Woman's Hour - Misogyny online, The week’s news, Talking about turn-ons

Episode Date: June 14, 2019

As new data shows just how many women are silenced by the threat of abuse online, we ask what is being done to make women feel safer on social media. And who is responsible for monitoring abusive content? Jane talks to Hannah Bardell MP, Leigh Hopwood, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and to Isobel Asher Hamilton, Tech reporter at Business Insider.We discuss the news stories of the week - the elimination of the only two women in the Conservative leadership content, Esther v Lorraine and why the media loves to pit women against one another, the next John Lewis boss, and new Nike mannequins.Ell Potter and Mary Higgins’ sell-out show Hotter talks about what gets you hot. Creators and ex-girlfriends Ell and Mary talk about discussing the ins and outs of their relationship with a room full of people, and bringing up masturbation with a 97 year old.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Helen Fitzhenry

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey. This is the Woman's Hour podcast, Friday the 14th of June 2019. Do you feel safe expressing a point of view online if you've ever had abuse or if you just feel uncomfortable expressing an opinion because you feel you might be got at? Make sure you're listening to us this morning because we're discussing this very important topic

at BBC Women's Hour if you want to contribute on social media on that one. We'll talk too about the events of the week. This week in the company of the plus-size style blogger and writer Stephanie Yeboah and the political journalist Jane Merrick and the retail analyst Catherine Shuttleworth will join us as well this morning

to chew over the events of this last week, eventful as ever of course. First of all then to the idea of expressing a view online and whether or not you feel safe doing exactly that. You could be forgiven for actually not having this at the very forefront of your mind but the government is working on what it hopes will be a world-leading package of measures to keep people safe online. In the future, in the UK, companies will be responsible for tackling abuses and behaviour that is harmful, but not necessarily illegal. Research out today, though, from the Chartered Institute of Marketing says that abusive content on social media has put off over 80% of women from taking part in online discussions

and 58% of the women they questioned would apparently consider deleting their accounts because of it. So we'll talk to the chair of the institute, Lee Hopwood, and to Hannah Bardell, who's an MP, NSNP MP. She's in our studio in Edinburgh. And Isabel Asher-Hamilton is here, a tech reporter at the website Business Insider. First of all, Lee, the Institute of Marketing,

what is it and what business is all this of yours, quite frankly? Well, the Charleston Institute of Marketing is a professional body representing marketers in the UK and globally. What does that mean? We're the people that really care about the brand. We care about customer engagement, customer experience, and we care about business growth. So for us, it's our responsibility to engage in this debate. And the people who flog their stuff to us don't want to have their products tarnished by association do they? No absolutely it's the evidence that we've found is that where organisations are posting adverts next to harmful

content that have been paid for what we're finding is that that's putting people off and if that puts people off then the users aren't there the advertisers won't be there and as a result the revenues of these social media companies will obviously decline okay can you give me an example of an incident in which exactly that has happened um there if you look at the likes of um if you look at sponsors uh if you've got a scenario where you have someone that has aligned themselves to a, they may well be selling fluffy pillows. Let's say they are, yeah. And if they're next to an advert or a piece of content that is, quite frankly, nothing to do with fluffy pillows,

then the targeting is wrong. And the marketers are obviously looking at trying to target their adverts and their content at a specific audience. And if the social media companies are not getting that targeting correct, then that's where there is the mismatch. I know your research has looked both at young people and women. That headline that 83% of women have been put off engaging in discussions online, it doesn't mean that they've stopped doing it altogether, but it's an indication that a lot of women are being made to feel really wary, and that's concerning.

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, three in four are put off engaging. And it's really not surprising. And it's when you see the kind of interactions that are going on. So when you look at harmful content, on one side you're looking at adverts and you might be looking at photographs and video content. That's one side of the argument, if you like. But then there's the interactions, and the interactions not between a company and their customers, but the interactions between people.

And they're the really difficult things to catch out. And they're the ones that if you're in a discussion group, for example, on something like Facebook and an opinion is put forward and everybody attacks that opinion. And it's those kind of things that are really putting people off from engaging and not putting their opinions forward. And they might be really good positive opinions. Hannah Bardell, what would it take actually, you're an MP, you represent the SNP, what would it take to actually force you off social media? I mean, I certainly have had moments when I've contemplated deleting my account or certainly have taken a break when I've been on holiday, which I would recommend everybody does. I had gone away over the Easter break for a few days and deleted both Twitter and Facebook off my phone and put WhatsApp to the opposite end of it so I didn't get any notifications.

