Woman's Hour - Pensions gender gap, Rape investigations complaint, Women and AI

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

There's been a stark warning to MPs about the number of women pensioners living in poverty. The house of commons work and pensions committee has been hearing the pension system is dysfunctional, and contributing to more gender disparity, that's according to the feminist economic think tank the Women's Budget Group, which gave evidence yesterday. Anita Rani is joined by their incoming director Dr Daniella Jenkins and Sarah Pennells, consumer specialist at Royal London finance company.New figures revealed in a super-complaint suggest tens of thousands of sexual offence investigations are taking years to complete with some stretching beyond seven years to complete. Campaigners say excessive police delays are causing serious harm to survivors leaving them in limbo and may even be breaching their human rights. The complaint has been submitted by a coalition of legal and support organisations including Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre. Anita is joined by one of the co-authors, Ellie Ball, an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor Manager, who’s helped survivors of sexual violence navigate the criminal justice system for over a decade.Madeleine Gray’s first book Green Dot was a big hit and she's just published her second novel – Chosen Family. She joins Anita to discuss her fairy tale debut novel story, how then writing a second was daunting and why your ‘chosen family’ is so important.Is there a gender gap when it comes to using AI? Journalist Olivia Petter says the men she meets are obsessed with using it but believes that women are far more cautious. Studies show women are less likely to use AI in the workplace. As the government rolls out free AI training for every UK adult, the question is: what happens if women don’t feel equally confident or equally protected in this new AI driven world? Olivia and Prof Gina Neff from the  Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge join Anita to discuss. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones

Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, welcome to the program. Tens of thousands of sexual offence investigations are taking way too long to complete with some cases stretching beyond seven years, while a coalition of campaigners has brought a super complaint to the police. We'll be finding out more. Also, the government has announced free AI online training for adults, but do women and men feel differently about AI and its use?

Are men the early adopters and women more resistant? If so, why? Maybe you want to tell me about what's happening in your household and how you feel about AI. Also, Madeleine Gray, the author of Green Dot, is back with her second book called Chosen Family. It's a coming-of-age story about friendship, finding your tribe and your sexuality.

She travels between Eve's life as an adult and a single lesbian motherhood and back to when she's a young teen. She describes what it means to be a teenage girl trying to fit in and find your place in the chaos that's teen hierarchical groups in excruciating accuracy. It took me right back, the varying cleaks, how you figure out where you belong. So this morning I'm transporting all of you back in time. Tell me about fitting in or not as a teenager.

Were you ousted or ditched by a friend or a group of friends? Did you change who you were just to fit in with the cool gang? Were you the poor kid with the rich girls? Were you desperate for acceptance? Were you singled out because of your sexuality, your ethnicity, your social standing? It's amazing how these formative experiences really can leave bruises and happy beautiful memories, of course, too. But today it's about the more naughty, uncomfortable bits and what they've revealed about who you are. There you go, something like to think about this morning.

Get in touch with me in the usual way. The text number is 84844. You can email the program by going to our website and the WhatsApp. App number is 0,300, 100,444. And followers on social media, it's at BBC Woman's Hour. That text number once again, 84844. Tell me those stories about being a teenager and also your comments on anything else you hear on the program

are more than welcome. But first, there's been a stark warning to MPs about the number of women pensioners living in poverty. The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee has been hearing the pension system is dysfunctional and contributing to more gender disparity. That's according to the feminist economic think tank, the Women's Budget Group, which gave evidence yesterday.

Their director, Dr. Daniela Jenkins, spelled out that when the pension's age rises to 67 in April, there's a risk that poverty will only increase for older women. She joins me now, along with Sarah Pennell's consumer specialist at Royal London Finance Company. Welcome both of you. By the way, if you do have a question or you want to do. share your experience of living as a pensioner, 84844. I'm going to come to you first, Dr. Jenkins, Daniela.

Welcome to Woman's Hour. I know you were talking about personal pensions, but what kind of disparity are we talking about here? Spell it out for us. No problem at all. So when we talk about something being gendered, as feminist economists, we can sometimes think, what does that mean?

It feels like a very academic term. But what we mean when we say that something is gendered, it means that people have different outcomes based on whether they are men or whether they're women. And so we know that something must be happening, that why is it that all women, when you compare their circumstances, not just because they have children, but in their circumstances, will have different outcomes from men.

Now, pensions are extremely gendered, regardless of whether you have children, whether you are married, whether you are a high earner, comparatively, a man in the same circumstances will have a higher pension. And the reason why this really matters is because women live longer on less money. Okay, let's break that down a little bit. Where does this disparity come from? Is it something as simple as men earning more?

That is one of the key drivers of it. But I think we really have to kind of row that back because the moment we start sort of saying, well, what is it about women? We place the issue onto women. Now, the UK has the second worst, the second highest gender pensions gap across the whole of the OECD. So the only country that has a bigger gender pensions gap is Japan. So that's even when you take into account countries like the US, for example,

they sit around the median. So we know that there is something within the design of the pension system in the UK that means that women are much less well served by our pension system than they are in other countries. Okay, you've got us. Come on. What is happening? So part of it is that you have decisions about, how you can design pensions. Is it that you put money in as a society that everyone puts money in and then we pull that risk? Is it that you effectively, which is what most people in this country,

certainly people who are working now, have effectively what is a retirement ISA. So you've got a savings pot that you then invested and you get some tax benefits around that. Or is it that you've got something that's more like the state pension, for example, where everyone pays in and everyone gets some form of universalised benefit. Now, the way that we've weighted that in the UK, it means that most of that is that individualised savings pot. And that depends on what you earn. So if you earn less over your whole life course,

which women do. Which women do for lots of different reasons. Then you're going to have less in that pot to be able to be invested in the first place, which means that you've got less to retire on overall. Just coming back to the point you made about us, having the UK being the worst gender pensions gap in the OECD, which has 38 members.

