Woman's Hour - Sinead O'Connor, Your returning to work manifesto.

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

It's one of the most unforgettable moments in pop. Sinead O'Connor singing Nothing Compares 2 U straight into the camera. Big eyes, shaved head, minimal make up - tears rolling down her cheeks. It catapulted her to fame whether she liked it or not. Sinead joins Emma to talk about her autobiography," Rememberings" The ‘work from home’ guidelines are expected to be scrapped on June 21 - should the government’s current roadmap continue. If you were writing a manifesto for the best way for women to work post-pandemic what would it say? We hear from author and columnist, Elizabeth Uviebinené who argues in her new book ‘The Reset’ for a fundamental reset of our entire work culture, Danny Harmer, Chief People Officer for Aviva on how big companies are addressing the flexibility needs of their workforce and Mark Gatto, father of a two-year-old and research associate in masculinities and working parenthood, Presenter Emma Barnett Producer Beverley Purcell PHOTO CREDIT; Donal Moloney

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. And what a start we have for you today. The woman behind this iconic single. Because nothing compares, nothing compares to you Sinead O'Connor is my first guest this morning as she publishes her life story, reflecting on many issues that we'll get to very shortly.

And speaking of reflection, and I mentioned this last week, as the world of work gears up to return to some semblance of normality, what changes, if you have experienced any, of course, you may no longer be in the same job you were, you may not be able to work from home, but if you have been working from home when you haven't before, what are the things that you'd like to keep about your new arrangements and what are the things you'd like to ditch?

This is an opportunity for changing the way that we work after the pandemic. And we want to hear from you, of course, very aware that women have fought for decades for flexible working changing the way that we work after the pandemic. And we want to hear from you, of course, very aware that women have fought for decades for flexible working, and some may be wryly noting that it's taken for all of us, men and women, to be affected that might finally force employers

to trust us to work at home and not be skiving off. What do you want to see when we change the world of work, if we change the world of work? Some very cynical about that, and some don't want any changes. I'd like to hear all of your views and your experiences this morning

that you feel that you can share. Do so by texting us here at Woman's Hour on 84844 or social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour, or email us through our website. But first, she writes in her autobiography out today, I'm not a pop star, I'm just a troubled soul who needs to scream into mics now and then. I don't need to be number one. I don't need to be liked. And screaming to the mic,

she has done. Sinead O'Connor is responsible for one of the most unforgettable moments in pop when she sang Nothing Compares to You, looking straight down the barrel of the camera, big eyes, shaved head and tears falling. And at the time in 1990, it was so different to anything else in the charts. It crowned Sinead as a pop star, whether she liked it or not. She says she had no desire for fame, but that's what happened. Global fame,

especially after she ripped up a picture of the Pope on live TV in America, two years after that hit single. Sinead O'Connor joins me now for her first UK radio interview to mark the publication of Remembering. Sinead,'Connor joins me now for her first UK radio interview to mark the publication of Remembering. Sinead, good morning. Hi, how are you?

Well, I was going to start actually by asking you that. How are you doing, Sinead O'Connor? I'm good, thanks. I'm very excited today because it's the book release. It's been like four years in the making, so I'm kind of beside myself really with excitement. I could detect that from some of your tweets last night when I was looking up you getting ready to promote this but I ask also because I know that you started writing the book in January 2015 in a good place and then there was a large gap in the writing of it because you had a prolonged breakdown and I know that you've spent much of the last six years in a psychiatric hospital who you dedicate this book to.

Yeah, I had a hysterectomy, a radical hysterectomy in 2015. And unfortunately, I wasn't warned by the hospital that I would go into surgical menopause, which is like menopause times 10,000. I had my ovaries removed which was not necessary i only had endometriosis and uh yeah no one mentioned hormone replacement welcome to ireland and so yeah i lost my marbles for quite a while took a while to get them back but i hope i don't fully get them back what do you mean by that ah well you, you don't want to be too normal, isn't it? Like normal is like a contagious disease. You know, you sit beside people called Nigel, you end up really normal, you know. Well, hang on, we've got a lot to get through. But in a serious point,

I know that asking how you are is also important for a lot of your fans after you did in 2017 post a video from a hotel room in America asking for help and and people around the world perhaps tuned into how much you were suffering well I guess we all suffer don't we like that's the human condition we all go through suffering it wouldn't be normal if we didn't I'm always saying to my kids when they're struggling you know when you look at Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example, the Harrison Ford character, you know, he's on his adventures. He has to encounter, you know, boulders and snake pits and all of that stuff. He always gets the girl. But in any adventure, there are boulders and snake pits, you know, and life is a great adventure.

