Woman's Hour - Rachel Weisz; Euro 2020; Kanya d’Almeida; Abortion in Northern Ireland; Emily Rapp Black

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Rachel Weisz seems to have had constant work in the film industry since the early nineties. She's been in all kind of films: historical, action, science fiction, serious, art-house. Now she's diving into the world of superheroes with the new Marvel film, 'Black Widow'. Anita speaks to her about her latest role.The nation is transfixed - after many years of hurt could England be on the road to winning a major trophy? Football journalist Flo Lloyd-Hughes joins Anita.Sri Lankan author Kanya d'Almeida has been named the Commonwealth Short Story Prize Winner of 2021. Her winning piece, "I Cleaned The-" features two women who share a room in a refuge run by nuns, for people who have nowhere else to go. Kanya talks to Anita about her winning story, motherhood, mental health and paying for childcare in Sri Lanka.Northern Ireland politics is stuck. Continued disagreements between the power-sharing parties have led to stagnation in the Northern Irish Assembly, leaving lots of services in the lurch, including access to abortion for Northern Irish women. Now a charity, which is the first port of call for those who want an early medical abortion, says if they don't get funding they'll have to stop.Emily Rapp Black felt an instant connection with the artist Frida Kahlo after seeing her famous painting 'The Two Fridas'. At the age of four, Emily’s left leg was amputated due to a congenital birth defect. In her new book ‘Frida Kahlo And My Left Leg’, she explores the legacy, life and art of Frida Kahlo which helped her to make sense of her own life and body. Emily writes about the trauma of her son’s death and the current discourse and attitudes around disability.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Frankie Tobi

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. Good morning all, we've made it to another Friday. Now if I were to say superheroes, who comes to mind? Spider-Man? Superman? Batman? Aquaman? Ant-Man? Well, fans of Marvel and the Avengers franchise will know that there is a kick-ass woman

called Natasha Romanoff aka the Black Widow she's played by Scarlett Johansson and after years of being a side character she finally gets her own film

which fans are thrilled about here's something to whet your appetite you don't know everything about me I've lived a lot of lives whet your appetite. You don't know everything about me. I've lived a lot of lives. Before I was an Avenger.

Before I got this family. I made mistakes. Choosing between what the world wants you to be. And who you are. Yes, fans are buzzing. It's got a fantastic cast, including Rachel Weisz, who will be on the show later. But what we want to know on Woman's Hour today is who are your real life superheroes? Let's celebrate the remarkable people in our worlds. And your tweets are coming in already. Here's just a few. Will Hartog says, my daughter.

She works in retail, runs her own business, keeps a gold medalist producing diving club running despite COVID restrictions and fights for the rights of my autistic granddaughter. More of a full time job than any of the previous mentioned. I'm in awe of her. Bernard Crapup says, my sister, she had to deal with a lot on the sad side of life for the past few years and she's coped admirably. Kim McAllister says, my mum who raised the three of us girls

while dad worked away for weeks at a time and she did a blooming good job. And Holly says, my daughter Hetty, she's a single parent who created her own business and has two children, one of whom has a rare disability. She's incredible, and I'm so proud of her. And Jazz Hummel just says, simply, my mum. So who are your real-life superheroes? You can tweet us. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. You can text us, 84844, and you can email by going to our website,

and we'd love to hear your thoughts on any of the things we talk about on the show today. Maybe Gareth Southgate and the England team are your superheroes at the moment. We'll be discussing football on the show. How many of you don't follow football? Me. But are now invested in backing England? Me. And joining in with a sense of much needed euphoria in the country, we will be getting up to speed. And then domestic servants are a cultural norm in Sri Lanka and are the focus of a short story that's just won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. We'll hear from the author. We'll also be finding out why there's a delay in women accessing abortions in Northern Ireland and author Emily Rapp Black. As an amputee, she felt a connection to the Mexican artist Frida

Kahlo and has written a stunning new book about her experience and that of losing her son. It's a packed show, but of course, we'd love to hear your thoughts throughout. You can get in touch with us in the usual ways. Text 84844. Now, are you into superheroes and Marvel comics and films? Well, the first Marvel film solo directed by a woman, Kate Shortland, is out next week.

And there's lots of talk about how feminist it is or not. It's called Black Widow and has a trio of top female Hollywood stars, Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh and Rachel Weisz. You may remember that Scarlett Johansson complained that last time she was in a Marvel film, how hyper sexualized she came across. Well, this time it's very different. Last night, I spoke to rachel vice on zoom me in london and her in new york she plays melina vostikoff a seasoned spy and mother figure to florence pew's character and scarlett johansson's character rachel vice welcome to woman's hour thank you anita thank you um watching you on screen playing this role gorgeous woman in her prime being a total badass for me

watching I thought this is a game changer this is how women are represented on screen now and in a superhero movie what did playing this role mean to you? Well, I don't know how to put it any better than you just did really. Well, I really always wanted to work with Kate Shortland. That was the first thing. So before I'd even read it or knew what the character was, Kate is an Australian director that I've seen her independent films and I've always wanted to work with. So when I got the script and it was her um it first and foremost meant that I was going to get a shot at working with her I tried to work

with her for many years I could never find her she's very mysterious and she was in Australia and she was quite shy I think um she said that she said that she was shy so that yeah I really wanted to work with her um it seemed like a great opportunity to work with Scarlett and David and Florence. And it was a great ensemble. And yeah. I mean, yes, you mentioned Kate. She, I mean, again, another game changer. It's the Marvel have got a female solo director for the very first time.

