Woman's Hour - Sabina Nessa, Fertility Warnings, Flexible Working

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

Police Minister, Kit Malthouse, talks to Woman's Hour about violence towards women in the light of Sabina Nessa's murder. We talk to him about the funding and strategies that were promised to how the police will act at Friday's evening vigil for Sabina.We speak to Professor Adam Balen, a consultant in reproductive Medicine at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, about why he thinks it's a good idea to have special messages in contraceptive packages advising people not to leave it too late if they want a baby.We discuss flexible working and how it really works in practice. At the moment when you've lasted 26 weeks in your job you have the right to request flexible working, but now there are government plans to let you make that request from day one. We speak to Emma Stewart from Timewise who wants those plans to go even further and to Leanne Skelton who runs a nursery and worries that more flexibility will be a logistical nightmare.And we speak to two women who love gaming, but say there's some alarming and worrying abuse towards women and non-white gamers. They are Shay Thompson, a gaming journalist and presenter as well as Cassie Hughes who's the co-founder of Black Twitch UK.

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 Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to the programme. Sabina Nessa, a 28-year-old primary school teacher who was murdered walking through a park near her home on Friday evening in South London, is being remembered by her family, who say they are devastated. And she's being remembered as a beautiful soul. The Met Police believe the attack happened in Cater Park, Kidbrook, around 8.30 in the evening,

at a time when the park was likely being used by many people. Their words. Sabina's body was found the next morning. Here's her cousin, Zubal Ahmed. We're still in shock. It's been a few days but still not sunk in yet and we are all truly devastated. Her parents are absolutely, absolutely shocked. They're inconsolable still and understandably so to hear of their daughter being taken away from them. She honestly was the most caring person,

kindest, sweetest girl you can meet. The sweetest girl you could meet. Many people sharing her name today across social media and in the previous few days, Sabina Nessa. And on a Friday evening, tomorrow night, there will be a vigil in her memory. This is only six months after the murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard,

also in South London, and she was walking home. That was by a Met police officer, Wayne Cousins, who has pleaded guilty. There was the murder of two sisters in a park, Bieber Henry and Nicole Smallman. The man who murdered them was convicted in July. Their mother, Mina Smallman, spoke movingly and unforgettably. She said, No one expects their children to die before them, but to have two of your three children murdered overnight is just incomprehensible.

This year has been dominated by women and girls using their voice to say that they have a right to be safe. But so far this year, at least 106 UK women have been killed by men or a man is the principal suspect. That's according to Karen Ingala Smith, someone who collects data on precisely this, which is used by politicians. Most of those who have been killed are women that we don't know about, I should say as well. Only last Friday, a key report by the police watchdog, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services,

talked about an epidemic of violence against women and girls and concluded that tackling such violence should be as much of a priority in this country as countering terrorism. In a moment, I'll be speaking to the Minister for Policing. But first, I wanted to throw this to you here on Woman's Hour. What action do you want regarding women's safety and male violence? 84844 is the number you need to text me on here at Woman's Hour. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. You can get in touch with me with what you want to say about this, what you've been thinking about this, what you've been feeling about this, your experiences around this subject on social media at BBC Women's Hour or email me through the Women's Hour website. As I say, Kit Malthouse, the Minister for Policing,

joins me now. Good morning. Good morning, Emma. Can I begin, sorry, just by offering my condolences to the family. Obviously, I've spent a lot of time over my career, sadly, in policing with the families and loved ones of murder victims. And I've seen the devastation personally. And it is heart rending. I'm deeply, deeply sorry for them. Yes, of course you can. And those condolences are being shared far and wide today. I suppose the issue that I have to get to with you, because you are someone who's got power, who's got the ability to make change, people would hope, is that once again, a woman who was simply walking through a park is now dead. And women are fed up with hearing, we'll do more from police and people like yourself, politicians, and these seemingly empty words around all of this. I wanted to start by asking you something slightly different today. We will get to policy because I know the government's been working on things. Why do you think some men are still killing women? Well, it's a very good question. And it's one, to be honest with you, Emma, on which we are very

focused. One of the actions that we have put in place over the last couple of years since I got this job is looking much more systematically at the homicide reviews that take place after these kind of awful killings to see if there are patterns of identification that would allow us to get ahead of those offenders and prevent them. As you might know, the Prime Minister set up a Crime and Justice Task Force. We have a National Policing Board now, which is a new body that's looking at some of these systemic crime types. And we've set the prevention, driving that murder number down overall. But of course, about a third of those are domestic and targeted at women. That we drive those numbers down. But key to that is getting ahead of these offences.

And one of the things, for example, that we did is to say that, please look, we know that a number of murders that are perpetrated against women take place in a domestic situation following a pattern of offending by the offender. How can we better identify those individuals? How can we better get into, for example, issues of coercive control that often sadly result in, not often, but sometimes sadly result in these kind of catastrophic crimes so that we can prevent

those awful crimes? Now, what I've done over the last couple of years is go around effectively the big six forces, the big six metropolitan forces where we disproportionately see this kind of crime and sit down with them and ensure that they have a preventative strategy in place that we think is good and up to scratch and which hopefully in time we'll see these numbers turn. We are seeing, as I say, Covid slightly fault the issues from a statistical point of view, but we are seeing, I think, signs of a turn in the number. But look, there's always still much more to do.

