Woman's Hour - Pregnant women in Pakistan, Salary transparency, Writer Lottie Mills, Clothes and grief

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

More than 33 million people have been affected by the flooding in Pakistan. How has the flooding impacted the thousannds of pregnant women. who require maternal health services to ensure a safe pregnancy and childbirth? We hear from midwife Neha Mankani and founder of the Mama Baby Fund. In a bid to close stubborn gender pay gaps, several states in the USA have passed laws requiring salary ranges to be clearly stated on all job ads. To discuss the growing trend and whether it is workable in the Uk, Anita hears from money blogger Iona Bain and Radha Vyas, co-founder of the group travel company Flash Pack.For our Girl’s World series, reporter Ena Miller went to talk to 13 year old Alice and India about the drama of their lives, boys and girls and how things have, or have not, changed since Ena was their age. Two years on from winning,The BBC’s Young Writer Award with Cambridge University, Lottie Mills has a book deal. She discusses her writing, and how disabilty is depicted in fiction. How can clothes help us grieve? 'Wearapy' is a term coined by the fashion psychologist Shakaila Forbes-Bell who believes that what we wear can help us through times of emotional upheaval. In her new book Big Dress Energy, she describes how wearing her late sister's clothes has helped her confront her grief. She’s joined by Dr Matilda Aspinall, lecturer at UAL London College of Fashion, who has paid tribute to her late grandmother through the act of refashioning her dress.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Dianne McGregor

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Now, many of us this week have had moments of contemplation, remembering loved ones we've lost in our own lives. But how do we remember them? How do we keep them close when they're not with us physically? Later, I'll be talking to two women who found wearing the clothes of the deceased family member they loved a positive, helpful and therapeutic experience. So I thought I'd ask if this is something you can relate to this morning.

Do you have something in your possession from your mum or gran or your best friend or great auntie Ethel? A cardi, a dress, a silk scarf, a bobble hat, a lovely piece of jewellery, a memento of them. Do you wear it? Why do you wear it? How does it make you feel? Do you feel closer to them? Are you honouring them, remembering them? Do you find you always talk about them when you wear the item? Well, we would love to hear your stories on Woman's Hour this morning. Please text us. It's the usual text number, 84844. You can email us by going to our website. You can contact us via social media at BBC Woman's Hour. And now you can even WhatsApp us. The number is 03700 100 444. You can even leave us a voice note so we can actually hear your voices too. That number again, 03700 100 444. And remember, data charges may apply depending on your provider.

So you might want to use Wi-Fi if you can. Terms and conditions can be found on our website. So tell me about that item of theirs that you treasure so much. Then here's a question. How much do you earn? How did that question make you feel? We'll be discussing salary transparency shortly. Will it help close the gender pay gap? How are you when it comes to negotiating pay? Maybe you're in a job where you know you're being paid more or less than someone else doing the same job. What are your thoughts about this? I'm also going to be joined by a talent of the future, a name to watch out for, Lottie Mills.

Not five minutes out of uni, and she already has a book deal. We'll find out why in a bit. That text number once again, 84844. But first, to Pakistan and the devastating floods that have affected more than 33 million people. 1,500 have died while homes, roads, health centres and schools

have been destroyed or damaged, livestock killed and cropland ruined. Pakistani health officials are warning of a looming health crisis in the country and experts are reporting a surge in dengue, malaria and severe gastric infections. The numbers around this climate disaster are almost unfathomable. This morning, we want to know how the flooding is affecting women, and particularly the thousands of pregnant women and their access to maternal health services. Around 650,000 pregnant women.

We want to know how they can ensure safe childbirth and access neonatal care. Well, I'm joined by Neha Mankani, a midwife and founder of the Mama Baby Fund, and they're based in Karachi. And Neha joins us now. Neha, welcome to Woman's Hour. What's the situation in Pakistan at the moment? Hi, thank you. So the situation is still really bad. What we're seeing is that the waters have hardly receded and there's still new places that are going underwater. What I'm seeing specifically around maternal health has been a really bad situation. Some of the field that I've been going to, I've seen villages, maybe in one area, I'd see like 50 villages just underwater so where two cities

that would have been 10 minutes apart I would it would take me one hour by boat to get there and under that water that I'm in a boat on are 50 villages that are just completely submerged and this has happened to hundreds of villages now because the lakes just couldn't take the water so they just kept breaching and took a lot of population and land with them so what this yes carry on sorry so i was just going to talk about how what this actually means for i mean it's just been devastating i think for women altogether because we all it's already a very vulnerable population but pregnant women specifically are have been affected very badly. Before we talk about pregnant women, let's talk about how this is affecting women generally.

What are their concerns? You've been going to the villages. What are you seeing? What are they telling you? So there are a number of things. We're seeing a lot of health challenges. We're seeing issues with menstrual health and hygiene, obviously, because there's no clean water. I've seen areas where there'd be 150 women and they'd have one latrine that all of them are sharing. So there's that. But then there's also things like women are living in tents. Some of them are just living in open air there have been a lot of cases we've been working with some community-based organizations that are working on sexual violence this is just something that comes up a lot in crisis situations so sexual violence in camps we've had cases of early age marriage where girls are being sold off for money

just because everyone's just in a very desperate situation. And I think these things just come out a lot more in situations where people have been displaced, they've lost their livelihood, they've lost their homes. So all the issues which are already quite bad have been exacerbated. And as a midwife, you are going, as you've mentioned, to some of the most affected areas. You're on a boat traveling between, you've just mentioned villages that usually are 10 minutes apart and it's taking you over an hour to get to them. The figure is an estimated 650,000 pregnant women.