This is her first big budget film. And she actually said that she has made this film. She wants to talk to her 12 year old daughter and other young women and to say you girls are strong funny smart and you can do so much more than the world is telling you to do I mean this is cinema doing something that it hasn't done ever before really isn't it I suppose so I mean mean I guess it is extraordinary that this is the first time there's a solo woman I guess you're referring to that Captain Marvel was directed by a man and a woman it's I suppose I always just find it sad that this is something that we even have to point

out and celebrate I'm really happy to join in with you and to celebrate this but um i don't know it's this idea that was some outlying bizarre i don't know kind of animal that hasn't made it into directing things it's so odd you're just talking about a woman like a woman i mean woman who's directed a marvel movie yeah about bloody time I guess yeah just about bloody time that we had a an Asian woman who won an Oscar for the first time this year you know you're right you're right why are we still having these conversations but because we have to I didn't mean to say let's not have it of course we have to but I get the feeling I was having as we were beginning to was oh isn't it sad Like wonderful to celebrate such a thing,

but sad that it's still a point of interest that it's a woman. It's not, it's not, it's not being directed by an endangered species of giraffe or something. It's just, just a woman, just a human woman. But yeah. Okay. I love what Kate said to her daughter, because I think the film does show women being funny and vulnerable and superheroes, but also what it takes to be, I mean, the Black Widow is a mortal, they're human beings who will die and they don't actually have any superpowers, they're just highly trained. So what it is to be behind the mask, you know, you're just a person and you're vulnerable and you're needy and you have family that you miss. And yeah, so I think it addresses, it's very human.

It's a really human film. Absolutely. And that is credit to all of you. I mean, yourself, I mean, what a cast. Scarlett Johansson, of course, who is Black Widow. And finally, all the Marvel fans get to get her backstory, her story of origin. And the incredible Florence Pugh.

I mean, talk about the holy trinity of gorgeousness and beautiful voices. All three of you have divine voices. And what the three of you bring to those characters is great empathy and humanity, I think. Well, thank you you I suppose and um yeah I think uh I think as I as I said I think what Kate and and Scarlett you know produced this movie it's her it's her very much her baby the whole project I think she actually was interested in showing the uh the beating heart the human being behind the the mask of being a quote-unquote Yeah. You know, what it takes, the cost. So, yeah. So Black Widow, Scarlet's character and Florence's character, they have

a lot of empathy. And I think it allows, certainly for me as an audience member, when I watched it, I had a lot of empathy for them because they felt real and vulnerable. Yeah. And the film's about sisterhood it is yeah yeah it's about it is it's a good old subject sisterhood we've had you know I guess a lot of uh you know being brought up on a lot of uh buddy movies between men um yeah so this is like a female buddy movie. Yeah, sisterhood. Yeah. And it's also about control of women, isn't it? It's, you know, you've got brilliant Ray Winston, playing Dreykov, who has just taken these women, you know, I was watching the scenes, and I guess I was drawing parallels with stories that we hear in the news about trafficking. And here we have these women being taken and

finding finding their own voices taking their power back if you like I mean it was just very powerful maybe I was reading too much into it Rachel I don't think so I don't think so I think I think it's all I think it's all I think it's all there yeah because there was one scene I don't want to give any spoilers to anyone listening obviously but there was a scene that there was the most powerful scene for me. It's between Ray Winston and Scarlett Johansson's two characters. I'm not going to say what's happening and why they're there. Women, we have been told for centuries to stay quiet, to shush, to appease men.

And in this scene, she does something so simple but so radical. She humiliates him. She uses her brain and her voice and he can't handle it and I was like wow and again I keep saying it in a marvel film in a superhero film it was just wonderful to see yeah well directed by a by a gal um what was it like um going back to work after having a daughter how was it going back to the office um I think much the same as going back to work after having had a ever having had a boy it's always having a baby and I just wanted to absolutely I'm sure it is the same I just wanted to point out that you'd had a beautiful daughter that's did. I did. Yeah. I mean, it's always I think for all working mums, it's always it's always it's a it's a it's a moment, isn't it?

When you when you like, yeah, first first go back to the office, as you say. Yeah, it's it's it was two years ago now. So it's such a distant memory. But yeah, it was it was it was a lovely first job to do back to work. Yeah. An action film, though. Was it tough to get back into shape? Well, you know, those, those iconic widow suits are pretty, they're pretty forgiving. They, you know, zip you up and hold you in and they're pretty good. Lots of Lycra. Yeah. I mean the iconic widow suit, I also particularly loved the scene where you had all your hair in braids and you were wearing a brilliant boiler suit. I'm working on the pig farm in Russia. Yeah.

You see, I needed to talk to you about that as a country file presenter. How was it working with those pigs and were they Tamworth pigs? Gosh, I can't remember the names of them. They're very hairy and they've got kind of like these sort of things that hang off their chin that look a bit like testicles. I don't know how else to describe it. I don't know where they were from. I'm sorry. I've forgotten. I've forgotten now. I have to look it up, but they're really sweet. They're really adorable.

Yeah, they looked, and they were very well-trained as well. The acting was sensational. So much has changed in the last few years. You know, we've had Me Too in Hollywood. We've had the Black Lives Matter movement and people are exploring different stories because the audience are demanding it, right? We wanted Black Panther, we want to see women on screen, we want to see everything, we are craving stories. Are you finding that you're getting really interesting scripts now? You know, I mean, you know, 10, even 10 years ago, a woman in her 50s, an actress in her 50s might not be getting the roles that you might be getting now. So I just wonder if you're seeing a change in the stories that you're receiving through scripts.

