Woman's Hour - Rosamund Pike, Covid-19 and women's finances, Florence Given, Fertility clinics

Episode Date: June 13, 2020

The scientist Marie Skłodowska Curie is recognised throughout the world but how much do you really know about her and her ground breaking Nobel prize winning discoveries? The Oscar nominated star of Gone Girl on playing the Nobel prize winning scientist in the film Radioactive.The debt advice charity, Step Change, warned that British households are expected to rack up debts worth a combined £6bn because of the health emergency as they fell behind with their bills. And it looks like this will disproportionately impact on women. Jude Kelly, Founder of the Women of the World Festival who is involved in the Insuring Women’s Futures programme, Zubaida Haque, Interim Director of the Runnymede Trust and a member of the Independent Sage and a commissioner for the Women’s Budget Group and Amy Cashman, CEO of Kantar’s Insights Division discuss. Protests are expected this weekend across the UK. What do you do if your child wants to go? We hear from Monique Bouffé who is a member of the Black Protest Legal UK Support team, as well as Talja Parkinson who has three sons..Fertility clinics were told last month that they could reopen as long as social distancing measures were in place. Being without access to fertility treatment has left thousands of couples – as well as single women – worried that they might run out of chances to conceive. We hear from Dr Zeynep Gurtin, Lecturer at the Institute for Women's Health at University College London, Rachel Cuttings from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and Seetal Savla who has just restarted her fertility treatment. The historian Bettany Hughes talks about her new Channel 5 series A Greek Odyssey where she retraces the steps of Odysseus from the coast of Turkey where the mythical Trojan War took place to the island of Ithaca in the West of Greece. Florence Given is a 21-year-old artist, writer and feminist. In 2019 she was named Cosmopolitan’s Influencer of the Year. She has just written her first book, Women Don’t Owe You Pretty. She tells us why girls and women don’t owe prettiness to anyone.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 welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. We'll look at people having fertility treatment or trying to during the coronavirus lockdown on the programme this afternoon. And you can also hear from the actor Rosamund Pike, who talks about geniuses and double standards. We've sort of looked so benevolently on the sort of tortured or difficult soul of somebody who's brilliant as long as he's male.

And Marie Curie, if she was sweet and lovely and kind, she would not have been Madame Curie. And that's Rosamund Pike talking about the character she plays in her latest film, Radioactive. We've also got the young feminist influencer Florence Given talking about prettiness. We talk about how women don't look at themselves in the mirror, they look at themselves being looked at.

It's something that I constantly think about. I rarely do things as a woman without thinking about what I look like while I'm doing it. That's Florence Given, and also on the programme this afternoon, historian Bettany Hughes on her Greek odyssey. Now, the debt advice charity StepChange says British households are expected to rack up debts worth £6 billion because of the lockdown. Research out this week by the Women's Budget Group and the equality organisation The Fawcett Society showed that concerns about debt are particularly high among women in black and minority ethnic groups, some of whom said they were struggling to feed their children. So how much money do women have and what needs to change if finances are going to improve? of the race equality think tank, the Runnymede Trust, to Amy Cashman of the data company Kantar,

and Jude Kelly, founder of the Women of the World Festival, also involved in the Ensuring Women's Futures programme. Now, last year on Woman's Hour, Jude told us that money was a feminist issue. What the pandemic is demonstrating is that women at all levels of society are going to be affected because they're much more likely to be doing part-time work. They're much more likely to be furloughed. If they get furloughed or they lose their jobs or they step down because of huge childcare pressures, amongst other things, their pensions are going to go further down than ever.

And I'll just give you a frightening statistic. Women from black or ethnic minority groups have a 51% pension gap with an average white man. The gap isn't just at a pay level now, it's at a pension level much later down the line. And so why it's a feminist issue is because it absolutely relates to the history of the idea that women's finances doesn't matter as much to society, that unpaid labour is acceptable, that low paid labour is acceptable, and that women can go to the back of the queue whenever there's a crisis. And we have to say that's not acceptable. It mustn't happen anymore. Zubeda, the research published this week highlighted the impact on BAME women. How do you reckon we got to this point? What COVID-19 has shown more than anything is that racial inequalities have always been there. COVID-19 has brought racial inequalities and socioeconomic inequalities into sharp relief. And that's because, of course,

black and ethnic minority women and women in general have always been treated as, if you like, second class citizens and their work, whether it's direct labour market work or work at home, has not been recognised, has not been valued. And that's been a considerable problem. Now, for black and ethnic minority women, the impact of COVID-19 has been particularly harsh because not only do they not have savings, but they're also disproportionately poor. We know that one in two black Bangladeshi and Pakistani children are in poverty. We know that black and ethnic minority single parents have been hit disproportionately hard by austerity cuts. And in fact, they were the worst hit by austerity cuts.

Amy, I know you've been tracking women's attitudes to their finances since the start of lockdown. What's changed since we spoke about that last summer? The pandemic has really exacerbated challenges that were already there for women in these areas. So what we see in lockdown is that women are much more concerned with the everyday management of the budget, and we're seeing that in terms of things like shopping habits. Women in particular are looking for better deals.

