Woman's Hour - Pakistan child marriage, I'm With Her, Sex bias in natural history museums

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Despite opposition from clerics in Pakistan, a bill banning child marriage in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad, has recently been passed by the National Assembly and awaits the signature of the President. Azadeh Moshiri, BBC Pakistan correspondent and Senator Sherry Rehman, who has spent more than 7 years campaigning to get it through, join Kylie Pentelow. The American folk trio I’m With Her have routinely taken time out from their individual careers to dream up songs together. On their long-awaited second album Wild and Clear and Blue, they sing about reaching into the past, navigating a chaotic present, and bravely moving forward into the unknown. They join Kylie in the studio.From displays to collections, the lack of female specimens at natural history museums shows a clear gender bias -- that's according to Assistant Director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge Jack Ashby. Jack has written about this as part of his new book, and he joins Kylie to tell us more. Metro journalist Alice Giddings has been spat on, not once, but twice, as she was out jogging on the streets of west London. Keen to find out other women's experiences, she began an investigation, in partnership with the organisation Women's Running, to discover other women's experiences. She joins Kylie. Madeline Potter grew up in a Roma family in post-communist Romania. She’s traced the history and stories of her community, as well as her own experiences and treatment across continental Europe and the UK in her book, The Roma: A Travelling History. Presenter: Kylie Pentelow Producer: Emma Pearce

Hello, this is Kylie Pentelow and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Coming up today, imagine being out for a run when out of nowhere someone spits at you. That's what happened twice to one woman who'll join me to tell me her story and how she's now leading a campaign to expose this behaviour. She says women she's spoken to have been forced to change the way they exercise because of the fear of it happening again. We'd like to hear from you if you have experienced anything like this. You can text the programme – the number is 84844 on social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour, and you can email us

through our website or you can send us a WhatsApp message or a voice note. The number for that is 03 700 100 444. Now also coming up today from big tusks to huge antlers, have you ever thought about how the animals you're looking at in museums are mostly male? We'll be finding out about the impact of lack of female specimens and what it means for our perception of nature and also for research. Plus we'll have some wonderful live music in the studio from the award-winning American folk trio, I'm With Her. But first, I can bring you the news that despite opposition from clerics in Pakistan, a bill banning child marriage in the country's

capital city Islamabad has been passed by the National Assembly. It still awaits the signature of President Asif Ali Zardari. It's difficult to obtain accurate figures, but in the last few years UNICEF have said that one in five girls are married in Pakistan before the age of 18. So how significant is this development? We'll discuss this. I'm joined by the Pakistan People's Party Senator Sherry Raymond. She was the politician who tabled the bill in the Senate and also BBC Pakistan correspondent Azadeh Mashiri. Thank you to you both for joining me this morning. Let's just start Azadeh with you. Can you just explain what the term child marriage means in Pakistan? Because I know

it can mean different things depending on the country and also what it will say. Previously under laws that were inherited before partition, so that's under British colonial rule, the minimum age for marriage was 14 years old for girls so that's under British colonial rule. The minimum age for marriage was 14 years old for girls and that was then raised to 16. Now what this legislation that people like Senator Rahman have advocated for sets out is a penalty should anyone facilitate or coerce a child into an underage marriage, which according to this bill would be defined as under the age of 18. And in terms of the landscape here in Pakistan, numbers as you said are very

difficult to get and these are estimates but according to UNICEF, Pakistan currently ranks sixth globally when it comes to early child marriages, so under the age of 18. So what then could be the consequences for family members or registrars, clergy who facilitate or indeed coerce children into early marriage? They could face up to seven years in prison alongside a fine and that depends on their level of involvement and that's a big change given before we were talking about only a fine or up to a month in prison.

The bill also defines child abuse and that would set the age of consent now at 18 years old. And if someone were to take a child out of the Islamabad capital territory in order to contravene this law, then that would be considered child trafficking. Though it's important to understand that while this would send a message nationally about the age of consent, this age requirement is already in place in the province of Sindh in southern Pakistan, but legally this bill would only apply to the Islamabad capital territory and that would only be once the bill receives a signature from the president,

though that's not to downplay what a big step this would be for senators who have advocated for this bill. But there does remain opposition to it being banned. Why? What's the argument? Yes, and that's particularly from the clerical community here in Pakistan. The Council of Islamic Ideology is an advisory body and a constitutional one, which means its opinions do carry significant weight when it comes to legislation. It can recommend changes to existing laws, for example, but it doesn't have veto power per se. The real risk is public reaction once the Council of Islamic Ideology releases a formal opinion. And in this

