Woman's Hour - Shakespeare's Women, Izzy Judd, Women in the metaverse

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

A new play - Shakespeare’s Women - transports ten of Shakespeare’s female characters from the 16th century to 2024, placing them in the same domestic abuse support group. Written by Lorien Haynes, this dark comedy gradually exposes each woman’s darkest secrets and asks what would happen if these protagonists survived their men and traditional narratives, to become flesh and blood today? Lorien and the director Jude Kelly, join Emma Barnett in the Woman’s Hour studio.Violinist Izzy Judd trained at the Royal Academy of Music and was an original member of the string quartet Escala, who shot to fame on Britain’s Got Talent in 2008. She met her husband Harry on the McFly Wonderland tour. Following marriage and three small children, Izzy has written two books - Dare to Dream and Mindfulness for Mums. She has now returned to her love of playing the violin, with a forthcoming EP - Moments, and a single - Somewhere in My Memory. Izzy joins Emma to talk about her music and motherhood.Police are investigating what is possibly the first crime of its kind: a British schoolgirl playing a game in the metaverse was allegedly sexually assaulted by a group of online strangers. Given that this happened in a virtual reality game, it is not yet clear whether there is any crime here to prosecute. Emma is joined by Helen Rumbelow from The Times and her colleague Sean Russell, who has gone into the metaverse as both a man and a woman, and was struck by how different it was.In 2015, BAFTA-winning film-maker Leslee Udwin decided that making programmes to raise awareness about issues like rape was not enough for her. Her investigation India’s Daughter - about Jyoti Singh Pandey who was raped, tortured and killed by six men on a bus in Delhi in 2012 – asked why men rape women. Leslee spoke to one of the attackers, who blamed the victim. Leslee decided to campaign for a revolution in education, not just in India, but in the UK and theoretically, every country. Her aim is to equip all children with the tools to ‘think equal,’ and reduce violence against women. She joins Emma.

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. With storms and strikes affecting the real world, it would be understandable if perhaps you felt like retreating online. Ironically, with gaming becoming more realistic through virtual reality, some feel those worlds are blurring. Perhaps then it shouldn't be a surprise that some of our societal ills are bleeding over, and that includes how female characters are treated by men in these worlds. We're going to look at this in more detail shortly after the police have now got involved with an unusual case. But I wanted to ask you today whether you feel being online, whether that's gaming, social media or other forums, is an escape, or do you see it as your world's colliding?

And perhaps to our female listeners in particular, it isn't the reprieve it once was. Do get in touch, 84844. Text will be charged to your standard message rate. On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour. You can send me a WhatsApp message or voice note on 03700 100 444 or just get in touch with your stories as i say via email i recognize i'm asking you to go online for most of those ways of contacting us this morning um but you are getting in touch i hope if you feel you can to tell us what your life as a woman is like online and to

our male listeners we're going to be hearing from a man shortly who experienced what it was like pretending to be a woman in the gaming world and how that differed to his experience of passing through the online world as a man normally. But always, your views are welcome too. We know we have lots of male listeners, but those worlds colliding for good, for bad, for reality.

Also on today's programme, some soothing music from the violinist and influencer Izzy Judd, the BAFTA award-winning producer turned education activist trying to transform how we teach emotion to the youngest children. And Jude Kelly will be here to talk about her latest production that she's directing, Shakespeare's Women, imagining if the Bard's most famous female protagonists had survived and met in a support group in 2024 over some biscuits and cake. But first, police are investigating what is possibly the first crime of its kind. A British schoolgirl playing a game in the metaverse was allegedly gang raped by a group of online

strangers. Given that this happened in a virtual reality game, it's not yet clear whether there's any crime to prosecute. The National Crime Agency has previously warned that police will need to be ready to deal with virtual sexual assaults in the future. Does the fact that the girl's alleged attack happened virtually mean it didn't really happen at all? Or given that more and more time will be spent, we think, in the virtual cloud,

could our new reality be a Wild West in which male sexual predators have the time of their lives and do whatever they feel they can and want to do? Helen Rumbelow from The Times has been looking into this and what's been happening in the metaverse and her colleague, Sean Russell, has gone in to this world and these worlds as both a man and a woman and was struck by some of the differences. Helen, if I start with you, good morning. Good morning. Tell us what we're talking about when we speak of the differences. Helen, if I start with you, good morning. Good morning.

Tell us what we're talking about when we speak of the metaverse, first of all. Yeah, I can try. Basically, the tech bro billionaires that increasingly rule our lives would like us to transfer so much of what we do in the real world, shopping, working, going to concerts, socialising, into this virtual world. And it's not just through a screen, it's using a VR headset. So it feels very different to a screen.

You feel like you're actually going to a different place. And you've been looking into this to research or are you someone who goes into these worlds and has those experiences by choice for pleasure? I do not normally do it. And I have to say, come Christmas time, you see everyone with the VR headsets and I think they look faintly absurd. So I'm not someone that normally does this. And I went in and spent a few hours yesterday morning to research yes and how did you find that world I actually found it amazingly gender imbalanced so I was very conscious when I went in as a woman or I should say as a female avatar because you can't really be sure what who people are in this place, that I was very much in the minority, I would say, like at least 20, 30 to one.