Well, I suppose what I'm driving at is not everybody puts it out there and you did put it out there and people were concerned about you. Yeah, I guess the thing about singers, we don't do embarrassment because we go into a studio to record a song, we're in a dark room, there's a glass window like when you see the detective shows, in there's a bunch of strangers it doesn't matter if you're barbara streisand or mariah carey you sound like a cat getting dragged to a bush until you get it right you know you make all your mistakes and you sound

like a squawking animal until you get it right so we're used to uh what's called not having any embarrassment about our our weaknesses or vulnerabilities or whatever. So that type of thing works outside the studio also. The way we are in life is we don't hide anything. Singers are by nature emotionally honest. But we're in a different place now though, aren't we, Sinead, about mental health, the way that we talk about it, in a different place.

I hope we are. I mean, there's still been an awful lot of people, what you call it, leaving very abusive remarks, which are usually either Islamophobic, racist or abuse of the mentally ill. There still is an awful lot of abuse of the mentally ill, particularly women who have mental health conditions, you know. I suppose what I meant by that is at least it seems like we are in the public discourse certainly from when you were starting out in the 90s and becoming famous and i was very struck by an interview with neil mccormick the music critic of the telegraph in in a recent interview he said your reputation as the crazy woman in pop's attic has pursued you. And I wonder what you make of that,

whether some of your actions would have been viewed differently if you were a man. I think it's a bit extreme to make the Jane Eyre comparison, frankly. I don't think I have ever been perceived as the crazy woman in the attic as represented in Jane Eyre. It's not like I'm attacking people with knives or trying to strangle anyone or wandering around in my nitrous. I call it racist. It's the wrong word, but I can never find what is the right word. But being the subject of abuse on the grounds that one is mentally ill is kind

of similar to racism. And I experience, as do many of my friends who have conditions, you know, having a mental health condition, it's in the world the way it is now. It's like having two broken legs, but everybody expects you to walk normal. And if you show symptoms and you don't walk normal, people are going to knock you over, jump on your broken legs. And when you scream out in pain, they're going to use even your screaming in pain as something to abuse you. Bollocks. I mean, the British press like to make me out to be mental. They always have done. The Guardian, The Times, all of these people.

I don't know if it's because I'm Irish or what, but to compare me to the mad wife in Jane Eyre is abusive, actually. Well, I bring it up because, of course, a lot of people had a very strong reaction to you, to what I mentioned right in my introduction. And in your book, you give a lot more context to this about the tearing up of the Pope's photo on live television. And actually, later on in the programme,

we're going to be talking about what the Catholic Church is trying to do around child abuse with someone who's been tasked with that, an independent regulator. And I wanted to ask, first of all, you know, how did you feel at the time of doing that? Because it certainly comes across in the book. And to give more context to our listeners, you were doing it as a protest against the abuse of children. And it was actually your mother's photo of the Pope. And you've been waiting for a moment to rip it up. And it's obviously come about many years later, when Catholic clerical

abuse has been exposed. It even says it on a mural in Dublin, that it says, sorry, Sinead, you were right all along. So what's the question? In the sense of how did you feel at the time doing it? Because it was a different time to be making that sort of statement. Were you scared to do it? No, not at all. I mean, you know, Irish artists, there's a tradition in Irish history of art of, you know, there being riots in the streets after plays, you know,

mounted police outside Pogues gigs in London, you know. Irish artists were kind of different. We feel like our job is to create conversation where it's needed, you know, and then we're on. You know, we just run and we let you all get on with arguing and screaming artist in the manner of the way that Nina Simone describes the duty of an artist to create conversation you know where conversation is needed so it was exciting and also you know in those days it was terribly exciting the idea of live tv do whatever you wanted you know you could be a rebel the punks were on you know remember the sex pistols or punks I think it was the sex pistols on one of the punks were on, you know, remember the Sex Pistols or punks?

I think it was the Sex Pistols on one of the British shows. And, you know, one of the hosts makes a salacious remark about one of the punk girls. And then the guys stand up to her, they're swearing and cursing and everything, you know. So I grew up in that age where, you know, artists use live TV like a weapon, you know. Yes. But what was interesting as well, what you said about this in your book is some say that was the end of your career. You know, you killed your career there and then,

but you say it set you free. Yeah, I mean, I felt that having a number one record is what derailed my career. You know, I was a punk, I was a postmodern artist. I was influenced by protest singers and punks and spiritualised artists, you know. What I derailed was the executives' ideas for my career. Nobody had ever sat me down and asked me what I wanted. I had kind of gone along with it, but I didn't realise what was going to happen.