Yeah. We're just behind Japan. So what do other countries do that's better? It's a really good question. So there are other sort of systemic ways that you can design that. So you can put, say, you know, a greater proportion into something that looks a bit more like the state pension. It might not be funded in the same way that the state pension is funded in this country. But you can put something into more like that sort of system.

You can look at how employers contribute, for example. You can look at how you average out contributions over the life course, so you can take an average. Now, we do have some pension schemes that work like that in the UK, but I think it's really a point worth making. But most people, if you are working now and you're employed now, unless you're employed within, say, the public sector or something that's called a defined benefit scheme,

then you are going to be, you know, working with someone like, you know, Royal London, who's working hard to invest your pension, but ultimately you are only reliant on what's in your pot and the investment performance of what's in your pot in terms of your private occupational pension. Sarah, it all sounds very bleak. As a personal finance expert, is it all that bad? Well, I think it is bleak for today's pensioners. I think it is important to realise that when you look at what today's pension is, what women retiring today are experiencing, it is like looking in the rear view mirror and the kind of employment prospects and also the pension regulations and sort of structure that was around throughout their working lives.

So a couple of examples. So until, I think it's like the late 1990s, there was a judgment that said that women who worked part-time could sort of buy back years where they were employed but not allowed to join the pension scheme because employers sometimes didn't allow part-time workers to join pension schemes, of course, many of whom were women. The state pension, we had a big shake-up of the state pension system in 2016, which is, making things more equal. But at the moment, we've saw a lot of people who retired under the old system and some people who built up state pension under the old and the new system, so it isn't shaking out. So again, under the old system, you could get something called home responsibilities

protection if you were caring for your child. But there were oddities like if you were caring for a child, not for a full tax year, you didn't get it. I mean, how weird is that? And there were other things that, you know, so some women paid the married women stamp, which meant they gave up a right to a state pension from their own national insurance contributions and relied on their husbands instead. So there are all these things that were literally baked into the system, which some female pensioners are now still experiencing and living with because they retired under that old system. But as Daniel says, there are some other things that I think there's a widespread acknowledgement both with the government and the industry that it is unfinished

business on a range of levels. So we had something 12 years ago, sorry, in 20, 2012 called automatic enrolment, which meant that people were put into a pension scheme rather than having to fill in the paperwork or whatever. That has done a huge amount to increase the number of women who are saving for their retirement. But what it hasn't done is ensure that women and indeed men are saving enough. Now, a glimmer of light on the horizon, there is a pensions commission that was the government sort of started last year, which is really looking at finishing some of the unfinished business, including pensions adequacy. Are we saving enough? and I think the whole issue of the gender pension gap is quite firmly on the government's radar.

Tanya. Can I just come in on that? Because I think it's very easy for us to think that this is yesterday's problem. This is our mum's problem. Maybe it's our grand's problem and a grand had her stamps and she had to do that thing and maybe granddad and someone had to help her fill out the form. The gender pensions gap is something that's crystallising in real time to women at every single age cohort.

there's DWP's own figures. So 16 to 24, we still see the earliest workers, we already start to see a gender pensions gap. Because? Because pay discrimination, patterns of employment, for example. And all of that, you know, we all know about the magic of compound interest. Well, the magic of compound interest will help grow your pot. It'll also help to grow the gap so that that small gap actually gets bigger and bigger over time.

Are we talking to women particularly? I know we are here now, but generally is the world of pension and finance more generally, are we spoken to directly? Are we made aware? Is it something that's even, you know, are 16-year-olds thinking about this? No. I don't think, to be fair, I don't think any 16-year-old is worrying about their pension. And if they were, I'd be worrying about them. But you can also argue that you shouldn't have to. You shouldn't have to. We've got enough to do. I shouldn't have to worry about the changes that I need to make in order to have enough to retire on.

I do think it is changing. I think years ago, probably the financial industry as a whole was doing not a great job at talking to women. That really is changing. And I think there's far more awareness now about things like the gender pension gap. And as Daniel rightly says, because of things like pay inequality, because it is still largely women who take time out of the workplace, because childcare, even with the recent changes, is still very expensive. There are all these things that are baked into the system that do mean, you know, it isn't a problem. It was yesterday's problem. It was worse yesterday. And I think today's pension is a experience a bigger gender pension gap. Things are changing, but there is definitely more that needs to be done. What would you like to see employers doing? I'd like to see some real design changes to the system. And I think, you know, I want to shift the debate away from what women need to do to improve their pensions because I think everybody can have, you know, behaviours that will help them in terms of improving their retirement position. But thinking about how we can improve the system.

So one of the big issues at the moment is that a lot of women don't even get auto-enroll. so they don't even get into the through the first gate because they don't earn enough at the moment. And a lot of the recommendations are, well, why don't you just lower the threshold so that everybody comes in? But one of the issues around that is that we have to take out of the money

that we're earning today to put into your pension. And if it's so low anyway. And if it's so low anyway, that a lot of people, you know, I had to do this. You know, I'm supposed to be the expert. When I had to pay childcare, I was like, I cannot afford to pay the nursery and to have this money out of the money

out of my salary every single month to go into my pension. It's not because I didn't know. It's because I couldn't afford it. And so making it affordable for people to be able to save for their retirement doesn't make sense. Why don't we make it non-contributory for the lowest earners so they don't have to make a choice between eating, living, surviving today and being able to survive in the future. Sarah, what can women do themselves to challenge this pension gap?

