Woman's Hour - Review into alleged abuse in British Gymnastics

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

An interim report into British Gymnastics, published this week, revealed 1,500 complaints between 2015 and 2020, including 39 claims passed to police. Jessica Creighton is joined by former gymnast, Claire Heafford and Sarah Moore, one of the lawyers working on the case.It took a year for Maria Beatrice Giovanardi to convince the Oxford Dictionary of English to not only change their definition of 'woman' but to re-examine the synonyms for 'woman' in their thesaurus, and amend the contents. Maria has now turned her attentions to Treccani, a leading online Italian dictionary, in a bid to get them to do the same thing. She tells us how this part of her campaign is progressing and why language matters.A new report out today from the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggests that women in heterosexual couples are much more likely than men to give up their jobs, or cut their hours, after becoming parents. And it shows that this happens even if the woman earns more than her male partner. Alison Andrew, Senior Research Economist at the IFS joins me now to discuss.The first UK Clinical Guideline for the use of vaginal pessaries in pelvic organ prolapse was launched last week. The multidisciplinary Guideline Group included 3 pessary users who co-developed the resource. Being written against the background of the Baroness Cumberlege report ‘First Do No Harm’ from July 2020, it aims to help women learn, understand and be empowered to ask about whether a pessary is the right option for them.Presenter: Jessica Creighton Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Claire Heafford Interviewed Guest: Sarah Moore Interviewed Guest: Maria Beatrice Giovanardi Interviewed Guest: Alison Andrew Interviewed Guest: Kate Lough Interviewed Guest: Kath Sansom

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, it's Jessica Crichton here. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. Good morning and welcome to the programme. This morning we're talking about language. It took a year for women's rights campaigner Maria Beatrice Giovannardi to convince the Oxford Dictionary of English to change what she felt was their offensive definition of woman. She's now hoping to do the same in Italy and will be telling us why language matters. Also, a new report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggests that women in heterosexual couples are much more likely than men

to give up their jobs after becoming parents, even if the woman is earning more than her male partner. Alison Andrew, Senior Research Economist at the IFS, will be joining us a bit later. But we'd like to hear from you as well, our listeners on this. What's your experience? Are you a woman who decided to leave work after becoming a parent, even though you earned more than your male partner? Did you feel you had enough options open to you at the time?

You can get in touch with us via Twitter, at BBC Woman's Hour or you can text Woman's Hour on 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate or you can email us as always through our website. Also on the programme, the first UK clinical guideline for the use of vaginal pessaries to treat pelvic organ prolapse was published last week, which aims to help women make more empowered choices about their health. We'll be discussing the mistrust of health services by some women in the shadow of the vaginal mesh scandal. But first, a report into abuse in the sport of gymnastics revealed that

nearly 400 people came forward to submit their experiences. 39 of those were deemed so serious that they were referred to the statutory authorities. The White Review, which is being led by Anne White QC, is looking into allegations of bullying, extreme weight management, use of excessive physical force and coercive control, amongst other forms of abuse. It comes after a group of current and former gymnasts known as Gymnasts for Change, who are taking legal action against the governing body British Gymnastics. Claire Hefford joins us on the programme this morning. She is a retired gymnast who helped set up the group. And also joining us is Sarah Moore, the lawyer representing the group.

And now, of course, we will be discussing both physical and emotional abuse, which some listeners may find distressing. A very good morning to you, Claire and Sarah. Good morning. Welcome to the programme. And a pleasure to talk to you, Claire. And I appreciate you're taking the time

to speak to us this morning about something very personal, a very personal experience. So I thank you for that. Now, looking at this report, this interim report, it deals with the time period between 2008 and 2020, and it revealed that 390 individual submissions were made detailing allegations of abuse and that covers 90 different gymnastics clubs and includes 100 coaches from all corners of the UK as well Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. What did you make of the report's findings? I was generally very pleased with this interim report and the content was not surprising to many people who've been involved in gymnastics and it seeks to reaffirm the need for our claim which is looking to achieve personal

redress for many of the athletes who've been harmed over the years. So it was unsurprising but the scale that's been reported in terms of the figures, it's also been incredibly validating. Do you have confidence in this report and the findings that come from it? Now that we've had a chance to see what the interim report says, I don't think that it's possible that the final white review will renege on these initial findings so yes i i think that the report is going to do the right thing by the gymnasts and um expose um the what they've found and however the terms of reference of the white review um when it was initially set up they were um not enormous in scale so um for many of the gymnasts in our legal claim, our experiences go back more like 30, 40 years, whereas this report only looks at what's been happening since 2008.