And in answer to my question, I know that's what you've been trying to look at. Have you got any answers? You have had a lot of experience in this. Yeah, I know. Well, it's complicated. I don't think there's any one particular answer. I mean, we do know, for example, in a domestic situation, that coercive control as an offence type often results in this kind of serious violence towards the end of the relationship. We're looking at the role, for example, of drugs and alcohol. Often mental health plays an issue that we have to look at quite seriously. But one of the things we've tried to do is to collapse. When you have an individual force, say like my home force in Hampshire, the number of killings that you might have in a year are quite small, and it becomes quite difficult, therefore, to draw any patent or conclusion from them.

What we're trying to do now is to say, look, let's look at the country as a whole. Let's look at the 600-odd murders that we have across the whole of the country and use that as the base for us to look at patterns. Come together as a national police force, if you like. Identify those areas where we see good practice, like for example, Essex doing fantastic work on domestic abuse and violence. And as a result, they've seen the proportion of murders against women fall against the background of their overall number and try and spread that work. So that research work is ongoing at the moment. But I have to say, Emma, overall, obviously, we are pushing hard on violence in the public realm and in particular where it results in murder in

the hope that we'll see the numbers fall and early indications are that so far we're being successful i don't think it's a day to say that though is it no look this is the thing you know can i just put two things together in in the minds of our listeners which is that we believe sabine anessa was killed on friday evening that was the same day a report commissioned by your boss, the Home Secretary, said we need to treat violence against women and girls as seriously as terrorism. When is that starting? Well, look, Emma, you're absolutely right. And talking about success in terms of fighting crime only means that things are less worse than they otherwise would be. I mean, back in, if you remember, back between 2008 and 2012

when we were dealing with a plague of knife crime in London, we managed to get teenage killings down from 29 to 8, but it was still 8 too many. And I totally agree with what you're saying. Look, there is a huge amount of effort going in across the whole area of violence against women and girls at the moment. Yeah, let's go through some of those because there's some specific questions. Six months on from the killing of Sarah Everard,

and when I had Victoria Atkins, your former colleague in the Home Office, she was a Home Office Minister at the time, since the reshuffle has changed brief. She said some things that I wanted to look at, but also just sticking with this report from Zoe Billingham, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, the category of women and girls is not included on a list of priorities in the government's strategic policing requirement, which includes terrorism, serious and organised crime, large protests, civil emergencies and child sexual abuse. Are you going to include it?

Well, we're just having a look at the strategic policing requirement at the moment and considering, as I say, giving it a review and considering what should be included and should not be included obviously we have to make sure that we get a pattern of response across the whole of the country and that is part of that so it's under review at the moment but whatever the strategic policing requirement says emma we have made it very clear through the publication of a violence against women of girl strategy just in july this year that this is a significant priority for the government. Yeah, but why don't you go further and actually include it?

Why spend more time reviewing it? You're on air today. We're very grateful that you've come to talk to women and to our listeners. In light of someone being killed on the same day that report came out, why not just say you're going to include it in the list of priorities? Well, whether we do or we don't and as i say that's under review at the moment above my pay rate to make that decision on air with you at the moment emma i'm afraid well no i didn't mean on

air but i meant why has it got to have some kind of long bureaucratic clunky style government review because it's not clunky style we have to to consult with our partners, the police and crime commissioners across the country, police forces of the country about what they believe strategically we need to look at. But look, we've set up a strategy. We're doing huge amounts of work on the ground in areas like rape and domestic abuse to try and drive these numbers down. One of the things we've done, for example... Hang on, sorry, also to try and get some of the people convicted who are doing it. Well, critically, we want prevention as well as conviction. I mean, obviously, on murder, we have very high conviction rates in this country. And happily, the Metropolitan Police have some of the highest conviction rates in the world on murder.

But one of the key things that we're focused on, for example, at the moment is safety in the public realm, particularly around women and girls. You will know that we've launched a thing called the Safer Streets Fund, where we've asked police and crime commissions in each area to have a conversation with their local population about where physically women and girls feel unsafe and what physical improvements could be made in that area, whether it's street lighting or CCTV or changes to the public realm that might provide a greater sense of security and indeed actual safety.

And we'll be putting significant funding into that quite soon as those bids are completed. So it's an ongoing mission, Emma, please, please. It's an ongoing mission. We are constantly dedicating ourselves to the safety of everybody in this country. But the safety of women and girls is a priority for us, as I hope you will realise from the publications and the strategies that we put in place. Yes, although the rape convictions, the former Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland, had to apologise for this year. And had to, you know, if we're talking about convictions and we're talking about women feeling safe, women and girls feeling safe, this government has been, you know, we've had the Conservatives for more than a decade. And that is a sorry record. Yeah, no, we you're quite right. And we have apologised profoundly for those fallen numbers. The reasons are complex. But I'm personally leading now,

the task force, which is trying to drive the numbers of rapes getting into court upwards. We've got some really fantastic new projects underway now in a number of police forces across the country. I'm hopeful we'll see progress quite soon. And happily for me, the Blokes, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and other partners, not least police and crime commissioners, are really all putting their shoulders at the wheel on the effort to try and improve those numbers. But I can't pretend to you that we aren't very sorry and it's a source of deep regret that the numbers fell as low as they did. We are now dedicated, though, to pushing them back up. There's a question here, and there's a few that's come in, and I want to try and get to some of our listeners.

