Woman's Hour - Rhiannon Giddens, Women and Data, Crime Writing

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

Rhiannon Giddens is a Grammy Award winning musician. She's in the Woman's Hour studio to perform a track from her new album “There is No Other”. She’ll be talking about her music, her career and why some of her best gigs have been inside prisons. This week there's been news of still births, neo-natal baby deaths, mothers dying during labour and children born with brain damage in Shropshire. It involved the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust and it's widely been described as the largest maternity scandal in the UK. This week’s news has led to even more families getting in contact with lawyers asking for help. We speak to one solicitor in Shrewsbury called Beth Harrison, who says new enquiries are coming in every day. We also talk to Dr Bill Kirkup who chaired a major review into the Morecambe Bay scandal. Women in Data is an organisation which connects up women who work in the field of data. Research suggests that only 26% of people working in data in the UK are women. So why should women think about a career in data and what can they achieve? What's stopping girls from going into it as a profession?

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. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast on Friday the 22nd of November. Good morning and welcome. We've got a Friday treat which I hope will brighten up a grey day in the form of live music right here in the Woman's Hour studio from Grammy Award winner Rhiannon Giddens. That is coming up later. Now we also know that big companies collect our data,

so it's not surprising that data science is one of the fastest-growing employment sectors, but it's struggling to attract women. We're going to look at why that is and why it really matters to all of us if there aren't more women in data. And does crime writing make you a bad feminist? I'm just throwing that out there.

But first to a story that you might well have seen in the news this week, although with the election and the royal crisis, perhaps not as prominently as you might expect. It's the shocking revelation that 45 babies and mothers died and many other babies were left with disabilities amid major failings at a hospital trust in what's likely to be the NHS's worst ever maternity scandal. The news came from a leaked document

from an inquiry into the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust which showed a toxic culture stretching back 40 years and causing avoidable deaths and injuries. The inquiry into two maternity units is being led by Donna Ockenden, who is a senior independent midwife. Well, since the story broke, more families have come forward, and more than 600 cases are now being looked at. I'm joined by solicitor Beth Heath, who is representing some of the families, and Bill Kirkup, who led the inquiry into the Morecambe Bay maternity unit where there was another maternity scandal and other babies died.

Beth, thank you for joining us. Just to give us a bit of background to this, Jeremy Hunt, who was then Health Secretary, asked for an inquiry back in 2017 into what was described as a cluster of avoidable deaths in the two maternity units. Yes, that's correct, Andrew. It was limited initially to 23 families who had contacted Jeremy Hunt at the time

and that resulted in Donna Ockenden being appointed to lead the independent NHS improvement review. She has a specialist team working with her. But that initial scope of 23 cases has grown substantially in the last two and a half years. As you said, it's potentially over 600. I know that they've got the notes and have reviewed 270, but there are over 300 where they're still awaiting for records, etc. And I think that's only going to grow as well, that number. So you think it could be bigger than that? Yes, definitely. Just in the last couple of days, I suspect, from what I've heard,

a number of families weren't even aware of the NHS Improvement Inquiry. And we've been contacted as a local firm of solicitors by these families who want to know more about this and where where to go and what to do so beth i know you were originally looking at around 35 cases in the past few days how many other families have come forward to you yes so we we act currently for more in excess of 35 families in relation to kind of babies who have died mothers who have died or babies have suffered with life-changing injuries. But in the last two days alone since this leaked report hit the news we've received over 60 new inquiries from families. And these are families whose babies have also

died or been injured in the hospital trust? Yes that's correct and they date back to to the 70s 80s but we also have ones that are very recent as well bill i'd like to bring you in you've you've seen this interim document um and you chaired the investigation into the morecambe bay hospital trust yeah what do you make of it are there similarities oh very much so yes it was very sad reading the interim report because there were such strong and unmistakable echoes of what we had found in morecambe bay because the significance of that is i mean the morecambe bay report was published in february 2015 all trusts were supposed to look at themselves and see whether they had any problems that they needed to identify in the light of the Morecambe Bay report including Shrewsbury and Telford

