Woman's Hour - Online scams, US election, Mary McCall Jr

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

The business owner Martha Keith found her products being sold fraudulently online. She tells Nuala how she set about trying to take control of the situation. Last month Lloyds Bank warned of a huge rise in rogue retailers using fake websites to trick people into buying items that are never dispatched. To discuss Nuala is also joined by Katherine Hart, Lead Officer for Scams for the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and Emma Jones, founder of Enterprise Nation. With less than a week to go until the US Presidential election next Tuesday, how are the campaigns trying to appeal to male and female voters? Nuala speaks to Jill Lepore, Professor of American History at Harvard University, and Edward Luce, US National Editor at the Financial Times.The Taliban has announced new restrictions on women in Afghanistan, which mean women are not allowed to pray out loud or sing together. We hear more from the BBC's Shazia Haya and Fawzia Koofi, the former deputy speaker of parliament in Afghanistan, who was a member of the peace negotiations with the Taliban.Film historian Jennifer Smyth talks to Nuala about the life and legacy of the pioneering American screenwriter, Mary McCall Jr. The first woman president of the Screen Writers Guild in 1942, Mary was a key negotiator ensuring better rights and wages for all screenwriters in the film industry. But after years of standing up to male studio heads, she would be blacklisted and go from being one of the biggest earners in Hollywood to living on nickels and dimes.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Emma Pearce

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

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome. Now, imagine setting up your business. It's going great guns. And then your loyal customers alert you to the fact that your product, marketing and social media has been copied across the internet on fraudulent websites.

Not only that, but they are scamming your potential customers. What has happened to Martha Keith, she's going to be with us in just a moment to tell us about what happened. And we'll also hear what can be done if you are an entrepreneur to try and stop scams like this

attacking your business. If you've had experience of trying to counteract scammers, do get in touch. We're also going to hear from guests on what they would like to see in today's budget when it comes to business owners as we speak with Martha too. I'm asking

you, what would you like to see Chancellor Rachel Reeves say today in the first budget delivered by a woman? You'll hear that line quite a lot today as well. And of course, you don't have to be a business owner to chime in. You can text the programme. The number is 84844. On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour

or you can email us through our website. For a WhatsApp message or a voice note, that number is 03700 100 444. So what do you want to see in today's budget? Maybe you're a business owner, maybe you're not. And also on scams, let me know. We also return to the US election, called by some the men versus women election.

Well, today we're talking about US political campaigns and how they historically and today have tried to target women. We'll also hear about a woman who shook up Hollywood back in the 1930s, the tenacious Mary McCall Jr. Did her film franchise about Maisie, an independent young woman, give rise to James Bond? That's a question we'll ask. And we'll also speak about the latest diktat by the Taliban in Afghanistan on trying to silence women.

But let us begin by speaking to a female business owner who is considering closing her business after that scam led to her product being posted on fake websites and leaving hundreds, possibly thousands of customers in the lurch. Last month, Lloyds Bank warned of a huge rise in rogue retailers using fake websites to trick people into buying items that are never dispatched and driving a 200% rise in car disputes in just one year. With women more likely to shop than men online, how can you know what you buy is what you're actually going to get? It's a question Martha Keith, who I mentioned earlier, has been asking herself in the past few weeks after her personalised advent calendars popped up on fake websites. Now, also I mentioned the budget there. It is the Labour government's budget coming up in just a few hours. So we'll have analysis on that too.

Let me turn to Martha. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Hi, thanks so much for having me on. So tell me, I mentioned Personalised Advent Calendar. How would you describe your product? Yes, so Personalised is our 24 days of stationary advent calendar run by my business, Martha Brooke. It's the seventh year we've done it. It's a very popular product and it's sold out every year.

It's become a bit of a cult across social media. It's how a lot of people hear about our business for the first time. And we have some dedicated customers who come back and buy it year after year. So that all sounds great. But what happened? Well, so we launched this year's Advent Calendar. Every year there's a new design. There's a new theme.

It had a lovely, enchanting woodland design this year. We were blown away by the reaction. We unveiled it in September. People went mad and saying how beautiful it was. Some of our videos went viral across instagram and tiktok and facebook really beautiful product and we relaunched it a week later and we were amazed that it sold out in 10 days which is brilliant it's something that um our business my business works so hard on we start working on it in january coming up with the theme for the year. And it takes us six months to make.

It's a very thoughtful product. It's not just personalised. There are 24 items inside, match the theme of the year. It's a really lovely, thoughtful product. And we sold out. We thought, oh, that's that. That's it for another year. We're so pleased it did so well.

And so pleased it got such a nice reaction. Now we're going to dispatch them all. We were not anticipating what would happen happen next which was which was two days later I had a message on Instagram saying oh I just just wanted to let you know I've had an ad for your advent calendar and I'm pretty sure it's one of your videos and the ad was sent to us and sure enough it was one of the videos that we'd made about the product and it took took the customer to a fake website that was set up at the time to look at like the Macy's website. This is very strange. A few days later, that website disappeared and then another one popped up and then another one. And then about fifteen hundred fake listings that we've identified so far across many fake websites, but also reputable marketplaces, hundreds and hundreds of ads, all using our videos, many using videos of me being served to customers repeatedly again and again and again.

