Woman's Hour - Sexual Violence in India, Mary Rose Diver, Green Christmas on a Budget

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

With the recent gang rape and brutal murder of a young woman in India, and news this week of another woman being set alight on her way to give evidence at her rape trial, we consider the longstanding issue of sexual violence again women in the country. In 1979 divers were working hard, excavating the contents of Mary Rose, Henry VIII's war ship. Over the next 3 years more than 19,000 artefacts were brought to the surface. Forty years on, we speak to one of the divers, Dr Alexzandra Hildred, who went on to become Head of Research at the Mary Rose Trust. How can you have a green Christmas if you're on a budget? We discuss eco and budget friendly ways to gift, decorate and socialise. The first in our series about eminent women scientists: Medical pioneer, Dame Janet Vaughan whose wartime research saw advances in treatments of blood transfusion, starvation, radiation and anaemia. She later held the position of Principal of Somerville College, Oxford for over 20 years and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1979.

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. This is the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, good morning, welcome to the programme. Today we're going to look at ways to have a green Christmas, eco-methods of decorating, gifting and socialising. And you can give us your thoughts on that and your own ideas as well on social media, at BBC Women's Hour, Twitter and Instagram, or you can email us as ever via the website. We're also going to be chatting today to the head of research at the Mary Rose Trust, and we'll celebrate the work

of female fellows of the Royal Society over the next couple of weeks. And we are starting today with a truly remarkable woman, Dame Janet Vaughan. She was a medical pioneer and the person who started a blood transfusion service during World War II using milk bottles and ice cream vans. And there is much more to Dame Janet Vaughan, as you'll hear later in the programme. First, though, this morning to India. Now, last week, you'll have heard that police shot and killed four rape suspects in Hyderabad last week, and it made headlines all over the world. It was certainly a talking point here.

The men had been taken back to the scene of the incident in which they're alleged to have raped and murdered a 27-year-old vet. And on Friday, a 23-year-old Indian woman who'd been set on fire on her way to testify against her alleged rapists died of her injuries in hospital in Delhi. Now the chair of Delhi's Women's Commission Swati Maliwal is on hunger strike demanding that the Indian government change the entire judicial system in a country where violence against women is completely endemic. We're going to talk to Geeta Pandey, who is the editor of India Women and Social Affairs for BBC News Online,

and first to Karuna Nandi, who's a women's rights lawyer in India, and she helped draft new rape laws in 2012 after the case of the gang rape of a young Indian woman who'd been on a bus with her boyfriend. Karuna, first of all, can we go back to the incident in which the alleged rapists were shot and killed? Some people applauded the action of the Indian police.

What do you say about that? We may not have been the right people. It's not at all clear. The reason that we have a justice system is so that you can determine, firstly, who committed the crime and who didn't. And secondly, the level of culpability of each person, which may be distinct. The reason that I think it's bizarre that people believe that it's reliable, the police's arrest was reliable and that they got it right,

is because at the first instance, the police didn't even register the complaint when the complaint was attempted to be registered with them. And the woman was being assaulted and burnt just a couple of kilometers away from them. And if they had just gone and investigated the issue immediately, there was a chance that she could have been saved because that was the golden hour of evidence. Now, many, many days later, the fact that they felt the need to, at 3.30 a.m., go to the scene of the crime and take the accused is bizarre to me. Why would you need to do that?

So I think what's telling is the fact that there are so many people celebrating. And I think that speaks to the breakdown of faith in institutions and in the justice system. And it's a wake-up call that we really, really need to increase the number of judges, increase the number of police, make sure that the people who are recruited are recruited for their abilities and orientation towards bringing gender justice. Yeah. Thank you. Geeta, tell me what the prime minister has said about, I mean, there have always been problems with violence against women, sexual violence in particular in India.

But recently there have been just horrific headlines coming out of the country. Has the Prime Minister, Mr Modi, said anything about this? Well, Mr Modi has made a statement. In fact, he made a statement at a conference of the police officers from across the country at the weekend where he said that police should work to have sort of, you know, people, they should work in such a recent cases that we have seen in the country in the last week. Right. I mean, you know, we've had some really, really heinous crimes. You know, there was this young woman in Hyderabad who was gang raped and killed and then her body was burnt alive. Her body was burnt. And there have also there was also a case where a woman actually, who had alleged that she had been earlier gang raped,

