Woman's Hour - Monica Lewinsky Revisited: A new generation learn about the political scandal of the 1990s

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

Monica Lewinsky is a name that most people will know. But for a whole new generation of women, including younger millennials who were children at the time, the details of US President Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and the 1998 impeachment proceedings it led to may be unfamiliar. Impeachment: American Crime Story on BBC Two, aims to reframe the Clinton scandal from the perspective of the women it engulfed. Jessica Creighton talks to Jessica Bennett from the New York Times and Sarah Baxter, former deputy editor of The Sunday Times. Ahead of the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, COP26 starting this Sunday, Zaqiya Cajee, a pre-loved fashion advocate and Mikaela Loach climate justice activist and 5th year medical student talk about how to engage people on climate change action and their hopes for the conference. Nisha Katona, founder of the Mowgli Indian street food restaurants talks about her new book, setting up in business and her role with the government's newly formed Hospitality Council that aims to help the sector recover post pandemic. And we all know we should be doing our pelvic floor exercises: babies or no babies, young or old. But do we do them? Elaine Miller who's a pelvic physiotherapist based in Edinburgh is so passionate about getting women to do their exercises she does a stand-up gig about them; wears a giant vulva costume, and wants you to count-down to Christmas with a daily squeeze and lift. She says exercises can truly improve your pelvic floor, and in turn prevent all types of problems that you’d never think would be linked to a weak pelvic floor. Presenter: Jessica Creighton Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Engineer: Gayl Gordon

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Jessica Crichton. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Now, a new BBC drama portraying former US President Bill Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky is introducing a whole new generation of women and girls to this infamous scandal. Now, when the affair first came to light in 1998, Lewinsky was vilified by the media and suffered with PTSD as a result. We'll be discussing whether the narrative for women caught up in these situations is now better in 2021,

and the importance of women reclaiming their own narratives. Also, we'll be hearing the views of two young climate change activists ahead of what could be the pivotal COP26 conference this weekend. We'll be discussing their concerns, their hopes and the scepticism they've encountered from adults in this area. Plus, how many times have you been advised to do your pelvic floor muscle exercises? I know I have. One physiotherapist feels so passionate about women doing them and doing them correctly that she's created a stand up comedy routine about it where she dresses up as a vulva. You will have to dig out that photo, honestly. And after a boost for the hospitality sector in the recent budget, we'll be joined by restaurant owner Nisha Katona to discuss how she's managed to buck the trend and actually expand her chain of Mowgli restaurants during the pandemic. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts throughout the programme. You can text Woman's Hour on 84844.

Text will be charged at your standard message rate. Check with your network provider for exact costs. And on social media, it's at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us through our website. Now, first this morning, a recent BBC investigation found more than 220 female judges were living in hiding because they feared retribution from Taliban rule. As the situation for women in Afghanistan worsens, Baroness Talena Kennedy QC has managed to evacuate 103 women judges, prosecutors and activists with their families from the country. They are currently safe in Greece. But according to Helena and her team of pro bono lawyers, their situation remains uncertain. And Helena joins me now. Very good morning to you.

Welcome to Woman's Hour. Just give us an idea of what the situation is and what these women have been through, Helena. Well, you have to remember that during the Taliban, there were no women being judges and no women able to perform in any kind of professional capacity. And after the ouster of the Taliban, women were brought back into the legal system and able to go to university and train and some of them became judges and it was I'm I now I'm the director of an institute of human rights for the international bar association and we were involved in setting up a bar association and in training programs out there in Afghanistan and so these women then became women in the courts that were dealing with issues like violence against women, things that became outlawed, child marriage, forced marriage,

trafficking in women, abuse of women generally. And so these things were coming before the courts that were being administered by women and the the prosecutors were women, to be sensitive to the cultural needs of the women who were bringing their complaints. And so as a result, these women, as soon as the Taliban got back in, they emptied the prisons of many of the men that these women had jailed, and they made it very clear that they were coming after the women. And two women judges, of course, were assassinated in January of this year, two women on the Supreme Court by Taliban men. And so it was a forewarning of what was to come. And the women have had to go into hiding. Some of them at that time, when I first was speaking to them on the phone, were in the basements of their houses hiding and then were moved with help to save houses. I should make it clear that the team of lawyers that I've been working with on this are a young team of lawyers who work at the Institute of Human Rights of the IBA. So we've

really been receiving these calls and the International Association of Women Judges, of course, were wanting to get these women out and knew these women. And so we collaboratively, we then got to work as a sort of team that could do this to try to get them out. So that's how it came about. The women are in mortal danger for their lives. There are still women back there in Afghanistan that need to be got out. We've been involved with assistance because we identified charter plane companies that might make this possible. And so the cost of charter planes is huge, let me tell you, monumentally huge because of the risk and insurance involved. But we've managed to airlift out, first of all, a few weeks ago, as a sort of first run, 26 judges we got out with their families.

So it was 130 people. And we got that group out to Athens because the president of Athens is herself a lawyer and had been a judge. And we had managed to get through to her. And she spoke to the cabinet in Athens. And they agreed to receive this plane. And Greece has been wonderful. They provided accommodation and food for those women.

