Woman's Hour - Ruth Perry's sister Julia Waters, America Ferrera, 'Stuffed'

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

An Ofsted inspection "contributed" to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry. That’s the conclusion of senior coroner Heidi Connor. This is the first time Ofsted has been listed as a contributing factor in the death of a head teacher. Ofsted are yet to comment on the verdict. Ruth Perry had been head of Caversham Primary School in Berkshire for 13 years when she took her own life in January, ahead of an inspection report being made public which had downgraded the school from Outstanding to Inadequate, based on safeguarding concerns. The school was regraded this summer to Good. Her death ignited a national debate about the mental health of school leaders and the pressure they are under in terms of inspections. Anita is joined by Ruth Perry’s sister, Professor Julia Waters.America Ferrera is an award-winning actress, a director, producer and activist. She shot to stardom with her roles in Ugly Betty and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, but you'll most recently have seen her playing Gloria, an assistant to the chief executive of Mattel, in the blockbuster Barbie film, who delivers a powerful monologue on the double standards of being a woman. America joins Anita to talk about how she didn't "set out to be a role model, or to break barriers, or to have a career about defying the norm.” Food has revolved around women for centuries. History of food can provide us with a lens through which we can discover untold stories of women: their joys, struggles and ever-changing roles in society. Pen Vogler, author of “Stuffed," explores such themes in her new book and examines the history and culture of British food through political, social and global upheavals. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rebecca Myatt Studio manager: Duncan Hannant

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Acting royalty and a woman changing the face of Hollywood. Actor, director and activist America Ferreira is joining me this morning to discuss, among other things, that speech she delivers in the Barbie film. You have to have money, but you can't ask for money because that's crass. You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean. You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas.

You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. Looking forward to that. Also, Penn Vogler has written a book called Stuffed. It's an in-depth look into the history of food on this island. So this morning, I'd like to hear your food stories, please. What we eat and how we eat it has changed so much in one lifetime. Who's responsible for the food choices in your house?

Buying it? Preparing it? Is it you? Do you enjoy it or not? Do you just have to get on with it? Also, what are your memories of who made the food when you were growing up? With food prices rising, are you making different choices about what you can and can't put on the table and who has what to eat? All your food stories, please, this morning. 84844 is the number to text as usual you can also email me by going to our website or you can whatsapp me on 03700 100 444 and of course you can always get in touch with us via our social media it's at bbc woman's hour that text number once again for your food stories 84844 but first an ofsted inspection contributed to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry.

That's the conclusion of senior coroner Heidi Connor, delivered yesterday following a five-day inquest in which she heard from family members, school colleagues, the Ofsted inspectors and medical professionals. This is the first time Ofsted has been listed as a contributing factor in the death of a headteacher. Ruth Perry had been head of Caversham Primary School in Berkshire for 13 years when she took her own life in January, ahead of an inspection report being made public which had downgraded the school from outstanding to inadequate based on safeguarding concerns.

The school was regraded this summer to good. Her death ignited a national debate about the mental health of school leaders. Ofsted Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman has apologised for the distress that Mrs Perry undoubtedly experienced as a result of our inspection and said that Ofsted was making several changes to help reduce the pressure felt by school leaders. Well, I'm joined now by Ruth Perry's sister, Professor Julia Waters. Julia, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us here on Woman's Hour. I'd like to start by getting your reaction to the coroner's verdict that an Ofsted inspection likely contributed to Ruth's death. Thank you for having me on this morning um clearly there's no outcome from an inquest

that's a positive one if you like but we were relieved and pleased that the coroner came to the conclusion she came to, the conclusion that everyone who knew Ruth knew already. Ruth wasn't the first headteacher or teacher to take her life after an Ofsted inspection. But as you said, it is the first time that an Ofsted inspection has actually been included on the coroner's form as linked to Ruth's death. And actually, as far as we're concerned, it was the reason for Ruth's death. So I'm hoping that the

fact that that has been publicly and officially legally acknowledged will finally make Ofsted make the changes that are needed to make the inspection system reliable, consistent and safe. I'd like to pick out some other bits of what the coroner concluded and just to get your thoughts. And they said that parts of the inspection lacked fairness, respect and sensitivity, and that it was at times rude and intimidating. I mean, that must have been incredibly difficult to hear. Well, it was difficult to hear, but obviously I had heard that from Ruth herself last year. I suppose when, I mean, I've read all of the disclosure evidence that was submitted to the coroner in detail. So having seen that evidence from all parties, it confirmed, but with such brutal realism, what Ruth had already told us. There was always, I suppose, that niggling doubt