Does this tally with what you're seeing on the ground? Absolutely. I think it may even be more than that. I went to a very tiny village and in five hours of being there, I was doing checkups and I think I saw maybe 120 pregnant women just in that tiny area. So between all of the provinces that have been affected, I imagine that the number would be even bigger. And a lot of these women would be due to give birth in the next month or two months where they're not there, where they won't be back to their homes. None of the shelters or none of the health centres

that have been destroyed or cut off will have returned to normalcy. So they will be affected very badly. So what are you able to do, Neha? How are you able to help them? Part of what my organisation is doing, what I thought was an immediate need was that I know that a lot of these women will end up giving birth at home. They have been giving birth at home,

many of them already, with traditional birth attendants or midwives or just someone from the community who will help them. But because of this displacement, a lot of them will end up giving birth in tents and in those camps. Some of them might give birth in boats. So what we've done is we're making thousands of these clean delivery kits and giving them to women. So what I'm reaching them in a number of ways, we're getting them to different villages and some of them I'm going to clinics, setting up remote clinics where women will come to me. We'll do antenatal checkup you know we check on give them supplements check on baby heartbeat do like a fetal well-being check and then give them

a clean delivery kit so that which has like a surface that they can give birth on something to cut the cord like a clean way to cut the cord clothes for the baby vitamins for the mother just to make sure that even if the baby is born in a cam, you know, there's something to prevent a bleed. We can do take a few measures to help the birth be a bit safer. So you are handing out clean delivery kits for them to be able to be able to give birth in the safest way possible in an unimaginable situation yes and how are the women responding when you come to see them what are their concerns what are they saying to you they a lot of them have been very worried it's they don't um it's about some of them are dependent a lot of them had been dependent on

health facilities we'll see people coming in who had been able to go to a health facility maybe for the first four months of their pregnancy, and then that was interrupted. So they don't know where they'll give birth. They may not know who's going to support them. Not all births will end up being normal delivery. Some of them might have complications which need to get them to a facility no matter what, and they don't know how they'll get there um so they have a lot of these concerns a lot there are also a lot of infections

and um just there are also challenges within pregnancy that they're not being able to deal with because they don't have access to health care providers so what are the options then if they have complications um we i think there's just a lot of people who are trying to help on the ground. There's been a lot of organizations that are trying to mobilize. There are health care camps popping up and the government is trying to mobilize some health care providers. But a lot of women will still slip through the cracks. The first camp that I went to, one of the first camps I went to, the day that I had gotten there, just in that day, we heard of two maternal deaths. And we're

continuing to hear about maternal deaths. We're hearing about babies that have died because just the magnitude of the disaster, I think at this point, there just aren't enough resources to get to them. I mean, this is one of my questions about the supplies that you have. I mean, the international community, are they providing enough resources? The UN chief, Antonio Guterres, has acknowledged that what the UN is doing in Pakistan is a drop in the ocean of what's needed.

What is needed? I think the needs are just so big right now. I mean, there's a need for medicines, there's a need for providers. I mean, there's a need for medicines, there's a need for providers. I mean, just something I feel like just even if we were to get them all of the medicines and supplies that they needed, we wouldn't have enough healthcare providers. We wouldn't have enough reach to get to people. So there's just so many things. One of the things that I think of at this point is just, you know, things like mobilising community healthcare providers, like just investing more in people like midwives, because they are people who could

actually get to women at this point, because they're based in communities. So and then there's also going to be a very long rebuilding process, but we will require a lot of advocacy and a lot of support to rebuild infrastructure that was lost and get more on the ground than what was there before. How big's your team? My team is actually really small. We have just, we have four people in our team. I do work with volunteers, people who would like to help out. I mobilize midwives wherever I can find them. But it's difficult because we also have to make difficult decisions on who we can reach, who will get resources from us, who we will reach, who we will get to in terms of checkups or if we need to do deliveries, how we'll get there and how we choose who we will access.

I mean, there's so much to it from what you've just talked, said to me in the last 10 minutes that I'm sure our listeners are trying to process. Just mentioning that in one village you went to, they only have one latrine, that you went to one place and already there were two maternal deaths, that there is disease and fear and fear for women. Sexual assault is a reality. I mean, one of our correspondents on the ground here has been to a camp and spent time with some of the women and said that most women don't sleep at night, fearing danger. What concerns do you have about their safety and the very real threat of sexual violence, as well as everything else? I think sexual violence is a really big one.

It's just people sleeping in open air in large communities. Everyone is vulnerable right now. I think what I'm seeing is actually corresponding with what women are saying about feeling unsafe, because I think they have every reason to feel unsafe. They should feel unsafe about their health. They should feel unsafe about their children's health, about their own, own about being violated there's so many things that make them unsafe right now and what about newborn babies are there concerns for them yes absolutely newborn babies um they're not being i know a lot of women are not able to

feed newborns because of just because of health challenges that they have themselves a lot of women are extremely anemic they have a lot of nutritional deficiencies so breastfeeding ends up being an issue if for some reason they can't breastfeed formula is not easily accessible at all i know a lot of babies have died because of this like the cost of buying formula or just not having clean drinking water a lot of the newborns that came into the camps that I've been doing did have diarrhea, they had fever, they had infections. A lot of them who had been born at home, they had been born in unsafe, unclean circumstances. So there's a lot of issues that newborns face as well.