I think so. Yeah, I think that would be really fair to say that things are changing for the better in terms of everyone, more people being represented. Yes. Good. And who's your real life superhero? My real life superhero um my real life superhero do you have a real life superhero I don't know why my cat is coming into my mind he's only got one eye but he's pretty uh he's pretty great I think he's battled uh he's battled so many illnesses and he's making it through with one eye. I don't know why my cat Solomon is coming to mind. And if you could have a superpower, Rachel, what would your superpower be? I think, I don't think I'm going to be very original.

I think flying, just because just to be able to fly somewhere very fast without having to go to an airport would seem like very joyous yeah what would you pick I always said to be able to speak every language oh god much much better than mine no but right now flying because the dream would be to just get on you know go somewhere I mean we've all had such a tough year haven't we so the idea of going somewhere would be great but we should maybe like bring back the um Esperanto campaign you know where we just speak one universal language that everyone would learn it's like not in fashion anymore i think when my mom was young it was a thing you know why not and we could all speak to each other if you could go anywhere then when you're with your flying with

your superpower where would you head to um i've never been to india I'd love to go to India. Maybe right now it's not, it's a tricky time over there because I know the pandemic's still very tough there right now, but I'd love to go to India. And how has your year been? Um, I've, I've been, you know, fine. There's a lot of, uh, it's, it's been pretty hard for everyone but I'm you know very privileged and I've been totally fine but um yeah looking forward to it to being over everywhere on on planet earth absolutely Rachel I really enjoyed it and I think it is a really important movie and then I'm with you right why should we still be talking about women but if you watch a movie like this and it feels so important then you know I think it's part

of the change and I think it's important for young girls to see such uh three-dimensional powerful women on screen together yeah let's we should celebrate that you're totally right I didn't mean to be like Debbie Downer about it yeah oh not that old chestnut and uh Black Widow is in cinemas July the 7th. That's next Wednesday. And it's on Disney Plus with Premier Access on July the 9th. That was me talking to Rachel Weisz yesterday. Now, I'm not by nature a football fan, but who hasn't been infected by the joy of the Euros 2020 so far?

Now, besides England beating Germany on Tuesday to qualify for the quarterfinals tomorrow in Rome against Ukraine, even I found myself the night before glued to the penalty shootout between France and Switzerland. The scenes of celebration around the country when England won were incredible. Finally, something to be jubilant about. The nation is transfixed after many years of hurt. Could England, should I say it, be on the road to winning a major trophy? I'm joined by football journalist and broadcaster Flo Lloyd-Hughes,

who's going to fill me in and bring me up to speed and give me all the information I need. Morning, Flo. Welcome to Woman's Hour. So why is the nation so swept up by this tournament? It feels so important, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, I think you touched on where the tournament is falling. And obviously we've all been through a lot the last 18 months.

So I think that adds to the emotion and the hysteria in some ways about it. So I think that's a big element. But then you also mentioned the fact that we've been waiting so long for a bit of success. And I think in 2018 we tasted a little bit of that with Southgate leading England to the semi-finals and a lot of people thought that was the best chance they'd had in a very long time to get to a major final for the first time

since 66 they lost against Croatia but now things are looking pretty good when you look at their side of the draw and Germany was probably the toughest test they faced they've overcome that in sensational style and now I think people are getting very excited so the first time we've beaten Germany in what 50 odd years 55 years I think it might be yeah what a victory so let's talk about why we've got this success talk about the talk me through the team what's going on why have we done why have we managed to get this far so I think there is a bit of a perfect storm really of um a great bunch of guys that have come together a really young group and a really great leader I mean Gav Southgate has drawn a lot of attention for his honesty his commitment to diversity and inclusion and I think he is a credit to English football really and I think he's drawn

global attention because of that and I think when you put him together with this really young group who are very excited very passionate and very talented it's kind of the perfect combination and I think up until Tuesday lots of people have said Gareth Southgate really great guy not necessarily the world's best coach but this has suddenly kind of tipped him over that edge and he's really broken through as someone who actually might be a really fantastic football coach as well as a great guy and the team seems to be quite understated they They're very calm, focused, no one big star. Is that because of the influence of Gareth Southgate? I think so. I mean, he's quite an understated guy. I think, you know, he's a pretty normal guy. He obviously had some difficult moments in his career and he's always asked about 96 and the Euros and that missed penalty. And I think he always comes across as just a normal bloke. And I think he's tried to feed that into his team as well.

And I think we're seeing a different side of footballers now. I think where before we used to see the really glamorous side and footballers going to nightclubs and dating really famous women in the media, we're still seeing that side. You know, we've got players in the Premier League who are engaged to two of Little Mix. So that still happens,

but they live really understated lives now. You know, they have a big family. They go on Instagram and make TikTok videos at home. They don't go to nightclubs. They're not really interested in that anymore. So I think that's probably in some ways benefited this team. Yeah football culture does seem to have changed a lot from the from the days of Posh and Becks and those photographs of the wags all lined up in their stilettos and handbags and of course footballers have such purpose now we've got the likes of Marcus Rashford

and let's talk about Raheem Sterling. I mean, 15 goals in 20 matches. Let's celebrate some of the key players, standout players. Yeah, he's been a shining light of that. And he's a real family man. I mean, after the game on Tuesday, there was this amazing picture of him with his son. And it was a really emotional picture. And all of these players that do have children,

Harry Kane's a huge family man as well. And it's just really interesting to see how kind of culture pop culture sort of changed with this team and they're no longer necessarily the flashiest the flashiest players in the world they really care about this country they really care about English football and that they're kind of celebrating that okay for those of us less familiar with the world of international football what should we be looking out for Flo on Saturday I'm making notes uh I think probably the two biggest players that we should watch out for in terms of Ukraine would be Yarmolenko and Zinchenko Yarmolenko anyone who follows West

Ham will be familiar with or anyone who follows Premier League and Zinchenko similarly plays for Man City probably their best two players and those will be the biggest challenges for England, I think. So I think those are the ones that people have got to watch out for because Tchenchenko has unbelievable fitness, runs around like a madman, and Yarmolenko's got a brilliant finish on him and has already scored a few goals in this tournament. And how big a threat is the Ukraine team?