that maybe it was just Ruth who'd perceived that inspection to be as it was, but her colleagues who were there not only witnessed the terrible impact it had on Ruth, but were also profoundly upset and traumatised by the experience themselves. And to read their testimony, to hear them in court talking about the sustained painful levels of stress that they were all under during that inspection. The unpleasant experience of meetings with the inspectors confirmed kind of what I suspected and knew already, that there was something just profoundly wrong with the way that inspection was conducted, but actually with a

system that allows there to be inspections like that. Well, and the evidence also revealed very little training for inspectors to identify and deal with anxiety and distress in school leaders. But Ofsted say that they're now started to develop training for all the inspectors and recognising and responding to visible signs of anxiety. Is it enough? No, no. I mean, the National Director for Education, Christopher Russell, gave evidence at the inquest, during which he repeatedly claimed that Ofsted had always been very conscious of the stress that inspections cause and had included training for inspectors in its training materials, central to their training materials. The untruth of that was exposed in the inquest. The coroner asked Ofsted to produce these training materials.

So I, like the coroner, have seen both the training materials that were used at the time of the inspection at Caversham Primary, this time last year, and the training materials that have been used since the beginning of this school year, which allegedly have brought in changes. All they have done is sort of pay lip service to the fact that inspections can be stressful, asking questions like, you know, how could you get this information while minimizing stress and anxiety? But there's no rigorous, useful guide either to spotting signs of anxiety or how to stress how to respond to it or what options might be open either to the inspectors or to school staff if sorry if stress and anxiety are detected and yeah i mean in ruth's, the inspectors themselves identified it.

It's in their evidence. I mean, absolutely horrifying to read some of the accounts that they themselves have of Ruth's response in meetings. They saw that she was distressed. Her colleagues knew she was distressed, but there was nothing, nothing was done to adapt the inspection to that, to accommodate that. Nobody was aware of this mythical creature, as the coroner called it, of the option to pause an inspection, for instance.

So, sorry, I mean, a long answer to your question. The training that is in place now, that was in place a year ago, is woefully inadequate to cope with the stress that Ofsted themselves acknowledge is caused by inspections. And Amanda Spielman's suggestion yesterday, in response to those utterly damning conclusions of the coroner, that they're going to do a day's training next week to train their inspectors. I mean, come on. I think anybody can see that's just inadequate. Something far more fundamental is required than that. We will be coming to Ofsted's response to this as well. But there's something else that I'd like to

get your thoughts on that was highlighted by the coroner. And that was the rule of confidentiality that was in place at the time, which meant that Ruth could have talked to other headteacher friends about the report. Well, she couldn't talk to other headteacher friends. So there was this whole network of supporting women and supported women that she could have leaned on, but she wasn't allowed to? No, it was very clear in the guidance what she and her colleagues were told during the inspection, what was written in the most stark terms on the draft report. If you share any of the information from this draft report, it will be considered a serious breach of confidentiality and action will be taken. I can't remember the exact words, but that was the tone, that was the gist. So particularly in a small primary school, I mean, Caption Primary is a small primary school. The senior leadership team is four people. Two of those were the deputy heads who were part time. So, you know, in a school, it could be just three people who were themselves part of that inspection, who themselves was allowed to share that outcome with were her senior leadership team, the chair of governors and the local authority.

I'm sure anyone can see, we've talked a lot, I've been talking a lot about the power imbalance within the Ofsted system, the education system. But clearly here, Ruth, the only people Ruth was allowed to discuss the inspection result with were her employers or the staff whom she led and who were looking to her for leadership and guidance, who themselves were traumatised by that inspection. So actually the people it would have been helpful for her to talk to, absolutely, her wonderful, wonderful colleagues, Readinghead teachers, whom I've come to know this last year, didn't know before, she wasn't able to discuss it with them,

the people who more than anyone really could understand what it felt like and might have been able to offer her both emotional and practical support. They've changed that rule now. Are you satisfied? They've kind of changed it. As the coroner said, there are still elements of that. They have loosened the confidentiality requirement, but they have still not made explicit, for instance, that a headteacher can share that outcome with medical professionals. I mean, looking through the evidence of Ruth reaching out to her GP to mental health services. And even then, she felt unable to name the school to talk about what that judgment was, even when seeking medical help. So the coroner has pointed out that yes, there have been improvements. Ofsted have not just clarified matters, which is what they were trying to argue, they have changed the policy, having, thank goodness, recognised that that confidentiality requirement was inhumane. But there are still elements of clarification that are needed to lift that particular burden from headteachers. Now, the coroner also pointed to the current Ofsted system,

which allows for the single word judgment of inadequate to be applied equally to a school rated otherwise good, but with issues which could be remedied by the time the report was published as to a school which is dreadful in all respects. Do you think single phrase judgments will change? I sincerely hope so. It has been one of, if not the sticking point, I've had many meetings now, long meetings with the Secretary of State

