Woman's Hour - Modern domestic service; Mud and Mascara in women's rugby; Teenage subcultures

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Right now, there are thousands of people working hard in other people’s homes to keep them running smoothly. But what’s it like working in domestic service in modern Britain? Juliet Adame and Dawn Nickless talk about their experiences of the relationship between employer and employed, and the extent to which class still plays a role in people’s attitudes towards domestic workers. Jenni also speaks to Dr Lucy Delap from the University of Cambridge about how much the life of a cleaner, nanny and gardener has changed – or not – in the past 100 years, and why so many women feel mortally embarrassed about being the boss. Women’s rugby is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world and 29% of all rugby players are women. Since it was announced as an Olympic sport in 2009, the number of participants has grown globally from 200,000 to over 2.6 million. As preparations are underway for this year’s Women’s Six Nations Catherine Spencer the former Captain of the England talks to Jenni about her memoir Mud, Maul, Mascara: How I Led my Country, and Lived to Tell the Tale.Goth, punk, raver – what kind of teenager were you? The Museum of Youth Culture is currently touring their exhibition “Grown Up in Britain”, which showcases artefacts from teenagers throughout the decades. We discuss how teenage subcultures have evolved from the 50s to today with Ruth Adams, senior lecturer at Kings College London and Lisa Der Weduwe, Archives Manager at the Museum of Youth Culture, before kicking off our four-part feature series “A Short History of the Teenage Girl” with Kay from Derby.Presenter - Jenni Murray Producer - Anna Lacey Guest - Lucy Delap Guest - Julieta Adame Guest - Dawn Nickless Guest - Catherine Spencer Guest - Ruth Adams Guest - Lisa der Weduwe

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Wednesday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. In today's programme, the cleaner, the nanny, the housekeeper and the mistress of the house. In the early 20th century, domestic service was the biggest employer of women. What's it like today? And how guilty do you feel if you have another woman cleaning your house? Grown Up in Britain is an exhibition put together by the Museum of Youth Culture. The teenager was first defined in the 1940s in America. How did the teenage girl develop in the UK and how did she see herself? And the serial, of course,

the third episode of 24 Kildare Road. Now, I was watching the start of the Six Nations rugby tournament the other day, and at one point it was mentioned that the women's Six Nations would be starting soon. There was a rather flashy advert showing female rugby players, but no mention of when their games could be seen or where, which probably comes as no surprise to Catherine Spencer, who was captain of the England women's rugby team from 2007 to 2010. She retired the following year and her memoir is called Mud Mall Mascara. Catherine, why that title? I want it to be obvious that actually you can have a desire to put your mascara on in the evening, in the morning, whatever time,

but you can still go and play rugby as well and that's absolutely fine. This contact sport, aggressive sport, the two things can go together. There is an amazing picture in the book of you covered in mud from head to foot why did you like that side of it? Absolutely well there was sometimes I was like oh no it's really wet and muddy again but I absolutely loved it you know actually I say on the caption of that photo that many people pay lots of money to go and get mud packs and spa treatments and actually can get it for free get a bit of gritty exfoliation as well but um it's a it's a game that i've played since i was very very young um i think perhaps if i'd taken it up when i was older um i may not

have done having watched it a little bit but it's just it's just been normal to me in my in my life and my family life now obviously you started playing about with your brothers on the landing when you were very, very little. And then in 88, started playing properly. But how easy was it for a girl to get going? It was not easy at all. You know, back in the 80s, girls did not play rugby. It was not the done thing. You know, rugby was a man's sport, you know,

and then eventually it became a boy's sport as well when mini rugby was introduced but yeah girls were not for for being on the pitch so for me fortunately I had a very very supportive family and clubs the club was really supportive at Folkestone my mini rugby coaches were really supportive there was opposition you know parents and opposition coaches very shocked and mortified that I'd still be on the pitch when the starting whistle went. I don't know what they thought I was going to do. So yeah, really unusual. If it wasn't for my family, I doubt very much that I would have, you know, carried on and continued. So what was it like to pull on the number eight for England?

