Woman's Hour - Self employed the mothers missing out.. Science journalist Debora Mackenzie

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

Self-employed women are receiving less government support during coronavirus if they’ve taken maternity leave between April 2016 and March 2019 – because maternity pay isn’t taken into account when calculating payments under the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme. The group Pregnant Then Screwed is now threatening the chancellor with indirect sex discrimination. It’s estimated between 75,000 and 80,000 women are affected. We speak to founder of Pregnant then Screwed, Joeli Brearley and the freelance journalist, Alex Lloyd who says the support she’s getting is about half what it could have been if average earnings had included maternity pay.Casey Stoney MBE is Former Captain of England and now Head Coach of Manchester United Women. We see the return of the men’s Premier League tonight, while the women’s season was ended early in May, and Casey joins Jenni to talk about the women’s game.Science journalist Debora Mackenzie talks about her book 'Covid-19: the pandemic that never should have happened & how to stop the next one’.There are concerns that covid lockdowns could be pushing up child marriage and violence against girls in Nepal. According to Voluntary Service Overseas the lockdown is reinforcing traditional gender roles and girls living in rural areas are especially affected. We hear from Geeta Pradham, their Global Gender Adviser.The writer and broadcaster Sali Hughes has been talking to women about objects in their lives that are important to them. Today it’s the turn of Nadia Shireen.Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Joeli Brearley Guest; Alex Lloyd Guest; Casey Stoney Guest; Debora Mackenzie Guest; Geeta Pradham Guest; Nadia Shireen

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 17th of June. Good morning. Men's Premier League football begins tonight. Women won't be coming back yet. Casey Stoney, a former England captain and head coach of Manchester United, explains how the women's game is coping

with continued lockdown. COVID-19, the pandemic that should never have happened and how to stop the next one. The science journalist, Deborah McKenzie, on her new book. The worries voluntary service overseas has about the girls in Nepal. How is their education and safety from child marriage and violence affected by the lockdown? And the next in our series of precious objects, we hear from the writer and illustrator, Nadia Shirin.

A group called Pregnant Then Screwed is threatening the Chancellor of the Exchequer with legal action, claiming he's employed indirect sex discrimination in the allocation of payments under the self-employment income support scheme to women who've taken maternity leave between April 2016 and March 2019. The question was raised in the Public Health England Review COVID-19 Disparities on the 4th of June by Kevin Brennan MP. Earlier the Minister said equalities is something that happens across Whitehall. Self-employed women including BAME women who have had maternity leave in the last three years lose out under the Treasury under themorth Covid-19. Mae hyn yn ysgrifennu pregwysedd oeddol, yn unigol a syml, gan ei Lywodraeth. Beth mae hi'n ei wneud i ei gyflawni?

Y Llywodraeth wedi cynnig cynllun ddiddordeb i helpu pob un o'r bobl sydd wedi cael eu canolbwyntio arian gan produced an unprecedented scheme of packages to help all those people financially impacted by COVID-19. But as he knows, we are using earnings data, average earnings data based over the last three years. It does mean that some groups are impacted, but because of the way HMRC collects information, this isn't necessarily something that we can address. And that's why we have other schemes in place,

which people hopefully should be able to access. Kemi Badenoch, the Exchequer Secretary, answering Kevin Brown's question. Well, what effect is the allocation of funds having on those self-employed women who've had maternity leave in the past three years? Alex Lloyd is a freelance journalist and copywriter who has two young sons. Jolie Brearley is the founder of Pregnant Then Screwed. Jolie, how exactly is the scheme supposed to work? So the scheme takes a calculation over the last three years of your average earnings and then you are given a payment based on those average earnings.