case, they've decided that the bill does not align with Islamic teachings, specifically when it comes to any punishments for early marriage, they've said that Islam focuses on physical and mental maturity rather than a specific age. And they also seem to bristle at the fact that they were, according to them, not consulted on this. But to be clear, the Islamic community and scholars are not against certain legal protections for women or brides. There's a lot of nuance to the Council of Islamic Ideology's decisions. For example, in the same session where they expressed their opposition to this bill,

the Council said it was against mandatory dowries whereby the bride and her family must hand over money or gifts to the groom's family. They also said they support a woman's right to keep her own home after marriage and they've recommended some reforms to inheritance laws that could be detrimental to women's rights. So when it comes to this bill though, there is clear opposition and again the real risk from this kind of opposition is whether it encourages any other form of protests or opposition in the country. It doesn't mean the bill won't be signed but it can make implementation difficult. Senator Rehman, if I can come to you, you've been campaigning on this for seven years I believe, how does it feel then to have this pass? Senator

Raymond I'm just checking if you can hear me there. No it seems like we have lost the line to Senator Raymond there, I'm just going to return to you then Azadeh. So as you were saying, Islamabad is not the first state to pass a law like this. It was a decade ago that the bill was passed in Sindh province. Do we know anything about the impact then it's had there? Well, again, numbers are really difficult to get, especially in conservative communities in Pakistan.

But what some politicians within Sindh who've advocated for implementing the Age of Consent is 18, what they've raised as concerns in their province is that the bill hasn't led to the sort of change that they'd hoped for, for that rate of child marriage to drop compared to national levels. And there are different challenges there, of course some of them are religious, some of them are ideological, or simply part of the cultural practices. But the United Nations has pointed to climate change as one of them. Sindh is a province which is very affected by floods, and this can lead to economic hardships for families. They struggle, and according

to the UN, that's what can sometimes drive families to turn to child marriages and that's because they're simply seeking financial support. Do we think that there will be other states kind of following suit now after we've seen this Bill pass if it does indeed get the signature of the president? Well I think that's why it's important to, while there are all these challenges we've mentioned, to really not underplay what a big moment this would be for for senators like Senator Sherry Rahman and

others who have pushed for this bill because Islamabad capital territories legislation has to be passed in the national assembly and so that's why it does send a message nationally and so there are some politicians within other provinces like Raibhubhakt Unkhoar who have said they've taken note and that they hope this will be passed in other provinces so that is the hope but again it really does depend on a lot of the reaction nationally and even within Islamabad to what the Council of Islamic Ideology has said and what clerics say in the country.

I think we can return to Senator Rahman now. Senator, so I was asking, you've been campaigning on this for seven years. How are you feeling now? Potentially this just awaits the signature of the president? Obviously we're all very relieved that this has passed and since your correspondent has explained very well what the context is I think It's very clear that the country's been waiting for this for a long time It's not just seven years longer. And I think the signature is a formality, but it's a formality we need to wait for. And it's a powerful signal to women and girls, children and all those who enforce such marriages that we are not willing to have women's choices and bodies be made the you know the business of private

justice or private choices and or coercion or even trafficking so I mean really if if anyone according to now this law even tries to force such a marriage they will face very severe penalties. And that should be a deterrent, but we are facing a pushback even as we speak from the Council of Islamic Ideology, which I would like to remind all of you was not given the bill by the parliament. There is a provision to do so when someone asks, yet we voted that provision out as well, which requires one-fifth of the House. Since those who asked for this did not have the numbers, we were able to vote that out.

But I think it's crucial for infant mortality as well and for the kind of nutrition that is available to young women, to girl children, obviously they're girl children until they're 18. It is not the age for voting or adulthood even in the justice system of Pakistan. You're a juvenile until you're 18, you can't get a driving license until you're 18 and you're really, yet you are asked to be married well before that, expected to be married well before that when you don't know what your choices are and are not able to secure always the best rights for yourself, let alone your children.