Oh, it was, it was incredible, Jenny. Jenny you know it was um you know these moments in your life that you just kind of want to want to bottle up and and savor forever because you know that's I'm not going to do that now I'm too old and past it now but it was um it was massive me to to put on the England shirt you know the red rose you know and to run out and represent your country is is quite a special feeling and then you know you say the number eight shirt that that position to me um obviously I have to say the best position on the pitch but that position to me that number became really important to me as well and then and then later on in my career that the captaincy too and I hate to mention but you did lose two world cups as captain and you refer in the book to the

scars you carry as a result of that. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, rugby and World Cup cycle is a bit like Olympics. So World Cups come around every four years. So everything you do in that time is about that World Cup. Now, England women, we were a good team. We were a good international team. And there was every chance, every likelihood, really really that we could win a World Cup. It was realistic for us. So everything I did was about that, was about winning the World Cup.

The first one I went to in 2006, we lost in the final. I was, OK, we could have won, but New Zealand, who we played against, were just fantastic. They were the better team on that day. So next four-year cycle starts and the next World Cup's on home soil in England. I was capped in that point expectation pressure building and we you know we were going to win this world cup there was no other option and we were good

enough to win it and we didn't we lost by three points so everything you're walking working towards just shatters in front of you and and emotionally you have to somehow deal with that and manage that and as you say there's a lot of that in the book have you ever really understood what it is about the New Zealanders that makes them such incredible rugby players whether they're male or female so unfair they're just born like it it's in their blood they have an unfair advantage I mean they're just so skillful you know the men and the women you say that and you know they play a lot of sport over there they play they play touch they don't call it touch rugby. So it's very common for people to play touch over there,

you know, be out in the park, you know, after school, after work, at the weekend, chucking this strange oval ball rugby around, rugby ball around. And it's just part of their culture, really. It's their primary sport in New Zealand, whereas over here it's football or soccer. And they're just, they're so skillful but they're confident with that and I think that makes a big difference. Now here's something else I hate

to mention as well the team won the next World Cup after you'd gone what was that like for you? Really tough you know it's very light-hearted isn't it, Jolly, to start with? Yes, it was really tough. You know, I finished playing, I retired in 2011 and in my own words, I shattered my own dream. I'd never be able to achieve that, but I retired for a number of different reasons. So actually watching the team win in 2014, I was in the studio working as a pundit.

When that whistle went, just emotion came over me. But actually, absolute devastation that that didn't happen in 2010. And it wasn't me as captain lifting that trophy with my teammates around me. It was, you know, as much as it was fantastic that England won the World Cup for the sport, for me personally, it was a really, really tough time. How easy was it to cope with your retirement because I mean you'd always had a job because you had to to earn a living because rugby didn't pay for you in those days but how did you cope with having to give up the playing the game? I loved I loved playing rugby I loved playing rugby for England um as you said as you say Jenny we were we were female

so we didn't get we didn't get paid things are starting to change now thankfully but really this was my this was my primary focus I worked because I had to pay bills but my life my main reason for being really was to play rugby and to play rugby for England but I made my own decision to retire while I was at the top of the sport I didn't want to get injured I didn't want someone else some young whippersnapper to come and steal my shirt so I made that decision but then because I made it myself I've had to live with that decision ever since and think did I did I do the right thing and I'm not sure that I did and especially when they won in 2014 it made that decision even harder but there's so many people that go through transitions in life whether it might be getting a different job or parents with kids flying the nest and moving to university all these transitions that are really difficult you know we feel that

we have this identity and and suddenly it changes suddenly we need to find a new path and we're having to deal with this in our in our life emotionally as well as practically. How easy has it been to break into doing commentary and being a pundit? Yeah, not easy. As you say, you know, as you referred to earlier, alluded to, women's rugby, although we're getting more and more on TV and on the radio as well, that's been quite a slow process. And so within that is quite a small number of opportunities to sort of break into media, not as much as there is in the men's game.