What practical steps should we be thinking about? I think there's a few things. Firstly, if you are on, so we do know that some women maybe have two or three jobs where they earn under £10,000 a year. And £10,000 is this magic threshold where you get put into your workplace pension scheme. Now, to Daniel's point, not everybody may be able to afford it, but if you can, ask if you can be automatically, if you can be put into your employer's pension scheme and they should put you in and then contribute as well. And one thing that we know is that some employers don't support women enough when they go through the menopause and some women, find it physically and emotionally very challenging and maybe go part-time or don't work. I'd say don't underestimate the effect of that on your pension. And the message to employers is to make sure you support your workers, your female employees,

as they go to the menopause, because that can have a huge effect. We worked out that it can mean sort of like tens of thousands of pounds difference when you come to retirement. And we know a lot of women are interested. This isn't that women aren't interested in their pension or retirement. But do think about, you know, pensions may not be top of your list. I mean, certainly not when you're 16. But do think about actually the life you want when you stop work, because as we know from the stats,

we are going to spend longer retirement than men. Think about what that looks like and make sure that you are doing what you can. It's like, for example, with many employees, if you pay extra in, they will match you pound for pound up to a certain limit. Now, our research found that lots of people didn't even know about that. So find out there may be extra ways where a bit of extra money could actually go much further because you get this.

the employer's money and some extra help from the government. Daniela. I absolutely would agree with that. I think the realities of the lowest paid workers is it's really difficult if you're on, you know, the equivalent of a zero hours contract, your working shifts, you're trying to make it work, to then go to your employer and start to negotiate around your pension. I think really what we need to do is to make sure that our pension system protects the lowest earners and that is disproportionately women.

69% of those people earning 10,000 pounds a year or lower are women. And also that we allow that higher earners aren't being rewarded more. The reward for your high pay is your income. We're actually proportionately giving those people more in terms of their pensions as well. I think that's something we need to look at. Really fascinating conversation. Thank you both for joining me this morning. Dr. Daniela Jenkins, the incoming director of the Women's Budget Group.

Congratulations on the new role and finance expert, Sarah Pernan. Thank you as well. And we did ask the Department of Work and Pensions to comment, but they haven't responded. 84844 is the text number. On to our next item. Now, new figures revealed in a super complaint suggest tens of thousands of sexual offence investigations are taking too long to complete. Some more than seven years. Campaigners say excessive police delays are causing serious harm to survivors, leaving them in limbo,

and may even be breaching their human rights. Well, this morning, His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary Fire and Rescue Service, the body that's responsible for independently assessing police forces in England and Wales, have announced they will investigate this super complaint. The complaint was submitted by a coalition of legal and support organisations, including Cambridge Rape Crisis. One of the co-authors is Ellie Ball,

an independent sexual violence advisor manager. She helps survivors of sexual violence navigate the criminal justice. system and Ellie joins me now and just to say we will be talking about rape and sexual assaults which some listeners may find distressing welcome Ellie um let's start by understanding what a super complaint is yeah so a super complaint is a way for organizations um to complain about systemic issues within policing so the kind of issues where individual complaints won't pick up the broader pattern and problem across forces and across the country. So sort of national issues within policing.

When did you decide that you wanted to bring this super complaint? Talk us through the process and the buildup to get to this point. Yeah. So, well, it kind of really followed on for some support work that we've been doing over a number of years for different survivors involved in these very long-running investigations. This is a problem within Cambridgeshire where we work, but from speaking to other ISFA managers from around the country,

it also became clear it was an issue in other areas as well. Isva? Independent sexual violence advocate. So sort of practical support workers for survivors that support around criminal justice. So we discussed with other managers and kind of recognise that this is not a problem in a particular force, in a particular team. This is a systemic problem across the country and individual complaints only, deal with the experiences of particular women, mostly women. And so we wanted to find an approach that could tackle the problem

and really get the organisations such as the inspector to be aware of the problem in order to address it. How does it feel that they are going to investigate? Do you know, having supported survivors through some of these investigations, I have a certain amount of relief about the fact that actually this issue is now being discussed nationally. There is some more focus on the problem and that the people who are responsible for managing how police police our streets and respond to survivors are now going to look into the problem. So as a worker that supports survivors, there's a certain amount

of relief in that for me. We should talk about the most important people at the heart of this, who are the survivors and you've worked with them for over a decade. What have you been seeing that's prompted the super complaint? Can you share with some other stories? So I will speak about Rachel's experience. Rachel's case study is covered in our super complaint and she's given me consent to speak around her experiences. She reported sexual abuse including rape perpetrated by her father against her when she was a child.

It took her a very long time to be able to come forward and report those offences, which is so typical of that type of sexual violence. A lot of the time children are not able to disclose whilst they are children. It takes a number of years. And so she finally felt sort of ready and found the courage in order to come forward and report towards the end of 2014. So I supported her from January 2015 up to sort of the present time and witnessed what she experienced going through what was effectively an almost seven year wait for a charging decision.

and just seeing that impact on her day to day and the not knowing and after year after year seeing somebody go through that process, it's just incredibly, I think inhumane is the term that she uses and I would concur. Why did it take seven years? Well, so Cambershire Constabulary have acknowledged that they didn't do a good enough job in Rachel's case and she has brought. civil action around that. So there are various failings within that, including long periods of time where cases like these are not worked on. The issues that we saw in Rachel's case are not unique to her case and actually that's why the super complaint is necessary. We do have a statement from Cambridge Constabulary and they've said that Detective Chief, and this is in relation to Rachel, Detective Chief Superintendent Sherry Nash of Cambridge Constabulary said we recognise the immense courage it takes

for anyone to report sexual abuse and we're deeply saddened by the impact these offences and the subsequent criminal justice process have had on the survivor. We acknowledge the aspects of the investigation and prosecution fell short of the standards we strive to uphold and have apologized to the survivor for the distress this caused.