Well, of course, you mentioned, you know, your personal experience and legal proceedings are ongoing. But can you tell us a bit about your experience when you were training as a gymnast when you were younger? Yeah, so I began training in the early 90s. I was an elite gymnast from the age of 10 to 15. And I was trained by the first Russian coach who came to the UK. And so I essentially grew up in a Russian training regime in the heart of Surrey. And it was a kind of unusual experience which was quite hard to communicate to the people around me at school because nobody could see what was going on in my context and so I trained 30 hours a week and physical and emotional abuse was very normal

and I decided to leave the sport when I was 15 having won a bronze medal in the junior British vault final due to kind of the bullying of other coaches and gymnasts in my context and feeling that the emotional abuse just wasn't wasn't worth it and and I then went back into the sport as an adult after doing athletics for many years and unfortunately I was then ended up in a training context where I also then witnessed a really horrific attack on a 10 year old girl and reported that to British Gymnastics and became a whistleblower and that was when I was alerted to the fact that there were some major safeguarding issues within British gymnastics. So you left gymnastics at 15. And one of the things that this report found was that many of the individuals who submitted evidence and their experiences continued to be impacted by those experiences in gymnastics many years later.

Is that what you found? Yeah, absolutely. As I said, I went into athletics and I competed for 10 years. And then I had nothing but amazingly positive experiences competing as an athlete. But when I retired from athletics, and my body kind of finally had a chance to readjust to, you know, a kind of normal life that isn't massively about pushing your body to extreme places all the time. And I then started to get what I would now call as PTSD symptoms. And at the time, I kind of took that as a sign that maybe there was something undealt with in gymnastics and that I needed to

return to training. So I spent around three years as an adult gymnast, reengaging with the sport and training at a number of different gyms. And it was then that I sort of really was experiencing the difficulties. And it's only been since the Athlete A film came out that I've been able to categorise those very clearly as being post-traumatic stress from the abuse that I suffered as a teenager. And the Athlete A film that you are referring to details the sexual abuse that was encountered by the US gymnasts over a number of years. Now, Claire, you've described gymnastics as being stuck in the 1950s. And I'm interested because you seem to say that athletics was a much more positive experience for you. But what was the what were the major differences and why do you feel gymnastics has stuck in the past?

I mean, if we look at athletics, I think there's a lot more gender parity. So the issue with gymnastics is that you have women's artistic gymnastics and you have men's artistic gymnastics. And firstly, the groups, men and women don't train together. And really what women's gymnastics is, is the judgment of women's bodies against criteria that are based around aesthetics and there's a far greater emphasis on the aesthetics than the aptitude in many cases whereas within the men's side of the sport it's really about displays of strength and power so those are really reaffirming kind of those social differences that in this day and age just seems so out of date and belonging to a completely different time era. So there's a lot of emphasis on what you look like and what your body is doing as a female gymnast.

Yes, very much. And that's why we've got so many women in our group claim reporting all kinds of policing of their body in terms of their weight and subsequent eating disorders that they've suffered from many years later because of those forms of judgment and training practices which really require the gymnast to be in an arrested state of development. Even last week I saw some comments on Mumsnet from a current mother talking about her child being at home during lockdown and her fear that this child was about to hit puberty and how do I stave off puberty and it's going to be so awful for her once she's gone through puberty so this really speaks to the issues of gymnastics it's called women's

gymnastics but the reality is it's little girls gymnastics And many of these issues around abuse in the sport will only have the opportunity to disappear once the sport does become a sport for adults and adult bodies. Sarah, I would just like to bring you in here because this interim report really did highlight just how widespread these allegations of abuse are. Do you have confidence in this case, both in what the reviewer said so far and what you're expecting from the full report later this year? Absolutely. I think one of the most striking things from the interim report is the extent to which it's corroborative of the allegations that are being made across our group. And it's corroborative in a number of ways, both in terms of the nature of the abuses and in terms of their persistence and the scale. So we are not just talking about a few dodgy coaches or a few dodgy gyms. We're talking very much more about a systemic pattern of abuse