They're thinking about how to save for an emergency. Men are doing things more like talking to financial advisors looking more at their investment portfolio and thinking more to the long term and and that is absolutely just a continuation of behavior we've seen generally in the class of you which is women are much more focused on the here and now and everyday management of finance and men tend to be better set up for looking to the longer term. And that's, again, how you see things that Jude mentioned, the pensions gap, but how that plays out in the longer term in those sorts of measures. Jude, women are less likely to seek financial advice.

How do you begin to change women's difficult relationship with money? Well, you know, Jenny, that we started a project called SmartPurse recently because we were so concerned there wasn't enough independent financial education for women and that we were told as women that back way when, for some of us, well, you know, it's not really something you need to worry about because you'll have a husband or your father will sort it out for you. And that psychological idea that somehow it's not ours, it's not ours to be big players and it's not ours to be thinking strategically. I think that's been very internalized for lots of us and we have to change that. And we have to change that for our

children because we model that behavior that it's not really for us. And secondly, I think the financial sector has been really poor at talking to women, not about, you know, product. We need to be talking about the stages of women's lives, each stage that will make a difference to how they will be poor or less poor. And thirdly, I think that women have to realize that if they have their hands on money, it isn't necessarily a sort of dirty or bad thing to have money. It depends what you do with your money. And women could make a lot more difference to the way that investment happens, ethical ideas, the value system they want in society, if they had more levers in their hands with regards to the finances. So that's why I keep saying it's a feminist issue, because it's about if you want the world to be different, both for yourself, your families and your society, you have to find a way of controlling more of the circumstances.

And that is about finance, amongst other things. It isn't boring women. It's actually a fascinating way of making change happen, is my call out. And Zubeda, BAME women are more likely to say they don't have support. They're very worried about their jobs, they're very worried about putting food on the table. Why do things seem to be so much worse for them than for the average woman who's scared of tackling money? Because of racial discrimination. I mean, we haven't talked very much about the women who are on the breadline or those women who are just about managing. You know, you don't make savings if you're on the breadline or those women who are just about managing. You know,

you don't make savings if you're on the breadline or just about managing. While the rest of us, for instance, have stayed at home safely, we know anecdotally that a lot of black and ethnic minority women, particularly those in low paid work, those in social care work, that's disproportionately represented by black women, for instance, they have been having to go out to work because the government's economic measures, the ones Rishi Sunak rolled out, are not sufficiently covering those women. A lot of those women don't get enough money through universal credit. They are penalised by the two-child limit in child benefits.

They're not eligible for the statutory sickness pay and so on. So a lot of those women, including migrant women, including those who have no recourse to public funds, are falling through the gaps. Now, because black and ethnic minority women are disproportionately poor and not eligible for those, it's particularly hard. But the other issue, of course, that we don't talk about very much is we know, for instance, that poverty is not uniformly experienced anyway. But the difference between black and ethnic minority women and white British women when it comes to poverty is the issue of racial discrimination. Racial discrimination means that BME women are much more likely to be in poorer conditioned housing, in overcrowded housing, in insecure housing, as well as experiencing racism in the labour market, which means that they're also likely to be in low-paid and insecure work.

So all those factors mean that BME women are constantly on the breadline and constantly just about managing. Now, Amy, I suspect for those kind of women, financial services at the moment are not terribly helpful. But I remember last year you said financial services are missing out on £130 billion by not engaging with women. How are banks approaching female customers now to try and encourage them to take their finances more seriously? If I'm honest, I wouldn't say they are probably targeting women directly. I think part of the pandemic they've been looking to support customers

who have financial difficulties. But I personally feel that there would be a real appetite there because, you know, some of the data we have as well at Cantile shows just how much the levels of anxiety are much higher amongst women than men. And we've seen that women are much more receptive to bank communications and that kind of, that group that are anxious are much more likely to register and acknowledge the communications they're getting from their bank so i think that there is a genuine opportunity

there actually there'll be an online women of the world event at the end of this month why will economic equality be one of the global issues you're most concerned about? Yes, so we're doing a 24-hour marathon around the world in response to COVID and Black Lives Matter. It's an urgent point at which women and girls need to talk about their circumstances in many different subjects. And this issue of money, like how women are perceived in terms of whether they need money or what they can do with less, how unpaid labour is throughout the whole world. These are facts that we need to collect up globally. You know, the UK has some very bad statistics, but so do so many other places for different circumstances. So we're

trying to make sure that we travel the whole world talking about economic justice and come back with some findings so that we as girls and women and boys and men who want a different society can say this has got to stop. We can't keep on re-entrenching the ideas of economic injustice. And we have to feel angry about it and positive that we can make change. That's Jude Kelly. You also heard from Amy Cashman and Zubeda hack. Emma says my income pre-Covid was an almost 50-50 split of self-employment from face painting and part-time work for a charity. Since I fell slightly below the 50% threshold, I've had no government support. This is devastating as I'm now living on a half salary, but I've got all the same outgoings. My husband is furloughed on a zero hours contract. I feel pressure to find

extra work where I can, which is impacting on my mental health and that's transferring to my physical health as well. It's hard now and who knows how long before I can earn a full income again and how long the damage this period of using savings will last. We only got married in January and it's been a very hard start to married life. I can imagine. Thank you for that. And of course, you can email the programme whenever you like via our website, bbc.co.uk slash womanshour. Now, Marie Curie was born in Poland. Her real name is Marie Sklodowska Curie, and she won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 alongside her husband Pierre. Mary won it again after her husband's death on her own in 1911 for chemistry. Rosamund Pike