This is one of the reasons that every 40% of children under five in Pakistan are stunted due to malnutrition. And this is also one of the key reasons why every 50 minutes a woman dies in childbirth. We were talking with Azadeh there about other regions potentially following suit. Are you confident that that will now happen? I don't, I'm certainly not confident. The party that I'm from running is running the province of Sindh where when we last started out with this campaign they they moved the law and it's, I mean it's law now and it is very often resorted to, I'm not saying that there are slippages and people trying to avoid implementation of the law, but as a law, it enforces the state's writ, and it is a state that defines the age of consent and gives that power to

the petitioners or anybody who reports such coercion. So I think that the province of Punjab may well take that up because we have spoken to them and Balochistan is also considering that law. I'm not at all sure about Khyber Pakhtunkhwa because it was the Pashtuns in the Senate that all of them, secular as well as non-secular religious parties, had banded together astonishingly to suggest that this was part of their custom and that we should leave marriages to the families to decide. And we said, no no that's not possible. So it's probably going to be uphill in that province more than anywhere else but I think we all have to keep

pushing for it. Just finally Senator is this something that is making headlines in Pakistan? Well I was very grateful to the Guardian newspaper for raising it, but it got buried in a lot of other business in the House. I'm parliamentary leader for the People's Party, and therefore we hold the majority in the Senate. So we were basically engaged with the India-Pakistan war, and that's really what's preoccupying minds right now in Pakistan, amongst other things. But there was a fair amount of determination to get it through

at this point because, I mean, we could. And there we have it. So I'm very glad that you're doing this show and I'm very glad that the Guardian newspaper took it up. I really think that the Pakistani media needs to pay more attention to, at least the electronic media was quite alive with it, but the print media, it kind of got deluged at the print media among other national security news. I think it's very important for human security and it's one of Pakistan's fundamental challenges to overcome. We will of course be following developments here

on Women's Hour. Senator Sherry Raman and the BBC's Azadeh Moshiri, thank you very much indeed. Now, I'm With Her is the American folk trio featuring singer-songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Sarah Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O'Donovan. In 2020 their song Call My Name received nominations for two Grammy Awards, Best American Roots Performance and Best American Roots Song. And I'm delighted to say that the group are in front of me in the

studio now. We're going to hear a live performance shortly, which I'm very excited about. Sarah, can I start with you? To those who don't know you, how would you best describe your music? Well, we all come from a bluegrass Americana sort of, IFA comes from with a bunch of Irish music in her background. So we all grew up playing these acoustic instruments, leaning into a lot of the instrumental tradition that comes with all of those cultures. And there's so much harmony singing.

It's just, it's a culture where we, you join in with others, you find common songs that you have in your own repertoire that you share with other people and you come together and you sing. And that's what, that's where we all come from, this sort of very communal musical space. And so that's where we started and writing together and now like arranging these songs and finding this, writing together and now arranging these songs and finding this sound, this thing that feels very unique in our lives to this band has been really gratifying. Yeah, and Aoife, you've all have very accomplished careers on your own individually as musicians

and songwriters. So what is it that drives you to want to come together? We do all have a lot going on in our own solo careers, but I think all of us are really fed by this collaboration. Not just this collaboration, we all love to collaborate in general, but there's something very special about this trio. And when we first started making music together back in 2014 was really the first time the three of us sang as a trio for the first time. And I think for all of us it was kind of a light bulb moment of like, oh this is the thing we could do more of. And from there it's just really kept on

building upon itself and here we are all these years later. So Sarah, what was it like then to reconnect and come together for the second album? So special. It's funny because it feels like we never really went away from it. It just, other than kind of time and our other projects, it's always, I think, from that light bulb moment that Ife said, it was clear to us

that this was something that we always wanted to be a part of our musical lives and kind of be able to come back to it as a touchstone inspirational thing for us. And so I feel like it feeds our other things that we do. And I think with this record, we just went even deeper with these songs. And on our first album, we were finding our voice together

as a band. And with this record, it was kind of like, OK, we've laid the groundwork. And now we can really kind of explore these themes of you know sisterhood and ancestors and life and death and all those things with this record. To all of you, what is the process like? Is it true collaboration or does one person kind of take the lead on one area? How does it

work? It's true collaboration. There's always a start of some kind. It could be like some that the IFA or Drozor, one of us comes together with like a chord progression or a theme or an idea or like maybe a beginning of a verse. But it immediately sort of gets adopted through the lens, whatever the shared lens is that we all bring to the table. And it feels very collaborative. Yeah, none of these songs would have turned out like this if we had written them individually. They're very special because of, they're unique because of what everybody brings to the table on each one song. And what's it like, Ifa, with singing with two other women rather than bringing any male voices into it?

You know, it's just a different thing. I think for the three of us, there's so many different colors we can make, especially with this particular group of women. We all enjoy singing in various parts of our range. So there are certain songs. I think in a lot of bands, somebody will kind of always end up singing the middle part or the high part or the low part. Those roles are sort of predetermined at the outset.