Since these matters were first reported, the constabulary has made major improvements to how we investigate non-recent abuse and violence against women and girls. What is the impact on the survival? What's the impact been on Rachel? Yeah, I mean, the impact on Rachel was very much as well mirrored in the research that we did for the super complaint with other survivors that got in touch with us. So I think it is a kind of pause button placed on women's lives.

Women can't move forward. They're not told at the beginning, this will be four years, it will be five years, it'll be six years. They're constantly told and Rachel was constantly told, we're almost there. We're almost there. So being told that time after time after time, people can't plan for their futures. They put their lives on hold. She cut off contact with other people who were witnesses in her case. And the perpetrator was free the entire time.

He was in the community. He was not monitored. And for the majority of the time, he didn't have any bail conditions. So she lived in fear of him as well as the constant anticipation of will the case be decided. What an incredibly isolating place to be. Yeah, incredibly isolating. And if you think about the other things that women are managing in their lives alongside this, this can span someone's children's whole childhood.

It impacts on parenting, impacts on employment, and it impacts on mental health. And in Rachel's case, the perpetrator was her father. Yeah. What happened? So it finally was charged. She was always told from the beginning it was a very strong case. There would be enough evidence for it to go forward. He was charged and due to court delays,

and barrister strikes, the trial was cancelled at very short notice. At that point, Rachel felt she just could not sustain the level of energy and commitment. And for a survivor to have to make that decision at this point over seven years since they've reported is just heartbreaking. However, there was then another year's wait for the potential trial date. And he passed away very shortly after she had withdrawn from the process. So he died. He died. And we know that that is not an isolated incident. Increasingly perpetrators are dying before facing justice. And it's a common fear that survivors who report particularly historic offences are now subjected to. I am going to ask more questions about the investigations and what you're doing about it and your super complaint. But just to Rachel and that, we know it's not her real name when we're protecting her identity. But how is she?

She's an incredibly resilient woman. She's an incredibly determined woman. And I admire her bravery and her tenacity immensely. It's not easy to sustain the amount of energy it takes to go through an investigation of that length. But then also she has obviously contributed significantly to us raising awareness about this on a more systemic level. So she's an absolute champion. And yeah, I have nothing but admiration for her. her and the way she has fought not only for herself but for other survivors.

How widespread are these long delays? Well, the Home Office figures suggest that over the last 10 years, there's been over 37,000 investigations into sexual offences that have took more than three years. Over half of those have took more than four. And up in the last most recent figures that we had from the Home Office, so at the end of the last financial year, there was over 13,000 investigations outstanding that had been open for more than three years. And these are just the ones that actually get to that points.

Well, this is prior to charge. Right. So of those, a proportion will be charged. And we know now with court delays, you can add another two years as standard from the point of charge to any potential trial. What's causing the delay? Well, a variety of different things.

So we have done a lot of work to kind of get to the bottom of some of the issues We know that there are problems within forces of the way they prioritise different sexual offences and take a narrow definition around risk. They kind of risk assess the individual reporting rather than the perpetrator more widely. And we know that any offender who abuses children in the way that Rachel's father did remains at risk. They are not someone that you can assume is not offending. So narrow risk assessments, prioritisation. of more recent offences over historic offences,

failures and supervision. So when supervising these investigations, just allowing them to drift, not requiring officers to be making progress. There are multiple different factors, resourcing capacity within teams, sickness, staffing. Do you think this affects whether women come forward at all? I mean, absolutely.

And I think for women who end up in this situation, I think it's like a trap because if they were told at the beginning, it will be five years, it will be six years before you have an answer. They could make an informed choice about whether or not they think they can sustain that and if that feels reasonable to them. They're not told that. So they report with good faith expecting that their case may be managed, if not quickly, within a reasonable time frame.

So maybe 12, 18 months. And then it's kind of down. angled in front of them constantly that we just need a few more bits of information. The investigation is ongoing. They're often given very little updates about what's actually happening in the investigations. So they just left stuck. Yeah. And are there cultural issues within institutions that are causing the problems?

If you look at the police, we know from a recent report by Baroness Louise Casey, that the Metropolitan Police was described as broken and rotten, suffering, collapsing public trust and is guilty. of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, are issues like this to blame at all? I think absolutely, undoubtedly so. We see that officers are sometimes abstracted from these type of offences to work on other investigations. There's still a hierarchy in how different sexual offences are treated

with the small minority of stranger rapes being given absolute priority. And then we see more historic offending, deprioritise routinely as part of our research. we heard about in one force, they took 100 historic cases and decided they were not going to work on them for 12 months. Now that, to me, does not sound like a force that is seeing this as a kind of urgent issue to be solved for survivors. It sounds like a force that is treating these cases as just a capacity issue. And women definitely feel like they're made to feel like a nuisance, that they're not believed, and that their cases are deep priority.

due to a lack of consideration of the impacts of sexual violence on their lives. Yeah, not only have they had to suffer something absolutely horrendous. They're having to live with the trauma and the impact of it and then having to work. It feels like against a system. Absolutely against a system. And I think that women often do end up feeling like the police are almost against them. And I think that is not what our police forces are for. The government have pledged to halve violence against women and girls.