I've been lucky that I have commentated on different occasions. I was in the studio for 2014. I commentated on the Women's World Cup in 2017. I've just been over to the south of France, lovely, warm, sunny this weekend to commentate on the women's game. But yeah, I'd love to do more but it's it's very difficult and especially now there's there's more players retiring from the sport um who are kind of taking up the media reins as well which is which is brilliant but it's it's been

difficult the doors are not necessarily opened as much as they are in the men's game you say in the book that you don't think you have the right people leading the game. What changes would you like to see? I think there's been sort of natural growth in the women's game, particularly since I started, and it's been easy to see that. But I think there's time now that we need to be aiming higher in our game. So to give you an example, one of the home games for England in this Six Nations is going

to be up at Doncaster now it's really good to take the game around the country you know I'm a supporter of that but the stadium has a capacity of 5,000 in France this weekend we had nearly 18,000 at the game you know football seeing 30 plus thousand at club games we should be aiming higher I think and we should be having tougher questions and we should be a bit more challenging about how we push our game. What predictions have you got for the Six Nations? Jenny, I'm traditionally awful at predictions. I made predictions this weekend, three, and all three were incorrect. In the women's game, I mean, England have just beaten France in a really, really tough close encounter.

And really, that's probably the decider for the tournament. Italy did pretty well last year and they've got France this weekend, so we'll see how they do. But I think the red roses, England women will win this tournament. Same might not be said for England men this year. Because, of course, it was the England women who beat the French and not the England men who beat the French, was it not? Absolutely right, Jenny, yes. beat the French and not the England men who beat the French was it not absolutely right Jenny yes

just quickly next year's world cup in New Zealand who's going to win oh goodness now you know England have got a chance New Zealand have got a chance so New Zealand are reigning world champions they won in 2017 and and they were phenomenal their their forward pack. We're really powerful. And I think on home soil, it's going to be very, very difficult for anyone to topple them. France could be within a shout as well, but I think it will be New Zealand. Catherine Spencer, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. And let's just mention that this Sunday, England will take on Scotland and the coverage can be seen on Sky. Thanks, Catherine. Now, you may have been listening yesterday when we talked about the life of Churchill's cook, Georgina Landemar,

and a lifetime spent in domestic service throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When we look back on the history of both men and women who ran other people's houses, it's clear that for women it was often the only job open to them, and the sector was indeed the biggest employer of women. But it tended to be only the rich who could afford to pay someone else to do the work they really didn't want to do themselves, whether it be nannying, cleaning, cooking, or doing the laundry. Well, what's it like in the 21st century in Britain, where more women than ever go out to work and are not available to run their own households, as once was expected of them? Who now are the

cleaners and the employers, and how does the relationship between the two work? Well, Dawn Nicholas is a nanny and housekeeper in Dorset and employs a cleaner for her own flat. Julieta Adami is an artist and cleaner and Dr Lucy DeLapp is a reader in Modern British and Gender History at Cambridge University. Lucy, what do we know about how many women work in domestic service now? Well, I'd like to say that we know the numbers, but we don't really, because one of the transitions of the 20th century is that domestic service or cleaning

goes from being a formal sector to an informal sector. So we can have a stab at saying what kind of size sector it is in terms of its economic worth. We know that it's worth about £4 billion annually by the end of the 20th century, and there's no evidence that it's got any smaller since then. So it's a very substantial sector, but we don't know how many people work in it in the way that we did in the past. What about men? How content are they to become cleaners, domestic workers? Well, historically, there has been a sector of male cleaners or domestic workers? Well, historically, there has been a sector of male cleaners or domestic workers. And I would say that that has grown in recent years.

And one of the reasons for that is because we start to see the rise of agency work. So that is where we do get formal cleaners. And agencies are more ready to employ men and women in those roles so I do think there's been a transition away from what's been mainly a female sector into a sector which is more gender mixed. Julieta what made you become a cleaner? I think a little change I'm originally trained as a graphic designer. I did an MA in printmaking. And then things changed that. Well, now you're an artist. It's like I forgot everything about graphic design.