was set on fire, and she died at the weekend. So there have been and there've been several other cases like that. So there is, of course, a lot of anger in the country. The Prime Minister or the Home Minister have not addressed it properly. Of course, the issue has been raised in parliament, where MPs have talked about it, and one of the government ministers has talked about it. We now also have the hunger strike of Swati Maliwal, who's the chair of the Delhi's Women's Commission. Is that a talking point? Is it making headlines? Well, it is being covered in bits and spurts in the Indian press. She has been sitting on a hunger strike for the past six days, actually now. And there has been, I think it's growing in appeal. There has been, some people have been coming out in support and there have been some protests. Some people have joined in the protest and people are now sort of demanding

answers and also supporting stricter punishment for people who are for criminals who are involved in such activities. We know, Karuna, that you were involved in tightening up the law around rape and sexual violence after that horrific rape of a young woman on a bus back in 2012. What happened after that? Well, this is something that's been... Well, the laws were stricter, but if they're not being implemented, then with a justice system that's somewhat skeletal,

then there isn't much point, is there? At that point, the death penalty was introduced for a limited number of crimes. However, not for rapes in general. I think the protest of people like Swati Malewal and others, while well-intentioned, is deeply misguided because the death penalty was consciously not introduced for most rapes for a reason. And it wasn't the Verma Committee, which is the Justice Verma Committee, a chief justice, and a number of others who contributed to that consultation

before the rape law amendments in 2012 and 2013, said very clearly, they looked at data and they said very clearly that the introduction of the death penalty does not decrease violent crime. In fact, you know, some of your viewers might be interested in knowing that in places like Georgia, jurisdictions like Georgia, there are a number of places where the death penalty was introduced and the incidence of violent crime actually went up. The incidence of rape and murder. This is possibly because of a sort of brutalizing of society as a consequence. And I just think that, you know, it's one thing to be frustrated

with the justice system. It's quite another to demand specific remedies that, you know, while might be welcome to families in particular cases, might lead to other women getting assaulted and getting violently assaulted. And there's more of an incentive to rape and kill people.

Well, I always feel when we discuss, when we have conversations like this, we cannot pretend even for a nanosecond that Britain has got it right and that everything here is perfect. But there does appear, Geeta, to be a huge societal problem here in India. And I believe that there is a program called gender sensitization or sensitive. Can you tell us a bit about that, Geeta? Well, I mean, you know, we've been talking about gender sensitization for years now. What is it? Well, basically, you know, the gender sensitization is about sort of, you know, tackling the issue in a way where it brings about societal change. Right. So it's basically you talk to children, you start talking to children, you start talking to kids when they are in school and basically, you know, like bring up a society where boys are aware

that they are that, you know, that that girls and boys are equal. And basically, you know, to kind of change this whole notion of patriarchy that, you know, boys are better than girls. But that is something that's clearly I mean, you know, so far it's you know, even if they have started it now, then I think it's a bit kind of too late. And, you know, so far, it's, you know, even if they have started it now, then I think it's a bit kind of too late. And, you know, it's, it's really not going to make much of an impact on the current generation. And, you know, and we see this, right? We, you know, because I think that the problems are also, you know, you have to bring in the societal change, but then at the same time, you also have to bring in, you know,

the rule of law, which is accepted by people and which is followed by people. And that is one thing where we see this lacking. I mean, you know, this entire failure of the criminal justice system, where people have this belief that nothing is going to work and nothing's going to happen to people and people can do, you know, these kind of crimes and get away with it. Until and unless that changes, there's not much really hope for women in India. Geeta, that's a depressing conclusion from you. Thank you. Karuna, what do you think might work? I think she's gone, actually.

You know, I think it's important to remember there are some things that have already worked. So, you know, you brought up the sort of competitor of Britain, which is interesting because the CPS violence against women report said in the 2019 report in England said that the rape of conviction is 3.3 percent. The rape of conviction in India is 26%. And the reason for that is that the women's movements here made sure that the evidence law was amended after the Mathura rape case, where a young woman was raped in a police station and they said that she consented.

So, for example, in particular kinds of custodial rape, it's presumed that if the fact of sexual intercourse has been established, then consent, and the woman says that she didn't consent, then you presume she didn't consent. Also, if a woman testifies consistently and withstands detailed cross-examination, and her testimony is sort of found to be robust despite a judge's scrutiny, then a man can be convicted on the basis of that. And that has been found constitutionally not to violate the rights of the accused. So I think it's important to recognize what the women's movement here and what India is doing right, because I think it's very easy to think that rape is elsewhere.