Some of these ads had up to a million views. So people thought they were getting your product. They go to these websites at times handing over money or credit card details, etc. And you tried to clamp down on it. How was that? Well, so we obviously not this is not this is our copyrighted images and videos. And we are very aware that this product is not available from anyone else. And no one sells it apart from us so you know we immediately tried to take action it's you know it's very hard as a

smaller business without huge resources and huge legal teams to tackle these things but we started to go off the after the individual sites individually we contacted the big marketplaces such as amazon where we were aware that many listings were popping up. We contacted Meta, we contacted Trading Standards, we contacted Action Fraud, we contacted the police, we did everything we could possibly think of. And, you know, really through everything we know we could at tackling this. And I think one of the things that really helped was our social media community being our eyes and ears, we set up a reporting tool and they were submitting to us every time they saw a website they saw an ad they saw a listing they were

brilliant at making us aware of how much this was blowing up and really helping us be able to tackle it and we've had some success with getting individual websites down through taking legal action against the individual listings. Amazon have confirmed they've removed 900 listings across their platforms worldwide. We've had, it's been extremely hard to get the ads removed from Meta.

And I'm assuming that's because Meta are making a lot of money out of this. There are still hundreds of them running across Meta, despite hundreds of times reporting them. And I will just for a moment there, Martha, give the response from Meta. A spokesperson for them, which runs Facebook and Instagram, said, I quote, fraudulent activity is not allowed on our platforms and we've removed the ads brought to our attention for violating our policies. We're continually investing in new technologies to tackle this industry-wide issue

and encourage people to report activity like this to us and the police so we can take action. I think that a lot of our customers and a lot of small business owners would say that that's not what they see in practice happening on the Meta platform. I mean, people have been very frustrated because they've been reporting these ads on our behalf and they just get messages back saying there's nothing

wrong with the ad, it's going to continue to run. And yeah, Meta have been very, very frustrating. We now have a case open with the National Crime Bureau, the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, who are going to lobby Meta on our behalf to try and get the listings down that we're the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, who are going to lobby Metro on our behalf to try and get the listings down that we're struggling with. You know, the thing that strikes me with this, and you obviously have a very loyal base, but this sounds like another part-time job or maybe full-time job that you've taken on.

Oh, yeah. And I'm just wondering how you can continue with your business while trying to do this i i think the thing that the the it's really impacted us in three ways first of all i think it really definitely impacted me when this this kicked off from a mental health perspective because i just felt so um it was horrendous having you know some of the videos had me talking me be passionate about this product that we've worked so hard on and people were being scammed because of a video of me talking which just felt horrendous you know it felt awful that that somebody could do that one of the videos even had my daughter in it

was a video from last year I was holding her as a baby filling stacking this trolley with advent calendars and they stole that video and they ran it as an ad it was awful i think secondly this is just it's taken the whole of my time i've done really very little else because i feel so passionately that i need to sort this out which really is impacting our business at the you know the busiest time of year and thirdly from a brand perspective i i just think it really you know gets into a brand reputation thing where people you you know, will they lose trust with us? Will they never want to see this product again because they've been spam with hours of this product? And did you ever get to the root of where it was coming from?

Well, we tracked down many of these fake websites to a limited company that's been set up in the UK at Companies House. And the address that is held for that limited company is a fake address in Wales that is housed by a bunch of Welsh medical students who get very frustrated because they get a lot of letters sent to them saying, where's my item? And I think the thing that really, really just seems astounding to me is that we have, or even these websites that we've, or even these websites that we've taken legal action down and we think they're all owned by the same bunch of people.

We think it's a criminal gang that's based out of China from our research is that even though we get our listing down, they then put up another listing on their website and they run another ad. And so nobody seems to centrally care. Meta will not take down their account to stop them from running ads. They might take down our ad eventually. Nobody seems to take down their website. So we know that these companies are fake. We know that these companies will be set up to

scam people. And I just feel really passionately that nobody seems to really care or want to take action on this centrally. So hold that thought. So we attempted to contact the Chinese companies that you say are behind this, but we were unable to make contact. That may not surprise you. Also, just you had mentioned Amazon. I do want to read what their spokesperson said. Amazon strictly prohibits counterfeit and IP,

so that would be an intellectual property, infringing products in our store. If we identify an issue, we act quickly to protect customers and brands, including removing counterfeit listings and blocking accounts. We're in contact with the business affected and have removed the infringing products.

If a product doesn't arrive or isn't as advertised, customers can contact our customer support team for a refund. Again, I'll just go back to Meta in case people were just joining us halfway through. They run Facebook and Instagram and they say fraudulent activity

is not allowed on our platforms. We've removed the ads brought to our attention for violating our policies. We're continually investing in new technologies to tackle this industry-wide issue and encourage people to report activity like this to us and the police so we can take action. So, Martha, I'm going to bring in

another couple of people on this as well. I'm joined by Catherine Hart, who's lead officer for scams for the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. So it represents trading standards across the UK. We also have Emma Jones, founder of Enterprise Nation, a small business community with over 130,000 members. Nearly 60% of those businesses are run by women. You're both very welcome. Catherine, how often do you hear this story fortunately it's i hear it very frequently and it's certainly on the increase um martha i'm so sorry to hear about all

these problems that you've been having um but um it unfortunately because you're such a successful company that's where the scammers want to to to basically profit from your from your success so yes unfortunately we're seeing it more and more often and we're seeing different different versions of this as well with with emerging ai technology with the deep fakes so you know it might even be your image with different words coming out your mouth so unfortunately you know it might even be your image with different words coming out your mouth so unfortunately you know these things that we know are going on and we are it is very very difficult for us to actually always know where they're coming from well and what well martha did a certain amount of detective work so to speak um coming up against dead ends i think it's fair to say but she feels that there's

