Woman's Hour - Rethink: How might our relationship with our bodies and appearance change after the pandemic?, Public Speaking, Pregnancy

Episode Date: June 27, 2020

How might our relationship with our bodies and appearance change after the pandemic? As part of the BBC's Rethink series, Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism project, Kate Lister, Lecturer in the School of Arts and Communication at Leeds Trinity University, and Shahidha Bari, Professor of Fashion Cultures and Histories at the London College of Fashion discuss. Dr Amanda Brown has been working as a GP at Bronzefield, a women-only prison. In her new book. The Prison Doctor: Women Inside, she shares the stories of many of the women she has met inside the prison. Some medics have expressed concerns over a possible future rise in stillbirths and harm to babies because pregnant women in need of attention may have avoided seeking professional help during the pandemic. Dr Maggie Blott, Consultant Obstetrician and Lead for Obstetrics at the Royal Free in London and spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology explains.Theresa May has made a million pounds on the speaker circuit since she stood down as Prime Minister just under a year ago. The big fee paying events are still relatively male dominated, so how can women succeed at public speaking? Viv Groskop, author and podcast presenter of 'How to Own the Room', and Professor Heather McGregor, Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School at Heriot Watt University discuss. How to Cook the Perfect… Beetroot leaf rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms with Ukrainian chef, food writer and stylist Olia Hercules. The new BBC1 drama 'I May Destroy You' centres around a writer called Arabella who is drugged and sexually assaulted but has no recollection of the assault except in flashbacks and has to piece together what happened to her. We hear from Weruche Opia who plays Arabella’s best friend, Terry, Zing Tsjeng, executive editor of Vice UK and the poet Vanessa Kisuule.Presenter: Jane Garvey 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. Hi, good afternoon and a warm welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. This week, a reminder for anybody who's pregnant that it really is perfectly safe to make sure you get really good antenatal care, even if it means going into a hospital. You can hear about Michaela Cole's much-discussed TV series I May Destroy You, a series that features period blood on screen. I screamed in shock because I have genuinely never seen period blood portrayed in that way on screen before and I watch a lot of TV and I think it's actually almost sad that in a decade where I've seen more men and women get murdered on screen,

it takes a blood clot to make someone like me sit up and take notice and say, I have never seen that before. That is genuinely radical and new and refreshing. We can also hear some thought-provoking stuff from the GP at Bronzefield Women's Prison, Amanda Brown. And we celebrate the cuisine of the Ukraine. How about this? Beetroot leaf rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms coming up.

I'll have three, please. Now, first, Rethink, which is a series of essays and conversations across Five Live, Radio 4 and the BBC World Service over the last week. It's about how the world might change as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, Woman's Hour discussed architecture and planning, about how the world might change as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, Woman's Hour discussed architecture and planning, asking how COVID might transform our homes and our communities. On Wednesday, it was how we see ourselves and our bodies, and our Rethink essay on the subject to provoke the discussion

was written by the political philosopher Claire Chambers, and you can hear that by listening back to Wednesday's edition of the programme on BBC Sounds. But as Claire says, perhaps the pandemic will situate us firmly in our bodies as biological and material things, emphasising their health and function as their fundamental value. Perhaps the virus could push us away from appearance, our obsessed visual culture that's caused so much harm to our mental health. So Jenny talked to Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, to Shahida Bari, Professor of Fashion Cultures and Histories

at the London College of Fashion, and to Kate Lister, a lecturer in the School of Arts and Communication at Leeds Trinity University and the author of A Curious History of Sex. So how much has this period brought a new way of thinking about our bodies, where function is more important than form? I think that to a certain extent it has. I think that everybody is going to have their individual experiences to relay about this. And from a personal point of view, it's been interesting to see how long your leg hair can grow or that you can have a Zoom meeting from your bathroom.

But the issues that we're dealing with here, they are much more embedded and much more long standing than three months of not being able to get to the hairdressers is going to do. I think the emphasis on beauty and performativity and the link between appearance and health are much more long standing and much more entrenched in our culture. So I'm interested in seeing how people react when those control mechanisms around their appearance are suddenly, they're not there. And some people are flourishing and some people are freaking out and some people are barely noticing anything at all. So everybody's going to respond to this differently. Shahida, what's your view of this question of where maybe we may see function as more important than form? I think Claire is entirely right that we have focused our minds on our bodies necessarily of course but I also think that appearance obsessed visual culture

is not just about how we show ourselves to the world it's also about how we see others and in a funny way what the Covid-19 pandemic has done is that it's made us realise how connected we are to other people even as we're in isolation my body is connected to hundreds of millions of others in this world all of us are vulnerable to this virus and so I think it's alerted us to our connectedness through our bodies in a funny way too. And Laura what's your view of this? I think the idea that women might sort of suddenly be released from the body image anxiety that the world voices on us in lockdown is a wonderful fantasy. But I think it is a fantasy because unfortunately, we've still been subjected to the usual bombardment of weight loss, pressure, body shaming, fat phobia.

It's continued unabated, perhaps even amplified, I'd say, by social media. Here's a selection of headlines that have come out during lockdown. Do you have lockdown body? How to lose weight without going on a diet? Want to leave lockdown looking better than ever? How to lose weight in lockdown? How to tone up? Lose your lockdown love handles?