But, you know, it depends how you define success. Well, I don't define success as whether people like me or have a good name or tons of money or fame, you know depends how you define success as well I don't define success as whether people like me or have a good name or tons of money or famed you know that's not how I would define success to me success is about integrity artistic integrity and carrying on the lessons that I would have learned from artists who inspired me such as Bob Dylan you know or Van Morrison you know very spiritualized artists also the Rastafari movement was a huge inspiration for me in terms of music as a priesthood you know but you what I mentioned there and I think that context is important because it is a big part of your book is you talk about yourself being a recovering abuse survivor and it was actually

the abuse at the hands of your mum that you talk about here in the book in detail. And that picture of the Pope was hers. Can you tell us why you needed to rip that up in relation to your mum? Well, I'm not so sure entirely sometimes whether it was so much in relation to my mum as in relation to the types of people who gave the type of power to the Catholic Church that they had, i.e. to abuse us. So to me, it was a joke. Pope Paul II landing in Dublin, kissing the ground as if the flight had been awful and then declaring his love for the young people of Ireland there was no love otherwise there wouldn't have been a cover-up you know and I guess I could tell

at that time like look if you've nothing to be afraid of why are you driving around in a popemobile you know and if you need if you feel frightened you need to drive around in a popemobile you're clearly up to no good you know we were a miserable country under under the theocracy nobody can imagine what Ireland was like under the theocracy you know your grandparents were afraid to kiss it was a sin I recently saw an article from a newspaper in 1938 a Glaswegian girl gets sentenced to a month in jail for kissing a boy in Dublin he gets fined two shillings she gets told to get out of the country or she's going to jail for a month in jail for kissing a boy in Dublin. He gets fined two shillings. She gets told to get out of the country or she's going to jail for a month. So, you know, you got a month in jail if you're a woman for kissing a boy in 1938,

which is when my parents were born. You know, you could see the people were miserable. Your grandparents, your parents, the theocracy didn't bring any joy and it deliberately squished the sexuality of the Irish people and perverted it and made us believe that there was something dirty and wrong about

the very essence of life. Well, I think, you know, very aware that we're talking on women's hour. I think it was very striking that I believe your dad, was he the second man to get custody of his children

in 1975? He was the second man in Irish history to be given custody of his children in 1975? He was only the second man in Irish history to be given custody of his children and he was only given custody as a result of the barbaric abuse that myself and my siblings had experienced. But yeah, fathers had no rights when I was growing up. They didn't even have guardianship of their children. I might also mention that women, it was legal to rape your wife in Ireland up until 1980-something. There was no such thing as rape within marriage. You know, it was a very weird country, you know.

And if a marriage broke up, the woman, if she decided the man wasn't seeing the kids, there wasn't really a whole lot the man could do about it. The courts didn't give a damn about fathers. They very much underestimated how much children needed their fathers. And in terms of you having the strength that you have and the decisions that you've made, I want to come on to a few of them, especially at the beginning of your singing career. Is a lot of that from your dad?

Yes, I would say so. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. Like we, as I say in the book, you know, the O'Connors were a long line of soldiers. You know, there's been a lot of soldiers. In fact, even in the British Army in India and everything, I have great uncles, etc. So we've got soldier blood in us, you know. Because you do take the decision when, and you tell the story, of course, and we want to hear it from you, to take the decision to shave your head when I believe a record executive said

you needed to look more feminine. Yeah, I had a bit of a mohican and the record company called a meeting with me and they asked me, would I, before the first album came out, would I mind, sorry, I'm belting here, would I mind growing my hair long it's all right Sinead we'll let you have a burp on the radio um yeah they wanted me to grow my hair

long and wear short skirts and high heels and earrings and bracelets and all the stuff you couldn't wear close to a microphone as you know and uh so when I told my manager at the time about it he said oh i think you should shave your hair so i went off straight away to a barber in westbourne grove and it's a funny story in the book that the whole story of getting a haircut because the poor little barber didn't want to do it he was a young fella greek barbers and uh he had to ring his father that was in the days when the phone was on the wall you know he was on duty in the shop that day without his father or nobody around so he uh rang the dad and then he's like beseeching me not to do it literally and then after he did it one little tear was like the nothing to press you video one little tear came down his face so i hope that it's well written in in the book that

story no it is i should say it is very funny in a lot of parts your humor does definitely come through but there are also some moments in it where again sort of come back to the theme we were talking about earlier that you hope things have changed by now and there is a bit we're told there's a bit of a reckoning starting to happen in the music industry of its treatment of women and you also talk about in the book you've got four children You also talk about the fact that you were advised not to have your first child because they'd spent so much on your album. I was ordered. So I'm pregnant with the first child while I'm making the first record.

At the same time, Carl Wallinger is about to have his first child. He's making his first solo album. Nobody tells him not to have the baby. I'm summoned in by the record company doctor who has been instructed to say the following words to me. The record company have spent £100,000 recording your record. You owe it to them not to have this baby. Now, to get the point you just made about things changing

in the music industry for women, I don't believe that. That's not what I see. Women are encouraged to get on all fours on stage with dollars in their mouths in order to be successful in inverted commas. They are, you know, the American women artists, some of them, you know, you think they're Donald Duck, they're on stage with no pants on, it's like a requirement,

you know. There has been a silencing and grooming of a generation of songwriters, female and male, but particularly female, by artists who, whether they realise it or not, are groomers because they have been groomed. And the pop idol thing and everything has made everyone want to be famous. So you don't hear people anymore saying,

oh, God, I really want to be a singer. You hear them say, oh, I want to be famous. How do you get famous? You get on all fours on stage with a load of dollars in your mouth. You simulate sex of your childish looking artist with a man who's much older than you. If you're Lady Gaga, you come to Dublin, you invite half your audience, half whom are children, to simulate masturbation. There's something very messed up going on.