Have you taken your opportunity, do you feel, to push against what you hope is an open door? Is it an open door? I don't know. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I think the road to a broken justice system is paved with Vogue strategies and statements like harving Vorg. We want to see action. We don't want to see ambition. Ambition is one thing.

But what is the actual strategy? And part of the reason for the super complaint is because actually I was seeing nothing that suggested to me there was any plan to address some of the systemic issues that have affected people like Rachel. So what would you like to see happen now? A media action. We'd like to see the inspector get to the bottom of how many cases like these that there are. The home office figures around length of investigation, we cover it in our complaint, but are woefully inadequate. They use medians. They remove outliers. It doesn't capture the experience of women like Rachel's, there's no public scrutiny around that.

So we want to know precisely how many of these cases are out there. We want to see forces taking a proactive approach to moving these investigations through the system and also for the government to recognise that the proportion of those cases that are charged, then also need to move through the court system. So I would like to see a proper plan. Ellie, thank you so much for coming in to speak to me. And I'm sure we will be speaking about this again on the process. but for now, Iliable, thank you.

We have had a statement from the inspector of constabulary who say rape and serious sexual offences are devastating crimes with lifelong consequences. Many victims and survivors find it difficult to come forward, whether due to the barriers in accessing support or fear of not being believed. This is vital that the police working alongside other public services do everything they can to respond effectively. And I must say that if you've been affected by any of the issues in today's program, then please visit the BBC Actionline website for help and. advice. We were talking about the pensions pay gap at the start of the program. A couple of you have been in touch. I'll read out some of your messages. Raising the pension age does not recognize that life expectancy and having the stamina to work full time till 67 are not compatible. This decision should not have been made by anyone who does not work full time in a 67 year old

body. Another one says what seems to be forgotten in that life gets more expensive as you get older as you need to pay for help to do things you were able to do easily before like putting out the bins, mowing the lawn, gardening, painting and putting up shelves. Also, you need things like glasses, hearing aids and for many women, especially in Contonance products, which are expensive and the NHS provision is substandard. Amanda, thank you for that message. And Theresa says, let's not forget the women who put their careers on hold for husbands and once widowed, if cohabit or remarry, lose that pension. This happened to me as a police widow. 8484.8.4.4.4.

for keep your thoughts coming in. Now, the latest episode of the CBB's Parenting Download podcast is all about the power of the story, as studies suggest that parents reading aloud to their children is on the decline. Presenter's Katie Thistleton and Governor Bee speak to author of the Pip and Posey series, Camilla Reed, and professional storyteller Wendy Shearer

about how we can make storytime fun for everyone and not be restricted to what's on the page. Stories shouldn't be owned by books. stories came before books. You can consume stories in all sorts of different ways, but stories are really, really fundamental to how we learn to be human. I think it's the tool that our ancestors pass on to each other so that we can pass on lessons to our tiny people that we adults have learned, but that we package it up in this really entertaining and neat sort of little form so that, you know, it's really joyful and delightful to listen to,

but also really memorable. So I think the key thing is all about story. Yeah, absolutely. And remembering that, you know, reading and telling a story, they're very distinct, different things, but they're connected, they're deeply connected together. They run in parallel. So our children are going to be listening to just the sound of our voice.

And so if you are struggling to, or finding a challenge to read or see all of the pictures, you can use your imagination. Your children are using their imagination as well. also come up with ideas that are just shaped by, in your own words, is what I would advise people. Don't feel so constrained by the words or however the book is framed. But come up with things in your own words once you feel comfortable with whatever the message or the story is that you want to get out. Because children listening, you're helping them with those communication skills whilst they listen to your voice and the words that you're saying. Lovely. And you can hear that episode in full by searching for CBB's parenting download on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcast.

My mum just used to tell me stories. And it was beautiful. Now, talking of stories, my next guest. In 2023, Madeline Gray's debut novel, Green Dot, became a huge hit. And today, her second novel, Chosen Family has been published. A tale of female intimacy, a passionate ode to friendship and an exploration of those in your life who may not be blood-related or connected by marriage or long-term relationships, but who are your people. the ones you've picked, they're the best kind.

Books about friendship are not often described as love stories, certainly not ones that start at the age of 12, but this one is, Nell and Eve love each other and hurt each other, through the challenges of adolescence, long drunken nights in gay bars and shared houses at university, and then through the highs and lows of parenthood. And I'm delighted to say,

Madeline is with me now. Congratulations, Madeline. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you so much. I am thrilled to be here on publication day, especially. It's very cool. It's a huge. How does it feel? It feels, I've got to say, really good. I recommend it, yeah.

What, writing up and getting it published? Yeah. I should say, how did you feel last night? I felt so lovely last night because I had a brilliant array of friends and people that I work with come to the launch in Waterstones in London. And I just felt immensely lucky. It's rare as well that Australian writers get to come over for their launches in the UK. So I feel good. Yeah, chosen family.

What a great title. you. Yeah, I mean, chosen family is really, as one of my old colleagues, Kathy, who was very English, she'd be like, it's what it says on the tin. And I feel like it is. Chosen family is about the family that you make when your biological family doesn't give you enough emotional or, you know, intellectual sustenance and you, you know, gather around you the people that make you feel loved and held. And that's so for anyone who's been othered can make a chosen and family, and particularly in this book, in the queer community, when people have perhaps been

excommunicated from their biological families. Yeah, it's a term that's quite commonly used in queer circles. Yeah. We should talk about your lead characters, Nell and Eve, and Eve, in their relationship, which is so central to the storyline. Can you explain who they are? Absolutely. So we meet Nell and Eve when they're in high school,

when they are children, essentially, and they're both kind of brilliant and odd and friendless, and they both kind of see the world askance, which is, I love that in characters, people who see things differently. And when they meet, they become fast friends and they form a kind of soul connection, as you often do in childhood with a female best friend. Kind of like the Lila and Lenu in Eleanor Ferranté's Neapolitan Quartet is probably a good comparison. Yes.