plays Mary in her latest film, Radioactive. So I asked Rosamund how much of a scientific education she'd had. I found science interesting, particularly chemistry. I think I was very drawn to the order and structure of the periodic table. I found it very satisfying. As someone who perhaps is a bit more unruly than I appear, I think when I see representations of order like that, I'm quite drawn to them because I don't feel I can sort of maintain or keep that order in my life. So that was, funnily enough, the science of the three that I was most compelled by. And then, so it was odd that I ended up playing Marie Curie. And I took chemistry lessons again, because I thought when you're playing someone with

as sort of radical and as fierce a brain as Marie Curie, it's very important that I would have some idea of what she might be thinking when we're shooting the scenes in the lab and also understand the context in which she was working. Because her discovery, and I think a lot of people in the UK won't actually know this, is that Marie Curie coined the term radioactivity. It was her work that led to the revealing of that phenomenon. She discovered two radioactive substances, polonium and radium, which she was, you know, as you can, if you discover a previously unknown element, you're allowed to name it. And she named them and put them on the periodic table. But the climate in which she was working, you know, it was at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. Electric light was lighting up Paris, where she was living for the first time,

you know, the Eiffel Tower was being built, the railways were starting to run and x-rays had just taken photographic impressions of the insides of our bodies. You know, that was enormously exciting and new. And, you know, so her discoveries were coming out of this sort of fervor and appetite for science, which perhaps we're seeing again now, as you rightly say. It is fascinating, Rosamund, that she was, well, she has been criticised for being a somewhat spiky and difficult character. What a cheek for a woman with such a mind to be in any way spiky or troublesome. I know. It's been a sort of amusing journey, really,

because you realise that so many films have been made about male geniuses. And people are so tolerant that, you know, if he's difficult, well, of course he's difficult. He's a genius. Or if he's rude or abrupt, then, you know, he's given a sort of free pass because he's a genius. And now we come to make a film about a female genius and suddenly it seems that the same free reign isn't accorded to her. And it's very, very revealing that we've sort of looked so benevolently on the sort of tortured or difficult soul of somebody who's brilliant as long as he's male. And Marie Curie, if she was sweet and lovely and kind, she would not have been Madame Curie. You know, she would not have got done what she got done. You know, she wouldn't have been the first female professor at the Sorbonne.

She wouldn't have been the only woman to win two Nobel Prizes. And when she'd won one in physics to retrain herself in chemistry in order to actually reveal the element that she proved existed and win a second Nobel Prize and she wouldn't have transformed the French interior ministry's approach during this during the First World War and taken x-ray machines out onto the battlefields I mean that was radical she went before the French ministers and said look you're you're chopping the young boys arms and legs off and you're amputating them and that's because you don't know where the shrapnel is located if you take my x-ray machines out onto the battlefields they can tell you and we can save many lives and and you know she did that towards the end of her life and it you know you don't become a force of nature like that if you're sweet you know some people might but but generally you know it wasn't really about that

for her no um but the film actually and i sort of half hesitate to mention this, does hint at the fact that perhaps she might not have excelled at motherhood. And even as I say that, I mean, you know, what genius male is a brilliant dad as well? Often they're not. Well, that's an interesting point. I mean, I think, you know, she even acknowledges that later on in our film that to her daughter, who became a brilliant scientist, Irene Curie, also won an Ehebal Prize. In a way, she was a very passionate person, Marie Curie, and I thought that was one of the reasons I was very drawn to play her. Yes, she was very direct. Yes, she had this sort of abrupt manner, which I actually find charming, because I find it a sort of eccentricity rather than something cold or rude. I find it very, very appealing. But in a way, the discovery of radium, which was made by her and her husband, was almost the child they treasured the most.

I think their scientific discovery and the birth of this element was sort of more significant in their lives than the birth of their children. And it's a difficult thing to talk about. But, you know, her and Irene, you know, there was a lot of respect between mother and daughter. And she had her way of caring for her children. You know, there's a scene in our film where she's measuring their heads and the length of their arms. And, you know, she's a scientist. So her way of loving was to take very, very detailed records of her children's growth. You know, she's a scientist. So her way of loving was to take very, very detailed records of her children's growth. You know, in a way you could say, God, that's so cold. But on another level, you could say, well, that's her way of showing, you know, great care. You're such a composed woman. Please tell me that in lockdown you've done a sort of, I mean, I just find myself endlessly eating, mindlessly gawping at my fridge and just eating cheese at about 5.30 at night.