and the Department for Education. And we've had some tense moments when we're both kind of saying, that's our red line. So it's, you know, government policy saying that's our red line. So it's government policy that this is how they judge not just schools, but care homes, hospitals, GP practices and so on. And they're not going to budge. And I, on the other hand, and it seems the most of the teaching profession arguing that without removing those single word judgments many of the other tweaks that have been offered so far will be ineffective that's the one thing that would be easy to to change and would make the most difference in one fell swoop get rid of the single word

judgment and then many of the other issues around that sort of public shaming the humiliation because that one word inadequate that that loomed large didn't it for ruth oh god yeah oh god i mean it's not just that it's one word, it's that word. That word. I mean, I work in education myself, higher education. We have accountability systems and reviews and so on as well. But the idea that in education it is ever acceptable, to use that word, inadequate, to sum something up. If I wrote on an undergraduate essay at the end of it, inadequate, however shoddy I might personally think their work was, I would get shot down. That would not be allowed. And rightly so. How can you sum up one undergraduate essay, one student essay with

the word inadequate, let alone a whole school? And as Ruth felt, her whole career, her vocation, sort of destroyed with one word and with that word. I am going to just read out the Ofsted statement from the Chief Inspector, Amanda Spillman. She said, Ruth Perry's death was a tragedy that deeply affected many people. My thoughts remain with her family, the wider Caversham school community She said, to the way we work to help produce the pressure felt by school leaders. We will do more. The coroner highlighted a number of areas of concern. We will work hard to address each of these as soon as we can. And we're starting that work straight away.

She was, the inquest heard about the pressures Ruth felt and that she articulated in the time after the inspection and before her death, not only about how to face her staff and the parents after the downgrading, but also worrying about wider repercussions that that word, the inadequate judgment would have had, for example, local house prices potentially falling in the area. Just huge weight of responsibility. The last time you saw her alive was on Christmas Day.

How did she seem to you then? She was haunted. I mean, she really was from the very start of that inspection until her death. She was complete. She could think of nothing else. So she was trying very hard to put on a brave face, but it was very unconvincing. Her children were there, my children were there.

We wanted to have a fun family Christmas, and we did our best, but Ruth's heart wasn't in it, and it was very difficult for all of us. I think we need to talk. Sorry, sorry. I know it's difficult. I just would like to talk about the woman behind the headlines. What was she like? She was lovely.

She was lovely. She was a very human, unpretentious, genuine person. She had no front. She went into education because she liked to do good because she liked to nurture children. She had a very holistic attitude to children's education not just the curriculum and knowledge but actually thinking about their broader development and creativity and extracurricular activities she yeah, she was a friend to so many people.

I mean, I think being a headteacher is a very, very hard, isolated and isolating job. And I think there were probably times when Ruth just wanted to be a mum like everybody else and just, you know know live in the community like everybody else um but being a head teacher always comes to that sort of level of responsibility and local celebrity even everybody knew her so um but I think everybody knew her as a genuinely kind well-meaning, hardworking, successful person. And this is what is just so shocking about what happened to Ruth, that an inspection of a school that everybody locally knows

is an absolutely excellent school, that an inspection at that school could reduce my happy, healthy, successful sister to touch the depth of despair. She could see no way out. It's just a terrible indictment of a system that's meant to raise standards, improve lives. And she was married and had two daughters and you've taken on a huge level of responsibility as well as her sister. No doubt the death was devastating for the whole family,

but you're dealing with all of this and your own grief. Yeah, it's not easy. I do think sometimes the fact that I have, yeah, well, it's not that I've decided to do this, to sort of campaign for a want of a better word, I don't feel like I have any choice. It's something I have to do. Something was so terribly wrong with what happened to Ruth but within that system that I have to do this to put it right. But just because I can still speak with clarity about what happened and my analysis of what is so wrong with the system and responses to my calls for change. That doesn't matter. That doesn't mean that it's not hard.

It doesn't mean that I'm not still grieving. And on some levels, there's a lot of grief that still needs to come out, that a lot of my grief is still on hold because of doing this. It's added an extra burden, an extra layer of complication. But it has to be done. Is there anything you'd like to say about Amanda Spielman's comments on this programme two weeks ago? I can't say I was surprised. Amanda Spielman hasn't spoken often publicly, but every time she has, she has displayed a staggering lack of emotional intelligence. Can I just say what she said to Emma?