And then we follow them through their lives as their kind of power differentials shift and switch as, you know, those long-term friendships, relationships in those long-term friendships can do that. sometimes one person is kind of put on a pedestal by the other, and then 10 years later, there's been a switcheroo. Yeah, having to come to terms with that. And for positive and negative reasons, their early connections prove very significant. Do you think we really appreciate the importance

of those adolescent friendships we have? I think more and more we tend to. I think even if we don't talk about it, we know in our hearts that they matter, because when you're young, life seem, you work on a different timeline when you're young because your life is shorter. And so one year is actually enormous. And I think that timeline kind of goes in tandem with the intensity of feelings.

And when we get older time seems to pass more quickly because we know there's more of it. So often our emotional selves are reaching back to that core of teenage life. Well, lots of our listeners are getting in touch with messages about their own teenage life. I'll read some of them out and then we'll come back to Nell and Eve. Sarah and Devin says, I moved to Suffolk from London as a child and I got teased relentlessly at school because of the way I spoke. This damaged my confidence as a teenager so much

that it still affects me to this day in my 50s. Another one here, Anita, what made me feel I did not fit in at school was the total silence when I returned to school after my dad died when I was 13. No teacher, formed tutor or fellow pupil ever mentioned my loss, but I knew everyone knew. it was horribly isolating no counseling in those days i'm now a counselor and it's wonderful to be able to offer to others including young people the kind of support my younger self so desperately needed oh that's beautiful isn't that beautiful that's from anna um keep them by the way 8 4 8 4 4 they're very moving these messages really feeling them it's it's interesting it even when i was reading it you're you took me right back to my own teenagers i was in the uncomfort oh thank you i mean i'm also apologize i guess i'm i'm glad i'm glad you that my book did what I wanted it to do, but I also know that it's giving a lot of people

kind of traumatic remembrances. Yeah, but it's okay. There's also a lot. The story is There's joy, there's laughter as well. There is joy and laughter. And the characters are great. Could you read a bit for us? Absolutely, yeah. I was going to read just from early in the book when Eve is at her new school and she's just gone to the playground at lunchtime. At lunchtime, the playground is awash with girls in tartan. To the untrained eye, the scene might appear to be pure chaos. Apples dumped in bins, Nutella snacks traded for go-gurts, a tiff breaking out in the canteen line when a year eight dares cut in front of a year 10. But on closer inspection, one can observe that the trajectories are cyclical, the movements choreographed. These girls have been

formulating and safeguarding this complex ecosystem for years, and when one year 12 class graduates, the year 11s dash in to claim their spot at the top to ensure order to pass on received wisdom. The year sevens pick it up by osmosis, the way that each year is divided into groups and subgroups, girls linked by common good looks, girls linked by wealth, girls linked by their blandness, by their race, by their obsessions, by their weight. Oh, and that's just a little taster, a little teaser. This book is also very much about coming to terms with your sexuality for both of them. Tell us more about that. Absolutely.

So Eve, when she's young, kind of has a sneaking suspicion that she is queer. But at that stage, it's almost like pre-sexuality. It's more romantic when you feel just an intense love for your friend or you just really want to impress your English teacher. I know a lot of queer people I know recognize that. And Nell kind of has a different approach to her sexuality because her family really think that feelings are gauche and don't ever encourage any earnestness.

And so the ways that these two women are brought up really influence how they each decide to go. about embracing or not the sexuality that they eventually come to. Why was this an area you wanted to explore? I mean, I myself am queer and I would never have come out in high school. I went to an all-girls school in Sydney and to come out would have been dangerous. The worst insult you could say to another girl when I was at school was lesbian or dyke. And I just, I wouldn't have done it.

So in this book, I really wanted to see what was. happen if characters at the time I was at high school kind of were known to be queer and then to see what kind of emotional wounds could kind of carry them forward into their lives but also see how they could turn those wounds into strengths and that could inspire them to make new kind of modes of family of their own. I'm really important to have that in a novel and to read it. You also transport us into the future. So it's set in 2006 and 2024. Nell and Eve end up co-parenting a child. I'm not giving away too many spoilers in their 30s. And from a young age, Eve has questioned

why it's only couples who have babies and that it comes from a place of romance. And she wants to share the raising of a child with her friend. She says this even as a 13-year-old. Why did you want to look at this in the potential complications? I mean, it was certainly a conversation that I'd been having with so many female and non-sysmail friends for the past few years, people who were interested in having children but didn't have a

partner and didn't necessarily want to find one to have a baby and didn't want a single parent. And we went back to that old saying, it takes a village to raise a child. And we were thinking, why wouldn't you just have a baby with your best friend? And I think part of it is because we, in this society, really value romantic relationships more than platonic relationships. I feel like a good example of that is during COVID in Australia. You could have a romantic partner over in your bubble during lockdown but you couldn't have a best friend. Just a mate. Yeah, you couldn't have just a mate, which is a really, really interesting valuation on relationships. So I wanted to do that. And then also, the book is kind of structured like a mystery. We begin with Eve 30, with her child, who's seven,

and we know that Nell, her co-parent is mysteriously missing. It's kind of, you know, if you like midsummer murders, you'll love chosen family. So it was really important for me as a plot device as well. I wanted the reader to keep going. By the way, if there was a great marketing line, you've just said it on Radio 4. In your experience, though, can it ever really work? Raising a child with a form of co-parenting. I think, I mean, in this particular instance, there's a lot of, in the book at least,