I think it's a difficult one because they seem to have played differently in every single game they've played. So it's going to be a difficult one because they've seemed to have played differently in every single game they've played so it's going to be a hard one for Southgate to prepare for because they've been in some pretty stodgy games where they haven't played well and just scraped through and then they had that fantastic win the other night so I think it's going to be really difficult really difficult. Now let's talk about one woman who's been attracting a lot of attention so far in this tournament Emma Hayes the Chelsea women's manager.

Why? Is she someone we should be keeping an eye on? Yeah, definitely. I mean, for people that do follow football, they will be familiar with her. But I think for this tournament, she's really kind of broken that barrier because anyone that follows women's football would know her through her role with Chelsea women and and then other people within men's football might recognize her but now she's becoming quite a big name across England and across the world because she's really broken through with her commentary and her analysis and she has been really bringing something to this coverage of the competition that no one else has ever done before her preparation is unbelievable I, she's been preparing for commentary, for commentary, like she's been preparing to her team to face Croatia or wherever it may be.

Unbelievable practice, unbelievable kind of preparation. Yeah, brilliant. She's doing it. And do you think that, I wonder how much of that is because she knows she's stepping into an arena where she has to prove herself a little bit? I mean, potentially, but I also think people that know her know that she loves doing that kind of thing.

I mean, she's a football nerd, so she would never put herself in her situation where she wouldn't have done three days prep for it. And for lots of other people, that's not their style and they just want to go in and be relaxed and do that. But for Emma Hayes, she wants to know where that person was three years ago, what day their wedding day was, all these really intricate things. She wants to know what, you know, where that person was three years ago, what day their wedding day was, you know,

all these really intricate things. She wants to know that information and not everyone does. Good on her. Now, it's a standard football journalist question, but are we going to go all the way, Flo? Is this our year? I truly believe, I definitely think we're going to get to the final. Then, you know, anything can happen

because we could face Spain, Italy or Belgium in that final. So I think that's... Who do we want? Who do we want in the final? I think we could beat any of those teams. So really, but I think getting to the final will be a huge achievement. And then once we're there, anything can happen.

Brilliant. Flo, thank you so much. Really good speaking to you. If you'd like to comment on anything, final will be a huge achievement and then once we're there anything can happen brilliant flow thank you so much really good speaking to you if you'd like to comment on anything give us your predictions for the final if you want are we there yet uh it's uh 84844 now northern ireland politics is in limbo this week jeffrey donaldson uh became leader of the dup that was after edwin poot stood down after just three weeks and he took over from Arlene Foster, who resigned as DUP leader and First Minister. Continued disagreements between the power-sharing parties

have led to stagnation in the Northern Irish Assembly, leaving lots of services in the lurch, including access to abortion for Northern Irish women. Leaders from the smaller parties have urged Stormont in no uncertain terms to get on with things. Here's Clare Bailey, leader of the Green Party, talking in Stormont last month. So much needs done.

And let's not forget that it was Westminster MPs who approved our new abortion regulations just a year ago. And look how that's worked out. Women here still denied access to services. 371 women forced to travel to England during a pandemic in order to access healthcare denied. Now a charity, which is the first port of call for many of those who want an early medical abortion,

says if they don't get funding, they'll have to stop. We'll speak to them in a moment but first let's go to Emma Vardy BBC correspondent in Belfast. Morning Emma. Now on paper at least abortion became available in Northern Ireland in March 2020 just after lockdown began last year yet people are finding it hard to access services. Why is that? We have to remember that abortion was only decriminalised in Northern Ireland because the Westminster MPs essentially went over the heads of the devolved government here to make that happen. And the circumstances in Northern Ireland are that in a power-sharing government you need parties to agree to make things happen and the Democratic Unionist Party remains staunchly opposed to abortion. So the actual central commissioning of abortion

services has been blocked from happening. They do exist in some form, but they remain pretty patchy. So that means local abortion services, depending where you live, might not be available to all women who need it. And so as we were hearing there, women in many cases do still travel across the water from Northern Ireland to places like Liverpool if they want to access services. Can GPs provide early medical abortions in Ireland? Well, in the Republic of Ireland, medical abortions can be provided by GPs. But even there, three years on since the vote to legalise abortion happened, it's pretty patchy. It's reported that for the Republic of Ireland, only about one in 10 GPs actually do provide those.