We've managed to get 16 of the families out to other countries, none to Britain yet, I have to say, but we've managed to get some of them out to Brazil, to Ireland has been very, very good. And we've got them and some to Iceland and to different places. But we need, we then went on to the business of getting out some more. And Jessica, I flew out to Athens because Athens had said that they would take that first flight. But I went out and because I was getting so many calls, I went out and saw the minister of immigration and pleaded with him to accept another flight. And he agreed with me, but said, look, we're inundated with refugees. They've got islands are full of refugees from Syria, from the Mediterranean boats and so on. We know about this

from what the island of Lesbos is packed full of a camp where there are refugees. And so he said, we can't keep taking more refugees. And so basically I did a deal with him that if he let us land there, that we would meet the costs of accommodating another set of women judges and their families and that we would get them out. And so I've got two months to get these people out and resettled in other countries. And that's positive. That's very, very positive. After these women have been through such traumatic experiences, and you've mentioned a couple of governments that have helped,

but I wonder why it's falling on you and your team of lawyers to bring this evacuation about. Where are the government agencies or the charities that could help in this situation? Well, listen, there are others involved in in getting people out um we've you know there's there's there's a few women that are in a in Abu Dhabi that were got out on a flight um that was taking out religious minorities and and some of the women judges got onto that flight so there are about I think there are about five judges in Abu Dhabi um some women judges got

through on the road link um and and were helped to do that to into Pakistan we've been helped and I can't of course disclose some of the ways in which we've been helped by people who've helped us on the ground but it's why have governments not well you know the position is that there probably isn't a government around just now that isn't promising that they're going to deal with immigration and keep a tight rein on it. But this is not, these are not migrants. And these are people fleeing for their lives. This is, you know, this is Schindler's List time.

These are women who are going to be killed. And we have an absolute duty and not to let happen what happened in the past. We have to save the lives of these women and their families. These are highly educated, skilled people who can contribute to the countries to which they will come. Their husbands are also educated men who are happy to be with women who are holding professional roles. So they're not old fashioned, you know, men who keep women in a burqa. These were these are people who will contribute to any country that would take them. We have asked the Home Office for a statement about this particular situation.

But what more would you like to see them do helena well um i would like i mean obviously the uk has taken already people who were connected to the uk people from the our diplomatic mission from the embassy there who people from the from uh different um uh operations that were working with the military and so on translators and stuff so they've also had to give accommodation to people who were here studying they've had to basically say to them that we'll give you asylum, you know, because they can't go back if they've been out in the West and studying. So they've taken in 15,000 people. But it's not going to be hard to take in some of these women and their families. And why not set up a community scheme where there could be community sponsorship, where churches or communities or universities could say, we will take somebody and we will look after them and make that possible that way too. everywhere and anyone of influence who can help us with the challenge, because also we're having to feed and accommodate people in Athens just now. But the real urgency is offers of help and

resettlement around the world. And what will happen to these women once, if, as you say, they're able to come to the UK? How will they settle in? How will they adjust? What opportunities lie here for them? Well, that's why I think that it's very important to have community sponsorship, because there's nothing better than these women being able to be in places where there might be other Afghanis, but also where we'll get support and from the legal community, which has been very, you know, responsive to this. We've got a responsibility as lawyers to protect judges who have much greater difficulty in protecting themselves. You know, lawyers can do some of the things that judges

can't do. And so we've really got a duty to help them. But the other thing is that what the minister in Greece has said to me is, if in two months, I've got basically seven more weeks now, if you can't get them out by that time, I'm afraid, hell, you know, they're going to have to apply for asylum here and I'm going to have to put them into camps. Now, I don't want, I mean, you know, if anybody, I mean, I'm sure that any journalist or anybody who's ever visited the camps that Greece has had to create, they're like prisons. We can't let that happen to these women. We encourage these women to step into these roles because we wanted Afghanistan to become a democracy reflecting the rule of law and protect the rights of other women. So we can't do that to these women. They deserve better. And I hope that we will get a response, not just from our government, but from governments around the world.

Thank you, Helena. We have just received a statement from a home office spokesperson who says the UK's evacuation operation helped over 15,000 people to safety, including British nationals, Afghan interpreters and other vulnerable people. Whilst the success of that operation exceeded assumptions, we know that there are many left in extremely difficult circumstances. And of course, if you want to hear more about the work that Baroness Helena is doing, please visit the Woman's Hour website. Helena, thank you for joining us on the programme. Thank you. Now, the hospitality sector received a much needed boost in the budget this week

with the Chancellor offering a temporary cut to business rates Many pubs, clubs and restaurants have had to close as a result of the pandemic but for one restauranteur she's managed to buck that trend Nisha Katona used all of her savings to open up her first Mowgli Indian street food restaurant in Liverpool back in 2014 and is soon about to open her 14th with more to follow. Nisha is a member of the government's newly formed Hospitality Sector Council that aims to help guide the government's strategy following the pandemic. And she's just written a book called 30 Minute Mowgli, which is full of Indian inspired dishes. Very good morning to you, Nisha.

Very good morning. Sounds exhausting. I'm ready to go back to bed now. Honestly, I was thinking, do you have the same 24 hours in a day as the rest of us? We'll come to your busy lifestyle in just a moment. But first, I think it's important to note, isn't it, that the Chancellor has announced that shops, restaurants and bars in England will receive a temporary 50% cut in their business rates. And of course, next year's annual rates increase has been scrapped for a second year in a row as well. How much do you think that will actually help the hospitality industry? It helps a great, great deal because there's going to come a time very soon when enormous bills are going to have to be paid.

Because what happened during the pandemic is that lots of costs were deferred. So rents, for instance, there were negotiations that were made that then allowed a little bit of a rent breathing space. So all of those are about to come back and bite us now. So having any kind of respite from the other overheads is so very helpful. I can't tell you. It is absolute oxygen. And remember, we're in the business of creating jobs. This is the very time when we need to, you know, rekindle the economy in every way.