I think, I mean, I know a lot of people, you know, friends, not people who are in public life, but who have deleted it for their mental health. It would probably take some very serious abuse. But on the other hand, this study is shocking. 83% of women considering not engaging. That doesn't mean they're going to delete their account. But unfortunately, the opportunity we had with the digital sphere and social media it seems to be an opportunity missed that the old prejudices and bullying and

sexism and misogyny is being replicated in many corners okay online i'm going to ask when was there a golden age of opportunity for women to feel entirely free and safe to express opinions has there ever been one oh no no, I don't think so. And I think that my point is this could have been an opportunity and there still is an opportunity. If we can get this right, the online harms white paper that the UK government has produced is a start. And studies like this are really, really important

because at the end of the day, women should not feel that they can't engage because they might be abused. And there are times when I think about tweeting something or I think I want to express my opinion and I have to think twice because I've been in that position where I've had, frankly, dog's abuse just for expressing a view. Can you give us an example? I mean, I don't want to make you relive something that was unpleasant,

but just to give, because not all of our audience, frankly, will be entirely aware of what people like you are supposed to put up with Hannah yeah and I'm not trying to make myself a martyr it's more saying look I get this and I don't want other women to get it whether they're in public life or they're a teenager you know having their first experience online um I tweeted the other day about the women's football team, so the Scottish team. So obviously I was in Nice at the weekend watching the football and supporting Scotland and I had tweeted about the women's football team and about a colleague of mine who'd actually got

some abuse from somebody and I called it out. So I had called out a tweet that said, is it wrong that I'm watching women's football for a possibility of tits and fanny? And so I was like, how does this still exist and then got a ream of abuse from somebody who was basically calling women's football dog shite and making homophobic comments so you know that's the kind of thing that doesn't happen to me often I have to say but it does happen enough that it makes me sometimes take a step back and think, actually, do I want to engage?

And if people like me who are in public life are doing that, you know, and we are relatively protected to some extent. Yes, we're exposed, but I am afforded a huge amount of privilege. I can go to somebody like Twitter and Facebook and make a public complaint or raise it on the floor of the house. You know, other folk who are just existing in the public sphere, in the digital sphere, sorry, and expressing their views don't have that protection that I have. So that is absolutely at the heart of this issue. We need to be using our voices to protect women online and make sure that everybody is safe to express their views and have a decent

dialogue. Isabel, I'm conscious that there are two separate issues here, really. There's the one that we started off with in the company of Lee, the idea that actually manufacturers, people who want to get their products out there, are worried about profit suffering as a result of association with stuff they don't want anything to do with. And then there's the idea that people like Hannah, elected representatives, have to live through streams of abuse coming at them. What, if anything, can the companies responsible for this do at the moment? Or what should they be doing, which they're not? Well, the processes they've got at the moment is that, well, with something like the abuse that Hannah will get, that can be reported.

And then someone on the moderation teams at Facebook or Twitter will have a look at it, decide whether or not it violates their terms of service and then punish or not punish according to whether they decide. In terms of placement of ads next to harmful content. And I think something that needs to be mentioned is harmful content is such a massive umbrella term ranging from unpleasant, bigoted views being espoused. To illegal. To fully illegal, to the sort of, you know, pornographic, pedophil being espoused. Too illegal. Fully illegal to the sort of, you know, pornographic, pedophilic videos that end up circulating on things like YouTube.

And in those cases, I believe, like the social media companies, well, it's a little bit hard to know exactly what they're doing, but they talk about using AI a lot to try and proactively sort of winkle out where this harmful content, for lack of a more specific word, is cropping up. But as we can see from the wealth of news stories that breaks, it's just it's not really cutting it. The problem is, Hannah, I think you've got an example of when they want to do something, they will.

But there are other examples when apparently they are powerless to act. What happened when you put something about... Didn't you put a clip of the football match online? Yeah, so ironically, when I was in France, I had been watching some of the other matches at the same time and I had been watching one on my iPad and I had clipped on my phone just the celebration of a Spanish player celebrating her goal, so not the actual goal

and within 10 hours less than that possibly, it had been complained about by FIFA and removed by Twitter. Now I understand that they felt that was a breach of copyright and I accept that but the speed at which it happened versus, you know, I know lots of people who report abuse

I mean Caroline Criado Perez is a really good example she got reams of abuse at one point when she was campaigning and the police didn't take it seriously until somebody sent her a letter with cut out letters from the newspaper, old style threats. And, you know, I understand that, you know, social media has exploded and moved very, very quickly and the police and the legislature are frankly nowhere to be seen in terms of acting properly. But there is the commercial issue.

There's also the harm issue. I mean, one in 25 primary children have been sent a naked image by an adult, one in 20 secondary children, according to the NSPCC. There's a huge issue on both sides. And the social media companies are at a very real risk of damaging themselves. They're already doing that. Their reputation, you know, the Christchurch incident, being streamed on terrorist attack, being streamed online was horrendous.

And I think a watershed, but not enough seems to be happening quickly enough. And I think we all have a duty to to try and change that well is it not impossible Isabel for more moderated platforms to be developed why hasn't somebody taken that idea and run with it because presumably there'll be a stack of money to be made there as well um I think I think people have taken that idea and run with it we've got a bit of an indie web developing at the moment. But the reason that they're not taking off in the same way is I think structurally in order to make really safe platforms, you have to leave profits by the wayside for a moment. And meanwhile, Facebook... So you can't make short term profits, you mean? I don't think so.