But what's so cool about this band is that every song kind of paints a different picture because the timbres of the voice change depending on where you are singing. And it's been really fun on this record to kind of take that one step further and experiment with unisons or parts shifting, you know, halfway through the song, somebody who's singing melody, well, then all of a sudden switch to a harmony or when somebody is going to hold a high note, somebody else will jump up to their melody line. And it's really cool to feel as if we are one organism kind of creating this sonic palette that that is, I think, pretty unique. that is I think pretty unique. Oh, I mean, I got the chance to listen to you having a little rehearsal earlier and I must be amazing when you're singing those harmonies. How does it feel? It's magical. I mean, there's nothing else like it. I think there's something so special

about harmony singing in general. And so when you find people that it's just kind of instantaneous, this blend that so much of it is just a naturally occurring thing. Obviously we work to create those arrangements that IFA was speaking to, but I think it's probably the closest thing to magic that exists. And it's 11 years, isn't it, since your last album, is that correct? 2017, no, 2018. So seven years? Six years? I don't know.

I don't know how many years that is. So in that time, I mean, I don't know about you, but as a woman, a lot changes in that time. I wonder if that experience that you've had, life experience in those years, has brought a different element to not only the sound, but also the lyrics. Definitely, in the context of this album for sure. No matter what the life experience you have will come out in your music, but as Jeroz was talking about earlier with the content of sisterhood and life and death and mortality

and thinking about like tapping into discovering what these intuitions, how to connect with intuitions and greater knowledge that might have just been ignored throughout your life. And just seeing, feeling also connected to humanity in a different way. I think like when I became a mom, I felt immediately, I was like, oh my gosh, I kind of understand this thing that I heard my mom and my grandma talking about, like this connection to other women particularly, but to all humanity.

And you just kind of, it's been, it was really, that all of that made into this album and made it into throughout the song track list. There are these themes that reoccur and it feels like when we're singing these songs, it feels like the stuff that we're still going through. A lot of times when you write an album, it's about what you have gone through and processed already and I feel like with this material it really feels like this is stuff we're still living out and still kind of coming to a greater understanding of. Yeah and the title Wild and Clear and

Blue, what's that about? Why did you call it that? That's the title track of the album. It's a song that is really special for all three of us because we we have this kind of shared experience. Our childhoods were very different. Sarah Jeroz is from Texas. Watkins is from California. I'm from Massachusetts. But we all, little did we know that we were sort of having

these parallel lives, listening to this music that our parents introduced us to and driving around going to concerts and music festivals and really just being exposed to so much great songwriting through our parents who we are all very close to. And Wild and Clear and Blue is inspired by songs by Nancy Griffith, by songs by John Prine, and really just tapping into the physical memories of listening to those songs, learning those songs, and kind of wanting to know more.

And then also as we've gotten older, then there's a moment in the song where we kind of are still trying to access those memories and it's a it's a really emotional song. Wow the absolutely beautiful sounds of I'm With Her. Thank you so much to Sarah, Eva and Sarah and just to remind you their latest album is Wild and Clear and Blue and they'll be performing live at the Barbican in London tomorrow. Now just a reminder that we've been asking for your stories of when you might have been out on a run and something happened. This is because we're going to be talking to a woman who was spat on twice when she was running and she's now Investigating that she's a journalist. We will be talking to her in a moment. Let's read a couple of your stories here

Debbie says the most humiliating disgusting thing that happened to me was as a teenager when I was coming home from school She says I was spat up by an older boy on our school bus and it made me feel so dirty and uncomfortable I was 11 and I'm now 65. I've never forgotten it. Seems nothing has changed, she says. This other comment here says, I was passing a group of young men on the canal towpath on my bike. One of them spat full on my face. This was during COVID. When I got to a place of safety and wiped the spit off my face, I called the police who told me to wait for them in the place it had happened. I have never cycled on that

towpath since." Do continue to get in touch with us. You can message the programme on 84844. But next, have you ever thought about the types of animals that you see on display in a museum? We used to huge humpback whales, elephants with big tusks, perhaps a stag with its huge antlers. But what about when it comes to female species? Well, as part of his new book, Assistant Director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, Jack Ashby has been looking into the various different biases between the, behind the specimens that are on display in collections and scientific studies. And unlike some of the taxidermy, the sex bias seems to still be alive and well.