The problem is they don't exempt periods of maternity leave so if you've had one child in that time then your grant will be reduced by about a third. If you've taken two periods of maternity leave in that time it'll be reduced by about two thirds. The response from the Minister, Kebby Badenoch, is frankly nonsense. The government has the data which shows which self-employed women have accessed the maternity allowance scheme in the last three years. That data is actually published on their own website, which is how we know that 75,000 women are directly affected by this. But what about these schemes in place which people

hopefully should be able to access that she mentioned? She's talking about universal credit, which is £90 a week. That's not going to help a single mum with two children survive and pay their rent and pay their food bills. These women deserve this payment. Rishi Sunak's response when questioned on it was that everybody has ups and downs in earnings and he correlated this to sick leave which is frankly insulting giving birth and raising the next generation is not an illness it is critical work for the well-functioning of our society so these women need the payments that they deserve sorry to jump in there but Alex what effect has having taken maternity leave had on your claim for support? Well I took maternity leave with my first son in 2016 straddling into 2017 which is the first year of where they calculate it so I only worked the last two months of that financial year as self-employed

and I earned a very small amount of money the following two years I was back to full strength I was working four to five days a week and earning significantly more so when they averaged it it brought my total right down and I worked out that had they based it on two the two full years of trading I would have got nearly 50 percent more than what I actually received because of the, you know, the tiny amount in that first year. And when you've been paying quite a lot of tax, the national insurance, and you feel really hard done by because we're taxpayers. We work hard. We do really unsocial hours. I mean, when you're self-employed, if you don't work, you don't get paid.

So you often sit in bed, you know, the cold typing away on the laptop to hit a deadline and it's it just it really sticks in your throat when you hear the chance of saying no one's going to be left behind but as a mum you were doing really important work raising a baby and and you're penalized for it. Jolie what have you heard from other women who've been in contact with you how has it affected them? I mean we've had some heartbreaking letters from women for whom this drop in income is not just inconvenient it's absolutely infuriating and for some it means the difference between paying their rent putting food on the table you know some of them are worried about losing their homes just the other day I heard from a single mum who is a musician and her regular freelance gig with a West End show

disappeared overnight. And she will get less than a third of what her male colleagues will receive just because she took maternity leave. And we already know that the gender pay gap amongst the self-employed is 43%. Inevitably, this is only going to increase that gender pay gap and increase child poverty because these are vulnerable new mums. So Alex, what are you actually getting in your pocket now? So I worked out that if I'd received the amount based on the two years I'd probably get about six thousand pounds which is to cover three months of lost earnings but I'm actually receiving a nearer to three thousand pounds so it's not it's you know it's a good amount of money and I'm very lucky to get

something but I think it's the the inequality and the fact that I am still you are still allowed to do some work if you can get it and I've I've managed to pick up bits and pieces I have two children at home because there's been no child care um but I fitted it around them around my husband's job um but we just don't know what the future holds you know publishing I work in publishing copywriting and we don't know we keep being told that the economy is tanking and we don't know if that work will still be there in six months time so everyone's tightening their belts and every penny counts and I've spoken to lots of women in the same boat and you know I earn I earn fairly good money but

I know women who run a baby groups and they're all closed indefinitely. So they have no idea when, you know, they'll be getting any income. The one woman told me she, her grant was going to amount to one month of pay, but it's supposed to cover six. So that's a significant drop. Jolie, how confident are you that you can claim that this is indirect sex discrimination? I mean, it's so clear that it is. It's not only indirect sex discrimination, it's a breach of the public sector equality duty. The government has a responsibility to assess their schemes to ensure that they don't discriminate. And quite clearly, they have not done this here. And if we just allow them to get away with it without scrutiny, then we open the door to women

and minority groups facing government sanctioned discrimination in the future. This is about defending our rights and showing the government that they cannot ride roughshod over the Equalities Act. Let me just tell you what someone from the Treasury said to us. Our self-employment income support scheme which has been, is one of the most generous in the world and has helped more than 2.6 million people so far. We understand the challenges for new parents who are self-employed. The scheme already supports people who saw a dip in profits last year due to taking maternity leave by calculating the grant on a three-year average of profits. This ensures what they receive better reflects their usual income. What do you make of that?

It's just absolute nonsense. They're trying to cover up the fact that they have made a botch up of this scheme, but they've had plenty of opportunity to rectify it. They've just announced a new tranche of the scheme and they haven't rectified the problem. I mean, the issue really is where are all the women, Jenny? Where are all the women sat around that table making these decisions and saying you need to consider different groups in these schemes? They're just, you know, they're ignoring the problem and we're not standing for it. Jolie, I know you're a very small charity charity how are you going to afford a legal process?

