Woman's Hour - Sharenting, Stella Creasy, Science

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

Sharenting is when you put too much information about your children on social media. It could be baby pictures or details of what they're doing or what they've achieved. You might think your post is sweet or funny, but when your children grow up, they might not agree especially when it comes to finding a job. Jane talks to Claire Bessant, a solicitor and Associate Professor at Northumbria Law School and Leah Plunkett, who's an Associate Professor of Legal Skills at the University of New Hampshire in the US and author of ‘Sharenthood’.Anti-abortion posters were put up in the Labour MP, Stella Creasy’s, constituency in London this weekend. They've now been taken down. Stella Creasy is eight months pregnant, has publicly spoken about the miscarriages she’s had and she’s a prominent campaigner for abortion rights in Northern Ireland. We speak to Stella who feels she's a target for a group called Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform UK, which is behind the posters. We also talk to their spokesperson, Ruth Rawlins. More books than ever before are now published about women and science. Last week Caroline Criado Perez won the 2019 Royal Society Book Prize for her book ‘Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men’. It lists the ways in which the world is designed for men, rather than women. We bring Caroline together with neuroscientist, Professor Gina Rippon, whose book ‘The Gendered Brain’ refutes the claim that men and women’s brains are fundamentally different.

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. Hi, this is Jane Garvey. This is the Woman's Hour podcast. It is Tuesday, the 1st of October 2019. Today, the anti-abortion posters put up in Labour MP Stella Creasy's constituency. We ask whether the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has a problem with women. Increasingly, is he a problem for the women in his cabinet? Here's Nicky Morgan defending him, or trying to, on Newsnight last night. Does the PM have a problem with women?

No. You said that very certainly. Well, because I've been asked today by lots of journalists who obviously are talking about some particular stories and issues, but actually it's not what the delegates are talking about. And I genuinely don't think these issues are important, but I actually think what people really want to hear from their governments at the moment, from the prime minister downward,

is about the issues that need to be sorted in this country. And that's what we're trying very much to do here. Nicky Morgan and the questioning, and the slightly heavy sigh came from Emily Maitlis in that audio. And this is important. Are you guilty? Might you be guilty of sharenting? Posting cutesy images of your children on social media. It can be a very appealing thing to do, but they'll grow up and they may well resent you for it. What rights do children have when it comes to social media and images posted on social media of them

by their parents, grandparents and carers. That's all on Women's Hour today and you can take part as well. You can tweet at BBC Women's Hour, Instagram it's also at BBC Women's Hour, email the programme via our website. So first today to the anti-abortion posters that have popped up in Labour MP Stella Creasy's constituency in London. They are now being taken down. I should say there is some mystery about quite how many there are or have been, so we'll talk about that. We should say as well that Stella Creasy is eight months pregnant. She's been a prominent campaigner for abortion rights in Northern Ireland, where abortion is still only legal if a woman's life is at risk. Stella Creasy has also been public about the miscarriages that she has experienced.

So we'll talk to Stella in a moment after the view of Ruth Rawlins, who's from the Centre for Bioethical Reform UK. This is a group behind the posters and images. It is affiliated to other groups with the same title around the world. So, Ruth, tell us, first of all, how many of these images or posters are there in Walthamstow right now? Hi there. There are, well at the moment there's none. Because they have been removed? Yes, we had a contract with Clear Channel to put up six over the course of four weeks and as far as I'm aware only one was was put up, which was taken down, you know, within 24 hours.

Just describe that. The image was of a nine week living fetus. So just from we date it from fertilization. So there's some false accusations to say that these are fake images when in fact, you know, this is dated from fertilization, nine weeks. And so that's all it showed was an image that you can get in science. That's the image, but there was wording. What was the wording? The wording went to the website stopstella.com. Stop Stella, and that would be Stop Stella Creasy.

Now, why target Stella Creasy? We're targeting Stella Creasy because she is targeting the unborn child. She is pushing to remove all protections from the unborn child by removing offences 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act. If she moves these amendments, the unborn child will have no protection up to 28 weeks. Stella Creasy can speak for herself, of course, but we should say that Stella has been a doughty campaigner for the rights of women in Northern Ireland to have the same rights as people like me in the rest of the country. What's wrong with that?

Well, we have to ask, what about the rights of the unborn child? You know, it's a living human being from the point of fertilisation. It's got everything it needs to grow for the rest of its life. And it is separate to that of its life. And it is separate to that of the mother, that it has separate DNA, the heart is beating from 21 days. So what about the human rights of the unborn child? Don't they deserve the right to life? Have you thought of targeting, I don't know, the constituency, say, of a prominent Conservative MP, or it could be another party, Labour MP, who's known perhaps for having paid for his mistress

to have an abortion? Have you thought of going and putting up your posters in those places? Yeah, let me just say this is not... No, can you answer the question? Have you considered doing that? Yeah, we will be. Oh, will you?