I'm delighted to say Jack joins me in the studio now. Jack, let's start with the animals that we see on display at museums. How does this sex bias manifest itself there? So yeah, what I've done in my new book Nature's Memory is draw together all of the different ways that naturist museums misrepresent or under-represent female animals. And as you say, one of the really big ways that happens is in the galleries, in the cabinets on display. And a colleague of mine, Rebecca Machin, did some research that pointed out that by far the majority of animals on display are male. And so there's a massive numerical bias, particularly in birds and mammals, which I guess you might imagine, because often in birds it's the males that are more brightly coloured and more elaborately plumed and in mammals

it's the males that have got bigger weapons, tusks and that. So you kind of might justify or understand why that bias comes. But there's more going on than that and it's not just the numbers but it's also how they're displayed. So in this research Rebecca Machen pointed out that the males are often kind of higher up on the shelves and kind of puffed up and looking really, really important, where the females are lower on the shelves, but not only that, but literally kind of bowing down to the males, particularly in birds. If you next time you go to a Naturalist Museum, you will not be able to kind of unsee this way in which kind of the human social construct

of gender is kind of imbued in these specimens. It's kind of a way of showing that yes, they are real animals, they are made of real animals, but they are made by people and the people are bringing their biases to work. So it's kind of one of the ways that dead birds are propping up the patriarchy. It's so interesting this because as soon as I read this this chapter in your book about this, I suddenly went back to all those times I've been at museums and I never thought about it until this was pointed out. What is this something now that every time you go to a museum you're you're thinking about? Exactly yeah it's it's it is impossible to unsee and it's not just

it's not just the kind of the themselves, but it's also what's written about them. So on a male specimen label, which again, as I say, are by far the majority, you're likely to find standard natural history facts. So here, how does this animal adapt to its habitat? What does it eat? Where does it live? Whereas on a female specimen, you might like to see, this is how this species reproduces or brings up its babies. And obviously, female animals are also adapted to their habitats and move and eat, and male animals also reproduce and once were babies. So it's just reinforcing this human gender bias of, you know, basically saying females

are for breeding and males do everything else, which obviously is absolutely not a very healthy message to be communicating and also not particularly scientific. But it also has an impact on the way maybe we view nature. I'm thinking you pointed out about singing birds and we have this concept maybe that it's only the male birds. Yeah, it's a really kind of a really widespread assumption that if you see a bird singing it's likely to be a male but recent research has shown that's that's not the case that particularly in the tropics the vast majority of species the females are seeing as well and so it's it's kind of

again it's I say in the book that patriarchy has closed our ears to song which just affects our relationship with nature. So what's going on here? Why is there a lack of female specimens? Does this go way back to the kind of Charles Darwin era of collection? So there's a couple of things going on. One is, yeah, like you can imagine that the kind of epic hunter might make themselves feel a bit more manly by shooting the animal with big giant antlers or tusks but I would argue that a person with a shotgun or a bow and arrow crossbow isn't much of a fair fight whatever the animal's sporting. So there is a collection bias

and there is a bias in which specimens the museum might have been likely to accept. There is a biological bias as well because sometimes it might be easier to catch a male specimen, particularly if they are more brightly coloured, easier to spot, bigger home range, more likely to encounter a trap or a gun. But it's not just, that doesn't really explain the display bias because yes, another piece of research by my colleague Natalie Cooper showed that the collections behind the scenes are also massively biased. So that it's not just the displays, that 40% of birds and some groups of mammals are females. So that's like in a huge collection, she looked at over 2 million specimens across five of the biggest naturist museums in the world and found these collection biases, which suggests it's not just about display,

it's not just about choosing the most exciting to look at animal, not that that's what I think naturopathic museums should be doing, but it's also about what it is people collect and what it is museums chose to accept. But you asked about time frame, Natalie Cooper's study also showed that that bias hasn't changed over time, so that we're still over-representing male specimens when they're collected today. And you've got an example at your own collection with two parrots. Tell me that story. Yeah, in the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, I would say one of our most kind of scientifically important specimens or pair of specimens is a pair of Rodrigues parakeets. So these two parrots, they are extinct and they are the only two specimens of this species anywhere

in the world. So the only physical evidence this species ever existed is in our museum in Cambridge. And the story is quite remarkable because when a new species is described, the kind of the person describing it has to attach that description to an individual specimen or set of specimens, which is called the type specimen. And that is the physical description of the physical definition of the species, the most scientifically valuable specimens you could have in a museum. And when it comes to extinct species, that kind of adds an extra layer of importance. So we've got what is the type specimen. And it's a really