no central person or agency looking out for people like her what would you respond well i think there are lots of agencies all looking at these sort of things but i think that we have a an issue insofar as a lot of people don't know where to report it or or what what the action should be my feeling is a lot of the time that social media platforms really need to take a better responsibility what worries me is obviously Martha's gone through the process in which what I would be advising people to do is report report report but if they're not responding to that that then becomes a very it comes um a consumer frustration i can absolutely business frustration as well so i really do feel that that they the social media platforms need to take a better responsibility

so as far as sorry i'm just thinking about how that would happen martha's talked about her experience met and amazon have given their responses on how they're dealing with it but obviously there's a mismatch there somewhere and how could that be rectified it's very difficult to actually answer that question i think think that it would be better to have some sort of centralised reporting agency. Unfortunately, we do not have that at this present moment in time, but maybe that is something that we should be taking forward in the future.

There's a whole load of different legislation that we can look at as well. And when we have the IP issue, the intellectual property issues, the trademark issues, the copyright design and patents, we have the fraud side of things. There are lots of different agencies that would have an interest in these sort of fraudulent activities.

So, you know, it's important that we as enforcement agencies speak to one another as well, you know, to get the scope, soul and money into their business. What do they need to be thinking about to try and avoid this whole debacle that Martha has found herself in? Well, bless them. Small business owners always have to be thinking about a lot. And in fact, we've known Martha ever since she started her business. So, yes, this is just, as you've mentioned, one added distraction. It's interesting, though, just before coming to the question, kind of listening to this discussion, there is a role in the UK of someone called the Small Business Commissioner, who is very much the point of contact when small businesses aren't getting

paid by suppliers. So it's a different topic. But it does make me think as to whether either could the Small Business Commissioner take on this new extra role, which is small businesses reporting and calling things out. And I think respect to Martha that she really has publicly called this out. You know, it's been discussed on Woman's Hour. This is amazing to kind of shine the spotlight on it. But I agree, if there was a central point of contact, small businesses would then know where to go, which in response to your actual question is small business owners are very busy. They have to think are very busy. They have to think about making sales. They have to think about building their brand. As of today's budget, they have to think about how much tax they're paying and who they're hiring and what the salaries are.

And our job at Enterprise Nation is how do we take out the friction for people to start and grow small businesses? Of course, as more small businesses have increasingly sold online, this has now become a point of friction in their journey. So I do feel kind of part of the solution is, as we say, who could be the central point of contact, but also joint work with the platforms. Martha kindly reached out to us a couple of weeks ago. And actually, one thing we have said, let's discuss is, could there be a joint unit of the platforms on which Martha and other small businesses trade,

where there's joint action taken with small businesses in collaboration? Because ultimately, everyone wants it to end to get the right result for small businesses. Interesting. You mentioned the budget there briefly.

Emma, you mentioned, talked about tax and hiring. What are you hoping to see or not see in Rachel Reeves' budget today? Yeah, I think it's more hoping not to see. But anyway, I think we're going to see it. So we've had an interesting time since the new government has come into power. I probably don't need to say this on Woman's Hour, but there's over 6 million small businesses. Many, many women are starting new businesses. They're incredibly entrepreneurial with their new ideas. You know, I run a business called Enterprise Nation. We desperately want this country to remain an enterprise nation. However, I think what we will see today, and of course, it's been trailed, and we'll hear at 12.30 the specifics, is businesses who are hiring will potentially have increases to national insurance. Small business owners, just like Martha,

will be considering, well, what does that mean? Does that mean I reduce my hiring? Does that mean I increase my prices because I need to absorb the extra costs? Or does it mean I've just got less profit so I can't reinvest in growth? So we have openly said to the government, of course, pending what happens today, in the short to medium term, we're not convinced that small businesses will be able to grow because of the fiscal measures taken, because all small businesses will be evaluating their position. However, our position on this is if we have to face this reality of a new trading and economic environment, then I go back to our job is to support small businesses to trade through it. Small businesses have had like six years now of COVID, Brexit, then cost of trading challenge and bless them, they keep trading through. Resilience is probably now the number one asset that any entrepreneur needs and so this is our job is if we have to accept what budget measures are introduced

let's make sure that small businesses get the right support to keep going interesting and we would love of course to hear from the government on some of those aspects um that you have raised there emma i want to go back to mar Martha though before we finish because uh Emma mentioned resilience there are you feeling resilient what are you thinking about your business after going through all of this on some of the issues that Emma outlines as well potentially I I everything Emma just said I feel in spades I I think you know there used to be so much incentive for starting a small business and I think that it has just got harder and harder. You feel like everything just keeps being thrown at you.

And many women, you know, many women run single handed businesses. Many women want to start businesses. And I know I also as part of running my own business, I also I also reach out and support other businesses myself. I do I do a lot of work um you know mentoring and advising and things like that I work with the British Library as well um supporting their business and IP centre so I I hear it myself as well as feeling it and I think Emma's right that you know we need to find a way through and but it's hard we are actively within my business really thinking about how we can make some some clever changes to make sure that we are sustainable and able to grow in the long term but

it sounds to me like you're going to keep going we we are determined to keep going um i think this this product has been we had a conversation in our in our as well you know will we will we have the energy to do this product again? Will anybody ever want to see this product again? I don't know. That's for us to think about. But yes, we are. We are, you know, here to keep going.