This is not about party politics. This is about holding MPs to account. And so there will be other MPs that we will be targeting and other, you know, celebrities, people who are supporting and promoting and pushing, particularly for a change of law. And it wasn't just this one poster. There were placards as well.

Can you describe some of the placards that you and your campaign group were holding? Yes, so on Saturday we took banners showing, we have a public education display showing an image of what happens to a baby in a 24-week abortion. And so, yes, it's graphic to see, but that is the exact procedure that Stella Creasy wants to see more liberalised in this country. And where did you get that image from? The image was taken from Centre for Biotical Reform and they got it from an abortionist.

It was taken and it's verified. How can we possibly know that? People can go to our website, cbruk.org, and they will see the verification. It's all been signed by an abortionist. I mean, women who have had babies, babies survive outside the womb at 22 weeks with intervention. And so at 28 weeks, women know what babies look like at 28 weeks.

Do you have any concerns at all about the very public targeting of a female MP, particularly at a time like this, where the atmosphere is best described as febrile for a multitude of other reasons, who is also heavily pregnant? I mean, it's interesting why Stella Creasy wants to cry victim when she is victimising the unborn in the womb. And she does again. Stella Creasy is trying to give women in Northern Ireland the same rights that you and I and every other woman in the country has enjoyed for quite some time, since the 1960s, in fact. What on earth is wrong with that? Because what is this right? It's a right to kill an innocent human being in the womb and we need to show the humanity of these babies they should have rights too

and that's what the offence is against the person that 58 and 59 protects their human rights There's no issue with taste at all here as far as you're concerned Well I think a lot of the Walthamstow constituents agreed with us that it's extremely distasteful What do you mean they agreed with you? That it's extremely distasteful. What do you mean they agreed with you?

That it's extremely distasteful to be killing babies in the womb. And what do you say about the fact that actually the World Health Organization has categorically said that the abortion rate doesn't change regardless of whether access to abortion in any nation is legal or illegal. The plain fact is there are people who have real concerns about abortion, but the plain fact is that women will always require safe, legal abortions. But the thing is, an abortion is never safe, because every abortion violently ends the life of an innocent human being, of a child in the womb.

And Stella Creasy knows this, because she speaks of the humanity of the unborn. Yet she fails to speak of the humanity of the unborn when it's referring to abortion. You and your fellow members of the Centre for Bioethical Reform UK would be far happier living in a country in Britain where access to abortion was neither safe nor legal and women would die in numbers having backstreet abortions as they always did. We would be happy to live in a country where every life is respected,

where the rights are life. Unfortunately, not the life of a desperately poor woman who can't afford another pregnancy or a young girl who's been raped by her stepfather. Well, these women need protection from the law and abortion does not solve a problem. Yes, these are horrific crimes, but how does killing a human being in the womb,

how does that solve a problem? Let's bring in Stella Creasy. I know Stella Creasy is on a phone line from Strasbourg. Stella Creasy, good morning to you. Hi there, Jane. Tell us a little bit about how you felt about the events in your constituency over the weekend. So I want to be very clear that I have debates about abortion

both with local residents and at a national level all the time. I have debated and discussed with people who feel differently to who I do that i believe it is a fundamental right to choose whether a woman has a baby or not um and i have respectful debates this has been a campaign of sustained harassment against myself this organization have been explicit that they are targeting me as a hypocrite for being pregnant i mean i'm not quite sure what they mean by that but they're suggesting that i should have an abortion myself and i have to be honest that

when i saw the pictures of the 20-foot banner they had of my head next to a baby about the same age as the baby i'm currently carrying suggesting that i want to kill babies it hurts i mean i would defy anybody not to be shocked by that image. But also, you know, my heart went out to every woman in Morehamstow who's ever had miscarriages as I have, who's suffered baby loss, who has chosen for her own reasons to have an abortion and had to walk past that. When the posters started appearing on bus stops and on billboards,

when the leaflets went out with these graphic and they are scientifically untrue images it's very clear this is not about having a respectful debate about what the right regulation for abortion is because the offence against the person act makes it a criminal basis what i am looking for is a medical basis so i i'm not seeking to liberalize or change the way in which abortion happens i'm seeking to give women women control over their own bodies, whether they live in Northern Ireland or whether they live in Walthamstow. But this is not a debate. This is a form of harassment and intimidation. We've seen it around abortion clinics in this country. And to be honest, what I'm really angry with is with the police and frankly the Home Secretary,

who told us that the provisions were in place to protect women from these forms of harassment and intimidation. And as we discovered on Saturday and as we discovered yesterday and as we're still discovering, because this group are threatening to keep coming back and keep targeting me, those protections clearly aren't there. I don't want any woman to go through what I've been through over the last couple of days.

To be very clear, then, how long was that one image prominent and displayed in your constituency on Saturday? So the big banner with my head next to a dead baby, I think, was there for a couple of hours, despite the police promising myself and my local authority that if these people came, we could prevent people going and attacking these people because people are very upset by what they're doing in Walthamstow.