there's so much unsaid, so much desire and so much erotic tension kind of funneling through that it can only work if the women are finally honest with each other. But in general life, yes, I absolutely know people who have raised children in community, in kind of communal housing, absolutely. Yeah, same. I mean, the parental relationships,

we need to talk about those, because they're certainly very complex for most of your characters. They're often challenging for many people, but Taye's mother, Hannah. Hannah, yes, she doesn't get an easy ride. Is that why you want to look at other forms of parenting? Talk to me about those. I mean, there are kind of three maternal figures in this book

to the protagonists, and two of them, Emerald and Ondeen, are both not doing what we would expect of kind of a maternal figure. They don't have that maternal warmth. And even Nell are both trying to. create a family that addresses the lack that they feel they had. Whereas Hannah is Ty's mum and she is just absolutely divine and gorgeous and we love her. She's the best character apart from Lake, I think. And because of her warmth and because of the way that she has treated her son Ty, who's gay and she sees him for who he is, he has a different relation to the concept of

chosen family and perhaps latches on in a less utopian way than the other character. characters. Brilliant. We've done a deep dive into this brilliant second novel. Was it hard to write after the success of your first, Green Dot? I mean, yeah. I think anyone who says that the second novel Blues isn't a thing is lying. I definitely had a bit of an existential crisis for a few months.

And then my wife, who's a musician, said to me, she's written many albums. She said, this is not just the second novel. This will happen for third and fourth. You're not special. It's always, you never know what your project's going to be until you do it. So you've got two creatives in one house. told. Yes.

Doing stuff. How does that work? I mean, we're not very organized and we have a son as well. So, yeah, we could be more organized. But it's great. I mean, our son knows the value of the arts and he's like really creative. That being said, the other day he asked me, oh, God, it was so bad. I was like, how have I raised him?

He was like, what profession makes the most money? And I was like, no. How? Well, you should say, well, certainly men in Britain, their pension, they're much better than women's. There you go. There's a bit of information you could take back to this. Maddie, thank you so much and best of luck. Thank you so much for having me. Chosen family by Madeline Gray is available from today.

Yes. Well done. Thank you. Now, the government has announced free online artificial intelligence training to every adult in the UK to teach practical everyday AI skills. Ministers say it will ensure everyone can seize the benefits of AI and not be left behind. But some question the role that AI plays in their lives already. My next guest, journalist Olivia Petter, says the men she's come across while dating all want to talk about AI and appear to embrace it wholeheartedly, routinely using chatpots like GPT, Microsoft co-pilot and Google Gemini amongst others.

But women, and this is backed up by some studies, are much less enthusiastic. So, as the government pushes for AI adoption, what happens if women don't feel equally confident about using those AI chatbox while to discuss this? Along with Olivia, I'm also joined by Professor Gina Neff from the Mindaroo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, which looks at society's relationships to technology.

Welcome to both of you. I'm going to come to you first, Olivia, because you wrote a piece about this, which starts in a fairly light-hearted way, about the men you were dating, all wanting to talk about AI. When did you first notice this? And what kinds of things were they saying?

I actually wanted to know to say, when did it change from crypto to AI? Well, I suppose the first time I noticed it really changing was when someone I had met on a dating app suggested that we asked chatGBT to describe one another to potential romantic partners. It's just on a first date? Well, we hadn't met yet.

We were just talking on a dating app. So it was just an idea. And I thought, okay, that's interesting, sure. So we both did it. And I think he was quite a regular user of it. So clearly it knew him quite well, whereas I don't really use it very often. So mine came up with a list of kind of empty platitudes like Olivia is kind and caring and selfless and whatever else. So I made a joke and said, oh, well, obviously it's lying because I'm none of those things,

which he then took quite seriously and said, well, you know, I think maybe we shouldn't meet then because I kind of want to be with someone who's kind and caring and selfless. And it just made me realize how seriously men put so much faith into these AI platforms. And I think more so than the women I know. And I've just really noticed it because since that happened, I started speaking to a lot of my male friends and a lot of the women I know. And I just noticed there was a real discrepancy in the way that people were engaging with AI. And I think the men I know just trust it a lot more, whereas the women don't.

And I think it's not hard to understand why that is. 844-4-844. Get involved. Professor Gina Neff, through your work, do you think there is a gender divide when it comes to AI? Well, research is showing that's absolutely the fact. Surveys show that gender is the strongest dividing line and biggest predictor of excitement versus concern about AI. There was a study that one of our political researchers did in California in the heart of Silicon Valley that found that men, especially those with higher levels of education, are markedly more excited about AI. I mean, the gaps are huge. Men under 50 with university education are more than 60, 60% percentage points

more favorable to AI compared to women over 50 without a college education. These aren't different views. These are different tribes of thinking about the experience of what's happening. And what it's saying to me is that there's two very different conversations happening about the transition to responsible AI.

one where people see that AI is something for them and one where people already feel left behind and unfortunately right now that's women. Why? What's happening? Is it because we try, is it about trust? Is it about women? Are men always the early adopters of technology? I don't know. What's going on?

We're trying to figure that out and we have a couple of ideas. I think one reason is that women are overrepresented in the jobs that we know are at risk for replacement with AI. So administrative clerical and service jobs economists see that these are going to be the ones most exposed to disruption from AI. And women are overrepresented in that. But a paper that's just been published this month out of Northeastern University in Massachusetts gives this really interesting relationship to this question too. They say women in general at every category are less risk. They're more risk averse.