But I'm also minded to mention something that a lot of people in your position often bring up at this point. You talk about the boost in police numbers. And Victoria Atkins, when she came on this programme six months ago, boasted about exceeding police officer recruitment targets with over 6,000 by March when we were talking as part of the extra 20,000. I mean, just to say, that's not helped Sabine Anessa either. That's not helped women and girls like that walking through parks just going about their business. And then often at this point, and I'm sorry,

I've done quite a few of these interviews, CCTV's brought up and street lighting. But just to say about London, because we're talking about Sabina Nasser and I want to remember her name and say her name as much as possible, is that London is the third most surveilled city in the world. It's not working. Well, look, CCTV is obviously very effective from a detection point of view and you will know that the the suspect or the in the everard case was identified from cctv um and let's see where

i can't obviously comment on that's been a necessary investigation but let's see where that goes in terms of the evidential trail um it is the case, though, that in certain circumstances, we do know that CCTV acts as a deterrent, although there are obviously some offenders who pay no attention to those things, and those are the individuals who we really want to try and get ahead of and identify who they might be. Look, in terms of police officer numbers,

while officer numbers are important, they are not the whole solution. I completely agree with you, and it very much depends on what you're doing. I mean, if you look at the bare numbers, police officer numbers are important, they are not the whole solution. I completely agree with you. And it very much depends on what you're doing. I mean, if you look at the bare numbers, police officer numbers in London now are higher than they were in 2014 when murder hit an all time low. And so, you know, the correlation is not there necessarily. It's a question of what you do. And one of the programs that we've rolled out, in fact i was publicizing last week is what we're calling a grit program we know that violence in the public realm is quite sticky it's confined to quite identifiable small areas of our towns and cities which if we put police officers

there often just on a random basis that they visit on a regular basis we've seen big falls in violence so if you look at south end where we've been running this pilot with the Essex police there, we've seen 73 percent falls in violence. Now, it might seem like a simple solution, but it's a hard data driven approach towards policing, which we think can make that increasing number of police officers much more effective. And restore what we're hoping that everybody will feel, women and girls particularly, but that there is a sense of governed space, right, that public space is safe. That is our aspiration, that everybody should feel safe to move around in the public realm. But on that, and I wanted to pick up specifically about women and girls

because of what's happened to Sabine and I, so the awful tragedy here and the amount of women who've been getting in touch with us this morning is, you know, you also have drives from the police to say, you know, make sure you're not listening to music as you walk home. You know, people talking about carrying your keys in your hand, how to keep yourself safe on the streets. All of this is geared so often about how women behave

and how women should behave. What about men? Do you think we've got the emphasis correct? That's why I started by asking you what I asked you about why some men are still killing women in these numbers. Well, obviously I would encourage people to take steps to protect themselves as much as they can, to use well-lit streets, all that kind of stuff,

the sort of standard stuff that we all know about. But I agree with you, Emma, that violence against women and girls is disproportionately perpetrated by men. And men need to take responsibility for that. We've got a message here saying this is terrorism. Boys and men are groomed by society to believe they're better, deserving, all powerful. The fabric of society needs to be altered from the bottom up. What's your view of that? Just just as an MP, you know, I know you're a policing minister. Well, as I say, these are complicated issues that we have to consider.

I mean, it's worth remembering, for example, that the vast majority of all murder murders murders are perpetrated, whether against men or women, by men. And that's something that I do. I do know that. But it's very striking that the killing of women is not being done by women. It's being done by men. Yes. And as I said to you before, I do think that's something that men have to take responsibility for. I would hope. Well, in the work that we're doing politically, but also in the work we do as fathers and brothers and sons, in the way we raise the next generation and our attitudes towards women. I've said before, I think in the media, that we need to think

carefully about the values that we're giving our sons as we raise them. And respect for everybody, not least women and girls, is certainly part of the way I was brought up. And I would hope that it would be the way that all boys would be brought up in the future. But do you think we need something more radical than that? You know, that people are angry and upset today. I think we need, I understand people are angry and upset. And I understand why.

And this is a dreadful, dreadful crime, which is encapsulating a feeling that we saw writ large in the aftermath of other horrible murders like Sarah Everard. And as I say, we are trying to apply ourselves to dealing with that problem. But we should also remember that the vast, vast majority of men have good and respectful and wonderful relations with the women in their lives. So we need to take care to understand the drivers of this horrific offending, to identify those individuals and get ahead of them and prevent their offending in the first place. What I want is not just to catch the murderers. I want there to be fewer murders. And that means we need to get sharper about identifying who is likely to be one. Two very quick final questions from our listeners.

Amanda's written in to you to say, how about we start by doing what European countries do and call the murder of women femicide? What do you make of that as police minister? Oh, I believe we've just lost the policing minister. Well, obviously, I... Sorry, I'm still here. Can you hear me? Yes, carry on, please.

It's... My apologies. It says I've got an unstable connection. Well, we obviously do identify and focus on murders that are perpetrated against women as part of our Banskets with a Kill strategy. I don't really mind whether we call it femicide or homicide or, frankly, I we call it femicide or homicide or frankly, I generally call it murder.

Homicide tends to me seems to be a bit of an anodyne phrase and doesn't necessarily encapsulate the horror of that catastrophic crime. I think I suppose the point of the question was making sure that it's distinguished in that way we've been talking about and getting your take on that.