I have to be honest, the community in Walthamstow has been absolutely spectacularly brilliant and supportive in saying this is not okay. That billboard was up yesterday. The stuff that's online, the leaflets that have been handed out, I'm not too sure how long that's been there.

Right. We do know from Ruth that she and her group are planning to target other MPs in other constituencies. What, if anything, can you do about that? Well, that's why we need legislation. We need to say that I'm a passionate defender of free speech, but you can only defend free speech when you also take on those who abuse it. They don't have an unqualified right to intimidate and harass people who they disagree with. And that is what they are trying to do.

I have to say that their website is extremely clear. This is just about me as well as myself being pregnant. But, you know, it gives me no sucker that they seem to think that if they say they're going to target and harass other people, that makes it OK. It doesn't. This isn't a debate. This is a form of harassment and intimidation. Thank you very much. That's the Labour MP Stella Creasy currently in Strasbourg. Actually, while you're there, Stella, a quick question. How close are we to anything happening in Northern Ireland in terms of access to abortion there? Well, this is the irony because the law has already passed in the UK Parliament

that says if the Assembly isn't back together by the 21st of October, then we remove the criminal elements of abortion law in Northern Ireland. That obviously depends on whether the Assembly gets back together by the 21st. What myself and people like Diana Johnson and Rupert Huck are working on is making sure that every woman

in the UK is able to make these choices from a medical rather than a criminal perspective because this is the 21st century and we don't live in Gilead. That's something for the domestic abuse bill which is coming back tomorrow in Parliament. Okay, thank you very much. Safe trip back. That's Stella Creasy, the Labour MP. Now, Ruth, very briefly

you are a passionate speaker and I appreciate that there are people who feel the same way as you but you are a minority in this country. You really are. Well, that's not true because a recent Comres poll... It is true. Well, a recent Comres poll showed that less than 2%

were on the upper limit of abortion to increase. And can I just come back on Stella Creasy continuously using the word harassment? The police have stated specifically that no harassment is taking place. Why won't she stand by her... How else would you characterise what was happening in Walthamstow on Saturday? We were showing what Stella Creasy wants to take place.

She wants abortion on demand for any reason up to 28 weeks. We showed an image of a 24-week aborted baby. That's what she's campaigning for. Ruth, our listeners will be very familiar with this. You know very well very few abortions are carried out in this country at 24 weeks. 289 abortions, actually, after 24 weeks in 2018. Statistically, that is not a large number relative to other abortions carried out. But that's 289 human beings that have lost their lives.

That will be for a multitude of very challenging reasons and women in desperately challenging circumstances. And I wonder if Stella Creasy knows what happens in a 28-week abortion procedure because the baby is injected into the head and to give it a cardiac arrest and then the baby is pulled apart piece by piece. Thank you, Ruth Rawlins. That is going to be too much, I think, for many people to hear at this time of day.

Well, thank you. That's the view of Ruth Rawlins, who's from the Centre for Bioethical Reform UK, and you also heard from Stella Creasy, the Labour MP. And I know plenty of people are getting involved already on Twitter. You can keep on doing that. It's at BBC Women's Hour with your views on what you've just heard. Now, we're going to stay with politics and the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has been busy denying that he has a woman problem. So he was

on the Today programme on Radio 4 a little earlier. Here he is answering the questions posed by Nick Robinson. Have you got a woman problem? I've always been a big champion of women at the top of every organisation that I run. And if you look at the way I ran City Hall, it was virtually half and half. It was more as a complete feminocracy at City Hall.

The same goes for what I did in the Foreign Office. And if you look at the signature the signature policy of uh of the fco under me it was to champion uh as the as the the number one solution to the problems of the world 12 years of quality education for every girl in the world that's boris johnson an hour or so ago here on radio 4 well we did ask for a conservative mp to appear with us the programme today. Nobody was available from the conference in Manchester, but we are relatively confident that we will have a leading female Conservative politician on the show before the end of the week. We have, though, got Anne McElvoy, who's in Manchester.

She's Senior Editor at The Economist. In fact, she was with us on Friday as well when she was in Kiev. And with me in the studio in London is Policy editor at the iPaper, Jane Merrick. Welcome to you, Jane. And tell us a little bit, first of all, about the atmosphere in Manchester. I would say the atmosphere in Manchester veers a bit, depending on what's going on on the main stage, between strong backing for that get Brexit done feeling and that Boris Johnson is this decisive character who can somehow cut through all

the complexities and all the utter tedium of waiting for Brexit if you're on that side of the argument and somehow defeat his enemies. And a slightly, how would you put it, a sort of slightly subdued feeling about the conference as a whole. It just sometimes feels perhaps a bit more fly-blown, a bit more becalmed than in previous years. There are a lot of people who aren't here. And I would say, I mean, it's always been askew at both conferences on gender. I would say it feels more heavily male than it's felt in previous years. And I think there are reasons for that.