We have a very passionate customer base. We really care about what we do. Most definitely. As they came to rally around you, Martha Keith, thank you so much. Also Catherine Hart and Emma Jones speaking to us about potential scams. A couple of messages coming in. Maggie says, whenever I see an advert on a platform,

I always go to the source website rather than click from the platform. That reduces the risk. John says, the key to preventing this type of fraud is tightening the banking systems. Accounts which are set up to routinely transfer credit balances

to foreign banks should be intercepted until good reasons are provided. Follow the money! Now, this morning, as every morning this week, there is a flurry of US election headlines. Today, a spat over the word garbage as the Trump and Harris camps continue to trade insults.

And this comes with a backdrop of both presidential candidates speaking at events last night. Democrat nominee Kamala Harris urged Americans to turn the page on division and drama. At the same time, Republican candidate Donald Trump asked supporters if they were better off than they were four years ago. Well, yesterday on Woman's Hour, if you were with us, you'll know we looked at the way women have voted in the past

and how they're expected to vote this time. Today, we want to turn to the campaigns themselves. How has gender played a role in securing the women's vote? I spoke to Jill Lepore, Professor of American History at Harvard University, and Edward Luce, US National Editor at the Financial Times, who also worked as a speechwriter under the Bill Clinton administration between 99 and 2001. Edward began by telling me why he thinks Trump's campaign is not appealing to women voters. Trump certainly isn't. I mean, he seems to be going out of his way to alienate women voters. I was on the floor of the convention back in July in Milwaukee with that final, now I think sort of quite infamous night of testosterone,

sort of fueled buildup to his acceptance speech, Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and then Trump himself. This is a explicitly masculine campaign that Trump is running. I think Harris is trying to appeal to all genders. But of course, a lot of the most powerful arguments that she has are about the threat to women's bodily autonomy with the overturning of Roe versus Wade and also at the state level, some of them going much further in restricting any reproductive options. But that's really about rights rather than, and there's also an appeal there to the male relatives of women. So it's not really, they're not really parallel in that sense.

It's the most masculine campaign I've ever seen. And many people use the term bro in the sense, in the United States of a particular demographic, maybe into crypto, maybe quite technology focused, maybe followers of Elon Musk. Jill, let me bring you in here. Donald Trump isn't going after the female vote, as Edward has outlined there. But doesn't he need them? Trump absolutely needs women's votes, but I don't think that his hyper-masculine rhetoric

necessarily turns them away. A lot of what Trump's key supporters value is what they would consider traditional gender arrangements. So in a way, he's actually reaching those very conservative women who are his strongest, among women, his strongest female supporters. Conservative women have always been the powerhouse of the conservative movement. So one of the things that they really are objecting to in American life right now is, you know, the sort of gender dynamic and a sort of sense that gender norms are changing. So when he moves in that Hulk Hogan direction, it holds in close to him a certain

kind of female voter. Interesting. Coming back to you, Edward, I mean, you think that Kamala Harris has a bro problem. Do you think, though, she can reach some of those people that Trump is currently reaching, whether it's to doing a podcast with Joe Rogan, for example? Yeah, I think there's never any harm in, unless you really screw up, in going into the lion's den. And Joe Rogan isn't actually explicitly a Republican. It's just a very male podcast. Mass, my millions of listeners. There clearly is a big gender gap in how people intend to vote. And so if you're a candidate, you're looking to make up for lost ground. And that lost ground is not just with men in general, but it's with younger men in particular. And I think very vexing to Democrats, considerable spike in young African-American and Hispanic men who've been switching over to Trump.

So she's not going to appeal to sort of really hardcore gaming incels, sort of subcultures in that. But most men, like most women and young men and young women, have broad shared economic concerns about the unaffordability of housing, about whether their health care or their next job is going to pay them enough. She can go to where they are. Jill, let me bring you in here. If we look back just a little bit, eight years, Hillary Clinton put gender at the heart of her campaign. She had the I'm with her badge that some people might remember. Many people are talking about the fact that Kamala Harris has not done that. She is a black woman, but doesn't make reference to either of those points.

How do you understand that? Well, rhetorically, it's one of the strongest things about her candidacy that she, you know, she comes from the position we're sort of past that debate. We're past the first black president. We're past the first

female presidential nominee of a major party. And she really wanted to reject running on who she was and try to establish what voters really needed to learn more about, which is her political record. Kind of surprisingly, a lot of Americans don't even know that Kamala Harris served in the Senate. I mean, she's been trying to turn attention elsewhere. And I think actually her advisors have been frustrated with the sorting out of the parties by gender, turning the battle between the parties into a kind of battle of the sexes. But it is significantly, as Edward points out, significantly more intense now.

That sorting has really intensified since 2016. So I think kind of late in the day here, she really is emphasizing women's rights, reproductive rights, you know, even more strongly. And that is the strongest argument that Democrats have to bring across the ballot, up and down the ballot nationally and in local elections as well as the abortion issue. And I did see, speaking of podcasts, Mr. Trump may have gone on Joe Rogan. She did go on the Call Her Daddy podcast, which is hosted by a woman, also Brené Brown, recently as well. But do you think, is that a good strategy when it comes to a campaign, Jill?