We want to think rape is elsewhere if we are in the cities and presume it's in the villages. If it's in the villages, you want to presume that it's in sort of flashy urban areas, etc. In terms of what needs to be done, look, I just think that governments, our governments, state governments, central governments and governments around the world need to, in a very concerted way, make sort of targeted behaviour change programmes, not just in schools, not gender sensitisation, behaviour change, measurable behaviour change. We need to take down patriarchy, because at the rate we're going, just for wage equality, it's going to be 170 years until we reach wage equality across the world, 400 years in India.

Thank you. I hate to interrupt you, but I'm very, very grateful to you for your time and your input this morning. Thank you, Karuna Nandi, who is an Indian women's rights lawyer. You're listening to Women's Hour. We're going to talk now to a woman who's done a job for decades and absolutely loves it. She is Dr Alexandra Hildred,

head of research at the Mary Rose Trust. And she joins us now from our studio in Plymouth. Good morning to you. Morning. I'm in Portsmouth, actually. You're in Portsmouth. There we are. I was told Portsmouth and I said Plymouth. So I cannot blame anybody but myself. Easily done. Alexandra, good morning to you. It's great to talk to you. Now, Henry VIII's warship, the Mary Rose, sank back in 1545. And you've just celebrated, I think, your 40th anniversary of working on the project. Is that right? Yes, that's right. And also the 40th anniversary of really putting the project onto a huge and much more even keel with the idea of excavating it because of what we found during

that year. Right. So tell us, first of all, how on earth you got a job like that and how experienced were you and were you a diver at the start? Tell me all about that. Yeah, I'd done a degree in land archaeology and done a lot of land digs. I was quite an accomplished excavator, but never underwater. I'd learned to dive at university and the Mary Rose was actually looking for volunteer divers. And I applied and got a position as a volunteer for late in the season because it was pretty booked up by that stage.

And there were a couple of weeks that we got sort of weathered on, stuck on the boat, which sounds really weird because it's only a mile and a half out of Portsmouth Harbour. But the weather was bad and Dr. Margaret Rule was there and she was the head of archaeology at the time, the director. And I got on really well with her and did some work over the evenings with her. And when we came ashore at the end of the season, she interviewed me for a job as her personal assistant. So that's how I started working the winters with her. And it was the very beginning of maritime archaeology. So there was a lot of things happening and she was right in the middle of it. So I had a very swift learning curve and then in the summer I would go on the boat and became one of

the archaeological supervisors supervising the excavation. Well we're going to hear you in action now the sound quality isn't great but this just gives everybody just a sense of what your job entails so here you are managing a dive to find artefacts from the Mary Rose. Here we go. Kester, do you read me? Just checking that you're alright, over. Okay, just holding the fort for Dan. It looks brilliant. Everybody's very happy. So we're waiting for you to do magic with the next bit. It's on deck. It looks good. Lots of television broadcasts and everybody's beaming. So you're in charge. You're not actually underwater. But I guess you couldn't do that role, the one you were doing there, unless you knew about how to dive and what it was like to be there.

Yeah, we actually had very well organised dive supervisors. So as I said, I was standing in there while somebody else had obviously gone on deck. That was when we were lifting Big Anchor in 2005. So people sort of think that after the Mary Rose was lifted in 1982, that there was nothing else there. But actually, there's still an awful lot there. And in 2005, we had a very successful three years, 2003 to 2005, where we found the big timber that forms the bow of the ship, the stem, and a huge anchor and the ship's emblem, which is a Tudor rose, as one would expect, but we didn't expect to find that. So the site is still protected under the Protection of Rex Act and still has a lot of objects that are buried around the bow area of the ship. Now, why is it so important?

Because it's basically because of the time framework. It's Henry VIII's ship. It was one of the first things he did when he accessed the throne in 1509 was to actually oversee the building of two ships. And Henry VIII, quite rightly, is often talked about as being the person who started the Royal Navy. But what he did is he built up, by the time he died in 1547, he had 58 vessels that stayed. He maintained them even during a time that he might not have been at war. So it was the first sort of standing navy that continues to this day. The embryonic thing, the admiralty, for example, grew out of his small admiralty offices.

And so did many of the jobs that are done today. And do we know for sure why it sank? Because I know there's all kinds of theories ranging from dysentery to people rushing to one side of the boat to look at Henry VIII, though I don't think it was even there. Was it the French? I mean, we don't know, do we? Well, it was during an attempted invasion of Portsmouth by the French. Portsmouth was, as it still is now, a very important naval base, but it was the premier naval base at the time. And the English fleet were becalmed. The French, they'd been engaging in war with France three times during Henry's reign by this stage.