A lot of people who've got jobs and families are maybe kind of sitting this one out, waiting and seeing. And if they're thinking of coming, particularly because they're interested in being candidates themselves or similar roles, they're maybe just going to sit this one out and see what happens next year. We know that the Home Secretary is, excuse me, my coffee is fighting back. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is making a speech this morning, isn't she? Is she the big draw? Oh yeah, Priti Patel is always a big draw and that is not least because she's been given this role as a strong female figure who's also very firmly pro-Brexit. We know from David Cameron's memoirs that he got quite annoyed with her as he saw it, counter-camp campaigning while being on his ministerial team.

So she takes no prisoners in her speeches. I mean, she's always very, very forthright, Priti Patel. She's certainly at the harder end of the Brexit spectrum. And on issues like immigration, she of course herself comes from an immigrant background. She is very clear that she thinks

that there needs to be a much more open conversation about that so i think she's someone that the conference will warm to one has to be have to say regardless whether you like her views or not she's a strong female figure and i think team johnson are quite keen to put that forward for all sorts of reasons partly to appeal to the broader electorate and to women in it but also given what's going on around the subject that we're talking about. Well indeed, let me just quote Rachel Sylvester from the Times today. She was at a Women to Win event yesterday at the conference.

That was the organisation set up by Theresa May I think wasn't it or partly set up by Theresa May to encourage more women to come forward as Tory candidates. Boris Johnson was there as well and Rachel writes he emphasised his commitment to female empowerment on the same day he was forced to deny allegations he'd groped a journalist and channelled public funds to a lover. Jane Merrick, that, in a nutshell, is the alleged problem with women that Boris Johnson faces.

Yes, and actually a poll last week, even before the FI allegations came out, a poll last week showed that his standing among women voters is falling. So I think it was 40% find him dislikable. That's risen to 47%. That was a YouGov poll last week. And that's a higher rate than among men. So, yeah, he does have a women problem, despite what Nicky Morgan and Boris Johnson himself said. Yeah, well, Nicky Morgan was putting up a spirited defence. I happened to see the letters page of The Telegraph, and of course people will say, well, it is The Telegraph, and it is The Telegraph, which, as we know,

is a Tory-supporting, Brexit-supporting newspaper at the moment. The letters page today has three letters, all from women, all basically saying the same thing, but I'll quote one from a lady called Pamela. To all those women who had their legs touched by a man 20 years ago and are now drawing it to our attention, I say grow up. Jane Merrick. I think it's really misleading about the timescale.

I mean, Charlotte Edwards has talked about this, yes, in 1999. In 2003, I was sexually harassed by Michael Fallon. It took a long time to come out because at the time we just didn't say, we didn't come out, we didn't speak out. And you didn't have any agency or felt you didn't? There was no agency. If I spoke out, if I complained to Conservative Party whips, then I might have suffered in my job. I mean, Charlotte actually says in her piece that she didn't say anything because she was worried about recriminations at work. It's that same story. And at the time we didn't speak out because we were worried about what would happen with work and I think, I hope, you would think the culture has changed.

Well, what we do know is that Michael Fallon was basically forced to resign from his job as Defence Secretary. He was forced to resign and it was, I mean, you know, touching knees and grabbing thighs is not trivial but it was more than touching knees in Michael Fallon's case and in Damien Green's case as well. Who also resigned. Who also resigned. But to hear cabinet ministers this week respond to Charlotte Edwards' allegation, I think it's like Me Too never happened.

Matt Hancock said that harassment is a private matter. It is not. It's about public conduct. It's about conduct in the workplace and respect in the workplace. And for Nicky Morgan last night to say these issues aren't important, I think is really depressing from a female cabinet minister. I should say, by the way, that Damien Green denied the allegations, although he did indeed resign. But a cabinet officer found Kate Mulby's account credible.

Absolutely, and thank you for making that clear as well. We should say as well, of course, that people say it's not, and Nicky Morgan was also saying, not that the suggestion, the allegation didn't matter, but that what mattered more was delivering Brexit. And that, in a sense, that is, Anne McElvoy, that is Boris Johnson's case, isn't it? That's what he would say. He is there to deliver the thing the British people voted for, and that was Brexit. Yes, that is exactly what his pitch is and as i understand it you know he's pushing very hard towards the end of the week also with his european counterparts he doesn't either the column i'm writing today is saying everyone's talking about an extension

including political journalists like me an extension to to article 50 to we wouldn't leave on the 31st of october and that number 10 is determined that one way or another they will. What is, let's look at it a bit from that point of view because it's very easy to get into a kind of soft culture war around this in which you say, well, all reasonable women think X and unreasonable people think Y. I actually think there are a lot of women who, they sort of roll their eyes at the behavior of of men in the

way that that jane has described they perhaps don't think it's as reprehensible as a lot of women inside the political world or the journalistic world or you know the sort of slightly more kind of younger the more progressive politically you are in the left sense of progressive the more outraged you tend to be about it so i think there is sometimes we can mistake a sense that issues like me too quite rightly in many ways have become very salient okay but with a certain group of the population and others put other priorities higher and i do think it's worth reflecting on that even if you look at those figures on boris johnson i think there's still quite a lot of women in the country who would have no hesitation about voting for him.