Finally, there's questions coming in. There's a vigil tomorrow evening. Of course, we're at a different stage in terms of the national lockdown when there was last a vigil that attracted such attention, perhaps with Sarah Everard's vigil, of course, the Met coming under great scrutiny for that. Will the approach to policing this be different or viewed in a different light after how that happened? Well, obviously, the circumstances of the Everard vigil were very particular. It was in the middle of the pandemic. Obviously, the regulations that the police were seeking to put in place there,

and don't forget that was about protecting people from a disease, no longer apply. I'm sure that the vigil will, or the organisers will be liaising with the police and it will be handled as sensitively as the police, the Metropolitan Police do on an almost daily basis with all kinds of demonstrations. Look, it's been a dreadful moment in London and across the country. And I just hope that everybody realises we are trying as hard as we can to prevent these kind of appalling crimes across the country. And I just hope that everybody realises we are trying as hard as we can to prevent these kind of appalling crimes in the future. Kit Malthouse, Minister for Policing, thank you very much for your time this morning.

Thank you. Listening in to that, Harriet Wistrich, founding director of the Centre for Women's Justice. Good morning, Harriet. Good morning. What do you want to say after listening to that? There were some apologies in there and some reflections and also some, I suppose, attempts to try and look at this through a very specific lens of some men killing women. and girls and we've had a rape review report we've had um the report you referred to that came out on

friday all saying in more and more stronger terms that this is a pandemic that this is a problem that this situation isn't being solved and that's why women are so angry and why they are wanting wanting to protest and come out on the streets um to to mark this horrific uh further murder um but um the the problem is that you know there that you can't tackle uh these problems with um and there has been no evidence of of any real change in the tackle of problems in fact uh the figures have gone up i mean this is 106 murders since the start of this year. That is more than the average. And we know, obviously, that lockdown may have made matters worse,

but that's not enough of an explanation. So there has to be, the government, we need to see proper investment in our criminal justice system, which is collapsing. So if there is no accountability um if if um uh violent men are not being held to account and that means uh right from

the lower level crimes because men who kill women particularly in these most horrific ways are likely to be uh very serious repeat offenders who have got away with it and if we look at the statistics of the number of reported cases that end up being prosecuted in relation to rape it's a measly three percent of cases reported are prosecuted in relation to domestic abuse it's not much higher um something like seven percent and and and so if if the criminal justice system is not dealing with that then men know that they are free to continue to commit violent acts and that that tends to escalate over time until you know we've seen in in the case of wayne cousins as an example that he um you know was was doing low-level crimes for many years and that gradually escalated until he

did this horrific killing we don't know the circumstances of sabrina ness's murder exactly but that will no doubt reveal similar shocking details or So there's that ability, one would hope, to be able to move in earlier and be on a more preventative footing. Harriet, just slightly short of time, and forgive me for that, but can I just ask, with your history and your experience of fighting for justice for women, do you think this was always thus or is this a different moment where we are now?

Well, sadly, I mean, you raised with the minister earlier the sort of advice that's been given about, you know, women being careful and staying at home and not, you know, street lighting and those sorts of things. that was being said back in the 80s when yorkshire ripper was um alive you know that the police were telling women to stay at home and make sure they didn't go out with other people so we see the same patterns then as now and it's it is really depressing but i i don't think there is going to be a radical change until we actually mark this public health emergency as such, as deserving the seriousness, the investment and the understanding, the scientific understanding, if you like, about what causes the violence against women and how the mechanisms lead to women being targeted in this way.

So the inspectorate raised the importance of proper data analysis. We have no gathering of data, for example, why black and minoritised women are particularly targeted and are particularly less well protected, which is obviously pertinent in this particular case. We need to understand that, and we need to understand

not just bare statistics, but actually what lies beneath, what are the mechanisms that lead to the murder of women. We need to understand how coercive control builds up and goes to the risk of murder at the worst extreme so that we can tackle that at the start.

Data are key and also naming it as well as those other remedies that you talk about with regards to the criminal justice system and the policing. A lot to do, as always. Harriet Westrick, you're a busy woman. Thank you for talking to us today. Thank you very much. On this day when a lot of people are trying to get to grips with this, women and men getting in touch this morning with what you want to say. A message here from Professor Gill, who says, thank you for remembering Sab Sabina Nessa on Women's Hour. We have much to do to prevent the killing of women with the hashtag that many, so many are using today on social media with regards to Sabina and her memory, which is say her name.

Keep your messages coming in, the numbers that you need to get in touch with what you want to change, how you feel in this moment. 84844 is the number to text on social media. We're at BBC Women's App. Now, a leading fertility doctor has said that contraceptive products, pills or condoms, should have don't leave it too late fertility warnings on the packet, a bit like you see with some of the health warnings, for instance, on cigarette packets. Professor Adam Balan, a consultant in reproductive medicine at Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust and the former chair of the British Fertility Society,

was commenting on proposals from ministers just a couple of weeks ago that would allow all women to freeze their eggs for longer than 10 years. Moving forward, you'll remember this, I'm sure the threshold will be 55 years for all women. He joins me now. Good morning, Adam. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Why the suggestion then for these warnings on contraceptive products? The key issue here is to ensure that all young people have appropriate information so that they can make their own reproductive choices and they need to be empowered with the knowledge to do so. And I've been running a campaign in the UK for a few years now called the Fertility Education Initiative and we were successful in getting this put on the national curriculum for relationship and sex education during the government consultation of a couple of years ago and we have a website and have produced some animations and some excellent educational material for schools.