We are a tiny charity there are only two paid members of staff everybody else is volunteer we are very confident we're going to win and if we win it will not cost us any money to do this of course it is a big risk for us to take on this case, but it is absolutely worth it. If we do not defend the rights of these women right now, then when are we going to? So we believe we'll be successful. And Alex, just a final question to you. How are you and your family, your two little boys and your husband, managing financially? Yeah, we've managed, you know, my husband, it's not just sort of me it's my husband's company in force to pay cut globally when this happened for three months

so he's he's earning less i mean we we're lucky we're one of the lucky ones we we have some savings we we you know have professional jobs so we earn a bit more anyway and we have families that will help us out but i just worry about if we don't take a stand on this what happens to the single mums the low earners you know women aren't always self-employed through choice it's often circumstance and it's often because of our gender and the inequalities that exist when once you have a baby I felt it was the first time for me that I really felt unequal and how women were treated differently to men and there's a lack of you know I'm I'm the self-employed one I'm the one that fits around the kids because my

husband earns more than me um and I can't do anything about that but hopefully I can do something about this clear discrimination um in this government policy well Alex Lloyd Jolie Brearley thank you both very much indeed for joining us this morning. And if you are affected in the same way that Alex is affected, we'd really like to hear from you. Do send us an email or, of course, a tweet if you've had maternity leave and you can't get the money you thought you were going to get. Now, men's Premier League football returns tonight as Aston Villa play Sheffield United and Manchester City play Arsenal. Of course, there'll be no supporters in the stadia, but there will be back-to-back football over the next seven days. But there won't be any women playing. The Women's Super League ended in May and Chelsea won the title

on a points-per per game basis. Manchester United came fourth. Earlier I spoke to Casey Stoney who was a captain of England, is the author of Changing the Game, fantastic female footballers and is now head coach to Manchester United Women. How disappointed was she when the women's season ended? I think obviously as a team and as a club we're disappointed because we missed out on so many games and opportunities to play and obviously grow and develop. But I have to say, obviously, it was the right decision in the circumstances and I've said that from the offset because we need to remember

we are not the Premier League. We don't have the same funding, resources, logistics in terms of a lot of us don't have our own training grounds. We don't have the same funding, resources, logistics in terms of a lot of us don't have our own training grounds. We don't have our own grounds. Staffing would be obviously an issue as well. And we wouldn't return unless it was safe for the players and the staff to do so. So as disappointing as it was, you know, I think it was the right decision in the circumstances. But what about coming back now?

I mean, we've got the main coming back. And I know Alex Scott said on Match of the Day that women's sport has really taken a back seat because of the virus. What would you say to that? I would say, obviously, we are planning on coming back and we're planning on coming back stronger than ever, you know, in terms of making sure the women's game is visible, giving it the platform that it needs. And we're going through that process with the FA at the moment and the club and trying to make sure that we've got everything in place that we can return and safe to do so. And obviously, we've got the start date of the league

is the weekend of the 5th and 6th of September. So, you know, we're all working towards that date now to get the game up and running again. What have you been doing with your players then since lockdown? Because obviously you need to keep them really fit. Yeah, obviously one of the key things we wanted to do was make sure the players felt fully supported. So obviously they all had individual programmes.

We got equipment out to all of them. We had Zoom calls twice a week. We had different tasks set up for them that we did as a team online cooking tasks and you know different challenges where we could kind of just stay connected and be connected we had well-being surveys i think mental health at this time is something that we really need to obviously look after so we've looked after the players in those areas too and we kept them training um until obviously the league got terminated and then we shut them down

because it's very important. They also have a break and a rest. And as much as they can't get on a plane and go on holiday, they need a physical and mental rest from the training environment. They're back on programs now and booting back up hopefully

to return with us in July. How are you keeping them going financially? Do you know what I have to say? Manchester United have been incredible during this period. There wasn't even a mention of furlough at all. All the players are still fully paid. All the staff are still fully paid. We've been really, really supported.