Right. I just wonder, I suppose, whether there's ever going to be a female equivalent. Let's say I was running. Well, let's say I was Prime Minister. But frankly, I was known as a, you know, she's just, oh, she's one of those women. She's a little bit handsy. But never mind. That's just Jane. Jane Merrick, it wouldn't happen. It's not going to happen. It hasn't happened. No, it hasn't happened. And I don't think there is a kind of generational gap, actually, between... You don't?

No, I don't, actually. I mean, I am 45, so I suppose I'm sort of Generation X. Actually, I didn't say anything at the time, but when Me Too happened, it was younger women were actually breaking the ground first. They were coming out first. Bex Bailey, Kate Maltby, much younger than me. But actually, we followed.

And there are plenty of women my age and also older who have always found this behaviour reprehensible and unacceptable. Now what's changed is our tolerance of it. And we are now encouraged by a younger generation in actually saying, yes, this happened to me. I mean, that's the point about Charlotte Edwardsotte edwards's account it happened to her in 1999 she can now say it because because of me too because of what me too did i mean i can point uh as i did as an illustration to the letters page of the telegraph anne is talking about the mood amongst the people she's the women she's encountered at conference look at the opinion polls the opinion polls at the moment would appear to bear out what Anne is saying. People actually would still vote for Boris Johnson and they do it in number.

I think it's interesting that obviously Brexit is a huge issue, but you shouldn't, you know, sexual harassment and women's rights to not to be sexually harassed in the workplace shouldn't be a second class issue. I think it's interesting actually that number 10 are really pushing on the NHS and on crime because these are the issues that actually all voters care about. There are a lot of women work in the NHS, a lot of women work in education. They're really trying to play that up as well but you can't escape the fact that he's facing allegations about his own conduct related to two women and it is an issue that we need to discuss. And we haven't actually mentioned the allegations involving the American businesswoman,

Jennifer Okuri. Do you think, Anne McElvoy, that because those allegations involve public money, that they might matter more in the end? Yes, I think it's sometimes easier if you're following a trail, and I'm speaking here journalistically, perhaps the only difference between Jane and me is I'm making a distinction between what should be the case and what I think is the case in terms of political analysis.

I'm not, just to be clear, downplaying anything that she said. Well, as I said, look at the opinion polls. Wrong to be grouped. The opinion polls is one indicator. The other is that Boris Johnson, a certain amount of misbehaviour, misconduct, however you describe it, is factored in there because this has been going on for years and years. He's had mistresses during his marriage. There has always been a sort of slightly scurrilous feeling about Boris Johnson. And someone

who's known him for a lot of years, I do think, by the way, that that behaviour seems to have got a bit more tacky over the years and that is just an interesting side of his personality. What do you mean by that? At the age of 55, there's something slightly unbecoming about this. No, I don't. Whereas when he was 40, it was excusable. No, what I mean is that there was someone who had a longstanding marriage to a very substantial partner, very much her own views. And that seemed to sort of to go along and whatever their private arrangements were, we don't know.

But this, you know, there does now seem to be particularly over the last, say, 50 to 20 years, it just seems to be sort of more and more of this around him. So I think he does have that problem that he's carrying a lot of baggage, an entire Samsonite store of baggage when it comes to this story. But the question is, how much does it matter when you put it against other things, politically speaking? And I think that's the area where we have to be a bit careful because we've seen it in the US and in that culture argument in the US where a lot of people who didn't like a particular leader, in that case Trump,

said, ha-ha, I now have the story that's really going to do for him about women. Now I've got another story that's really going to do for him about women. Meanwhile, on he sails because there's something about this sort of mismatch between how important one group of people, including women, think adverse behaviour is, and another. And I'm only pointing out that it's sometimes worth being aware of that, however motivated and however angry you may rightly feel about the behaviour. About it. OK, Anne, thank you very much.

So, Jane, I'll leave the last word to you on this. What do you do about Teflon populist politicians who appear to have licence to carry on as they wish? Yes, I mean, I agree with that. Actually, there is a sort of factored into the market already with Boris Johnson. I think it would be different, actually, if there were a sort of stronger opposition leader. And I think the same is in the United States as well. And actually, they're allowed to get away with this because they don't have a strong sort of an attractive alternative I think Jeremy Corbyn is attractive to a lot of people but not abroad enough to win an election and I think

that probably will is what will count in the end. Thank you very much really appreciate your time that's Jane Merrick policy editor at the iPaper you also heard from anne mccalvoy of the economist and as i say um i apologize we did hope to have a leading conservative politician on the program today we hope to talk to at least one of them before the end of this week on woman's hour i appreciate we have talked to the main other parties talk to the conservative talk to labor we've talked to the liberal democrats we hope to be talking to the snp in a couple of weeks time applied cunru will be in the mix as well. We've had representatives of the Brexit party on the programme and we'll be talking to the Greens as well soon, we hope. Now, the British Heart Foundation warned yesterday, in fact, that heart attacks are needlessly killing women. And they report that it's partly because