She said there was a very sad case in the spring, which has been used as a pivot to try and discredit what we do. The quality of what we do underneath has been solid for years. We have really strong feedback on our inspection framework. I expect they're getting some strong feedback now. Yes, I heard that. I heard it live. As I was just saying to you, the fact that I have been speaking on the media doesn't mean that I'm not still struggling with my grief. And actually hearing Amanda Spielman speak on Women's Hour was the first time that I have actually screamed. I have a counsellor, I have a grief counsellor who said, if you need to scream, and I screamed and I screamed loud and long. And it wasn't, you know, expletive laden outburst at the crass insensitivity of what she did. It felt visceral. It felt painful. I really hope my

parents weren't listening. They listened to Radio 4. I really hope they weren't listening then. It was such a kick in the guts. And just a few days before the inquest starts, and here she is again in public media, casting aspersions on me me on those like me who can see there's something wrong with the inspection system suggesting that Ruth's death's been used as a pivot to discredit Ofsted I mean it's outrageous Ofsted are doing a very good job at discrediting themselves they don't need us to come along and do that. Ruth's death was a direct result of an Ofsted inspection. I've been trying for the last 11 months, it's 11 months ago today that Ruth took her own life,

to point out the fatal flaws in Ofsted's inspection system and been ignored. And that the chief inspector herself can go on, use her public voice and public platform to make such a crass and outrageous claim is just unacceptable. Well, there's a new chief inspector starting in January, Sir Martin Oliver. What's your message to him? I have a meeting in the diary to meet him,

very first week of his appointment in January. I very much hope that he is conscious of the massive challenge he's facing. I, you know, what is needed to respond, not just to my sister's death, as though that isn't terrible and devastating enough, but to the mental health crisis in the teaching profession, which has exposed the outpouring of anger and upset and rage against Ofsted. I hope that the new chief inspector understands the strength of feeling and the need for massive change, not just for tweaks. And I have to ask, how are you all? We're struggling. We're getting by. We're generally a resilient bunch, so we're managing, but it's hard.

And, yeah, Ruth's loss is immense to all of us. It is something that can't be filled and we just have to find some way of moving on. And yeah, yeah. A local, a neighbour spoke to me quite soon after I first spoke out. A lovely neighbour who'd lost her son in quite traumatic circumstances. And she said to me quite soon after I first spoke out. A lovely neighbour who'd lost her son in quite traumatic circumstances. And she said to me, I think the one word of advice that has been most meaningful, and she just said, life has a way of pulling you forward.

And that's just what it feels now. Life just pulls us forward, pulls us further away from that. But, you know, it's why it's so important that we ensure that things change so that no other family has to go through this. Julia, I would like to thank you very much for speaking to me this morning on Woman's Hour. Thank you. That was Ruth Perry's sister, Professor Julia Waters. 84844 is the number to text

with anything you'd like to talk to me about on the programme that you're hearing this morning. I am going to read out the statement from the Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan. She said, My heart goes out to Ruth's family, friends and the school community. Her death was a tragedy

that not only shocked the local community, but also the wider sector and beyond. It's clear from the coroner's findings that lessons need to be learned. We've worked closely with Ruth's family as well as with Ofsted to introduce key reforms and further support for our school leaders. I'm extremely grateful to Ruth's sister, Julia, and her friends for working so closely with us to introduce these changes. Ofsted is fundamental to making sure children are safe and receive the education they deserve. Together, we will look

closely at the coroner's recommendations to consider further changes to make sure we have an inspection system that supports schools and teachers and ultimately secure Ruth's legacy. 84844, that text number once again. 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 was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.

Now on to my next guest. She wears many hats from award-winning actor, director, producer, to activist. America Ferreira shot to stardom with her roles in ugly betty and the sisterhood of the traveling pants but you'll most recently have seen her playing gloria an assistant to the chief executive of mattel in the blockbuster barbie who delivers a powerful monologue i would say the powerful monologue on the double standards of being a woman america said i didn't set out to be a role model or to break barriers or to have a career about defying the norm. And yet some say that's exactly what she's done. America, welcome to Woman's Hour.

Thank you. How are you doing? I'm good. Happy to be here. It's wonderful to have you here. Right. A film about women made by women starring a lot of brilliant women and a brilliant Ryan Gosling just made one point four billion dollars. Yeah. How about that? Yeah, it's it's wonderful. And, you know, these are the kind of movies that we're constantly told don't work.

You know, they don't travel their niche or their sort of, you know, a special interest audience. And yet here we are. And this incredibly original, weird, delightful film has obviously disproved a lot of that. And what's it done for you personally? Because it feels like a role that's quite pivotal. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, what has it done for me personally? I feel like at a certain point I stopped expecting the phone to ring in terms of like some brilliant Academy Award nominated director calling and saying, I wrote a part for you and it's, you know, it's got to be you. And I've been doing my work as an actress in this industry for over 20 years. And, you know, it sort of feels like as a Latina actress, as a woman of color, as someone who has been from the beginning of my career, slotted into certain lanes and certain boxes, that even in success, the opportunities to really branch out and do things that are not, you know, so tightly labeled are few and far