I think the club have been a real shining light during this period and massively supported us as a team. So that gives you a lot of trust in the club and obviously it gives you that stability in a very uncertain time. I know you've been involved in the game for quite a long time now, but how did you break through into football as a potential professional game when girls were told, no, no, no no it's not a game for you very difficult lots of barriers lots of hurdles played in a boys team because there's no girls

teams when i was growing up but you'd have to go dressed because there was no changing facilities for me then when i got to the age of 11 i got banned from all my football teams because there was kind of no mix you weren't allowed to play mixed sports so i had to find a girls team to play for and you know the level wasn't what it was back then. I had to play senior football for Chelsea when I was 12. I was still a child playing in senior teams. But I do think my experiences shaped me and made me what I am. I didn't actually turn professional until I was 30.

I always had full-time jobs. I coached for every club that I played for from the age of 17. I've worked in many different jobs just to make sure that i could earn money and so that could play the game that i love because we always had to pay to play um until the point when you know obviously the game turned professional and that that changed my life in terms of being able to actually focus dedicate my life to football and what's the future for it after this ghastly period? Well, obviously there are massive concerns for the women's game because it's going to have financial implications on the world,

not just women's football. And with the finances of the women's game, we have to protect this game. And we need to make sure we protect it because we came off the back of a fantastic World Cup last year and the game was growing and i do think it's got the potential to grow again you know i think that the thirst is there from the fans they want to to get involved in the women's game now the level is higher than it's ever been on the pitch the advert in terms of people wanting to watch is brilliant so you know i do think it will continue to grow obviously we need to grow it very carefully now off the back of this terrible situation.

I was talking to Casey Stoney. Still to come in today's programme, the worries voluntary service overseas has about girls in Nepal. How is the Covid lockdown affecting their education and their safety from child marriage and violence. And the next in our series of precious objects, we hear from the author and illustrator Nadia Shireen. Now, earlier in the week, you may have missed Jane's conversations about the government's proposals for the Gender Recognition Act. And on Monday, the discussion about how publishers might support women from black and minority ethnic communities. Now, Bernadine Evaristo and Renée Eddo-Lodge are at the top of the best-selling book lists. If you miss us live, all you have to do is go to the BBC Sounds app, look for Woman's Hour, download us, and there we will be. Now, there could hardly be a more intriguing title for a book at this time than COVID-19,

the pandemic that should never have happened, and how to stop the next one. The author is the science journalist Deborah McKenzie, who's been writing about emerging diseases for three decades. In early January this year, she began reporting on a cluster of atypical flu cases in Wuhan in China. During lockdown on the border between France and Switzerland, she sat down and wrote her book. Deborah, why should the pandemic never have happened? Because we knew this particular group of viruses was a threat. Scientists had been warning about it explicitly since 2013. Scientists in general have been worrying about this threat,

the threat of emerging viruses and pandemics, for longer than that. But we knew about this specific group of viruses. We knew they were in bats. We could have taken steps to develop a few countermeasures, like reviving the work on vaccines for viruses like SARS that got dropped after SARS was beaten back in 2003. We could have taken steps in China, people in China could have taken steps to avoid contact between bats and humans. What is it? Deborah, what is it about bats that seems to be so significant in so many of these conditions? Well, bats are the only mammal who actually fly

and they have extremely high metabolic rates because you need that to fly, takes a lot of energy, and therefore they can't have the normal kinds, for various complicated reasons, of immune responses to viruses that you and I have and all the other mammals. So what they do is they have these amazing rapid responses where they just shut viruses down and tolerate them. You know, they carry them around. They don't actively fight them. They don't get sick. They just kind of keep them under key and stop them really causing any trouble. But they carry them. They don't get sick. They just kind of keep them under key and stop them really causing any trouble. But they carry them. They're alive. So a lot of viruses have adapted to live in this situation in bats. And they're particularly virulent for that reason. They've got to be fast to live in a bat. After SARS in 2003, there were international and local systems put in place to prevent any other outbreak. Why didn't those plans work?