And as a woman, I did have a distinctly different experience than when I went in as a male avatar, which I think is something that Sean also experienced. But I felt like it was pretty cruisy as a woman. So I was getting guys trying to connect with me a lot which was actually interrupting whatever I was trying to do play or whatever um and then when I was a man I did see I went into one particular game where uh there was only one other there was only a one female avatar I was then a male and the boys were like let's

kill the girl so they all teamed up to kind of shoot at the girl simply because she was a girl come coming to this particular case then that i mentioned which has has brought this conversation to the fore and prompted you know you and i to be talking and you to be looking into this world what what is alleged to have happened to this school girl so we don't know many details, and they're actually kind of not releasing many details to protect her. But similar incidents have happened in America to women. And it's something like in these other incidents that their female avatar will be surrounded by male avatars

and they will simulate something like a sexual assault in the real world. You know, but obviously it's, you know, it's similar, but it's also very different. You know, the word rape is used here. I can see it's being used in the media. I think that's the wrong word. I'm not sure we actually have the vocabulary yet to describe what is happening here.

In some senses, you know, this is a sexual assault. At the other extreme, you know, some people say it's simply a fiction, what's happening. You know, that your little sock puppet is doing something terrible or has something terrible done to them by another little sock puppet. It's made up. It's make-believe. You know, and I think probably we have to work out this is uncharted legal territory. We have to work out. I mean, at the moment, for me personally,

I think it falls under the bracket of sexual harassment. That would be the closest I could come to it. Okay. And I suppose the reality of this virtual reality is it sounds worse in some ways than the world you walk around in here right now in the UK. But in other ways, some would say these places reflect the society that we live in. Yes, I think they reflect a bit of a sort of Lord of the Flies reality of what happens when there's no one looking, I think you would say. And I think it's, you know, a lot of people,

when I wrote the article, people were commenting and getting in touch with me and saying, well, you can just take the headset off, you know, you don't have to be here. But I felt like I understand what they mean. This is a kind of optional experience. At the moment, it may increasingly be less optional. But, you know, it's a bit concerning, that argument,

because it's a little bit like saying if the streets are unsafe for women at night, women shouldn't go out at night. You know, I think if this is a place where we are increasingly being asked to be, we have to make sure it's, you know, safe or even safer than our real world. Yes. Let's bring in Sean to this. Sean, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. You've been gaming for some time from being much, much younger. And before we get to what it was like to try and be and pretend to be a woman in this space,

what did you notice about women's experience when you were gaming from a young age? Yeah, so when I was growing up, I'd say the first sort of early games I played were things like Habbo Hotel, like I mentioned in the article, which is a kind of an early version of a virtual world where there's no microphones, but you would type out messages and things. And I remember even as early as that point, sort of reflecting what Helen just said, when a female avatar appeared in a game like this, there'd be a swarm around of generally male avatars trying to chat to this person, sometimes it was completely just trying to sort of approach and speak in a sort of non-threatening way, but then sometimes it would be sort of sexually charged comments and things like that. And then as I got older, I would notice on sort of online,

let's say, shoot-em-ups like Call of Duty or Halo, if you had a nickname or gamertag that suggested that you were a woman, the treatment would be different. You'd start to hear porn noises being played over microphones. You'd start to hear some of it was sexual, some of it would be, oh, there's a woman on our team. We're going to lose. It's just sort of abuse for no reason

other than having your game tag suggesting you're a female. And now when you get to the most sophisticated that these games have been and you've gone in and you've had the experience both as regular players yourself as a man, but you've gone in as a woman, what did you find? I think what I was expecting, basically, I think having played for about 19 years, I'd seen this from the outside. I wasn't quite ready for how quickly it happened i probably i changed my avatar to a female avatar and within seconds someone came over and said something like um want to see my balls um and then minutes later um i have a boner and those are things that just hadn't happened to me as a male avatar and also in 19 years of gaming as well. So what happened in the space of say 10 minutes had never happened to me in 19

years. And they, they sort of came over and say this and then oftentimes would disappear when I didn't, I wasn't interacting myself. I was just kind of, so I didn't even do anything. I literally was stood there and this happened. And then I would just kind of move the character around and something else would happen. And eventually it kind of stopped and it became really rather boring the game in general there's not really much to do on the as far as I could figure out certainly in the world that I was in there's

multiple worlds to go into um it was just shocking to me that as a male character for say half an hour in this world nothing happened no one approached me um no one talked to me um I just kind of walked around and then as soon as I changed my avatar things changed and people approached me and people started playing songs over the music over their microphones um I should say that in the world you have to be close to the person to hear their microphones so it required them to come to my avatar physically for me to hear those things I mean it's going to be different I suppose in different worlds and but there is um just coming back to the original story which prompted this conversation we've had a woman text in who

describes herself as a woman who works in tech who says if a virtual rape is possible in the metaverse it's because the code allows it addressing the end result is too late look at how the metaverse, it's because the code allows it. Addressing the end result is too late. Look at how the metaverse is constructed and coded and by whom. If they don't want virtual sexual assault to happen, it could be prevented. And there have been such things as described as personal boundaries put in place in some of these worlds, depending on who they're owned by. But what do you say to that as a long-time gamer, Sean? I think these things have definitely gotten better.

