Woman's Hour - Order of Women Freemasons' Grand Master Zuzanka Penn; Actor Sally Phillips; Childcare Costs; Rebecca Humphries

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

The actor, writer and comedian Sally Phillips best known for Smack the Pony, the Bridget Jones trilogy, Miranda, Veep and, of course, Radio 4’s very own award-winning 'Clare in the Community' returns to our screens next week in the third series of Sky’s popular parenting comedy Breeders. And on Sky Cinema from today she takes the starring role in a new film ‘How to Please a Woman’. Set in Western Australia, Sally plays fifty-something Gina who, having just lost her job, feels invisible and stuck in a sexless marriage, and sets up an all-male house cleaning service that also offers sexual services.With the school holidays having already started in Scotland and Northern Ireland and fast approaching in England and Wales, the charity Pregnant Then Screwed surveyed 28,000 parents, 99% women, on their childcare plans for the summer. From the data they found 1630 women who had had an abortion in the last five years said childcare costs had influenced their decision and nearly 1 in 5 of them had made that choice solely based on childcare costs. Joeli Brearley, founder of the charity joins Anita to explain why this unexpected results are such a cause for concern.Freemasons are known for their white aprons, mysterious symbols and secret handshakes. To the outside world their rituals, which are shrouded in mystery, appear cult like. But for over a hundred years female freemasons have been gathering to conduct initiations and ceremonies like their male counterparts. The Order of Women Freemasons has several thousand members while Freemasonry for Women has about 700. So what is the appeal of becoming a member of an organisation that is shrouded in mystery? I am joined by Grand Master Zuzanka Penn of the Order of Women's Freemasons and Gaelle Ndanga from Freemasonry for Women.Actor and writer Rebecca Humphries had often been called crazy by her boyfriend. But when paparazzi caught him kissing his Strictly Come Dancing partner, she realised the only crazy thing was believing she didn't deserve more. Posting her thoughts on social media, a flood of support poured in, but amongst the well-wishes was a simple question with an infinitely complex answer: 'If he was so bad, why did you stay?'. Rebecca joins Anita Rani to talk about her new book ‘Why Did You Stay: a memoir about self-worth’. They explore why good girls are drawn to darkness, whether pop culture glamourises toxicity, when a relationship 'rough patch' becomes the start of a destructive cycle, if women are conditioned for co-dependency, and - ultimately - how to reframe disaster into something magical.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Sally Phillips Interviewed Guest: Joeli Brearley Interviewed Guest: Zuzanka Penn Interviewed Guest: Gaelle Ndanga Interviewed Guest: Rebecca Humphries

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to Woman's Hour, which for the next 60 minutes will be a politics-free zone. We will be discussing who the women are in the running once we have a better idea of who's putting their hat in the ring. On the programme today, though, we will be joined by one of our finest comedy actors, the brilliant Sally Phillips will be talking to me about her new film, How to Please a Woman, which is all about women in their 40s and 50s having a sexual awakening and finding a new zest for life. You'll find out more in a moment. But this morning, I'd like to know if you have had a revolutionary moment in your life

where you've discovered something that has given you a new lease of life. What have you taken up later in life that brings you immense joy? A new hobby maybe, like pottery or painting or a sport. Are you out there playing tennis in the sunshine or are you part of the wild swimming gang that's happening up and down the country? Is meeting up with your friends over

a cuppa or maybe a pint of gin your new way of finding joy in your life? You tell me. Maybe it's dancing naked in front of the mirror. Share your newfound way of celebrating life. You never know, you might actually inspire someone else today. Get in touch with me the usual way. You can text, it's 84844. You can contact me via social media, it's at BBC Woman's Hour. And of course, you can send me an email through our website. So what is it that you've discovered that brings you huge joy? Share that with me. Also on today's show, Rebecca Humphries, who became an overnight feminist icon when she tweeted a perfectly worded statement after her then-boyfriend cheated on her with his Strictly Dance partner. Well, four years on, she's written her first book looking at what made her stay in the relationship in the first place.

We'll also discuss women choosing to have abortions because they can't afford childcare. If you live in London, the average cost a year for full-time nursery placement for an under two is £19,000 at the moment. How do you feel about the cost of childcare and how has it impacted your life choices? It would be great to hear from you about that as well. Again, the text number 84844. Plus, secret handshakes at the ready. We'll be entering the world of female Freemasons. But first, the actor, writer and comedian Sally Phillips, best known for Smack the Pony, playing Shazza in Bridget Jones, Tilly in Miranda, the Finnish Prime Minister in Veep,

and of course, Radio 4's very own award-winning Claire in the Community. Well, now she's returning to our screens on Sky Cinema in the starring role in her new film How to Please a Woman. Set in Western Australia, Sally plays 50-something Gina who's having just lost her job, feels invisible and stuck in a sexless marriage. So she sets up an all-male housecleaning service that also offers sexual services. Here's a clip. We offer a service that encourages women to freely express what they want

without judgment. We provide safe experiences so women can begin to close the pleasure gap. This is a sexual wellness company about learning how to practice your pleasure. And we'd love to help with the house while we sort your orders. Because your pleasure is worth asking for. Sally Phillips, welcome to Woman's Hour. I've just asked our listeners what brought them joy. Watching this movie brought me great joy.