So that included in discussions about safe sex, reliable contraception, avoiding sexually transmitted infections. We can also introduce themes about thinking about when might you want to start a family and all of the factors that may affect your fertility in the future. That would make sense in the sense of some of the discussions that have happened of late have been around, I wish I'd known a bit earlier about my fertility. Perhaps I wouldn't have tried or started trying as late. I can see the sense in that and having those discussions. But when you get a packet, for instance, of the contraceptive pill, you're taking it often, not always, but often because you don't want to get pregnant, right? taking it often, not always, but often because you don't want to get pregnant, right? Is that really the right place, the right location for that sort of message that you're talking about? I truly believe it is. I think we should be trying to

raise awareness amongst older people as well. So when they're in their 20s and early 30s, just having some health information inserted in contraceptive packets for both men and women. And it's really important to engage with men here on this so that they start to think about issues for the future. When might they want to have a child? Would you like to have a family someday? And introduce themes about the factors that may affect your reproductive health. So this is all about health education and empowering young people with appropriate knowledge.

I'm still not necessarily, having looked at what some people made of your remarks when you first made them on social media, I'm still not necessarily sure that everyone would agree that those pill packets, just sticking with women for a moment, but I recognise it's important to include men, are the best place to put this message. I think it's great that we're having this discussion.

It's really important to raise these issues in as many forums as we can. And the government white paper made it clear that we should be providing age-appropriate information. And so we need to be addressing this to people once they leave school. So we did a survey a couple of years ago looking at 2,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 20. And 95% of girls and 93% of boys said that they would like to have a family at some some stage in the future. Yet we see that the statistics show that the average age of having a first baby is about 31 fertility declines as

people get older. And we see that 20% of women are ending their reproductive years now without having a child. And this compares with 10% in their mother's generation. In other words, we have seen a doubling in the number of women not having children, not only because of fertility problems, some out of choice. And obviously, we respect everybody's choice. But I think at the same time, it is important that we provide information about all factors that may affect your reproductive health, whether it's your age, smoking, lifestyle and diet. the fertility book that deals with all of these issues and is designed to help young people or people of all ages if they want to conceive naturally or if they're having problems and may need help. But come to the problems in just a moment. It's a slightly separate issue.

Don't you actually think some people, some women, would find this incredibly patronising? You know, how would it look? Obviously, I know what it looks like on the front of a cigarette packet, but here I am getting my contraceptive pill, not wanting to get pregnant. I know they're taken for other reasons. I've taken pills for the other reasons as well with issues to do with periods. But here I am looking at this going, don't forget, time might be running out. I mean, what would it, is it a big clock you want to put on the front of pills? No, not at all. This is not a health warning. It is not saying, it's not like with cigarette packets, not at all. It's inserting health information. You know, understanding your body is a skill for life and people need to know these things. And our survey also showed how serious the lack of knowledge is. And I run a big fertility clinic and every day I have couples

coming to see me really surprised that they may have left it too late. We have spearheaded the world in our advances in infertility medicine, but unfortunately it doesn't work for everybody. And also for young women to know that having painful periods or irregular periods may not be normal. We know that it takes a long time to make diagnoses such as polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis. So I think it's our responsibility to ensure that information is out there and then we can sign people, signpost people to our website, the Fertility Education Initiative, where we have a lot of information there. And just to come in here, do you think then women should be told whether they're fertile or not or going to have fertility issues as a matter of, if you like, health MOTs in this country from a young age? No, I'm not advocating that. But I am advocating ensuring that there is awareness so that they can seek information. And if they want that

information, we should provide it. And I spend a lot of time talking to GPs and trying to raise awareness amongst GPs as well, because reproductive health isn't mandatory as part of training for GPs now. So any way that we can raise this conversation in a constructive and healthy way so that we can empower young people with the right information to make informed choices about their reproductive futures. You've not won over Roo in North Wales. She's written in to say, as a 49-year-old woman who chose to be child-free, I personally would find this information highly offensive and prejudicial.

It's up to each individual to be aware of their own bodies and whether or not they wish to conceive. It should not be assumed that all women will want to have children. What do you say to Roo? I agree with her completely. I'm not for a minute suggesting that we respect everybody's views. No, but by putting this on a pill packet, that's what she's saying. If your proposals were to go ahead in some form, she would feel like that because you're not necessarily taking the pill with a view to having a kid at some point.

But I'm not talking about putting a warning on the outside of a packet. I'm talking about putting a warning on the outside of a packet i'm talking about putting information within a packet there's already a lot of health information inside the inserts and this is just expanding the information that's being given if anybody even reads those long long leaflets sorry again to uh to perhaps pour water on it in a different way i suppose the bigger point that i just wanted to make sure i had time to ask you is you will see, as you say, lots of people coming to you with fertility issues. And actually, a lot of the reason when people do want to potentially have a family that they haven't so far are economic and societal, whether they've not met the right partner or they aren't at the right stage or they haven't got their career underway or enough money or the housing situation. And I suppose the bigger point that you're grappling with, I imagine, is that that's what's driven a lot of the time, the later move to trying to conceive. And have you had any thoughts or got any insights in how perhaps you deal with that if you deal with it at all? Indeed, I think this is a huge societal issue.