between. And I kind of got to a point where I thought, like, I'm going to have to do that for myself. You know, I'm going to have to produce for myself and for others to get those opportunities. And so it was incredibly unexpected to get a phone call from Greta that she was inviting me to be in this world and that, you know, she had written the character Latina,

but there was no, that was not a part of her journey. It wasn that, you know, she had written the character Latina, but there was no, that was not a part of her journey. It wasn't, it wasn't, you know, she was undocumented, or, you know, the ethnicity part didn't play into it. It was more about her being a human in a pretend world. It was about being a mother, it was about being a woman. It was about more label, you know, kind of a larger box that I got to play in. And that was really wonderful personally. And it was fully noted when I was watching it because I thought I actually cheered when I saw that it was you on screen because the mother daughter relationship that that story arc is the most important. It's the heart of the film. And like you say, it's say, for it to be incidentally

a Latina mother and her daughter. Yes. I cheered at the speech, but I cheered at the fact that it was you playing that part. Thank you. I think we need to hear a clip of that speech

that Gloria gave, that incredible monologue that you got to deliver. Let's remind the audience. You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be Let's remind the audience. You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women, because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.

But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged, so find a way to acknowledge that, but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.

It's too hard, it's too contradictory, and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you. And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault. I'm just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. I mean, spine tingling stuff. Have you got tears in your eyes listening to it?

Yeah, you know, it's so funny. I've never just listened to it. I've always watched it. And it was kind of wonderful to just hear the words, actually. It was reminding me that I did that so many takes, we shot it for two days. And we did it so many different ways. But by the end, Ariana Greenblatt, the incredible young actress who plays my daughter, had memorized the whole monologue because I did it that many times. And she said the words back to me. And I actually videoed her. And I started weeping because hearing them come out of her mouth, this 14-year-old girl, I heard it different coming out of her mouth and um and anyway yeah the words are powerful the words are powerful um and lots of women resonated with that speech and it went viral on social media and lots of women have recited it and i was reading that jane fonda recited it to

you didn't she you received a jane fonda humanitarian award recently yeah i'm gonna say what jane fondonda said about you. She says she's there for climate change, for women's rights, reproductive rights, democracy, voting rights, immigrant rights, and always human rights. I've never been happier to say the words on stage, I love America.

I mean, and then the accolades and the awards and the honors keep coming. Elle magazine in the US have named nine honorees, three Latina women. So yourself, Eva Longoria, and J-Lo. America, you're on a list three Latina women. So yourself, Eva Longoria and J-Lo. America, you're on a list with J-Lo. I know. I know. I know. It did not escape me. Are you sort of sitting back and watching this happening? Are there moments where you're thinking back to little you and how far you've come? Oh, yeah. Every moment, you know, but also it's like, in a way, not anything I imagined it would be and so much better than I would have imagined because my career has in large part been about having to, you know, having to find a different path. There was no path for somebody like me when I started out. No one. Yes, there were there was Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz, like some Latinas you could point to. But I wasn't I wasn't them either. I wasn't a, you know, gorgeous sort of sex pot woman. I was a 17-year-old, overweight daughter of immigrants who was not Latina enough for Latinos

and not American enough for Americans. And there was really no path that I could follow. And so it's been a constant creation and constantly and you know getting that award from Jane Fonda was was in particular so much more emotional than I expected it to be but when I look at her career and how she you know she had this fairy tale actress career and there was nothing that that said she had to go use her voice and her platform for the things she cared about, but she did when there was no one ahead of her to really show that way for her. And then she came back and she brought it back into the storytelling and the work, which is also, for me, as I move forward, that line gets blurred between the stories I tell in my career as an actress, producer, director, and the stories I

tell as an advocate and an engaged citizen, you know, it feels so much like, in a way, the same thing, you know, either challenging stories that have created our reality or perpetuating them. It wasn't always going to be the case there, was it? Because there was a point where you couldn't decide whether you wanted to be to act, but you also wanted to change the world. And you thought maybe the legal route was what you should go down. You didn't realize that you could. Yeah, exactly. I think I mean, my passion was always acting. And I always felt engaged in the world. And like I cared about what was happening. And it felt like they were mutually exclusive. And, and to be to be able to you know stick with it long enough to see those things blend in beautiful ways and in different ways like you know Barbie is so impactful and it and it has such

a wide reach because it is entertaining because it fun, because it invites so many people in and gives a lot of different on ramps to, you know, and that the heart of the film and the dare I say message of the film, which is a bad word in Hollywood, you know, is is one that you you get to bring it to more people because you're throwing a fun and entertaining party. And that is power. And that matters that we know how to tell stories in a way that bring more people and not less. Do you feel you have power in Hollywood?