I was out of work for a very, very long time. And it was, I covered a friend during her pregnancy for a cleaning job. And I thought, well, I need money. And I wanted to also have my own printmaking studio so that's how I started funding it. Do you enjoy cleaning? Yes and yes and no it's as an artist you are always cleaning the tools the presses everything needs to be perfectly clean so I might as well and also my house as a freelance your your secretary your cleaner the ones that big books the clients everything so it is just another skill for me it's another skill and and also gives me kind of a good space to think about things that probably I get to

sort of overwhelm when when I'm trying to solve a print or a design for a client. So it is a good thinking space too. Dawn, why do you keep house for a family and then employ your own cleaner? Hello. I've nearly always on and off employed a cleaner because I've always had a really busy life. And it's more kind of two three week person who has always come in and just done the fundamentals and I think strangely I've always really liked keeping other people's houses clean. The job I'm in now which I adore I mainly

went for is it's a nannying job but part and parcel of it is to keep on top of a large four-storey house and all the laundry. What do you mean when you talk about the essentials? I mean communal areas, really. I'm also an Airbnb host in my own flat so that's you know paramount to me that i get lots of uh reviews saying it's sparklingly clean uh which i do um and i just find somebody coming in and doing uh the oh i don't know really the foundations uh every maybe fortnight or three weeks really makes a massive difference to my life.

I think it's what my grandma used to call doing the bottoming. It's getting right down to it and making sure everything is done properly. Exactly. Yes, skirting boards, architraves, that kind of thing, really. Lucy, people used to employ what they called servants, but I doubt anyone would ever use that term now. Why has that changed? Well, the term servant really falls away just after World War II when you get a wide variety of other jobs available to the mostly women who were going into domestic service. But I would say it's not that the job itself goes away. It just it becomes

informal and people have new terms for it. Margaret Thatcher talked about having a treasure in your house. And that was a very deliberate kind of tiptoeing around of the term servant, avoiding that term. There's a term mother's help that becomes really, really common in the 1960s and 70s. That's the fastest growing category of domestic worker. Nanny, I think, keeps its positive connotations, but maidservant, housekeeper, that carries with them a whole load of baggage of stigma. The work that Dawn was talking about there,

the fundamentals, that used to be called the rough. And the people who undertook it were also, you know, stigmatized as dirty people, unrespectable people. Why, though, do so many women now say, oh, I feel so guilty about employing a cleaner or even a nanny? I think, you know, the person who comes in and cleans your house, if you have somebody doing that, they know a lot about you. They know about your social life, your habits. They might know something about your health. They might know something about your sex life. So they have intimate knowledge about you. And yet the relationship is quite unstructured, ungoverned. You know, we don't really know, is the person

cleaning a friend? Are they a bit like a family member? Should you be buying them Christmas presents? And from the perspective of the person doing the cleaning, you know, how do they have a conversation about something like the amount they're paid or the hours that they're doing? It's very hard to know quite how to play it. And that actually isn't new. You see that in the, you know, the early 20th century when, you know, a quarter of all women were working in domestic service, you still get those senses of of embarrassment it's only really in the great houses the country houses um places where figures like churchill's cook would have been working that you have um i think a lack of embarrassment and that's because you have a sort of sense of of a professional structure

a career and that offsets the embarrassment jul Julieta, what's your experience of this very complicated relationship of being a cleaner and people throwing strange expectations on you? There was something to do with a bed, wasn't there? With a bed? Yes. You having to put something up for them oh well yeah it's it was like more um asking me to do things that but for me it's just like i can put together but yeah of course i of course i can and but it was more down to um to sort of oh well you have nothing better to do

you can come an extra hour because of course you're poor or or you you're in desperate need of this money um i can't be asked put the bed together for me and it's kind of like uh i don't know putting it it's things for me that you you could do yourself if you give yourself uh five minutes is's a little bit what you were talking about, about clean the scouting. Well, that's probably if you... It is annoying, but if you set aside five minutes in one week, you can do half of the scouting.