We just need to look at other countries such as Sweden, for example, where they provide much better maternity and paternity care. And they see in Sweden, for example, much less of a disparity in the gender pay gap, because there's a huge economic disadvantage to women who start their families early. Yet the key issue is if you want to have a family, that is maybe two or three children, you have to really consider starting in your mid to late 20s. So as a society, we need to be supporting young people to develop their careers, get appropriate housing, but also support them when they want to have a family, so that there isn't this huge gender pay disparity

disparity that we see in the UK that disadvantages the biological necessity to start to try to start at an appropriate age. I was going to say you've done the most perfect segue for me into my next discussion because some of what you're talking about there where I suppose medicine meets the economic and social and political realities of women's lives, is very, very pertinent with regards to flexible working. But Professor Adam Balin, let me say thank you to you and those insights there. I'm sure some of you will be having a reaction to.

I can see even more texts coming in. I'll come back to those in just a moment. But with regards to flexible working, which comes in many forms, we'll define it in just a moment. A trade union Congress poll from 2019 found that only one in three requests for flexible working, excuse me, one in three requests for it were being turned down and that flexi time was unavailable to over half of the UK workforce. The government committed to consult on flexible working back in 2019. Today, nearly two years on, it's announced proposals to allow workers the right to request flexible working from day one in the job. Currently, or before, I should say, it was at 26 weeks you had to have worked there. But do those plans go far enough or too far, creating a nightmare for employers trying to piece it all together? Joining me now,

Emma Stewart, co-founder of TimeWise, a social enterprise helping the working world become a bit more flexible, she hopes, I'm sure. And Leanne Skelson, a nursery manager at Monkey Puzzle Day Nurseries, grappling with perhaps the realities of flexible working as it comes in or not. Emma, first of all, let's start with definitions. What is flexible working? Well, flexible working is essentially anything that is looking at a change to how much, when or where we work. And ultimately, it's about a sweet spot between giving people autonomy and control and some input into that and, working from home, compressed hours, staggered hours, shift swapping, those sorts of things. In terms of the proportion of requests that come from women, do we have any idea of those? So we know that more women than men definitely request to work flexibly. We know, as you said at the beginning, that around one in three requests

are turned down. And I think the key thing here is that the onus is still on the individual when it comes to thinking about flexible working to ask. It's wrapped around people. And what we're really keen to shift into is the onus being on employers, which is what the announcement today is about. I have to say, though, it's moving in the right direction, but we think it's probably not the real game-changing need, which is about putting the onus on employers at the point of hire to consider whether flexible working is available and critically to say so, because we know that only two in ten job vacancies still in this country reference anything about flexible working in a job ad. Leanne, you're a nursery manager in Northamptonshire. Children in your care from 7.30 in the morning to

6.30 all year round. How easy would it be to allow flexible working for your staff? I mean, it's actually a logistical nightmare. I don't even know where you would begin to allow flexible working in this kind of environment. I mean, we've got a legal requirement to adhere to ratios, the right amount of qualified staff per times in the day, per amount of children you've got. I don't know how you would begin to organise that and the amount of administration that would go into

allowing anybody to do technically whatever hours they wanted. I don't see how it would work. And also, just to say, with your line of work, but there'll be other types of work where this will be relevant, it's actually part of what you need from your employees to be there consistently to have relationships with those children, which I imagine is also... Absolutely. I think the relationships... Go on. Go on, I was going to say, I think the relationships is a big factor in that because if you drop your little one

off to nursery, you would like to drop them off to the same person that preferably you pick up to at night time. So you've got that continuity of care and that handover and that parent relationship. But how would you have that if there's possibly two three different people doing that role per day emma you're here you help businesses handle this you know leanne's probably pretty busy that she made a bit of time for us today but how's she how's she going to do that i i i completely emphasize um understand leanne's situation i think the thing we've got to remember is that, you know, we're at

risk here of having a bit of a sort of two-tier response to flexible working. We've had millions of people who've been able to work from home over this pandemic, and we've got the introduction of hybrid working. But Leanne runs a nursery and works in the frontline, and we have millions of workers in the frontline for whom we've got to create different solutions. So if you can't work from home, it's about trying to understand where we can make adaptions and have a two-way conversation about looking at maybe changes to shift patterns, giving people more advanced notice and possibly giving people predictability. But the point is organisations like Leanne need help as well as legislation. They need support because these are tight margin industries.

There are bigger issues at play here. These are industries that need to attract talent and have chronic skill shortages. Yes, and all of that. We've had lots of discussions about the nursery industry in particular. But how could she actually do it? Well, if she wanted to look at offering flexible working, for Leanne, it's about trying to understand with the people that are coming through the door

what their preferences are. Sometimes it's about being able to accommodate in terms of splitting shifts, maybe looking at staggered start and finish times. Sometimes it's about looking at a team dynamic here. You know, not everybody will get what they want and the point is these are about having open and honest conversations between managers and individuals about where and when flexibility can work and it's about doing it she's also got

to keep her business afloat i mean i want to talk for you here absolutely no what do you want to say to that you've got to keep the business afloat i think um i'm always willing to talk with people and discuss what it is they want to do i've got three children myself so i completely understand the the troubles that is that come of it but um i mean we often we often confess working that's probably the best way that comes around sort of three full days and two full days but other than that it just doesn't meet the business's needs emma and that and that's okay i mean it you know not every business can offer everybody the kind of flexibility they want i think in leanne's situation you know we are we need to give businesses in the frontline world