And he'd sacked Boulogne. He'd taken over Boulogne the year before. And this was sort of retaliation. So we know by the fact that we've got the position of the Mary Rose, that's a known position. And we have a number of other things around Portsmouth that are still extant. And by looking at an engraving that was done from a painting that was actually done at the time, we can look at the positions of the fleets. And actually, by making the guns and firing them, we know the distances that they're capable of. So all we can say regarding the French is it was completely possible that the four French galleys which are shown attacking the Mary Rose could have hit the Mary Rose below the waterline,

but we can't prove it. We've only got half the ship, and in spite of looking over the timbers, we can't say that. However, the best account is that of a Flemish survivor that is given to the ambassador for Charles V, who was a Holy Roman Emperor, so he's quite an important person that's talking to this guy that says that Mary Rose fired the guns on one side of the ship and she was turning to fire guns on the other when she dipped her gun ports that were open below the waterline and sank on the side of the gun she just fired. So it's actually quite a descriptive account. And the way the Mary Rose is lying on her starboard side,

one of the guns on that side is found unloaded, and it's very, very usual to reload the guns almost immediately, whilst all the ones that we have from the port side, the missing side, although a lot of the guns were brought up in the 19th century with salvaging, were loaded. So it's a pretty good account. There were 500 people on board. But that's not, that's the number that she should have had. It's not as though she went out with any more.

And we can prove that by the number of human remains, for example, that we've got, which is 179. Yes, and that we shouldn't forget that this is somebody's grave. This is a huge loss of life for that, you know, for that period of time to lose all but 35 survivors you know it must have been a huge incident if you like can you imagine now it's like one of the major warships we've just having the Queen Elizabeth being

tomorrow the blessing of it if you like and you know that sort of thing she's standing here now she's huge well the Mary Rose was the Queen Elizabeth or the Prince of Wales of her time. Yeah. And when you're down there, do you feel, are you respectful? I'm sure there is a sense of awe and wonder about it now. But I suppose the one thing that we have to bear in mind is that the loss of their life and the wonderful conditions of preservations of the ship and all the objects. By talking about it, you're actually, you know, you're revering them. They died, but we have got all this wonderful information about the ship and Tudor life that you couldn't get elsewhere.

And that's the nature of a catastrophe. You know, it's a moment in time that happens that you virtually have very little control over. And the Mary Rose is important because we've got her and we've got her because she sank. You know, if she hadn't have sunk in 1545, we wouldn't know all of this stuff. We wouldn't have these everyday objects that make, you know, it's like touching the past. And they're things that, because many of them are wood and they're perishable and they're mundane, if you

like, they don't exist in that they aren't put in museums. They just fall apart gradually. But we've got this whole extra life of people, and it is about people. And I think that's the magic of the Mary Rose. And although it's a terrible, terrible thing, you know, to a certain extent, they didn't die in vain

because we celebrate them every single day, every time somebody goes in the museum. And I can hear the sense of wonder still in your voice, which is obviously why you've stayed there doing such an interesting job. Thank you very much for talking about it. Dr. Alexandra Hildred, who's Head of Research at the Mary Rose Trust,

and she was in our studio in Portsmouth. Now, there is an election coming up this week. You might have picked up on that. And on Woman's Hour over the last couple of weeks, we have spoken to the following party leaders. Tasham Berry, co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. Liz Saville Roberts of Plaid Cymru. Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland.

Jo Swinson, leader of the Liberal Democrats, and who knows what else or who else will be made available to us during the course of this week. If you've missed any of the interviews we have done so far, of course you can hear everything on BBC Sounds. That's also, of course, where you can subscribe to Woman's Hour and get the podcast edition coming to you at a time that suits you every single day. Now let's do green christmas again we talked about food last week today we're sort of

talking really if we can squeeze it in about everything else um presents decorations and how to socialize kate hughes is here personal finance editor at the independent good morning to you um she runs a zero waste household. We're going to find out more about that. And Zoe Morrison is here too, author of the book and the blog Eco Thrifty Living. Zoe, welcome to you. Let's first of all start just talking brutally about money, Kate. This has become a time of year when people don't just spend, they overspend. And the figures are astonishing, actually, aren't they? They really are. If you look at it too carefully, it starts to get a little bit out of control. The lowest numbers that I've seen,

and obviously there are loads of surveys out about quite how much we spend, are that we part with about £560 per person. Per person in our life? No, per year. Right, OK, carry on. On Christmas in general, so that's food and gifts and travel and all that, socialising is a big one.