so they've had that opportunity as early as 2015 and not taken it. Tell me a little bit Bill about what your report highlighted. What were the changes that you recommended well we found that there were very poor standards of care in that unit at that time it has turned itself around since then i'm very pleased to say which shows what you can do focusing around very poor teamwork people were divided on professional grounds very poor or non-existent investigations of safety incidents, so that you had the same mistakes being made over and over again without being corrected. And a failure of the trust to declare that there was a problem. So they were covering up and

concealing information. And unfortunately, it sounds as though very many, if not all of those features have been occurring in Shrewsbury and Telford. We made a series of recommendations, rather too many actually, but I think we needed it to, to improve services in Morecambe Bay, which has been a terrific success, and to improve services nationally, which led to, for example, the Better Births Review. And there have been a number of substantial improvements made since then as a result of that. Beth when you listen to what Bill was saying about the problems

at Morecambe Bay are those similar to the kind of concerns that parents have raised with you? Yes I'm sat here nodding my head as they they all echo things that as local solicitors we've been experiencing and investigating over a vast number of years. There's been a lot of problems with monitoring of babies' heartbeats through what's called a CTG monitor. And generally what we've found to be a delay or a failure to identify when a baby is in distress and needs urgent delivery or urgent help and when the labour is going wrong.

Bill, when you read what was happening in this trust, can we be assured that this is a one-off and it's not happening elsewhere across the country in the light of your report? I think that the real significance of this is that two major failings like this are not two one-offs, that there is evidence here that there are systematic problems. But having said that, I think it's important to say I don't think it's the problems with maternity care as such. I don't think there

are major problems with the way that we deliver maternity care. What I do think there are are major problems in the way that we learn when things go wrong in healthcare and actually it applies to all specialties as well as maternity. We just happen to have had these two in maternity and the problem is it's very difficult for people to accept when something's gone wrong it's very difficult for clinicians they find it difficult to declare and it's very difficult for organizations too they are not taking the opportunities to say hang on something's gone wrong here we need to stop take stop work out what it is and put it right and that's where i think we need to make take stop work out what it is and put it right and

that's where i think we need to make major improvements there has been talk of a closed culture which you described there and a toxic culture it's clearly leading to harm what can we do to try and make sure that we change that culture we've got to become an organisation that learns in the health service from when things go wrong. If you look at the history of all sorts of enterprises going back in time through industry and transport and so on, they've all started out as very dangerous. And the way that they have become models of safety

in the great majority of cases is because they learn every time something goes wrong. And we have not yet got that culture in health services. We must do that. Bill, you used to be an obstetrician. This must be a time when expectant parents everywhere, when they read about the shocking happenings at the Trusts are really concerned. I mean, unless you are an expert in neonatal care, you don't know when your baby should be monitored, how many heartbeats to expect, when a baby should be delivered.

What would you say to people? What advice would you give to people going into a maternity unit? I think that the great majority of maternity care is delivered to a very high standard and that people should be confident that that is the case. One of the wonderful things about obstetrics as a specialty is that you actually end up with two healthy people at the end of it. That happens the vast majority of the time.

What I would say is if you have any concerns about the way that you're being communicated with, the way that you're being involved in your care and so on, raise them. And if you don't get the answers that you like, well, maybe you need to think about whether you're at the right place. But I don't think that will apply to more than a very small minority of people. The great majority, it's a very good service that's delivered very well. OK. Beth, do you think that there is more to come in Shrewsbury and Telford? Yes, unfortunately there is. I think we always feared that the failings were worse than originally reported

given the number of families that we've acted for and the repetitive nature of the mistakes that we've seen over the years. And this leaked report has brought up a lot of ill feeling in the community there's a lot of very distressed families out there and there are trust issues with um not just the maternity service but it reflects widely on on the Shrewsbury and Telford trust as a whole well Beth Heath from London Biola solicors and Bill Kirkup, Chair of the Morecambe Bay Investigation. Thank you both very much. And the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust have said that they are continuing to work with the independent review.

