admiral, Commodore Judge Terry. Yes, great news. No, I think the Diversity and Inclusion Directorate is effectively still marking its own homework. So unless we get what Wigston recommended, which is a defence authority that is truly independent of the chain of command, I can't see there's going to be any change. That would be my big point. Well, I would say we will, and I should say we will, follow this up with Sarah Atherton, we hope, when she reports.

Perhaps we'll have you back on, Diane, and you, Baroness Goldie. We're very keen to understand how progress can or could be being made or already is. Thank you to both of you for coming on today. Thank you, Emma. Thank you. And many messages also still coming in, I should say, about the ages we are at and how we define ourselves. I just wanted to read a couple more of those before our next discussion.

One here saying on email, I'm 22. It's not helpful to say that geriatric millennials might make the best workers. My housemate's 30 and remembers dial up Internet. My 90 year old Argentine grandmother watches Netflix on her tablet. There are more overlaps between generations than these labels make us think. And one here from Pearl. Good morning to you. I'm 74. I'm going to a punk gig in Hackney for the first time since February 2020. And I cannot wait.

Geriatric punk and owning being an old lady. Long live or love live music and long live it. Pearl, thank you so much for that message. Well, talking of the arts, talking of culture, we are trying to get back to it. In fact, I was at the theatre last night trying to see something at Walden, Gemma Arterton's new play,

trying to see it for interviewing her for this programme. And in fact, four minutes before the play was about to begin, sadly, it was called off because of a concern around COVID. That's all in the news today.

So I didn't get to watch a bit of theatre, but I did at the weekend get to go, as some of you may have done, to an art gallery. And when you wander around them, do you ever notice how many women in the pictures are naked or partially clothed? Do you ever take the time to think why? Do you ever think about the gays who

painted the picture? Perhaps the panels that explain the pictures next to them don't do a good enough job in making you think of that. Well, the art historian Catherine McCormack has just published an impassioned book, Women in the Picture, Women Art and the Power of Looking. And she makes some arguments around women's bodies, sexuality and identity that have long been stifled, she says, by dodgy narratives and a limited set of archetypes. Well, Catherine, let's take this to a wandering that you did around the National Gallery in London. And you start by describing a trip, talking after they'd rehung their Renaissance collection, and you're in front of the story of Griselda. Could you describe what you saw and why we need to think about it? Yes. And just to mention, to keep with the theme, that I'm also joining as a geriatric millennial, just for the record. So thinking about this visit to the

National Gallery, as you said, when they just rehung their collection and I dutifully went along with my second child in tow, bouncing on my hip. And I was confronted by three panels I hadn't seen before. And they were about the story of Griselda. Now, the story of Griselda is a from medieval literature. It's sometimes known as something called the wife testing plot. And across these panels, a woman, a peasant woman, was chosen to be the wife of an Italian nobleman. And the first test that she had to go through was to be stripped naked in public.

So this was depicted on the panel. Then she becomes married. That goes ahead. And they have two children and her husband says well your children have to be taken away and killed I'm afraid but you can't ask any questions and if you do you will fail the test the wife testing the wife test and subsequently later on after she's been sent away again and stripped naked once more and sent off to be a peasant again. He invites her back and says, actually, I'm getting married again.

And I'd like you to be a servant and prepare a banquet for me, for my new wife. And then as if it's some horrific joke, the new bride is revealed to have been the long lost daughter. And Griselda is finally then allowed to be a mother and a wife. And that is her ultimate prize and all is revealed and it's sort of a happy ending. So that was one of the main inspirations for starting to really get to grips with how 50 years of feminist art history hasn't really penetrated in my mind enough down into the way collections do present these narratives about gender and as you say these dodgy archetypes these ways of depicting women that we find in pictures that don't just stay within galleries

but do actually bleed into contemporary visual culture as well. But are you are you saying we shouldn't have these paintings up or that the panels next to them contextualise them better? Because I'm just thinking back to, you know, what happened at the Manchester Art Gallery, a gallery I fondly remember going around most weekends in my youth, you know, to look at the world around me, try and understand it. And they got into, remind us what happened, they got into a spot of hot water about taking something down. Are you saying we should be doing that? No. So just to say what happened in the Manchester Art Gallery a couple of years ago is that a decision was made

between an artist, Sonia Boyce, who is a British artist who will be representing Britain next year at the Venice Biennale as the first woman of colour to do so. And that is actually, I think, a significant point to mention at the outset. So she, in collaboration with Claire Ganaway, who was curator at the time, possibly still is, decided after consultations with people who worked in the gallery space, now that was across the board, decided that they wanted to open a conversation within a certain gallery that was devoted to beauty, so a gallery of