Well, it's funny you should say that because I have wondered when I found my spoon in the Nutella jar. And I thought, I don't even like Nutella. What am I doing with the spoon in the Nutella jar? So, I mean, I think you have to look very benevolently on those sort of oddities that manifest. You know, you have to. Yes, there we go. Permission from Rosamund Pike to embrace your inner spoon in the Nutella jar during the course of lockdown. And if you'd like to see Radioactive, cinema's not available to us at the moment,

but the film is available digitally from the 15th of June and on DVD in July. Now, obviously, there are a number of Black Lives Matters protests and events planned across this weekend. We should say that lockdown does mean, of course, that you shouldn't gather in groups of more than six. And if you do go out to such an event, you need to maintain social distancing and wear a mask. But there's no doubt that lots of people will be going to such events over the weekend and including many young people. So on Friday's

edition of the programme, we talked about what advice you should give your children if they are intending to go to an event. I spoke to a parent, Talja Parkinson, who's from Surrey. She has three sons. Her oldest is 16 and has already been to a protest with some of his friends. And we also got advice from Monique Buffay, who is a lawyer and a member of the Black Protest Legal UK support team. Here she is. I think that the Black Lives Matter movement, although I can't speak for them, have said to activists that if they do want to go and protest, they should try to do it in their local area,

because there obviously are concerns around the pandemic. And I think the message is that you can protest, but just put your safety first as well and just consider what you can do to stay safe if you decide to protest. Right. In terms of young people attending events, a lot of them will never have been to anything like this before. What do they need to be aware of and what should their parents tell them? I think the first thing they should be aware of is their rights. They should keep a number of a trusted adult on them and a protester solicitor. Either they can write it on their arm or keep it in their pocket. People that they would

want to call if they were scared or if they did get arrested. They should make sure that they are properly prepared so they should take water, some snacks, keep a portable phone charger on them because they don't know necessarily how long they will be out protesting for. Making sure that they take warm clothes and wigs and keeping a notepad and pen on them in case they want to take notes or the shoulder numbers of the police in case they have any interaction with a police officer that doesn't make them feel comfortable or safe but knowing their rights is the most important thing right um stay with us monique talja um i know that you're you've got three children three sons actually um the youngest is very young but your other two are in their teens is that right uh yes they're a 12 year old and a 16 year old right and

and the 16 year old went out with his mates last weekend, didn't he, to an event? He did, yes. We'd gone as a family to one event in Basingstoke in Hampshire, but he wanted to go on his own with his school friends to another event, so he went on his own in Guildford. And were you concerned about that? Extremely concerned. I almost didn't let him go. But thanks to his stepdad, he, you know, he did go. But I think I was more concerned about his safety. And as Monique said, I think for me, it was more about who else was going to be there protesting as well. You know,

people outside of the Black Lives movement, was the biggest concern for me. So, and, you know, just hearing Monique speak now, it's some of the things that she said I wish I'd known before he went out to protest. But most of them were covered in that, you know, if you do get scared or if anything happens where you're not comfortable, make sure your phone is charged and give me a call.

I guess I've got a teenager myself. You're torn between obviously wanting them to be all right and perhaps warning them or telling them they can't go. Whilst also perhaps there would have been a part of you that would have been disappointed if he hadn't wanted to go. Yes, definitely. I think it was obviously, you know, we've spoken to him about especially where we live out in Surrey. You know, we're in a predominantly white neighbourhood, you know, keeping on top of him and, you know, making sure that he's aware of his worth and all of that and his history. So it would have been a bit hypocritical of me not to let him come, or not to let him go. But actually, you know, it was that being torn between the two, understanding that he's, you know, becoming a young adult and he needs to have his own voice, but at the same time still

being a mum and not wanting him to come to any harm of course and are his friends black white um what are they all white yeah yeah um and that was a bit of concern you know i did tell him you know try not to get separated from your friends because i know obviously he's grown up with these friends and they're very close but at the same time i in the back of my mind i was like you not you know we've always taught him that that you might not necessarily be treated the same way as your friends. So just be conscious of that. And it's difficult conversations that you have to have with your children in the sense of you're not like everybody else or the society might not perceive you the same way that they do your white friends. So just, you know, keep that at the back of your

mind, especially if, you know, don't get into any trouble, you know, respect the police, etc. So those things were at the forefront of my mind. And I think you'd gone as a family to another event, hadn't you? Yes, we had. So the day before, we went to an event in Basingstoke in Hampshire. And that was more of a protest in a park. So there wasn't a march per se. But again, I think it was important for us to go as a family because obviously my 12-year-old, I genuinely wouldn't let him go anywhere on his own or to a protest on his own. But it was important for us to be there as a family

to show us our support as well. Right. I'm interested, Monique, in the practicalities of what occurs at a protest like this. I know that you were at Whitehall last Saturday and you were kettled as a group, weren't you, by the police, which is a way of containing a group of protesters. Just talk us through that. Yes, it is. So both, I think, Saturday and Sunday, but as well as Friday evening, the police at the end of the day, I think towards eight o'clock started to kettle protesters that were left and and as you rightly said Jane kettling is a way of containing a group of protesters in one area but the problem is is that they will contain you for several hours and you're not allowed to leave even to go to the bathroom so it can be really

difficult and distressing for young people in particular especially young people as you mentioned who may never have protested before. Right, so how might you know that a kettle was about to start? Sure. So I think the first thing is keeping an eye on the police. So the police before kettling, if you notice a heavier police presence than there was before, that's a first sign.