Many, of course, illustrated with pictures of chubby women holding measuring tapes around their waist. I think we have to recognise that these pressures, which are served up to us and very specifically targeted at us on social media haven't gone away just because we've been away from physically from the public eye. Kate from a personal perspective how much of a release has it been not having to worry about what people think of the way you look? I've really enjoyed it. I've discovered a whole new wardrobe that I didn't know that I had.

I thought I just had casual and fancy, and now I've discovered a whole different layer of casual. Did you call them your wardrobe friends, the ones that you discovered? Yeah, my wardrobe friends. You know, suddenly you can go to work in sweatpants, and there's a novelty to it, you know, and it's been interesting seeing people that can't go to the hairdressers and they can't go to the beauticians and they can't novelty to it you know and it's been interesting that seeing people they can't go to the hairdressers and they can't go to the beauticians and they can't go to the gym

how people have reacted to it there have been nice elements of it I think but I think what it is is it's more that it's brought in this kind of blanket permission you know if you see people out and about and they've not got their roots done or you know they're wearing their tracksuits or whatever is everyone just understands or we know why don't we that's so it's brought in this kind of permission but i do completely agree with laura is that the idea of bodily control and how we present ourselves is far more ingrained but if we're thinking about rethinking it is it possible as the pressure is obviously still on on social media especially on young women and girls, can we rethink it and say it's going to be bad. Or the gray hairs come through and they thought, actually, I'm OK with that. But I think that we're not going to suddenly be released on July the 4th and it's going to be completely different.

We are ultimately a species, human beings that value how we look. And that is actually quite intimately linked to health as well. And I know that we can say that beauty and thing and the selfie culture is it can seem very frivolous but it is also related to how we understand ourselves and how we want to appear to other people and that's really powerful. Shahida what have you made of what's been happening online in terms of us all still being observed you're doing a zoom call and you're looking at the inside of somebody's house and you're thinking, oh, what books has she got on her shelves? What's she

wearing today? Has she put her eye makeup on? Has that changed in any way or has it got worse? Well, I don't want to deny the body image anxiety that Laura was describing. I think that's absolutely the case. But from my own experience experience the funny thing that I've experienced from it being in the zoom calls is I felt a certain kind of tenderness to my colleagues I'm watching them at home in their frayed jumpers you know with with baby food on their sleeve or you know colleagues in there who are who are who obviously struggling as lots of us are and are wearing their favourite football t-shirt I found it humanising and one of the things that our clothes do of course is that they demarcate the different portions of our lives we dress up in our work clothes Jenny whenever I've met you

you've been wearing a scarf over your shoulder I think that's your uniform that you wear for work and it puts you not today shall I bet far too hot today to have a scarf over my shoulder but most of us have some sort of work uniform that puts us into work mode and seeing people at home well now those those boundaries between our work selves and our home selves are really blurred and in fact many of us are juggling so many things we're homeschooling we're running the household and doing child care as well as doing our jobs. And so I found it very humanising and moving to see my colleagues at home. Laura, it can create tenderness, this being shown online in a way that people have never seen us before.

Yes, I think that's a lovely idea. And I hope that we'll be showing tenderness to the issues, I think, and a sense of compassion extended to each other for the issues specifically that lockdown has brought. Because, of course, we can't look at this issue in isolation without taking it in context of the other issues like anxiety and depression. We know that mental health issues have been exacerbated by lockdown and we know that they often contribute to body image and weight issues. We know that women who have been going out to exercise have reported a massive spike in sexual harassment and assault. We know that women, mothers are 50% more likely than fathers to have lost their jobs or resigned during lockdown.

And we know that people who are having financial struggles might not have the same access to healthy food. So I think it's really important to take into account all these different issues which may be having a knock-on impact on the way that we think about our bodies and on what our bodies look like as well. Kate this whole business of your friends in your wardrobe and discovering that there were many more friends there than you thought you had but to what extent have you still felt you had to put on a performance for yourself and get dressed up a bit? I've had a real journey with this because I struggled to get work done if I wasn't dressed for work.

So I've actually been getting up early when I know that I've got a full day's work to do. And I put my makeup on and I do my hair and I put my work clothes on and that has really helped I think that it's there are structures throughout the day aren't there and if they kind of collapse in on one another and you're absolutely right that it can lead to a tenderness and I've loved seeing the inside of my co-workers houses as well but I think that it is that level of performativity is actually really important to function. I found it, I've worked better when I've been dressed for work. I felt that I'm going to work even though I'm just going to the sofa. I know Shahida that you've described the PPE crisis as an example of our obsession with adorning our bodies, directly weakening our ability to protect them.

How do you explain that thought? My brother in March was working in a Covid ward. He's a doctor in a hospital and he was working, he volunteered to work in a Covid ward. And on the second day I phoned him and it was one of the most upsetting phone calls of my life. And he said, we ran out of hand hand sanitizer and I've got a paper mask and I just felt the absolute vulnerability of him on the front line and but but not just him another one of my brothers is a is a um is a supermarket worker when we've been talking about what what will happen how we've been working at home but many people have not been working at

home they've been you know stocking the shelves at in Sainsbury's and running our hospitals and those people have been wearing uniforms. And one of the things that's going to change for me, has changed me really profoundly, is the respect and dignity that I afford to people who've been wearing uniforms and carrying out the fundamental work of our everyday lives. Shahida Bari, Laura Bates and Kate Lister. And on Friday's edition of Women's Hour, there was a conversation about the future of leadership. And that was interesting too. If you'd like to hear that in its entirety, you can get Friday's edition of Women's Hour, there was a conversation about the future of leadership. And that was interesting too.