One option that Northern Ireland's health minister put forward is to look at whether Irish health authorities could provide women from Northern Ireland with early medical abortions. But again, that paper, considering that option, was blocked from making it onto the agenda. Now, politics in Northern Ireland is in limbo. So who's taking charge of all of this? Well, the Westminster government is pretty disappointed that the commissioning of abortion services has stalled in Northern Ireland. So it's given the Northern Ireland Secretary, Brandon Lewis, special powers to actually direct the commissioning of abortion services in Northern Ireland himself. He hasn't used those yet, though we understand he does intend to use those powers to compel Stormont to commission full

abortion services if there's no movement well by summer was what he said so you'd expect that you know something on that could could happen soon but effectively that would mean once again Westminster intervening in what is technically a devolved issue for Stormont. And how convenient is it for political parties to see this kicked into the long grass? Well, it's really an issue for the DUP more so than other parties. They're the ones particularly opposed to abortion. And that view is representative of a lot of DUP supporters. But of course, with younger voters, the DUP does risk losing more moderate,

younger voters who might have more liberal views on abortion than the more traditional wing of the party. So approaching assembly elections, it's not an easy issue for them. Emma thank you very much now we're joined by Rory Rowan who's the Director of Advocacy and Policy at Informing Choices in Northern Ireland. Morning Rory welcome to Woman's Hour can you explain the kind of services that you provide? Thank you so Informing Choices we provide a central helpline that people can contact in Northern Ireland to seek information if they have an unplanned or crisis pregnancy. So the majority of people who will call our helpline will have already made the decision not to continue with a pregnancy. And we'll be able to inform them about what local early medical abortion services that exist in their area.

And we'll be able to make a referral into those services. For those who contact us who are still considering their options we also provide pregnancy choices counselling and everyone who accesses our service is informed of our post-pregnancy counselling service as well. So all referrals into early medical abortion services in Northern Ireland come centrally through our helpline that we've been providing since April 2020. And how busy are you at the moment? So in terms of the first year since providing the service, almost 2,200 women contacted Informing Choices with an unplanned or crisis pregnancy.

They come from all parts of Northern Ireland. The average age of those contacting us has been 29 years old. And in terms of our counselling service, we've seen increasing demand since we've started providing the service. So we'd now be providing somewhere in the region of around 20 post-pregnancy counselling sessions a week with additional pregnancy choices, counselling sessions when requested. And now we've seen a growing waiting list in terms of post-pregnancy counselling as well. So we would now have around over 20 women on a waiting list and that could be somewhere in the region of two to three months before counselling can begin because this is something that has not been funded it's something that we've had to seek small grants for and as I said it's not sustainable

in terms of the long term and because those services haven't been centrally commissioned, it has been left to informing choices and individual health professionals in our health trusts in Northern Ireland to absorb and provide care for those women where government has failed to provide commissioning. And you've said that you'll have to shut down part of your work. Why? So in terms of the service,

the law changed at the end of March 2020. At that stage, the UK was in its first lockdown. People were finding it very difficult to travel to Great Britain to access care. And at that stage, Informing Choices worked with local health care professionals to provide an interim early medical abortion service so people wouldn't have to travel but because the service has not been centrally commissioned we have seen services struggle to cope and we've had a number of health trusts over the past year who have had to suspend their services because they've been sustained by a single health care professional and that's not sustainable in terms of the long term it's not sustainable in terms of informing choices. We are now being contacted by 45 women a week to continue providing that service with no additional funding. We've made repeated requests to the health minister over the past year

in relation to the service to state that it is unsustainable to continue to expect a small charity to provide for those women. for that reason we've had to take that very difficult decision that if that funding isn't in place we will have to end by the 1st of October. Well the Department of Health in Northern Ireland confirmed to us that it's considering a funding request from you and it's told as it's written to the Northern Ireland office about this have you heard anything? Are you hopeful? I do remain positive you know we have made positive steps in Northern Ireland over the past year. More people are now being able to access abortion care locally. Fewer people are having to travel.

I do expect that officials from the Department of Health will be in contact with us over the coming week in order to try and resolve this issue. And I'm hopeful that we can seek a resolution to allow us to continue providing the services and I think that will be the first step but also what we need is funding for the healthcare professionals, adequate funding so that all services can be maintained and they can be expanded so that women no longer are forced to travel to Great Britain to access the healthcare they should be entitled to access in Northern Ireland. And will you really collapse if you don't get the funding? Unfortunately, the service is unsustainable. We have been in contact from the department as far

back as the summer of last year. We've made repeated requests to the department which have gone unanswered over that period of time. We are a very small charity. We can't continue to cope with them in terms of the number of people who have been contacting us. And in terms of our counselling service, as I've said, we've had to speak small community grants. They too will run out at the end of September. So the service really isn't sustainable. And I'm hopeful that we don't take that step backward and women can get the access to the support and care that they need locally. And I guess, Rory, the most important question is,

if you aren't there and aren't able to continue providing the services, where do the women go? What happens? And what we've seen in terms of the services that have been provided to date is, as I've said, they've been provided by a handful of healthcare professionals and some of our health trusts, they've been provided by a handful of healthcare professionals in some of our health trusts. They've been provided by a single individual. So we've seen services collapse in those health trusts. And currently women living in one part of Northern Ireland, the Western Health Trust, have no access to local early medical abortion services

and their options are now limited to travelling to Great Britain during a pandemic, paying privately for a service in the south of Ireland or going to independent online providers and most of the people who we speak to when given those options can't believe that services aren't in place when the law has changed and unfortunately aren't prepared to travel. Few travel at the current time is scary and will access the medication online and therefore they won't receive in terms of the current terms of contraception afterwards because we know in terms of when women access

early medical abortion, they will be offered any form of contraception. And I know large numbers, around 50%, are taking up a form of long-acting reversible contraception too, which will reduce the chances of further unintended pregnancies. So that is the situation currently that women, if they can't go through ICNI, what we could see is the collapse of all services in Northern Ireland. And that is not a position we want to be in.