But the biggest number that I've seen is £2,500 per person, particularly if you've got children. On average, I think the kind of figures that seem to be about right are between £600 and £800 per person. And, of course, a lot of this will be on credit cards. And I gather that many people have not actually paid for the christmas of 2018 exactly and this is where it starts to feel a little bit out of control one in five people is still paying for last christmas now um and what

and as you're absolutely right about one in ten people will put all of christmas on a credit card it has become a festival of stuff, of the acquisition of stuff, much of which is then chucked out. How do we put a stop to that? The scary thing is, you're absolutely right, I think the number that I saw that scared me the most about this overspend is that we will bin about 42 million pounds worth of gifts that we receive at Christmas, which just seems crazy to me. But what's really encouraging is that a lot of people have now got the sustainability message in their head. About eight out of ten, there were some figures from country last week

that said about eight out of ten people are really keen to be a bit more conscious about what they're spending in terms of the green message and why having just a little bit less stuff and buying less stuff can really make a huge difference. Well, Zoe, this is where some of your ideas can come in. So tell me how we can stop acquiring stuff we're just going to chuck out, shamefully. Well, I think one of the big problems

is giving presents that aren't wanted. And we need to stop doing that. We need to ask people what they want before we buy them something. And we need to tell people what our likes and dislikes are. If you don't like Christmas cake, tell everyone so they don't keep bringing it to your house. Things like that.

So that's one way you can stop unwanted stuff. But also, we don't necessarily need to give presents to everybody. Scale back who you're giving to. Give to less people in our family we now just give to children not to the adults we can all buy what we need ourselves and I'd rather do that than guess what my uncle likes or my aunt likes and have them guess what I want and then us all give each other things that we don't want the living definition of a present surely and I would say this to anybody thinking of buying me a present, is to get me a present that I wouldn't buy myself. And there are lots of, I'll be honest, I quite like bath and beauty stuff.

I probably wouldn't buy it. I love people to buy it for me. Is that wrong? No. What about your bath salts idea? Because this is a good one. So there's lots of things you can do to make presents to make them slightly lower impact. Something like bath salts can be really simple. You just need some rock salt or sea salt and then mix it with some herbs like lavender

or whatever your favourite herbs are and put them in a jar. Bung in the bath as normal? Yeah, just put some salts in the bath. Okay, wrapping. What about gift paper? Gift wrapping is a huge problem at Christmas. I read, I think it was in 2013, that the amount of wrapping paper used in the UK could stretch to the moon. Something ridiculous like that.

And it's all, the majority of it is lined in plastic or it has glitter on it which is also made of plastic. So it's not recyclable. Lots of councils say they don't want any wrapping paper in the recycling just in case so all of this stuff is going in the bin i didn't know that about wrapping paper carry on it's pretty terrible and there's lots of alternatives on my blog i've done a whole massive series of ways to cut the wrap get rid of wrapping paper which can be things like wrapping fabric and that can be as simple as using a pillowcase or a scarf that you've got to hand or a piece of fabric that you've got lying around and then you can reuse that fabric. Most people that when I give a gift wrapped in fabric they tend to give

me the fabric back because I think they're a bit unsure what to do with it but I'm hoping that's going to change and we're going to move towards using reusable wrapping paper. There's this lovely tradition in Japan called furoshiki, which is a bit like origami for wrapping, where you tie it up in knots and it looks really pretty. In fact, right on cue, here's my Christmas gift. It wraps up in a scarf that I found in a charity shop. That's actually a particularly beautiful scarf. Is it difficult to learn this?

Not at all. I can't believe you've given me a copy of your book, Zoe. That's marketing. I thought you might like it. Brilliant. Thank you very much. I don't think I can do a beautiful knot like that, but perhaps you can teach me afterwards. Sure.

We'll have a little workshop. What about the impact on children? I know you've both got relatively young children. It isn't actually easy to sell acquisitional kids who, by the way, are just pummeled with all with all this amazing high octane advertising at this time of year what do you say to your children well my children have grown up going to charity shops and getting things second hand and they've realized that their pocket money goes an awful lot further when they buy something second hand and that they can often buy something much better or receive something much

better and they haven't been influenced by their peers at school? No, actually, I would say that my children have influenced their peers because one of my children found a pogo stick in a charity shop and it was about £4. He bought the pogo stick, went to school with his pogo stick. Everybody wanted to play with this pogo stick. No-one had seen one. They're not really fashionable at the moment.