They apologise unreservedly to the families and they want to reassure all families that they are working to improve services and are not waiting for the final report. A lot, they say, has already been done. They also say that anyone who is currently using their maternity services and has any questions can speak to a midwife. Now, more jobs are being created in the data industry than any other. And that's not surprising when you think about how much data we all give about ourselves on the internet every day. And yet it is struggling to attract women. Now, not only is

this a shame because it can be a very lucrative career choice, but also because if data is male dominated, that can actually have a knock on effect for all of us. Well, we certainly haven't struggled today to get a great panel of women to talk about this. I am joined by Rachel Keane, who is co-founder of Women in Data UK, by Megan Duffy, who is a data scientist, and by Nadia Stottaripolo, who is measurement lead at Google. Nadia, thank you very much indeed, all of you for joining us. Rachel, I'm going to start with a basic question to you. In case anyone listening is rather like me before I started researching this,

I'm wondering what exactly do we mean by the data sector? What jobs do people do in data? Okay, well, that's a really, really large question. The data sector is absolutely huge and it is growing by the day in terms of roles that are available you could have a role that is focused around data privacy or data ethics you could have a role that is more based around data engineering and data warehousing so building areas where the data can sit that can be extracted from. Right the way through to somebody who's a data scientist. There's our fellow panellist here, Megan, who is solving complex problems and bringing value out of data and everything else in between.

Megan, I'm going to ask you as well. You're a data consultant at Kubrick. What do you actually do? It's a good question. I work for an investment bank as a client who I'm not allowed to name, unfortunately. But basically, my job is solving problems using data. So that could I spent the last six months working on machine learning problems. So that's looking at big data sets we have of corporate financial data and seeing if we can use that and process it to predict things that might happen to companies in the future. And how did you get into it?

So I actually worked in the NHS for seven years as a clinical scientist and then made the difficult decision last year to change career and retrain. So I joined my current company and they trained me and now I work for them as a consultant so I've only been working in data for about a year you know this time last year I'd never seen a line of Python code and now I know you can code yes I've spent the last six months writing machine learning code in Python so Nadia you are measurement lead at Google and I know that you're keen to make clear that these are your views and not those of Google but just begin by telling me what is measurement lead what does that job entail? Yeah it sounds so enigmatic doesn't it? So it essentially means

that I work with some of the UK's largest clients that Google work with and I consult with them to make sure that they're utilising all the different data sources and tools that they have to understand the impact that their advertising is having on their business. And therefore how to continue making smart decisions with that data, improving their business, improving the returns that they get from the advertising. That sounds quite creative. It's not justified science, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's an important point to make about data. You know, data can be really technical as a job but you can also get very creative and as we were chatting earlier with Rachel and Megan we were talking about human stories and how you can extract from data. What are people doing? What are what is our habits? What's our trends? What's the direction

we're going in and how does the data tell us the truth? Rachel you set up Women in Data in the UK. It was a group that was set up really I think because you find that as headhunters there were fewer women going into this sector than there had been in 2000. Absolutely both myself and Roisin McCarthy my fellow co-founder set up Women in Data really by pure accident, if I'm honest, in 2014. As analytical headhunters, we ran some specific stats and KPIs around gender and how many women we had placed as opposed to men, and we were absolutely horrified. We had placed less women in 2014 than we had in 2000. So we obviously dug a bit deeper and thought, well, you know, how can we change the way we work?

You know, do we have certain ethics? And we were putting the best person across for the job. And we decided to do something about it. And we started off by creating a community that had 125 women in 2015. I'm very pleased to say that next Thursday we'll be having 1,250 women in a. I'm very pleased to say that next Thursday we'll be having 1250 women in a multi-streamed event at the Intercontinental in London. Megan and Nadia, only a quarter of the people working in data are women. And, you know,

because it's a new industry and it doesn't have those legacy issues that we might traditionally associate with male-dominated industries like banking, say. Why do you think that they're struggling to find women and women aren't going into it? Megan? I think that the key skills that most data professionals need to employ include programming and computer skills. And I think that's a very male-dominated field and it's one that women often feel they don't have a place in. I wasn't a hobbyist programmer when I was young, and I therefore kind of thought it wasn't for me. I did learn coding at university, but I never really properly understood it. I think trying to shatter that archetype of the male coder in a hoodie, you know, hacking by night is very important. In his bedroom.

Yeah, you know, so women understand that coding's for anyone, anyone with the perseverance and curiosity to learn. And Nadia, how did you get into it? What did you study at that university? I studied economics. So I think, you know, going back to that conversation, it's just that fewer girls are being encouraged to do STEM subjects, you know, science, technology, engineering and maths.