I'm so happy, thank you. And I'm also so impressed that you watched it none of your tag you're a classy presenter who actually does the research yeah no it's good it's good homework watching a film starring Sally Phillips so talk to us about Gina tell us how she ends up setting this all-male cleaning service company with with added up? Well, it's based on a true story, actually. The director, Renee Webster, who is a first-time feature director in her 50s, came across this company, which was run by two very unlikely Sydney housewives who were, you know, not nymph-like, shall we say, who just decided that they just had enough of cleaning the house and not having any sex. And they thought this is ridiculous. Why? You know, we want sex to be

well, Australians are much less repressed than us, we want sex to feel well and alive. And so they set up a cleaning company that started offering sexual services on that. And it was enormously popular. And so Renee was fascinated by these people and thought, well, this is a fun story on which to hang this discussion about. You know, we're not we're not supposed to articulate our pleasure like nice girls don't. And certainly my generation, I'm enormously repressed. That's partly what attracts me to the role. I was like, I just, I can't talk about this stuff. Aussies are so much sort of more comfortable with talking about their desire and their bodies and all of that. And I just find it completely, I mean, I turned down the vagina monologues

because I didn't think I could say the word vagina without snickering, you know. So, yeah, so this character is not those people. It's a woman who's just got beat somehow by life, by others' expectations. She's a Brit who's moved to Australia, been there 20 years. She's not Australian, but she's no longer British. She's not young.

She's not yet old. She was a mother. Her daughter has now left home and come to London and is loving it here. And she'd had a job that fitted in with the hours where she wasn't appreciated, a job that was beneath her that she wasn't appreciated in. And she's then replaced for a younger model in the job. And her job is working in liquidation.

And she comes across this company of blokes whose removals company is also hitting uh is also going going bust so she has the idea why don't these guys start cleaning um because uh one of them she discovers one of them is working as a stripper part-time so because her friends buy her a stripper because they think she's so repressed for her birthday. Yes. And so she starts this company and and against it's not her idea that they offer sexual services, but the women start asking for the sexual services and the men start doing it. So very quickly she becomes the only person she knows who isn't having tremendous sex. And it leads to her sort of finding the words to articulate what she wants

which is really to leave the marriage and start again find her voice and i think that's very i mean forbes have just started doing the 50 50 over 50 haven't they the list of uh female entrepreneurs over 50 and we control 65 of all buying power apparently wow and um and yet we're invisible in many ways aren't we yeah i think i just think there's beginning to be a bit of groundswell going actually you've got much more power than you realize i mean you've got skills that you've learned from bringing up children and making relationships and running the pta and multitasking and and you're you've got a sense of time running out and so there's an urgency and you're efficient i remember meeting a well somebody i've known for a long while who started up an animation company and you've got a sense of time running out and so there's an urgency and you're efficient.

I remember meeting a, well, somebody I've known for a long while who started up an animation company who was saying she was only really employing mums over 40 because they did the work quickly and efficiently. No nonsense, get on with it. No nonsense, get on with it. And your character, she's in her early 50s and she feels invisible and she's stuck in a relationship. Do you think women watching this are going to be able

to relate to a lot of it? Well, in Australia, that's certainly what's happened. Yeah. What was the reaction like? There's been cinemas full of women screaming and going back several times and bringing their partners to see it. Her partner in this is trying to get, well, he's got her doing diet boxes yeah which i just think is such a brilliant it's such a i don't know it's just such a brilliant idea of renee's that that's

a sort of terrible control that's sort of joyless you can only eat you're only allowed to eat this very low fat yogurt until 6 p.m and then you're allowed a you know caesar salad and two prawns followed by three raisins and the idea that your husbands are encouraging you to do that so i remember felicity montague saying to me that one of her worst christmases was when her husband gave her an exercise bike she just felt so i mean you know yeah yeah i think that's quite a good one for later in woman's hour the worst gifts you've received. Pots and pans and other not good. I went and got an onion dicer.

My 39th birthday, I got an onion dicer in a bottle of Waitrose bubble bath. And I said thank you on the day and five days later, just cried and cried and cried. Is this what you think of me? The worst, the worst. Now, we've seen that there's also the scenes at the beginning, you swimming wild swimming with this group of friends that you have that are your first customers when you set up

the company is that you swimming because you've got fantastic strength oh i also had they did they did some shots later with a body double as well but i did my first day of filming they did chuck me in the indian ocean and i hadn't swum for a couple of years because of the pandemic, all the pools had been shut. And I thought, oh, you know, Aussies are so sort of bold, aren't they? I better not show any fear. I better just get on with it. And they threw me in and those were the scenes of me crying in the ocean.

And then they hauled me out like a teabag on a stick. And the DOP said to me, he said, you're brave. I wouldn't have done that because, of course, there's loads of great whites. Yeah. Did you know, you realised you didn't, oh, I had a choice? I thought, oh, I did. Yeah, maybe I had a choice. Maybe that was, maybe that wasn't just normal.

The DOP, Director of Photography, the sort of main person. I bet not, yes. So there's scenes because of the swimming that make for great moments in the film because often we get lots of locker room scenes with men having male banter. But this is women together just having a giggle, talking about their lives and just taking charge of their own pleasure. Yes. Yeah, it felt very beautiful.

That was a real changing room. There's lots of ocean swimming clubs in Australia. It's very common. And, yeah, everyone has apps to track the great whites, so they notice swim at the beaches where the great whites aren't and they tag all the sharks. So they go, oh oh there's one over there I won't go there today and um and Renee the director is a member of an ocean swimming club

and um it felt they felt quite moving those scenes because she had a rule that there was no nudity um no nudity during the sex scenes your body was only just the body that you inhabited and we had loads of women of all different shapes and sizes I remember one woman saying to me she said I've just had a bad time sexually and I just decided that this would be a way of taking my body back and saying it's saying it's beautiful we all felt quite moved by that realizing how much of our lives we spend hating our bodies and we just ought to get on with it, really. It is a moving film.

There's scenes, there's lots of joy and lots of laughter. But the scenes that really struck me were when you're in the car and your potential customers are coming, it's almost like confession, where they share with you why they want to do this, how they don't feel like they've been touched, or there was one woman who wanted to experience it with a woman. How much research went into those? Was that all Renee?