Well, they're certainly not because I got one at christmas which just shows not recently which just shows you how unfashionable they must be sorry carry on we accidentally started a fashion trend pogo sticks so they've not felt deprived and my kids have got sort of older games consoles but they know that they can get all the games for them really cheaply yeah this is really interesting yeah i mean kate you pointed out earlier secondhand tech is out there and it's all right it's brilliant i mean i i wouldn't know the difference between a brand new iphone or samsung whatever it might be and one that's a year old a year and a half old and i don't know anybody who really would necessarily well i wonder whether your average 13 14 year old might actually but carry on i'm struggling with this idea that kids are

by default acquisitional you know the global climate strike what is oh yeah powered by kids you know my kids are okay they're tiny and maybe they're not quite at that stage yet but their school is zero waste and it's powered by the kids they're just not that bothered yet and i just i wonder whether we're doing the next generation a disservice. I just want to bring in Laura who says on Twitter we haven't got time to make presents women's hour get a grip another extra job for mums with too much to do and feel guilty about it if we don't I mean I've got a I sort of I do sympathise with Laura Zoe so what do you say to the likes of Laura? Don't don't make presents and it's just a suggestion and I totally advocate not buying anything for people if they don't need it. The 28th of December

has been dubbed boxing up day because it's something like over 70 million items will be listed on sites like eBay to be sold on because we're giving people things they don't want so don't make presents if you don't have time for it. Scale back your presents and buy things secondhand if you are going to buy something. Decorations, is it possible to source really good decorations that aren't made in, well, you tell me. What do you think, Kate? Well, we use the ivy from our back garden.

You know, it's grown like a weed. I mean, it effectively is a weed in our garden. You can do come round and have some if you'd like them um so and in fact we we put out some of the holly for the people to take from our pavement yeah that's free and that's we've got to get back to that that was normal for hundreds of years we've got to get back to this idea of normal being living within your bit within your budget spending what you have what you'd like to spend at christ Christmas within reason, and not feeling guilty about this idea that you have, the assumption that you have to spend,

you have to buy. Socialising is something that many of us are expected to do and thoroughly enjoy doing at Christmas. But food waste, I know you have a zero waste household. Yes. So food waste at Christmas is a disgrace, isn't it? Yeah, it's really depressing, actually. There's been so much chat about trying to reduce our meat consumption and Christmas is a great opportunity to kind of explore that. If you buy less meat, it's going to cost you a lot less money. Put one pig in a blanket on your plate rather than four. I'm not sure anybody's going to turn down your offer of Christmas lunch just because of that.

You honestly do succeed in running a zero-waste household, do you? Yes, I do. Can you just give us some really quick tips on exactly how you do it? Yeah, so we do a lot. It's about planning, really. Yeah, I know the time demands for people. I have a full-time job.. I have a full-time job. My husband has a full-time job.

We have two small kids. You've got to be a bit more organised. And that's where if we fail, it's because we're not organised that week. So batch cooking at the weekends, if you can do it, again, really cheap. If you happen to have a slow cooker, quickly whack that on on the way out the door at half past seven. By the time you come back in at six o'clock, it's ready to go. Just be a bit more aware, maybe if you can be, about what you are spending on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, especially around Christmas time.

To really see if there are things that you have to buy and ask that question, where has this item come from to get to me where is it going to go from ultimately from me and is it worth it and if you can be confident and happy with those answers you're probably not going to go too far wrong yeah i've got a lot of sympathy sometimes i've said to people please don't buy me anything and they get offended by that i mean there's literally there is nothing you're right there is nothing i need literally nothing but there are things i'd like and i know people get pleasure in buying them. So I don't know. Well, let's see what the listeners think, because I know people will be more than willing to pitch in.

I'm very grateful to you both. Kate, thank you very much indeed. That is Kate Hughes, personal finance editor at The Independent. Lovely to meet you. And Zoe Morrison, who is the author of Eco Thrifty Living. Good to see you both. Thank you. At BBC Women's Art on Twitter and Instagram. Now, a

couple of weeks ago, I talked to the librarian of the Royal Society, Keith Moore, about how long it had taken the society to acknowledge the work and achievement of women scientists. It was only in 1945 that women were elected as fellows. Now, Janet Vaughan is a name that we should know. She was nearly 80 when she was elected as a fellow in 1979. Her pioneering medical career included wartime research into blood transfusion and treatments for the effects of starvation and radiation. She also spent time in Belsen after she'd been liberated,

describing her time there as like doing science in hell. Dr Patricia Farrar is from Clare College, Cambridge. And Patricia, you actually didn't know about Janet Vaughan either. I had never heard of her. I have yet to meet anybody who's heard of her. It was the Royal Society archivist, Keith Moore, who you met. He showed me that they had a typescript of her autobiography and he suggested I read it.