The privacy settings are better than when I was younger. Things like the personal boundaries. And I know that these conversations have changed in that time. We're so much more aware of privacy and personal boundaries and things like this. And I know that, for example, certain games will record X amount of minutes whilst you play. So if you were to report someone, it should be fairly easy to kind of see what they're doing and get that person banned.

But definitely, I think in the sort of short term, these developers have to be on top of this. As you say, we have, it's probably one of the good uses of ai is can it spot these things on microphones do you have to report this yourself or uh how can we improve these places and make them safer and and and i'll come back to helen in just a moment but you know having now gone through this having our thoughts about it explored it seen how it's changed actually in some ways for the worse although things improved, like you talk about our knowledge of privacy. What's your view of, you know, your fellow man doing this and what's going

on there and the culture? Because it's always easy to say, well, these are other people. This is, you know, people not like me. They're not like my friends. But we do have to face up to this. a there is a mirror that technology provides sometimes in a way that's that's much clearer yeah it's it's tricky i think i've been as i say i've kind of seen this for a long time online and you kind of wonder what kind of man is doing this and why they're doing it and a lot of the time i say in the article a lot of the time it's people men that you imagine wouldn't say any of this to women in real life but at what point do they do something horrible uh in real life and then it

change um and also like you say isn't like you'd like to think oh i don't know anyone like that but i wouldn't know necessarily if my friends are like that I've always taken the position of reporting anything that I see and blocking these people and um these days to be honest as as a 30 year old I completely sort of have zero tolerance and just block this stuff but I it is hard to sort of understand what man is doing this and you feel like you don't know them but someone is someone is some men are doing this um and it's not something that's been comfortable with me and it's never been comfortable with me um unfortunately i've not been vocal enough about it in the games in the past and probably perhaps i should have been um but yeah it's it's do you think you will be moving forward uh yeah i'd like to think i would be especially when um i don't play games as often as i used to

to be honest but just having gone through this experience it might be something that yeah yeah it was it was shocking to me i think i mean i was always like i said i've always been aware of these things happening but the speed at which it happened to me i was just it really shocked me um and i didn't quite understand what it was like. And so, yeah, I feel like going forward, it's something I'm definitely more aware of. Helen Rumbleau, let me just come back to you. There's a couple of messages that come in. I like to bring in our listeners when I can. And Julia has gone a bit along some of the lines I think you've had in your response. Aren't there enough problems, she says, in the real world without stressing about the metaverse? Nobody has to enter the metaverse if they don't want to.

The phrase first world problems comes to mind. But Gemma's written in, he's listening in Paisley. Good morning to Julia and to Gemma. We cannot go down the road of telling women to exclude ourselves from the online world. We went through this in the early days of the internet. The internet now is essential to participate in public life and gain employment opportunities. There should be no space that's so unsafe we need to exclude ourselves. It's up to the gaming industry to fix this problem,

as the writer Laura Bates says, fix the system, not the women. Helen, what do you want to say, kind of starting to think about this now moving forward? Yeah, I think it's naive to say you can just retreat. I agree with Gemma. I think that this is very reminiscent of, let's say, you know, workplaces that were male dominated, had a very macho culture, and, you know, were not legally excluding women, but were excluding women through their culture. And I think that, you know,

the tech bros, to an extent, have created a world in their own image. And that has to change. But they didn't create those ills in the first place, did they? That's the other argument that always comes back. You create the world, you see what happens, and the world gets reflected back to you. True. But I think part of the problem here, as Sean has talked about, is that they don't experience or see how those worlds feel for a woman.

And I think actually this is interesting and exciting as an experiment, isn't it? How quickly and easily you can change avatar because you can experience those things. And I think it's duty bound really for men to try it. Well, there you go. Some homework from you, Helen, for our listeners as they perhaps get to grips with this or not. But the metaphor and the experience extends,

which, you know, I know some of our listeners will be getting in touch about, about how women feel online generally as well, not just in the metaverse and whether they, you know, one of the big things

that concerns me is whether there's sort of self-censorship going on, especially in what used to be public squares like Twitter and now X, and whether women are feeling like me is whether there's sort of self-censorship going on, especially in what used to be public squares like Twitter and now X, and whether women are feeling like they may say, oh, I can't be bothered to get involved with that. But are they then just being pushed out of another space? That's another big issue. Helen Rumbelow, thank you to you. Sean Russell, thank you to you,

who looked into this for The Times and wrote about their experiences. Your message is still coming in on this. I have a daughter reads this one. She and all her friends that are girls all identify as men online. I now understand why. There you go. I was flipping it the other way and gaming it within a game. This is getting meta quite literally. But let's take a break for a moment, shall we?

Because my next guest has walked into the studio. She's a classically trained violinist turned influencer. Izzy Judd is here, an original member of the string quartet. She's shot to fame on Britain's Got Talent in 2008, if you remember that. And she met her husband Harry on the McFly Wonderland tour. And following their marriage and three small children, Izzy now has a large following on Instagram and she's written two books. But she's returned to her love of playing the violin.