So for example, there's an alternative to Twitter called Mastodon, which is this very decentralized, much, you know, meant to be much safer, much more friendly space, with lots of different people running lots of different servers, which can all interact, but it's it's describes itself as a little federation. And that's got, you know, a pretty healthy little crop of enthusiasts. But I think it's got like, I think it says it's got about 2 million users. And that's in contrast to the couple of billion that are on Facebook. So at this point, there's kind of a critical mass that's in contrast to the couple of billion that are on Facebook so at this point there's kind of a critical mass that's been reached. Let me just give you some statements here's one from Twitter. Twitter's singular focus is to improve the health of the public conversation

well what do you say about that Hannah? I mean I should say I'm on Twitter and I love it but go on. Yeah and so am I and very often it can be a really positive place I mean when I came out in 2015 as gay and took part in a photo I put it on Twitter and it was a really really positive experience for me but that was my own individual experience and so often Twitter can be such a toxic environment you get pylons you get we often unfortunately the sort of darker corners of football fandom and football casuals can be behind a lot of this kind of stuff. And it can be such a toxic place. But it's an important place. I think it's an echo chamber.

But for political discussion, it's actually a very important place. participation in democracy and getting involved in democracy, then the fact that they're being silenced in that space a lot of the time or feel like they can't express their views just shows, I mean, 83%. That's a huge number. Twitter need to take it much more seriously than they are. It's a concerning statistic to put it mildly. Facebook say everyone deserves to feel safe online and we have strict policies in place to help people who encounter abuse and harassment on our platform.

It's worth saying that a listener has tweeted to say the kind of golden age was the early to mid 2000s. Blogs were great and parenting forums were great. Perhaps they were. I don't know. There's toxicity wherever you look, actually. What do you think about the future, in all honesty, Isabel? Where are we going to be in five years' time with all this? Let's say the government does actually change the way these companies operate. Oh, OK. You don't sound very confident about that.

No, I'm not super convinced that the white paper is going to end up actually... First of all, I'm not convinced it's going to end up being what it says it is now. Why not? Because when I read through it, I just thought so much of it. It was a good attempt at narrowing down and like breaking into specifics, the different kinds of harmful content. But in terms of penalising, it just seems unenforceable to me. Because in order to say, you know, it would require so much,

so many resources from the government monitoring the moderators at Facebook and Twitter and wherever, enforcing their own policies, which are themselves quite obscure and quite complicated. I think in five years time, we'll still have like the giants that we're familiar with now, but they will have changed a lot. Zuckerberg is in the process of... That's the man who runs facebook yeah mark

zuckerberg founder and ceo of facebook is um he's made a lot of noise about changing the platform making it a lot more safe a lot more responsible and he's also said that he is going to make it more of a space for the metaphor he uses is that he wants it to be more like your living room than the markets then the town hall town square. And he's going to be tying together the back ends, the software that connects all these different companies that Facebook owns, like Instagram and WhatsApp, to make it much more about direct messaging, much more about person to person interaction. So I think possibly the Facebook, I think the Facebook wall might be gone in five years. Which would mean what? Which would mean, you know, sort of posting

pictures to your friends at large, to your hundreds of friends, thousands if you're lucky. Don't get all boastful. Oh, that's not me, don't worry. It wouldn't be me either. But I think that might well have just fizzled out.

I think there's going to be an element of self-imploding because I think some of the things that have happened have been so extreme and so awful that the damage being done is so significant you look at like I read The Burning recently by Laura Bates

of the Everyday Sexism Project that's her novel isn't it? yeah it's her novel, it's a teen novel and it's based on witchcraft in Scotland but the mirroring of how things haven't changed in terms of and all of it is real experiences of young women. So having to leave school, having to move different areas because they've been bullied so badly online and the social media companies have done nothing. And schools very often, you know, if young women share intimate images, they are themselves expelled rather than the young boys who share them being reprimanded. And that's the kind of stuff we're talking about.

And it's terrifying. Can I just bring in a point from a listener? Because I think this is really important. It's Soma who says, In the real world, I act the same as I do on social media. I know some people who don't, but I do. It's up to you to be yourself in all spheres of life, online and offline. That is important, Hannah. We're not powerless here. We can make a choice about who we are and what we do

and what we say and where we say it. Yeah, absolutely. I think what's interesting and what has happened is, so I worked in a parliamentarian's office before social media exploded when email was difficult enough to deal with. I was also at university before social media came about, and sometimes I say I might not be elected if there had been social media when I was at university. But I think what has happened is people will say things to each other, and they will say things on social media platforms that they would never say to someone's face, and that they wouldn't even necessarily put in an email and it's about saying look that behaviour you know what you would how

you would behave normally to each other what you would say to somebody's face has to be you know mirrored online and it's not because it's it's grown up in a way people have got sort of cognitive dissonance from social media platforms a lot of the time and we have to make a choice particularly those of us who are in positions of power, to say we will stay online, we will engage. But sometimes the impact on your mental health can be significant. People like Jess Phillips, Diane Abbott, Joanna Cherry and my own party have all received huge amounts of online abuse.