Well, you know, you've got to do everything you're asked to do. And I think that was an extraordinarily effective appearance, the call, her daddy appearance. I mean, I think she was one of the best interviews I've seen her give. I think it was really effective and it did reach a lot of people. I don't know that it's, there's no breaching the gender gap at this point. So it's really just tallying whatever turned voters can be turned. I think Harris has no choice but to but to play to women right now. Edward, would you agree with that?

Yes, I think Jill's absolutely right. I mean, it would take some kind of a miracle to change what are deeply set trends in terms of gender voting divergence in this campaign. It's not that I'm with her. She's not trying to make this an historic moment about first woman president. She is trying to, with varying degrees of effectiveness, make it about the economy and make it about more everyday issues for people. Who was, Jill, do you think, the first president to make an explicit appeal to women for their vote. Eisenhower in 1952, with the emergence of television campaigning, who has campaign advisors who say, look, let's, everybody loves your wife. Mamie Eisenhower was hugely popular, sort of like Eleanor Roosevelt, but less controversial. So Eisenhower's ad campaign featured ads directly aimed at women. And they weren't especially transformative, because at that point, the Republican Party had the women's vote to the degree that it existed. Through the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the Republican Party was the party of women. And that didn't change until 1980 when Reagan lost the women's vote. And that's been the case ever since. So the trend that,

you know, that we're talking about now when it talks about a long-term trend, the gender gap, the phrase is first used in American politics in 1980 with reference to Reagan. But there is an interesting thing, Edward, really with some of the states and it's states that decide these elections as opposed to the popular vote. Some of them have a measure about abortion on the ballot. But could it be that some women vote for Trump, but also vote to preserve abortion rights? It's entirely conceivable that they'll split their vote in that way. I mean, states like Florida, which, of course, used to be a swing state, have very important ballot measures. I don't think it's going to change the vote there. It's Arizona, it might do, a couple of others. But I think you've got this sort of whole bunch of Republicans, maybe a fifth, who after Nikki Haley dropped out of the primaries,

the challenge to Trump, and she was the most moderate on abortion and the only serious woman in the race. After she dropped out, they continued to vote for her uncommitted. And those are sort of perceived to be what Democrats call the secret non-Trump voter. As Liz Cheney said, the former Republican Liz Cheney, who's endorsed Kamala Harris, said, you can vote your conscience in the ballot booth and nobody need ever know. I think that's a pretty explicit appeal to women in conservative, particularly evangelical communities, who would never publicly disclose any sort of shift from the doctrinal position on abortion and the anti-abortion position, but who are getting genuinely worried that this is

now intruding into IVF, potentially contraception. All kinds of rights that they took for granted are now in jeopardy. It's an interesting one, though, because it often doesn't come as the number one issue, though, does it? It's generally the economy, whether we're talking about men or women, particularly in those swing states that will decide this election, Edward. Yeah, I mean, it comes a lot higher, though, than future of democracy, protecting the US Republic. That just doesn't resonate with people. But you're right. I mean,

generally speaking, the top two issues on almost across all the opinions surveys are the economy and immigration. But this is an issue that usually comes in the top three or four, and it's namely abortion, but also one that has a very high intensity, very high motivation of people to vote. And the right are no longer motivated because they got what they wanted. It's not the same rallying issue that it was when the cry was we've got to overturn Roe v. Wade, which Trump harvested in 2016. He can't harvest that now. All the energy is on defending and rolling back what's been done. So that's kind of gold if you're in a presidential campaign.

When it comes down to gender, with real brass tacks, and I was asking previous guests that we had on about the US election about this as well. How much do you think it matters when a voter goes into the's not what this is going to be about. In the Biden moment when we were, you know, sort of watching what Biden would do, I don't think there was a lot of sorting out of, oh, it would be tactically this will prove to have been a kind of frenzy of exception. But these last few weeks do make it seem like this is what people are voting about. This is what people care about. I myself am not persuaded. I think when we come to the other side of it, it might look different. In what sense? What do you think it might look like? I know the polls are showing this extraordinary gender divide right now. I would not be surprised if when it came down to it,

the voting was closer along gender lines than it looks like it's going to be. We heard. There, that's Jill Lepore's voice, a professor of American history at Harvard University. Her latest book is The American Beast that's out in paperback next month.

We were also hearing from Edward Luce, the US national editor for the Financial Times. And I mentioned it yesterday, I will be off to Washington DC later this week covering the presidential election for Radio 4. And I'll be with you here on Woman's Hour on Thursday, the 7th of November. We may have a result by then. You'll hear it. 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. Here. Now, I want to turn to Afghanistan next, however. Two months ago, the Taliban announced a new law saying if a woman is outside her home, her voice must not be heard. Now further restrictions mean women are not allowed to pray out loud or sing together. The Taliban Minister for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice said that a woman's voice is considered

aurat, meaning that which must be covered. It's the latest in a series of restrictions for women, including not being allowed to show their faces in public, look at men they don't know, drive a car, or of course as we've spoken about many times, attend secondary school or university.

I'm joined in the studio by the BBC's Shazia Haya, who's the producer and presenter of Nirman, which is a Pashto language programme about women. Welcome. Welcome back, should I say. Thank you. So explain this new edict about voices. Welcome. Welcome back, should I say. Thank you. So explain this new edict about voices.