A forthcoming EP of Lullabies called Moments is coming and a single, Somewhere in My Memory, which she performs with her brother Rupert. Izzy, good morning. Morning, Emma. Nice to have you here. Well, we'll get back in the real world, away from the metaverse for a moment. And I mentioned that you are classically trained yourself, but you're from a very talented and very musical family, aren't you? Yeah, I grew up in a musical family. My parents ran a music school.

My three brothers are all musicians, so there was no hiding it. And in fact, I remember once being on a train with my violin and someone asking me what it was and me thinking, it's a violin. It was that normal. It was like brushing our teeth in our family. Yes, and your brothers went to be part of the choir of King's College, Cambridge, and you couldn't. No. So my brothers, yeah, exactly. My brothers left home at eight, joined wood choristers at King's.

And when I think I was about four or five, I walked into the magnificent chapel and looked up at my dad and said, the problem is, daddy, I'm a girl. But I got to enjoy many, many services at King's. Does that still annoy you? I don't know. I mean, I grew up, I suppose, very much around brothers. And I always, ever since, I've always found groups of men, I suppose, slightly easier than being around groups of girls. But I think that's simply because I was so used to just having boys around. But I also meant that they had a musical opportunity you couldn't follow.

Yeah, they had a musical opportunity, but I suppose I was given other opportunities. I was at home with my mum and dad, and I suppose therefore my dad was able to take me to violin lessons. It came into London twice a week. But yeah, I guess deep down I would have loved to have been a chorister and had the same experience. Yes, and you couldn't because you're a woman. There you go.

We could dwell on that. But actually, it is the relationship with your brother that I wanted to hear a bit more about today because it's a very special track on this EP. Somewhere in My Memory is recorded with your brother Rupert, who's duetting on the French horn. And you've shared a video of this online, and there's some beautiful images, very, very moving, of you both growing up as children and then now in your adulthood,

because something happened to him when you were young. Yeah, my family experienced a real tragedy. When he was 18, he had a serious car accident and has been left brain damaged. And he now lives in a residential home and has done for the last 20 odd years. But miraculously, the part of the brain that wasn't damaged was his music and even though he had extensive surgery part of his brain removed the metal plates on his face aren't around his jaw so the reconstruction has meant he can still have the sensation to play the french horn so when i decided earlier this year to go back into the studio and go back to my roots as you were saying and going back to music um it just felt appropriate to have rupert with me for for Somewhere in My Memory which was a piece actually he played at our wedding and there's a lyric in it which is all of the family all of

the music home here with me and I think it sums up what music has meant to my family it's been a language that we've used when words have been too difficult to speak so having Rupert with me on this track has been really really important and special and it's lovely to know the story about your playing and he's playing and how you've come to that point but I mean how did that change your family words are very difficult to explain how a trauma like that changes your family um For me personally, that sort of innocence of my brother came home one night and then the next day he didn't come home. And I have a clear image of his bed made up from the night before.

And, you know, there's always somebody missing. Even though we're living, he's here, we're still grieving the loss of what might have been. He was such a, he was just full of life and he was vibrant and he was Marmite, you know, people either loved him or hated him. Love Marmite. Yeah. Can't think of one. ways didn't he love my life yeah um and he and he still is you know he still walks into a room and and people like to meet rupert he's he's got that zest um you know for life and energy but it's just so sad to see somebody you love um having to have gone through the the fight he went through

and i mean he has care around the clock doesn't he has care around the clock, doesn't he? He has care around the clock. And, you know, with somebody like Rupert who has a head injury, it's very much a hidden disability because you don't, because he looks a certain way, you expect a certain type of behaviour. And actually he's not capable, he's lack of inhibitions. And I've had to really learn to remember that it's not my place to have to explain. And that hopefully by talking about Rupert and brain injury,

there's an awareness that disabilities can be hidden. Yes, but it is incredible that he could still play. I bet that was a real moment again for the family when you found he could still yeah it was music it was he he lifted up his horn after we hadn't had any communication with him and he started to move his hands in time with the music but I think as well you know having gone through having children of my own and especially when my youngest Lockie was born I realized I hadn't picked up my violin for so long and how disconnected I felt from me. And I just think, imagine how Rupert must feel

if he doesn't play the horn, how disconnected he must feel from himself. So for both of us to be able to perform and play is, yeah, very important. Do you feel that you had lost yourself in motherhood because not not playing is one of those symptoms if I could describe it as that of not doing something you were doing before absolutely um we really struggled to start a family we went through IVF and it became my whole life and existence I just you know I had no control over the future and then when I went

on to have Lola my son Kit came along very quickly and unexpectedly and so I think life was it just threw me into kind of chaos I was sort of still trying to get over going through IVF and becoming a mother and then finding motherhood difficult and feeling guilty for finding it difficult because of how hard it had been to get there and then suddenly my son arrived and he was completely different species to my daughter um and it was only then four years later when I had Lockie that I realized I haven't picked up my violin. And he was really fractious. It was one tea time and I got my violin out. And I was like, everybody's soothed.