Well, they weren't good enough, really. There was a lot of talking. There was an update to the international rules saying countries had to declare any outbreak that might have international significance. And indeed, you know, China did. But still countries maintain sovereignty, sovereign rights over any outbreak on their territory, despite the fact that we're all at risk. A country can say, no, no, we've got this. You can't come in and look at this firsthand. You know, you don't have the right to come in here and verify what we're telling you about this virus. You know, you could do that if somebody's accused of making a chemical weapon, but you can't do it if somebody has a novel virus outbreak. You know, it seems to me that this is kind of an inappropriate kind of continuation of 19th century national sovereignty. I mean, diseases threaten everyone. We all know that now firsthand. And, you know, we need to develop symptoms that can get past those.

The need for social distancing seems to be the key difference between this virus and others which were contained through isolation and testing. When did scientists know that, that it was a different kind of disease? Well, the Chinese caught on pretty early, because of course, they have world class scientists, and it was spreading, and they were realizing that just isolating cases with symptoms wasn't working. You know, they were still getting rises in cases, and they were adapting their response in different cities as the virus spread, and they responded very quickly. Once they finally, you know, knew that this was spreading person to person and they could launch a full-blown response. The problem was that that was kind of, you know, kept secret for the first two or three weeks and they couldn't do

that. But the thing is that there are a lot of viruses like that. Flu spreads before it causes symptoms. That's why there are no containment plans for a flu pandemic, because it just spreads too fast and you can't see it. That's one of the reasons why that is the reason, as you mentioned, the containment alone didn't work on COVID-19. You know, we needed social distancing as well. But then they had to try that and realise that the virus was spreading, you know, not necessarily when it had symptoms, and adapt their response accordingly. And that took a little while. Now, once it had spread beyond China, the World Health Organisation gave out clear guidance

as to what would contain the disease. Why did different governments just cherry-pick the measures they thought, oh, yeah, we'll do that, no, we'll do that? I heard one Italian official say, you know, we just watched what was happening in China, and we never really thought it could happen here. I think there's just disbelief. You know, scientists have been mourning that this sort of thing can happen,

but as societies, we've lost the habit of having out of control infectious disease. We beat most of them long ago. The last time we had a seriously lethal flu pandemic was 1918. We stopped having polio epidemics every summer in the early 50s. I think people just didn't believe this was happening. And of course, it's pretty economically disruptive to do what you have to do. I mean, China certainly took a cut to its economy

by launching the containment efforts that it did. And I think governments that were more focused on, you know, the stock market than on medical well-being, might have been a little slower to do that than others. Now, you say in the book that scientists and journalists like yourself have been having fears about potential epidemics since the 1990s. Why has nobody been listening to you? Well, the other scientists have been when this started a

few of my colleagues said well deb you've been predicting this for years um you know because i cover infectious disease and i've been talking about the scientists saying this was going to happen um the thing is that in order to respond to a warning like this um you have to really believe that this is going to happen and and like i say we've kind of lost the habit of being afraid of infectious disease. You also have to make pretty thoroughgoing changes to a society. We're a complex society. You have to change a lot of things in a coordinated way to really put in good defenses against this.

For example, we knew we should have stockpiles of ventilators. Some places did. Toronto, which had a bad SARS epidemic in 2003, had a stockpile of ventilators. California also made one, interestingly enough, under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. He made a stockpile of ventilators. Later on, under the next Democratic governor, they had a bit of a financial crunch in the States, and had a bit of a financial crunch in the States and they got rid of the stockpile because it cost money. And they thought, well, why do we have this? You know, you just have to have follow through. I think after this pandemic,

possibly the silver lining will be that we now understand this is real and we really have to take some serious precautions at all levels. What are you most worried about for the future? Nipah virus. Sorry, say that again. Nipah virus. Okay, give me some details. Yeah, well, what happened was I went to an emerging diseases conference and we were all talking about each scientist had their pet virus that they were talking about enthusiastically. And I asked all of them, look, of all these viruses we're hearing about here, what's the one that scares you? And almost all of them said, oh, Nipah. Well, that or a bird flu pandemic, which would not be good news. But Nipah is starting to learn to transmit between people and it's got a very high death rate. So people are worried about that.