It is annoying, but you can get around to do it. Is the relationship difficult with an employer? Sometimes it is extremely difficult because there's expectations, especially on time. And normally it's people that tell you, oh, it's going to take you a couple of hours. And you get there and it's a six day job. Even if you're like just not even being into into the details it's just like well this is this unrealistic two hours isn't is not enough and I think my feeling is it pairs up with um well you only deserve I don't know 20 pounds for for these two hours and you're a cleaner

you're supposed to be able to do it on on time for that money and that's good enough for you. Dawn, as a cleaner and an employer how embarrassed or guilty do you get at having someone do your, I mean effectively, dirty work? I'm not personally embarrassed but I have found a reticence in me to maybe mention it to other female friends. There is certainly some stigma in it. It's interesting.

I don't have any stigma personally about my job and I adore it and I always take a lot of pride in it and say that. But I can find myself hanging back in letting people know. You know, people will say say you've got such a busy life how on earth do you manage and certain people I don't then say oh but I have this wonderful woman Rachel who's really flexible who comes in maybe fortnightly three weeks and I know all the the foundations of of being done you know and I don't know that's a strange one isn't it really i can't quite explain

that don't i know you've worked in hospitality in the past and served some very very posh people yes yeah i wonder how much now does class play a role in the way staff are treated um in my not present experience at all i'm treated really well and as an equal but certainly in the past having done as you said i did lots of lots of uh dinner parties for quite wealthy affluent people and um i hate to bring in class but i think that the people who did not grow up with staff you know as young people were more likely to throw their weight around and have ridiculous expectations of what you could do as staff that they I think had they grown up with staff they wouldn't be asking you to do those things. And Lucy, very briefly, how much exploitation do

you reckon goes on now? It's hard to know, but I would say we've been emphasising embarrassment, but I would say there's other emotions and forms of experience going on in that relationship, which are about snobbishness and mockery and trying to get a bit more work out of your cleaner. So it's, you know, I don't want to dwell too much on the embarrassment and forget about the fact that actually there's a lot of employers who try to cut corners. So a common practice, for example, is not to pay your cleaner when you go on holiday. That is just exploitation. And a lot of cleaners say that is just the norm, that people go off on their skiing holiday or their summer holiday and they don't leave any

money because they assume that somehow the cleaner can afford it dr lucy de lapp julietta adame and dawn nicholas thank you very much indeed and we would of course like to hear from you are you a cleaner do you employ a cleaner how does that relationship work send us an email or a tweet now still to come in today's program the third third episode of The Serial, 24 Kildare Road. Earlier in the week, you may have missed yesterday's discussion about the difficulties of getting help for an eating disorder. Or on Monday, we spoke to Danielle, whose mother has Huntington's disease

and her daughters had to make the decision about whether or not to have a test to see if they carried the gene. Don't forget, if you miss the live programme, you can catch up. All you have to do is download the BBC Sounds app. And tomorrow we're going to be discussing the midwives in Edinburgh who've been complaining about fathers on their maternity wards using the place like a hotel.

What's been your experience of being a new father trying to be involved with your partner and your new baby? Now on Monday evening I recorded my teenage diary which will be broadcast at the end of June. It was for me a period of grappling with parental disapproval of long straight hair, Mary Quant eyeliner and the shortest of short skirts. And that was the 60s and the sexual revolution. The term teenager was coined in the 1940s in America and every decade has brought new fashions and cultures from then to now.

Well, there's an exhibition which is about to tour the country called Grown Up in Britain, put together by the Museum of Youth Culture. Kay was, like me, a teenage girl in the 60s, and to be a mod was when I was standing on Derby Marketplace and there were rows and rows of lambrettas and they were all decorated either with a Union Jack or lots of ridiculous mirrors on the front and seating and that. And I noticed the slightly older girls and boys and what they were wearing and their hair

cuts and it so impressed me I thought you know this is what I want to be I want to be part of this the girls the mod girls were wearing the mini kilts or the mini skirts or the a-line shift dresses and the new American tan tights that were coming out, flat shoes as ankle straps, white trench coats in the summer and long leather coats, which are very practical if you're sitting on the back of a scooter in all weathers. The haircuts were usually a very strong bob or a long bob, very Cathy McGowan-ish.