I think I, you know, it's so funny because when people say Hollywood, I don't actually know what to picture when people say Hollywood. Like it's not a building. It's not a zip code. It's not a set. Is it not Bobby Lens? It's not.

It's not a set like, you know, complex where people show up and this is what Hollywood is. It's like Hollywood is just made up of individuals and also corporations making decisions. And I think that more and more I have claimed my own voice and have used whatever access I have to decision makers to advocate for the things that matter to me. And I've had some success in that. And that does feel like power. It does feel like telling certain stories has an impact.

And I've been able to get stories told that maybe otherwise wouldn't have been told in that way. As well as your acting career, you've said your activism, it comes side by side. And I read that you were very, very young, five years old when you were switched on to what inequality truly meant because of your own childhood. We are going to be talking to my next guest has written a book about the history of food in this country.

So I'm going to be talking to her about the role of food and women in particular. So I'm just would love you to tell me about that. Yeah, it's one of the kind of one of the most vulnerable memories of childhood was that, you know, my mother, for the majority of my childhood was a single mother and I was the fifth grade, I didn't even really know the facts. And I was too kind of embarrassed or ashamed to ask. And I didn't want to put more burden on my mom. But I basically spent all of fifth grade going to school with no lunch and getting through a school day hungry. And, and that, you know, that is an experience that shapes you as a child when you're so personally acquainted with what it means to be like a different species or person who deserves it, but it's what's happening nonetheless. And just trying to be a child wrapping your mind around that at the same time that I'm being taught and learned that like, you know, being taught that,

you know, that there is equality and freedom and that, you know. Did you feel that there was equality and freedom? I think that I deeply believed in the American dream and in the promise of America because that's what I had been taught to believe, not only from my immigrant parents, but from my education. But it wasn't long before I, before, you know, it started to feel confusing. I was I was as young as I was in, I believe, third grade, when there was there was a proposition. I grew up in California on the California ballot that would make basically

take away public services from undocumented families, including children in public elementary schools. And I remember my mom having to pull me aside one day before school and say to me, you know, if somebody comes and asks you about where you're from and where your family's from, like you did nothing wrong. You don't need to be afraid. You were born in this country. You know, and I was so young and I didn't understand other than my mom telling me that I didn't need to be afraid made me afraid. And then and then realizing that not every kid had that conversation with their parent that morning. You know, I was quite young when I started to realize, oh, I do have this feeling and sense of my identity as being an American. And I hold on to the feeling that there's justice and equality. And at the same time,

I'm having an experience that doesn't reconcile. And so I became aware of things, I think, because I had to. Yeah. You were politicized from a really young age. You've taken it into adult life because in the run up to the 2020 election, you launched on an Instagram series breaking down the voting process and talking about voter suppression. The 2024 election is just around the corner. The Latina vote, hugely influential, being one of the largest groups in the US. How important is your influence and other prominent stars who talk about politics in the States? You know, it's hard for me to say. I don't know for sure. You know, all I know is that I think it's important for any and all of us to be engaged

and to use whatever circles of influence we're in to compel people. What we know actually is that the most influential people to get people to engage in a political process and vote is their most intimate circles. Like, it's actually better for somebody's friend or somebody's niece or nephew or aunt to say, have you voted than it is for, you know, someone to hear America Ferreira talking on the radio about the importance of voting. And so I use any and every platform I have because I believe so strongly in democracy and protecting it. But I by no means feel like that that's not a power and a level of influence that we each can have in our lives.

You won an Emmy for, I loved it, Ug Ugly Betty in 2007 you were the only Latina actress to win the Emmy no one's won it since I know I was gonna say are things changing but yeah I know Joelle Jenna Ortega is nominated for Wednesday I mean brilliant and so if she wins then it will be a club of two um but it brings me no joy, you know, and, and we unfortunately, there was just a research out of the Annenberg inclusion initiative, saying that, you know, based on the numbers, representation has not changed for Latinos in the last 16 years, which is the majority of my career. And that's frustrating, you know, that's frustrating, because we do see things that make us feel like, oh, okay, well, there's more of

us. And that is true. There's more of us in the room, there's three of us on the list instead of one, like, things are changing here and there. But then you look at the totality. And the numbers say, not only are we so marginally represented, but then the representation that does exist is largely and more than half representations of us as criminals. And that is so damaging. So you have to tell your own stories. So we have to tell our own stories and we can't stop. We have to keep taking whatever access we have to create more more more narratives and now there are powerful women like yourself and Eva Longoria and JLo and people are paying attention um I hope so I hope so um I've got to ask um because you didn't play with Barbies

growing up neither did I yeah but if you'd seen this film as a little girl now yeah would you be playing with a barbie i think that i would have been uh yeah i think that i would have been so excited to see myself reflected in the world i think it might have felt different uh barbie too i i'm the wrong person to ask you're the right person to ask but even if you know i'm not i have no power i have absolutely adored speaking to you. Thank you. Keep going. More power to you.