Yeah, that was Renee. Renee did so much research and she felt, because she was really interested, she spoke to these Sydney entrepreneurs, I shouldn't call them housewives, Sydney entrepreneurs, and they spoke to her about their clientele. And they were women who about their clientele. And they were women who had been raped, had bad sex experiences,

didn't want to shut up shop, people who hadn't been touched, people who had only experienced sex with a partner who was addicted to porn. And so it was very sort of brutal in one way. And people who couldn't cope with an emotional link, but felt that, I mean, Australians, as I say, it is much less repressed, but felt very much that they needed a sex life for their health. And it's interesting because there's some countries, so for example, the producer of the film,

also one of the producers, also produced The Sessions, which starred Helen Hunt as a sex therapist working with a man with a disability. And there are some countries in the world where they regard sex as a as a human right. And so if you're disabled and you find it hard to have sex, the government will pay for you to have a sex worker. Yeah, we have actually interviewed some sex worker who does that on woman's hour and it's a remarkable interview but actually we've had a message in sally from somebody who says um uh basically asking is it okay to objectify men in this way saying i'm astonished and depressed by the horrendous double standards demonstrated on woman's hour

he's asked this person's asking if sally phillips was a man who'd written a book about another man setting up a company to supply female cleaners who's supposed to have sex relations with their customers, there would have been an absolute outcry and quite rightly. What do you say to that? Have you had that kind of reaction? It's a good point. That was my first thought when I read the script, pretty much. But then once you look into it, you know, it is just much more complex than that. And the fact that it's from a true story, you know,

makes it, makes it much more interesting to me that there is a, you know, there is a way in which we're not supposed to be sexual after a certain age. And, and also, yeah, I mean mean you know i'm i'm not i'm not as you say i'm not the right person to talk about the pros and cons of of um of prostitution but it is a more complex question than it might first appear and i think what's interesting is you know how much care in the film went into the question of consent. Yeah. So if it's entirely consensual, what do you say then?

And so there are, and I think a less careful film, I mean, it's not all played for laughs by any means, which meant I felt a bit uncomfortable because I'm much happier when playing for laughs. But there are sort of five or six scenes that just wouldn't have been there 10 years ago. Yeah. It's about consent and about the men's attitude towards it. And it's going to be on Sky, so everyone will be able to watch it and make their own judgments about it.

Take your own decision, yeah. Well, it is joyful. I really do um i really enjoyed it so and and i've just got to say someone has been in touch to say that their valentine present from their ex-husbands in capitals was a chip pan yeah that's like the onion dicer also my ex-husband there we go uh sally come and talk to us again anytime i want to talk to you about what you're doing with ronnie and cononey you've set up a production company entrepreneurs in our 50s you've set up a company called Captain Dolly

brilliant come back and talk to me all about that next time and yes Sally's new film How to Please a Woman is going to be available to watch on Sky Cinema from today Friday the 8th and she's in the new series of Breeders which starts on Wednesday the 13th of July also on Sky Cinema from today, Friday the 8th. And she's in the new series of Breeders, which starts on Wednesday the 13th of July,

also on Sky Comedy. Sally, thank you so much. 84844. Lots of you getting in touch about things that you have started doing later in life that are bringing you a new lease of life. I'm 70 and volunteer two afternoons per week to listen to Year 3 children read and absolutely love it.

I'm on my own and these little people with their ideas and questions are a delight i love having to explain what among other things coal ink and checks are i can honestly say that this experience has enriched my life so much more than i could have ever envisaged and and you're enjoying the program that's nice to hear someone else has said i have discovered pickleball, a new sport, a bit gentler on the joints, played on a badminton court, fun sport with a great sporting community. Keep getting in touch with anything you want to talk to me about that you're hearing on the programme.

84844 is the number to text. Now, with the school holidays having already started in Scotland and Northern Ireland and fast approaching in England and Wales, the charity Pregnant Then Screwed surveyed 28,000 parents, 99% women, on their childcare plans for the summer. From the data, they found 1,630 women who had had an abortion in the last five years

said childcare costs had influenced their decision, and nearly one in five of them had made that choice solely based on childcare costs. According to the latest survey by Coram Family and Childcare, a charity that promotes children's rights, childcare costs have increased 60% in cash terms between 2010 and 2021, twice as fast as average earnings. And a full-time nursery place for an under two in London is now £19,000 a year. Well, I'm joined by Joelle Brilly, founder of the charity Pregnant Then Screwed, and Anna, who's a student nurse. Morning to you both. Joely, I'm going to come to

you first. Were you surprised at the number of women who'd chosen to have a termination because of childcare costs? We knew that this was an issue because we run a free advice line. So we talk to women every day and this was coming up as a problem. But we were shocked, appalled and saddened by the scale of the issue. I mean, this data shows us that women are terminating wanted pregnancies as a direct result of childcare costs. And not just a few women, it was almost one in five women say childcare costs are the reason they terminated their pregnancy. And, you know, this is something that is in the government's gift to fix. And childcare costs have been an issue for many years now. This is nothing new, but the response so far

has been wholly and completely inadequate. You must have had an inkling that this was possible because the question was in the survey. Yeah. So we talk to women every day through our free advice line and they call us about the challenges they're facing at work as mothers. These were women who already have children who were terminating pregnancies. So they knew how difficult it is to access the childcare system. So we did have an inkling it was a problem, but yeah, we were surprised at the scale. You spoke to 28,000 parents, 99% of them women, as I said. So talk me through the survey. What did you hope to find? Who did you speak to? And how did you access the people who responded to it?