more support we need to make sure that lean anne has some space and time and some training and some management capability beyond her day job to be able to work this out but it's okay sometimes to say no the point is we have gone through 18 months of in theory flexible working revolution we need to be starting to have these conversations more openly and honestly but it and it's are you worried by saying it's OK to say no, that some of the wrong companies will also say no? I say wrong in the ones who can do it and might not. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, we have to be really clear

in a frontline environment, as I said, in shift-based work, it's different. We have to be really careful that we aren't just saying no because it's too hard, it's too complicated. There's a stigma and assumption that people who need flexibility will be less valued or will be less committed. But is by going down this route, I suppose the other concern, I don't know, Leanne, if this is a concern,

but are you concerned that you're going to be breaking some kind of rules now if this is the change that we see? Well, yeah, you would break the rules, the OSPEC requirements of legal ratios, wouldn't you? Oh, no, I meant if you don't do flexible working, now you can be offering it or be asking for it. Oh, yeah, it is a worry, absolutely. If we're not offering it, are we not being legal?

Are we not following the guidelines? It's scary. Emma, any words on that? Well, this is a consultation at this stage. The law hasn't necessarily changed. And the consultation is still saying that businesses can say no. So this is about a right to request from day one, as opposed to waiting for 26 weeks to be able to ask for it flexibly.

Okay. So that's the difference. It's a consultation. And the point is it's got to be done. Okay. So that's the difference. It's a consultation. And the point is it's got to be done. Okay. It's not law yet. It's not law yet and you still have the right to say no the way it's been drafted at the moment.

So it's good to bottom this out. But I think just to say, Emma, which you were saying, the two-tier system element of this, that office workers will be able to do this, office in that sense that we know it, and those in a nursery perhaps won't be i mean that that is that an unintended consequence or a concern here of moving forward with this emma yes it is and we have to make sure i think you know the government needs to be thinking very

carefully about what kind of packages of support can be made available at a sector-based level for industries that are going to struggle. I mean, at TimeWise, we've done pilots in different industries like construction. We've worked in social care. It is possible to do this, but you have to have support and space to be able to do that as well as your day job. So people like Leanne can get some help as opposed to having to struggle on and do this on her own. But I think we can't afford not to do this. You know, we invest in R&D and technology in this country all the time. We don't invest in job design

and leadership and management skills. And also, I know from your work, Emma, sorry to cut in again, but with the construction industry, you know, the figures there can be terrible about, you know, relationships staying together, the pressures on work, people not seeing that you know this is about ironically looking at the whole image and i say ironically going back to my my

discussion just now about our life choices and um what we do with our for instance fertility not just that but we were just talking about that it all fits together doesn't it emma it does it does we have millions of people who are working longer hours, who have less autonomy and control over how they work in this country. And not coincidentally, these are industries that are desperately struggling to attract talent, to keep people and to be able to be as productive as possible. So we have to, you know, we have been through this revolution of different ways of working. We have to really now focus in on some of these industries that need talent and are really struggling and we've got to stop trying to necessarily just think about that leaky pipeline and skills provision but think about how we design work to enable people to be able to balance work and life more

effectively otherwise you know we have a risk here that we would have unhealthy strained stressed individuals who will drop out of the workplace and we also have many more who will not come into these environments because the way that work is designed is just too challenging for them. We have to help people like Leanne. The idea of work not working. Leanne Skelton, we'll let you get back to it. A nursery manager. Thank you very much. At Monkey Puzzle Day Nurseries. A message actually from Kieran who said, My child's nursery does have flexi working. no issue with parents having different adult picking up. My child's very happy. Please let people know these things are possible.

But flexi working is important and should be encouraged. But I think, Kieran, the reality from Leanne is very important to hear because lots of people are not in that situation. And we also know, particularly in nurseries, how difficult it has been with staffing and what's been going on during the pandemic. So that's why it was doubly important actually to hear from Leanne today. Emma Stewart, thank you very much to you, co-founder of TimeWise, for putting us in the picture there. Emma, do you have a wonderful work-life balance as someone who spends their life talking about such things?

Emma, are you still there? Oh, she's gone. I wanted to see how it was to actually know about these things in practice. I just wanted to read a couple of messages that came in off the back of our fertility conversation before our next discussion. One saying, raise awareness. Raising awareness is really needed. By the time couples seek help for infertility at 35, they only have a couple of years to investigate and try for a child before fertility plummets. This comes as a shock to many, believe the expert.

And someone else saying with regards to putting warnings within pill packets within the literature, think it's a good idea girls have it drummed into them not to get pregnant for so long but this is not balanced by information about how fertility wanes once you begin having issues becoming pregnant you're told you've left it too late more messages coming in and I'll come to those as I can but Twitch as some of you may know especially the gamers amongst you is a platform where millions of people come together to chat and live stream games. But recently it's been influxed with something called hate raids, a way of abusing marginalised members. Joining us today are two women who would love gaming to be a safe space, free of discrimination and a lot of fun, I'm sure too. Cassie Hughes, co-founder of Black Twitch

UK and Shea Thompson, a gamer and gaming presenter journalist. Welcome to you both. Shea, I thought I'd just just start with you and ask, how did you first get into gaming? When I was a kid, you know, I had my older brother who introduced me to Sega Mega Drive. You know, I'd play like Streets of Rage, you know, really classic games, Altered Beast, things like that. And I was always fascinated with the stories you could tell with sort of less technology, because obviously you only had 16-bit back then, so you could tell so many stories with such limited technology. And of course, that's just developed and progressed over the years since then.