It's not a position that is acceptable 15 months after services and the law changing. Rory Rowan, Director of Advocacy and Policy at Informing Choices, thank you very much for speaking to me this morning. Now as we mentioned there the Department of Health in Northern Ireland has confirmed that it's considering a funding request from Informing Choices. The department has written to the Northern Ireland office in relation to the funding required to support the provision of abortion services. They also told us early medical abortion services in the Western Trust area have been temporarily paused due to staff resource issues since the 23rd of April 2021. And department officials continue to monitor ongoing efforts by the Trust Restore Service delivery. In relation to the full commissioning of abortion services, as COVID pressures have started to ease,

the department has resumed the necessary planning work to develop a service specification for abortion services as provided for under the 2020 regulations. Now, your thoughts are coming in on the various things you've been hearing this morning. We were just talking about football and Natalie Ainscough has tweeted us to say, let's hope some of the girls and women watching

who haven't played or watched before will be inspired to play or follow their local team. My daughter has played since she was very young and I started playing recently at the age of 40. I play my first competitive match next weekend. Oh, Natalie, very good luck to you. 84844 is the number to text. Now, Sri Lankan author Kanya Delmeda has been named the Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner of 2020.

Her winning piece, I Cleaned The, is a story about dirty work, domestic labour, abandonment, romantic encounters behind closed doors and human waste. Friendship, care and love feature heavily in the story, which follows two women sharing a room in a refuge run by nuns for people who have nowhere else to go. One woman, a former domestic worker, recounts the 20 years she spent looking after and loving a paralysed child who wasn't hers, while at the same time caring for and loving her dying elderly roommate. I started by asking Kanya, more than 6,000 people

from 50 Commonwealth countries entered the competition, but you have won the grand prize. How does it feel? It's been a kind of ongoing rolling dream since the shortlist, to be honest, to have emerged as the winner. It's taking a while to sink in, I have to admit. Well, it is a stunning story. Really interesting. You take us into a world so many people have no knowledge and idea about. Where did the idea come from? I was sitting and nursing my son a few weeks after he was born. I'd had a very traumatic birth experience.

And I also had hired two women to work in my house at the time and one of them was cleaning his used nappies as as occurs in the story and I just remember sitting there looking at her doing this task for me and wondering actually asking myself the question who is this child's mother you or this woman who's doing this this work for him and I just couldn't get that idea out of my head. And in order to work it out, I kind of needed to write this story. So explain to the audience who might not know what happens then, how you've set it, what is the setup for the story? The story is about a woman who is in middle age.

She's spent most of her life caring for someone else's child and for various reasons she's left that job and she's entered a home for destitute women and she's recounting her life story to her roommate who is quite a character herself and within it we're getting the backstory of this narrator's life and how she came to care for a severely debilitated child and what that work meant for her especially within a class society where that kind of labor is not valued. And you include pretty graphic details about the jobs that she had to do particularly the cleaning out of the nappies. You don't shy away from talking about human filth because she's with this disabled child throughout her life

until she passes away. And you talk about the nappies, you talk about cleaning period blood. Why did you want to make it so visceral? I wasn't sort of trying to be grotesque or graphic. I just thought to myself, OK, how am I going to really depict what's happening here? And how can I do it in a way that's true to what that work is? And can there be love in that work? Does it have to only be purely disgusting? And maybe just having come out of the birth experience and having to come to terms with so many kind of bodily functions that

you might, especially in the postpartum period, that you might not want to deal with and that are not really kind of celebrated in all of their glory. I was trying to get at the heart of that, I think. Could you tell us a bit more about the cultural norms surrounding domestic workers and childcare in Sri Lanka? Yes, I will say that it is absolutely the most undervalued form of labor in the country. And I say this not only speaking of, you know, domestic servitude, which obviously has a very long legacy in Sri Lanka. And it's kind of an unfulfilled history in a way. We still live in a highly class segregated society, back doors for the help. I'm talking that level of, you know, archaic practices.

But also my mother is a kindergarten teacher, a Montessori teacher. And I saw from her work, you know, how even the work of a kindergarten teacher, Montessori teacher is devalued and people try to pay the least possible amount for daycare, for childcare. And so all of these notions of the value of that labor were really sort of swimming and stewing in my mind. And I think a lot of what is in the story comes from that concern. And why do you think writing fiction was the best way to explore these issues? I've never had any success carrying through a conversation about domestic work in Sri Lanka in any other form. I've tried journalism. I've really, you know,

reported deeply and compassionately about various things. I've tried sitting and talking to family members. I've tried talking to people through work. And it always ends badly because it is a structure, you know, the sort of structure of women's labor, particularly, but also domestic labor that is so ingrained in the culture that there's no nice way out of it you either have to you know accept that system for what it is and be okay with yourself for participating in it or completely move away out of it and so I found that with this story and I've been so heartened by the responses that have come in now that people have had a chance to read the piece that I don't have to argue with anyone about it. I feel like we're

maybe touching on something in a really lovely way because of these two characters. And I'm extremely gratified by that. And what are people saying? People are loving the idea of these two women sitting and talking together as if nobody else was listening. So they're not having to use the language of, you know, politics or economy. You know, they're really just talking about their lives. And so when all of that other sort of stuff is stripped away, I think people have just appreciated having a window into that and maybe thinking a little bit more about what the people around them

might be thinking and feeling rather than, you know, have it be mediated by the wage or by a political kind of discussion or debate. As well as, you know, talking about domestic workers in Sri Lanka, you also have this wonderful relationship between these two women. And yes, TB Rita is such a great character. And they're living in a refuge. And there is some sort of romantic relationship between them there's a deep friendship it's not just not just one of caretaking and it's not something we often read about between elderly or unwell characters particularly women so why did you decide to