Police will start to put on their riot gear before kettling and then also they'll start standing. Obviously, the police do tend to stand in lines, but they will start packing together shoulder to shoulder and not letting people through the line. So if you see that, that is a sign that they may kettle. And that would be a good idea to leave the area if you don't feel safe anymore. You can always leave the area and then maybe come back if you think that it's safer and you still want to keep protesting. But keep an eye on the police and most importantly, keep an eye on how you're feeling and how safe you're feeling. And if you want to call someone because you're

not sure, that's always fine as well. Right. I mean, the police, we should say, they get a lot of criticism. We know that they have an extremely difficult job to do. They've also received a great deal of praise for the way they dealt with the events last weekend. Is that fair? I think that everyone's experiences of the police are mixed, but I think the experiences of particularly black and brown young people in these protests have been generally quite negative. And I think that's really problematic, especially because these protests in particular are about police brutality after the murder of George Floyd. So of course the police are doing a difficult job but the police also should be being mindful that there are lots of young people at these protests who haven't protested before

and we did have reports of really young people you know under 16 under 14 who were cattled who weren't allowed to leave and we did have a couple of young people who we made them known to the police officers that they were young and very vulnerable, and they ended up being arrested for that. So that's also not fair and potentially not lawful. Yes. We should say, of course, that attacks on the police are utterly unacceptable, and they did occur too over the weekend. That may be true. I personally didn't actually view any attacks on the police. So all in all, there is no doubt that young people are going to want to attend protests

over the weekend. The advice from you, Monique, is go, be aware, be sensible and stick with your mates. Yes, make sure that you're in a group of less than six if you are going with friends. And I think know your rights. There are really good resources online that parents and young people should read. The Liberty website has lots of information about how to prepare for a protest and what your rights are. Equally, the organisation Green in Black Cross and Black Protest Legal Support UK on our Twitter page are posting information to keep young people and people who are going to protest safe. Monique Buffet and before that, parent Talja Parkinson. Now, on Monday morning's programme, we hope to be talking about the government's plans for summer schools. The Education Secretary,

Gavin Williamson, says he hopes to be setting out plans for pupils in England to go to summer schools over the holidays. This, of course, is after the government decided not to get all primary pupils back to school for a month before the summer break. So how will summer schools go down with your children? Do you think they'll go? Are you planning to persuade them to go? How do you think it'll all work out? Email the programme via the website, if you can, bbc.co.uk slash womansl. We'd love to hear from you and also about how your children are reacting to that possibility.

Now, fertility clinics were told last month that they could reopen as long as social distancing measures were in place. But going without access to fertility treatment has left thousands of people worried they might have run out of a chance to conceive. Research is now underway on the impact of the lockdown on people using fertility clinics, on their relationships and on their emotions. The research is being done by Zeynep Girtin, who's from the Institute for Women's Health at University College London. I talked to her this week and to Rachel Cuttings from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. And we also got the experience of Sital Savla, who's just restarted her fertility treatment at the age of 38. My husband and I, we had a surprise natural pregnancy about four years ago. Unfortunately, that ended in an early miscarriage.

And after that devastating loss, we spent about a year visiting our GP, having tests and various fertility tests, and embarked on our first round of IVF. Unfortunately, that was unsuccessful. And since we didn't qualify for funding for a second round, we then went to a private clinic and underwent two additional rounds, which were pretty intense and gruelling. Unfortunately, they also failed. And at the time, we started talking about donor eggs. And since our clinic only offers known donor cycles, we swapped clinics for one that offers anonymous cycles.

And our current and fourth cycle started at the end of February, at a time when coronavirus was making global headlines on a daily basis. So we were expecting our treatment to be affected in some way. And sure enough, it was after the egg collection. Right. I know you've written a very powerful blog about all this. And you really lay it out there about the invasive nature of all this. And it's just, it has such a colossal impact on mind and body, doesn't it? That's right.

It just affects you on so many different levels and it does depend on the clinic and the protocols that you're following. And I've seen a difference in the treatment that we've received, but definitely the two cycles that we had at our previous clinic really took it out of us emotionally, physically, financially, of course,

as well. So where are you at now, quite simply, in terms of your infertility treatment? We had our egg collection back in March and I resumed treatment last week, actually. So now we are preparing for our frozen embryo transfer. So your private treatment and your private clinic is open again? Yes that's right. Right okay I think we can bring in now Rachel Cuttings from the HFEA. What is happening in terms of clinics reopening or not? Are all private clinics now open but not all NHS fertility clinics? Well overall what we've looked at is all the treatment centres, those clinics that are providing treatment services to patients and overall at the moment 87% of those are open and then of those mainly it is a lot more in the private sector so 94% of all private clinics are

open and 76% of all NHS services are open. Now that does mean that they've been given the green light to open and they can provide treatment in a safe way. But it might not be that they've actually started treatment yet. To be blunt, if you're at a private clinic, you are more likely to be getting treatment than if you're relying on the NHS. It is actually that simple, isn't it? There are definitely more private centres that are open, but when we did look at the early stages, the number of treatments that were being done,

it was more or less an equal mix between NHS and private last week. How can you do this treatment with social distancing? Clinics have had to obviously adapt their services dramatically, and what we did for the HFEA is that we asked all centres to review absolutely every aspect of their service and their clinic and it was a very detailed, 50 questions in a detailed questionnaire to make sure that they could apply all the procedures and put policies in place so that patients could be treated safely. And it may be

that some patients are happy and will go ahead and have treatments now. Others may decide and we know that some patients have decided to wait a few months until things have calmed down a little bit. And very briefly, who takes priority? That's up for an individual clinic to decide. But if you were already undergoing treatment, like Cetal, for example, you would be moved to the top of the queue? You would be able to resume where you left off? Well, that would be up to the individual clinic to decide.