And the new designers that were coming out, Mary Kwan and Ozzie Clark, and they all seemed to be so ahead and so fashionable and nothing had been seen like that before. And I really thought, you know, I'm going to save up and buy that dress. I'm going to buy that leather coat. It was a time of being well-dressed, male and female.

Before the Mod Era came out, we sort of had to dress in a shortened, cut-down version of our parents, i.e. the late 50s. And this generation, we were literally saying, this is ours, this is what we want to wear, so we'll wear it. Every morning I get up and it would be the same routine, the foundation, the pale foundation, the Mary Quant double-sided lipstick, which had a colour on one side and a clear lip gloss on another, which was amazing.

And then you'd put your pale lips on. And then to make your bottom eyelashes look a little bit fuller, you would actually do what we call the downers, which was like with your little brush, you'd paint in little eyelashes. So I'd get dressed up and I'd usually put on my little A-line mini with a chunky belt, my big Ben watch, and my skinny red polo neck jumper, my tights, my flat shoes,

and my trench coat if it was raining or my leather coat. My hair was short and cut across the ear geometrically so it was very easy and the blow drying had really just come in before that it was like very much a shampoo and sets heated rollers or going to bedding rollers so you got into that routine and then I think literally people saw you and thought yeah you know what she's a mod and I think it was just a... You wanted to be different, but at the same time we all must have looked the same. The King's Road was the scene, was the place to be,

and that was in London. And so very, very often you'd hear on the radio, really, the pirate radio, about what was going off in London and the King's the king's road and kensington high street and that and viva london really did swing i would say that the towns and the city outside sort of slightly swayed i mean it was still restricted by certain things like we didn't have the shops as i say and we didn't have the small sizes that probably they had in London. In Derby, it would basically be the marketplace and you would

stand on the marketplace, it was all flood-littered and you would see and be seen. And obviously all the cars, the minis, the Mini Coopers and the Lambrettas would be parked on the marketplace and the lads would come and walk across with the helmets in their hands and

the parkers and that, and the girls would sit and talk. We had a coffee bar. The coffee bar scene was just beginning, and it was called a Bocasio, so you could go and have a coffee there, or for the price of a Coke, you could actually see what was going on and see the latest fashions. The kind of music that we liked, it was a two-faction thing. Sometimes it would be a popsy thing, like I would call it Manfred Mann. The Who, definitely The Who, Roger Daltrey.

I mean, he was just someone that year. Oh, yes, he was absolutely amazing, a top mod. Then you'd have Herman's Hermits, and you'd have The Foremost, The Four Pennies. And then you'd go to the, the four pennies, and then you'd go to the other side of the coin and it would be the soul thing. Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin. I mean, oh, God, Aretha Franklin, she just filled the dance floor. But the real lady of soul that sang soul to me

was Dusty Springfield and obviously Aretha Franklin. The thing is, the music came from your soul and your heart and when you went out at night, you blocked out all the adults. This was our music. As I say, whether it be a pop chart thing or whether it be a soul thing, this was our music and I literally got up to almost everything because you live for that scene.

I don't know what it is that makes me love you so almost everything because you live for that scene. I don't think there's a lot of adults who understood it. My parents were very strict Edwardian parents and they couldn't quite understand my miniskirts and the way I dressed. And I think they let me get on with it, apart from getting in on time at 11 o'clock. They were quite strict. Work colleagues, I think they used to make me go up the ladder a lot and i thought about that afterwards and i thought yeah that was because i had the miniskirt done i wasn't that bothered

about what the adults think i was quite a free spirited girl i know at school when i just left school at 15 i know that certain songs were banned and i can't remember which ones they were because they were seen to be a bit liberal. And yes, I did do different things. I did stay out till 11 o'clock, which was late for a lot of adults. Yes, I did wear the short skirts and whatever. And yes, I did want to watch Top of the Pops, even though my mother and father used to protest.