If you'd like to hear that in its entirety, you can get Friday's edition of the show on BBC Sounds. And we should say, if all this rethink content has got you pondering a few fundamentals, make sure you join Chris Mason, 10 o'clock on Sunday evening on both Five Live and Radio 4. You can call in with how you believe the world can change for the better post-COVID-19. Melanie says in response to that conversation about how we view our bodies,

women spend so much time on how they look and it means they've lost huge hours from their lives when more valuable time could be put to learning, developing skills and doing healthy, valuable activities that would feed a good sense of themselves. Spending loads of time on how you look is a self-defeating exercise because you just get caught up in a cycle of low self-esteem, says Melanie. From another listener, I'm not bothering with proper work clothes. I just bung a sundress on that I would almost never wear to work. But I do find that having proper shoes on rather than slippers helps me focus. I get that. And we'll keep this one anonymous. I'm not sure it's a

changing relationship with my body, but I'm loving not wearing a bra, says one regular listener to Woman's Hour. Thank you for that. Now, Dr Amanda Brown has been the GP at Bronzefield, the women's prison in Middlesex, since December of 2015. She was a regular NHS GP before she moved into the prison service, first working at a teenage detention centre, then moving on to the male prison, Wormwood Scrubs. Now she's written a second book, The Prison Doctor, Women Inside.

I think 80% of women are in prison for non-violent crimes and at least 50% when they're released from Bronzefield are homeless again, which is tragic. And probably between 60% to 80% of women in prison have been victims of abuse themselves. So it's a very complex population. And the more I learn about the women in prison, the more I'm affected by it. And the more I want to try and do something to improve things, if possible.

What was the thing that shocked you most when you first entered the women's prison system? The fact how nice they were to me I was I was for 12 years working in male prisons being told don't go near a female prison they'll eat you alive you'll have a terrible time you'll be it just be very very unpleasant but quite the contrary they were absolutely delightful to me and I love working with them. And the women that you talk about in your books they are as, as you've already indicated, often deeply damaged individuals who right from the very moment of their birth stood almost no chance of a half decent existence. Did that surprise you? I think everything surprised me.

And it sounds a bit strange, but almost every day I go to work, I hear something that still surprises me. It never stops. So even on Wednesday when I was talking to somebody and she was abused from the age of four and her father is serving 28 years in prison for it. And she's now 41 and has been homeless for 30 years. You know, it's awful. It never stops.

Yes, no, I'm sure it doesn't. And I don't suppose it leaves you when you go home either you're probably still thinking about it um let's talk about homelessness because that's something you've already mentioned and it clearly is something you feel passionate about why are we still allowing women to leave prison with nowhere to go to I absolutely wish I knew the answer to that and I find it it horrifying. But fortunately, in a way, because although I am quite a shy person, the books have led me to meet people that care very much about this. And I want to work more and more with people like that to try and improve things for them.

I don't have the answers, but I hate seeing what's going on. I mean, I'm sorry, but sorry, but to say when I, some of them leave prison and I have to do a prescription for them for their methadone, and more often than not, I'm writing no fixed abode on the prescription. It's terrible. And then you see them again a couple of weeks later. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's, it's crazy, isn't it? It literally is quite, quite crazy. Yeah. I think they think a third of the women in prison at any one time are in for three weeks or less. And these women have very deeply horrible mental health issues, drug addictions,

and there is no way in three weeks you can do anything to help them. Indeed, some of them do ask for longer sentences, don't they? They ask for longer sentences, they're relieved to get a longer sentence, and some of them refuse TAG because they know they'll be homeless if they're released early. So there's a lot that's wrong. Sorry to sound so miserable. No, Amanda, you have a real insight and this is your real life experience. So don't apologise for that ever. We'll get on to the important stuff you've already mentioned in a moment or two. But are there any pluses to the prison service? When do you see it really being effective and helping women? Well, a lot of the time, actually, if they're in for

long enough, which I keep saying, but they're offered education, they're offered training, they can get off their drugs, they have companionship, they have food, they have a bed. One woman I met some while ago, first time in prison, and she said it was the first time she felt safe in bed for seven years. So, yes, it gives them a chance to get off drugs and get a training and find themselves again. And find companionship in some cases and a family that they've never known on the outside. Yeah, totally. One elderly lady who'd been in prison for a long time, I couldn't help but be fascinated by the poor soul. And when I said, you know, are you going to be in for much longer?

She said, I hope forever because I never want to leave. This is the happiest time of my life. So it's quite a it's quite a range of emotions in there. You mentioned a particular prisoner who the name you've given her in the book is Kim. And she is serving something, something that doesn't actually exist anymore, but an IPP. These are indeterminate sentences for public protection. Now, tell us more about an IPP. Well, exactly what they are. They came in in 2005 and they were abolished in 2012.

But anybody currently serving an IPP sentence has to serve that sentence until a parole board think they're safe to be released. And this lovely, lovely girl that I met in 2017 was on an IPP sentence. She'd already served, I think, at least 10 years for effectively stealing a handbag. It's a bit more complex than that, but it wasn't manslaughter. It wasn't a vicious sexual crime or anything like that. And this girl completely captivated me with her story. And she grew up in care. She was abused.