So we were surveying parents. 99% were women that responded. And we used a system called Typeform. We did it through social media. And we were wanting to find data on the cost of parents when they're trying to access summer childcare, because we often talk about childcare happens to parents who have older children and you have the six weeks summer holidays and you've got to figure out you know how you're going to work and care for your child and lots of women we found have had enormous barriers in terms of cost but also in terms of availability particularly women who have a child with a disability. I'm going to bring in somebody who actually did respond to your survey a student nurse called Anna who answered your questions. She chose a termination a few years ago when she was a student. Anna, welcome to Woman's Hour. I'd like to know from you, why did you decide to take such a serious step? I'd not long left my first degree, I'd just finished my first degree and I wasn't in a financial position to afford a child.

The biggest consideration was the cost of childcare. I want a career but I want children too. I shouldn't have to choose between the two. We don't live in that world anymore or we shouldn't live in that world anymore um and I haven't got my career started and I financially could not afford to have a child and that was the choice I had to make um and I discussed you know with my partner now is it something that we would have to do now now we we have our first child and absolutely if I got pregnant now I wouldn't be able to keep it because we cannot afford it we We're struggling now, you know, just with the one child. Why not? Because you've got a 20-month-old now. Yeah.

So you've had another conversation with your partner and you've decided that if you were to get pregnant again, you couldn't do it. Tell me why. Tell me a bit about your situation. So I'm in the middle of my nursing degree, a vocational degree i don't get any support for child care at all um i get student finance and i get the nhs learning support fund doing the nursing degree that totals about 16 000 pounds a year my other half earns just over minimum wage she earns about 20 000 pounds a year and with the cost of living at the moment it's just extortionate my degree is 37 and a half hours a week minimum you know we get six weeks holiday a year it's

that kind of degree and we don't get any support this year I've qualified for 227 pounds from student finance for the full academic year to cover child care costs and we are lucky I have a mother-in-law who is incredible and she will you know have him three days a week but she's she's retired she shouldn't have to have him all the time she should be enjoying her retirement she's worked hard you know and like you say you're lucky you're lucky you see yourself as one of the lucky ones because you do have help yeah absolutely so what would you like to see happen for parents like yourself what would what would need to happen?

On a personal level, for all healthcare degrees, I feel like, you know, it's a vocational degree. We should be entitled to the tax free childcare and the 33 hours because I don't qualify because I'm not considered working. So because there's only one person in my household working, we don't qualify for the extra hours as he gets older but you know for everyone there needs to be more how can they expect women and men to go back to work after nine months because that's all they will pay for maternity and it's not a lot and if you don't get anything from your job it's not a lot of money if they're not going to help support the cost of child care something needs to be done and you know there's a lot more people who know a lot more about it but from a you know bog standard average person a lot more needs to be done because it's unaffordable and with the cost of everything at the moment it's you know I've considered whether I need to quit my degree because we can't afford it and I shouldn't have to do that when you know

they need hundreds of thousands more nurses so you, it's really difficult and more needs to be done. Jolie, I mean, Anna, thank you. Anna is just one of the people who got in touch in one of your case studies. But the figures were much worse for women from black and mixed race backgrounds. What was your analysis of this? Why was that? Well, so black women tend to be on lower incomes because of structural racism. And so as a proportion of their income, childcare costs are more. And we are quite unique in the UK compared to other liberal welfare states in that those on the lowest income pay the highest amount for childcare as a proportion of their income. Why is it? Why is it so expensive in the UK? Well, it's a mixture of reasons. I mean, it's just been a hodgepodge plan by the government and your 30 hours subsidised don't kick in until the age of three. So most people can't access any

help until their child is three. But that scheme is underfunded by the government. It's underfunded by about three pounds per child per hour. And so those costs are passed down the chain to one-year-olds and two-year-olds. And so what happens is, tends to be a mother taking maternity leave. She's about to go back. She looks at her salary compared to the cost of childcare, and it just doesn't add up because it is so expensive. Two thirds of families say they pay the same or more for their childcare as their rent or their mortgage. So that means this is their biggest expenditure. And so they think, well, that just doesn't make sense.

And so they fall out of the workforce or they go for low paid part time work where they're very unlikely to progress so that they can manage their childcare in the world. So it has a huge impact on women's careers. I mean, this is the reason why we see a pension gap, gender gap. When women get older, it really stalls their careers because they physically can't progress. You know, you can't leave little Johnny on the doorstep with a packet of beef flavoured Tula hoops and hope he'll be fine. He needs to be cared for. And if you can't afford it, you're stuck. You cannot continue your job you cannot progress your career and it's still mainly women who take the time out to then decide to look after the children

this is a problem that impacts women and you know perhaps that's why it is being repeatedly ignored by the government well we did get in touch with the department of education for a statement but they have been otherwise occupied for the last few days so So they've given us a bit of their press release. I'm sure you already know what they've said, but let me just read out what I've got. With the cost of living continuing to rise, the government is committed to doing everything it can to support families with their finances

while keeping people in high-wage secure jobs that help grow the economy. New plans are being set out to ensure high quality and affordable childcare is accessible to all. To drive down costs for providers and parents, paying £265 per week for childcare for their two-year-old if providers adopt the changes and pass on all the savings to parents. What do you think about that? I think it's absolute nonsense and they're just kicking the can down the road again. And those ratio changes are going to do more damage than good. We also already have the lowest qualified, lowest paid workforce out of all the liberal welfare states.

And so now we're going to add more pressure onto this underpaid, highly stressed, you know, undervalued workforce. But in addition to that, we know from the Early Years Alliance who researched 9,000 providers that only 2% said that any cost savings would be passed on to parents. It's absolute nonsense. But it is at the minute, Joleone, a consultation. So presumably you will be getting in touch to let them know. Absolutely. You know, parents don't want this and providers don't want this. And that point will be made very clear. But where is the plan? There is no plan. There is no strategy. It's just being ignored. Well, we will continue to talk about this on Woman's Hour. Come back and chat to us again another day.