And I was just absolutely riveted. And then I had the opportunity to write an article for the Lancet about her and I've had a lot of popular response to that and so the Royal Society is going to digitise her memoirs and they're going to be available online in the spring in the new year. Fantastic and I know this this programme is all about celebrating the lives of women we might not have heard of but when I read about her life I felt the frustration probably the same frustration as you might not have heard of. But when I read about her life, I felt the frustration, probably the same frustration as you. We should know this woman.

Oh, she's absolutely extraordinary. She did so many things. She should be celebrated for about four or five different medical discoveries and achievements. So the first thing she did when she just graduated as a doctor, she studied anemia. And she was a bit sort of sneaky, really. She's the woman who's referred to by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own when she has a scene with Olivia and Chloe.

She's one of them. So she minced up liver at home. She secretly fed it to an ill patient in the hospital. The hospital patient miraculously recovered. And the doctor in charge attributed that to him because he'd been dosing the patient up with arsenic. So he congratulated himself on curing the patient, whereas Janet Vaughan decided she'd carry out some more experiments. She had to experiment on herself because the extract she prepared made the experimental dog sick. So she did it herself,

and then she went to America and she wrote the key foundational book on anemia. And that was just at the beginning of her career. Later on, she went, as you mentioned, at the beginning, because she'd been active during the Spanish Civil War against fascism, she learnt about the value of storing blood for the blood transfusion service. So during the war, she was in charge of that. And as you said, she requisitioned ice cream vans and milk bottles. You can imagine all these little ice cream vans with their ding-dee-dong sounds going round to the zones distributing blood.

Well, they just went, whenever they saw a bomb, off they went with their blood. And that alone must have saved millions, well, thousands, many thousands, thousands of lives. And then she was really an expert on malnutrition. The reason she became a doctor in the first place was because she had a mission in life from when she was a young girl to improve the world that she lived in, rather like we've just been hearing about zero waste. She also wanted to improve the world. And she had lots of poor patients in the underprivileged parts of London.

This was before the National Health Service was introduced. So she became a specialist in malnutrition. So at the end of the Second World War, she was in Belgium treating some prisoners. And she decided that she was going to head off across Europe in a car with two other people to Bellstone. She hadn't got official permission. She hadn't got any of the right inoculations. But she decided this was what she was going to do. And she got there.

And like a lot of people in Britain at the time, she had no idea of what had been going on in the internment camps. And she was driving through northern Europe. And she saw all these hundreds and hundreds of emaciated men with yellow faces, all wearing pyjamas, sort of fleeing through the woods. And she wondered what on earth was going on. And then they got to Belsen. And there were piles and piles of corpses just sort of mounted up. And in the letters that she wrote directly from Belsen, there's some copies of those letters in Somerville College. And they are so incredibly moving about what she saw when she went into the camp. And she just had no idea that she was going to face this.

So she stayed there for two or three weeks. There was what was called the camp laundry, processed about a thousand prisoners a day, just basically washing them. She chose the young men who were ill but not infected, the young men who were more likely to survive. And she experimented on giving them different sorts of foods. And she discovered fairly soon that the standard army prescription just wasn't the right thing to

give them their digestive systems were too fragile to tolerate it so she gave them small sips of milk that were flavored and had added glucose and she completely reformed the way that starving prisoners should be treated and this was very relevant for Britain because lots of people were about to come back from the Japanese concentration camps so the minute that she got back to London, the next day she went into a meeting with army personnel and told them they got to change the whole way that they were resuscitating people who were starving. There's also the nugget of information that as soon as she got home, she burned her husband's striped pyjamas. That is the only place in her autobiography, as opposed to the letters she wrote at the time, the autobiography I think is rather sanitised for her descendants.

That is the only place where you sort of really catch a sense of the agony that this woman must have gone through. And it's not as if she went unrecognised in her life because she did become the principal of Somerville College, Oxford. This was a girl who, when she left school, the headmistress said that she was so stupid she wasn't worth educating. And she left Oxford with a first and went on to do all these... It took her several times to get in, I think. It took her several times to go in because she'd gone to a sort of girl's school

that taught her how to sew and do all the sort of things I'm hopeless at. They hadn't taught her how to do Latin and science, which is what she needed to get in. But she did get in, she persevered, and another reason why her memoirs are so fascinating to read is she met all sorts of other famous people of the 20th century. So she met Ludwig Wittgenstein, Virginia Woolf was a relative, she spent the evenings having hot chocolate with the Woolfs after she'd cycled around London campaigning