Yeah. So, as you say, that the Taliban's minister for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, said just two or three days ago that it's all about comparing, like,

just explaining how it's impossible for women for women to sing together so he said that when an adult baler baler means adult woman is praying and another woman maybe adult or maybe teenager passes by So that woman who is praying should not pray loudly, should not recite a takbir. Takbir means call for pray loudly. So during that time, these two women should not hear each other's voice or that woman who is praying should not say something loudly that another woman should should hear so if they are not allowed to do that even during the prayer time so how could women be allowed to sing together so that's that's exactly that. It's cracking down on that. And if they were passing one another, not praying, not singing, but can they speak to one another? Of course.

I mean, he didn't explain. He didn't say something about that. He just said that women are not allowed to sing when they are together. Women are not to pray sing when they are together. Women are not to pray loudly when they are together. So it's only about the speaking. It's all about the religious. It's about not singing song. It's about not saying something or not praying loudly when they are together.

He didn't say clearly that they are not allowed to speak to each other. He didn't say that. He just compared the impossibility of giving the right of sing a song for women and he compared those two situations. I understand. We can also bring in Fazia Zakoufi, former Deputy Speaker of Parliament in Afghanistan, who was a member of the peace negotiations with the Taliban. Welcome to Woman's Hour.

Why do you think this was passed at the moment, Fazia? Well, as you know, in August this year, the so-called Vice and Virtue Ministry issued a paper called the Vice and Virtue Law, contains of 35 articles, mostly about women, but some also putting restrictions on men's outfits. That created a lot of anger and frustration because, as we remember, then they said women voices regarded as aurat or intimacy, and they're provoking, so women should not speak in public because they might intimate a man. Followed by that, there was a lot of anger and frustration, including women went on public social media, put their voices and sing a song and put it on social media,

saying my voice is not out at, my voice is not intimacy or not something that should be hidden. I think then he further clarified his position in a speech that he had in Kandahar two, three days ago, this gentleman. And he said women should not recite louder or speak or sing louder because he, I think the whole idea here is basically controlling women. The whole idea is controlling women. And they know that, you know, the young, the mature or the balig or the basically women who are a little bit elder than the teenagers, they are educated. They have enjoyed some level of liberty over the past 20 plus years, and they might educate

the younger generation. They might pass on the message to the younger generation. So they are afraid of that because they are putting every effort to create religious madrasas based on their definition of Islam, not even actual madrasas. And they allow younger girls and even elderly girls, no age restrictions, to go to these madrasas. And my fear is, and their fear, my fear is that this will create a generation of only, you know, girls that will embrace the Taliban's ideology. And their fear is that this generation that have been demonstrating resilience will teach and educate the girls.

So that's the whole idea, to control women. I understand what you're saying, and I see my colleague Shazia nodding. Yeah, so actually about the restrictions, Taliban is saying that women's

voice is awrat. Awrat means that it's private, it's not for the public. So when women are in the public, so they should not speak and men should not hear their voices because it's something really private. Women's voices are only for their fathers, husbands, brothers, and that's it.

Only in intimate settings. Yes. And about the madrasas, as we know that women are not allowed to go to schools beyond sixth grade. They are not allowed to go to universities, but they do. They are allowed to go to madrasas and in madrasas, they are getting education as Taliban saying something related to religious stuff like learning Quran and other stuff. But in their version? In their version, actually. I mean, that is really quite something, that concept of this generation of older women

that would be, in the Taliban's eyes, the last generation of these resilient, independent women that had certain freedoms. And I'm thinking with you, Shazia, you present and you produce Nirman Pashto language program for women for the Afghan service. What are women telling you?

Do you discuss these issues? Well, so in my program, in my program mostly, we do talk about those issues that women are facing in the Afghan society. It's not only about Taliban's rules and regulations and instructions. There are some other problems that women are facing. Like just last week in my program, we talked about how loneliness impacts women's lives.

Loneliness. Yes. how loneliness impacts women's lives. Loneliness. Yes, and then I talked to a psychologist and psychologists say that don't leave women alone. They should talk to each other and that's the solution. They should share their problems. They should say that what's going on with themselves. When they do talk, they won't be alone. And that's the only solution for not being lonely. But what we're hearing now is this crackdown on women's voices in certain spheres,

and not being able to communicate in the way that they want. Fazia, where do you see this going? I think unfortunately they will make a gender the next generation of Afghanistan as radicalized as the Taliban are I was talking to somebody the other day in Kabul and he was telling me was a former colleague of mine he was telling me miss Kofi don't be scared of the main in five years time to be scared of these women who go to madrasas because nobody actually controls the Krikola. And all these radicalized groups actually target women and especially target educated women because they know an educated woman will never allow

her son to pick up a gun and pursue his rights through military means. And then eventually Taliban or any other military extremist groups whose existence is based on suppression and brainwashing of a generation, they will not be able to recruit more people. So that's the fear they have. And that's why they have launched a full-fledged war against women, one ban after the other.

And actually, I call this gentleman who is the minister, the so-called minister of vice and virtue, probably the nickname for his is ban, because every day he comes up with a ban against women. And I wonder, from a psychology perspective, you know, what would his mother think if she was alive about all of that he launches against women. And there is a culture of impunity. They do not hold accountable for what they do against women because we think Afghanistan is far away. We think women of Afghanistan have always suffered like that, and they're right. And the world leaders only issue statements of sympathy and empathy,

which statements are descriptive of our feelings, not our policies. We want a policy change. We want the world and both Taliban accountable. You want a policy change. You mentioned one of the members there of the ministers. And of course, the Taliban are very popular with certain parts of the country. Also, I don't have a response from that particular man that you talk about who you give the nickname Ban. You know, what do you want to happen from the world? There was a conference in Albania for women from Afghanistan. Was there any concrete proposal that came out or help, Fazia? Absolutely. We organized the first ever all Afghan women's summit in Albania in September.