And I think it's had an impact. Soma's point is important because we do need to be ourselves and you are your authentic self, Hannah, as you say yourself. You're gay, you said you were gay. In terms of attacks on gay people, I'm thinking of the lesbian couple who were attacked on the bus. There were another gay female couple actually who I think were members of the acting profession.

They were going off to a theatrical production, weren't they? And the production had to be cancelled for a couple of days because people were I think throwing things at this couple of young women this has been a really horrible couple of weeks. It has and I think it is a stark

reminder, we've come a long way in terms of LGBT rights and equal marriage but we're having a big debate just now in England on LGBT education. There are still many countries where it's illegal to be gay and anybody that was surprised at the attack on those two women on the bus in London

need to be reminded that this is the kind of stuff that still happens. I mean, my girlfriend and I got abused in the street, regularly get comments from men as we walk along. Still, this is still happening. Still, yeah, absolutely. And so I think there's a bit of complacency because we have come a long way. And, you know, companies fly the pride flag, football teams, you know, wear rainbow laces.

That's great. We still don't have any out male, you know, Premier League footballers because they don't feel it's a safe enough space because they feel that they'll be abused by fans and that's that's a really sad reality to face so it is important that those of us who are you know activists who are feminists speak up and use our voices but you know it's about standing together and it's about it's about calling out the misogyny and sexism but the reality is it's a it's a small number because there are many many men out there who stand with us who support us and actually I had an experience with a I called out a game called rape day and that was potentially going to be publicized and put out there and a lot of those

in the gaming community were like this shames us this is not you know the kind of stuff that we want to see out there equally there were a lot of people like well you can murder people in video games why can you not rape them do you know so two sides of that yeah okay um but the point i want people to come away from this discussion with is that women must not retreat from online discussions the really important thing is to keep participating isn't it because we will not be bullied off uh these platforms that would be absolutely dire uh thank you all very much indeed thank you for talking to us all the best to you hannah thank you very much and thanks to to um you also heard the views of lee hotwood chair of the chartered institute of marketing thanks for kicking us off lee and isabel asher hamilton tech reporter

at the website business insider thank you lovely to meet you now we should say on tuesday of next week dr ruth is on woman's hour i've recorded that interview you will not want to miss it that's on Business Insider. Thank you. Lovely to meet you. Now, we should say on Tuesday of next week, Dr. Ruth is on Woman's Hour. I've recorded that interview. You will not want to miss it. That's on Tuesday. She is amazing. Now, a show I saw earlier in the week at a tiny theatre in London, upstairs at the Soho Theatre in London, but you are going to have the chance to see it at the Edinburgh Festival in August. It's called Hotter and it stars R.L. Potter and Mary Higgins. And I'm going to ask them to describe Hotter because I'm not sure that I can. I don't think I can do it justice. So, Mary, over to you.

It's a show about bodies and hotness and Ellen and I interviewed women and trans people aged 11 to 97. How many did you speak to? It was about 40 in the end. 40 to 50, yeah. Each time we do the show show we sort of try and add more interviewees to make it kind of greater spread of the type of people we're interviewing These people are volunteers aren't they? Yes, we don't force them into anything

And the show, it's an hour long and it's about sexuality, it's about experiences of sex it's about sexuality it's about experiences of sex it's about how you learn to experience sex and it's about body image and it's also and this is the bit I found if I'm honest slightly uncomfortable it's about your relationship or your former relationship so tell everyone a little bit first of all about how you came to do the show together um we didn't really know each other we were at uni? We didn't really know each other. We were at uni, but we didn't really know each other. Does that mean you'd avoided each other or you'd been wary? We sort of had... Well, I was...

We had mutual friends, but honestly, I was slightly intimidated by Mary because she's so cool. If anyone saw her now, they would understand. She is cool. Yeah, she's very cool. And we were in sort of theatre productions, separate ones, and sort of always missed each other. But I was sort of aware of her. And then one day she came up to me in a pub

and said she wanted to make a two-woman show with me. Like, literally out of the blue. Had barely any idea who she was. And I said yes. And from then, we sort of started hanging out more and more, rehearsing, finding out about each other. When you're doing a show about bodies and hotness, you have to think quite a lot about your own relationship

with your own body and your own sexuality. And we were both sort of discovering, I suppose, who we were, who we are. Are you prepared to say anything about that, Mary? Go on. Yeah, I mean, I also think I asked Elle retrospectively because I fancy her. But you can't really admit that to yourself at the time.

It's quite a good opening line. Do you want to make a show with me? Yeah. It did work at the time. And it paid off. Yeah, okay. And we just got really intimate and we were also talking. Yeah, we knew we were going to make a show about bodies.