that has been permitted to happen over decades, actually, in the case of the individuals whom we represent. What surprised you most about this report? I think when you look at the details of it and you see that 126 individual gymnasts have come forward and that 90 coaches have been identified, 100 different gymnastics facilities, then you begin to see that this isn't as I say an individual problem in terms of dodgy coaches and dodgy gymnastics but much more pervasive and it's in that context that we can begin to think about the culture of abuse I think and it's in that context that the questions really need to be asked of British gymnastics about what they have been doing

to potentially sanction condone and permit this to happen and you've got to remember as well I mean as Claire says this is about young girls often young girls sometimes boys as well as young as six so we are talking about serious safeguarding issues and long-standing injuries which have flowed from the failures that we've seen across our group to better protect these athletes. I do have a statement here from British Gymnastics and they have said that in response to the White Review interim report Alistair Marks who took up the role as interim CEO of British Gymnastics in January he says that British Gymnastics welcomes the White Review's interim reports we are fully committed to doing everything possible to help the review get the answers it needs to do what is right for the sport and gymnasts.

I remain appalled by the claims I have heard and alarmed that some gymnasts do not feel that they can have their voice heard and have a future within the sport. So British Gymnastics clearly are identifying that there is an issue. And I know, Sarah, that the group that you're representing, Gymnasts for Change, were representing 17 different athletes. But have more people come forward since this became public? Yes, absolutely, Jessica. So in the last week, we've seen very many more people stepping forward both men and women I should say as well and I think that's going to be a pattern that we continue to see part of what Claire and Gymnastics for Change have been incredibly able in doing is empowering other athletes to speak out and it's by hearing those experiences creating that movement of solidarity really that has enabled people to

step forward and be counted and have their claims looked at by lawyers so that they can seek the redress that actually they demand here. Claire, I wonder, because this report has shown how widespread the abuse is, you know, 100 coaches implicated so far what would happen to the sport of gymnastics if there was a zero tolerance policy for this type of abuse what would it mean to the sport i mean that's a very good question and it's got a complicated answer in that and these um practices are so normalized that um and particularly in the elite side of the sport, there are very, very few coaches who use positive coaching practices. In fact, you could probably name them on one hand.

And so really what we need to push for now is an entire rethinking of the kind of structures that the coaching is based on. At the moment, what we have is a system that's very much focused on coach-centered coaching. And we need to move to a model that's about athlete-centered coaching. That's very normal in many, many other sports, but it's not normal in gymnastics. So the sport really needs to start dialoguing with other governing bodies in other sports who have up-to-date coaching methods and those need to be brought into the sport and the sport needs to be led forwards now with people who have the vision to create a safer sport that is going to be much better for athletes long term. Yes I do have a joint statement here as well from Sport England and UK Sport.

They say Sport England and UK Sport have received the interim report from Anne White QC as part of her independent review into allegations of mistreatment within the sport of gymnastics. We'd like to thank the review team for their work to date and we recognise the courage of the gymnasts, parents, coaches and others from across the gymnastics community who have come forward to share their experiences with the review. For you Sarah, what would you like to see happen as a result of this report? I think as a result of this report, in legal terms, we'd like to see British Gymnastics doing what Alistair Marks indicated in his

statement and really engaging with the individuals involved here. The White Review we now have more confidence will do an excellent job in delineating the problem but what we need here is individual redress and for the gymnasts themselves to be involved in the conversation about reform so we'd invite British Gymnastics to engage with us and those whom we represent directly at this point. Sarah and Claire, it's been a pleasure to talk to you this morning. Claire, again, thank you so much for sharing your personal experiences. Thank you. You're welcome.