They're less likely to take on risks. We see that for women who have university educations of higher incomes, compared to men with the same categories, women are more risk-averse. And so they say, first, women are really being really savvy and smart. They see that they have a risk from AI. And even when they do, they're less likely to embrace those risks. Olivia. I mean, yeah, I think to me what's interesting is that, you know, I write a lot about violence against women and AI has been weaponized against women since its inception.

You know, you don't have to look very far for examples of this. Obviously, with GROC, there was, you know, this platform that was digitally undressing women. Then you look at the rise of things like AI girlfriends, which are being used by men to act out violent sexual fantasies with chatbots that by design cannot give consent. and then visually these AI girlfriends resemble very hypersexualized, often very young-looking women. And even if you think about things like the metaverse, as soon as that became a thing,

there were reports of sexual assault happening in this virtual space. So I think there are myriad reasons why women have been told time and time again that AI is not a safe space for us. And even on a lesser level, there is a litany of gender bias and gender stereotypes that these programs are enforcing. You know, AI algorithms have been found to objectify, female bodies to the point whereby images of women pregnant bellies and women having breast

examinations for breast cancer health screenings are being hidden on social media because these algorithms deem them too sexually explicit. So there's all of these problems here. And AI is so vast, you know, a lot of us will be using it without even knowing within systems at work. But if we bring it back to what we started the conversation with, this is these chat pots that, you know, chaps that you are sort of potentially dating or not because they don't get a joke. You know, are we not using it in a useful way? Should we be using it more, Gina? And what happens if women get left behind?

And I mean in that sort of basic day-to-day way. Exactly. I want to tap into something that Olivia just said, which is there's this, you know, violence, literal violence against women that's being perpetrated. But it's also a kind of violence against culture. Right? There's a Silicon Valley way of thinking, and if you don't fit that, if you're not young, male, and a Californian tech bro, then it seems like this is not for you. So for example, you mentioned the government just announced these AI training modules, these free AI training modules. Those were all ones that tech companies provided and are making free for the British public. Someone just did an audit of what that says about content. creators, novelists, and IP content. And it takes the industry line. So we're still having this

debate over whether and how we support creative arts in this country and what's the role of AI. And there's now a free training program that says, you know, if a model puts something out there, it's not actually theft. Olivia, as a writer, do you think this is going to make you even more distrustful of AI? I mean, I think, yes. I mean, I'm already fairly distrustful of it. And I'm worried about the impact it's going to have on creative industries as well and that it's already having on us. But I think these ultimately, what needs to happen is we need more women at the top of these platforms running these organisations because we know that something like roughly 30% of women are in leadership roles in these companies. That goes down to 10% at CEO level. But they do

exist. I mean, you know this. And Gina, you know this. The CEO of BT is a woman, the vice president of Google Cloud is Maureen Costello, Lee Thomas at Inuit, Naomi Weir, is the technology director at CBI. Sarah Walker is the UK chief exec at Cisco. Is it going to make a difference? Will things start to change? We have a lot of work to do. So a recent survey done by the Ada Lovelace Institute found that 72% of British public say that laws and regulations would make them more comfortable with AI. This isn't just about having women representation at the top, but we need to have that too. We absolutely. need to have government making sure that AI is for everybody.

This isn't just about individual choices. This isn't just about young women and girls getting into tech. And by the way, if we're going to keep the young women and girls 16 and younger off of social media, we're going to need to come up with a better plan than we have right now on how they're going to get exposure to responsible AI. Yeah. I mean, you've just mentioned the Department of Science Innovation Technology told us that new women in a tech task force launched last month and look at barriers to getting women entering

the tech system and they're committed to making sure that AI is going to work for everyone. Do you think this is going to this task force is going to help? I hope so because I think women need to be using AI and we need to be encouraged to know how to use it properly in whatever industry we're in. But we also need to be made to feel that like I said, that this is a safe space for us, that it's not going to be used against us somewhere down the line. I think we need to build up that trust. I'm going to read out some of the messages because they're coming in

and a message saying Anita on on AI My husband age 72 will go to it And trust AI for pretty much everything I age 66 use it with a huge dose of scepticism And rather enjoy finding where it's just plain wrong Says Jenny I love that now I'm going to prove that it's wrong Another one here from Lucy and Kent saying

I actually use chat GPT When going through an awful breakup with an abusive man I felt I damaged my friendships my obsessing over the relationship, speaking about it non-stop to work through the utter confusion I was feeling and used it as a sort of therapy

to take pressure away from friends. It helped me, but unfortunately one friend was so upset that I used AI to help and not them. We don't speak anymore very quickly on that. Well, I mean, I just think that that's also a terrifying thing, isn't it, that we're sort of using AI to help us, you know, formulate these human conversations

and these human instincts. And it would be wrong to say it's dystopia, because it's happening now. Gina, and like literally 10 seconds, comment on that one. I don't want to live in Elon Musk's world. We need better safety by design and better regulation. Better regulation, better safety by design. And have you been put off dating or are you still out there, Olivia?

Still out there. All right, come back. We'll talk about it some more because we are fully invested in your dating life. Olivia Petter and Professor Gina Neff. Thanks to both of you. Another one, Miles says, Hello, please understand that it's not confidence that prevents me from AI. I just don't want to. It's invasive and I prefer to do my own work, writing and research.

And that's Lisa Miles. And by the way, I asked our financial experts whether we should be asking AI for financial advice. Both of them said, no. Join me tomorrow for more Women's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft turns out to be flawed? In 1999, four apartment buildings were blown up in Russia, hundreds killed. But 25 years on, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. Because these bombs, they're part of the origin story of one of the most powerful men in the world.

Vladimir Putin. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the report. reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss first time round? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen first on BBC Sounds.