And then you come to the bit where you realise you've only got two between you. And you should probably ask some other people. And that's how the interviews came in. So queerness is sort of central to Hotter. It's sort of like the blood of Hotter, but we didn't used to mention. We've been doing the show for about two years, but we didn't used to mention, we've been doing the show for about two years but we didn't used to mention that we were together. Oh you didn't mention

it at the start? No because we'd just broken up before we did the first Edinburgh run. So crucially that was a very difficult time when we were doing a show together really intimately about bodies and the elephant in the room was that we had been together but couldn't really speak about it

because it's really difficult immediately after a break-up to sort of even contemplate spending time with the person you've just broken up with let alone doing a run, a month's run in Edinburgh Festival. So we couldn't really talk about it in that. Okay, we've established that you talk to lots of other people, it isn't just you and you actually very effectively lip sync your way through the contributions of lots of people who range in age and all sorts of other ranges as well amongst the people you talk to let's hear some of your interviewees talking in this instance about their first experiences

of masturbation on sofa late at, it was probably around 11, and it was to a programme called Sex Etc. My parents were asleep, all out. And I remember at the beginning, I used to quite forcefully go left to right. My friend Juliet taught me how to do it, largely over the telephone. I think I almost definitely looked up some kind of wiki how

about how to do it i thought i was dying i was like thank god i have my phone here i can call the police i'm very lazy i just do what i know i like and then it's over and then i go to sleep i don't know if i came the first time but that I remember specifically lying on the sofa watching sex et cetera going with one finger. About masturbation no I don't think I've ever talked to anyone about masturbation. And slightly infuriatingly she doesn't reveal any more. That was the voice voice of a 97 year old how did how did you find that 97 year old ann is the grandmother of my sister's ex-boyfriend keep up at the back yeah um and just she was living in the same city and so we went and met her well i was on my own actually and we spoke for an hour we have about five or six questions online, but the first one is, you know, have you ever talked about it before?

And she said no. So I didn't ask the others. I'm not entirely surprised that she hadn't talked about it before, really. And I suppose, in a way, that is an illustration of just where we are. We're in a very different place to when I was growing up, and things are changing around you two as well, obviously. You do talk, too, about the menopause. I've got a bit of a beef here because god knows i'm menopausal but i've never had a hot flush and that was the only symptom that you talked about i want you to talk about

aching joints please really you've never had a lot of women having the menopause don't have hot flushes well maybe we should interview you well i'm afraid i'll have to speak to my agent i don't come cheap these days. It is interesting to get those insights from other women and from men, we should say as well. You're doing another show, aren't you, which involves a different sort of contributor. Tell me about that one. Yeah, so our next show is called Fitter. And basically when we made Hotter, we didn't even think about the fact that we would only interview women and trans people. And we thought, why have we done that? Why have we made that decision as women?

Why do we only want to ask those questions to other women or female-identifying people? And it sort of forced us to face up to our own relationship with masculinity, like our own softness and hardness in our attitude towards it. So we thought, why not make a kind of greasy teenage brother like too hotter, like the male equivalent of the show? But you will be there representing those voices? Yeah, which is, it brings up a kind of conundrum, which is, can you take on experiences of people

you don't really, you're not the same as on stage, or is that the perfect place to sort of become someone else? But in some ways it's no different from Hotter. I think it's interesting that we have that extra hesitation because we're talking about male and masculine presenting people. But with Hotter, you know, we are lip-syncing to a 97 year old or voices of women of color um actually we don't lip-sync only we do so it's just about sort of degrees of separation and just being really careful when you're making verbatim theater that you are uh platforming the

voices in a respectful way well i hope um people listening to you two have now got a bit of an idea of what it is. I have to say, I just think you're probably better off going to see them, and you can. It's in Edinburgh at the Underbelly between the 12th and 25th of August, and then they're back in London between the 2nd and the 7th of September, that's right, isn't it? And then Fitter is the

show that will come sometime later. Yes. Great. Okay, thank you very much to you both. Thank you. I love you to me, Mary and Ellie ellie thank you so let's plow through um some of the big news stories of the week and see what our contributors have got to say about everything that's been happening it hasn't been uneventful but then increasingly life isn't uneventful uh in the uk there's always something to talk about um the conservative leadership contest the two female contenders have already gone andrea ledsam and and Esther McVeigh. Then there was the extraordinary, well, what would you call it, row, bit of trouble, minor televisual showbiz kerfuffle between the gargantuan contributors to our national life that are Lorraine Kelly, who's a very popular guest on this programme.

She's been on a number of times. And the aforementioned Esther McVeigh, who clearly worked together at some point on Breakfast Telly. Or had they? And we'll talk too about the Nike mannequins. And also the future of retail because plenty going on there. Catherine Shuttleworth joins us, retail analyst and CEO

and founder of Savvy Marketing. Catherine's in Leeds. Good morning to you, Catherine. Good morning, Joan. With me in the studio, Stephanie Yeboah, plus-size influencer and writer. Good to see you, Stephanie. Hello. And Jane Merrick, political commentator and about to start a new job as policy editor at the Eye.