women falsely believe they're not likely to have a heart attack, actually. And so they don't actually get treatment for any symptoms. Perhaps they don't know what the symptoms are and then sexes the sexes are treated differently when it comes to heart attacks caroline creado perez's award-winning book invisible women sets out the ways in which the world is designed for men and treats women as the second sex and gina rippon is Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at Aston University in Birmingham. Her book, The Gendered Brain, refutes the argument that women's brains and men's brains are fundamentally different. We should say that this is really all about the differences that these books about women and science and society are making to the way we live our lives. And Caroline, I always think of you when I'm in the queue for the toilet,

and I mean that in the nicest possible way. So just briefly outline. I think you're not the only one. No, I'm glad. But go on, outline briefly what Invisible Women is about. So Invisible Women is about the gender data gap. And the gender data gap is simply the fact that the vast majority of information we've collected on the world has been on men so male bodies and typical male lifestyle patterns and the result of this male bias in data

means that the vast majority of the world just doesn't fit women very well so we're talking cars which have been designed to be safe for men but not as safe for women we're talking public transport which has been designed around typical male travel patterns and we are talking health care that has been designed to cater for the male body so you end up with women having more serious adverse drug reactions women's symptoms you know this is much more than heart disease this is things like tuberculosis like colon cancer you know women are more likely to die from colon cancer, partly because the way they present is not as easily found by the diagnostic tests that we've developed,

which have been developed on the male body. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. You're not saying that women's brains and men's brains are significantly different? I am not saying that women's brains and men's brains are significantly different. You know, I am not an expert women's brains and men's brains are significantly different. You know, I'm not an expert in neuroscience or neuroimaging. The thing that I find really fascinating and what I found really frustrating reading Gina's book is the huge difference in

the attention we've paid to sex differences for the brain versus sex differences everywhere else. And so we are obsessed with trying to find sex differences in the brain that will somehow prove, you know, that men are supposed to be CEOs and women are supposed to be, you know, nappy changers. But when it comes to sex differences in things like colon cancer, in heart disease, even in, you know, the differences in size of bodies and muscle mass distribution so that women can be safe in car crashes. We're just not that interested. And why is that? I would suggest it's because finding sex differences

in the brain would naturalise patriarchy. That's interesting. Gina, what do you say about that? Well, I think one of the things we have to be careful about is whether we are talking about sex or whether we're talking about gender. And I think Caroline, congratulations on the prize, by the way. Thank you.

Caroline talked about the gender data gap. And sometimes it's actually a sex data gap. It's saying that women and men have different physiology, about which there is no argument. But there is also the fact that there's a kind of socio-cultural factor that people live their lives differently. And sometimes the two do intersect. I mean, Caroline's got a lovely chapter on snow clearing, acknowledging the different lifestyles that the different genders lead. And I think that's important to draw attention to. But one of the things that slightly concerns me is that emphasising the differences, which as Caroline exactly put her finger on, has been a longstanding way of talking about women not just as being different, but being inferior, what I call the three I's, inferior, incompetent

or invisible. And so, you know i i completely accept that the physiological differences are very important to acknowledge but we also ought to be careful to to realize that there is still an overlap in those data so small men also have difficulties with body armor and and um all right let's put that point to Caroline then. The world is not... I mean, I'm a five-foot-one-inch woman and the world isn't designed for me. But maybe it's a height thing, not a sex thing.

No, it's a sex thing. You know, height is part of it, but it's much more than height. You know, there are sex differences that have been found in the immune cells that convey pain. For years, researchers were concerned that they didn't understand why

sometimes muscle-derived stem cells would promote regeneration, and sometimes they didn't. They thought they were unpredictable. It turned out they weren't unpredictable. It's that female cells promote regeneration and male cells don't. Similarly, another study found that, you know, male cells won't respond to oestrogen and use it to be able to fight off a virus, female cells will. So there's absolutely sex differences. Yes, of course, small men won't have, you know, as easy a time as average men. But that's kind of the point of the book, is that we're not talking about women who are outliers. The book is talking about women who are average and small men are not average. They are outliers. But average women are treated as if they're outliers when in fact they're 50 percent of the population the big point i want to put

briefly to you both if you can is that the good thing is that these books like the books you've both written are being written but what are your books changing gina um well i like to the origin of a lot of what i wrote about is is exactly the same as Caroline, saying the research in this area is so important that we must do it properly. And I've had terms like sex difference denier levelled at me in the same tone of voice as climate change denier, with the same consequence for human civilization, one assumes. But I think the idea is that this is really important research so it needs to be done carefully um but we also need to say that you need to take sex into account certainly but also where it intersects with gender how people live their lives um and other aspects um so we shouldn't just stop at dividing people into two groups, which is in itself an issue. Thank you very much, Gina. I'm so sorry to interrupt. And I'm going to ask you,

Caroline, just to sum up in 20 seconds, if you can. Sum up what? Everything. The world and everything in it. Whether or not writing books like the one you have written has actually started to make a difference. Oh, it definitely has. You know, I've had so many researchers getting in touch with me to say that they have changed the way that they're doing research because they've realised how important it is to sex disaggregate their data.