To me, the industry have completely perverted the idea of female liberation when you challenge these artists who are on all fours with dollars in their mouths they'll tell you that it's female liberation it couldn't be more opposite in fact to female liberation so i don't think anything has changed at all they still want the music business still wants to silence male and female songwriters. That's why John Lennon is dead. But it certainly wants to silence women and little girls who might aspire to be artists like myself. Do you buy any of it when a woman says,

I want to do this, this is empowering, this is how I feel? Those who say it is their choice. Oh, it's certainly their choice and that's fine. But I don't buy the idea that it's an expression of female, such feminism. Sometimes they'll make out an expression of feminism. OK, it's freedom. You know, everybody's entitled to do what they like. But to call it feminism is oxymoronic, almost, you know. You do talk about your own. I mean, the thing, what bothers me, forgive me for interrupting you,

what gets at my goat is that half the audiences for these artists are children. So there's also a very sinister sexualising of children before their natural time that happens when artists who come through Disney, for example, or blah, blah, blah, or Gaga or whatever. And I mean, I love these artists, I love Gaga, you know, so I don't mean to disrespect her music. But like, if half your audience are children, you're asking everyone to simulate masturbation.

You are, in fact, sexualizing your audience before their time if you're miley cyrus and you're on all fours with a load of dollars in your mouth and half your audience are children and you look like a child while you're simulating sex with an older guy you're actually sexualizing your audience before their natural age something very sinister about that. Just talking about children, I know you also talk about this in the book. You talk about having four children by four different men. Talk about that being a deliberate choice because you wanted all of those children.

Do you think we're in a different place around that and the judgment of women in that respect? Because I do really also like your description, just because you've talked about sexualization of yourself as a horndog, as someone who was on the road always having trying to have express yourself and be yourself and I wonder if you think women can do that more now oh you mean having babies with lots of guys yeah and and doing what they want sexually and having that freedom well I think people women always had the freedom to do what they wanted sexually.

It's just that on stage when half your audience are children, I think you need to be careful. Yeah, and I guess I certainly haven't computed in my life, apart from people of my parents' and grandparents' generation, that there was any limitation on women when it came to their sexuality. But, yeah, it would probably be unusual maybe still. I don't know what it's like in England, but it would be certainly unusual in Ireland for someone to have at least more than two kids

rather with two different fathers, you know. Well, I wanted to ask about... I'm kind of like a Jamaican father, you know. That's your description. Father's Day is a revolving door in my house. But I mean, nobody bats an eyelid when like guys, you know, Jamaican fellas, they would have, you know, kids with fucking tons. Oh, OK. We're just going to apologise for that. Sorry, I didn't mean that to come out of my mouth.

It's all right. It's past and I'll... They have women, kids with tons of people and Novi Basin Island, you know. Well, I think, you know, I loved reading so many of the stories behind the stories in the book, because this is a chance for you to put what you can remember, which you also talk about. What can you remember? Because you say you smoked a lot of weed and some of it's not there anymore. Well, that's a bit of a joke. I mean, that's sort of tongue in cheek. That wouldn't be why I can't remember stuff. No, no. I was going to go on to say, and't be why I can't remember stuff I just don't want to remember I was going to go on to say and you also make the point some of it you don't want to

put in some of it you don't want to to talk about and I also did laugh I have to say out loud Sinead O'Connor when you said there'll be some people who want to be in this book and I'm not putting you in it yeah well there was a few people who they were hoping they might be able to sue me they'll be jumping on the book today because they're real litigious and they'll be terribly disappointed that there's either nothing in there about them at all or nothing they can sue me over. Five years

ago people were writing to the publishing company threatening to sue them before the damn book was written. Everything you're saying is you're aware of some of what people react to. People will not like, for instance, the stereotyping of the Jamaican father, for instance, that you've just done. But the point is, you'll

say... Well, I'm not stereotyping. I have particular people in mind. What's the bass player? I can't remember his name. Well, no, no. Let's not go there, Sinead. Well, my point is... I mean, no, I have to stop you there. I'm sorry, but I'm not generalising on Jamaican people. Jamaican people is my favourite human beings on Earth, in fact, they're the greatest people on the planet Earth. The fact is, lots of them have kids with lots of different women and nobody bats a fucking eyelid if I can, but you do have a new job,

which is perfectly suited for shooting from the lip and the hip. I read you're going to be a newspaper diarist for the Irish Sunday Independent. And I wanted to end by asking sort of what you were up to now. That will be one of the things. And you said in your tweet about it, you can finally tell your dad you have a real job, which made me... Yeah, exactly, because he used to worry when I was young about me getting into the music business you know in case i wouldn't make a

living so he was always on at me about getting a real job you know well i hope you enjoy it as a newspaper columnist more singing to come now the pandemic is hopefully coming to a close well i've got an album coming out uh early next year yeah well i read also that you describe your life now as quite boring as well, which I thought was... Well, I mean that in a good way. Boring is good, you know. Well, we've come a bit full circle. Not necessarily normal, as you put it,

but boring is good. Sinead O'Connor, Rememberings is out today. Congratulations on the book. Yeah, all right, thanks. Thank you for talking to us this morning. There you go. Many messages coming in off the back of that. Well said.