If you'd already started treatment and you'd had the medication, then it may be that you would be treated first. But it may be that clinics can't treat the same numbers as usual. It might be a little bit delayed more than not usual. But delay is so significant here, isn't it? And a woman might go over a significant birthday. What happens to those women who are now, in quotes, too old for treatment?

Well, that would have to be for the individual clinics and the patients to talk to their clinics about. It may be that clinics would prioritise patients if they were approaching a significant birthday, or it would be that they would talk, if they were NHS funded, they would talk to the local CCG and see if the funding can be extended. That's Rachel Cuttings from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Zeynep Gürtün, I know you're undertaking research into all this now.

Who have you talked to so far and what have they told you? We have an online anonymous questionnaire that all fertility patients are very welcome to fill out and give us their opinions and responses. And so far we've had about 400 people fill that out. And, you know, there's a huge range of worries, and there's a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. And many of them have told us that they've had real difficulties trying to communicate with their clinic and trying to just find out when they'll be able to resume treatment, who will have priority, how long they might have to wait,

how their treatment might change. So I think a lot of patients are finding they're feeling very out of control and very powerless as part of their fertility treatment, which is at the best of times a really difficult and challenging situation to be in. I just want to read briefly a paragraph from an email we've had from an anonymous listener but I know who you are and thank you for writing and I hope you're listening and you're okay today. She says that she and her husband have been trying for a baby for 17 months. We are puzzled, upset and desperate. I must admit I've really struggled to listen to some of your programs about the difficulty of being pregnant and giving birth in Covid-19. Many of our friends are proudly showing off their bumps.

Infertility feels like such a shame at the best of times, but even more so now. I don't think that view will be uncommon amongst people who are having fertility treatment. And also we should say, Zeynep, that there has been a lot of sometimes, I guess, rather thoughtless chat over the last couple of weeks of the night so-called nightmare of homeschooling you know what a dreadful thing

it is I'm stuck at home with my children blah blah blah we've all got to stop that those of us who are in that position I guess yeah absolutely so some of the women who filled out our questionnaire have actually said that they've been really hurt by some friends being insensitive you know not not meaning to be hurtful I'm sure but saying things like oh you're so lucky you don't have actually said that they've been really hurt by some friends being insensitive, you know, not not meaning to be hurtful, I'm sure, but saying things like, oh, you're so lucky you don't have to deal with small children, or you have no idea how impossible it is to school small children. And, you know, these are couples who are desperate to become parents. So to have that kind of feedback from friends can be really hurtful. And also people saying things like, it's been very difficult to watch on social media, people posting mum challenges and all the sort of outdoor and creative activities

they're doing with their children. It just sort of really brings it home that not only are they not parents themselves when they wish to be, but they really at the moment have no idea when they're going to get to try to conceive again. Well, we heard Rachel say that from what she gathers at the HFEA, most private and NHS clinics are open in some form. Is that what you're hearing? Yes. And the HFEA actually have a sort of a comprehensive list on their website of all the clinics that have been given the go ahead to open. But as Rachel said herself, the fact that these clinics have been given the green light doesn't actually tell us how many treatment cycles they're doing, which patients they're seeing. And as you asked Rachel, I think some of the patients who were midway through treatment

might now be in a better position to resume. But what about all those patients that were on waiting lists? Are they going to have to wait even longer? So there is a lot of uncertainty about what actually that means and how many patients clinics are going to be able to see if they're trying to honour these social distancing requirements. Can people still get involved in your research? They can, can't they? Yes, absolutely. And we would love to hear from as many people as possible just so that we can put as good procedures in place for the future for supporting patients. And they can access it by going to it's bit.ly forward slash Corona Fertility Study. And I would love to hear from as many people as possible.

Zeynep, thank you very much. And Sital, finally, just a really open question to you. How are you? Are you finding this really tough? As Zeynep touched on, it is hard when you see all these challenges on social media. You hear pregnancy announcements and news of births as well and you're happy for them. At the same time, you're struggling because you're at the starting block and you're not getting any further and it's also out of your control. There are so many unknowns when it comes to IVF anyway and it was bitterly disappointing when we heard that our treatment would be affected. Grateful overall that we were only delayed by a month. And I do hear of women and men whose treatments have been indefinitely postponed. And

there are issues with funding or in case of surrogacy as well, babies being born abroad, and they were unable to be there. So it's having a lot of consequences. Sital Savla, and you also heard from Rachel Cuttings from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and from Zeynep Gürtün, who's doing that research at University College London. Now, why, oh, why, oh, why did it take Odysseus a decade to get back to his wife on Ithaca after the Trojan War?

The historian Bettany Hughes decided to make her own Greek odyssey in a series for Channel 5, following the route allegedly taken by Odysseus, and she found the seas a little choppier than many of us might have expected. It was a surprise that we'd sort of engineered for ourselves because we wanted to make the journey across winter because you hear in the story of Odysseus and the Odyssey that he has all kinds of challenges, that he meets monsters and storms and is shipwrecked.