Okay, time now to talk about language. If you've ever looked up the word woman in the dictionary recently, you might have noticed that the definition has changed. That's thanks to a campaign by women's rights activist Maria Beatrice Giovannardi. Now, Maria has also had the terms associated with woman changed in the thesaurus too. And now she's trying to do the same thing in Italy. Maria joins us this morning. Very good morning to you, Maria. Good morning. Lovely to have you on the program. So please, for us, for those of our listeners that don't know,

what was wrong with the previous definition of woman in the dictionary? And why did you want to change it? Yeah, so basically, I found this definition via google because oxford licensed its content to all the search engines and what was wrong was that basically there were a lot of surnames such as you know piece bit baggage bitch and a lot of other derogatory words but also within the definition there were example sentences such as i told you to be home when i get home little woman or you know if this doesn work, they'll become women off the streets. Like typical sort of like negative stereotypes.

And also most of the example sentences were patronizing women and they were showing them as sexual objects or objects of men. So this was what was wrong with it. And then why also we started the campaign to change it. It doesn't sound great when you list it out like that. More than 34,000 people signed your petition. The definition has now changed. So what is it now? Well, they sort of like revolutionized it in a way that

before the woman had a passive role in the definition. And now, you know, the example sentences changed to, you know, a woman that puts kids through college and, you know, women have, women of letters, women of science, the woman of the moment. So they, they basically made, took the effort to, made the effort to change the, the way women are represented, were represented in the definition and are represented.

And also they changed the fact that before, you know, a woman was a man's lover or a man's partner, and now it's just a person's partner. And this was a huge victory for, of course, the LGBTQ community. And then, yeah, they removed lots of the derogatory synonyms. And yeah, I mean, I'm quite happy. It's not 100% perfect, but it's definitely much better. You've also said that the definitions for man were also a lot more exhaustive than those for woman. So can you give us a few examples of what was in the dictionary for man?

Yes, they were. Well, the men were actually playing an active role in definition. So, you know, the example sentences where he was a solid Labour voter or, you know, a Cambridge man or, you know, a man that plays basketball, like men were just like being human beings. And they're also excelling at them. And women were discriminated against. So, yeah, and there are no derogatory surnames whatsoever on the word man. So that was another problem. They haven't added any, which that was not our goal, of course. We don't want to discriminate against anybody. Now, when you challenged the Oxford Dictionary of English, what were the justifications given for having those definitions and synonyms of woman? Yeah, so the first challenge, which is also the one I'm getting in Italy, was that, you know, the role of the dictionary is to describe the way society is and how people speak, not to prescribe a reality or proscribe a reality. So that was the first, the main challenge really.

But we kept saying that, first of all, like not everyone speaks like this, but also that sexism, just as, you know, homophobia, racism, xenophobia are serious issues. And it's not a joke or it's not trivial to basically speak about sexism because a lot of people were saying, you know, you're not going to change the world by changing the definition. And we understand that. But this was just one of the examples of everyday sexism and how it's not taken seriously and how sexism actually has a huge impact on women because

we are discriminated against ever since we're born. And, you know, even I have, I love to quote my son, Angelo Carter, that says language is power, life and the instruments of culture, but it's also the instrument of domination and liberation. And another one from Tony Morrison that says, you know, oppressive language does more than represent violence, it is violence. I think, you know, language has been used throughout history to oppress different groups, you know, whether it's, you know, from a religious perspective or, you know, under the racist, like, spectrum, or for homophobic like homophobic purposes so and I think sexism is still of course something that's not taken seriously unfortunately especially

in language because you know even in the media or in tv we all we always see people discriminate well men discriminating against women and no one really caring or yeah so it's sort of like a symbolic campaign I guess of course but as you rightly pointed out language does matter now you're trying to do the same thing in Italy um you've come across Tricani the online Italian dictionary and you're trying to get the same um definition of woman changed what's the response been and is it going well yeah so we just started after oxford decides change uh i sort of uh asked dracani she's a huge institution in italy of of course like a public interest as well and um in november they said they weren't going to change it uh so this march for the 8th of march, for International Women's Day, we wrote an open letter signed by over 100 people, very influential people in the civil society, from the vice president sort of like connotations within the definition.

And the response has been that the director said, they sort of like associated us to, you know, the movements in the 70s that were like of women burning books and patronising us. So not positive then, but you have had some high profile support

from the president, no less, Sergio Mattatrella. So could that change their mind? Yeah, so Mattatrella did a wonderful speech. I think, I mean, Oxford answered in the same way in the beginning. And of course they are a huge institution. So we weren't expecting a yes plea, like, thank you. We'll keep challenging them.