Indeed. I was casting my mind back to my Game Boy, which still works all these years on my original one in a bum bag i got given shay how did you first get into gaming excuse me shay i've said shay cassie forgive me i'm looking at the wrong screen cassie tell me for you what was it like what was the thing that caught your imagination I think the um the competitive nature of my mum starting us off with Scrabble and then stealing her you know those handhold games that had like 99 games on one yeah but you could get from wheelhouse it started like that and then um being left to entertain ourselves um my sibling and I and then we had like one of those snares you know the ones that you had to blow in the cartridge

and then just a lot of shouting in the house that being better so that was the way we resolved everything if you can beat me in this game, then you have to do this. And that's how I ended up doing all the washing up in my house. It's good to get that insight into both of you. And Scrabble being the gateway as well. An interesting one. Cassie, thanks for that. Shay, this is a huge love of you and the people that you game with and a lot of fun.

We can hear that. But I mentioned these hate raids. What is that and and how is that impacting people like yourself uh so raids are a feature on twitch which lets streamers send their viewers to another channel when they're done for the day and it's normally a nice thing to help support up-and-coming streamers um but there are people who have taken that really lovely thing for the sole purpose of sending abuse and harassment to quite often like marginalized creators they flood the chat with bots who overwhelm it with abusive and hateful messages and slurs and things like that which is obviously not really nice to see

um it can you know really throw unsuspecting streamers off guard and you know actually kind of get people in trouble since uh people who aren't expecting that to happen you know they can get banned because they're basically in control of what happens in their chat so it's just you know it's a really terrible thing all around and cassie what's been your experience of this oh so um shea had it exactly right that's exactly what hate raging is um over the past i would say month it's really been amped up um a lot um but it's horrible because obviously as streamers um we do a lot of sponsored streams and we're in featured um lights um on highlights on twitch it can be quite difficult because if you've got say a brand working you, it undermines the whole stream

because you can't focus on what you need to do because there's really hateful things. And it's more than just, oh, don't worry, ignore it. It can be sharing personal information. It can be threats. Obviously, we know about the George Floyd murders. It's laughing about that in the chat and then spamming things like, oh, we wish it the George Floyd murders. It's laughing about that in the chat and then spamming things like,

oh, we wish it happened to you constantly. And there's nothing you can do but be able to stop what you have to do. There's a lot of like moderation that we have, but it's just it feels very unprotected at times. And they know they target people that are vulnerable on the platform. Is that, Cassie, is that more towards women, would you say? Or is there another pattern? They target people that are vulnerable on the platform. Cassie, is that more towards women, would you say, or is there another pattern?

I would say it's for women, it's for black creators, it's for members of the LGBTQIA trans creators pretty much um anyone that's not white male is it's I would say over the past month or so significantly more I think as a black woman that streams on Twitch um when I've spoken to my friends that are white women on Twitch they were so shocked when they saw my chats when I was on like a featured front page. And they said that they've had things where people are, you know, sexist, like get in the kitchen or things like that. But the messages that they'd seen in my chat,

they hadn't come across. And yeah. Well, that's why we wanted to talk about this today, to bring it to to a wider audience and knowledge a statement from twitch uh that we've got just to share with you and with all of our listeners hate and harassment against any member of our community is completely against our values and terms of service no one should have to experience this on twitch these targeted attacks against marginalized members of our community have been organized by online networks of highly

motivated bad actors who are determined to spread hate by any means. We're working around the clock to combat them through legal action, combat them through legal action, excuse me, and a number of new safety tools that we plan to launch in coming months. I'm really minded, Cassie,

and to come back to you, Shay, that you want people, of course, though, to be part of this, you know, not part of that, but part of this community and be enjoying the gaming side and women and those who might not have thought it's for them. What would you say in light of these hate raids to say to people who perhaps do want to get involved

but don't know how, Shay? It's awful because, you know, streaming has been a way for people to kind of stay connected and build new communities over the last you know year year and a half um and so of course i want people to get involved in that but they're you it's almost like undertaking a massive risk by doing so because then you leave yourself open to you know a lot of abuse and harassment and slurs and i think i do think that twitch could be doing a lot more to protect their users and like people on the platform, because, you know, like there have been community tools and software being developed. But that should have come from Twitch way sooner, you know, way, way sooner, honestly. And I mean, this is a story I suppose we hear across social media.

But do you think there is an added element here with it being to do with gaming, Shay, very briefly, if you can? Yeah, I think I mean, it's the same thing with the internet right like there are always going to be pockets of bad actors making everything worse for everybody but you know with that we do have people making you know the community being the shining beacon of light that we've needed for the past year so you know what comes with the good comes the bad it's the classic thing right well and just try and enjoy the games in the meantime, I suppose, and the experience. It's lovely to talk to both of you. Shea Thompson, a gamer and a gaming presenter and journalist there, and Cassie Hughes, co-founder of Black Twitch UK.

Thank you to both of you. Thank you to all of you listening for your messages today and for your company. We'll be back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us be back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Lifelines, a new series of the multi-award winning Radio 4 drama, now available as a podcast. Sometimes heart stopping, sometimes heart starting. Always matters of life and death.

Ambulance service. Is the patient breathing and conscious? Subscribe to Lifelines on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

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