Rodriguez parakeet. And it's a really unusual example of a female type specimen, because the first specimen was collected was a female. And again, Ashley Cooper's work showed that only a quarter of type specimens are females, which firstly suggests that in bird slayers, that kind of the male is seen as the standard of the species and the female is the other. But that's not the only story with our parakeets because when the specimen was collected in 1871 and sent from Rodrigues, which is an island near Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, it was described of course as a new species. But the person doing the description, who's called Alfred Newton, who was the first professor of zoology in Cambridge, was given the opportunity to illustrate the species alongside his publication. And he wrote, you know, I've been given the chance

to make a picture of this specimen, but unfortunately it's a female, so I'm going to wait for a male, which was a pretty, firstly, biased, but also not very sensible thing to do because the species had never been collected before. It was known to be really rare. And after a few years when another expedition had tried to collect more and they'd come back empty-handed, he's like, oh, hang on, maybe this is the last one and maybe we should illustrate it. So he publishes an illustration of it. And then later that year, 1875, which of course, 150 years ago this year, a male was collected, but that's never been

seen since so we have both those specimens in Cambridge but it just really shows not the numerical bias and the kind of the way that people have been thinking about female specimens. Yeah just finally briefly if you can it is important isn't it that these collections have a fair amount of male and female species because they're used for a research. So what impact could that potentially have if all this research is carried out on male species? Exactly that's the important question because yeah we receive thousands of research visitors in collections every year. That is what

these collections are for and completely underpin our understanding of the natural world and if these collections are significantly numerically biased towards males, then we're effectively under-representing our knowledge of female specimens, which is true in so many parts of science, particularly in human medicine, studies that over-represent males in the sample that's being studied draw the wrong conclusions about females. So it's something that really that bias needs to be acknowledged or corrected when scientific research is done because of course it is perfectly possible that a female and males have different diets or behaviours or you know protein levels of certain kinds

or hormone levels that we are here, we are drawing biased conclusions from those data. It's so interesting and I'm sure for many of our listeners their visits to natural history museums will never be the same again. Jack thanks so much, Assistant Director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, Jack Ashby and his new book Nature's Memory, Behind the Scenes of the World's Natural History Museums is available to buy now. Now we were mentioning earlier about the awful incidents that have been happening with spitting at women while they've been running and Metro journalist Alice Giddings has been spat

on not once but twice as she was out jogging on the streets of West London. We've asked for your comments on this and lots of you. I mean, unfortunately, lots of you have been getting in touch and have experienced this. This comment here says, several years ago while out running in Sheffield, I was chased by a very overweight man perched on a tiny moped shouting abuse. He followed me out of the park continuing to shout as I ran back down the road to my house. It was so shocking and frightening. I wish I'd reported it. I now have a treadmill and no longer run outdoors on my own. It wasn't the only reason for this decision but it was definitely a contributing factor. And this

one here says I psych-o'd to and from work daily. I've been spat at, beer cans thrown from cars at me, verbal abuse with cars slowing down alongside me and then shouting loudly to scare me, usually groups of youths in a car. I've just learned to accept this as part of my daily commute. Well, Alice as part of this is keen to find out other women's experiences. So she began an investigation in partnership with the organization Women's Running to discover those experiences of other women. And of the thousand women surveyed, 10% reported they'd been spat on. And Alice joins me now. Alice, thanks so much for your time here on Women's Hour. Can you just explain what happened to you? Can you just explain what happened to you? Yeah, absolutely.

So I was actually training for the London Marathon and I had to do my runs in the evening. I was running down a very busy main road near my home and as I slowed down to come to a stop, I heard a lot of shouting, a lot of swearing and all of a sudden looked down at my leg and there was a very thick glob of spit seeping into my leggings and I obviously took a second, didn't quite understand what was happening and

a man was moving towards me very aggressively and he'd spat on me which was traumatizing and no one did anything, no one said anything, so I unfortunately just walked home and cried. And then two weeks later, same road, different man, again, I was spat on. And that one I would say I saw coming a bit more. I tried to move out of his way, but he lunged into my path and again spat at me.

This time it missed, thank goodness, but yeah two incidents in two weeks was a real eye-opener for me. And in your role as a journalist you've been speaking to other women including as we were saying those involved in Women's Running. So what are you here with we've had lots of comments and I still haven't read them all, there's plenty coming in. You know, this seems to be happening, doesn't it? How prevalent is it? It's been shocking. The response after that happened to me, I put a small post on a very small Facebook group,

a women's Facebook group, and in 24 hours I had more than 80 replies, which then made me realise that this was a more systemic issue. So we did the survey and obviously found that 10% of women have been spat at or on, and the amount of women who said they've been spat at in the face, they've been, a woman was spat on by boys young as 13 a lot of women have been spat on in Instances they believe were racially motivated a lot of women think it's Because of you know, misogynistic ideals that a lot of men seem to have developed. It is just So widespread and I even did an interview yesterday. And after I left the interview, a woman stopped me and said,

that happened to my friend the other day. It is just everywhere. It's an epidemic. You've spoken to the Met police about this. What have they had to say? Well, I initially got in touch with the Met hoping to get some stats on how many women were being spat on after it happened to me.