Shouting out the female pop image of sexuality. You said, Sinead, what I've been silently screaming for years. That's from Karen, who's just messaged O'Connor's framing there of racialised minorities. Sheila says, thank you for addressing endometriosis and mental health after a hysterectomy. I myself have been in the same position back in the 90s and it was a breath of fresh air to hear that. Well, over the weekend, Carrie Simons became the first Mrs. Johnson after the Prime Minister married for the third time.

She opted to take her new husband's name, changing it on social media where people could see this. His first two wives kept their maiden names and keeping almost with the theme of how women define themselves and to discuss the history of women changing their names on marriage, Dr Sophie Colombo, lecturer in 18th century studies at the University of York. Sophie, just to take us back to the beginning, how and when did it start that women changed their names? The custom is about as old as surnames themselves in Britain. Having a hereditary surname itself is only about a thousand years old. Those surnames came over with the Normans at the Norman conquest. And by about the 14th century, it was pretty standard to have a surname that was transmitted hereditarily.

But married women were an exception to that. They were seen at that time to have no surname at all. Since the Normans had also brought with them a legal doctrine called couverture, which was the principle that on marriage marriage a woman became sort of like her husband's possession uh or somewhere between a possession and employee a vassal um and her state of namelessness was a reflection of that so one court in 1340 uh said for example when a woman took a husband she lost every surname except wife of. But then around, we think around the turn of the 15th century, the doctrine of coup d'etat received this unique English twist.

And instead of the woman becoming the husband's vassal, there was this idea that the husband and wife achieved a sort of spiritual unity. They became one. So a jurist at that time said they become a single person because they're one flesh and one blood. And as that gained ground, so did the clerical habit of calling a married woman by her husband's surname. Now that sounds quite romantic in a way, quite cosy, quite lovely, you know, one single person, one flesh, one blood. But the woman was still very inferior within that partnership in many ways.

She couldn't hold property. She couldn't go to law. Essentially, she ceased to exist legally. And by sort of the early 17th century, it was sufficiently entrenched, this custom of a woman taking her husband's name in England, that one antiquarian could say, women with us at their marriage change their surnames and pass into their husband's names and justly. But then he goes on quite disapprovingly to note that this is not the case everywhere and says, but in France and the Netherlands, the better sort of women will still retain their own name with their husbands. But I

fear husbands will not like this note for their women may be ambitiously overpert and too forward to imitate it. Wow. That's a prescription and a half or a description and a half, however you want to say it or take it. Why do we think it's stayed? And is it right to see it as a feminist issue

that women want to take their husband's name? Well, I think it's stuck around because there's a disjunct between what the law is and what people understand it to be, quite frankly. English common law, which we live under in parts of the UK, which other formerly colonial territories live under, has never actually dictated itself what people should call themselves. There's actually a huge amount of freedom, legally speaking, in the UK to call yourself whatever you want. All you have to do is not use it for fraudulent purposes. And I think many people aren't aware of that.

Many people still think that there's a legal requirement to be a certain name, for example, to change your name on marriage, or that you have to do certain things like get a depot if you want to change your name. It's not true. You can be called whatever you want. But there's a lot of misinformation around and institutions ranging from government bodies to private companies to individuals who exert pressure on others can really misunderstand that and think that there's a kind of legal requirement to do so. That's one reason. Another reason, obviously, is gender norms, you know, a kind of patriarchal ideal that, you know, when two people get married, there should be a family unit and in a heterosexual couple, the woman should change her name to that of the man

and that is that is rooted in patriarchy in couverture as I described in the medieval period but I think there are always new iterations of that developing it's always mutating and new kind of um rationales for uh heterosexual women taking their husband's name emerging um but throughout history there have also been women who have always bucked the trend who have always tried to um react and resist against this um so there's also a really long history to that which where people have kept their name for various reasons, but not least because they don't wish to be defined literally by someone else. Yeah, or they found really interesting workarounds. So, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft, a feminist pioneer in the late 18th century.

She had a very vexed relationship with her name. she for example um she adopted the surname of her lover gilbert imlay in order to pretend to american citizenship which was an advantage for her in revolutionary paris she never actually married him but she took his surname as if they were married but then when imlay abandoned her she wrote to a friend i earnestly desire to resign a name which seems to disgrace me so she was coming in in a way for that dilemma of a woman who finds herself separated or divorced has changed her name and now doesn't want that anymore wants to go back then she married her fellow philosopher William Godwin in 1797 but again after that she was sometimes known as Mary Godwin but she also

signed her name Mary Wollstonecraft, Femme Godwin or Wife of Godwin. So she was trying to have her cake and eat it in a way that many women do today as well. You know, they have one marital name for certain contacts and one birth name for other contacts. Well, let me throw this over to our listeners. Have you taken your other half's name? I'll put it as broadly as that because we'll have men listening who may have not even liked their name and gone for it. I certainly know a couple who've done that. We also, there's a trend, isn't there, Sophie, with people even not just double barrelling, but also fusing their names. But it's fantastic to hear some of the history as to how we got into this position.