And it all starts from there. So our choices at school, the GCCs we do, the A-levels we do, unless we're all encouraged to believe that we are as capable as our male counterparts, then we won't necessarily be taking those up. And, you know, I personally did experience some of that at school. I wasn't necessarily so encouraged to take those courses. Yeah, and it's amazing that today that still is the case. You know, there are quite a lot of statistics

that show that, you know, a lot of women and girls at school actually still think that they're worse at maths, for example, and they really are, and boys think they're better. Yeah, and for no biological reason, right? So society really does impact that. Megan, there's a bigger, broader issue here as well, isn't there?

Because it affects all of us if only men are in this sector why is that um well i think we're all human and we're all constrained by our own perspective and biases and it's important to recognize that and there's there's countless examples if you've read caroline criado perez's great book about um invisible women yeah yeah and there's countless examples of when people unintentionally you know they don't intend harm just don't include perspectives outside of their own and therefore make bad design decisions and the only way to combat that really is diversifying teams and Nadia we're already seeing that may that algorithms which decide an awful lot more

things about us than we realize these days, can show gender bias. Is part of that because we need to have more women in that decision-making process and data? Certainly. I think also important to note, it's not just about gender diversity, right? It's about socioeconomic diversity and racial diversity. Unless we have a reflection of the population in those professions... Yeah, looking at that data, then you're not going to come out with exact and varied results.

We need to reflect with the teams what can be reflected in the data. Otherwise, you will see bias. And businesses make really big decisions off the back of the data. So unless we're looking at it from all the different angles and representing the population, it can be dangerous. There are concerns that a lot of people have surrounding their privacy and how much data they've given away. So there are slight negative connotations perhaps around the industry sometimes. Do you think that that puts women and girls off going into it? What would you say to that?

Personally, I'd say no. I'd say what puts perhaps young women and girls off joining the data industry are a couple of things. I think it's the fact that there aren't visible and accessible role models. So you can't be what you can't see. And I think there's a lack of knowledge about perhaps some of the skills that are required. Yes, historically we've talked about STEM subjects, but actually there's a lot of subjects that can be considered, such as history and politics, evidence gathering and research gathering. It's equally as important as being able to communicate data.

And I think that actually young girls don't appreciate what roles are available in what companies. And I think we need to very much make this a UK-wide campaign to ensure that we are educating young girls where data can be used in what companies. Megan, you made a career change to go from working in the NHS to arrive as a data scientist. Sell it to me if girls are out there listening thinking what should I do what should I do for my A-level choices or for my university choices why would you think that going and being a data scientist is a great career well I really struggled making the decision to change careers it was it was scary you know I

was giving up a very secure job a decent decent salary, a lot of experience. But it was absolutely the right decision I've ever made. I love this field. It's challenging, it's absorbing. It's also what I love about it is the sort of sense of opportunity. You know, it's changing constantly. There's so many new opportunities opening up all the time. My advice to young girls would be don't ever think that it's not for you. If it's something that you're interested in, if you like solving puzzles, if you like doing maths problems, you know, even if you haven't necessarily studied maths, this could be a great career for you. And Nadia, do you think that it's something that you can see more young girls coming into? Is it a career for them? I'm hopeful, yes. So, yeah, I would definitely encourage. And I think for me, one of the reasons I get so excited by this industry

is because you get to look at the data in whatever way you want and you can tell a story from that. And then ultimately, that story will help influence a big decision. And whether that is for commercial gain or also, what we haven't talked about is how charities and other organisations use data to help improve their services and impact more people at a quicker rate and in a better way. So it's a very exciting field to be in.

Thank you all very much indeed. Nadia Sotiropoulou, Megan Duffy and Rachel, thank you very much for coming in today. Well, you're listening to Women's Hour. And coming up, Rhianna Giddens is performing at the Royal Festival Hall tonight as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, but before that, she's going to be playing right here in the studio, and she's been

patiently waiting in the studio with her banjo. We're going to hear from her in just a few minutes' time. And if you head to the Women's Hour website, you will find a huge selection of articles and videos, including our latest, How to Talk to Children and Young People About Climate Change. The article features tips and advice on talking about the planet

from a climate change psychologist and teen activist's perspective. Now, how easy is it to think of a novel, a thriller, where there is no violence against women? If you don't read crime thrillers, then think of a novel, a thriller, where there is no violence against women. If you don't read crime thrillers, then think of TV dramas, as they're often adapted from books and are equally often full of missing, raped or dead girls. The Damsel in Distress School of Crime Writing has been around for as long as crime writing itself.