Yeah. Okay. What can we do to prevent it? Well, we could start working on Nipah vaccines. You know, we could set up surveillance. That's the big one. If we could somehow institute surveillance. It's already set up in this international treaty called the International Health Regulations. We're all supposed to be doing this. Each country is supposed to be watching outbreaks and then telling people if one comes up that's kind of unexpected and might be a bit of a threat. And, you know, we're supposed to be big and honest and open about it. That's the part that seems to be missing now. And then, you know, go in very quickly and try and contain

it. That would have certainly slowed down COVID-19. I'm not sure. And the scientists I talked to are not sure we could have stopped it completely because it's a very slippery virus. But what we need to do is watch more carefully and respond more quickly. Would have happened this time. If it had happened this time, it would have been a lot better. And, you know, that's what we need to stop things like Nipah, to stop things like the next flu pandemic, that and work on a lot of, you know, like vaccines and stuff. Even if we don't have a market to sell those products now, now a company cannot work on a vaccine or a drug if there's no market, because that's just, it's not mean and nasty, it's just the way it's set up. We need to get around that. We need to

find ways of developing countermeasures, whether or not the disease is there and already constitutes a market for the product or not. So briefly, how surprised are you that knowing that COVID-19 may well be just around the corner, why there was no vaccine, why nobody had worked on a potential vaccine? People did. After SARS, people worked on vaccines for SARS. And then everybody went on, oh, look, SARS is gone now, and it's not coming back and you know we can't sell this thing so forget it there's no money for the research Deborah McKenzie thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning and I will just repeat the title of your book it's the pandemic COVID-19 the pandemic that should never have happened and how to stop the next one.

Fingers crossed you're right about that. Thank you. Bye bye. Our concerns are being expressed by voluntary service overseas about the lives of girls in Nepal during lockdown. There are worries that particularly in rural areas, traditional gender roles are being reinforced. Their education is suffering and they're at risk of child marriage and violence. Particularly in rural areas, traditional gender roles are being reinforced. Their education is suffering and they're at risk of child marriage and violence. I'm joined by Gita Pradham, the Global Gender Advisor for VSO. Gita, how strict is the lockdown in Nepal? Hi, Jenny. Namaste and a very good afternoon from Nepal. So in Nepal, the lockdown started on 24th

March. And since then, it has been very strict. And over 80 days, around 80 days, we had the lockdown. It was really strict. There was no movement allowed. And even in some high-risk areas, in some of our districts that we work in in midwestern part of Nepal where even essential shops were allowed to open for only three days a week that also from 7 a.m to 9 a.m. So how are you getting the information about the girls that you're worried about? So we're getting the information through communicating to them through phones or through mobiles. A lot of the girls, they don't have their own access to mobiles or phones. So we communicate with the parents and we ask the permission and then we are able to speak to the girls through our community volunteers who are based in those communities.

How has their education been affected? This has had a huge impact on the education because since the lockdown until now the schools are not open. The government still has not given a clear pathway in terms of how schools will reopen or how they will access the most marginalized and poor girls in those places that we work in. Because even if the government are saying that they will have digital learning through TV or through radio, we have to understand that 57% of the girls in our district, they don't have access to internet. And 27% of these girls in the households, they don't even have a radio. So there is a huge impact on their learnings and what our research have also shown is that 89 percent of the girls are now involved in household

chores as well as agricultural work so before the lockdown they would spend around two three hours a day to help out the parents but now we see that you know eight to ten hours of them is involved in care role as well as helping out the parents in agriculture but why aren't boys as negatively affected as the girls appear to be nepal being a patriarchal society where there are certain roles responsibilities and construct in terms of what boys should be doing and girls should be doing. So girls are expected to do all the care roles, girls as well as women. And boys aren't really expected. They enjoy the privilege of being the men and the boys in the families.