And that kind of allowance really helps us do that. So for that, we are grateful. There's a lot more to be done. But right now, this is a moment of real hope so that we can get on with what we're good at, which is getting those people back into work and creating fantastic careers. Now, as I mentioned, you're one of the experts on this new government hospitality sector council, which has been set up to, I suppose, help aid recovery following the pandemic. How will that help exactly?

Goodness, it's fantastic because what this is, is a formal council where we co-create solutions for hospitality. This is government and hospitality, that sector that's always just been seen as restaurants and pubs. It's almost this ignominious sector. Suddenly we are walking hand in hand together towards a future where we can come up with solutions that work for both of us um things like raising the profile of the skills and jobs in hospitality at a point like this where the real recruitment problem that is so important that's why it's good of you to have

me on um you know i really appreciate that because here here i am as a as a woman that came into it so late as an entrepreneur that came to it at 43 years of age with no business experience you know people like me need to be out there talking about what a splendid sector this is to come and work in so so that's part of it but it's also things like you know we need we need and your program's going to deal with this today we need to build better greener more you know more innovation and have that really very solid financial foundation so that this is a sector that does not sway when there will be and there will be other headwinds that we face. But we need to be something that is veritable and a place where people want to come and work and stay. Wow. It's interesting that you describe the industry as splendid.

10% of workers have disappeared from this very industry in the past year. How do you attract them back when it's notoriously associated with low pay and very long hours it's right and it's not only that if i'm honest jessica it's not just the low pay in the long hours it's much more profound than that and this is what i sort of dedicated my life to it has when you come to work you need to feel nourished purposeful and fulfilled for me building these restaurants, it's not just, you know, a peddling of curry that we do. It's creating a place where people would rather be often than being at home. And it's things like that. So if you have, yes, there are long hours in hospitality, but actually we can monitor that. So,

for instance, in our restaurants, if anyone works over 45 hours, we personally in head office will find out and we want to know why. So we can marshal, actually, the pressures upon our own people. We can limit how much they work or if they want to work more, we want to understand why they want to do that. Low pay is not OK. Low pay is not OK. It's right that people need to be able to survive and to live well from the pay that they receive. But if we make these places more attractive, where people come in and they're not brutalised, you know, I think hospitality has had a dreadful reputation in terms of the brutality of kitchens, in terms of the hours that you speak of, just the lack of emotional wellbeing that takes place when you walk into that place of work.

We in hospitality have a duty to change that. And that's what we need to talk about. You know, we need to grasp that nettle. So assuming that the pay within Mowgli is competitive. Yes, of course, it has to be. And what's so wonderful. So and of course, you know, tips don't even come into this. We, I mean, we strive to be sort of the best paying, you know, restaurant in the industry. At a time like this, honestly, it is so difficult to recruit. And if we can't recruit, we can't serve. If we can't serve,

we can't build a bottom line that allows us to build the chain, that enables us to build more sites and create more jobs. And when that's your aim in life, is this sort of enrichment of society by creating those jobs. We've got to pay people well so that we are competitive. We need people to be knocking our door down to come and work for us.

And there's only so much I can do. There's only so much we can try to do that. But if we all tried to do that, we would make hospitality a better place. It's a tricky one, isn't it? Because right now there are other pressures. For instance, central London, where everyone hasn't quite come back to work. You know, it's all very well me saying this i'm outside of london i opened my first london site you know in about a week and i haven't been to london before that everything else is provincial and that's i think really important and has been a great help to moley um but you know there are those pressures just in terms of footfall there are pressures it is down

so this is the this is why those external helps that come from government, etc., are really important when actually the top line isn't coming in. And yet we need to pay our people really well. And of course, we need to pay our people really well. So how have you managed to do this then, Nisha? How have you managed to buck the trend when so many restaurants are struggling, so many restaurants have actually had to shut down? You've actually expanded your chain of Mowgli's. Do you know, this is this, so much of this comes down to where I chose my restaurants to be. For instance, I started this chain and we're now building my 18th restaurant in Liverpool in a little street that nobody else would go to because nobody would have me. I was a barrister for 20 years. And it was, when I when I changed you know I thought well I'll start this restaurant because this is my passion people thought I was having a

midlife crisis it was crazy nobody would lend me money they just thought you're a 40 year old woman with no business experience we're not going to lend you a penny you're obviously just going through some crisis you know get yourself some tablets or whatever so I chose a very cheap location and that has been my business model. I choose restaurants where the rents are affordable. So my restaurant in Liverpool to have the equivalent size in the centre of London would be eight times the rental income. Can you imagine? Which means great, I could have one temple to capitalism in the capital, but never build another one because all of my, you know, the whole profit would go into rent. So that's been partly the help that's helped, you know, just give me that sort of financial buoyancy.

I also brought to it my kind of ideas of domestic husbandry. You know, in my own home, I'll always have enough in my bank account to, you know, we have another lockdown or whatever. And it's the same for Mowgli. If she locks down for another year, she will survive. I will always build her with that circumspect kind of jud know judicious anxiety really when it comes to the bank account yeah so so those are the things that have helped and having food that is addictive that's the point you've got to have food tasty food tasty food that they need and can afford that's really important it helps um now you mentioned when you first started on this journey, you were 43 and looking for some someone or some some business to fund you. How difficult was it for a woman of that age to get into business and take the first steps on the ladder to becoming an entrepreneur?