And a message here from Anna, I think, kind of rounds up this part of the programme. My husband chose not to take my name when we got married. These modern men. So we'll think about that. Keep your messages coming in. Perhaps you were also trading out a name and getting rid of a name that you couldn't bear and you couldn't be bothered to spell anymore or explain.

84844 or on social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour. Dr Sophie Colombo, thank you for putting us in the picture. I'll await those messages. But Anna, thank you for starting them with a very wry one there. Now, figures obtained by The Times newspaper from police forces over the weekend show that children known to be at risk of abuse have gone missing more than 55,000 times in Britain over the past three years, with some as young as 11.

Most, but not all, are girls. One child has disappeared 197 times in three years, despite being known to the authorities as a potential victim of sexual exploitation. It would seem that in the decades since the first successfulor for North West England, Nazir Afzal, who brought justice in 2012 for those victims of the Rochdale grooming gang. Nine men were convicted of multiple offences against five girls and given sentences ranging from four to 19 years. I spoke to Nazir just before we came on air and asked him if he was surprised by these figures that the Times have uncovered. Sadly, I wasn't surprised. I led nationally for a couple of years after the Rothschild case, and we were really getting on

top of it. And I'm afraid to say that we've become really complacent. Actually, I'm quite angry about this because we learned some really good lessons. We started putting things in place and we've gone backwards. And I feel like I've been putting some kind of time machine just going back to 2012 and the figures the times have identified and the work that they've been doing in terms of investigating demonstrates that the problems that we had nine or ten years ago remain and if anything they're worse now simply because we thought we'd got on top of it and we failed entirely. If I just look at what the National Police Chiefs Council lead for child protection, Chief Constable Simon Bailey, said in a statement that we've been given,

our understanding and awareness of the link between a child going missing and the potential for exploitation is increasing all the time. And we have vastly improved our recognition and recording in recent years. We know there's more to do. We're increasing the number of specialist partnership teams that will focus on a holistic partnership approach to keeping children safe. One of the most important things we can do is help a young person to work together to break the cycle of going missing. But he goes on to say protecting children is not something the police can do alone. Children go missing for many different and complex reasons. He seems to be saying that there's been vast improvement and that it's complex.

There's a lot of improvement in terms of process. I'll give Simon that. Simon's a real champion for children, so I have an enormous amount of time for him. Unfortunately, what's happened, Emma, is we've lost 21,000 police officers, half a million years of police experience. And you cannot replace that by new officers out of the police academy. But what Simon, the bigger point that Simon makes is that, in fact,

these are multi-agency failings. Children's services, education services, health, you name it. Any agency responsible for the safeguarding of children has gone backwards rather than forwards. That point about missing children, we learned a decade ago that when a child goes missing once, we throw a Rolls-Royce service to try and get that child back. When a child goes missing 10, 20, 30 times, they lose track of that child altogether. That is what's happening again. And what we learned last time, Emma, was that

you need to share information in real time. That's not happening. The Times found that. You need to be much more proactive. These children don't come to you. You've got to go and find them. And that's not happening routinely. You need to build trust. That's not happening. Children are not being properly supported. They go back to those who are abusing them and exploiting them. And the actions that are being taken to deal with the perpetrators aren't as robust as they could have been. So everybody responsible for the safeguarding of children needs to look at themselves and see what they have done, what they haven't done and what they now need to do. Do you believe that there is the political will and the political commitment there? You mentioned about the police cuts.

But if I go to what the Home Secretary Priti Patel has said, because, of course, the Conservatives made much of the fact that they're going to put 20,000 police back in. Just to see her statement, nothing is more important than keeping our children safe. The government, this government, is committed to improving the response to all children at risk of sexual abuse and exploitation through actions set out in our Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy. I expect each case to be fully investigated

and we're supporting the police to better understand these hideous crimes and make full use of their powers to stop these abhorrent acts. We already have some of the toughest powers in the world, but the police crime, sentencing and court bill will introduce further measures to strengthen the sex offender management regime, which includes electronic monitoring of compliance with conditions. And on top of this, delivering our commitment to recruit those additional 20,000 police officers.