underpin the story with this kind of relationship? You know I've recently become a huge Sarah Waters fan and I have to say I love the way that her sort of relationships unfold and I will admit that you know she's very much in my mind as I as I write these women characters but also just in my own life you know seeing how women at later stages of their lives may find companionship with other women that was possibly was not possible in any other stage of their of their lives and when you're in a refuge and when you're destitute and you're old and you're past your childbearing years, no one's really looking at you in that way,

that the gaze of the world and of men is gone. And so for the first time, possibly, these characters can explore what it means to, you know, have a body that's not controlled by outside forces. Now, you would have been developing this story during the pandemic, which is still ongoing, as we know, around the world. How were you feeling then? And how did it impact your writing? It did force a kind of solitude on many of us. And because there was no outside stimulation at all, my husband was also locked out of the country for six months,

sort of the first six months of our child's life. and so I had to take this time to sneak away and get the story done and my mother was just a huge huge supporter and help in that she would keep my baby and she was like I know you have the story you want to write go write for an hour for half an hour for 10 minutes and so I and we were as you know in Sri Lanka under full nationwide curfew for three whole months and a lot of it took shape at that time. And looking back on it now, I'm just grateful that I stuck to it because I don't always, I don't always finish the stories I start. I bet you're grateful. And as someone who's read the book, the short story, I'm very grateful. Talking of books, I know you're working on a new book about women and mental

health. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, it's actually not about women and mental health. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, it's actually not about women and mental health. I use the term mad women, right, very sort of loosely and specifically to Sri Lankan culture, because there's a expression here when a woman behaves out of the ordinary, out of bounds, she's called a mad bloody woman. That's just what they say. You know, when I look at these people who are deemed that they're always people who have transgressed, who have stepped outside of the norms of society, who have expressed sexual desires, who have expressed a certain kind of feistiness or fire or rudeness or bad behavior. You know, I'm so tired of seeing women lose, I suppose, is a simple way of saying it. I just, I wanted them to win.

And I wanted to set the terms for those little victories that they might have, whether that's leaving an abusive partner or spouse or, you know, sticking it to the employer. I just was desperate for that. And so I started to create it myself. You say it's a word that's used in Sri Lanka. I think it's something that's used around the world. I think if a woman behaves, you know, out of the ordinary, she's just seen as crazy. And we see it with celebrity, we see what's happening with Britney Spears at the moment.

Right. And, you know, also, I will say that I reported a little bit on the women's prison in Sri Lanka, which is terribly, in Colombo, which is a terribly overcrowded place. And I was realizing as I talked to people who had been incarcerated there that a lot of the women who were serving time there years and years, some of them really without even a proper trial, were these mad women. You know, they were women who had said no to whatever kind of oppression that they were expected to silently endure. And I'm very interested in, you know, carceral systems and justice for incarcerated people. So that is a big motivation for my writing.

I was talking to Kanya Dalmida, who's been named the Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner of 2021. And talking of beautiful writing, writer Emily Rapp Black felt an instant connection with the artist Frida Kahlo after seeing her famous painting, The Two Fridas. At the age of four, Emily's left leg was amputated due to a congenital birth defect.

In her beautiful new book, Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg, she explores the legacy, life and art of Frida Kahlo, which helped her to make sense of her own life and body. Emily, welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you here. It's a beautifully written and really affecting book. How did you become interested in Frida Kahlo's life and art? Where did that begin? So when I was in high school, my brother brought home one of his

college girlfriends and I saw that she had an art book, and I opened it, and it fell open to the painting, The Two Fridas. And I had this incredible, visceral, bodily reaction that I couldn't explain, but felt palpable and real to me. And as a writer, those are the things that you have to go and explore. At the time, I wasn't thinking that way. And so I just tried to read everything I could about her. And I went to the actual library. I know, right? And went to the, you know, the drawers and then would find it in the stacks. I looked at microfiche, which I still love to do if it existed anymore. And I just felt there was something going on with the way in which she depicted disability,

pain, the female body, her body in particular that intrigued me. Yeah, the portrait that you talk about, the two Fridas shows two different personalities. One is the traditional Frida with a broken heart sitting next to an independent, more modern Frida. You're going to read an extract from your book, which explains how you felt when

you first saw it. Yes. Yes, we're looking forward to this. The first time I saw Frida's painting, The Two Fridas, I felt the impact in the intimate landscape of skin between my real leg and my fabricated leg, that small, hardworking patch of flesh that touches what is connected during the day and disconnected at night. For so long, I explained to people that it was like having two Emilys living in two bodies, one for the day, one for the night. And when I saw the two Fridas in an art book, my brother's college girlfriend brought home during Christmas break, I thought, yes, I thought, you see me. I thought, this is true. It was 1991 and I was still in high school. I went to the library and found every book I could about Frida and read them in a quiet corner as snowflakes

slowly twisted to the ground on the other side of the window, and the sounds of public enemy screeched through my Walkman headphones. Many of the books mentioned that Frida was debilitated by her pain. They talked about how much and how long she suffered. And yet, all these paintings, all this output, all this art, all this beauty, I knew that pain was not a muse, so what sustained her? The two Fridas was not about suffering. It was about imagination and connection, and that word my parents had started to use with me, self-love, which I was supposed to be practicing and was not. I had no model. I knew no female bodies like my own. It is really beautiful writing.

Thank you. Really powerful. So for the first time, someone who had your leg amputated when you were four years old, you saw someone like you, who was creating this stunning art. Exactly. And you describe Frida Kahlo's art as the art of survival. Do you feel the same way about your writing? or the worst thing that's ever happened to them. I think as a writer, you want to create a new narrative and you take back your agency and your power by writing your truth in the narrative. And in that sense, you can't put it in a box.