Jolie Brearley, thank you for now. And Anna, thank you so much for speaking to me about your own experience. Lots of you getting in touch about various things you're hearing on the show today. Really sparked your imagination to talk about the worst gift you've ever been given when Sally Phillips said that she was given an onion dicer.

My ex. I love it how they all seem to start with my ex. My ex bought me a leaf blower for my birthday. As he said, so I could back the garden as well. Oh, my goodness. Worst present from ex-husband, a fire gate. Well, they're very practical, these exes, aren't they? You can also email me by going to our website. Now, Freemasons are known for their white aprons,

mysterious symbols and secret handshakes. To the outside world, their rituals are shrouded in mystery, but for over 100 years, female Freemasons have been gathering to conduct initiations and ceremonies like their male counterparts. The Order of Women Freemasons has several thousand members, while Freemasonry for Women has about 700. So what's the appeal of becoming a member of an organisation that is so secretive and about which so little is known by non-members? Well, to tell me, to lift the lid, to make it less secret, I'm joined by grandmaster zazanka penn of the order of women's freemasons and gail ndanga from freemasonry for women very good morning welcome to women's hour zazanka let me come to you first tell me why you got

involved in freemasons before i say that may i just say my worst present yes a wiper for my rear windscreen of my ford fiesta i cried for days and days he's not my ex-husband but he's not allowed to buy me any presents ever again oh just tell him just tell him what you want i think that's i think we need to we're gonna this is obviously an item which we will run with but maybe you just need to say this is what i want or here you go pay for that but yes free freemasons tell us all about it it's the most wonderful amazing fantastic organization that has been going for hundreds and hundreds of years um in the beginning it was a male organization women were not allowed to join in any shape or form until the turn of the, until the late 1890s, early 1900s, when some English women were initiated in France. And they formed a lodge of men and women Freemasons in London in the early 1900s. And our first Grand Master was the Reverend Dr. William Cobb,

who was the rector of a church in London. And he was a great reformer, very interested in rights for women. But he was a man. Yes, absolutely. Yes, we were men and women. And our roots are really in the suffrage movement. Most, if not all, of our early members were campaigners for rights for women. And of course, you see, women couldn't be Freemasons. So to make Freemasonry for women was a step in equality. And what got you first involved? Why did you join? Why did you become a Freemasons, Azanka?

Oh, well, I would like to say I had some high fluting and deep and meaningful reason, but in truth, I was curious. I just wanted to know what they did. And it runs in the family, doesn't it, for you? Yes, it does. Yes, my mother and my grandmother were Freemasons and we had men as well, for you? Yes, it does. Yes, my mother and my grandmother were Freemasons, and we had men as well.

But they wouldn't tell me anything, so I just wanted to find out what was going on. And as soon as I joined, it just took my imagination and I just loved every minute of it. Why did you join? What did it do? That first meeting, it was moving, emotional, spectacular. All the women, this is a long time ago, Anita. I'm old.

Moving, emotional, spectacular. They had long evening dresses. They had beautiful Masonic regalia. All of the ceremony was learned by heart and recited. It was absolutely fabulous. And I just loved it. I'm going to bring Gail in here because Zazanka joined, her mother was a Freemason, her grandmother was a Freemason,

but you only joined four years ago. That's correct. Why? Good morning. Thank you very much for having me. Welcome, welcome. Nice to have you in the studio as well. Yes.

So I decided to join four years ago. Many times during my career, welcome, welcome. Nice to have you in the studio as well. Yes, so I decided to join four years ago. Many times during my career, professional, I've been, I spoke with people and they highly recommended me to become a Freemason. So I didn't really know what it was about, but then I did my search and I understood that it was mainly about empowering women, about brotherly love, solidarity and charity.

Or sisterly love. We still call ourselves brothers. Do you? Yeah, we do exactly the same as the men. We call ourselves brothers, not sisters. Why is that? We, as, I don't know, this beautiful lady that we just talked about her with, I don't know her name. Zuzanka.

We learn everything by heart and everything has more than one meaning and to be to have the right um understanding of it I I think it make more sense to call ourselves brothers sorry that's fine so did you join for professional reasons not for professional reason for spiritual reason professional reasons, for spiritual reasons, for empowering reasons, but it's true that when, I would say when I was talking with people in a professional environment, outside of work, but

colleagues, when we finish work, when you talk about some spirituality, some type of dystopia, they were highly recommending me to become one. So I'm trying to just get to the nub of what it is and why someone would choose to join. Convince me, Zazanka, why would, if I said to you,

oh, I'm curious, but, you know, I love my life and I've got my hobbies and I'm doing my thing. What would becoming a Freemason do for me? How would it enhance my life? Well, you will meet many women from all sorts of different backgrounds that you would never meet in any other environment. Some amazing, powerful women. I have friends of 40 years or more that I would never have met if I hadn't been a Freemason. It's companionship. It's friendship. It's support. And when you go to a meeting, you forget everything in the outside world you go in

it's calm well it should be calm it's peaceful it takes your mind off everything and you can relax and just be is it religious as gail is not religious no at all. You have to have a belief in a supreme being of some sort. So it doesn't matter what supreme being, because we pray, we have prayers, and we have promises. So you have to have that basic belief. But really, the main thing is that none of us are perfect. We all can improve something within ourselves. And Freemasonry gives you the framework to enable you to make yourself into a better person so that we're nicer and kinder and better people.

Gail. Thank you very much. I would say as well, it's a lot about personal development. And to answer your question, you're like, oh, if, you know, I wanted to try to convince you to become yeah go for it i would say maybe are you member of some club or private membership club you just meet people that are like-minded that share the same passion the same love and really wants to improve in a personal way intellectually and in within with people that are really like-minded, that will empower them and learn about themselves and others. And so what happens in a ceremony? So as the lady said previously, everything is learned by heart.