I think they just let us get on with it, because it wasn't really a bad generation. And Kay rings lots of bells with me for obvious reasons. You couldn't get to Bieber from Barnsley. But what faced teenage girls in later decades? Well, Dr Ruth Adams is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries at King's College London. Lisa de Véreve is the archive project manager at the Museum of Youth Culture. What was the inspiration, Lisa, behind Grown Up in Britain? Well, the Museum of Youth Culture comes from this amazing

archive of photography that chronicles, you know, young people throughout the decades. And it tells a really amazing story but when we went out there and did exhibitions we met people that would have you know one photograph or just this amazing story to tell of when they were younger and we just realized that actually to build a museum of youth culture that's truly representative we need to get as many voices in as possible and that's where Grown Up in Britain came from to really go out there and meet as many people as we can to get those stories. Ruth, Kay mentioned Swinging London which as I said I never managed to get to but how revolutionary were the teens of the 60s and that whole Swinging London idea? Oh very much think um as as k mentioned in sort of previous

generations like my mother's generations there wasn't teenage fashion there wasn't really a period between childhood and and adulthood you you left school you wore adult clothes you you got married so it was really a sort of like a new period in people's lives. And there were clothes and fashions that celebrated that. And with the advent of Mary Quant, fashions became more comfortable, more liberating. The skirts were shorter, the hair was less set. You could get ready more quickly. You could run and dance in comfort.

I mean, my mum's generation were in permanent discomfort, going to bed in rollers and spending hours in the hairdressers and Liberty bodices. So I think that the freedom that the clothes gave was reflected in sort of broader freedoms. How significant was punk for girls in the 70s? Oh, really significant, I think, because it was really the first subculture where girls were down the front to some extent because in the Teddy Boys and the Mods and the Rockers, girls had been taking a back seat quite often,

literally on the backs of motorbikes and scooters. But punk was really the first subculture that sort of enabled women to not be an accessory of the boys. They were their own people, and they were really defying sort of conventional ideas of sort of feminine beauty and behaviour. The idea of being ladylike went completely out the window. And what came to the fore in the 80s?

The 80s, well, we had new romantics and the Sloan Ranger, I suppose. And the 80s, I guess, was a pretty aspirational decade. But also you had a hangover of punk with goth and the emergence of rave culture in the late 80s, which was a whole new sort of like kind of freedom. Rave, I suppose, really came to the fore in the 90s, almost as a political movement. How political was it? It was pretty political.

I mean, and it was politicised, because rave and rave music was the first subculture to be sort of explicitly outlawed. Literally, the Criminal Justice Act that came in in 1994, I think, banned groups of people listening to music, but banned groups of people listening to a very specific groups of people listen to a very specific type of music that was characterized by repetitive beats so the laws wouldn't wouldn't sort of like bring things like Glyndebourne into trouble but it did allow them to clamp down on raves so there was a lot of pushback against this and really you see the sort of like the echoes of the hippie counterculture and the punk movement really all coming together as a resistant movement in rave culture. Lisa, where would you say teen culture is today?

It's so difficult to tell. I mean, there's always things going on. You know, we sometimes get told, young people aren't really doing anything anymore. but young people always find a way to carve out a space for themselves and to rebel but I think probably the biggest change that's happened in youth culture is the fact that so much is digital now um I was an emo when I was growing up and that was kind of the first youth culture movement that really took advantage of social media and using camera phones and since then kind of you know the digital culture has really played a big role in it but you know young people are always doing amazing things where would you say it is now then ruth um again i think it's very much on online rather than on the street so it may not be apparent to

to sort of like the to the older generation. But I think in some ways it's quite difficult for young people to rebel because it's quite hard to be more outrageous than their parents or their grandparents' generation now. I mean, they've got quite a lot of hard work to do to outrage anybody these days. But I think things like sort of like the climate strikes and extinction rebellion we're seeing you know really quite quite young teenagers getting involved in in sort of progressive political action now. Now throughout the decades we've

talked about we've seen feminism and female friendly cultures becoming more apparent what is it now how feminist and female friendly is it now i think it depends really i think it depends on the cultures and i think there's there's sort of quite um amongst certain young women there's there's an unfortunate amount of sort of ambivalence and even hostility to feminism but also i think I think, with the rise of Me Too, you are seeing sort of pushback against sort of, like, entrenched sexism in youth culture. And, Lisa, how are you hoping that people will get involved in your archiving project? We just want everyone to submit their stories, you know.