They don't have that information. Obviously, they would have to go into every single assault report and by hand and find out what exactly that situation entailed. They just don't have the manpower for that. So I then got in touch with my findings after I'd completed my survey and they were very apologetic about my experience but unfortunately they cited their jog on initiative which is currently as I believe is just in West Yorkshire Police, it's not a national initiative yet,

where they train members of the public, runners, to become active bystanders to intervene in situations like this. But that, unfortunately, at the minute, was what they were able to offer. I should say that we contacted the Met Police this morning for a comment on this, but they weren't able to provide one at this notice. We've had some more comments here, and I think it's important to read this one from Laura

in York, who says, I'm just listening to your program about women being harassed while running. Obviously, this is horrendous and needs to be called out. But please remember, she says, that thousands of women and girls run, cycle, hike, etc. independently every day in safety, including me and I love it. Please be sensible and aware but not discouraged from exploring and enjoying the world around us." And that's it, isn't it? You know, we all want to be able to do those things we want to do without any fear. Yeah, we do and we shouldn't, I mean the bottom line and why

we're all talking about this is we shouldn't have to be afraid when we're exercising, when we're walking around in our daily lives trying to get on with whatever we want to do we should not be living in fear but at the same time I think we have to acknowledge that this violence towards women is increasing. You know, over from, I think from 2018 to 2023, there was a 37% increase in crimes of violence against women. That can't be ignored. So it's about people being aware that this is happening and acknowledging this is happening

so that we can bring that conversation to the forefront and hopefully people start to realise that this is a part of a lot of women's lived experience and it's tiring, it's exhausting and it's unfair. So we need to try and take steps to rectify that. And just finally Alice, you didn't report it at the time. Would you now? Now yes. I think, you know, what I've been saying to everyone who asked why I didn't report it is when you look at, I mean, in my job as a Metro journalist, you know, I do a lot of stuff on women's rights and women's safety. You know, we've got a huge violence against women initiative that we launched called This Is Not Right in November.

We're very passionate about women's rights there and when you look at stats that say of the 68,000 rapes that were reported in 2023 and only 5% of them had a charge brought to then think well if I report being spat on if those aren't being prosecuted and charges aren't being brought I just you know and like many other women assume that it's not going to be taken seriously and nothing's going to come of it so why bother? But having spoken to the countless, and I mean countless, women who have been spat on, spat at, we need to start putting our foot down and having a zero tolerance policy for it because I

think that is one of the only ways that we're going to see any change. Okay, Alice Skiddings, thank you very much Metro Journalist. We are getting lots of comments. I just want to read a couple more. Rachel in Edinburgh says, I've had various horrible interactions with men while running many lewd comments about my breasts. The worst was when I was in my early 30s running past a group of about 10 teenage boys on a quiet pavement near the beach. She says one of them grabbed my bum as I ran past. I've been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer so I turned around and roared and swore at them and asked them how they'd like their mum or sisters to be treated by that like that. It made no

difference but I felt much better having stood up to them. The downside was that I had to make a huge detour to avoid them on the way back and I was shaking like a leaf afterwards. Thanks so much to all of you for sharing your stories and I'll try to read a few more out if we have time a little later. Now our next guest grew up in a Roma family in post communist Romania. She now lives in Scotland and is a scholar of 19th century literature but it's Madeleine Potter's own community that inspired her new book, The

Roma. She travelled through 10 countries for her research, tracing the history and the stories of the Roma people. And Madeleine joins me now in the studio. Hello. Hi. I'd like to talk first, Madeleine, if we can, about the title. Why Roma? Because when it comes to the language used to describe your community, there's many different words used, aren't there, in history? Yeah. So Roma comes from the Romani language itself. The Romani language is descended from Sanskrit. It's related to Hindi and it's still spoken within Romani communities. The term Rom singular means husband or man and Rom

are is plural and technically it means husbands or men but it's applied broadly to refer to all Romani people. So I use the technical term and I kind of turn back to the Romani language because that is the language that Romani communities have used to refer to themselves. There are many, many terms. The obvious one is gypsy, which is a very controversial term. It's preferred by some communities as a self-identifier, as others, especially in North America, tend to view it as a slur. So there's that point of contention there. But it comes from Egyptian. It's short for Egyptian because when the Roma who came from northern India, roughly the 11th century, they left northern India, reached Britain around the 16th century,