And they're also just so vulnerable and small and just need a special level of care that they're not getting right now. And you and your team must be having to make some very difficult decisions on the ground. Absolutely. We make decisions about where we're going to go. I mean, we have a camp next week, but I'm just trying to figure out where the need is the most. If I know that even one other healthcare provider can get to the site, then I will not be the one going there. And because I want to go to places where I know that no one can get there, or if there's an emergency delivery, my services will actually be required. So it's really hard to figure out, because I think so many of those places are so badly in need. And even with the clean delivery

kits, I mean, even though we're making thousands, we have to make decisions about where they'll go and where they're needed the most. Really difficult. It must be taking its toll on you and your fellow midwives seeing people in such a desperate situation. So I want to know how you're coping. It's difficult, but I think it's also I think it's a great opportunity to even just be of service to our community a little bit. I mean, for me, it's a big opportunity to serve the women who live in these communities. Neha, thank you very much for speaking to me this morning. Neha Mankani, who's a midwife and founder of the Mama Baby Fund,

who's based in Karachi, who is doing an incredibly difficult but much-needed job of looking after the welfare of those 650,000 pregnant women in Pakistan whose lives have been completely shattered by the floods. 84844 is the number to text. Lots of you getting in touch about items of clothing from your loved ones who are no longer with us that are very meaningful to you. An email here. My mother died in 1974 when I was 22 years old. I still have a turquoise long line cardigan belonging to her hanging in my wardrobe. I have a picture of her wearing it as she waved me goodbye three years earlier as I embarked on my first foreign holiday

hitching in France with college friends. Over the years the cardigan became too small for me to try on but the weight has gone and it now fits. Putting it on makes me still feel the warmth of my mother's hug as she wished me a safe journey that day. It hangs at the front of my wardrobe where I see it most days and even now as I am in my 70s it gives me great comfort. And another one here from Jo who says, I still use a yellow toweling hair wrap that my Nini used to have. It wraps around your hair and then ties with an elastic on top of your head after you get out of the shower. My 11 year old daughter Holly uses it too. And we always talk about her when we use it. Nini is my mum's mum.

She died over a decade ago. I love it and treasure it for all the memories I have about her in putting her rollers in every night and using her makeup compact. Jo, that has just brought a smile to my face thinking about her with her hair in rollers and putting on her makeup. Please keep your memories and those treasured item stories coming in. Now, do you talk about your salary with your co-workers? Imagine if someone just asked you, how much do you earn? So many of us tiptoe around this taboo topic, but more and more companies are beginning to implement salary transparency policies in order to fight stubborn gender pay gaps. Some are doing this by choice, but some are required to do so by

law. In the United States. Several states, including Colorado, have passed laws enforcing it. They insist that salary ranges must be clearly stated on all job ads. New York City is set to follow suit from November, meaning that any employer with four or more staff must post a minimum and maximum wage range on all job postings. And just a couple of weeks ago, a game-changing salary transparency bill was also passed in California, which is home to 19 million workers and some of the most influential companies in the world,

as we know, including Apple, Disney, Google and Meta. Well, this morning, we're joined by money blogger Iona Bain to tell us about this growing trend and whether we're likely to see laws passed in the UK too. And Radha Vyas, co-founder of the group travel company Flashpack. Yeah, Iona, I'm going to come to you first. Tell us more about what's going on. Why has this come about? And why now? Yeah, so as you mentioned, there are now several states in the US where much more radical laws around paid transparency than we've seen previously have either already

been introduced or on the way. So you mentioned some of them just then, Colorado, New York, Washington and California. And this is part of a long running campaign in many states to try to remove much of the secrecy that surrounds pay within organisations, which is long thought to be a pretty big contributor to the gender and ethnic pay gap that remains stubborn right across the US. So the typical pay gap for women working full time in the US is roughly 17%. And that's even higher for ethnic minority women. Now, this isn't to say that there isn't already legislation in many states in the US that requires employers to address the issue of salary ranges at some point during the hiring process, and also importantly, ban employers from asking about a candidate's salary

history something which is still perfectly legal here in the uk yes but what's changing is that certain states are now requiring employers to be completely upfront about salary bans when they are posting jobs and that's a big departure from what's gone before oh 84844 if you want to comment on this um is it likely to happen here in the uk There was a pilot scheme earlier this year, wasn't there? Yes, announced on International Women's Day. But it's voluntary. We don't know how many companies are taking part in that scheme. We don't know how it's going and we don't know what the next steps are. So I think we're in a bit of a holding pattern in this country at the moment where this policy is being actively considered, discussed and tried out in certain

companies. But it's not really close to becoming a reality yet. this policy is being actively considered, discussed and tried out in certain companies, but it's not really close to becoming a reality yet. Well, one company has not only tried it, they've run with it, is Rathers Company. Rathers, you introduced this by choice. It's not mandatory here in the UK to disclose staff pay, but you was the founder, you hold the keys to this information. So why did you decide to implement it? Yeah, hi there. Thanks. And great question. Well, when we're rebuilding Flashback, we're a travel company,

so we had a rough time during the pandemic and a lot of time to kind of reflect on how we had been building the company. And one of the things we thought hard about was how to make employees feel valued and heard post-pand pandemic as we were rebuilding. And we realized that we were falling behind on pay transparency. And this was inadvertently causing pay gaps, ethnicity pay gaps, gender pay gaps within our company, which I just could not tolerate at all. So as we started rebuilding, as the world starts to travel again, we decided that was the one that was a top issue we wanted to tackle as we started employing new staff. And we, you know, we just felt that our team's pay should not be doing, the impact they are having, the responsibility they take on. And being open and transparent with our salaries is a great antidote to those pay gaps

forming again. Before we find out how it's gone down and how your staff have reacted and how it's impacted the company positively and negatively, let's talk about what was happening before then. What did you find was happening with pay? Well, we found that as we scaled the company very quickly, we went from two of us on payroll to about 60 staff within less than four years. And we felt that hiring managers... Congratulations. That's some rate of growth. Thank you. Thank you. Inevitably, as the company was scaling, Lee and I as the co-founders weren't close to every hiring decision. And hiring managers were having to make pay decisions on the fly, right? It was kind of finger in the air. I think this is the right salary. They were using woefully inadequate