One guy redid 260 pages of code because he realised that the clinical data set he had been sent had placed white men as the reference point with female and African-American as, you know, a condition as, you know, some kind of weird thing that complicates the data. So definitely there is a difference being made. And I think it is really important to write these things. And I agree with Gina that it's important to collect the data accurately because we're trying to measure reality and you can't distort reality and then expect to provide good services and good health care and good whatever else it is we're trying to do. You heard that from Caroline Criado-Perez. Thank you very much. And from Gina Rippon. Now,

are you guilty, if you're a parent, of oversharing, sharenting too many images of your cutesy children doing cutesy things? What might the lasting impact of all this be? Claire Besant is a solicitor and an associate professor at Northumbria Law School. Leah Plunkett's an associate professor of legal skills at the University of New Hampshire in the States and the author of a book called Sharenthood. Claire, first of all, what rights do your children have here? Can I post any image at all of any child of mine doing anything with absolutely no worries about my or their legal rights? That's a really complicated question to answer actually because for children they do have a right to privacy just as any adult would have a right to privacy but the difficulty that children face which adults perhaps don't face is how they actually go about exercising those rights, how they would bring a claim if someone actually did breach their right to privacy.

So technically, you could put anything up there. It's whether a child would then be able to do something about it, which is the real question, which we don't have 100% answers to yet. But does all that change then as soon as the child becomes 18, their own image belongs to them and nobody else? Well, technically their images belong to them the whole time. Just because you're a parent doesn't mean that you own your child or that you have a right to make every decision in relation to that child. And there's been cases, going right back to the Gillett case, which makes clear that a parent does have responsibilities in relation to their children. But the decisions that they can make, they dwindle. And as a child gets older, they have much more ability to make those decisions themselves.

OK, bear with me one moment. We're really short of time. Leah, can you tell us about the situation in the States then? In the United States, parents can post images of their children unless those images would violate what we would call a law of general applicability. So you cannot post an image of your child if that image would violate criminal law, if that image would reflect abuse or neglect of the child or, heaven forbid, pornography. But really, until you get to those outer limits of what criminal or other general bodies of law would prohibit, parents in the U.S. do get to choose when, whether, how and why to post images of their minor children. And we should be clear here, we're not talking about people who make a living out of their family life. And there are plenty of people out there, YouTubers, people on Instagram, vloggers who catalogue every single day in their children's lives. We're talking about the average person, Claire. And I just wonder how much, honestly, the average parent knows about all this and understands what they're doing yeah i think there's not enough data out there at the moment as to what parents do understand and whether they do appreciate that there could be risks posed to their children or that their children have got a right to privacy and what the implications are if they do start to put information out there because obviously we've always shared information about our children

whether that's with friends whether that's family. But the difference nowadays is that when something is shared online, it can be up there forever. Something that you share thinking it's just with a handful of friends can be spread further if it's tagged or reposted. So it's a hugely different scenario to what it was 10, 15 years ago. Leah, there was an absolutely dreadful case in the United States of effectively a famous online family who were, they were guilty of neglect, but they also had half a million subscribers watching their family life. It was unbelievable. That's correct. So that you're referring to the YouTube channel Daddy 05 that was run by the Martin family. And they were positioning themselves as a family prank channel. So they would play little jokes on each other and on the kids. But it took

a really dark turn. And they were in particular, playing what they call jokes on one of their children, a young boy named Cody. And the images were so disturbing that viewers contacted Child Protective Services. Some of the children in the family were removed from the family's custody for a bit. And the YouTube channel was taken down. And one of the things I find

so alarming about this is that they got to half a million followers. It's devastating. Yeah. And that's an extreme example, unfortunately, rare. But I just wonder, it seems to me, Claire, to be the logical step that there ought to be some kind of warning put out before you post any image of a child. Wouldn't it be logical for something to flash up on the screen saying, are you certain you want to post this image of Tallulah sitting on the potty, bearing in mind that she could be the Secretary of State for Defence in 35 years? I think that would be an excellent way to deal with it. And irrespective of whether she's going to be a prime minister in 35 years, Tallulah might not like that in two years' time.