No, it was in terms of any external help. I think the word might be impossible. It was impossible. It was it was to the point that when you did go to your bank, which I did, I banked with the same bank as a barrister for 20 years, exemplary bank accounts. When I came to them wearing this new mantle, this new desperate mantle of an entrepreneur, if anything, you were more demoralized. If anything, you came away thinking, am I doing the right thing? And that is what is so tragic. We have this scene of women, my age, my stage of life, where you think the next, you know, children have flown the nest. You think the next great hurdles in life are the menopause and bereavement. That's it. And it's not the case.

It is so exciting that we bring with us these skills, these abilities to manage people, to understand, you know, the emotions of your workforce. And you bring a very unique way of building businesses. And that was almost demolished on the journey to trying to get some cash together. So I had to use all my savings. I remember my brother bought my first set of pounds. I was still a practicing barrister. We were going to sell the house because that was the only way I could create Mowgli. And still my skin is in the game. And it's so interesting because, you know, I'm not sure it's completely changed yet. I went to try and get a mortgage the other day from the very same bank

that said, sorry, we're not lending to anyone in hospitality. You know, you're at the age of 50, which happened about two weeks ago. I came away completely crushed thinking all along, this is something that is innoble all along. This is a, you know, this is something that is fragile. It was a real eye-opening moment, that. So your hearts need to go out to people in our sector right now. Yeah. You'd think with 18 restaurants, that would be all right. So it is very interesting. That is not something that has gone away. Clearly not an easy thing to do, but you are making a success of it. And best of luck with your new book, 30 Minute Mowgli as well. Nisha Katone, it's been a pleasure to speak to you this morning. Thank you for coming on the programme.

Thank you. Now, if you were listening on Friday last week, you will have heard former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and award-winning author Louise Penny talk about the new book, State of Terror. The two women also spoke about how their friendship, along with their mutual friend Betsy, led to them deciding to collaborate and pen the novel together. You know, our friendship really started because of Betsy.

It deepened because of Betsy. And then with Betsy's passing, we obviously, you know, fall end of 2019, our agents reached out to us and said, have you ever thought about writing a thriller and writing it with the other? And I have to confess, I had, you know, I've never written fiction, I was somewhat apprehensive, I didn't want to do anything that was, you know, beyond my capacity to do. And I didn't want to, in any way, endanger my friendship with Louise. And she had a different set of issues, one of which is that she'd written, you know, these amazing books, but always on her own, never with a collaborator. No, no, no, exactly. It was completely, I had no idea how to write with a collaborator and generally when I

write nobody sees it except me until it gets like the five or sixth because my first drafts are soft and smelly they are soft and smelly they are really bad so I thought now Hillary is going to see how awful I am and I often think of it as like a tennis you know you go from playing singles to suddenly having to play doubles. And I thought, I am going to hit Hillary Clinton on the back of the head with tennis balls for like six months. And even worse, she's going to be hitting me. Brilliant. Now, Hillary Clinton there and Louise Penny talking about their friendship and how that led to them working together. Has this ever happened to you? Have you decided to start a business or collaborate on a work project with a long-term friend? How did it go? Was it a good idea or perhaps you ended up

regretting it? Did it make or break your friendship? I would love to hear your experiences. Get in touch with Woman's Hour 84844 on the texts and on social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour or as always you can email us through our website. Now, are you someone who's interested in environmentalism? Perhaps you're a young person who struggles to get others to take your interests seriously. Well, ahead of the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, which starts this Sunday, we wanted to find out how young climate change activists speak to adults who aren't interested, what their issues are and their hopes for COP26.

Well, let's speak to some environmental activists, shall we? They are Sakia, who is 18 and an advocate for pre-loved fashion. She set up Swap It Up, which encourages young people to use their creativity to protect the planet and encourages secondary schools to set up clothes swaps to fight fast fashion. She's also one of BBC Biteside's new Regenerators, which is a brand new environmental initiative from BBC Education. Also joining us is Michaela Loach.

She was 23 years old, a climate justice activist and fifth year medical student based in Edinburgh, who is currently taking the UK government to court for their support of North Sea oil and gas. She was also on our 2020 Women's Hour Power List. A very good morning to you both, Sakhira and Michaela. Good morning. Now, Michaela, I'll start with you because we're just two days away now from the start of COP26. How are you feeling about it all? Oh, so many different emotions, I think.

And I'm heading up to Glasgow today. I hope that there's been landslides on the train line seems like everything is getting in the way but we're going to make it happen it's been such a long time and this has been such a long time coming I'm definitely nervous about what will happen whether we will get anything resembling climate justice whether we'll get the pledges that we need from governments globally whether our movements movements will really be able to meet together, whether COVID will get in the way. There's so many different things to be thinking about. But I'm mostly just excited to be in a space with so many other brilliant activists, because it's been such a long time since we've been able to be physically together.