Everyone's got a story to tell, you know. Your youth and when you're growing up is such an important period in your life. And it's something that never really leaves you because it shapes who you are as an adult and you know, what you're interested in and how you view the world. So everyone's got a story to tell. Everyone's got photographs. And what we want is everyone to get involved and share those stories with us. So when we do open the Physical Museum of youth culture you know we have so many voices coming through i was talking to lisa de verve and dr ruth adams on being the captain of the england women's rugby team i was talking to catherine spencer about mud mall and mascara

and claire liggin said on twitter me and a friend set up a women's rugby team at Bristol University in the late 80s. Initially, the men's team would come out and disrupt our training sessions in protest at women playing their sport. Eventually, they realised we were serious and actually quite good. So they accepted us.

Lots of you responded to the discussion about domestic service today kathy said on email after many years as an expat in countries where housemaids are common here's my recipe for a good relationship with your staff they are staff and not your friends they require clear instructions and boundaries. These should be very specific. If areas of your house require privacy, office and bedroom, put locks on the doors and clean them yourself. Provide a worksheet of jobs that get done daily, weekly and as required. Do not require them to do non-cleaning work like gardening.

Always have a written contract and pay on time. Ask for advance warning if they can't be there. This is a tried and trusted method. I've had some amazing domestic staff over the years. Lisa said on email, I have a degree but choose to clean private houses. It's well paid and you have freedom to pick your hours. I love my customers.

I'm respected and treated like family. And if I'm not, I leave and find another family to work for as there is plenty of work out there. Heather said on email, When I was growing up, I'm in my early 60s, my mother cleaned for other people, including at one point my school teacher. She was a stay-at-home mum and this was her way of earning a bit of ready cash. I always felt slightly uncomfortable but it was her choice, her decision. When I had my own children I decided to

work part-time in my career and that I would pay someone to clean my house. I'm now approaching early full-time retirement and having to decide whether to pick up the cleaning again after nearly 30 years of hardly touching the vacuum cleaner or just if I'm continuing to pay someone else. Decisions, decisions. Annie said on email, Home cleaning is a useful and respected job.

It also creates work opportunities with some flexibility for those who take them on. Surely the issue to be addressed is the working conditions, including payment for this work. Twice I've benefited from the services of a cleaner at home for extended periods of time. They improved my life and I hope that they would agree that they were well treated. The bottom line is about communicating properly with the person who is willing to undertake work that you wish to have done. It's about being clear and honest with each other about expectations on both sides. And then the short history of the teenage girl, Tracy said in an email, I was part of the second generation of mods and I'm now in my 50s. We stayed out till 6am and I was not on the back of a scooter. I had my own, as did some

other girls. Tomorrow we'll be discussing the response to the outbreak of the coronavirus, which assumes that men and women are affected in the same way by epidemic and pandemic disease. But according to Dr. Claire Wenham, assistant professor in global health policy at the London School of Economics, that is simply not true. And she will be explaining why. Join me tomorrow live if you can at two minutes past 10. Until then, bye-bye. If you're listening to some other podcast, then stop now and listen to a good one,

because the Infinite Monkey Cage is back for a new series, and we're doing loads of things, aren't we, Robin? We're going to be dealing with the science of laughter, conspiracy theories, coral reefs, quantum worlds, and finally UFOs. I love UFOs. It's also, by the way, the UFO one available to watch on iPlayer. In fact, all of the series that we've done

are available on BBC Sounds. I must say that I wouldn't bother with the first series. I don't think it's very good. I wouldn't bother with the first two. Yeah. But we were played by different people then, I think, weren't we? Yeah, yeah.

Melvin Bragg was you. You were Debbie McGee. Debbie McGee. Bragg and McGee. Now that is a 1980s TV detective series that I will be making. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. 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. Available now.