they were mistaken for Egyptian. So they were called Egyptians. Henry VIII famously passed the Egyptians Act, which tried to banish all Roma from the territories of the country, and then became shortened as Gypsy, which then kind of later took on a life of its own, became an aesthetic, a vibe became disassociated from the Roma and associated with other traveling communities as well. So I wanted to turn back to that self-identifier from the Romani language and took that somewhat technical approach to go back to the Romani language itself. So the story itself then, and you know, as we were saying, you travel through 10 countries to do this research and spoke to many, many people. Why was it important for you to tell

the story of the Roma people? I think the history of the Roma has been broadly misunderstood and has been broadly represented from non-Romani sources. A lot of the books written about Romani history, telechronology of where the Roma were spotted and when they were spotted. But they come from outsider sources which very often misinterpret the culture itself, partly because Romani culture is an oral culture. So what I wanted to bring to this book was also the tales, the stories that we carry with ourselves as communities. So, I've included folk tales such as one about a man traveling together with a snake or some Romani people who were enslaved in Romania because this

is a part of history that we don't often talk about. 500 years of chattel slavery in Romania has also led to the creation of some stories such as that of a man who runs away and then strikes a deal with the devil to see if that means he can gain his freedom. So I've tried to bring these snippets of oral culture and tradition to the book, but also Romani communities, we often think of the Rome as this big, broad identity, and there's a lot of diversity within Romani communities. The histories of Romani people in Britain are different from those in Romania and different from those in Germany or Spain or North America. So I've tried to that this traveling, moving through countries, speaking to

different people, looking at different communities, was trying to bring out this mosaic of of Romani communities themselves. And it's quite interesting that you share a lot of your own experience, your own history as part of the book. You could say it's kind of part memoir. It is, yeah. And when you first came to the UK, you didn't tell anyone that you were from Romania. Why not? I have a very complicated relationship with Romania, especially I had a very complicated relationship with Romania. This book has been partially me working through that trauma and healing from it and finding

solace within that history of Romani people and within community. It was a difficult topic for me to talk about. I found Britain's diversity, Britain, I found it quite liberating in many ways. Growing up in Romania, you were instantly spotted as Romani and that came with a lot of marginalisation, with a lot of racism. And there were experiences that I talk about in the book, such as me suffering from police brutality, that really mark you, especially when you're a child at such an impressionable age. So I felt that when I came here, I'd left that behind and I was starting a new life and I didn't want to think back to those quite complicated and

complex and often traumatic memories. I didn't want to open that can of worms anymore. So I was just trying to tap into a silence about Romania. But gradually I started looking back to the positives, trying to find that solace within tradition and within communities. And here I am now. And you talk about an early memory from your childhood of asking a group of young girls to join them skipping. Can you tell me about that because it's a moment that's stayed with you? It did, yeah. It must have been about six or seven hours in the town that I grew up in. It's a post-industrial small town. and it looked very fun and I was watching them and I really,

really wanted to play so I approached them and I asked if I could play and they recoiled an absolute horror from me and basically said the word tiganca which is the feminine for tigan which is used to refer to Romani people in Romanian but also other European languages. As if it was a curse, as if it was something absolutely unforgivable. And I've suffered a lot of racial violence in my life, but it was that particular memory that I think made me realize that I was different. It made me look, I remember looking at my feet that day and just comparing myself to them, realising that I looked different from them, that I wasn't the same as them. And I think at that young age that does

something to you. Retrospectively we can analyse what happened, we can talk about trauma, we can talk about healing, but when you're in that moment and that realization hits you that they don't see you as they see themselves, that there's that gap between you and them and I didn't get to play. So I think that really etched itself in my memory. Just very briefly if you will, do you think this book has been kind of cathartic for you? Absolutely, it's been absolutely cathartic. It's been finding that healing within looking at that history and bringing it together and finding stories and histories of resistance and resilience rather than just simply persecution and rather than just simply survival because it's not just about

survival it's about thriving and celebrating. Madeline, thank you so much. Madeline Potter's book The Roma, A Travelling History is out now. I just want to bring you one more comment here. We've been asking for your experiences of when you've been out running and Anne in Glasgow, we were talking specifically about women but Anne in Glasgow says it's not just women who are targeted, my husband has been spat at and bricks thrown at him while out running. Now, thank you so much for all your comments, just to let you know that Anita will be here for Woman's Hour tomorrow. But for now, thank you very much indeed for listening. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Full stop. Money Gone. A new fast-paced satirical thriller from BBC Radio 4.

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