And even if they don't help out and they don't support they aren't really expected but for the girls if they don't help out their mothers or the parents in some of the scare roles then they might be scolded and they might be say you're not a good girl you should be doing this and why aren't you doing that so these are some of the ways in which how it's not really impacting it's impacting differently for boys and girls and men and women. I know it's a relatively small survey that you have here but you're clearly worried about forced child marriage and violence what what's your evidence for that? Our evidence in our report also clearly shows that, but also other reports that are coming out from other organizations, as well as national data. violence and and another organizations like uh warwick which have also shown that there's an increase of domestic violence rape and other kinds of violence against women and girls so even if a

sample is quite small but it reinforces and aligns with other data that is coming out across the nepal in terms of increase in violence increase in protection issues and also an increase in suicide cases. Just last week also there was a woman in one of the western part of Nepal in a quarantine centre where she was gang raped by the volunteers there who were supposed to help and support her so we can see the vulnerability as well as the risk that women and girls are facing in this country. I know you're also worried about girls being able to get sanitary protection when they have a period. How much of a problem is that?

It is a huge problem because just last year, our president, through the president's fund, it was announced that all government schools will provide free sanitary pads. So a lot of the girls now have been accessing that. But now in the lockdown, the schools are locked down. They don't have money to go and buy sanitary pads.

And also most of the shops are closed. And where it is available, it has become very expensive. So we have seen that 77% of the girls are not able to access sanitary pads from the market. So now, since in our programme, we have trained them to use reusable sanitary pads, so they're relying on homemade products and using some of the skills that they had to make some sanitary reusable pads at home. Now, just briefly, Nepal has a woman president. How outspoken has she been about protecting women and girls now?

She has through the official, you know, the office of the president. So there has been some number of statements that they have released. And also on May 15th, when she was presenting the country's policy, she had made a special address on protecting most vulnerable children, such as children, women, people with disability and ethnic groups. But of course, there is this voice from the people as well as the youth of the country that, you know, we want to hear more from the presidents and from the government. And just over the past last week, we've been having youths who have been protesting against the government who feel, who are not happy with the way the government is handling the pandemic. Well, Geeta, we'll have to stop there. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Geeta Pradham, who we were speaking to in Nepal. Thank you so much for joining us this morning, Geeta Pradham, who we were speaking to in Nepal. Thank you very much. Now, the writer and broadcaster Sally Hughes has been talking to women about objects in their lives that are important to them, things we cherish are not always vintage or antique or even expensive. Instead, we treasure stuff that reminds us of special people

or particular times in our lives. Today, it's the turn of the writer and illustrator, Nadia Shirin. My object is a large, sad-eyed teddy bear. And it matters to me because it was given to me during a really tricky time in my life. I was 20, so maybe too old. 20 or 21, so you'd think too old for a teddy bear. But my dad was dying of cancer.

And I'd had to leave university quite suddenly to go back to the family home where we were looking after him and I had a really tight group of friends at uni and one of them had moved back to Ireland he just got married and I think at that age it's really difficult with illness and death it's difficult at any age but at that age particularly everyone's very funny everyone's very good at taking the mick you're less good at actually talking about really big scary things like cancer and your parent dying. John sent me this teddy bear and a card and it said something like, I wish I could be there to give you a hug, but I can't. So hug this bear instead. And I did. I did. I'm not much of a public crier and I wasn't talking about it much. I didn't really know how to talk about it. But this bear, it's kind of floppy, limbed and just has,

it doesn't have a cheery expression. It has quite a deadpan expression. But I could fit my whole head, my face into its stomach. And it became a really nice thing to sleep with which again I know sounds crazy for like a 21 year old to sleep with a teddy bear but it it did bring me huge comfort and I could cry into that bear's tummy and no one would hear me. Is there something about a teddy bear or a toy I wonder that sort of gives you permission to be emotional and sentimental in a way that perhaps doesn't sit well with your personality elsewhere I'm quite childish my personality is quite childish but I think yes there's something in that this particular circumstance I I put myself in the role of being as sensible and practical as possible. There were other people in the family who were maybe more demonstrative in their grief.