We'll probably start a petition. And Mattarella also, yes, I'm sure he had an impact. He's had an impact. And yeah, I'm sure they'll change it. We'll just keep fighting. We'll just need to keep fighting. Well, best of luck for the rest of their campaign. And thank you for what you've done.

It's incredible work. Thank you, Maria. That's Maria Beatrice Giovannardi there, women's rights activist. And now, do you have a budding writer in your house? If you have a teen between 14 to 18 who likes to write fiction, maybe has found it an outlet during lockdown. The BBC Young Writers Award is open for another two weeks, closing at 9 a.m. sharp on Monday, the 22nd of March.

All you need is a short story about any topic and in any style of up to a thousand words, which will be read by some stellar judges. The singer-songwriter Arlo Parks and the writers Louise O'Neill, Robert Webb and Alex Wheatle, all chaired by Katie Thistleton of Radio 1. The best five stories are read by actors and published in an anthology. The winner is offered mentoring and all five writers

will get a great day out with the BBC. All the details are on the BBC website. Just go to bbc.co.uk YWA. Now, a new report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggests that women in heterosexual couples are much more likely than men to give up their jobs or cut their hours after becoming parents, even if the woman earns more than her male partner. Alison Andrew is the Senior Research Economist at the IFS and joins us this morning. Very good

morning to you, Alison. You too. We'll come on to what these findings tell us, I suppose, about the inequalities that exist between the genders when it comes to pay. But first, just give us some background on how these results were collated. I believe it's, is it part of a wider review that the IFS are currently doing? Exactly. So this is a small part of the agenda chapter for the IFS's Deaton Review on Inequalities,

which is a long run project looking at various aspects of inequalities in the UK. So like over health, education, and then over gender, race, and then we're looking at labour markets, etc. And what did the results show then about the way men and women's jobs and their hours changed after they became parents? Yes, so the gender gaps in paid work tend to open up a lot after individuals become parents. And what we show in this research is that this is the case even when women previously

had a higher wage than their partner. And so these are the group of households who you might think that all of the financial incentives point towards them prioritising the women's work. But actually, if we look in these households, these higher earning women drop their hours of work by an average of a quarter and a further 13% drop out of the labour force entirely. So it really tells us that this doesn't seem to be what's going on. It doesn't seem to be largely driven by households prioritising the paid work of the person with the highest earning capability. Rather, it always seems to be on average women who take the largest step back, whilst men's careers seem remarkably unaffected by parenthood.

Okay, so it counteracts that common myth then. Were you surprised then by these results that the woman, even as the highest earner, was more likely to stop work? I think just how similar households where the woman was the highest earner look to households where she wasn't is quite surprising. Also, the persistence of these effects. So these aren't short term effects. Women's participation in paid work and hours drop immediately, and then they stay at that much lower level for at least the next 10 years. And that's where our data runs out, but we think it lasts much longer.

Okay. So do you think this tells us anything about, I suppose, the social norms in place at the moment and why women often end up carrying more of the childcare duties. Exactly. So I think it's really important to think that couples are making these choices within loads of social norms. And so whether that social pressures from friends and family about who should, whether women should take a larger caregiving role or whether men should be a primary breadwinner or just sort of small things like schools often using the mother as a default caregiver that all serve to reinforce sort of very traditional gendered norms. How much of, I suppose, the women that responded to you felt

they had a choice? Because it's, you know, it's easy to say that even though women were earning more, they felt obliged to become the primary caregiver, but perhaps they wanted to, perhaps it was that woman's choice to decide to give up work and stay at home and be the stay at home parent absolutely and i think that's a crucial thing to say is that um the care work that people do whether that's paid or unpaid is obviously crucial for our society and our economy and that's not what's at issue here and we were i guess we want to get to a stage where individuals can make meaningful choices and at the moment where we have quite an unequal policy environment in terms of it's quite difficult often for fathers to take a good amount of paternity leave at high pay

and when couples are making these decisions within a lot of social norms, we really don't know the extent to which all of this and stepping back from paid work reflects genuine choices. And it does seem likely that for some women, they would prefer to take a larger role in paid work. And likewise, for some men, they may prefer to take a larger role in the care of their children.