data sources because we hadn't put a framework in place. And that led to pay gaps because, not because women are worse at negotiating, they're not. In fact, some of my best negotiators in my company have been women. But society has conditioned us to put ourselves last, to not ask for too much, right? And inevitably, we're starting from a lower base than maybe a male colleague. So you're negotiating from a lower base already. And so we were just perpetuating those pay gaps by giving an uplift on their previous salary. And that's what we wanted to get rid of. Exactly what you were just talking about, Iona,

the salary that if you're meant to disclose the salary you've just been on, then you're probably going to be negotiating from a lower rate than someone else. Yes, absolutely. And this pilot that's been tried out in the UK is looking at banning asking prospective employees about their salary history. And I think the reason why this whole initiative is being considered now is because there is some

compelling evidence that it does help to reduce pay gaps within companies. So for instance, in Canada, where there have been wage transparency laws, there was a study looking at the effect within universities, and they found that the gender pay gap there was cut by between 20 and 40%, which is pretty impressive. But there is a bit of a concern that overall wages could actually be reduced. So there was a study done in California, which found that whilst wage transparency did cut pay gaps, it did reduce salary overall by about two to 3%. And the thinking behind that is that basically women might not get offered the same amount of promotions once their employers kind of know

that salaries will be made public. And also employers might push back and say, well, look, if you start asking for a pay rise, everybody's going to ask for a pay rise. And therefore, we just can't fulfill everybody's requests. Radha, what's your experience been? How's it worked out? Yeah, well, exactly. So we started with advertising pay on all of our job adverts to show that we're being competitive. And alongside of that, we did a massive piece of work with a company called Justly to benchmark all of our salaries against 3000 startups in the UK. So travel, actually, the travel industry in general does pay underpay staff. And so we benchmarked all salaries against startups in London

and no matter we're fully flexible and fully remote and no matter where you we employ you whether it's Liverpool Wales what have you we benchmark your salary to London we so we that's how we've circumvented the kind of issue of salaries going down because we have to we have to be competitive as a startup in London against all the other amazing companies that are out there to to hire talent right but alongside that in terms of ensuring that people get fair promotions we've created a progression framework which outlines at a high level the knowledge you, the communication skills you need, the impact you need to have within the company at your level, right? And there's a clear path to progression

for everyone. And it's completely transparent. So we've rolled that out in tandem with the pay salaries. We've also gone one step further, we've created a salary calculator, where you can trade your base salary for more or less options so we offer stock options as part of the package and dependent on your personal circumstances you might be buying a house this year you may want slightly higher base salary and trade in some options for that there's obviously a minimum salary for every role so that we're not perpetuating privilege in that instance. And yeah, we think it's gone down very, very well. It's created a huge amount of trust between the team and the leadership team, which creates a great amount of goodwill, right? People feel safe,

they feel valued, they feel that the leadership team are transparent and it creates happy employees that are more loyal. Well, this is the interesting bit because, I mean, we don't know. You've done it, so you can tell us how your employees feel. But I think lots of people listening, even though we all want to sort the gender pay gap out, makes us feel slightly uncomfortable, doesn't it? Having your colleagues knowing how much you earn. So how are your employees taking to it? How are your team finding it? Yeah, I think there may have been slight hesitancy when we first rolled out, like, look, it was a scary thing for the entire organisation, because once you're in, you're in, there's no going back. So it was a huge piece of work mentally, as well as kind of the actual work that needed to be done to roll this out.

But it's really important that we all overcome our collective uncomfortableness about talking about money, because there's a bigger issue here, right, to resolve, which are pay gaps. And is that what this is about, Iona? It's a culture of just feeling uncomfortable. And it's just something once this becomes the norm, we'll all look back and go, can you believe that we ever once felt weird about talking about our wages? Yes, I think money is always going to be a sensitive subject for people for very understandable reasons. It can be tied up in all sorts of past and present trauma. So I understand why it's not the kind of thing that you want to discuss with people you don't know that well or trust and you know most people are polite and nice and we don't want to make others feel uncomfortable but unfortunately that does mean that everybody stays quiet on certain

key issues like how much we get paid and one person going over the top and saying I get paid £50,000 a year right who's with me who's going to join me in disclosing how much they get paid it's not guaranteed that everybody else is going to follow them. So I wonder whether or not pay transparency is going to become more normalised. Certainly in the US, if you only have a few states introducing these laws, it does create the risk that employers might overlook those states when hiring people. So perhaps we are going to be moving towards pay transparency right across the board. A better understanding of how it works. You know, I've talked about some research that shows some of the downsides, but there is research showing upsides as well, whereby it has helped boost productivity, staff morale, and so on. And

certainly what Rad has discussed there shows that it can work in practice. But I think the thing is, it's only going to work if the salary bands are sufficiently tight, right? You can't have a salary band of between 40k and 80k a year. if it's in conjunction with a genuine commitment to reducing pay gaps within an organisation. And also, employers really need to think carefully about their calculations. Explain the thinking behind those calculations too, because I think employees do accept wage policy within a company if they can understand the thinking behind it and if they think it's genuine and fair. So what are the downsides? I think, as I mentioned before, the downsides are that it can reduce pay. And also, yeah, I mentioned research which shows that potentially those employees who are on lower wages relative to colleagues become demoralised, unproductive,