Lockie's soothed. I feel soothed. Why have I not played? Why have I lost touch with who I am? And how important it is to reconnect to ourselves. And that's something you can do in the house. You don't need to book it. Because lots of people, you know, myself included, you know, you try and rebuild after becoming a mum and reform around the space that is around the edges. But I was also imagining if that had gone wrong and adding a violin to a fractious tea time had sounded even worse than the tea time that was

going on. Well fortunately it didn't go that way and I started to just pick up and play all these different lullabies and I realised my older two were feeling calmer too. Yeah it was luckily it went in the right direction. And I mentioned that you also happen to be married to a musician Harry Judd of Muckfly, who I believe also has left you alone quite a lot lately, races around the world with his mum, if people watch that. So that was nice of him.

It was. What are you going to do to get out of some childcare? I'm going to go on a race around the world with my mother. Exactly. Oh my goodness, that was such an intense month. I think they could have done, yeah, a series of what it was like at home. I've now got an image of you just in the corner playing the violin, ignoring everybody else.

Yeah, something like that. But it was amazing to watch it back, actually, and see the relationship with his mum. I'm so glad they had that. Where are you going for a month? I know exactly. Where shall I go? Where shall we go? Let's go. Go somewhere. No, I've just come back from maternity leave. The worst name job in the world because there's no leave. But here we are back at work.

You're going to make everything okay, Izzy, I'm told, with the track Stay Awake. What are we about to hear? Yeah, so Stay Awake is from Mary Poppins. And as you mentioned, I do work on Instagram. And I put out a post to ask which was the most, the lullaby that they play, people played to their children or sung to their children and Stay Awake was the most requested. So this is sort of a thank you back to the community for all their support and coming along with me on my various journeys. Thank you so much to both of you. And somehow I have to stay awake now to perform the rest of

this programme and present it. Thank you so much. Lovely to have that conversation. I'm sure we'll get lots of messages. People feeling soothed this morning. We're only just easing our way into 2024. And that's a beautiful way to do so. I'm Sarah Treleaven. And for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service,

The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now. Now my next guest, Leslie Udwin, joining me in the studio, you might know as the BAFTA award winning producer of the comedy drama East is East, or perhaps you know her for her powerful documentaries. Amongst other acclaimed work, in 2015 she made a groundbreaking film about a shocking rape and murder in India that asked the question, why do men rape women? She interviewed one of the gang who raped and ultimately killed Jyoti Singh Pandey, a 23-year-old medical student

on a bus in Delhi. She called the film India's Daughter and the process of it and making it was a turning point for her. She left her career in filmmaking for something entirely different, a mission to change the primary education system, not just in India or the UK, but around the world with her organisation, which is called Think Equal. Leslie joins me now. Good morning. Good morning, Emma. I'm delighted to be here. My favourite programme. Oh, we'll take that as a starter for ten. I mean it. I am going to come to your educational work shortly but I did read that you moved away

from films, from documentaries because you wanted to stop raising awareness and do something. But you know, if I look at your documentaries, if I just took one of them and take one of them here to talk about now, for instance Who Bombed Birmingham for HBO, Granada TV.

That directly led to the reopening of the Birmingham pub bombings, that case from 1974, and eventually the release of the Birmingham Six after years and years of wrongful imprisonment. You could argue that your films did have impact. They didn't just raise awareness. They did, but in a limited way. So in that case, six men who had been wrongly imprisoned for 17 years. Yes, of course, that is an achievement. Of course, it's something. Every life counts. But you know, we're on this slalom ride, aren't we, to catastrophe. And it seems to get worse every week. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted from

being upset. Another war, another brutal gang rape, another rape, another instance of domestic violence. Honestly, we cannot keep being reactive to the fallout from that. And we have to do something at scale. We have to change the trajectory. And the one thing we're not doing, I realized, sitting in those prison cells doing those interviews, is we're not preventing. Because if I may, just at this moment, and I want to get to that work. You know, I mentioned about the interview that you did with one of the gang in India. And what was so striking, I was rereading the transcript from that this morning, is the words that were said to you by that individual, by that man, which were, he seemed quite a normal person, as you described.

Absolutely. And he talked about, well, she shouldn't have been out. Women should be at home. And the worst thing she did was, was she fought back. Absolutely. he told me categorically, clearly, with no remorse, this girl was a beggar girl. Her life was of no value, quote, unquote. I have it on film. What is that? That's programming. That's the coding that your earlier guest spoke of at the beginning of this programme, isn't it?

We are culpable in this, that through sociocultural thinking, we do actually code and program our children in ways that take for granted that men are entitled to certain things, or boys will be boys, or a boy needs that full glass of milk and a girl can make do with just the half. Now, it of course is different across cultures, but there's not a single country or culture in the entire world that has achieved equality. And I'm not just talking about gender equality, I'm talking about the kind of equality that enables me to say that each human being on this planet is of equal value, regardless of religion or colour or ethnicity. That is what's missing here. And it's the onus is on us, I believe, to educate our children. They have a right to these competencies and skills that teach them all this.

But there will be teachers listening to this. And, you know, I'm thinking of as we start a new year and, you know, a massive NHS strike happening today, but there'll also be potentially more strikes in the education sector. There'll be teachers listening, thinking, well, I am doing a really good job. I don't believe that is true, Emma, forgive me. I respectfully do not believe that is true, Emma, forgive me. I respectfully do not believe that is true. And I base that on our recent experience in Greater Manchester, which is the most exciting, hope-filled, optimistic thing I can think of. I mentioned your organisation Think Equal. You have alighted upon very early years education. That's your focus. That's critical.