We had quite a few people contact us about this on social media. I'm reading one out here from Twitter from a woman that said she stepped back from a teaching job for 10 years while her three children were small. Husband was away with the RAF lots. So thankful that she had the chance to do this as the job was well paid. Back in a full time post now. so no real impact in the career. Pension not looking too good, though. I wonder, with the results that you've found, what does it tell us about the, you've hinted at it previously, but the systematic problems between the genders in the labour market? Yeah, so I think the choices that men and women make around childbirth can have quite long-lasting impacts,

both because they establish norms and habits within the household, but also if women take a large amount of time off, it often is hard for them to get back into a job with a comparable pay, and they lose out on a lot of pay and promotion decisions along the way. And so what's interesting, what we find is that hours and employment rates drop off immediately. And then we have this slow accumulation of the opening of the wage gap, where slowly, it seems that women earn less per hour and large part of that might be because they've either switched to jobs that might be a bit more flexible or they've reduced their hours. We've also had another tweet come in from Alison that says four children later and 15 years

later I retrained and had to start again it certainly was the right decision for me it does set you back a lot she she said in capital letters, in potential earnings and career progression though. So Alison, what would you like to see in terms of policy changes that can make it better? I think that actually highlights a really positive one that there's, you know, there are a lot of women in the UK who have perhaps stepped back entirely from paid work or reduced their hours a lot when their kids were young. And now they find themselves in a situation where they don't need to do as many hours of childcare. And there could be real scope for policy to help more women move back into paid work if that is their choice.

And then likewise, we've got policies around parental leave. So many Scandinavian countries have what's called use it or lose it months where leave is reserved for the father and can't be transferred. And this has been quite effective at encouraging fathers to take more time with their kids during the early years. I think the final thing I'd say here is that the status quo is really costly. We've got a lot of women dropping out and therefore policies that are able to help women to move back into the labour force are going to generate tax revenue

and they're going to mean that those policies may not be as costly as you would first think. Alison, thank you for shedding light on the issue. Thank you. Alison Andrew there, the Senior Research Economist at the Institute of Fiscal Studies. Now, it's hoped that new guidelines released last week will help to empower women when it comes to dealing with pelvic organ prolapse. The first UK clinical guideline for the use of vaginal pessaries aims to help women learn and understand if a pessary is the right option for them. Joining us now is Kate Lowe, who is the chair of the UK clinical guideline group for pessary use for prolapse.

And also Kath Sansom, women's health campaigner and founder of Sling the Mesh. Very good morning to you both. Hello. Kate, let's start with you. Please just shed some light what is a vaginal pessary for those that don't know and how does it treat prolapse? A vaginal pessary is a collective term for a number of vaginal devices that are inserted into the vagina to support walls that are falling due to prolapse. It's usually plastic or rubber device and they come in different shapes and sizes. The most common one is a basic ring-shaped

tapestry and they've been in use for hundreds and hundreds of years. And although the design is evolving, it is still very much a basic supportive device that sits within the vaginal walls to reduce the symptoms of prolapse. And it's considered one of the non-surgical management options for prolapse. So how do you feel this treatment differs from what's already out there for vaginal prolapse. So what do you, how do you feel this treatment differs from what's already out there for vaginal prolapse? Oh, I mean, it's completely different. You know, if you have a prolapse, you have a number of options. You can wait and see how things go. You can employ some lifestyle modification measures, changing your diet looking at constipation pelvic floor exercises which obviously has now evidence behind it for

effectiveness and then you can have something supporting so at the end of the day that prolapse obviously is is the walls the compartments of the vagina sort of falling down and possibly beyond the entrance to the vagina and creating bothersome symptoms. And to reduce those bothersome symptoms, you need to restore that vaginal anatomy. And you can do it with a pessary device very effectively for a very large number of women. And then obviously for some women, you might also restore that vaginal anatomy with surgery. Okay, so the guideline that has been released is evidence-based. What does it say and how do you feel it will further help women? It's really, it's drawing together that pessaries are in very common use