to end poverty. She met Duncan Grant, Vera Brittain, so many people that we've heard of in the 20th century. And she was much loved as the principal of Somerville College as well. And she went on doing her research, and after Hiroshima, she turned to paying attention to the effects of radiation on your bones, and she became a world expert on that as well as everything else. Were her ethics, or the ethics of what she did, particularly around her time at Bellson, ever questioned at all? As far as I can tell, they were never questioned at the time,

but she does sort of admit in her memoirs, if you read them in that way, she was forced into making decisions that now would seem horrendously unethical. So for example, when she was running the blood transfusion service, there was a young girl with horrible burns, and she knew that this girl was going to die. so she tried out something completely experimental of pumping blood straight into her sternum her breastbone so normally of course that would be banned because it was an it was a trial but many years later when she was principal of somerville college she saw this woman walk through the through the door as a student and she was a student of some of it and And she knew that that decision

that she'd taken at the time under terrible pressure, she knew that she had made the right choice. And it must have been the same at Belston. She couldn't save everybody's lives, but she was doing what she could to help those immediately around her. And she did bring back that treatment to England.

And so other people benefited. But according to the strict code of medical ethics, yes, of course it was wrong. Anyway, in 1979, Dame Janet Vaughan was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, but it did take them some time. Just absolutely fascinating, Patricia. Thank you very much. Thank you. That was Dr. Patricia Farrar talking, of course, about Dame Janet Vaughan. Absolutely. Well, both actually absolutely remarkable women. Now, to your thoughts on the programme today.

Eco Christmas. Caroline and her daughter Lucy emailed, we made crackers from loo rolls and Beano comics and scavenged gifts, hats and jokes from Southampton Triathlon Club Christmas party. Well, I think there's probably more to that than I've got in front of me. I'm not quite sure why you managed to get all that stuff from that party. Where were the triathletes

when all this was happening? Perhaps they were a little worse for wear. Who knows? Although being athletes, I'm sure they wouldn't have been. Katie tweeted to say, I agree with the premise of not buying lots of unnecessary stuff, but I do find that specific gift lists take the joy out of gifting. Yes, I know what you mean, actually, Katie. Why not just buy it for yourself if you need it? Hilary emailed to say, our Christmas decorations are more or less the same ones we've had for 40 years. It's all part of the Christmas prep to rediscover old favourites.

The fairy on the tree was on our family tree back in the 1950s and it now adorns ours. That's nice, isn't it? Helen, what about organising an event this year? I'm organising a day on a canal boat. I've been doing it for a few years. The kids look forward to it and everybody has great memories. Heidi, lovely ideas but impractical if you've got teens, she says. A new iPhone and a Nintendo Switch are on lists in this house. I do budget carefully for gifts. I take extra work in December and I don't go into debt.

But a charity shop pogo stick wouldn't cut it here. Yeah, and I suspect Heidi does speak for many parents, particularly of teenagers. I can only speak from our own household, my own household. And yes, on the face of it, they care tremendously about the planet. But other aspects of their lifestyle indicate that they aren't prepared to make all that many compromises. Anyway, there you go. Susan emails to say, I use the brown ironed paper and wrap with ribbon salvage from various places. And I am that woman who irons the used paper and cuts off the torn edges on it post-December the 25th.

I've done this for 50 years because I cannot bear waste. More powder to your elbow, your ironing elbow, Susan, because you're onto something there. From Tracy, listening and wanted to say that I asked my children about how they wanted me to approach their stockings this year, as although it's fun, it's 30 minutes and then just all chucked in the bin. Their answer was, we still want the stockings, but we don't want anything in it that we can't eat. I thought that was good. Fiona, we cut down a twig from the garden and used it as our Christmas tree, having filled it with fairy lights.

Last year was our first year and we did a £10 limit. That was fantastic. No horrific bills in January. And we used all the greenery from the garden. It has all focused the attention on being with each other rather than on what we were being given. And from Romula, another thought, perhaps Women's Hour could get behind the fast for Christmas idea. You miss a meal and you donate the money to charity and also get a very small idea of going without food for the festive season yes um that is also worth considering isn't it if you've got the kind of household that might be prepared to go along with the notion now tomorrow we're talking about well

it's helen mort the writer actually who i've always um really liked talking to and helen mort's on tomorrow giving us what is her personal account of what she went through when she gave up breastfeeding and weaned her child. So we'll hear about that. And on Wednesday, we're discussing women in space. Now, if you've been a regular listener, you'll know that I've got a bit of a space fetish. I do love items about space. And so on Wednesday, I'm talking to a space gynecologist, which is a first for me.

I'm looking forward to it. Also with us will be Britain's first astronaut, Helen Sharman. So that's something to really look forward to on Wednesday. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.