And so I think that's what my writing has done for me. It's also kept me literally alive at certain points. And so, yeah, survival, yes. At what points did it keep you literally alive at certain points. And so yeah, survival. Yes. At what points did it keep you literally alive? So my son was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease in 2011. And he was a baby and he died in 2013. And it was, I mean, after that moment of diagnosis, I had my body just cracked, basically, and all I could do was write. And it was the only thing that I could do that didn't feel saturated with just dread and rage and, I mean, helplessness and sadness, you know.

So it gave me purpose and meaning, and it allowed me to parent him until his death and it allowed me to continue to feel like I had a role in the world and you talk about that in the book with I mean with such pain and it's it's it's heart-stopping like I say that your writing is but it is you know it you take us somewhere that a lot of us have never been um and it is it is you you start the book by visiting we you you are at the blue house the casas all frida kahlo's house the residence where she lived most of her life life um talk me through how you felt when you viewed her legs and corsets, which she turned into works of art. You were there. You're finally in her house.

This woman that, you know, had inspired you from being a teenager. Well, I mean, I didn't know, actually, that they were going to have her legs and corsets and shoes in an exhibit for some reason. I just I wanted to go to her house. They had just unsealed the rooms where she died. I was also about eight months pregnant. So I was just kind of trying to maneuver around the museum without a huge amount of discomfort. And when I saw them, I was just, again, I had this moment where I was like, something's happening to me. I can't analyze it. It's just a feeling. It's something I have to explore. I'm upset. I am disturbed. I'm electrified. I'm angry. Like all the emotions at once, like this big star burst of emotions. And it took me a while to figure out how to approach that and how to think about it and how

to write about it. But yeah, I knew at the moment I was like, I'm going to have to write about this. I'm going to have to comb through this because this is how it just there's no denying this feeling so yeah your art really was your survival it was and I mentioned you you had your leg amputated at the age of four and your body has been shaped by a team of mostly men over four decades. What impact has that had on you? Well, I just actually, in my, the man who's been making my legs since 1991 just retired. And I literally was like, I don't even know how I'm going to live.

Like, what are you doing? You can't retire, never. But he actually hired two women prosthetists and gave them the company. And so that's new. It's strange. But he actually hired two women prosthetists and gave them the company. And so that's new. It's strange. I mean, it's a strange relationship. It's incredibly intimate.

You know, I owe so much of my mobility to these two people. More than two people, but certainly my last prosthetist. So it's very strange and it's um i i don't know quite how to describe that that um relationship except that it taught me a lot about trust taught me a lot about trust and it taught me a lot about um acceptance in the sense of letting somebody kind of take over and see you in a really vulnerable position. This book is really vulnerable. Yeah. It's honestly, it's, it's, you have to, I've, when I was reading it, I had to kind of just take a moment, put it down, take a breath,

reread it. It's, it's so beautiful, but incredibly vulnerable. How does it feel putting it out there and talking about it? It's a relief, to be honest. I mean, I write memoir primarily or have done to keep my sense of privacy, which no one ever believes, but it's true because people will otherwise tell me what my life is like or assume what my life is like. And I don't want to have any part of that. That's not the truth. So in some ways, I think it's the book I wrote for my secret self if you have a public a private and a secret self took me a long time and I resisted it but now I feel a lot of relief and I feel like it's been I mean whenever you put a book into the world it's a strange experience but um it this has been a pretty remarkable actually uh zoom book tour if that's a thing um there's so

much of your story that i couldn't relate to you really take me took me into a different world but there's actually i found myself nodding along with bits of it particularly when you talk about wanting to be loved in your in your body rather than your mind you wanted to be seen like everybody else. Explain that a little bit about that. I think, you know, I've never had any trouble with my mind. I've always had an active life of the mind and have known that I could do things intellectually and have thrived on that. But the body has always been harder for me to think,

oh, this is acceptable, this is okay. Like, will I belong those kinds of things? So it's, yeah, I mean, it's not a very feminist thing to say. And it's embarrassing for me to say it in the book. And I didn't want to say it, but it's the truth. So I think, you know, it's something that is ever evolving. And I think that's true of everybody in the relationship they have with their body, regardless of what it looks like or can do. And you talk about assumptions people make about you. You were given a round of applause on a flight because passengers assumed that you were a war veteran. Yeah, that was a moment. I mean, actually, yesterday on the plane, there was an actual war vet behind me. And someone was saying, like, you know, thanks for your service.

And I was like, oh, my God. But yeah, that was very strange. I didn't actually realize it was happening until after it was over. And then I just like beelined out of there and was like, I don't know. Yeah, it was very bizarre. And Emily, do you think that attitudes and the discourse around non-normative bodies are changing? I do and I don't. I think I think like any kind of group that we're just learning about, we have a lot of a lot of work to do. And as long as disability is framed as a disaster or tragedy, it's a problem. So I think that I think there is a lot to to celebrate in terms of how people with different

bodies are viewed but I also think we have a long way to go well your book has done a great amount I'm sure already it's by Emily Ratblack she it's beautiful it's called Frida Kahlo and my left leg and that's it from us have a wonderful weekend thank you Emily that's all for today's woman's hour join us again next time. Hi, I'm Matthew Side, and I'd like to invite you to see the world differently with my podcast, Sideways. Those societies and social networks begin to act as a brain, a collective brain unto itself. Sideways is all about the ideas that shape our lives. And in this series, I'll get to grips with the myth of mind control.

This is your subliminal programming tape on smoking control. He is what I would consider to be a quack charlatan. And I'll find out why it's so hard to be original. For all this and more, subscribe to Sideways on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.