Okay, excitement for Michaela. Sakia, what about yourself? Are you excited? And are you hopeful? I mean, there have been quite a few things that have been seen as both negative and positive in the run up to COP. Just little announcements to do with the commitments that we're starting to see from countries. One positive thing, though, that has come out is that we've heard that the big polluters are not going to be given a seat at the table during COP so that is a massive kind of win and so it's starting to see some positive things which is making it seem a bit more hopeful but there's so many more things that we need to do it's not just about who's at the table it's also about the things that we're discussing and we need to be sticking more to a 1.5 degrees increase in warming rather than 2 degrees,

and preferably lower than that if possible. But, you know, let's be realistic, 1.5 degrees. The IPCC report in 2018 showed us what would happen beyond that, and it's devastating. So it just, our promises from governments around the world need to be more in line with that. What would you like to see happen, Michaela? Oh, there's a lot of things I'd like to see. A lot of them I'm not sure if they're actually going to happen. But I think one thing that's really important I think that we need to talk about is a commitment to loss and damage. So basically what that means is getting governments all around the world to just accept and commit to financing for the harm that's

already been caused because we talk a lot about adaptation and mitigation but how horrendous is it that countries like the UK and the US and other industrialized nations have caused so much harm to so many countries all over the world that they've also previously colonized and then have this idea that oh we should be able to pollute and you guys just have to adapt. And maybe we'll help you a little bit with the finance of that, but actually we'd rather not. Actually, there's so much harm that's been caused already by the climate crisis. I was born in Jamaica.

A lot of my family is still in Jamaica. And that island has been harmed by the UK through colonialism historically and presently, and also through the huge amount of emissions that this country emits. And then how it's harming Jamaica. I've back um in recent years and seen beaches that i went to as a kid disappear completely because of sea level rise that's a really real thing and it actually breaks my heart and it makes me sad because i wonder about my family like how long will they be safe and that's a real real feeling and i think that the harm that's already been caused needs to be addressed and there needs to be a commitment from governments like the UK like the US European countries

and governments to paying back climate reparations to for the harm that's been caused as well as financing for this adaption or this mitigation but another thing that's important as well if if we want to actually have any sort of climate justice, is we need the UK and all these other countries to stop taking out oil and gas out of the ground. Such a simple thing. When we're talking about the climate crisis, we need to stop putting the emissions out, not just talking about net zero, which is not real zero. And given that the UK government is currently trying to push 40 new oil and gas projects through, it's important that we actually call that out as they're hosting COP26. And instead, we try and challenge them to be a world leader

in reality and stop oil and gas extraction now. And that's why I'm part of the paid to pollute court case. That's why I'm part of the Stop Cambo campaign as well. And these are things I think we need to be highlighting in this time when the spotlight is being put on the UK. Yes, yes, you've highlighted that very well there, Michaela. I do have a statement here from the Oil and Gas Authority. A spokesperson has said that we remain firmly of the view that the OGA strategy, which includes net zero requirements on industry, is the primary tool that the OGA has to hold industry to account on emission reductions, as well as ensuring a pace on essential energy transition projects, including carbon capture and storage.

Now, Sakiya, I wonder, Michaela has highlighted a number of issues there, but how much is this cut through into the general population, into the mainstream? How aware are people of the issues that they're facing in terms of climate change? I think that the general population knows a bit about climate change we generally will know the buzzwords but a lot of people don't necessarily know what the exact sort of language being used actually means and exactly kind of what you just said there I imagine that there's a lot of people listening

and have no clue what any of that means what that statement actually means and the language used around climate change climate change is something that's going to be affecting everyone so everyone deserves to know what we're facing and when language is used that we can't understand that puts a barrier in the way for people to actually access that and to actually be able to petition for change and to create change if we don't know what we're facing it's difficult to actually solve the problem and so ultimately what we need to be doing is breaking it down to basics and I thought what Michaela was saying was very much breaking down um I understood everything like there's no um there's no language in there that I didn't really understand and I'm sure there's still quite a lot of people

that might need to know a little bit more and to do with why net zero isn't the goal that we should be going for because ultimately that's to do with the amount of carbon that we absorb versus the amount of carbon that we put out and that is completely different in the sense of carbon that we absorb versus the amount of carbon that we put out and that is completely like different in the sense of that trees are part of which is to do with like deforestation and to do with reforestation planting trees is seen as a good way of kind of

balancing out um the carbon emissions but actually carbon emissions from fossil fuels is part of the long-term uh carbon cycle compared to the short-term carbon cycle the trees are part of they're completed although they are connected it's completely different ends to each other and so it's why it doesn't necessarily balance out in the way that it should and so when it comes back to the language being used we just need to be clearer so that more people can understand that more people can access it and more people can get involved when you're talking about this Michaela from adults in particular what's the response what's the reaction is there skepticism I mean I am an adult as well um yeah so I think I also sympathize with a lot of people from different generations who

climate change was not the priority there and i think so often um there's this division that's created between younger generations and older generations as if like older generations were just doing nothing and just sitting around in reality like there's been so many other issues that have been going on so many issues issues of injustice throughout the years and throughout generations that the older generations have been fighting. There was apartheid in South Africa, the civil rights movement, there was a Thatcher government. All of these things are things that older generations were having to fight. And for us as a younger generation, climate is the biggest thing that we're talking about. But it doesn't mean that people weren't fighting for that beforehand so i think that we need to kind of address that divide that's put there because i think that

division doesn't actually help any of us what we need is we need everyone on board everyone from all different generations and age groups and professions and everywhere to be on board with climate and in my experience talking to people of different generations i organize those people from those different generations i do activism with people who are like in their 70s 80s 50s full-step from every generation and so many people have been doing this work for so much longer than I have and many of many other young activists and when I do speak to I guess some other people who maybe aren't as aware of climate issues I think it's because there has been a huge investment by the fossil fuel industry into either like climate skepticism or complete climate denial or climate delay. I think that's something that I heard before they're going to be talking about on the programme at 11 o'clock.