What do you make of that? A lot of words. Her focus, for example, on sentencing. Well, you can't sentence somebody that hasn't been arrested. You can't sentence somebody that hasn't been charged or convicted. And so, you know, absolutely, I can see why she wanted to focus on that area rather than the areas, quite frankly, where we're failing. And I totally accept the government 10 years ago did some great work that one of the things we asked for was for child sexual abuse to become a national

policing priority as terrorism is for example and they did that what's happened is we've taken the eye off the ball and words do not replace the experience sadly of of hundreds if not thousands of victims who are just not being properly supported who are being ignored perpetrators are acting with impunity people are suffering people are children are suffering and uh we're just putting our hands up in the air and saying well we got it we're getting it right well we are we may well be getting it right but we had real pace um five or six years ago and that has now slipped to the point where literally we've gone backwards and i you know i go back to what i said i'm really angry about this because we were making significant progress one phrase that always gets me is whenever every terrible incident happens you'll

hear reports saying lessons will be learned emma we did not learn those lessons. We haven't learned those lessons, and we are still going backwards, and victims are still suffering. And I just can't get over the fact that, you know, we will hide behind press statements. We'll hide behind what we intend to do around sentencing, for example. When, in fact, the more basic things about actually ensuring that those who are meant to safeguard, those, you know, it's bizarre to me that we have authorities

who don't know where these children are, but the perpetrator does. Maybe we should have access to their phones and their, you know, their intelligence. The reason for that is because agencies are not sharing information. Their bit of jigsaw is not being added to somebody else's bit of jigsaw, so they can't see the bigger picture. Unfortunately, the abusers see the bigger picture all the time. So is that what needs to change?

If you were to say the thing that needs to change right now, it is about agencies sharing information? 100%. They hide behind the Data Protection Act. They're worried that some child or some representative of some child will sue them for having told somebody about what they're experiencing. I'm afraid their first priority is to protect that child. So absolutely, they should be sharing information. But added to that about the proactivity, the victims don't walk into a police station seeking help. They need to go and find them. There was some really good work, for example, in Salford, where there was a little van that used to go around

all the fast food places at night and find young girls and young boys and work with them and identify them. And that ran out of money. Everything that seems to work runs out of money. And what does that mean? It means those children remain at risk without the

proactivity that's necessary. Because I was going to come on to that. In the statement from the Chief Constable, Simon Bailey, it is striking. He says that many young people at risk of exploitation do not consider themselves to be victims. So they often do not disclose offences that have been committed against them. Then going on to say, we're therefore working with local authorities in the third sector to help young people understand and recognise those risks. But if you are worried about a child who doesn't see themselves as a victim, and perhaps you're listening to the radio right now,

should you go to the police with that or should you go somewhere else? You're not in a position, I don't think, to identify what the risk is. So I would tell the police, because you don't know what the risk is. I'd tell the police, but there are NGOs, there are charities. For example, in Rossdale, we have Sarah Rowbottom's health protection charity, and she had a phenomenal relationship with the girls. It's about trust. These victims don't trust the police.

They don't trust any adult, to put it bluntly. And what we do is we push them from pillar to post. Rather than having one person that will remain in contact with them, build a relationship with them, build trust with them, we push them around. And that's why they don't feel any urge or desire to come forward. And, of course, they're being so manipulated by their abusers to think that actually the authorities are your enemy.

You know, you can't do this on the cheap. You can't do this in silos. Again, I make the point, we need to work together. There's some phenomenal safeguarding partnerships around the country, but I think we need a greater, more proactivity. We're still waiting for them to come to us. And I can assure you, as you've just identified, many of them don't even see themselves as victims. I remember some of the cases, the victim during the trial would call the perpetrator her boyfriend. And that relationship is more solid than anything that we could develop unless we really put our minds to it.

Do you know if these figures from the Times represent an increase? Is there any way of knowing that? It's impossible to know because we don't know what we don't know. But I know from experience that when it's trying to light on something, you'll see more of it. And go back to the figures that the ONS came up with a year and a half ago that said 3.1 million British adults were sexually abused as children. That's one in 20 of us.

Now, and that was an underestimate. So I imagine this is industrial. This is, you know, I regularly say this is the pandemic that will outlive this pandemic. And we're talking about thousands and thousands of young girls and boys as well, for that matter. And from all races and all communities. And I'm afraid we're not having the sense of urgency that we would have if it was something else. Just to say you are starting a new job today with the Catholic Church what are you doing there?

Strange as it may sound the Catholic Church I mean I'm the independent chair of their brand new safeguarding agency and this is an independent regulator. I can't think of another institution or organization in this country that has said, we're so poor at this and have been perceived to be so poor at this. We're going to have an independent regulator make sure that we comply with standards. So it's a credit to the Catholic Church that they've put this in place. Obviously, I'm delighted to be the chair. What we intend to do is, what we haven put this in place. Obviously, I'm delighted to be the chair.

What we intend to do is, what we haven't done before, I imagine, is to create the most supportive environment for victims and the most hostile environment for predators and abusers. It'll be hard work, I can assure you, but rest assured, Emma, I'm committed to doing this. I don't take on roles unless I feel I can make a difference. No, I'm sure you don't. But is that to deal with historic cases or if you're going through something now

to come and report something? Anything that comes to our attention. So historic, current, obviously hopefully fewer in the future. So we're looking at everything that could be within the 22 dioceses of England and Wales. I'm just mindful of the fact that we've got Sinead O'Connor

on the programme today who was effectively cancelled worldwide after she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II in 1992 on live television in America to speak up against abuse by religious figures and in particular the abuse of children. And it was very striking when I was reading up on Sinead O'Connor. There's a mural in Dublin a few years ago as Catholic clerical abuse was being exposed, which just simply said, sorry, Sinead, you were right all along.