So Freemasons transmit messages through allegory. So basically, I would say it's a kind of group visualization, kind of a way that helps you to understand. So you're all together in a room? Yeah, we're all together. Dressed in a certain way? Yeah, all black dress, long, with the regalia, if it's an official meeting. And what's the regalia?

It depends on what is your level within the Freemasonry. So when you are just an intern apprentice, you got a white apron. When you become a fellow craft, you got the white apron with the blue roses on the side. Then when you become a master, it's pale blue. And then when you move on within your lodge, you may be, when you pass in the chair, you end up becoming a dark blue. Okay. And the lodge is somewhere quite beautiful. Are your buildings quite spectacular? Yeah. Spectacular. lodge is somewhere quite beautiful. Are your buildings quite spectacular? Yeah. Spectacular, yes. They're beautiful. There is a lot of meaning, I will say.

You learn from everything that you see, that you hear, and that you feel. It's like really a 3D experience. It's not just talking, but it's acting and put that in action with other people that are like-minded. Okay, so you're in your regalia, you're in the room, and then what happens? Well, we express a lot of gratitude.

So that's, I think, people that really don't... No, but when you don't know or you are not Freemason, you don't really believe in that. But we express a lot of... That's the first thing that we do. No? Am I correct? We express gratitude to everybody. It's not just about being Freemason,

it's to the society. So we vow to be a fit member of the society, to help other people, not just Freemason, to give, to receive, and to never stop learning about ourselves, our society, and what surrounds us, and to respect the country that we are living in, and to always love the country where we were born in. Well, what you just said is quite interesting, because Zanka, I think people traditionally think that Freemasons, it's about helping other Freemasons. Because, you know, it was men inviting other men who knew,

you know, you need to know someone on the inside, and then no one really knows who a Freemason is. Is it about helping someone? But that's not what this is about. Absolutely not. No. In my career, a Freemason has always been completely separate from my professional life. Yes, we do help each other.

Of course we do. One of our basic principles is brotherly love, and that is loving each other and helping them in trouble. But it's also loving other people and supporting charities and fundraising and doing all that sort of thing as well. It's not just Freemasons that we help. And anyone can become a member now? Yes.

Well, yes, you have to have a belief in the Supreme Being. You've got to be reasonably respectable. And you need to be 21 or 18 in some cases yeah just apply go to our website and apply go to the website and apply as easy as that it's been a really fascinating insight uh thank you very much is anchor thank you and gail thanking it thank you for coming in to talk to me about it uh lots of you getting in touch about these terrible birthday gifts that your partners have bought you and elaine has said my husband bought me a cement mixer one christmas i had to go and get it in my fiesta and spent the following week mixing mortar to lay a patio beat that i don't think we get i don't think we can

can anyone beat that 84844 is the number to text now new data from the nhs shows there's been a record rise in the number of people that are now taking antidepressants 8.3 million people were prescribed the drugs in the last year and two-thirds of them were female the group most likely to receive them were women aged between 50 and 59 and there's also been an uptake in children and teenagers taking them so let's find out more about the data with dr nigat arif a gp who specializes in women's health based in Buckinghamshire. And she's also the resident breakfast TV doctor. Morning, Nigit. Nice to have you on Woman's Hour. Also a Woman's Hour regular, which we're very pleased about.

So talk to me about this. This trend has been going up anyway, hasn't it? People taking antidepressants over the last five years. But why has there been such a rise in the last year? The trend has been going up and the figures and the statistics don't surprise me as an NHS GP. I'll tell you there are three reasons why I think there's a rise. One is the pandemic.

The pandemic has really affected lots of people's mental health. The lockdowns, the uncertainty, workplace, people made redundant and the financial pressures that might have caused relationship pressures. So the pandemic, as we know, everyone can relate to the fact that at some point they felt extremely stressed or anxious around that time. Number two, I think that there's far greater

awareness that we've got. So we've got Dr. Alex George, who is the mental health ambassador. We've got Dr. Julia Smith, who's been using using TikTok and she's got 4.3 million followers who have been accessing her content on how they can help their mental health and number three I think that there's greater awareness about antidepressants themselves there was a huge stigma around antidepressants they were always called eyes of the happy pills there were derogatory terms sometimes used for them and now there's far more in acceptance the trend started in America on social media of doctors posting their antidepressants that they're taking, making sure that everybody else was knowing. Do you know what? Even doctors and healthcare professionals,

they also become affected by their mental health. And no one is immune. 100% of us at some point will become affected by our mental health. And so I think those are the three reasons why we're seeing an upward trend. And why women? Why more women than men? So we do know that there's a gender health gap already and the research has always shown that there that is the case and then access to services are different as well so again if I can use my three-pronged attack to why I think women far more is because well women women talk and they talk a lot more with each other as a as a GP if I tell a woman any health care advice the she will go home and she will spread it to all her friends and her mates and she'll let them know

and so women ask for help as well and women understand that actually there is a chemical imbalance and antidepressants given at the right time will help with that chemical imbalance because antidepressants do a lot of good work. And I think this is almost like for women sometimes, if this is my personal view, it's a kickback against the masculine toxicity that we have sometimes that hangs around that we're going to get through this.