Three to six. Why? Because these are the brain building years. And of course, we can improve, ameliorate behaviours after six, but we cannot put a foundation in. And it's that foundation that is absolutely critical and key. And what do you think isn't being done? I mean, I'm not asking you to take us through your entire course, I know you won't, but on your thinking of this, what isn't being done that should be done? It's the simplicity

of giving teachers, as we do, a four and a half kilogram box of tools, of resources, of lesson plans, narrative picture books that embrace, in our case, 25 competencies and skills. We say, and I say this to every education minister and policymaker I meet, how, if you really take seriously your duty of care to our youngest, our most vulnerable citizens. How on earth can you say we must mandate literacy and numeracy, and we do, but we can leave it as optional for our children to learn how to value another human being, or indeed how to value themselves, have self-esteem, empathy, environmental stewardship, gender equality, racial equality, all of these things, our children have a right to learn. And unfortunately, discrimination and violence, which is what our program disrupts. Indeed, I'll go further. I will confidently tell you our program will end and is ending

violence and discrimination. In the UK, we're with 64,500 children. That's a sizable movement. This is a revolution in education. It's bringing the missing subject into the system. The missing subject for you is everything else around. Are you talking about, because a lot of people, again, would say, you go to school to learn those skills that you have just described, numeracy, literacy, sports, language, going on science as it starts. The other part, if we can call it that, comes mainly from perhaps the home, the parents, the people around them. Well, it's not coming from there because look at the societies we're living in. So something has failed fundamentally. I say the whole concept of what is education, this needs to be not just reimagined and re know, that is when it was designed in and for the Industrial Revolution,

and it has not been substantially changed since. I suppose there would again be PSHE teachers, those who talk about, we have tried to go around what, you know, as you describe Industrial Revolution, or an academic creation that was tailored for the world of work. We've tried to put in other parts to this. And I presume you will have looked at those in detail and seen what the curriculum is. We've mapped our programme against those objectives and core areas. But this is the difference. It's as simple as this. You cannot disrespect, underpay, undervalue early years teachers for so many decades, forever, as we have,

and then suddenly just give them a list of a curriculum framework that's a heavy academic tome and say, give me a critical thinker by the end of this year, they'll say to you, what do you mean by critical thinking? We haven't trained them. This is a brand new subject. We cannot expect them just on the basis of a list of outputs and objectives to know how to tackle this very serious gap in our education system. So what I did was gather together experts. Sir Ken Robinson, genius, giant brain, who's the greatest educator who ever walked the earth. Sadly, we lost him two years ago to cancer. Neuroscientist Professor Richard Davidson, the two co-founders of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence,

psychologists, experts in social justice. We brought all these experts together, 22 global thought leaders, and they helped design this. And it's concrete. It's plug and play, literally. And its cost is ridiculous. Can I tell you an astounding statistic, please? Go on, I like statistics. the same amount of money to give the Think Equal programme to 48,000 children, as it costs us in England to incarcerate for one year, one violent offender. You looking at that now, and you're trying to, as you've talked about going through your work, see what you can do to stop people being in the situations that you've seen. And it's a very powerful education is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. I mean, immediately I did anticipate this, but I did see a message, for instance, from one of our listeners.

Sarah has just come in. Very interesting. All the emphasis on teachers. What about parents having a role? How do you come to that when we work with parents so based in the classroom learning we also engage parents indeed we had a launch in greater manchester just two months ago with parents coming and giving testimony about how utterly thrilled they are partly saying that their children are teaching them um and also teaching them what could you give a specific example? Yes. Because I think it's important.

So we teach, for example, emotional literacy, which most adults aren't very capable in. How to distinguish, for example, between anger and frustration. Emotion regulation, absolutely key, you know, when you consider discrimination and violence as ills in our society, key. Well, one mother told us that her child had saved her marriage because her little four-year-old came home and said, Mummy, you are very much in the blue, which means deeply depressed, and I'm going to teach you how to breathe. And I'm going to help you go into the green. And then maybe we can go into the yellow.

I mean, literally, we've had the most extraordinary feedback from parents, whom we send, by the way, every week, five, 10 minute exercises to do with the children that complements the classroom program. So you're, in terms of, I was going to ask about what evidence you had that this has worked. You're talking there from anecdotal feedback from people? No, much more. Or you have? We have RCTs, which are randomised control tests.

We did three RCTs, two of them led by Yale University, Dr Craig Bailey, one of them led by IPA, Innovation for Poverty Action, in three very diverse countries, Botswana, Colombia and Australia. Identical results. Emma, aggression and anger plummeting. Anxiety. I mean, if you only think on a physical health perspective, anxiety is as strong a predictor as any other predictor of cardiovascular disease, of diabetes. And you've managed to get this to how many pupils in the UK? In the UK, 65,000 and a plus. And abroad, nearly, well, more than half a million children. But your aim is to, in this country, I presume, having done this in Manchester, try and get this rolled out across the United Kingdom. But are you, in terms of what is this subject called? How do you term it? Because there are curriculum, we see that things are not changing quickly or easily with the curriculum. Yes, what the teachers are telling us is that at last they have in their hands the narrative picture books, the lesson plans. They don't have time to sit and write lesson plans on a subject they haven't been taught.