Congratulations on that one, Jane. So let's start then with the elimination of Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVeigh. Or in the spirit, let's call them Esther and Andrea because that would be a bit friendlier and it's the way we address Mr Johnson often or people attempted to um is it just that they were eliminated because frankly Jane neither of them were much cop I think with Esther McVeigh I think she wasn't as popular as the other candidates I think also they were both Brexiteers and the sort

of it's a very very crowded field yeah Brexiteers Andrea Leadsom had huge popularity in 2016 because she was their chosen candidate. But the ERG, they fancy Boris Johnson and if not him, then Dominic Raab. So I think she'd sort of, both had sort of fallen to the cracks. She'd had her chance. In fact, it is amazing. She could have been Prime Minister three years ago.

Yes. I mean, really quite easily could have been. And actually, I think the two, we can't sort of write both off. I think Andrea Leadsom as Commons, has sort of made some huge... I was about to say, it is odd because she is a much more experienced politician than she was a couple of years ago. Yes. And she's made some huge gains and reforms in terms of sexual harassment. She did a great press gallery lunch this week.

She was incredibly... Sort of, she took all questions and she was really kind of... Whereas I think Esther McVeigh is sort of seen as, perhaps unfairly, as a slightly more two-dimensional, you know, she's just a Brexiteer. And, you know, she's from Liverpool. How could she be a Tory? I think she sort of had to sort of have that all her life. And then again, I think, you incredibly, an incredibly sort of backstabbing environment. I'm sure it isn't any more than the lovely, comforting world of Radio 4, where everybody, I mean, I was around at Melvin Bragg's last night for my tea. I mean, we all get on super.

We'll talk about that in a moment. I just want to talk briefly about the likely leader of the Conservative Party and indeed the country, Boris Johnson. He is a singular individual. He is the sort of person that no woman in politics could ever attempt to be. Surely, Jane? Exactly. He gets away with so much. I mean, I think Jess Phillips made this point on Twitter the other day that if a woman had had sort of different children by different marriages and had left so many husbands, then, you know, she wouldn't get anywhere near the sort of the premiership. I think what's really interesting, actually, is that given the last three years have been so unpredictable in politics, that everybody is kind of accepting that he's prime

minister, I think. Well, who might beat him? Well, I don't ethically bet in politics, but I wouldn't bet on Boris Johnson. I think that Jeremy Hunt or even we could just see someone having an amazing debate on Sunday night. Someone like Sajid Javid, who had a really good launch, really interesting backstory. Or even Rory Stewart, who's got that kind of momentum. If he gets in the final two, he could just blow the whole thing away. Let's move on then to the debate uh if you

can call it that about the alleged cat fight between esther mcveigh and lorraine kelly um where do your sympathies lie stephanie on this one uh i just think the whole situation is has been completely blown out of proportion and you know it's good fun though isn't it i mean it's good fun but i have such serious issues with the word cat fight because i don't understand why when women have a bicker or an argument it has to be put in a completely different category and you know when I hear cat fight it issues sentiments of um being petty or being over the top and things like that if somebody has a disagreement it should just be a fight um I thought you know I did see the clip

on YouTube and I ever seen I saw the clip on youtube and i come on everyone's seen i saw the clip on youtube and i was just like oh this is so awkward because you could tell lorraine was just like she just wanted the camera to sort of cut somewhere else and um i just find it interesting that you know if it was two men doing it on on breakfast tv i don't think it would have had the same impact in the press as it would for two women because I think you know with women we have this extra standard when we're in public and we're on tv to be a lot more refined and and polite and you know have these mannerisms where we don't get ourselves into these sort of spats with men it's a lot more expected for them to be passionate and you know speak their opinions freely without having that um backlash so it's funny that in this situation

you know it's been gassed up quite a lot because they've sort of shown their sort of emotions i guess i just don't get it okay let's put katherine on the spot are you team mcveigh or team kelly i'm team kelly i think i mean i i when she sort of was asked that question by peers who was there with his big wooden spoon stirring it in the background Oh isn't he awful He is dreadful She actually did that thing your mum would say which is if you've got nothing nice to say

don't say anything at all and she sort of blanked him didn't she and then you know by saying nothing actually that spoke more volumes but you're right everybody's got excited about it this week because it is boring politics at the minute we are all tired of it

so it's been the most exciting thing that's happened for a good few weeks oh let's celebrate something positive which is the appointment of Sharon White um who now works at Ofcom where she's the chief exec she's going to be chair of John Lewis now John Lewis is one of those shops I mean I'm fortunate enough to be able to be a relatively regular customer it's been a staple of my life um what would you say about its long-term future though Catherine this is going to be tough isn't it yeah there's no retail business at the moment that's looking at the future thinking everything's going to be brilliant but I do think you're right John Lewis provides the backdrop to many of our lives doesn't it our childhood and our growing up and I think it will be okay in the

longer term but it's going to need somebody with a different view coming in and that's why I think they've chosen Sharon White who on paper wouldn't have been the obvious choice well she was she was a major civil servant wasn't she people forget this but she was what was she her job in government jane she was permanent secretary of the treasury that's a colossal job isn't it yeah and it's but it's i can't make that leap from that role to running john lewis well john lewis is a bit like the civil service jane i have to tell you i worked Well, John Lewis is a bit like the Civil Service, Jane, I have to tell you. I worked there many years ago as a placement student and I don't think they'd ever employed anybody from Yorkshire