This is absolutely something that I don't need to get some pills for or go and see a doctor for and put up with it. Unfortunately, if we look at the research from Mind or Rethink and the mental health charities, we know far more suicidal attempts or even successful suicidal attempts are in men. The biggest killer of men in the UK. So that just means that we do have a gender health gap, but we need to be tackling that. We need to be supporting men so they don't feel that they can't go to the doctor and ask for help. Now, last year, NICE, which gives guidelines to doctors, said that talking

therapies and exercise should be the first port of call. Do these figures suggest that that's not happening for some reason? Oh, not at all. I don't think these figures do. I think these figures show that actually we're giving the right support at the right time. I think that we need to be really clear what happens when a person comes to the GP. So firstly, a lot of the talking therapy. So the government put in £5 million in March 2021 for mental health recovery action plans. So they made IAP services, which are talking services available on the NHS, which means patients can bypass their GP and not have to have that appointment. And they can do a self-referral and cognitive behavioural therapy is great for anxiety, low mood, depression,

stress or PTSD. If I can just take a small second to say about myself, my son had a liver transplant when he was really young in 2016 and I as a GP went to talking therapy first and I had sessions of CBT. In fact still even now to cope with the pressures that I deal with as a GP, I go and have talking therapies and CBT and do exercise and mindfulness. Antidepressants is very nuanced. It's a complex reason. There's multifactorial reasons why we start someone on antidepressants. It's not one single decision. So the fact that we're using them appropriately for some patients is really good. And this shows that we need to be also aware that they're not appropriate for everybody. But it is that sort of nuances and that relationship between the patient and the GP and understanding it's an individual choice. And that's why we start them.

What kind of circumstances then are people normally prescribe them? So I'll take a typical consultation. I've done consultations all this week and I've been prescribing antidepressants. So usually what happens is a patient comes to see me and they'll say, Dr. Arif, and the reason that they've come to see me Anita in my surgery is because they've tried all the lifestyle, all the talking therapies, they've tried to cope with their mental health, but now they're finding that they really are struggling. And that's why they're at my doorstep, because this is where the GP steps in. So then I actually go through what their wishes are. I tend not to prescribe antidepressants on the first, second or even the third consultations.

We go back to holistic measures. It could be like yoga or acupuncture or hypnotherapy that they might not have thought of. Antidepressants are then started if we think, you know what, we've done? And we've exhausted all the routes that we possibly can. And now the mental health is impacted so much that actually we need to try to help that chemical imbalance. So start with either SSRI, serotonin reuptake inhibitors like citalopram or sertraline. And then we wean the patient on slowly with it and checking in on three weeks. So the circumstances are so individual. It could be because of the extremeness of their symptoms. It could be because of the lack of their sleep or impact on their life and their work. Is there something else possible? I'm just thinking back to the figures, particularly that so many more women are on antidepressants than men. Because you've been on before to talk to me about HRT and prescribing antidepressants for some women when they're going through menopause. So has that got anything to do with the uptake in women over the age of 50?

This is a really good question. And I'm so pleased that you're asking me this because a lot of women, unfortunately, we know, and this comes back to the gender health gap and the knowledge of our women's health in this country, is that women from the age of 40 can approach perimenopause and psychological symptoms such as low mood, irritability, brain fog, lack of sleep, irrational anger, tearfulness,

that loss of self-esteem and self-confidence might be the first symptoms even before they get hot flashes. So women sometimes can be misdiagnosed as having depression and offered antidepressants. The NICE guidance in 2019 says that psychological symptoms are far better dealt with if you actually peter out or tackle the oestrogen and progesterone fluctuations

that the woman is having. And to do that, you give HRT. So HRT is first line, not antidepressant at that stage. But this is where we don't have the education to be able to find those nuances between that. But we will continue to do it on Woman's Hour. Dr. Nigit Arif, thank you for coming to speak to us about that. Lots of you getting in touch with these terrible gifts

that your partners have bought you. Moira in Huddersfield says, my husband bought me a long-handled axe for Valentine's one year. Absolute caucus. on to my next guest who is giggling already at your uh answer your text coming in the actress and writer rebecca humphries says that she has often been called crazy by her boyfriend but when paparazzi caught him kissing his stricticum dancing partner she realized that the only crazy thing was believing she didn't deserve more rebecca posted her thoughts on social media,

including advice for other women who might be going through something similar. Her story went viral. And yesterday was the release of her first book, Why Did You Stay? A Memoir About Self-Worth. And I am delighted that Rebecca is in the studio with me now. Good to see you. Oh, I'm delighted to be here. It's lovely to see you. Congratulations on your book coming out yesterday. I want to take you back in time,

not four years back in time. I want to take you back to Wednesday evening, the eve of your book coming out. You know, all of this has happened. You've put it all down there. You've said a lot. How did you feel? I just sort of sat at my kitchen table and grounded myself and was like, you really have to bear this in mind this moment, because tomorrow is the day where people who you've never met, who have no idea about your story that I've normalised for such a really, really long time as so many of us do, have the opportunity to read about this and connect with it. And to be honest, I don't really think I anticipated what has happened, which has been that, once again, just like it did in 2018 when I put out a Twitter statement about gaslighting,

so many people have connected to what is actually a very specific set of circumstances. And my very authentic story seems to be quite universal. Yeah, the story resonates, but also the way you have written the book is just joyful and it's very amusing as well as very moving as well. So let's go back to what I call your mic drop moment. The tweets, I mean, the worded tweet um that got huge support um from the greats like Marianne Keys and Catlin Moran um but it was actually one tweet that stayed

with you that kind of guess was the impetus for this book which is someone saying to you why did you stay yeah it's that well what happened was me putting this statement out was really the first time in my life that I had owned my narrative and owned the fact that actually what was happening in that house was very toxic and actually tantamount to gaslighting. And so therefore, the why did you stay was my first experience of victim shaming. Yeah. And that question is posed. I mean, every time that I've said to someone on my book is called Why did you say the response has been,