And the whole aim was to bring unity and mobilize over a few messages on what could be done to change the status quo for our sisters inside Afghanistan. So the summit included women also, a high number of women participants from across Afghanistan, from including the villages. And their message was clear. First of all, they wanted to be part of a political process because that political process that we started in Doha is not completed yet. But Taliban feel that they are the victorious force.

They also emphasize in three, four articles of the declaration called Tirana Declaration on accountability. They see accountability including codifying gender apartheid, including, you know, the use of ICJ and ICJ as a leverage to hold Taliban accountable for what they said during negotiation, because they are now acting on the contrary. And they are not honest and genuine to what they said to me and to my sisters in Afghanistan during negotiation. I want to thank you for coming on, Fazia Koufi, former Deputy Speaker of Parliament genuine to what they said to me and to my sisters in Afghanistan during negotiations. I want to thank you for coming on, Fazia Koufi, former Deputy Speaker of Parliament in Afghanistan, who was a member of peace negotiations with the Taliban, and also my colleague, the BBC's Shazia

Haya, who is the producer and presenter of Nirman, a Pashto language programme about women. I want to turn back to the 1930s now, to a chain-smoking Irish-American writer who arrived in Hollywood and shook up the entire film industry and created a legacy that still has an impact today. But you've probably never heard of her. Yes, her. She's called Mary McCall, Jr. She was the first woman president of the Screenwriters Guild. Before that, she secured the first ever contracts for writers as Talking Pictures took over from the silent movies. Mary was a

power player until she was blacklisted in the 1950s and her career was irreversibly damaged. Jennifer Smith joins me in studio. She's a film historian and a professor of history at Warwick University. She's just written a biography. It's called Mary McCall Jr. The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter. Welcome.

Thank you. So how did you come across this tenacious Mary McCall, Jr.? Well, it was a long time ago. I think it was over 20 years ago. I was doing some work in the Warner Brothers archives in Los Angeles, and I was doing work on gangster pictures back in the 1930s then. And I saw that a woman had written a gangster script. And it was a shock because usually you just saw a line of men's names. But it was Mary McCall Jr. And it was one of the first times I'd ever seen a junior after a woman's name.

And I got curious, but life got in the way. And eventually I came back to her and did a lot of digging and found out everybody in Hollywood knew who she was at the time. But she just disappeared from the history books. So she disappeared. First, we'll get into why she disappeared or how she disappeared. But I love the junior. I know.

So tell us, there was many women called junior back in the day? There were back in the 19th century. It was almost a tradition around sort of middle class or fairly wealthy women who insisted that their side of the family get a voice. And she had quite a remarkable mother, who was called Maisie. Her family was very wealthy, that, you know, they were more than middle class Irish Americans. They were very different from the stereotype very often that we get of Irish Americans at that time. And she married into an enormously wealthy family. Her father-in-law was the president of New York Life. He was advising Theodore Roosevelt when he was in the White House. And she was really insistent when she had her little girl that she was going to be

something. And so it worked. And I talk about her last name. I'm sorry, I mispronounced your last name. It's not Smythe. Jennifer Smythe. And for people who are looking for the book, it's spelled S-M-Y-T-H. Northern Ireland. Forgive me for that. But let's talk about Mary McCall Jr. So she came from this wealthy upbringing. She had like, I suppose, the parents behind her that were ready to propel her in that way. But it was incredible. She became a Hollywood screenwriter. She became, as I mentioned, the first woman president of the Screenwriters Guild.

And one of her biggest successes was the Maisie film series, which I started going down a rabbit hole looking at. Really kind of a feminist sort of spin on the film she was assigned to write. It was, you know, and it was out of the blue. They sort of gave it to her when she went to MGM, which was a very wealthy studio, and almost half of its screenwriters were women. So she was delighted to be there.

But she basically took this property that had been written by a man and made it her own. In fact, she got a Critics Award for the best screenplay that totally disregarded its source material. And, you know, it was made for Anne Southern, who was a fabulous comedian, and they got along like a house of fire. And she was basically left alone to do her own writing,

which was very different from what screenwriters basically had to suffer through at that time. Very often they'd have a dozen writers on a script, and they wouldn't even know that they were the only writer. It was this about an independent woman in Brooklyn. She had a different lover or love interest at the beginning of each film in the franchise. And some say there might be a possible connection to James Bond. Yes, absolutely.

Mary was a mentor for many young writers. And that was one of the things when she was doing all of her work for the Guild. She wanted to make sure that every writer got the same rights, the protections on the job, it didn't matter how experienced you were. And Richard Maybaum was a young writer and became involved with Guild governance and helping other writers, and she helped his career along. And years later, when she was sort of down on her luck, and the Maisie series had wound up, he helped her try and get a pilot on TV based on sort of the Maisie character. But of course, Anne Southern had moved on to other things. And Richard Maybaum, you know, had his own

incredible career. He might have learned a trick or two from Maisie, because in James Bond, his, you know, scripts, he did the first few of them in the 1960s. James always has a new woman on his arm with each new, with each new film. And that's exactly what Maisie did, you know, James always has a new woman on his arm with each new film. And that's exactly what Maisie did. But she was a working class girl, you know, and she had a Brooklyn accent. She didn't have fancy clothes. She didn't have her hair beautifully done. You know, and she was always trying to escape bosses who were sexually harassing her,