they start looking for other jobs. But then again, experiments in countries like Germany have found that actually disclosing salaries does help to boost productivity. So I think there's a lot more research that needs to be done on what the benefits are. But certainly it's an interesting experiment that we need to be giving a lot more thought to. Claire in Eastburn's been in touch to say great discussion about the gender pay gap. There's already a lot of transparency in the NHS with the agenda for change pay scales. However, this has gone too far and staff, either individuals or groups, are often referred to

by their banding rather than their job title or even name, e.g. the new band seven or the band fives can do that. It feels very impersonal and hierarchical. Rather, why should more bosses follow suit and introduce salary transparency like you? Because it exponentially increases loyalty, productivity and employee well-being. Most of our staff have been given a 10 to 30 percent pay rise and have progressed much more quickly because with the progression framework, it's very easy to see and have a meaningful conversation with your manager when you know you've reached the next level and we only see uplift. There is a downside in that we have lost

some talent when hiring because another company is able to offer 5 or 10k more which we can no longer do we have to stick firmly within our bands but to be quite honest if an employee wants to go to another company for a 5,,000 uplift, when we believe we're giving very, very generous salaries anyway, that's not an employee that I want within the organisation. That might be people looking to find, come and work for you, Radha, at the moment. Very quickly, before I ask you the obvious question, which is how much you both earn, haha, you don't have to answer. Radha, you set up the company with your partner, didn't you? You met on a date and this was the first conversation you had let's set up a business yeah yeah it sounds quite sad doesn't it but it's

true we were um we met on a dating site and I think we'll probably match for our love of travel and business and uh yes after a few glasses of wine I disclosed this business idea he's all in he thought it was amazing and uh yes, and that was it. We started the company within a few months of meeting. And the business is a huge success, even though you've had to struggle through COVID and you've bounced back. And it works. The partnership works. The business works. It does. It's, you know, it's an intense roller coaster, but I wouldn't want to do it with anybody else. It's like going to work with your best friend every day. That's nice to hear. Thank you both for joining me to talk to me about that

Radha Vyas and Iona Bain 84844 if you'd like to tell me how you feel about any of this I work in a tertiary sector and know my role is paid lower than it than it than my worth but I'm passionate about the work and think it's important it's very hard as I'm constantly wondering if I should change fields I do keep bringing up the pay issue to senior management we have to go through HR trustees and to our commissioners to get pay reviewed so it's such a long-winded and complicated process most people leave before anything gets changed now do you remember what it was like to be 13. For an occasional series called Girls World, Enna Miller went to talk to girls about their schools, not necessarily about the big issues, but about the drama of their lives. Boys and girls and how things have or have not changed

since Enna was their age. Alice and India are 13. They go to school in Stroud. You two are really close friends, so when you get to school, what's the first thing you talk about? The drama, drama like every single night. To be honest, we don't actually end up having that much to talk about at school because if something happens,

it's very much the case one of us will call the other one straight away. You'll never guess what happened. Literally, I'll call India and be like, you'll never ever guess what happened. Like, this happened and then they said this and they didn't say that and blah, blah, blah. What are those dramas that make you send that text

or pick up that call? The main topic of interest has to be boys. Yeah, it has to be. Like, there's no way beating around the bush is going to be boys. It's like, that's our main source of entertainment and drama because like it is funny we're 13 at the moment and it doesn't really matter if you think about it like we've got the rest of our lives to worry about other things so at the moment you might as well just have fun

and laugh about it right now like in year nine what normally happens is you'll say you like someone they'll say you like you back you'll go out which is basically you'll meet up a couple of times and then after about the three month mark something will go wrong yeah and what's classed as wrong the thing is it's hard because with relationship with boys is that it can go like that like in an instant and a very different having a friendship with a girl. Why is it different? With girls, there's no judgement, unless it's someone you're obviously not close with, but I could be equally as close with a girl and a boy and I know I'd just be more comfortable telling girls some things

because I know they're going to be able to relate to some and also if I'm telling one of my friends who's a boy about something, I'll be like, I don't understand. And I was like, I know you don't understand that. Sometimes, like, we have some, like, catty arguments with girls and they're like, why don't you just make up with them? And I was like, it's so much more than that. The boys have told me, like, why didn't you just all be friends?

Why didn't you all just like each other? I found my diary of when I was 13. So I was flicking through this and all my entries are about boys. Can I read you one of them? Yeah. Right, hold on a second, hold on a second, right them right hold a second hold a second right hold a sec um okay hold a second um this is the fake I love you valentine's letter someone sent me a friend sent it to me and it wasn't from a boy it was from her isn't that I know and I stuck it in my diary and underneath I wrote I also got a love letter

because I was so happy and then years later I found out it was from somebody else so I've written I think I fancy Paul but I'm not sure Paul is really nice

and treats me well today I asked him if he liked my ring and he held my hand then looked at me I looked back and said so what do you think of my ring then Paul said oh yes it's really nice and then slowly let go of my hand he is not nice

looking or anything but he is really very protective and if someone was to go out with him he would really be protective and not let anybody harm them. I think I love him. Oh, that's so sweet. That makes me a bit sad. I know, and I can relate to that. Even however many years it is on, I can still picture that happening today, and I think that's really interesting, the fact that the same problems people had 50 years ago,

60 years ago, 30 years ago... I'm not that old. No, I know. No, I was just giving an example, don't worry. But, like, the same situations happen with our parents and our grandparents and that they're happening to us today. It also does make me a bit sad because it makes me think, I honestly don't think there's many boys like that anymore

who just kind of have, like, a pure moment with you where you really feel like you have a connection. It's kind of now always about, like, oh, you really feel like you have a connection it's kind of now always about like oh you look you look hot you look hot there's always a meaning behind it and it's never innocent to be honest that sounds then quite exhausting that sounds a little bit more can i use the word predatory yeah sometimes and i won't lie it does feel nice to have attention because it makes you feel, like, valid, but then other times it does just make you feel like you're being used.