But a literary award, the Storch Prize, has been set up to celebrate a thriller in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered. Its founder is Bridget Lawless, and she is with me now, as is novelist Deborah Donoghue, who has asked, does crime writing make me a bad feminist? Well, we're going to come to that. But first of all, Bridget, this is the second year of the prize. What gave you the impetus to set it up? Well, I vote for the BAFTAs. And in the year 2017, I noticed how many storylines in film had rape as a main story or as a subplot.

I found that quite uncomfortable because you watch an awful lot in a short period of time. And it was also the time when Me Too and Time's Up hit the news. And as a voter for a film, you're in a difficult position of having to potentially reward executives, directors, even actors who might subsequently be found to have done abusive things towards women they're working with or other women in the industry. So I decided to not vote that year and I abstained and wrote about it in The Guardian for why. And then I decided to set up this book prize because books are source material for a lot of film and television and they also have their own agency. So yeah, it was a sudden

move. The reaction, you know, wasn't positive across the board. Val McDermott, who's a doyen of crime writing, tweeted, I expend vast amounts of time trying to write creatively about difficult things. I somewhat resent being lumped together with the crass, the incompetent and the pornographers of violence. You did get a bit of negative reaction about it. What do you say to that? Only from crime writers, but not from general readers. We got extremely positive reaction from a lot of people.

But, well, no one was lumping Val in with anything. She wasn't being particularly attacked. And I think that all the writers that have commented on this have sort of distanced themselves from the pornografying, the gratuitous, the very graphic. And yet there it all still is. And this is very much something that's promoted by the crime fiction industry as well. Well, I'd like to bring Deborah in now.

Deborah, as a crime writer whose novel wouldn't qualify for this prize, what's your reaction to it? Morning. Good morning. I think it's fascinating, and I welcome the challenge that this sort of thing offers to writers. You know, we're constantly looking at new ways to tell stories, and particularly, you know, me, when I went into writing Sea of Bones, which is a thriller and it does unfortunately contain violence against women because I wanted to reflect things that I saw happening in the world around me. You know, as you've mentioned, Me Too, etc.

The President's Club scandal, all sorts of things fed into my thinking. But I didn't want to, as we've already mentioned, be lumped in together with pornographers of violence. And so I sort of found my own manifesto, if you like, my own little poetics, a way of writing the book that I could live with. Deborah, you clearly have considered this. You came up with this manifesto. You wrote an article actually that was entitled, you know, can writing about crime make you a bad feminist? What are your answers? What is your manifesto? Can you include violence against women and yet not fall into this trap? Well, I think that part of it is an acknowledgement that violence against women is part of women's reality. And I wanted to express, I wanted to reflect women's experiences.

There is an awful lot of crass crime fiction as well, where mistakes I think are made in portraying the sorts of violence against women. And Bridget comments eloquently on that on the Staunch Prize website and so on. But I took the approach, first of all, that I didn't want the violence to be titillating. And I had to give up on that almost straight away because I realised I couldn't cater for all possible sexual perversions out there. That's very much in the mind of the reader rather than the writer, perhaps. Absolutely. So I started looking at how I could give my victims within the book agency

and sort of decision-making power within the plot. And I also dug back into sort of Greek myths. I come from a performing arts background, so I went and looked at how those writers had done it and so started writing scenes which contain violence from a sort of skewed perspective. I wanted to create a slightly different angle on it. The audience, when we realise that Oedipus is tearing out his eyes with his mother's clothespins, we don't see that.

That's offstage. Perhaps just as well. Absolutely. Medea, you know, we hear the terrified cries of her children as she's slaughtering them. We don't see it. And so I used that sort of angle to try and skew the scenes where the violence might be quite graphic. Your book does open, though, with the body of a dead woman. Second chapter, yes.

Pretty near the top. It is. And, you know, Bridget's absolutely right that this is, you know, perpetuated by the crime fiction industry. You know, naturally, agents and editors are giving writers advice about what they think works and what sells. And, of course, that comes down to what readers are buying. And there is a reason why readers buy these books.