And I tried very hard to be brave, keep it together, do what I could do to be useful, make lunch, make sure the bag was packed for the hospice, you know, stuff like that. And I'm sure people would have been fine if I had broken down and cried, but I couldn't let myself. So, yeah, a teddy bear, I guess. Yeah, a teddy bear, my defences were down and I could just privately have those moments that I couldn't let myself have in front of other people. There's something about a parent dying even in adulthood that sort of makes you

regress in a way to childhood that it's an undeniable thing that when you lose a parent the child in you comes out did you find that? Yeah definitely there were definitely moments of that because I would have quite petulant thoughts of but this isn't fair this isn't right this isn't how it's meant to be what about me um yeah definitely definitely I think I'd you know it was a complicated age or at the end of uni or when you when you're at that if you don't go to uni if you're that age in general your horizons abroad you're looking ahead you think the world's going to open up for you I had friends who were leaving the country they were moving down to London their lives were beginning and in contrast I was looking at death

and dealing with illness and going home and going home and none of my friends were there. So, yeah, I had lots of childlike feelings. And I was at home. And again, being at home turns you into, can turn you into kind of a childish version of yourself. Yes, it's that back in the single bed sensation, isn't it? Yeah, I was back in the bedroom I'd been in since I was five with a big teddy bear and a grumpy cat. And then after your father did die, did you hang on to the bear or did it go away for a while? I maybe cried into that bear more afterwards than during. I started to use it as a pillow um there was no one around to judge judge a 21 year old girl with a huge teddy bear in her bed um yeah I would sleep

with it I would rest my head on that bear for the best part of a year and what will happen to the bear now will he stay with you for the long haul or will he be passed to somebody else in need? Could you bear to part with him? I don't know. Bear has seen a lot. He's still with me. He's not in my bedroom, but he's in my son's bedroom. And even though my son's disinterested, I don't know. Do you know what? If there was someone who fell in love with him and cuddled him the way that I did, then yes, I would pass him on. Nadia Shireen was talking to Sally Hughes and we would love to see pictures of your precious objects. You can send them to us either on Twitter or of course on Instagram. Now, lots of you unsurprisingly got in touch about how recent maternity leave has affected claiming government support during COVID-19. An email came from Susanna who said,

I have fallen through the net as a smidgen over 50% of my income is from employment and the rest from self-employment. I was on maternity leave until February 2020. So my income has halved and I am the main breadwinner. It seems very unfair that I have no recourse to public funds. We're just about surviving on benefits and my meagre wage. Kate tweeted regarding universal credit. What infuriates me is that you're treated as a household after paying tax and national

insurance forever as an individual i'm now dependent on my partner emma emailed i am several thousand pounds down from the grant due to my period of maternity leave i'm a self-employed archaeologist and the problem is further exacerbated by the fact that it took time to build up my business again when I restarted my business, thus impacting the following year's earnings as well and therefore the average payment I received. It feels like double discrimination as the self-employed maternity scheme does not match the scheme for the employed in the first place. Sue said, it's not just mothers. I'm in my 50s and started self-employment running a small holiday company three years ago. I was a teacher up to two years ago and have paid all my tax and national insurance all my life. I meet all the criteria for the grant except one that wasn't publicised. I have three years tax returns but the three-year rule means that I'm not eligible for anything at

all because in 2016-17 I earned more through PAYE than through self-employment. This took my average for paid employment above my average for self-employment over the three-year period. Not surprising, as it's a new business. I've appealed the decision with HMRC. No joy. I now have no income. And it really irks me that friends are furloughed or even getting a £10,000 grant for second holiday homes or businesses. Now do join me tomorrow morning when I'll be talking to Georgina Williams. She found a handwritten recipe book in a second-hand cabinet she bought. She started cooking some of

the dishes including semolina pudding and gherkin fruit salad well she's keen to reunite the book which has homemade recipes on every page for 365 days with its owner we'll be talking about it tomorrow join me then two minutes past ten bye-bye i find quantum mechanics confusing hello i'm brian cox and i'm robert intz and the infinite monkey cage is back for I find quantum mechanics confusing today. T-Mac, Eric Idle and Steve Martin. Yes, you heard that. Steve Martin and Eric Idle are joining us. Anyway, enjoy the new series. We're having a fantastic time making it. Brian's particularly enjoying it because he's hundreds of miles away from me

and they're just using technology to create some sense of proximity. That's the great thing about it all. That's the Infinite Monkey Cage on BBC Sounds now. Well, not now. I mean, there's no unique definition of now in physics. Simultaneity is relative. It's on BBC Sounds, anyway.

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.