This fits around numeracy, literacy. What is it called? Totally. Well, the subject, the program is called Think Equal and they roll it out as such. We don't care what they call it. No, no, I didn't know if you had a descriptor for this type of education. What we call it is social and emotional learning for well-being, psychosocial support, which is so critical post-COVID. Do you know that educators are talking about a lost generation here in this country? We cannot have that, you know, and social justice. I mean, and some schools do already include emotional literacy in their curriculum. It's just, you know, they may not be doing it.

But they do so in a theoretical way. So that would be the difference. Oh, that's what teachers are telling us. Well, we're going to get a lot of input from teachers, I think, off the back of this conversation. I certainly hope so. And, you know, it's spreading like wildfire. So one very important fact I must tell you, please, is that Greater Manchester, who's funding it?

Well, it's led by the visionary, extraordinary Andy Burnham. But who's funding it? The National Health Service, mental health teams and the violence reduction unit of the police. Well, you see him as a visionary. Of course, he's the Labour mayor of Manchester. And for others, he will not be on point with that issue or other issues. But in your experience, that's what you're saying, because you've had this experience going into these schools in a limited way so far in this country.

It's fascinating to hear because of your work and what you saw around the world that you've now turned your attention to education of this very specific age group. So thank you for coming to talk to us this morning. It'll be interesting to hear what goes on. We're obviously in an election year. We'll find out what happens with some of the strategy and the focus. But it's good to talk to you. I hope to have you back. I hope to come back. And it's a political programme. There's no politics in this. Whoever recognises that this is key and this is how we must serve our children is visionary and enlightened to me whatever colour they're from there you go in an election year we still we expect it to be election year i could say

it could be right at the beginning of next year but leslie edwin thank you very much thank you there you go a message here saying thank you uh for this interview with leslie she's right early years education is key prevention not just reaction i too am tired of being upset says rachel let me tell you a bit more about finally finally, if I can today, a new play, Shakespeare's Women, transporting 10 of Shakespeare's most famous female characters from the 16th century to a 2024 women's support group. What's being described as a dark comedy

gradually exposes each woman's secrets and asks what would happen if these protagonists had survived. The producer and founder of WOW, Women of the World Festival's Jude Kelly is directing the play and also who's just joined us we have the actor and author of Shakespeare's Women, Lorian Hayes. A warm welcome to both of you. Lorian can I start with which women have you picked from Shakespeare's World? Give us a flavour. Well we've picked Kate from Taming of the Shrew, because she experiences coercive control. Each woman has experienced a different form of kind of domestic

or sexual abuse. So the idea is to pull them all into the same space to talk about it. Desdemona from Othello, because she experiences domestic violence. Ophelia, because she experiences sexual violence and abuse from Hamlet. Cordelia, because she suffers under her father. Viola, who is transitioning in this play, female to male. So she's experiencing transgender abuse from her neighbour. And Hermione from The Winter's Tale. And why did you feel you wanted to do this? Because I believe it might fit with our previous conversation of education. You were looking at this through a younger person's eyes. Yes, it kind of came as an idea because my daughter was studying Shakespeare and I realised that it was actually key still to the curriculum

and she was in the States studying and I looked at her contemporaries and how they were relating to actually it was Henry V and I was kind of curious about how this generation can kind of access the characters. So I started thinking about what would happen if the women were in the same space, if they existed now, if they survived their plays, if they survived their men, and if we made them the central person in their own story. And it was about can young people, can the next generation actually grasp these characters? How

do they relate to them? And then looking at all of that, I could see that Shakespeare was writing in the 16th century about multiple instances of domestic abuse within relationships and how it was so easy to transcribe that into now. And then that made me realize not enough has changed. And that was why I wrote the play. And that was why I kind of feel it's so important to have this discussion because it's so prescient. Many, many things have changed in the 16th century, but that is not actually one of them.

I mean, it has and it hasn't. I suppose that would be the way you'd come to that. Jude, what's drawn you back to directing? Away from Women of the World. I know you'll still be doing that and all those festivals. But, you know, it is something that you must be drawn to very strongly. One of the reasons I created WOW Women of the World was because I felt as a director that there were very few stories

that directly spoke of women's experiences throughout the whole canon and that we hadn't got time to commission one-on-one and that thousands and thousands of women's stories, real stories all over the world needed to be told in order for us to have a kind of collective understanding of what we were really experiencing. But I am at heart a theatre director. You are.

And have done so many different kinds of plays and I've begun to be drawn back now into the field of theatre because I actually think the result of this kind of collective understanding of everything from menopause to domestic violence has changed the canvas of drama, finally. And this is a play that, for me, is so exhilarating because, first of all, it's very hard to come across work that directly confronts domestic violence and talks about it.

It's quite rare. And this does that. And it looks at how normalised it is for the women and the context in which these women exist. And that is one of the frightening things about domestic violence. And the second reason I wanted to do it was because I love Shakespeare and I've always thought, when I've been directing Shakespeare, that his understanding of the context in which women are trying to fight

for the limited power they've got, it's very real. He's very good at it. So whether you're talking about Juliet, you know, deliberately administering poison to herself in order to have the right to independence of love, or whether you're talking about Hermia racing off into Midsummer Night's Dream's forest because she also is being told by her dad that she can't make her own choices.