They're cathartic. They're full of jeopardy. They're exciting. But as I said, they also find themselves reflected within these novels. And I think that lots of novels that do contain violence against women are quite empowering. You had Winnie on earlier this season talking about fictionalising her own rape. And I think that, for example, the Helen storyline in The Archers, we've seen a huge uptick in awareness of controlling coercive relationships as a result of that, and that's the power of fiction.

I'd like to bring Bridget in here. Bridget, you've listened to this, and I know that many thriller writers will defend their use of violence by saying that it is important to reflect the real world, and in the real world there is a lot of violence against women. That's certainly true, but most of the violence towards women happens to women because they're women, and that's one of the very unique things about violence,

statistically as well. And one thing is that so much proliferation of these repeated stories of women being victims normalises women as victims. We don't even notice it quite often. I agree it can be cathartic but it's not cathartic for everyone by any means and a lot of people won't read crime fiction for exactly that reason. And it's also one of the reasons that the prize is open to thrillers, not crime fiction specifically.

It's open to other kinds of writing that is thrilling and contains all that excitement and jeopardy and intrigue and puzzle-solving without focusing on women as centred as a victim. Do you think, Bridget, that the way that women are portrayed in thrillers and in the TV dramas that they often are used to create actually has an impact on real life? Yes, I do, because one thing that is very skewed in fiction is that most of it is stranger danger and women are attacked by people

they don't know. That's not completely true, but it's the majority of cases. It makes a much more interesting story, unfortunately, if there's a puzzle to be solved. If the perpetrator is known, which reflects statistically what happens to women, that you're likely to be raped by somebody you know, an ex-partner or a current partner, most likely, over 90%, and more likely to be killed by somebody you know as well, if you're a woman. And so fictional representations tend to reverse that. Deborah, does it concern you that actually what happens in your novels,

on TV dramas, actually does have an impact in real life? I'd like to think that in Sea of Bones, the violence, I can't give too much away, obviously, because readers won't know about the plot. But I think I've addressed some of the things that Bridget talks about. But yes, it does concern me when you see fictionalised violence that is unhelpful to real women's experiences of the justice system and so on. I think that's very concerning. And Bridget, the Staunch Prize winner will be announced on Monday.

You haven't had any problem finding wonderful thrillers that don't have violence against women? No, I almost spilt for choice. I have to say that it's really worth seeing the shortlist of last year and this year just to see how many different kinds of thriller there are available. They're not easy to find, of course, because crime fiction takes up most of the shelves. But if you go looking for them, they are there and they give you an alternative to reading about dead, beautiful women. Well, Bridget and Deborah, thank you both very much indeed.

Thank you. Now, Rhiannon Giddens studied opera at the Oberlin Conservatory, but then she took up the banjo and the fiddle. American folk music and her legions of fans are very glad that she did. We're going to be hearing from her. She's going to perform Wayfaring Stranger from her latest album in just a few minutes time. But first, welcome to the programme. I said that folk music is what you do, but really it's a blend, isn't it, of gospel and jazz and blues and country.

Is it the music that you grew up listening to? I mean, I grew up listening to a lot of different things, you know, a lot of commercial music, as most people my age. A lot of revival folk music from the 60s and 70s. My parents were hippies and, you know, bluegrass. I have family members who play Bluegrass. So, you know, a lot of different things, but I didn't really hear the roots of all of that music. I didn't really hear that kind of music until I was an adult. And what happened to the opera?

Well, you know, funny enough, it is still around. I'm actually doing my first best and four-year best next year. But I just kind of, when I was doing that, I went, what can I offer the operatic world that a million other sopranos can't offer it? And so when I found the banjo, I found something that I could really contribute to in a way that was unique. And that was adding to the conversation in a positive way. You got a huge response to your previous album, Songs of Our Native Daughters where you and three other women of color set poetry that was written during the period of slavery to music. Why was that such

an important project for you? Well I have to I have to say that most of that was a completely original material the words were original the inspiration was historical and it was an important project for me because the voice of the black woman, of the woman of color, has traditionally been sublimated or subjugated or silenced or invisible. But her role in the creation of the United States is pretty massive. And there's just a lot of stories that need to be told. So it was a really wonderful opportunity to gather together three other sisters and just sit and make some songs that really mattered to us. It seems like it's important in your music to tell stories.