Yeah, exactly. I'd much prefer a boy to be honest with me and tell me how he actually felt rather than just thinking that, oh, I'm a boy, I can't say that. Here's just for argument's sake. Do you think it's different because, say, I was a girl growing up that the boys didn't fancy me, so I was always the one hoping,

and you were the two girls where the boys do like you, so you're always receiving. There's nothing wrong with boys liking you and obviously getting attention from guys. It's just sometimes you get the attention for the wrong reason. Why can't he just like me because he thinks I'm nice why does it have to be because he thinks I looked nice and it makes me kind of wonder if they actually do like me or if it's more about something else yeah it's more about like the way you're

looking or the what you've got on show shall we say, and rather than genuinely liking you for being you and being that person, being Alice, being India. So this is what I did with this boy. I won't say his name. I wish, let's call him David Smith. I wish David Smith and his brother would have a conversation with me and David would ask me to get off with him and go out with him.

But then I wrote, but there's a really good-looking guy, I don't really know who he is, but he drives the ice cream van up the street. He looks Italian and seems very nice and looks gorgeous. I think most girls feel that way. It's like being blinded by love, almost. Is it fun? It is fun.

Yeah, it is. It's a really nice feeling like laying in bed like waiting for someone's message and then seeing it come through but then at the same time it's also not nice the after feeling when something's gone wrong or something's over. It's like an unbelievable feeling in the moment but then it's like a really hard feeling to get over once it's gone. Oh how so many of us can relate to that. Loads of you getting in touch sharing your stories of that treasured item of clothing that belonged to a loved one. A message here from Angel who says I had a favourite tie of my dad's he used to wear to go out for dinner.

It's silk and had a lot of hot air balloons on he used to wear to go out for dinner it's silk and had a lot of hot air balloons on it and even a food stain which I haven't removed I keep it on the tie rack with my scarves in my wardrobe and look at it when I miss him a lot I also still have a voicemail message from him

which I listen to from time to time I have a scarf of my mum's which I bought for her once as a gift I like to wear it when I can because the colours suit me as we have very similar skin tones. It's silk with large thistle design on it. Greens, purples, teals and blues.

Sounds beautiful. Now, next Sunday, Radio 1's Life Hacks will announce the shortlist for the BBC Young Writers Award with Cambridge University. It's open to 14 to 18-year-olds who are asked to submit a story up to 1,000 words. The prize? The chance to 18 year olds who are asked to submit a story up to a thousand words. The prize, the chance to get their story narrated by an actor for a BBC podcast and published in an anthology. Well, I'm joined in the studio by the 2020 winner, Lottie Mills. Her award-winning piece

was called The Changeling. She's got cerebral palsy and wanted her story to show that disability can be both empowering and beautiful. Since winning, she's graduated from Cambridge with a first and got a book deal just to make us all feel a little bit inadequate this morning. Her first collection of short stories will be called Monstrum and she hopes it will challenge the representation of disability in fiction and she's here to talk to me all about it. So a first from Cambridge Lottie, a book deal and Woman's Hour. That's the triple. Yes, I'm thrilled. So you won the award with your short story called The Changeling, which I read and I highly recommend it to everybody. It's beautiful. It's moving. It's

affecting you. I'm not surprised you've got a book deal. Tell us about it. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it was it was a really unusual story for me to write in a way. Obviously, I've been writing affecting you I'm not surprised you've got a book deal tell us about it oh thank you so much yeah it was it was a really unusual story for me to write in a way um obviously I've been writing you know since I was a kid and experimenting with all different kinds of stories um but it was the first time that I'd kind of sat down and thought I'd like to write about disability I was suddenly in a place in myself where you know it had always been maybe a future of my work in the background but where I suddenly thought this is something nobody's talking about and I have things I want to say you know um and so yeah it was a very strange it was one of those creative experiences you kind of dream about because I sat down and I wrote it um in a bit of a rush really

and all at once um and yeah it was almost like without knowing I'd kind of been waiting to write this story and to start saying these things that you know no one else was saying in the way I wanted so it just came out straight from the fingertips onto the keyboard onto the page yeah I mean it's kind of the stereotype of what people think writing is like and it's not always like that obviously but on this occasion it was because you knew exactly what you wanted to say and what was that yeah well I think you know what was what had always frustrated me was disability is first of all it's kind of very absent from fiction that you know as we all know it's just not there enough and that is improving now which is really lovely um but also when it is there it's so often seen

as kind of a negative thing and people just don't question that they just they think of it as this sad thing and it's very complicated because obviously there are elements of it that can be painful or can be difficult or isolating even but what I was not seeing enough anywhere was a celebration of the kind of uniqueness and the beauty of growing up with a disability and growing up different to the people around you but still being embraced by them which is kind of what The Changeling was about for me. Is that your experience? Yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, my family and my parents are amazing. And they're very big on kind of, you can do all of the same things as everyone else, but you don't have to do it in

the same way. And, you know, kind of improvising and making things work for me. you know and just really kind of and you know I'm very lucky to be surrounded by people who really accept me um and the differences I have and really embrace that which I think is just the most important thing with disability because the the in the story um there is so much beauty in it but there's pain in it as well oh yeah absolutely and I think that's what it's it's a very difficult thing and a very difficult balance for me with my writing and especially as I'm kind of embarking on writing the whole collection is that disability has so many contradictory feelings even throughout my life I've had periods of time where I feel really negatively about my disability and you know