I mean, yeah, just because that's been posed to so many people who have tried to share their experiences about damaging relationships. And when it happened to me, I mean, it was it's etched on my memory when I saw that tweet for the first time because all of this support was coming in and yet there's this question and it sat so strangely with me I mean it's it's it's the same question right as well if you didn't want to get sexually assaulted why do you wear a short skirt yeah women get asked it all the time it's so binary and isn't it sort of sees the world in such a black and white way yeah completely and I mean the the thing that I really learned about that circumstance was okay I'm going to take what's happened and I'm going to find a way to reframe it in a way that's helpful

for me which is exactly what I did with that tweet and I was like well that question exists I can either allow myself to be shut down by it and to be dimmed by it, or I can take it at face value and go, OK, well, that question belongs to me now. And in order for me to move on with my life and not make my life this huge halo polishing, finger pointing exercise in blame and judgment and attack, I can really look back on my life, figure out why did I put myself in that circumstance for such a long time why did I not believe that I deserved more and actually go back to all of those narratives that I ingested from age of about five and go oh my expectation of what love looked like has never been about self-worth it just never has it's been about attaining a man or a partner and chucking bits of myself out the window in order to maintain it so that's what you do in the book very cleverly you kind of go

between sort of 2018 and then go back into bits of your life to explore exactly what you're saying what got to where you got you to the point that you got to so let's invite our old friend shame into the room shall we because glad you came just kind of looms around all the time anyway yeah um and you tell you go to two stories specifically one when you're is it four or five and one when you're 15 yeah tell us about those well the the story that i chose to tell when i was five was my first i mean i say the first time i saw a penis there were two of them and it was my first experience of asserting myself properly as a young woman. And I took these twin boys that were in my class that thought I was so hilarious into the woods

that we weren't supposed to go in. And I made them take their clothes off. And I did the same just because it was sort of, I was a child and it was joy and it was naughty and it was secret and there's sort of nothing in it but I had this real experience at that time where I suddenly realized that I a little girl had asked these two boys to do this and I had this real moment of there we all are with our clothes off something about this isn't right or it just felt within my body my sweet innocent little body that me a girl it was wrong for me to have done this and for me to have asserted myself in that way and made these boys do this thing it was my first experience of shame and real fear of getting found out because of the repercussions of that and I speak also in

in that chapter about how I was always identified from a tiny tiny age as being loud for a girl loud bossy of course I mean we've heard that word bandied around and we know how dangerous it is but the problem is that the damage has already been done yeah because then what happens is this shame that you internalize from that age and you push down and down and down throughout my life and my relationships when then you start getting told you're being too much or you're taking up too much space or what you're and then that progresses to what you're saying is mental yeah what you're thinking is psychotic you begin to self-identify as that because of course you've been told that and been shamed for that ever since you were a child you just accept it there's so much in this book rebecca that you cover that made me go whoa oh my god and that and that and that there's something that i

need to bring up and ask you about because it's a sentence that I read and I thought I need to ask her. And I can because she's coming in to chat to me. You say the longest running toxic love of my life has actually been my career. Yeah. What a sentence. Well, as an actress. Well, I think that it's not just an actress thing. I think it's anyone who's ever had ambition and has found themselves in a career that they really thought was going to solve all of their problems or was you know their main desire and has just striven for something and time and time again been undervalued in it or felt as though what they're doing isn't being seen or being heard and I mean as an actress that happens time and time again I mean this industry is I mean

it's changing for the better but for so many years it has been so sexist and ageist and sizist as well I've been told my whole career everything that's wrong with my body shape with my face with the way that I speak and assert myself. And before you know what's happening, there you are feeling completely as though you have nothing to offer, nothing to say. Your voice is gone. And then you get another job and you think, well, it loves me back at last. And then it happens again. And that cycle just goes around and around. And of course, when you're accustomed to that happening in that facet of your life, when it happens in your relationship, it just feels like normal.

It feels like how the world operates. So yeah, I mean, it almost certainly has been the most toxic relationship of my life. By the way, I've started watching the British version of Call My Agent, 10%, and you're brilliant in it, which I can highly recommend. Everybody must watch that. It's on Netflix at the minute.

Something joyful, though, in the book, throughout the book, is your friends and the friendship and your gang of buddies that I've just fallen in love with and I'd quite like to just hang out with all of you at some point. They're pretty fabulous. It's really important that you put that in there, the story, the thread of your friends. Of course, because the thing that I really wanted to highlight from this book, this book, you know, on the front cover, it says a book about toxic love and that's crossed out.

And actually, the book is about self-worth. And it's about moving on from this relationship that I had, more so than highlighting all of the problems within it, even though that obviously does come into play too but the moving on had so much to do with me understanding that love the the onus that we put on romantic love is it's overwhelming in the world and actually love is so profound when it has nothing to do with romance when it has nothing to do with partnerships it has to do with your friends and your family and it's it's so intoxicating when you really start to see it in technicolor and i mean the romance that i experienced with my friends in this book you know it's so heady and so you know invigorating that that is what everyone should be looking for and if you want to experience it i would highly recommend you go and get the book it's called what did you say a A Memoir About Self-Worth

by the brilliant Rebecca Humphreys. Thank you so much for coming in and joining me. Carol Parker, mother-in-law bought me a doormat for my 23rd birthday. She says, I was left speechless, which allowed me to see it inside. But she says, when my husband got home, I did indeed show my anger, but then we collapsed in laughter. That sounds healthy to me. Have a joyful weekend. Join me tomorrow

for Weekend Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Stephen Fry and I heartily recommend you listen to the BBC's history podcast, You're Dead to Me, because, well, one, you can join me in learning all about Frederick the Great of Prussia. Two, it takes you on a historical grand tour from naughty nuns who became stitching sisters to a globe-trotting Maghrebi. And three, well, it's fun. And don't we all need a little bit of that at the moment? You can find it on BBC Sounds, don't you know? So subscribe to You're Dead to Me and have yourself a giggle as you learn. You've earned 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.