but very little is said about them or really known about them. It's a sort of unglamorous side, really, of prolapse, but they really are very effective, very well tolerated, provide a lot of satisfaction in treatment. And this guideline really is the first guideline that will bring together the multidisciplinary element of pessary provision, because in our prolapse journey, possibly, and certainly understand more when we actually do seek help for prolapse, to understand more about how they work, how long you can use them for. And for that, you need a really broad framework of training and practitioner skill so that women are getting access to the same level of care wherever they present. Kath, I'd like to bring you in here. You have obviously a lot of experience in women's

health matters. And now the guideline was written with the background of the Baroness Cumberledge report, which focused on three recent scandals in women's health, one of which was the pelvic mesh, which I know is your area of expertise. So how do you feel that report influenced the new guideline on pessaries? I'm hoping it played a huge part. I mean, the biggest thing to come out of the Baroness Cumberledge review was women being routinely ignored or dismissed

when raising concerns about their health care, women not being given full information about all the options and treatments available. It was about women being rushed into a surgical procedure using mesh when actually physiotherapy or these pessaries actually could have helped. They should have at least been offered. So I like to think it's played a huge part. And I would just like to say to Kate, you really welcome these guidelines because it gives not only women confidence in trying this holistic approach, but also clinicians, because what we've seen in the campaign and in the Cumberledge review, too many women were rushed for surgery when they really didn't need to be. They should have been

offered a natural approach first. And because of that, Kath, and because of other scandals involving women's health, is it fair to say that there's a sense of distrust among women when they're given these new options for their health? There is a huge sense of mistrust, certainly within the MeSH campaign, but I think I speak for a lot of other women's health care. That trust needs to be rebuilt. I think so many women have been to their doctors and, you know, it's perhaps taken three, four, five, up to 10 times to be listened properly and get a diagnosis. Certainly in the MESH campaign, women have gone back to the GPs or their implanting surgeon and they've been belittled, denied, they've been told that they have psychiatric problems or they're not dealing with their pain very well. I mean, you imagine these women, it takes a lot of confidence to keep having to go back to a clinician that is ignoring them. And actually, Baroness Cumberledge herself yesterday at the all-party parliamentary group, she said, and it says it so well,

she said, women have been treated in a cavalier fashion by a healthcare system that appears to have lost its way. And it really feels like that in gynecology, urogynecology and urology. And certainly in the Facebook support groups in the mesh, I mean, there's almost 9,000 people. And I would say the majority of us in there, we have lost trust in the medical professionals.

And that's tragic. It shouldn't be like that. Well, Kate, listening to what Kath has said there, do you feel cultural change is needed? I think cultural change is happening, actually. I think, I mean, clearly the throughput from the MESH report, the ongoing parliamentary group looking at the way these things are managed, the way women listen to, is very important. I think probably in the guideline situation, what we're really after is that this is actually a treatment that is already in very widespread use. So what we're

really trying to say is make women more aware of it, make the provision more consistent, and give women longer term options really for managing their prolapse symptoms, so that they don't rush to surgery, absolutely not, because often it's not actually what they need at that point in time. So this is about actually helping women to understand that taking the long view over your prolapse symptoms might actually in the end be you managing yourself in a much better way and feeling much happier with what's going on. And I think it's also women, you know that they have a problem they sit on it for a long time and then they come forward and they sort of want the problem over they're fed up to and thrown to the doctors so but understanding that perhaps taking the long view using pessaries for a certain amount of time can buy them time can leave them still active and still able to do things

is very important and that requires a dialogue with their clinician. And it's about this guideline really is about kind of matching the dialogue so that the clinicians have a better way to speak to the women and the women have a more empowered way to speak to the clinicians to say, is this right for me? Is this what I want to be doing now? What do you think? And continuing that conversation as they go through their life, really. Well, Kate Lowe and Kath Anson, thank you so much for joining Women's Hour this morning. A pleasure to talk to you. A pleasure to have your company on the Women's Hour podcast. Join us again soon. Hello, Greg Jenner here. Series three of Radio 4's top

comedy history podcast, You're Dead to Me, is now in full swing. That's when you find yourself in the pocket of big Asclepius. We like to learn and laugh about the past by pairing up a top historian with a top comedian. That is hangry at a new level, isn't it? So far in this series, we've met the Irish pirate queen, Gráinne Ó Máli, explored the strange world of ancient Greek and Roman medicine, 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.