Come back and talk to me when you've won the Oscar and the everything else. Oh, goodness. Okay, well, thank you so much. Thank you, Erica. Bye. Now, earlier I spoke to Julia Waters, sister of the late headteacher Ruth Perry. I wanted to let you know that there is a BBC program all about Ruth Perry which you can watch now on iPlayer. It's called The Death of a Head

and if you have been affected by the issues discussed, please go to the BBC Actionline website for advice and support. 84844, that number to text. Now, we're going to delve into the deeper meanings of food. You might have read Scoff, a fascinating

social history of food and class by Penn Vogler, written, now the writer is back, with a new book with an equally clever one-word title. This time it's called Stuffed. Welcome, Penn. Thank you so much.

How long does it take you to come up with these titles? Oh, actually, that was my cousin. She just told me it's going to be called Stuffed, and it was, because the idea of stuffed is that there are sort of two meanings. Yeah, you can be pleasantly stuffed, you know, after a Christmas dinner or a nice meal, or you can be stuffed because you've run out of road because there's no other good choices left to you. And so what I was trying to do was kind of explore the sort of line between those two meanings and how people have kind of arranged themselves over a long period of time,

about a thousand years, and how people have arranged themselves so that, on the whole, we hope that people are pleasantly stuffed and not stuffed because they run out of road. And obviously the history of that has been quite checkered. It's a big, big, beautiful book. What's it about? Well, it's really about a kind of the three pillars of our food system and our food system as it's sort of grown up over the last centuries.

And those are the government and whether the government is the church or the local lord or what we have now in terms of government. People who produce food and sell it, businesses. And then the third is the consumer, and that's us. And what I really wanted to do is show that all those, in those kind of, there's a sort of triangle, and people sort of push responsibility for making sure that people have either got enough to eat, or whether that food is good food, you know, makes you healthy. And I just wanted to see how people had kind of taken responsibility for it or sort of pushed it from one to the other. And of course, that third person in the triangle, you know, it's like the three people in the marriage is a bit crowded.

And the third person in that triangle is often the person with the least power and responsibility because it's the individual and that is often in most many houses historically being the mum or the housewife or the woman or you know the carer or whoever she's been termed exactly the history of food it helps us understand women's roles in society in the past isn't it yes i think so um so so you're looking into the responsibility of who is who should be feeding our children who should be feeding our children? Who should be feeding our children and whether just feeding them calories is enough or whether we should be taking responsibility for the quality of food they have. And I kind of start by looking at, Marcus Rashford made us all think about this in the pandemic because he was saying, you've just got to feed kids.

Somebody has got to take responsibility. And there was a sort of, you know, one MP saying it's the government's responsibility and another MP saying, no, no, it's the parents' responsibility. And I started off by thinking, well, what's right? What do I think? And it took me a long time. But in the end, I came to the conclusion that actually the government's responsibility is to put in place a food system so that individuals, parents, mums, carers can make the right choices for themselves. There's so much research that's gone into this book. But I'm going to jump straight to the bit that leapt out at me and you're from Leeds, I'm from Bradford, and nobody can stop us talking

about it because we're here, we've got microphones in front of us and let's go. Yorkshire is very present in my book. Absolutely. And quite right too. Free school dinners introduced in 1907. How did that impact women? And what was Bradford's role in that? Bradford was extraordinary. It goes back to this terrible act from 1834 that basically said that you could only give charity to people in the workhouse. And the whole kind of edifice of the workhouse was that anybody who was indigent couldn't have charity at home. And this meant that basically free school dinners were sort of illegal. and a couple of things happened there was a report that showed that kids who'd been educated in state schools were much much less healthy they were less tall

they had dental caries they had rickets they had health problems much less healthy than kids who'd been you know educated in public schools and as a result of that and the poor law was kind of beginning to break down Bradford had always hated the poor law

there were riots in the 1830s when it tried to come in because Bradford and a lot of northern cities hated this idea that you would treat people this way, poor people this way. And the mayor of Bradford gave some money to the schools and said, just feed kids. And one of the heroines, really, I think my of my book is this lady called Miss Marianne Cuff and she was the head of domestic science and she came up with these lovely recipes and menus things like scotch barley broth and rhubarb tart rhubarb spray Yorkshire thing the uh Yorkshire

triangle yes exactly locally grown food and she said, and she arranged for kids to be fed in nice rooms. There's a tablecloth on the table, little pot plant or flowers in the middle. And she taught people to use knives and forks if they didn't know how to use them. She had this very interesting rule that you could refuse food, but only if you'd tried it twice already. And she managed to, through patience and love and time, I felt she was making a really interesting political point that children have the right to eat good food in good surroundings. And I think one of the achievements of what she was doing with other people in Bradford was to keep the mums and the parents on side with her the whole time. Other so many delicious facts and stories through the history of food in this country. And I want you to talk a bit about gruel