There's an attraction about protest music. What are you trying to say with your songs? Well, for me, it's really shining a light where a light hasn't been shown very much. It's the thrilling thing about what I do for me is finding those stories that need to be told and that really show what the reality of, you know, the formation of the United States is of the, you know, the history of what's going on now. I talk a lot about the slavery times from the United States, but there's people who are enslaved right now,

millions of people all over the world in bondage. So these things, history moves in cycles, and the more we can understand about what's gone on, the more we can understand about what's going on right now. Now, I mentioned that you are at the Festival Hall tonight. But last night you were at Wormwood Scrubs performing. Tell us about that. That was really an amazing program.

There was a couple of serious and the Consular Arts Project. They bound together and they worked with prisoners from Wormwood Scrubs and they composed their own music based on artwork from prisoners. And then they opened, this group opened for us. And then we did our show at the chapel, at the prison. And it was a pretty amazing, intense experience. So I was really glad to be a part of that. Now, this latest album, which came out earlier this year in May, is entitled There Is No Other, which kind of sounds quite romantic. The other has got a capital O. So it's a bit of a play on words there as well about the kind of like the intellectual roots of that word other.

Tell me about what you mean by it. Well, I capitalize that, you know, specifically. I don't want people thinking this was a record of romantic songs, you know, because there's been a lot of talk of othering and how that is the first step to dehumanization, which is the next step after that is things like slavery, genocide, and we see it all over the world now. But it's something that's been a part of human nature, unfortunately, for a long time. But the flip side of that is that we are all incredibly connected, and that we've been migrating and moving and affecting each other being affected by each

other since the very first mass migration out of Africa. So a really easy way to show that is through music. And so that's what the whole premise of the record is. Now, you've already got one Grammy and I know with this album, you're currently nominated for another. Tell us about the song that you've chosen to perform for us today from your album. Well, this is a it's actually a traditional song. The album is a mixture of traditional songs and originals. And this one in particular is one that's very well known in the States. It has, you know, could have roots in, you know, Scotch Irish. It could have it's one of these that is everybody kind of claims a piece of it.

And it has a lot of different traditions in it and putting the banjo and the accordion together really pulls out a lot of, I think, that feeling in this song. You mentioned the accordion and I should of course mention that also in the studio with us is Francesco Torisi who has collaborated on this album and who's going to be accompanying you on the accordion. So let's hear it, Wayfaring Stranger.

I am a poor wayfaring stranger Traveling through this world alone There is no sickness, toil, no danger And that fair land to which I go I'm going home to meet my mother I'm going home no more to roam I'm just going over Jordan

I'm just going over home I know dark clouds will hover over me I know dark clouds will hover o'er me I know my pathway's rough and steep But golden fields lay out before me But weary eyes no more will we I'm going home

To meet my father I'm going home No more to roam I'm just going over Jordan I'm just going over home Thank you. piano plays softly Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Teresi there. We've had a huge response on Twitter to that and to lots of other things. Ben has tweeted, Oh, Rhiannon, thank you for giving her space.

I am wet eyed already. We've also had a big response to our item on women in thrillers and the award that's been giving out the Storch Award for thrillers where there is no violence against women. Tom Clark says it's the same with TV thrillers and detective shows. We just stopped watching because we got so sick of them. And Jules Hussey said, great to hear that Woman's Hour is talking about the prevalence of violence against women in crime writing and film television, and a literary reward for those crime writers

who don't rely on it for a good story. Kathleen Clark has said, love detective-type novels, but hate rape novels. A book by a famous crime writer that started with a girl's clothes being found, folded up neatly in a car, put down immediately. Agatha Christie is best, unravelling a mystery, not gloating over the actual crime. Lots of people there talking about that. One last one, Claire Nottage says, I'm reading a highly entertaining book at the moment in which the woman is the serial killer.

We also had a response on data and women in data. Menaxi says, I'm a woman of colour and I've worked in the data industry for almost 25 years. I've seen so much progress and I'm very pleased to hear

about the women in data organisations. I loved listening to your guests leading this. I've had to battle hard to change minds and to prove myself in this field as an expert. And I'm proud to say that I'm now involved in a women in tech community within the company that I work for. Thank you for bringing attention to this amazingly interesting field and particularly what women bring to it. And you can join Jane Garvey on Monday for Women's Hour. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies.

I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.