men who were whistling at her. And she basically wanted to live her life on her own terms, which is an thing and you know it was a franchise basically in the 40s i couldn't believe it when i when i looked at how many movies there were which i haven't seen but i am going to try and catch one but let's talk about mary because she became quite high-flying talked about screen actors guild she was uh also the first woman president, as we mentioned, and then she went on to present at the Oscars. But then things did go down. Talk us a little bit about, at that time, anti-communist witch hunts in the late 40s, early 50s that directly affected her. Yes, well, it's true that, you know, she worked with a lot of people in the Guild who were on

the left. A lot of writers were on both sides of the political spectrum. And she was able to hold things together because she was a moderate. She was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. She did have lots of connections with new dealers. But she tried to maintain a kind of even political base so that she could get as much as she could for all writers. She wanted that kind of economic stability for everybody. And I think that's why she was able to bring so many producers to the table to get the contract signed. But then toward the end of the war, Roosevelt started losing ground. There were a lot of people

from the right that were marshalling against civil rights groups, women's groups were becoming more prominent, and they were trying to find somebody to blame. And it was easy, I think, for a lot of people on the right to pick Hollywood. It wasn't necessarily that they were communists. They certainly weren't trying to overthrow the government, but they got headlines. And those politicians were very targeted in the way they went after media people. And she was one of them. You know, they even said that she was at a communist meeting when she was actually presenting at the Academy Awards. So it didn't matter. They just created this fake news back then in order to smear people. And then sort of word got around that she was too much on the left, too visible,

perhaps. And she started getting fewer assignments. And she didn't make a comeback after that time had passed, unlike some of her male counterparts. What happened to her, to her wealth, to all that she had accrued at that point? Well, she had had a very sort of productive relationship with a lot of people in Hollywood, and she had built her image around being, you know, a great friend to lots of people across the business. But also she was a mother to four children, three children, and then she got married again.

But that was really what happened. She had a very sort of stable relationship with a guy who had a lot of connections in Hollywood. She was known as, you know, respectable Mrs. Franklin of Bainbridge Avenue, which is right around the corner from UCLA. And then she met this younger man. He was very hot. He was very good in bed. And she just got fed up with a stale marriage. And right around the time when she was most visible and presenting for the Academy Awards and making all of these speeches. Everybody was sort of noticing her. She ditched the old husband and married the young hot guy and it created backlash. And so I'm not really sure that it was as much about her politics, which were pretty moderate,

but it was more about the image that she was willing to smash because she just felt like women could do anything that men can do. She was a real equal rights amendment feminist and Hollywood really wasn't ready for her. America certainly wasn't ready for her at that time. A couple of small details I loved about her. She never wore a bra. She let her hair go grey. She was great friends with Betty Davis, been knocking back cocktails. You want to be part of that club.

Absolutely, yeah. And I mean, Dorothy Arzner, the only director who was really working in Hollywood, was a woman in the 1930s, was a close friend. They made a film that was created by nothing but women at Columbia in 1936, Craig's wife. Yeah. It's so interesting though, and we just have about a minute

because I speak to a lot of people that are, you know, working in that industry and they talk about how difficult it is for women. Amazing kind of these undiscovered women that were already there at the very beginning of the 1930s, etc. with Hollywood. Yeah, it's true. I mean, about half of all writers in the 1920s were women. And Mary was able to keep that together and really help women's careers through the 1940s.

And it just fell away. I think as soon as the studio system really started to break apart and you lose that community, then you get independent filmmakers coming in. And these are mostly guys. And they were hiring nothing but guys. And then the content also changed as well, too. Hollywood cared about women coming into the theaters. They wanted to make content that was for women. They don't want that anymore. I mean, their idea of a great women's film is to make something about a plastic doll. You know, that's basically it. But Mary was actually making films about women for real women. You mean plastic doll in the sense of... I mean Barbie. I mean Barbie. If you want to think about, you know,

what's a good women's film these days, it's about a piece of plastic, plastic merchandise. It's about the ultimate stereotype about women's femininity. Oh, we'll have to have another conversation about your thoughts about Barbie at another point. Times have changed, you know. But I want to let people know,

Jennifer Smythe, who I've been speaking to, her book is called Mary McCall Jr. The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter. Somebody I didn't know, but just a fascinating lady. Thanks for bringing her to us, Jennifer. Join Anita on Woman's Hour tomorrow when we look at how women will be impacted by today's budget announcement. I'm off until I join you next week for Woman's Hour from D.C. I will talk to you then. Thanks so much for spending

part of your morning with Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Danny. It's been too long, but I am back and I wanted to

let you know about something very special that is going to be happening on the Uncanny podcast feed this October. As we all know, this is the month of Halloween, that most ghostly time of year, and to celebrate, I am going to be doing a Halloween advent calendar. Every single day during October, I will be dropping a brand-new mini case into the Uncanny feed, each one under two minutes

long, a tiny bite-sized nugget of terror, an email from a listener recounting an experience they believe may have been paranormal. But is it? There will also be video versions of the stories on all of my social media channels. The episodes will land every single morning, 31 stories in all, leading all the way up to Halloween. And there might just be some special Halloween surprises to come too. So that is the uncanny Halloween advent calendar on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. Join me if you dare. I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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's 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.