and how that's been the rehashing of gruel, which might surprise some of our listeners. It's funny, isn't it? Because I was writing a chapter on gruel because, again, going back to this idea of the workhouse and the poor law and this idea that gruel was a thin porridge. One recipe I saw said two ounces of oatmeal to a pint of water for gruel and five ounces of oatmeal for porridge. So that kind of gives you an idea of sort of what it's like. And gruel was used as a kind of punishment and an icon of mistreating children. Although in actual fact,

some people chose to eat gruel because they liked it. But it became quite a sort of iconic dish. Maybe the sound of the word kind of goes against it. But what is it? Well, it's just very thin porridge. Or it could be something that's very similar to what we think of as oat milk. Hilarious. So when actually when I see oat milk in the supermarket,

so when I put oat milk on my cereal in the morning, if I do, I kind of think I'm eating gruel. I quite like that idea. You discussed this idea of women as the food distributor. Can you tell us a bit more about that idea? Well, in this kind of three-way triangle of kind of the way that food is sort of organised, women always have to end up as the person in the house, this is historically, as the person who's responsible for making sure kids get something to eat. And if you, well, you and I both grew up in Yorkshire,

you might have had the same lesson that I had, which was that Yorkshire pudding, this big solid sort of batter pudding, was kind of invented to keep kids full, whereas the man might have had the roast meat of the house. And I was so shocked in my kind of child-centred life to learn that actually children kind of came way below the male of the house.

And women were sort of way below the male of the house as well. And so it was mum's responsibility to try and police that imbalance, to try and make sure her husband was happy that he had meat if there was available, and also to try and make sure her kids just didn't go hungry. And I see that pattern happening throughout history. And what's so terrible is that we hear about it still today. There are still women who are having to figure out who goes without food. And often today, as it has been in the past,

it's the woman, it's the mum of the house who goes without food so her kids can eat. Where did your fascination with food come from? Like eating it. Yes. I worked for the British Museum publishing house for a short while and I just discovered this subject called food history and I didn't even know it existed as a history.

But I realised that you could do things like find old recipes, recreate them, and in recreating them you got something tasty to eat. Not always tasty, I have to say. I've made some pretty awful disasters, but I've got better over the years. And using those recipes and the idea of where that food comes from, how it's cooked, you can unpick those relationships that are going on at the time. So many stories. So many stories.

Tell us about who we are and our families. And I just want to read out a couple of messages that have come in from our listeners. Maria said, I had the most glorious culinary childhood. My Italian mother, who came here and worked in service for rich people, cooked homemade pasta and mastered English food brilliantly. She then married my Mauritian father, a chef who sadly died when I was little. By then she'd also mastered a wide range of Mauritian dishes. This sounds incredible. Our friends came over regularly, of course, but it was only for the chance to eat at our house. I've since married a French trained chef. Our own home revolves very much around food and what we can eat. Sounds like it's the men and the women doing

the cooking in that household. Yes, I think we learn a lot from, you know, other cultures and other cuisines about how to produce good food and how to kind of make it a bit more equal. Well, the book is called Stuffed. There's so much in there. It's an absolute delicious delight. Pen, thank you so much for coming in to speak to me. And thanks to all of you who've been sending in lots of messages. I'm going to read out one more. I'm 67. I've been cooking for my husband and my family since 1978. Responsible for Christmas every year for 43 years without a break. You need to embrace new dishes, equipment, ingredients, health, and people's likes and dislikes. I still approach each day or Christmas like it's my first and enjoy

every meal. On weekend, Woman's Hour tomorrow, how does a relationship change if you become a carer for your spouse? One couple tell their story and the politics of buying Christmas presents. Join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Kirsty Wark and this is The Reunion. Reflecting on a shared news event, a cultural moment, or just the experience of all being there at the same time and the same place. I just started doing that voice to Armando. When he was stressed.

Nervous breakdown, nervous breakdown. We all started chanting. It just became this mean thing. Now, all 200 editions of the Radio 4 programme are available on BBC Sounds. From the makers of Chariots of Fire to the Beirut hostages. I do remember asking one of the guards, Brian's Irish, they've done nobody any harm. And there was a long pause and he said, Brian was a mistake.

From the Brighton Bomb to Olympic Heroes. From when you're running a world record in Oslo with Seb Colchase to be on the last lap, or whether you're doing it in the Durham Schools Champs, the process is the same. It's just the context is very different. You can hear again all 200 editions of The Reunion. Search for The Reunion on BBC Sounds. 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.