But we need to also, I think, have sympathy for people who have been living through an age where the fossil fuel industry have ploughed millions, if not billions of pounds into making people skeptical about the existence of the climate crisis or about climate policy and therefore i think what we need to do is have more grace when we go into all of these situations and work out like oh how can we actually communicate about climate in a way that will engage people who maybe um have been um forced to deny it or to um be skeptical about it and how can we actually connect climate to something that someone else already cares about? Because that's the best way to go into a conversation,

not to try and force your ideals or your values on someone else, but instead think from what are their values and how does this connect to climate change? Because it will in so many different ways. Thank you both for explaining those issues and for just having a well-meaning debate, because I think we're going

to be having this conversation for many, many years to come. And if you are both heading to COP26, look after yourselves. And I hope something good comes out of it for you both, because I can tell that you're both excited about it and you both want some good to come of it. So, Sakiya and Michaela, thank you for joining Women's Hour this morning. Thank you. Thank you. Now, many of us probably know that we should be doing our pelvic floor exercises, whether you've had babies or not, whether you're young or you're old. But do we really actually do them? Well, Elaine Miller, who's a pelvic physiotherapist based in Edinburgh, is so passionate about getting women to do these exercises that she does a stand-up gig about them and wears a giant vulva costume and wants you to count down to Christmas with a daily squeeze and lift. Good morning Elaine, how are you?

Morning, I'm great, thank you for having me on Jessica. Ah absolute pleasure. Now I already feel a little bit guilty because I do not do my pelvic floor exercises. What am I missing out on? Well, it's really common that women don't do their pelvic floor exercises. It's a real challenge to try and get women to do it. And we don't really understand why, apart from women are generally very, very busy and it's hard to make time for this stuff. It's true that usually it's not until a woman has stress incontinence or a vaginal prolapse that's starting to interfere with her life that

she starts to pay attention to her pelvic floor which is totally fine because it's never too late. There's always opportunity for improvement but the benefits are that you just you know you don't wet yourself you don't poo yourself and it can improve your orgasms so that's quite good well I think a few people's interest there would have perked up certainly mine is motivating so why are you so keen on this area what's been your personal experience well I'm a pelvic health physiotherapist so it is my job and one of the frustrations I had in clinic was that women delay coming to get help and it's frustrating because physiotherapy is really effective for these problems. So six sessions of physiotherapy cures up to 83% of stress incontinence and we

also know that if women do pelvic floor exercises themselves three times a day for three months, about three quarters of them will be able to get dry on their own. Now, because there isn't an essential vehicle to educate women about this stuff, then basically nobody knows. Very few women know that the pelvic floor is important unless it's connected with having a baby. And they certainly don't know that pelvic floor physiotherapists are around so the problem with that is that the woman will the first thing she'll do she stopped if she wets herself if she stops drinking enough because she's worried about having an accident she goes to the toilet more often than she really needs to because she's worried about having an accident and those two things make her constipated and can irritate her bladder. It changes the way that her bladder happens. So then she becomes more leaky. And usually women just manage this on their own

until it becomes so that it's actually interfering with every single thing that they want to do. And this is in a condition that the World Health Organization said in 1996, I think, was largely preventable. So they stop exercising. Coronary heart disease is the biggest cause of premature death in women in industrialized countries and it interferes with their intimate life and it's associated with quite you know big issues like falls in older women. We know that if they're hurrying to the toilet and they fall some of these women break their hip and that doubles your risk of death in the year after you've fractured your hip. And it leads to women having to move into residential care, all of which could be prevented if we can sort a pelvic floor out 40 years earlier.

Wow. So profound effects. So how easy are they to do? How do you do them? Can I do them here sitting at this desk? You sure can. They're very easy. It's a bit though, like the problem is that a lot of women aren't confident if they're doing them correctly and it's quite hard to motivate yourself so there's been some studies done to find out what the best command is and um it's like comedy gold it just writes itself so one of them is imagine you're lifting your testicles to you so your testicles to your spectacles which works even if you don't have either testicles or spectacles i'm just trying to visualize the movement that that would require movement is the action of the pelvic floor as it squeezes and lifts so the best command is imagine

you're holding in uh can i say fart on Radio 4? I think you just did. Gas. I'll channel my inner Edinburgh posh lady some gas. So if you're trying to stop yourself, disgracing yourself in a lift, you will feel your back passage squeeze and lift. Like the two bits are important. It's no good if you just squeeze.

You've got to feel the lift as well. And if you do that, then that's a good pelvic floor contraction. And if you feel squeeze you've got to feel the lift as well and if you do that then that's a good pelvic floor contraction and if you feel it working anywhere whether it's at the front or the back it doesn't actually matter because the muscles work in all the areas each muscle does the same thing so you want to squeeze and lift and hold it for a count of 10 seconds and then relax and then you need to do 10 quick flicks in a row so they go like oh I'm going to release gas very unexpectedly oh it's going away oh no it's going to be embarrassing oh it's all right it's going away and you do 10 of those in a row so hold for 10 10 quick flicks three times a day for three months leads to 75% of women no longer wetting themselves my goodness that is really profound we've had an

email come in from david who says uh i think you should also point out that it's a very valuable exercise for the male population with regards to bladder control as well so um if people listening have men in their lives and in their families they can help with this as well yeah they should do and men often the prevalence of incontinence in men is lower when they're younger but as they get older and their prostate gland starts to misbehave then they can start to have problems and if they have surgery for the prostate then they will definitely have intervention and teach them about pelvic floor exercises and he's quite right it is important for too. But I'm concentrating on the women because it's the that's where my clinical experience is.