So we thought it would just be making it too easy for ourselves as we went during the summer. That was interesting because we really were caught up in waves nine metres high, in sea storms that were two notches off a hurricane and even an earthquake in fact. So we sort of began to understand why it might have taken Odysseus 10 years rather than the kind of 30 or so days actually if he just had an easy sail that could have taken him from Troy back to home and Ithaca. Now, it only took you six months. Could it have been that Odysseus stayed with several women on his journey back to the patient Penelope,

including the goddess Calypso, with whom he spent seven years? Yes, he does spend seven years with Calypso and we're told that they made love every night and this was one of the reasons that he didn't want to leave her and travel home. It's a really fascinating story that actually, I mean, it's one of the reasons we love the Odyssey, we love these myths because they give us truths both about ourselves and about history and in the story of

Calypso who's this beautiful nymph who tempts him in, a goddess who treats him, it's as if he's arrived in a Greek heaven and she offers him immortality but actually Odysseus makes this choice. He knows that it's better to live and to live with challenges and threats and trauma rather than to almost give in and live in this kind of Elysian way with Calypso. It does take him seven years to make that decision, I have to say, Jenny, but eventually he manages to tear himself away and make it back to his beloved home and to his beloved wife, Penelope. Now, you did go to 13 different Greek islands, including Samos, and the temple there is claimed by the Greeks

to be the largest in the world. Let's just hear a little bit of you there. This has to be one of the most romantic places in Greece, and it's got a pretty romantic story attached. It was said that this was the birthplace of the goddess Hera, and it's also where she married the king of the gods, Zeus, making her the kind of first lady of the Greek pantheon. Now, you mention her relationship with Zeus, which you point out in the programme, it was somewhat a somewhat fiery relationship. Why was it important to tell the story of her fiery relationship with

Zeus and the story of her son? Well, I think because when Hera is described typically in the story of the myth, she's described as a jealous wife, which we thought was frankly outrageous because, you know, you're dealing with 3,000 years of misogyny here because Hera is only annoyed because Zeus keeps on slipping off from Mount Olympus and going having affairs with nymphs and assorted mortals. So actually her rage and anger is perfectly righteous and there's one myth. It's one of those things, it's why these stories matter

because they're actually helping us to kind of understand how we should behave. They're moral tales, as well as tales of fantasy and history. And they tell us that Ahira was so furious that she manages to channel her rage and to give birth by herself to this explosive son, Hephaestus, who is the god of blacksmithry and forges and volcanoes and so he is an eruptive creature. There's a really interesting story about Hephaestus that he was said to have been born lame or became lame and we actually think it's one of those moments where myth and history graze because ancient blacksmiths used to use arsenic a lot in their blacksmithry and Arcanisosis

can make you lame so it's a little hint in the story of the the god Hephaestus of what was actually going on on the ground in the ancient Greek world. You go to the site of a bronze age sacrifice which is reminiscent of the story of Iphigenia. What did you actually find there? Well, this was really very chilling, very sobering. So I think we have this slightly Pavlovian response when we think of ancient Greece being these beautiful blue seas and wonderful, stunning landscapes and a kind of golden age. But this was a place that was brutal as well as brilliant and in the myth stories so in the Iliad in particular and in the tragedians when they write these

extraordinary Greek tragedies we hear about human sacrifice and we hear about the sacrifice of young women so if a janea exactly as you say is the classic example so we're told that this daughter of Agamemnon the great Greek general was sacrificed by her own father so that the Greek warriors could get fair winds to sail to Troy and eventually to be victorious in the Trojan war. It's a terrible story very hard to countenance but when we were on Cte we went to a mansion which had suffered terrible earthquake damage you can actually see the splits in the floor from the earthquake and the people at the time we're talking about uh 3200 or 3300 years ago reacted by making sacrifice of animals but also there is the decapitated skull of a young woman.

And the skull has actually been pulled open as if it's imitating the earth being pulled open by the earthquake. So we're certain that this is a young woman, possibly a young princess, who was sacrificed in order to try to keep the power of the gods and nature on side. So we must kind of imagine this world as having horror within it. And isn't it fascinating that it's a young woman who then turns up in myths, in the story of Iphigenia, in the story of Polyxena, also from the Trojan War,

that it's a young woman who is chosen both as the most sacred creature and as the ultimate offering, but as the victim of human sacrifice. That is the historian Bettany Hughes. Well we can't go to Greece but it's not an enormous ask to go to Channel 5 where you can enjoy a Greek odyssey with Bettany over the coming weeks. Now to Florence Given who is a 21 year old artist and writer and a feminist influencer from Plymouth. In 2019, she was Cosmopolitan's Influencer of the Year. She's got over 400,000 followers on Instagram. And her first book is called Women Don't Owe You Pretty.