sometimes I wish I didn't have it but for the most part I've always kind of maintained that actually when push comes to shove I am the way I am and I wouldn't want to change it but I think you've got to allow room and creativity for those conflicting feelings um you know and what's difficult for me is I'm scared sometimes that if I say um oh this is really painful and difficult sometimes people will say oh that's so sad I wish you weren't disabled or I wish disability didn't exist which isn't the message I want to send so I think now what's really good for me is writing a short story collection, which is kind of by its nature episodic and, you know, lots of different narratives really allows you to explore those multifaceted kind of feelings and, you know, take lots of different angles on an issue that is

so complicated. And you've brought us nicely onto your book deal. Monstrum is going to be the name of the short story collection of the book that's a collection of short stories. What does Monstrum mean? So Monstrum is the Latin word and it's really it's a Latin word and it's really fascinating because it's the root of the word monster obviously as you can hear but it's so they used that to refer to kind of Medusa and know, mythological monstrosities of that nature. But it was also their word for physical abnormality or disability. And so I found that kind of blurring is something I'm really interested between mythology and folklore and these kind of magical explanations we make up to explain and understand difference and conceptualise it. But also the very real kind of physical, medical disability, you know, the kind that I

live with. And I think that kind of almost reclaiming that mythologising of disability and going back to those very old roots and looking at the magic and the, you know, the sort of folklore of disability is a really nice way to kind of encapsulate beauty and uniqueness, you know, like I wanted to. Where did that idea come from? Well, I think it started when I was writing The Changeling, which I did based on, I was doing an essay on Midsummer Night's Dream and I researched changeling myths and how they're related to disability. It was a way used to explain a disabled child

was that they had been swapped for this magical fairy child. And so once I'd done that, I sort of thought, actually, when you look at folklore and you look at mythology, there are so many things that kind of resonate in that way with different kinds of disability or different kinds of outcastedness. And so I just started kind of looking at different stories. And some of the stories in the collection are very much straightforward retellings of existing folklore.

But more of them are kind of a bit of an amalgamation of different bits of fairy tale, you know, a bit of Beauty and the Beast, a bit of Medusa, whatever, into a new narrative. So I think it really is for me an act of kind of reclaiming because some of these stories were used to discriminate or to, you know, sort of cultivate fear around disabled people so for me as someone with a disability to be able to rewrite them in my own way has been really enjoyable. Very important and a huge breakthrough because getting a book deal is not something that happens to everybody every day so do you feel a sense of responsibility about what you're going to write? I do in a way yeah but also I try not to feel it too deeply that I'm writing for every disabled person because that's just simply not possible. Everyone feels differently.

You know, so I think ultimately I can only write from my perspective and also try and make room for other people's voices and to respect that they might feel differently to me. But I do feel incredible sense of privilege, particularly because I was so lucky that everything fell into place so quickly after me leaving uni, you know, that I got my on on the BBC and then from there I got an agent and

from there a deal it was it was a very very lucky um sequence of events and I do feel kind of privileged and want to make the most of that yeah yeah Lottie luck favours the brave and the talented as well so and the and your writing from what I've read is is. What advice would you give to other young disabled people who are wishing to pursue writing? I would say just give it a go. Just don't be afraid and particularly don't be afraid if your story is maybe different from what's trendy or what the kind of literary style is at the moment

because I think that's what we need is we need a bit of a shake-up and people telling their stories in their own way. So I think just absolutely give it a go and don't be afraid. And shake up in the industry. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Representation across the board, I think, is so important. Lottie, it's been an absolute joy speaking to you. We want to wish you the best of luck. Good luck with your writing. We cannot wait

to read it. When the book comes out, come back and talk to us about it, won't you? Thank you so much. The announcement of the BBC Young Writers Award winner and the Adult Award for National Short Story Award will be broadcast live for an awards ceremony at the BBC Broadcasting House on BBC Radio 4's front row from 7.15 on Tuesday the 4th of October. Now, how can clothes help us through moments of grief? Wearapy is a term coined by one of my next guests, the fashion psychologist, Shakila Forbes-Bell, who believes that what we wear can help us through times of emotional upheaval.

In a chapter of her new book, Big Dress Energy, she describes how wearing her late sister's clothes has helped her confront her grief. And I'm also joined by Dr. Matilda Aspinall, lecturer at UAL, London College of Fashion, who's paid tribute to her late grandmother

through the act of refashioning her dress. Morning and welcome to Woman's Hour, both of you.'m gonna come to you uh first shaquilla what's where are we oh she's not there well in that case i will come to you matilda um let's um find out about your what you've been doing many of us might customize our late relatives clothing and you refashioned a dress belonging to your late grandmother tell me about the dress tell me a bit about the background and the story behind it well excuse me when we were kids we had this big dressing up box and it was full of all sorts of clothes for my mom's shoes and in it was this balloon dress that had been crocheted and we used to dress up in it,

my sister wore it in the school play, but it was just part of the box. And then many, many years later, obviously, we'd grown up, my mum gave me a box full of old clothes, and in it was this blue crocheted dress. And at that point, I had no idea it belonged to my grandmother. And I was informed that she'd hand crocheted it as part of her trousseau before she got married. Well, it was a lovely dress, but it looked pretty rubbery. It was full of holes and it was really tatty. And it was one of those garments that are too precious to throw away

or give to charity, but you don't know what to do with it. So I just shoved it in my attic. I just thought, I'll just put it up there. And it wasn't until I was doing some research into, I was developing a sustainable design methodology that I thought, well, I'll try and refashion that dress and develop it into a more contemporary context. That's how the story began