Victorian paintings called In Pursuit of Beauty, that there was a painting by John William Waterhouse called Hylas and the Nymphs, which is a visualisation of a moment of classical mythology where Hylas, who's the lover of Heracles, is lured to his death by this bevy of water nymphs. And in the image, they're pictured sort of naked, but it's adolescent girls, topless, basically pulling a man into the stream. And after these consultations that, as I said, were a kind of non-hierarchical decision that was trying to shift the decisions of who gets to see what's on the walls and determine the conversations was actually taken away from the more elite maybe curators and directors of the museums to the people who actually occupy the museums and lived in the spaces and worked in the spaces employees so this was taken away and the space was left for yellow sticky notes to go on the wall and members of the public were allowed to make comments or were encouraged to make comments I

should say in order to open up this debate of what happens when we take something away who gets to decide what goes on the walls and you know how can we talk about this in more interesting ways and I think what you're referring to is there is an absolute for raw I mean we're talking about the criticism on websites thinking about in response to the army making institutional change um there was an absolute avalanche of criticism suggesting this was feminism gone mad comparing um feminism to isis and a whole debate about strange when in fact this was not about taking images away and i personally and what I advocate for in the book that I've written is that we shouldn't eradicate history or take away images that we might find

problematic to our current sensibilities that in this moment but that we should use them as starting points to have wider conversations and make art history and images work for us and I actually do think listening having had the privilege of listening to the conversations this morning on Women's Hour I really do think that whether we're thinking about this issue of putting people in boxes or institutionalized violence and sexism in its various manifestations whether it's in public office or whether it's in the army, I think if we want to look for the roots of these, we could be doing ourselves a great service by going back

to our shared visual cultural language that has on many occasions, numerous occasions, aestheticised and normalised violence against women and misogyny and sexism. And I'm actually working on a couple of projects that are coming out of this book that are using the history of our images that might do that in ways to start meaningful conversations for things that are troubling us at this time. For example, the avalanche of testimonials unleashed by the Everybody's Invited project. I'm working on a workshop that can be brought into schools so we can think about what does the history of nude images if we want to take that example what does that mean? Well I was just going to say though what do you make of the idea of women today now being able

to own their own image and control their narratives through you know selfies you know should Kim Kardashian's selfies especially if they're partially clothed you know should that be considered she has reclaimed. Should it be considered art? Oh, it's a very interesting question and it's one that is hugely thorny. And it's precisely the reason why I wanted to write this book to open up this debate because it is hugely nuanced. First of all, the idea of women having agency over the construction of their own image is something which is relatively new. You know, women were held back from making images full stop up until well into the 20th century. There was many women who did slip through the nets

of institutional discrimination that stopped women from training to be professional artists. I'm thinking about an era before we could create digital images. And so just that in itself, women being able to craft their own image and have authorship of that is something that we should think about. However, I think that the history of images that inform the way that women might want to choose to project themselves is quite limited because we're drawing on a reservoir of images of female sexuality if we're thinking about it in those terms with or of celebrity if we're thinking about kim kardashian

we're drawing on a reservoir of archetypes that have been created um for by men and largely for male pleasure whereas the fact that i don't think we've got enough of a language yet that is adequate for exploring women's own identity that takes us beyond that. I suppose going back to what we've been talking about, we're developing it as we go a little bit in this, especially digital era where the image seems to be endless or what we can produce. Catherine McCormack, I've got to leave it there. Thank you for talking to us. It's called Women in the Picture, Women, Art and the Power of Looking. Thank you to you for all of your messages today. So many impassioned ones. We seem to have made many of you incredibly angry, but it's a good response nonetheless. Speak to you 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. Charlie, I have been so excited to speak to you. Hello, Myrna.

Hello, how are you, Joe? I'm Joe Wicks, and I'm back for the second series of my podcast that's all about sharing ways to help you live a happier and healthier life. Doing a bit of research, and apparently you're into something called inversion therapy,

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life will get in the way. Subscribe now on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. And you can also check out every single episode in video format on BBC iPlayer. The Joe Wicks podcast for BBC Radio 4. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

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