But certainly the men are very welcome to come to physio as well. Now, tell me about your comedy sketch where you dress up as a big vulva. I've seen a picture of this and it's fantastic, in my opinion. Anyone who wants to see that, please head over to the Women's Hour website and have a look. It's fantastic. Did you design that? Yeah, my friend made it for me because she's a smasher. I got this getting frustrated about women not coming into clinic. I had a hobby of stand up and a woman in clinic told me a story that was really funny about her wetting herself in a doorstep,

which is not a funny incident, but she was from from Glasgow so the way she told it was hilarious and I said to her can I use that for a sketch or at the comedy store at the comedy club and after I did this five minutes four women came up to me and said afterwards oh me too so they didn't know that I was a physio they didn't know I wasn't promoting pelvic health I was just telling a funny story so I wondered if maybe you could use comedy to access people and encourage them to to come in so I wrote this show called Gusset Grippers and did it at the Fringe thinking I would be on my own nobody why would anybody come and see a show about pelvic floors at lunchtime at the Fringe but it sold out and it got five stars and i was invited to the adelaide fringe and i won the comedy award at fringe world with congratulations i know i'm quite pleased mainly

because i have teenage children so when they say to me oh you're not funny mum i get to point at my ward and say i think i am absolutely brilliant well long may that success continue and thank you for what i feel like has been life advice for me, really important life advice. Elaine Miller, thank you for joining us on Woman's Hour this morning. Thanks for having me. Now, Monica Lewinsky is a name that many people will know, but a whole new generation of women who were children at the time and are now learning the details of the then US President Bill Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky back in 1998. Now, that's because of a new BBC TV drama called Impeachment,

which chronicles the scandal from the perspective of the women it impacted. So how would Monica Lewinsky's story be considered now? Well, let's find out from Jessica Bennett, who is New York Times editor at large, covering gender and culture and author of Feminist Fight Club, a survival manual for a sexist workplace, and Sarah Baxter, writer and former deputy editor of the Sunday Times. Good morning to you both. Good morning. First, before we get into the discussion, let's just hear a clip from Impeachment, actually,

where Monica Lewinsky, played by Booksmart's Beanie Feldstein, meets Bill Clinton, played by Clive Owen, for the first time. Didn't mean to catch you off guard. Mr. President, sorry, I was just... You don't have to apologise for doing your job. I'm Bill. I know. I'm Monica. I like your sweater, Monica.

Thank you. I guess I should head back. You can come in here for a second if you want. I'm just kind of hiding out. Now, Sarah, I'll start with you, because for those that don't know about this, just explain briefly the scandal that happened between Monica Lewinsky

and the then President Bill Clinton when this affair first came to light in about 1998. Well, it's quite a cringe listening back to that imagined scene. But I expect it was something very like that, because Monica Lewinsky was a young woman in her early 20s working as an intern in Bill Clinton's White House. And yeah, they ended up having a relationship, which then was leaked by enemies of Bill Clinton to be used against him. But it ended up embroiling Monica Lewinsky in an absolutely global scandal. And she was still very young. Bill Clinton went on TV and told the American public, I did not have sexual relations with that woman. But he had a very different definition of sexual relations to the rest of us.

Because by my definition, oh, yes, he did. And the rest of the world agreed. But it put Monica Lewinsky in a very difficult spotlight. It did. And I mean, the scale of this scandal was unprecedented. Her name, her face. It was absolutely everywhere for months, for years even. She's actually referred to herself as patient zero of Internet shaming. And of course, she's revealed that she suffered from PTSD as a result of the experiences. What was the narrative at the time?

What was it that she was going through? And why was it so different to anything we'd seen before? Well, this was way before the Me Too era had come about. And at the time, of course, it must be remembered, Bill Clinton was not only the president, but married. And she was very much seen as the sort of vixen who set her cap at the president. Famously, she was revealed to have flashed her thong at him as a signal that she was available. But of course, a lot of young women become obsessed with their boss.

And when they're the most powerful man in the world, you know, that has its own attraction. But frankly, all the blame was laid on her. It was actually called the Monica Lewinsky scandal, not the Bill Clinton scandal. And these days, of course, you look at that and you say, well, hang on a moment. He was the president. He was the most powerful man in the world, let alone, you know, your boss at the office with you.

What an abuse of power that was. And yet women, including feminists, rushed to defend Bill Clinton against this young woman who, as the series makes clear, thought that she was in love with him. Jessica, one of my first thoughts was, well, where were the feminists? Why were they not trying to protect, support what Monica Lewinsky was going through? I think that they knew that Bill Clinton had been relatively good on women's

issues. And this was tarnishing that. And so they didn't come out to defend. There was a famous interview in the New York Observer where, in fact, they're mocking Monica Lewinsky. They're talking about the way she looks. They're saying, oh, well, who wouldn't want to have an affair with Bill Clinton? And much like that clip we heard, it's pretty cringey to read. But I think that there was this sense that this would pass and that they should put their stock in the person who is going to to be better. And as Sarah said, you know, this is before Me Too. This was before we had a more sophisticated understanding of power dynamics at work. Now, having met Monica Lewinsky, Jessica, is the portrayal of her in impeachment accurate, would you say?