Her stepfather went to prison for years for abusing herself and her three siblings. And she's still in prison. And when she moved to open conditions recently, and I was very fond of her, we still write to each other and I'm longing for her to be free so that one day she can find her life again. But it's just extraordinary to me.

Yes. There'll be cynics listening, Amanda, or perhaps not necessarily cynics, who think, oh, I can't believe this typical pinko liberal chit chat here. Some of these women have done terrible things to people. They have victims and they will have victims of their crimes. I don't want to hear this stuff. What do you say to them? Well, I suppose the main thing with women is that by far the majority are not in for violent crimes. It's petty crime to fund a drug habit that's funding the result of the abuse they've mostly been through.

Of course there's some shocking crimes in there and they have to be in prison, but I am not there to judge them. I can't. A place you mention in the book, Anna Wim, it's a place I went to myself in 2013. And just explain what Anna Wim is, because it's an alternative to prison, isn't it, for women? Yes, it's a women's centre, which is quite extraordinary in the work they do and the results they get. And I felt very lucky to

go and visit them in Birmingham. And they help women get their life back together. They offer accommodation after they leave prison, they're supportive, they train them. So I don't know the funding for a place like Anna Wim but certainly the average cost for a woman in Bronzefield, I believe, is £65,000 a year. So that's a lot of money that could help other women rehabilitate in women's centres. Yes, but it's in the end, it's the electorate you have to convince of all this, isn't it? Again, it's a conversation I've had on this programme before.

People, voters, we, the public, like to lock people up. Well, I guess that will always be. But I think for women, there is so much more to it than just the crime. And people need to understand that. Dr. Amanda Brown, who was a guest on the programme, who attracted a huge number of compliments. People really liked her plain speaking and her passion for the subject. Paul is one of them. She was full of compassion and understanding.

I could have listened to a lot more of what she had to say. Thank you. And from Deborah, I think Dr Brown is really inspiring, insightful and formidable, talking about her work in women's prisons. As much as the population at large may want to lock them up and throw away the key, it's our business to care and be compassionate for those people who have suffered terrible experiences.

Yes, I certainly echo the comments about Amanda's contribution. It was really, really interesting, wasn't it? Now, some doctors are expressing concerns over a possible rise in stillbirths and harm to babies, because some pregnant women may be avoiding getting help during the pandemic. I talked this week to Dr Maggie Blott, consultant obstetrician and lead for obstetrics at the Royal Free Hospital in London, and also a spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. During the peak of the pandemic, we noticed very quickly across many, many maternity units that we were not seeing the same number of women presenting with symptoms of reduced fetal

movements, abdominal pain, vaginal bleeding, and they just fell away completely. We were concerned that not seeking help may actually mean that women are missing opportunities to protect themselves and or their babies. There are anecdotal reports, and I stress anecdotal reports, that there may be an increased incidence of complications in pregnancy, such as late miscarriage or possible stillbirth. So there's a lot of research going into that area at the moment. And what we're trying to do is really encourage women to come forward for their antenatal visits, and if they have a problem, to contact their midwife or their maternity unit to seek help.

Antenatal clinics are still physically up and running then, are they? They are. So we're recommending that women have at least six antenatal visits during their pregnancy. Face-to-face visits are important so that women can have their blood pressure checked, we can measure their tummy to make sure their baby's growing properly, and address things such as ultrasound scans and blood tests. Some visits can be done remotely by telephone or video conferencing, if all that's required is a discussion, but we do still want to see women for their antenatal appointments to make sure that all is well.

But are hospitals safe? Yes, they are. They're very safe. Social distancing has been fully implemented in the antenatal clinics. The antenatal clinics that were full of women everywhere have gone. Antenatal clinics are smaller in size. They're socially distanced. All staff wearing PPE, face masks and so on. have gone. Antenatal clinics are smaller in size, they're socially distanced, all staff wearing PPE, face masks and so on. And women are screened when they enter the clinic and they

also are asked to wear a face mask. So it is very safe to come to the hospital to be checked up. All bleeding in pregnancy is a concern, is it? is there some that is just inevitable and perhaps you you could just let it go well a lot of the bleeding that we see in pregnancy is actually fairly benign in the word it's not not a symptom of a serious condition however the only way we can decide that is by actually seeing a woman and examining her and listening to her baby's heartbeat until we've done that we cannot assume that a small amount of bleeding is not significant. We have to see you to check the rule as well. And foetal movement is a difficult one,

because obviously the foetus doesn't create much of a commotion until, what, week 20, 21, 22? When does it all start? So foetal movement starts, it varies a little bit, but as early as 18 weeks and as late as 23 or 24 weeks. And we ask women to really start concentrating on fetal movements after about 26 weeks. Babies develop patterns of movement. And it's when that pattern changes

that we want to see you to check that your baby's OK. So a mother will know that her baby's movements have changed. They may have reduced, they may be less obvious than they were. And if you feel that your baby's movements have changed, it may be an indicator of a problem developing. Often it isn't, but again, the only way that we can discover whether it's a problem or not is by seeing you and checking you and your baby. And when it gets to the point of birth I know it's difficult to generalise but on the whole will a woman get the birth she hoped for? Yes she will