or a comprehensive girl like me at that point. They were quite shocked. But it is a little bit like the Civil Service, so she will fit in in that way. It's a partnership organisation. It's a very, very different and uniquely British organisation. And I think she'll be great at the politics in it, actually. Do you take heart, Stephanie, as a young black woman, that a woman of colour is assuming a role like this? I think it's fantastic. When I heard the

news, I was overjoyed. You know, to be completely honest, I'd never heard of her before. And, you know, I was discussing it with my flatmate, Chloe So you hadn't seen her? I hadn't seen her no but because my flatmate works at John Lewis and she's like a senior merchandiser there so we were talking about it and we were both talking about how how excited we were about her assuming this role and just seeing somebody who is a black woman in such a high position is so inspirational for women like me and you know women who are of color who are generation z coming up in the world thinking you know oh you know i couldn't get to this position or you know i want to be in retail or whatever the um case may be but they may have reservations because of their race it's nice that we've have somebody in such a high position and I think it speaks a lot to hopefully in the

coming years as we go by to I hope it tells a message of you know there needs to be a lot more inclusivity and diversity in these top roles. Can we talk briefly about Arcadia Catherine because the organisation is a massive employer of women we know that and again it's something a string of stores that play a part in our national life. Will it survive, do you think? I think it'll survive in a very different way. I mean, it's been a torrid week for them this week because they've had these CVAs, which are these company voluntary agreements,

which means they're teetering on the edge a bit. And they've had seven of them this week, but they've been saved by the landlords. And I think what's going to happen now is they are going to have to look at whether they need as many shops because so many of us are shopping online. But they're huge. And when you start thinking about high streets, and I mean normal high streets, not swanky London high streets, I mean, you know, places across the UK,

they are really important shops for people. And if they go, they provide jobs in a lot of cases to women who can work and bring their families up so it really fits in really big worry yeah no it definitely is and i want to talk too about the plus size nike mannequins now stephanie um they are prominent i gather in the nike store not far from where we're sitting now just down the road on oxford street yes um and it wasn't well you tell me first of all what you think about thequins. I think it's it's such a long time coming. I think it's an excellent idea. I think it's so important for plus size people to be included within the conversation of sports, but not in a purely negative way.

Because when we do talk about being plus size and and working out and exercise, it always comes from a place of policing our bodies and judgment. And we've never had the opportunity to have swanky, you know, really nice sportswear. It's always been sometimes ill-fitting and things like that. And, you know, as a child, I used to see all of my friends in secondary school wearing Nike. And I knew that I could never wear it because it never came in my size. And I think it's important for us to have that for us as well because it's not only slim people that work out plus plus size people work out as well we're always well we as a society are encouraging bigger people to exercise so if we're going to encourage people to exercise we need to show them that it's indeed possible yeah however you know there's been a backlash um the article by tanya gold in

the sunday telegraph describes the mannequin as immense gargantuan and vast she heaves with fat this is nasty stuff what would you say about it well that article i when i read it i was absolutely disgusted to be honest because the writer is also plus size so I don't really know what angle she was coming from you know and on her social media she's got a picture of her smoking a cigarette so it was very contradictory. Jane what do you think? I would agree with Stephanie and I think you know Tanya is a great writer and she's written before about this issue she's written before about this issue so her argument started off I think quite well meaning to say that, you know, brands shouldn't be policing bodies. But then she sort of contradicted herself by policing women's bodies by describing plus size women in that way. And I think it's terrible. And it's sort of, you know,

we are surrounded all the time by adverts on TV and in newspapers and magazines, you know, women's running magazines always have a really, you know, slim woman. It's not that is not real life. And it's not what I want my daughter to be growing up to see those sort of images when she looks at her own body and sort of thinks, is there something wrong with me because I don't conform to these stereotypes. Quick word from you, Catherine. We're back where we started really in terms of marketing, in terms of selling stuff to people.

Yeah, and people want to buy it. And I think it is a real shame. The article that Tanya wrote, I'm sure, has gone in a different dimension. And it's funny, isn't it? Because I think about somebody who has inspired me as somebody who's perhaps more in the size of this new mannequin than the slim ones, Bryony Gordon, who looks amazing when she goes out and runs. And she's used it as a great way to explain what's happened to her in her life. And she's in the same newspaper stable as Tanya. And you think, blimey, we talked about Esther McVeigh before and all of that stuff. You know, it's an amazing thing to be able to go out, whatever your body looks like, and do that. And from a marketing perspective, I give Nike lots of ticks for this this week. Catherine Shuttleworth, and you also heard from Stephanie Yeboah and Jane Merrick, who were talking over the

big news stories of the week on the live show today. So to your emails and tweets Eleanor says, I'd urge any woman with something to say to come in and say it. There are always knuckle draggers but please don't let them win by taking yourself out of the running. Block