Now, that title comes from the lexicographer Erin McKean. She says, That's the quote I asked Florence why it had inspired her so much. I think that quote encouraged me to analyse how I show up in the world and how everyday rituals such as shaving my body hair, putting on makeup, making myself quote-unquote presentable, I realised how much of it was a performance to receive better treatment, not just by men but by the world in general. And to analyse prettiness, I also had to analyze how me existing in the body that I do as a thin white cisgender woman I actually have a lot more

privilege whether that's comfortable to acknowledge it or not in so many interactions in my life just because I exist in the body that I do and because it reflects the beauty standard that has been set by racist patriarchy and although women experience this kind of um this pressure to perform prettiness to receive better treatment uh marginalized women such as black women and trans women and fat women experience this a lot more in society and I think it's really uncomfortable for women to acknowledge that we have this kind of privilege, because first we have to call ourselves pretty, which a lot of us don't want to do, right? We don't want to acknowledge that we look good, because we've been encouraged to kind of shy away from that and point to our flaws instead. Can I just, I remember something,

graffiti on the toilet at my university back in the early 80s, which I think I've quoted before on the programme, which was women who shave are collaborators. Now, I remember reading that in 1982, 83. This isn't new, but you know, you're onto something here because I did shave my body hair. What was that all about? I mean, I can tell you exactly what that's about. In the early 1900s, Gillette wanted to make a lot of money selling razors to women and there simply wasn't a market for it. Women before the early 1920s simply did not shave their body hair. And it wasn't until Gillette planted the seed of insecurity in women's minds through manipulative ad space on billboards and in magazines,

women's magazines that they know women go to to feel better about themselves, to tell them that, oh, you're going to start shaving your body hair now. And it's just become a norm. It's not normal for women to be these hairless angels. It's a capitalist insecurity thing because they want to make money. And I think also, again, going back to my argument about prettiness, I don't care if a woman wants to shave her body hair. That's her choice. And also all women understand that, OK, I feel like most choices that women make now, if they're aware of feminism and of systemic oppression, they make the decision of either do I apply feminist morals and feel better that I'm a better feminist, or do I conform to just survive? And I think it's a survival tactic, and I grow out all my body hair,

but that's something for me, that's something that I love, it's something that has encouraged me to feel very comfortable in my body because I resented it for a while. OK, sounds patronising when I say you're only 21. You could change your mind, I guess, as any of us could at any point in our lives. Of course, it's your body, your choice. That's the whole point. And I think it's very important, though, for women to understand where these decisions come from. Yes, you're shaving your body hair, but are you doing it because you like the way it looks? Or are you doing it because of how people

look at you? And I think a lot of the time time women don't really look at themselves. You know, when we talk about the male gaze theory, we talk about how women don't look at themselves in the mirror, they look at themselves being looked at. That's a quote by John Berger. And it's something that I constantly think about. I rarely do things as a woman without thinking about what I look like while I'm doing it. I know that you are passionate about being as inclusive as possible, but you are aware of your own privilege. Of course. You've already said this, but I'm just going to quote another passage from the book. I sit high on the scale of desirability, being slim, non-disabled, white, cisgender and feminine.

People open up to me and see me as nice and innocent before I even get a chance to open my mouth. Tell me more about that. So there's this huge trope and stereotype which was perpetuated intentionally by racists in America. For example, the film Birth of a Nation depicted a white woman being chased around by a black man, although it wasn't a black man. It was a white man dressed up as a black man. So he was in blackface. And that film set the stereotype as black men being sexually deviant and white women being innocent. And this was to instill fear in the public about black men. And we see this today with white women calling the police on black men simply for existing. And that quote in my book about how I'm viewed as nice and innocent, it's a direct link. You know, it exists in dribbles today. Of course, it's not as extreme as that as it is today, but it still exists in that people approach

me because I'm white. People open up to me because I'm white. People see me as innocent. It's disgusting. People are more likely to open up to me because of my whiteness. So I speak up about very passionate things, but people almost view this passion as some kind of cute thing. Whereas when black women speak up about their very righteous anger, they are often dismissed as the quote unquote, angry black woman. I mean, this is a difficult one. Your book, you've been published for a start at the age of 21 you are cosmopolitan's 2019 influence of the year you have over 400 000 followers on instagram you would probably acknowledge that none of this would have been as likely to happen had you been a young black woman absolutely absolutely it

wouldn't have because of the systemic disadvantages that black women have racism affects absolutely every single aspect of our lives can i ask just just a bit about your own family? You have a brother, I know. Are you telling him all this stuff? And how does he react to it? Of course, my brother gets daily lectures whenever I see him about this kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, I'm not responsible for him or his behaviour. And I think you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. We have to take on that work ourselves. And I think it's a balancing act of being able to encourage people and give them the tools and the resources. And as white people, we have an access to white people that black people simply do not have because they are dismissed so often for bringing up the same issues. So within my family, I do have a lot more tolerance because I have the privilege of having that tolerance with them.

So I have the privilege of being able to slowly talk them through things to get them to the place that they need to be to be anti-racist. The thoughts of Florence Given, whose book is called Women Don't Owe You Pretty. A mixed reaction to Florence, lots of support for her but there were also people like Caroline come on, Florence at 21 isn't saying anything original at all we heard all this in the 60s and 70s yes, but not all of us, not even me

we weren't all around to hear it all in the 60s and 70s Sarah says, Florence I salute you what a wonderful person I'm a traditionally built 60 year old, says Sarah. And another Sarah, I love this interview. The beauty industry has so much to answer for. We can look however we want. Well done, Florence. Thanks to everybody who's contributed to Women's Hour this week. And I hope you can join us live after the news at 10 o'clock on Monday morning. 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'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 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.