we haven't changed anything about the birthing process one of the things that did not change during Covid was the fact that women still gave birth. And we kept our birth centres open as much as we could. Many hospitals continued to facilitate water births. And the choice in childbirth continued. Their partners are still welcome in the labour ward and in the birthing centres to be with their partners during childbirth. The thing that has changed is a lot of hospitals are unable to allow or facilitate postnatal visiting because of the problems with

social distancing. And we're looking and working on that at the moment. Maggie, I'm delighted to be able to speak to you because like many people, I watched the hospital documentary that was filmed at the Royal Free. And during during that programme you actually were present at the birth of a baby to a young woman who had Covid and this was at a time when really you didn't understand the possible impact of Covid on pregnancy. Yes we were very much feeling our way in the early days we had it we had information about effects of pregnancy with MERS and SARS but we didn't really know about it with coronavirus, this current COVID-19 pandemic.

And we didn't know the effect it would have on pregnancy. But what was clear is that although most pregnant women either have very few symptoms or very mild symptoms, a small number of women, particularly in the later part of pregnancy, who contract COVID-19 become very unwell very quickly. It's a respiratory virus, so it basically presents with cough and shortness of breath. And of course, in the last third of pregnancy,

women find it more difficult to breathe because of the pressure of the baby pushing up on their lungs. So what we observed with this particular lady is that when she came in with fairly mild symptoms of coronavirus, very quickly over a course of two or three, four hours, she deteriorated quite rapidly. And we made the decision as a multidisciplinary team, so myself, a consultant anesthetist, an infectious diseases consultant, and an intensive care consultant, we made the decision that we would deliver her. And of course, it was the first time that I had done, or we actually had done a cesarean section in full PPE. So it was a really, really steep learning curve. We had practiced for it beforehand. We'd run drills and simulations,

but that was the first time we'd done it. And the baby was fine, as it turned out, and so is the mother. So that was a good result. It was a very good result, yes. But obviously, we also now have learned more is so is the mother so that was a good result but it was a very good result yeah but obviously um we also now have learned more and about the additional risk to to women of color who are pregnant now we also know that you definitely should limit your contact with other people

in the third trimester of pregnancy whatever your ethnicity that's right so the big study that's been done by ucos showed that the average the mean gestation of admission for COVID was 34 weeks. So we know that women in the third trimester of pregnancy who get COVID are more likely to be affected. So the advice for the last trimester of pregnancy is to stay at home as much as you can, shield, socially isolate yourself and just basically stay away from people. If you have symptoms of coronavirus, get in touch straight away. And a message particularly for women who are a higher risk group, so BAME women, women who are slightly older, obesity, and women who have other comorbidities in pregnancy,

really need to get in touch very early on if they suspect that they might have contracted COVID. That's Dr Maggie Blott. And if you need more advice, go to the website and click on Monday's programme page. That's where the additional links to help you will be. Over the next couple of weeks on Woman's Hour, we're going to look at women and gaming, everything from the history of games to the role women play in the industry now, the imagery and the music they create, the technology and the gaming styles,

and how all this is changing. And we'd love to hear from you if you are a gamer. What games do you like? How do they make you feel? How do you play? Who do you play with? Maybe gaming is really helping you in lockdown, helping you to connect with people,

perhaps even younger relatives. Get involved via our website. You can email the programme that way, bbc.co. Get involved via our website. You can email the programme that way, bbc.co.uk slash womanshour. Now, Theresa May has already made a million quid on the speaker circuit since she stood down as Prime Minister a year ago. We know this because she has to register payments in the House of Commons Register of Members' Financial Interests. We should say she isn't doing anything unusual. Lots of former prime ministers and big-name politicians do the same thing.

But what we do know is that the big fee-paying events are still relatively male-dominated. So this week we asked how women can succeed at the very lucrative public speaking game. I talked to Viv Groskopp, author of How to Own the Room. There's a new edition out in July, and she also presents a podcast of the same title. And to Professor Heather McGregor, Executive Dean at Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University. She was formerly Miss Moneypenny in the Financial Times.

I think that however much money Theresa makes, it's going to be a rounding error compared to the amount of money that the men in this game make. Why? Men seem to be very much more single minded about this and just chase the dollar. I mean, Theresa didn't do really any of this until she had done her long stint as Home Secretary and as Prime Minister. And however good you are in the Commons, you have to learn to speak. I'm sure Viv would absolutely back me up on this. I mean, I think you have to invest in how to do this well. Let's ask Viv, how do you become a good public speaker, Viv?

Well, you become a good public speaker by making people want to listen to you. And it obviously helps if you're already in a position where people have to listen to you and it obviously helps if you're already in a position where people have to listen to you like being the prime minister the thing about the speaker circuit that is really interesting is that it's not so much about how good a public speaker you are although obviously if you are good that's going to help you it's about how much people want to get you in inverted commas off the record because you only really get those massive fees if you are in very high demand but low supply so you said she's made over a million well at this speaker fee of a hundred thousand that's about probably ten to a dozen appearances that she's

done at that massive fee it's not that she's going out five times a week the whole point is to be very relevant and that people desperately want to hear you and this is where the gender thing sort of breaks down because women are not always in these positions in their industry where they've attained that status where their insight is seen as unique. So all of the biases that we see and the problem with the numbers, that, you know, not enough women being CEOs, not enough women on the board, they get replicated on the speaker circuit because it's those unusual people that get the big bucks. And can I ask, do audiences expect a different sort of performance routine