and move on. Some people are just not pleasant. Yes, I'd go along with that, Eleanor. From Sue, Can we teach that freedom of speech doesn't include abusive or hate speech? It's the right to say, but not to attack. Another listener says, Just get off Twitter, Facebook and the rest. It's pernicious, dangerous, definitely not social,

and you're helping to enrich people, mostly in the States, who don't care a jot about you or your life. Jane says Twitter can be toxic, but I have met and connected with so many wonderful women through it. And again, I'd agree with that one because I have just come into contact with people who I don't know and I'll never meet. But I do genuinely regard them as Twitter friends. I think it's rather nice. It also is a way of, I don't know, drawing your attention to articles or issues that you would never, ever have come across ordinarily. So I will speak up for it, really. And I think social media can be exactly that.

It can actually be social. This listener says, I'm a parish councillor. I faced angry residents in meetings and I've been sent horrible letters. However, since the internet became so popular, the tone and freedom of people to comment and criticise and bully has made life very hard at times. I've become afraid to go about in my own community. I never make national political comments online and I don't criticise individuals on Facebook. And I'm aware that I'm censoring myself.

This is so sad and I'm appalled about the way that people are prepared to speak cruelly, lie and disparage and be happy to destroy good reputations that have been built up over decades by hard-working volunteers trying to work for their communities. That's distressing, isn't it? From Sue, how many people like me, age 66, feel they don't want to take part in any form of social media? Although I do use WhatsApp for sending photos and messaging our book group. I really appreciated the discussion this morning,

and I salute the courage of my sisters who are on social media and keeping on despite all the difficulties. Sue, thank you. And I'm glad you found the discussion interesting. Jude says, just get rid of the term plus size. It's annoying. OK. Another listener, Bath Bird. Ridiculous sized mannequins in M&S. We need to change all representations of what we should look like. Let's have different sized mannequins from big to small. Yes, I mean, that does seem reasonable.

I think, what is the average British size? I think it's probably a 16 or an 18, but you rarely, if ever, see mannequins of that size, do you, in the stores. But certainly if you've got any teenagers, you'll know that they don't really go into shops unless their mother's got a credit card with her. That's my experience. Now, size 16, I'm told, is the average British size. So that brings you up to speed. It is size 16. Right, let's talk about what's on the programme next week, because I think this is important. On Monday,

we're starting a new series on teenage mental health. And this will involve teenagers and parents and teachers and mental health professionals. And to give you an idea of what's in store next week, this is the voice of a mother of a young girl who has mental health issues at the moment. She was starting to self-harm. She was having suicidal thoughts. She was drawing very worrying drawings along that sort of subject area. You know, I knew there was something far more than just normal anxiety because she just seemed totally flat, not enjoying life at all. and you are you're put on a waiting list and left to get on with the rest of your life you know it's it really is like that it's very very lonely and I know that there are lots of other people out there going through it but that doesn't help me you know it doesn't help me today it doesn't help me deal with my daughter when she's telling me she wants to end her life and also this part of

you doesn't want to tell anybody because you don't, you know, family friends, you don't want to upset them, you don't want them to have, you don't want to put your worry onto them. But you need support and you need help and it's just not there. Well, that certainly gets to the heart of the matter and that is just an indication of what we're going to talk about on Woman's Hour throughout next week.

So if you'd really like to take part, if there's something going on in your life and you feel you want to contribute, then please do email the programme via our website. You can perhaps wait and hear a couple of the features and interviews and then take part. Or you can pitch in with your own experience right away, particularly if you're waiting for an appointment in terms of mental health. bbc.co.uk slash womanshour. You can email through the website. On Tuesday of next week, on a happier note, I was really fortunate this week to be able to record an interview with Dr. Ruth, who is a phenomenal presence. She's just so exciting to be around, just exudes life and enthusiasm.

She's now 91. She's got a lot to say about the state of human relationships, about how you keep marriages together. She told me about porn, about Viagra. She's just a force of nature. And you can hear Dr. Ruth on Tuesday's edition of Woman's Hour. And on Wednesday, we'll talk to the aviation pioneer, Wally Funk. So let's hope the rain stops, the sun comes out, and we can all get together and make daisy chains

throughout the week next week on the programme. Have a very good weekend. Thank you for listening. I'm Simon Mundy, host of Don't Tell Me The Score, the podcast that uses sport to explore life's bigger questions, covering topics like resilience, tribal tribalism and fear with people like this we keep talking about fear and to me i always want to bring it back to are you actually in danger that's alex honnold star of the oscar-winning film free solo in which he climbed a 3 000 foot sheer cliff without ropes so i mean a lot of those you know social anxieties things and certainly

i've had a lot of issues with talking to attractive people in my life. I'm like, oh, no, like I could never do that. And it certainly feels like you're going to die. But realistically, you're not going to die. And that's all practice, too. Have a listen to Don't Tell Me the Score, full of useful everyday tips from incredible people on BBC Sounds. 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. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in.

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