so what did you do to it well first of all I mended it I took a very fine crochet hook and re-crocheted it and then to give it a more of a contemporary twist I um I trimmed it with I re-dyed some of the wool that I unravelravelled and I trimmed various aspects of it in black because I thought black would update it a bit. And it had a slip under it and the slip, obviously, because if you wore a lacy crochet dress, it would be completely see-through. So she actually made a slip and I've dyed that. My microphone wasn't that successful because it was rayon but anyway it didn't matter and then as I was making it um what was really interesting was I suddenly began to um get very interested in the history of my granny because when I knew her when we were

little she was just this elderly Dutch woman who came from Indonesia before the Second World War. And she was really lovely because she used to go to Holland and buy us chocolates. But I became very interested in her past. And it was through looking at old photograph albums of her that I found at my mum's house and talking to my sister who seemed to have much more information than me but I discovered it lived this really different life to the the

elderly woman that I knew who lived in a bedsit in Earl's Court she lived in a little bedsit with a baby belling cooker and a shared loo and this item of clothing just took you into her past and revealed so much about her as a woman. Yeah, absolutely. I did all this research and I found out who she was. And she lived this very exotic, glamorous life in Indonesia, in Batavia, which is now Indonesia. She'd gone, there were photographs of her on horseback in front of the pyramids on cruise liners. She sounds great. Well, she was amazing. And she'd obviously had this very lovely life before the outbreak of World War II.

Matilda, I'm going to try and bring in Shakila as well to see whether she's there to join in the conversation. Shakila, we're going to get you to tell us all about where a p and how it can help us through moments of grief yes i can hear me now you can you're absolutely nice i can hear you i can see you you look gorgeous uh tell us about where a p what's the psychology around it and when when did you get interested in it so where a p is really a psychological concept behind something that we're all familiar with so we all all know the fact that, you know, when we look good, feel good. And what wear a pee does is looks beyond that. It looks at the emotional aspect that clothing can bring, not just happiness and things like dopamine dressing, which has been trending for the last year. looking at how clothes can help us navigate different emotional states help us to um you know conceal or reveal different aspects of our emotions um or to change them as well um and i think we can

all acknowledge that we all feel that but we don't necessarily um be aware be aware of that and we don't lean into that when we're getting dressed i think a lot of the times when we're getting dressed we just do it very you know frivol. We think more about the aesthetics or the context that we're going into, but we're not addressing our emotional concerns and not understanding how clothes can be used as a tool to really help that and to help us navigate our day to day situations. Now, your sister sadly died and she was only 32. Yes. Why did you decide to wear her clothes? How did that help you? So fashion and style was always something that we shared. I'm sure many people have that with their sister.

You know, they dip into each other's wardrobes. Yeah, my clothes, it wasn't just mine, it was ours. And it was something that was a very active part of our relationship. So when she passed, like you mentioned, she was so young, it was very sudden. Things like looking back at photographs or reading text messages, they just felt too historical. And it felt like something I couldn't connect with. But fashion was something very active and like clothes and, you know, style was something that we shared that was felt more present in the moment.

So when I wore her clothes, I felt like I was celebrating our relationship as it was. And I kind of made me embrace something which I discovered through fashion psychology, which is the power of nostalgia. So there's a ton of research that shows that when we embrace nostalgic thinking, we can, you know, improve our mood, we can feel more confident, we can even feel physically warmer. So it's true that, you know, engaging in those nostalgic thoughts and hearkening back to the good old days can make you feel cozy and that's something that I found that not just with thinking but also with clothing engaging in those nostalgic dressing was something that was very comforting to me it was like a physical manifestation of the abstract pain of

my grief and my loss and it's something that brought me a lot of great comfort and pleasure. And the more I talked about it and talked about the research of other people, I realized that this is something a lot of people do. We just don't necessarily talk about it enough, which is such a shame because grief is such a challenging emotional thing that we all are going to sadly experience

at one point in our lives. So we should really be embracing all the different types of tools that we have at our disposal to help help that and clothes are definitely an overlooked tool that can help us feel comfortable and to help us navigate such a disastrous emotion that is grief and matilda you can relate to that oh absolutely absolutely i mean when i was um uh refashioning my grandmother's coat, dress, I decided it needed a jacket. And I wanted to memorialize my granny because she'd had this very interesting life. And we knew nothing about it because, you know, people didn't really talk about what happened during before and after the Second World War

because the trauma was too intense. So what I did with my granny's dress, I created a jacket to go with it that I made out of patchwork using colour catchers. And colour catchers, they're things you buy in the supermarket and you put in your wash to catch the colour on. And I'd been saving these colour catchers because they're quite lovely colors. And I decided I would make a jacket, patchwork jacket, out of these color catchers because they caught the color on both mine and my children's clothing. So I not only refashioned and updated my grandmother's dress, I created this patchwork jacket that had links with both mine and my children.

And in the jacket, I had made a little label with a photograph of my granny, talking about her history and mine as a form of memoriam to who she was and who she was as a woman. Wonderful. I mean, Shakila, we've had such a huge reaction to this, just mentioning it at the beginning of the show. Lots of people have been getting in touch with their own stories. What's the reaction when you talk about it? What do you get? Yeah, I've had honestly such a positive response to it. I think within my book, Big Just Energy,

I talk about fashion psychology as a larger concept. And I just talked a bit about my sister's you know passing and how I dealt with the grief and how I embraced where I'd be in that instance and it was actually such a small part of the book but it really resonated with a lot of people and I was just so shocked by that. It's resonated with a lot of people on Woman's Hour this morning Shakila Forbes-Bell, Dr Matilda Aspinall and Lottie Mills. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm sorry I didn't get to read out all your messages, but we do appreciate your input. Thank you. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time.

I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC

World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.