from female speakers, Viv? Are you meant to be rich in family-based anecdotage, for example? Yeah, I've talked to Mary Portas and Professor Mary Beard about this, and they are both people who are expected to say no no no everybody responds the same to men as to women and you just have to own your power but both of them admitted that you do sense audiences responding differently and both of them said that as a woman and this plays out for Teresa May as well that if you can use humor you immediately get more people on side. And I remember Mary Portas saying, you know, as soon as she would make a joke, she would notice men in the room unfold their arms and relax. So I think you have to disarm slightly more if you're a woman

or show yourself to have a sense of humour about yourself. That can really help. But once you've got people on side, then I think that that gender divide sort of flattens a bit and you can just be yourself. Heather, that is... Thank God, right? Yeah, well, it depends who yourself is.

She says getting in with a bit of self-deprecation, of course, which is a fault of women. Heather, do you buy that from Viv, that women have to be... Well, they have to want to be liked, don't they? I don't think you have to want to be liked. It's not a popularity competition, speaking in public, any more than being a parent is. Well, it shouldn't be, but Viv makes the point

that women, on the whole, do have to be liked. As I answered Viv to make the point then, is that you have to be able to laugh at yourself. And that is, I think, a very important thing. It's one of my three golden rules, is that you have to be able to laugh at yourself and that is i think a very important thing it's one of my three golden rules is that you have to be able to laugh at yourself and you have to be able to get the audience to laugh with you so you have to talk about experiences that they're going to have they haven't all been prime minister but they've all been in a position where you've made the husband

put the bins out so you know that that is the kind of level that you have to get into and an engagement with and you know i learned my craft, although I did a lot of public speaking before, but I really learned my craft when I had to go and do stand-up comedy. And Viv has done that even more than I have and very successfully. And that is a school of hard knocks. And that's what I think the Commons was for Teresa. You know, a place where people didn't necessarily listen to you. They did walk out. They didn't always respond positively to you.

And they haven't come necessarily there to hear you. So if you can hold people's attention by making a joke, laughing at yourself, referring back to something you've said earlier that was patently rubbish. Yes. You know, I think that is very important. And the other thing is reading the room. So making a joke about something that happened to you. I did a public engagement at the end of January for Burns Night in London. And the first thing that happened when I arrived at the venue was that they charged me for my room, which I thought was meant to be free because I was coming to speak.

But anyway, I didn't argue being a pathetic woman. I just paid. But I stood up that night in front of 300 people and said, so I knew Scots were parsimonious, but to be charged for my room when I checked in, I thought was a bit much. And that was the thing that took us

off to a good start because I had talked about something that happened that day and I do think you have to be, you have to read the room, decide what and adjust accordingly. And being able to adjust mid-speech is something that happened that day. And I do think you have to be, you have to read the room, decide what, and adjust accordingly. And being able to adjust mid-speech is something that's very important. Blimey, that takes real expertise, doesn't it, to veer off script and perhaps try a different tactic to win over the room. Viv, what do you do when you know you're losing your audience?

That is one of the most terrifying feelings on earth. Yes, well, I was talking to Katie Brand of the most terrifying feelings on earth. Yes. Well, I was talking to Katie Brand, the comedian about this the other day. She's coming up on the podcast soon. And she was saying that you've really got the first one and a half minutes. I think I've heard Lenny Henry say

that even when you're famous, it's 30 seconds. You've got that time to get your audience on side or not and if you lose them after that 30 seconds or one and a half minutes then you really are fighting a losing battle so you first impression is the most important thing and katie brand's advice and my advice would be the same is smile and that's something that is really interesting about women and public speaking that we don't like to say i've done lots of events and workshops with women where we discuss this and women will say, why do I have to smile at the audience? I don't want to feel like a geisha. And women hate being told to, you know, smile and make

nice and what you were saying about, you know, being likable. We're sick of being told to be likable. But there is something about warmth a human thing not a female thing something about warmth and so if you're losing an audience but you can be seen to be at ease with that or even find it quite funny then that is a way to win an audience back to show that you're not bothered and it's okay and not every audience Teresa Maple know this not every audience is your audience and that's okay and with her if she audience is your audience, and that's OK. And with her, if she does lose their audience, they still have to pay her £100,000.

The thoughts of Viv Groskopp, author of How to Own the Room, and before that, Professor Heather McGregor from Edinburgh Business School. Olya Hercules was a guest on Woman's Hour this week. She's a Ukrainian chef and food writer, and her book Summer Kitchens tells the story of the culinary history of her mother country. She chatted to Jenny, amongst other things, about making beetroot leaf rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms.

Jenny had asked her too about the tradition of the summer kitchen in the Ukraine. In Ukraine, especially in rural areas, apart from your regular house, you've also got almost like a smaller miniature version of your main house, which is just a couple of steps away from your main one. And it's just a one room structure and it's a kitchen. And this is where people cook in the summer. It kind of flourished in the 1950s after the Second World War when people started living a little bit better and kind of settled back into

life a bit. The young couple would get married, and they would, during the hot summer months, and Ukraine gets incredibly hot in the summer, it's almost Mediterranean, especially in the south, they would build this little structure first, put a makeshift bed there and a stove, and then build their life around them. They would build a bigger house, put their vegetables in, orchard trees, et cetera. And then when they move into the bigger house in the summer, they'd use this kitchen because, well, it is incredibly hot.