She's probably not going to like it in 10 years' time. And really, it's probably not just even putting something out there to tell parents, think about it, but just having a wider education for children so that they maybe start the conversation with their parents, as well as parents being told about it. The NSPCC has a family online agreement, a sort of pro forma that can help families actually discuss what do parents put out there as actually discuss what do parents put out there as well as what do children put out there. Because obviously there are issues nowadays,

children could be putting things out about their parents that parents might object to. And it's probably there needs to be a whole discussion between families about generally what do we want to put out there and how's that going to make us feel. I think it's a really good series of points you've made there. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your time, Claire Besant. And you also heard from Leah Plunkett, who is an Associate Professor of Legal Skills at the University of New Hampshire in the States. And her book, you might want to look it up, is called Sharenthood. There's some good advice in there as well. Now, let's go to your thoughts on the programme today. And actually, because there are so many of them,

I'm only going to read out the emails and the tweets we had about the conversation about abortion and Stella Creasy, because there were many, many different points of view here. Sue says, I'm incensed. Does Ruth really think that anybody having an abortion isn't already traumatised by having to make that choice? It is not OK. We're lucky to have access to a procedure in safety

that nobody wants to actually have. I know, having had to make that choice myself at 22 weeks. Mark says, well done on giving a chance to Ruth, the anti-abortionist, on your programme this morning. Whatever your opinions, it's important to hear both sides of the debate. Jane was obviously pro-abortion, but she did give Ruth the chance to air her views.

That's from Mark. Lex says, I support a woman's right to choose, but do you think your interviewer could be any more hostile or prejudiced towards the interviewee? Alison says, what about small children

who saw that poster? It could be really traumatising. Could even be a child protection issue. They have rights as well. Anne, so much talk about the rights of the unborn child or foetus, which is the correct term. What about the rights of the woman bearing it? It strikes me as very anti-women.

Lucy says, in 2012, I was heavily pregnant and I was harangued by anti-abortion protesters who were harassing women outside the BPAS clinic. They had placards showing pictures of aborted foetuses. I had to drive past these placards with my young daughter in the car. On another day, when walking past them, I told them their placards were offensive and upsetting and I was followed down the street by a number of them who shouted I was unfit to be a mother and didn't deserve to have children. The protesters are misogynists and aggressive,

and they don't respect women's rights at all. That was the experience of Lucy. Kate says, if somebody doesn't agree with abortions, the simple answer is don't have one. Don't terrorise others who have them, especially if you've never been in that situation yourself. Another listener says, I'm disgusted how offensive the interviewee is this morning, thinking that she has the right to tell every other woman how to behave and what to do. It's making my blood boil. Thank you for showing this woman for the person she is. I think she is bullying, intimidating and harassing people. Lucy, on the other hand, says, I need to keep my pro-abortion views contained in order to maintain the role of objective interviewer. Another listener says,

I wonder if Ruth has considered the implications of a woman being forced to carry a baby and possibly look after it against her will. Please, can we move on to the 21st century and stop all this nonsense about the rights of the unborn baby from Angie thank you so much for allowing somebody to speak for the right of the unborn child how dare we continue to kill these little ones and their most precious gift of life I was offered an abortion by my GP simply because I'd had an unplanned pregnancy. Inconvenient. Instead, I had a beautiful baby boy.

And this is a nuanced response from Catherine, who says, listening to your contributor talk about the viability of 24-week fetuses has prompted me to get in touch. I don't think she has any real idea of what viability means. My daughter was born at 24 plus 3 weeks and happily is now a thriving 8-year-old. However, her survival was precarious for many, many months and her medical care cost the NHS tens of thousands of pounds.

It does incense me to hear pro-life campaigners talk about 24-week foetuses as if they are babies who could survive independently. I have lived through watching a much-wanted infant struggle to survive and endure endless procedures in order to do so. It is disingenuous and scientifically inaccurate of her to talk about viability at 24 weeks in this way, without acknowledging what this actually means in real terms. Siobhan says, I once had to take part in an abortion on a 16-week fetus as a medical student. I've never got over that. It was quite clear to me that the upper limit is too high.

In my opinion, while there should be medical exceptions, 24 to 28 weeks is too high. You may need to give a prior warning, but people do need to hear what the procedure involves. It is horrific. And from Anna, well done to Ruth Rawlins for spelling out the reality of abortion for your listeners. Women's Hour is constantly advocating the ideology of abortion without considering the reality of it. From Amelia, I'm a midwife and I'm proud to care for women during late-term abortions. As you know, this is undertaken in challenging circumstances.

It is never taken lightly by the patient or medical professionals. As I say, we had so many of these, as you can imagine, and I hope you agree that is a reasonable range of opinion on that as-ever complicated issue, which I suspect will continue to tax us. But it was an interesting conversation, and I was grateful to Ruth and to I suspect will continue to tax us. But that was, it was an interesting conversation and I was grateful to Ruth and to Stella for being willing to take part.

Now, Jenny is here tomorrow and she, amongst other things, she'll be talking to the novelist Jojo Moyes. Lauren O'Byrne here and I'm calling all music lovers and in particular Radiohead fans because on Desert Island Discs, I'm casting away Tom York.

He talks to me about how he discovered music, his love of breaking things, what he felt about his posh school. eight sensational tracks he wants to take to the desert island. Do not miss it. Search for Desert Island Discs Tom York in BBC Sounds and subscribe. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.