Oh, you know, it's a drama. It's a Ryan Murphy drama. So there are certain flourishes to it. I think she would say so. She was a producer on the show and that was really important to her and to the show because they wanted to get it right. And they wanted to show it through the perspective of these women. But how could they do that without actually advising the women? So I think she would say that it's emotionally honest, but there are certain things about it that are a little dramatized. Of course, as you might expect. Sarah, how important is it that Monica Lewinsky is able to almost reclaim

her own narrative? She was a producer on this very drama series, so she's able to inform the scripts. I think it's been psychologically very important to her. She sort of came out in a sense publicly about five years ago with a TED talk where she did talk about being that sort of patient zero of Internet shaming. And for years she couldn't get a job. People regarded her as that woman. She actually went into a semi-exile in London,

where, in fact, I met her once at a party because over in London, she felt a little bit safer. She was doing a course at the London School of Economics. One of the things to remember, of course, is that while she was slut-shamed, she was actually a pretty smart woman who had been clever enough to be an intern at the White House and do a master's at the LSE, etc.

But it became very hard for her to be anything but a subject of sexual ridicule. So telling her own story was important. I think it's interesting that Jemima Goldsmith was a producer on that programme. I think they knew each other from those London days as well. And of course, as Jemima Khan, she became globally famous for being married very young to the Pakistan cricket star, now prime minister of Pakistan. And I think they bonded over that global spotlight, often very uncomfortable on very young women. And as grown women, they've tried to shed that and get some agency back in their lives. That seems to be something that we're doing at the moment where we're reassessing women's stories

for a modern day lens. I think we've seen that, haven't we, Jessica, with Britney Spears and everything that she's been going through. Yeah, I think we are living in a cultural moment where, you know, one, we have a little bit more wisdom. And so we are looking back on things and in retrospect, you know, noticing how maybe they weren't covered so fairly. And I think in particular to these cases that, you know, were in journalism, Monica Lewinsky was patient zero for internet shaming in the sense that she was one of the first stories that was ever leaked on the internet, on the internet site Drudge Report, before even the magazines or the tabloids could get this story. And I think that we have more women working in media now. We have more young women who are

looking at this from a little bit more modern, sophisticated lens. And so, yeah, we're looking back on people like Britney Spears or Monica Lewinsky or Whitney Houston, you know, so many of these pop stars who were treated pretty unfairly at the time. And through a modern lens, it's almost hard to believe the way that they were spoken about and written about. So, Sarah, how do you feel this new generation are being introduced to Monica Lewinsky, perhaps for the first time? How would they view her now compared to how she was portrayed in 1998? Well, I think they'd view the power dynamic as very different. And certainly that sort of global shaming of her as totally unacceptable. And yet, you know, it carried on

until really recently. I mean, even women, I mean, the singer Beyonce wrote a song about he Monica Lewinsky'd all over my dress. And Monica Lewinsky rather wittily pointed out, she said, shouldn't that be Bill Clinton all over my dress? How come she was the person in that song, famously because of a blue dress with some DNA stains on it. But it was really, really one-sided and biased. And of course, it wasn't just Monica Lewinsky was hurt by all this, but Hillary Clinton, that dogged her campaign right up to 2016,

where she was standing as a presidential candidate. So that whole scandal went on to have a huge impact. And I think when young women look at that today, they think, oh my goodness, is that how un-sisterly women were at the time? And yeah, I have to say, at the same time, Monica Lewinsky was an adult. She was a very young person. But she did always say it was a consensual relationship with Bill Clinton. She didn't try to sugarcoat it in that way. And, you know, no doubt, you know, there are elements to it. You could say, well, you know, she really shouldn't have done that.

But but she didn't deserve that global shaming and pressure on her and almost exclusively on her as the woman at fault in the whole saga. Jessica, how would Monica be treated now if this happened in 2021? Well, I think we would call it the Bill Clinton affair, for starters. And I think we would immediately start talking about the power dynamics of the president of the United States having a relationship with an intern who was half his age. I think we'd have some more sophisticated conversations about why this occurred. Should it have occurred? Did it break policies? How is she being treated in the press? And, you know, one of the things to note, as Sarah was saying, she sort of lived in this box for more than a decade, trying to run away

from this past and over time realizing that she in fact had to integrate it into her identity, which she's struggled to do. And so even now, when we talk about how she's reclaimed her story, she's still talking about the same story. Impeachment is still, as she would put it, reliving the worst experience of her life from 1998. And so, you know, what is progress? Maybe progress would be if Monica Lewinsky didn't have to produce shows about that same experience in 2021. And just briefly, Sarah, I wonder, is this a sign of progress that this very drama centres on the female point of view?

Well, of course, it's good in many ways that it centres on the female point of view. But it still kind of lets the men off the hook, doesn't it? We're not really exploring their motives. And we're really looking at the internal world of the women involved, including somebody else who was really done in by the scandal. And that is Linda Tripp, brilliantly played by Sarah Paulson in a very controversial fat suit. But Linda Tripp was the so-called friend who betrayed Monica Lewinsky and taped her friend talking about her relations with the president and then handed it over to what Hillary Clinton called the vast right-wing conspiracy that aimed at bringing Bill Clinton down.

And, you know, Monica Lewinsky was just a tool in that. Linda Tripp's own life, something justified, was undoubtedly defined and ruined by that. But a lot of the men involved in the saga got off pretty scot-free, including some of them who were having affairs of their own at the time and yet were, you know, lip-smackingly puritanical about the whole business. Well, Sarah Baxter and Jessica Bennett, thank you for joining us on Woman's Hour. You can watch Impeachment. It's on Tuesday evenings on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer. That's all for Woman's Hour today. Woman's Hour on the weekend is back tomorrow.

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