And in the past, people weren't able to get an air conditioning, for example. So you just do all of the cooking there. Now, the summer kitchen has a stone oven, which seems to have a lot of rules attached to it. What are they? In Ukraine, there is an oven called peach. And traditionally, historically, there are interesting um things connected to it so for example when a young woman would get married and she would she was to leave her family home she would scratch her nails on the uh white kind of washed uh stove to and you know keeping it

under her nails it kind of like signified keeping her family together with her it It's no longer done, but it's just something that I found in my research that I found really interesting. So it was a really important kind of oven that you had in your house. And you weren't allowed to swear in front of it, were you? No, absolutely not. You were not allowed to swear. It was almost treated as a mother figure. Now, Ukraine is bordered by Poland and Russia, with Belarus to the north,

Romania and Moldova to the southwest. But how particular is Ukrainian cuisine? There are some common themes running through, but it's also very regional. Ukraine is very large. It's the second biggest country in Europe after Russia. And as you travel around the borders, you can just see all of these influences coming in from the bordering countries. So if you go to Transcarpathia, you will get elements of Hungary in there, so loads of paprika. And then if you go to the south, next to the Moldovan and Romanian border,

you'd get echoes of those cuisines and even almost Turkic influences, loads of herb pastes that you put into your broths, etc. And of course, pickling and fermenting is done throughout the country. And this is another thing that summer kitchens are used for. So it's not just about summer cooking. It's about preserving the glut, all of the vegetables that you've grown, fermenting them, pickling them for winter. So you can have fresher kind of produce during the winter time. And of course, pickling and fermenting have become very popular in this country now because apparently very good for feeding your microbiome. Now, you've chosen beetroot leaf rolls

with buckwheat and mushrooms for our Cook the Perfect. How do you make it? So beetroot leaves, or if you don't have, you can use chard leaves as well. If they're already a little bit wilted, that's how they traditionally did it. They just left them in the sun to wilt a bit. You just use them as they are, or otherwise you can steam them a little bit to make them a little bit more pliable.

Then you fry a little bit of diced onion and grated carrots to draw out all of those sugars out of them. And then you also fry some mushrooms. I just grate them on the rough side of the grater because it's much easier. And then you just toast the buckwheat groats a little bit and then blanch it for about five minutes. Mix everything together alongside the beetroot or charred stalks as well. Of course, we don't waste anything. You cook them down in a little bit of butter and garlic, mix everything together, and that's your filling. And then you roll this filling into your beetroot leaves, and you put it into a sauce, and you make the sauce by sweating sliced onions a little bit, then you add your tomatoes in, and then a little bit of sour cream. You season everything really well. And then because the filling for the rolls is already cooked,

you just kind of cook it in the sauce for about 15 minutes. And it's such a beautiful and light and summery dish. And it's one of my favorites. And it's vegetarian. Not vegan because of the cream, but vegetarian, yeah? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, you can have meat versions as well, but I do love in the summer this vegetarian version.

What do you reckon is the future for the summer kitchens? Will they go on existing? So we travelled around Ukraine. We did about a 10,000-kilometre trip by car, and we've seen a lot of them. They still exist, and all the generations are keeping it alive. But some of them are being turned into storage spaces or even got rid of. So there's hope that people will keep them because they are so incredibly useful.

It's like having a kitchen workshop in your garden, basically. And hopefully people will realise their value and will keep them going, the younger generations. And if you'd like that recipe, it's on the Woman's Hour website. It does sound quite tempting. The more often I say it, the more appealing it sounds. Beetroot leaf rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms. You can also download

the Woman's Hour Cook the Perfect podcast via BBC Sounds. Now, you will not have been able to escape lots of publicity and lots of praise and chat around Michaela Cole's drama series on BBC One, I May Destroy You. In the six episodes broadcast so far, we've seen Michaela's character Arabella in Italy with her best friend Terry, enjoying an active life with lots of sex and drugs. When they get back to London, we find out some of the problems that their assumptions about their supposedly free choices have created. Arabella has flashbacks of a night on the town where her drink was clearly spiked and she was raped. Then there was the time when a man removes a condom without her permission. Terry begins to wonder if that threesome in Italy had really been what she wanted. So what questions is the series raising about consent?

And is it an accurate portrayal of the lives of young women in 2020. Jenny talked to Singh Singh, the executive director of Vice UK, to the poet Vanessa Kasooli, and to Varuchi Appiah, who plays Terry, Bella's best friend. What was her reaction to reading the script? I was blown away at how frank and raw and how real Michaela was able to put all this down on a script. It was quite beautiful to read and quite authentic so it was very enjoyable to read but also hard-hitting at the same time. Shocking as well because I've never seen anything like it. Vanessa the story is told

in a non-linear narrative and there are flashbacks throughout each episode as Bella slowly realises what's happened to her. How effective is that method of telling a story? What I love about it is it honours the fragmentary way that our brain processes information, particularly when it comes to trauma. You know, oftentimes we block things out and then when they reoccur in our minds,'re getting pieces the way of looking at life as a linear progression is a false one that we put on it in order to feel a sense of control or cause and effect but what the show does so beautifully is really depicting how strange and disordered our thoughts and our memories can be and I feel like that's what makes it so different to any other depiction of sexual assault or drug taking

or any of the things that are happening in the show. It's kind of unprecedented as far as TV is concerned for me. Zing, Michaela has been very open about the fact that she was a victim of sexual assault after her drink was spiked and she's drawn on that in writing the series and I think it's a similar experience to something that's happened to you so what do you make of the way she's telling that story? I had a similar experience in that when I was 18 my drink was spiked at a pub and luckily I left the pub before whoever did it to me could approach me I got on a bus and