Pretty much every single character in Shakespeare, whether you're talking about comedy, tragedy or, you know, the problem plays, Isabella in Measure for Measure, they're all given the right to have a context in which their own personal agency is diminished. And Shakespeare shows that and he understands it. He doesn't make them central. You know, they're not the central character, but he's always true to the situation that they evolve in. They're not just there as decorative extras. And that's very unusual. So it is a tribute to Shakespeare, I think, that Lauren's written this.

But also it's something about, like, how do we discuss domestic violence? Does it make you, though, because, you know, you could have watched a film version or a play version of something like Romeo and Juliet and not seen it like that and I wonder what it then does to your ability to to engage in a in a in a good way with Shakespeare I mean does it basically put you off? I don't think so I mean obviously as a woman directing Shakespeare I've always been aware that you know whether you're talking about Miranda having to be dominated by her dad Prospero in the circumstance that she finds herself in, even though she loves him, or, you know, whether you're talking about Cleopatra

with all the power she's got, nevertheless being sort of demonised because she's a sexual woman. I've always been aware that as a woman director, you could bring those contexts out more strongly, but they are there. You're not making them up. No, no, it's just more that, you know, in this age of choice and people being able to go towards whatever they want, you know, you're already having to perhaps keep, especially younger people, thinking, why do I need to keep going back to this? Why do I need to keep going to look at this world that isn't the world that I want to be in and isn't how I want it to be? And yes, things may not have changed. But by putting it like this, I just wonder what you thought of that, June. And now I'll come to you, Lauren. Well, I mean, I think audiences want drama and they want both intrigue and catastrophe

and they want hope. And I think that this piece of work that Lauren's written, because that's what I'm directing, not a Shakespeare play, but this particular play, it's bleak because the circumstances are horrific, really. But what is very, very clear is all the women are looking for an out and they're determined by working together to get an out. So you have to give that sense of hope. And I think young people are as aware as any of us

that actually they are still trapped. I mean, look at the thing you just did on AI. You know, it isn't as if the world is organising itself to make clear progress. So I think it is about young people deciding that the patterns of behaviour that have been going on since time immemorial can be changed, and I believe they can. I did mention dark humour, Laurie,

and I'm wondering if you just all sat round from the Shakespeare's plays with the list that you just gave, you'd have to have a wry laugh, wouldn't you? Yes. You know, it's at times so bad, some of what we're talking about that perhaps you do. I think I think I mean, I wrote this play as a survivor myself. So I know that this area is really hard, really hard to talk about. I experienced child abuse. I've experienced sexual violence. So many women I know have. I mean, the stats are one in three women in a lifetime will experience sexual violence. One in four will experience some form of domestic abuse. So the subject area is incredibly serious.

Putting the women together in the room, I wanted them to, I wanted to find the lightness in it. I wanted to find the joy. I wanted to find the humor. I wanted to find how they connected. I wanted to find the fact that there's love between them and there's antagonism. But I wanted it to be really playful and and it was very exciting to me to go what happens if all these women suddenly end up in the same space and they have all these common areas and can they get on do they like each other they don't

some of them and it's just it's like Cordelia is carrying Lear around in an urn and she can't put him down and it really pisses everybody else off because it's like we don't want to sit with your dad could you please not put him in the middle of the room you know it's i've tried to find pieces of each of their characters and sort of exploded them and exaggerated them in in a way that people can relate to it and i think the key point is that comedy is our in yeah that that dark comedy is the access point for people that have not experienced domestic violence. It's an access point for men and boys and students who come and see the play because

I think it's digestible then. I think if you present them with, you know, support group eight women talking about domestic violence it's too difficult. It's not a documentary. It is lives interconnecting. It's a rollercoaster ride. And it does sort of catapult you out of just thinking that, OK, Desdemona's just collateral damage.

Emilia's just collateral damage to Iago's jealousy. And just re-engage with the fact that some of these characters who are kind of almost clichés, like if you think about that famous painting of Ophelia floating around with the flowers, so attractive before she drowns. We've sort of got this idea that some of these victims just like, well, that's who they are. They're just victims.

Was actually, you know, Ophelia was struggling away trying to have a good boyfriend, a nice dad and, you know, and a future. So it re-engages you with some of those problems. Sunday, 7th of January, two performances of Shakespeare's Women, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in London. Good luck with it. Thank you for taking us behind the scenes. Jude Kelly there, Lauren Haynes, and thank you to you for your company today. Woman's Hour, about tomorrow

at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. From BBC Radio 4, life can be unexpected. It was big. This was not a wind. This was not a storm. This was a tsunami. But when confronted with change, humans are remarkably resilient. I knew in that moment as I fell to the ground that I would recover more. I'm Dr Sian Williams, psychologist and presenter of Life Changing, the programme that speaks to people whose worlds have been flipped upside down

and transformed in a moment. If I had to live my life again, would I ever want to go through what I went through? There's a very simple answer to that. I would go through it again. Subscribe to Life Changing on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody.

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

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