I just completely blacked out and end up at home safe and sound so I it was a very different experience to me but having seen Drink Spiking portrayed on TV in other shows like Riverdale and Netflix and Veronica Mars this is the first show I think I've ever seen that really grapples with the reality of what it is where you feel as if you can't trust yourself and you can't trust your judgment of what happened on that day or on that night. And I still go back to my own experience and I think, well, what was I doing that made me out to be a target? Even though that is a completely false line of thinking, you know, often these things are not targeted at all. You are just a target of someone who's a crook

who wants to perform some criminal action. But I think that what I May Destroy You captures so well is that sense where Arabella doesn't quite know or remember and is trying to piece together the fragments of the night. And she does this really cleverly in, you know, these flashbacks where she sees this man standing above her, but in various flashbacks you see the man replaced with the faces of different people at one point you even see him replaced

with Arabella's own face and I think that's really really clever and that's a really interesting narrative device to actually portray the confusion and the lack of being able to remember what happened. Where it's at there are some very explicit scenes in the series, which may have shocked some people who've watched it. You're acting in it. How have you coped with them? I mean, I know that they're not actually real, so it's not been a problem for me. But I think it helps to tell the story. The explicit nature of it makes it more visceral i think now the threesome that she has with those two other men she describes it at one point as the most freeing thing she's ever done and then you start to think hmm maybe she's not that happy about it what do you make of it

i think in the situation and as you see if you've seen the episode already there's a matter of confusion of if she was in control of the situation or not there's the conversation about whether her consent was given or whether it was taken because she realizes that the two men may have known each other so she's not quite sure if she was in power in that situation or if she you know if she wasn't So I think that's where the confusion comes in for her to know she's not quite sure if she was taken advantage of or if she made the decision entirely herself to partake in that. Vanessa, that scene and others like it do continuously imply that there's a very fine line between liberation and exploitation.

How powerful does that make it to watch for you? What I love is this show is not afraid of nuance. It's not afraid of moral conundrums and of acknowledging that there's no such thing as the perfect victim or, you know, the holy evil perpetrator. You know, it doesn't pull any punches as far as accountability is concerned. But what I love is we've been fed a lot of stuff about, you know, go do your thing, you know, have lots of sex, be free. And, you know, we haven't really examined the inevitable quandaries that come with that. And, you know, our understanding of our bodies and what we truly want, as opposed to what we think we should want or what we're told we should want. And I love that it just sits in that, that murkiness. It doesn't try to give answers. It doesn't give any sort of neat ethical conclusions. It just sits

with that confusion. And it's so beautiful and honest and radically empathetic to how very confused and sad and resilient we are as humans. Zing, I honestly didn't think there was very much I didn't know about these kind of things, and not very much that would shock me, but actually, removing a condom without a woman realising during sex is known as stealthing, which is sexual assault. How many women watching this would have been aware of that? I actually think not that many. And this is why I really rate Michaela Cole for producing a show that manages to inform and educate as well as entertain,

because there are going to be a lot of women, and I hope men as well, who are going to watch that and then watch the follow-up episode where Michaela Cole straight up asks a police officer who's investigating her previous rape what that is and whether it's considered sexual assault and she gets told a very very harsh yes it is and we encourage people to report it and it's all done with the lightest touch you don't feel like it's trying to tell you a moral fable it sits happily in that grey air and vagueness. But there are some things that I think, like the stealthing episode, that I think are going to

be very useful and informative for a lot of women and men to tell them that, you know, these encounters that you have that don't feel right in the moment, they're not okay for you to experience and that, you know, people should care about you and treat you with more care and respect than that there's one other thing i want to ask you about zing the way in which women's bodies are represented on screen is very naturalistic and there's a scene where bella removes a tampon during sex and we see a blood clot on the bed what was your reaction when you saw that? I screamed when I saw the blood clot. I have never seen that on screen before. Did you scream in horror and shock? No, I screamed in shock because I have genuinely never seen period blood portrayed in that way on screen before and I watch a lot of TV and I think it's actually almost sad that in a decade where I've seen more men and women get

murdered on screen, it takes a blood clot to make someone like me sit up and take notice and say, I have never seen that before. That is genuinely radical and new and refreshing. And Vanessa, what do you make of that scene? Similarly obsessed, so relieved to see something that not just normalized it, but offered such tenderness. You know, she was there with a man in an intimate setting and he didn't recoil, you know, he had a really lovely curiosity about it. And I thought, hey, like, this isn't supposed to be a sensational thing,

though it is to watch. She's actually trying to undercut this shock that we might initially experience and go, maybe we can get to a point where this is just another scene in a TV show and not some sort of watershed moment. Vanessa Kasuli, Varucia Paya and Xing Xing, all talking to Jenny on Women's Hour this week. Thanks for listening to our highlights. We're back live three minutes past 10 on Monday morning. And amongst other things next week, we're talking about skin lightening creams and women in gaming.

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.