And she spoke up very early on about this. And I just wonder what you almost want to say about that because it's something about being believed, isn't it? I mean, I have a lot of time for what Sinead said and has done. It's absolutely right to see the victims have been, if they did speak up, they would be ignored. If they, you know, nothing was happening in relation to what they were said. We know reputationally, the reputation of the church

and every institution, by the way, Emma, was more important than the abuse of children. That's happened. People were being moved around rather than being dealt with. Those are things that we are absolutely familiar with. I don't bring theology to this. As a Muslim, I think it's really brave and bold of them to put me in this chair. But what I do bring is hopefully a lifetime of experience, particularly around victims and survivors. They really do need to be at the centre of this in a way previously they haven't been.

So I can provide some level of assurance that's going to happen. As I said, it is a gargantuan task, but I think the right people are working at this. And I think it's credit to the Catholic Church

that they've simply said, right, we can't do this ourselves. Let's get some outside help. Nazir Afzal, former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England, who starts his new job today as the chair of that new

Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency that will cover England and Wales. We're talking of jobs and work. In a few weeks time, the work from home guidelines may be lifted if the government's roadmap goes according to plan. And today we're going to have a discussion around what should change about the way we work after. We hope it's after, the pandemic. Of course, being mindful of the fact that many will have lost jobs during this time or have roles that mean they can't be done from home, or perhaps you're going to be heading back in wherever you work at the end of furlough. But the point is, after decades of campaigning for the right to have greater flexibility, which has been led by women, usually mothers, the pandemic may have forced the issue.

You've been getting in touch on this and I'll come to some of your messages shortly. But joining me now to kick this off, author and Financial Times columnist, Elizabeth Yuvie Bimene, who's argued for a fundamental rethinking of our entire work culture in her book, The Reset. We're also joined by Danny Harmer, Chief People Officer for Aviva

and Mark Gatto, father of a two-year-old and research associate in masculinities and working parenthood. Elizabeth, I'm going to throw this straight to you. Are we going to reset and how should it look? Hi, everyone. Hi, Amal. Yeah, thanks for having me. I yeah, definitely. I think that we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to kind of, you know, rewrite the wrongs of how so many of us will work and live in pre-pandemic. And there were so many things that were, you know, red flags. And this is the time to kind of rethink these things because we're never going to get this opportunity again.

Are you aware of the sort of top changes people might like having done your research? What have you been hearing? Definitely more, you know, four-day weeks, more flexible around, you know, how we structure our day, more flexibility around that. A real sense of ownership and autonomy and how they'd like to work. I think that was a real running thread for the people that I spoke to in the book. And just culturally what I'm hearing as people are, you know, going back into the office.

I think that embedding, you know, choice in the heart of how people like to work is something that, yeah, we've missed for so long. And it is possible. I think, you know, what we've seen over the last year or so is, you know, before it was, you know, it was a lot of resistance, but where there's a will, there's a way and there is a real opportunity here. Do you trust your employees, Dani, as chief people officer of Aviva, a very very large company but I'll come to small businesses in a moment. Yes absolutely we trust our people at Aviva and you know as Liz says choice is one of the things that we know our people want and we've surveyed them and 95% of them have said we want some flexibility but I think it's really important that organisations put a framework around that choice in order to be really mindful

about some of the unintended consequences of flexibility and making sure there are frameworks that just, you know, consider in the future whether or not there could be any potential for bias. What do you mean by that? So unintended consequences? Well, you know, in terms of flexibility, a lot of the flexibility that people are talking about is location flexibility. And, you know, one of the concerns I have is that women might be more likely to take up a large proportion of their time working from home because it helps them from a caring perspective. And the issue is that if we find we've got women at home, they're not learning as much because you really learn in the office. They're not spending as much time with a boss. They're maybe not being considered as talent or successors in the same way. Two years from now, organisations could be

going, gender pay gaps widened. You know, we've created a problem for ourselves. So I think frameworks that say, look, this is how we expect people to work based on the kind of role that they do and set some expectations is really important. We should say your job title, if people don't know what it means, is basically how this all works, human resources, making sure people are perhaps progressing and finding work in a better way for themselves. I know you've been thinking about how to reset yourself, Mark, and building on that point of perhaps men not necessarily having always wanted better way for themselves i know you've been thinking about how to reset yourself mark and

building on that point of perhaps men not necessarily having always wanted to or even thought it was their role to be raising their children hands-on day-to-day or having that choice where have you come out on this and what are your male peers saying lovely to be on the woman's our big fan fan. So my son was born in 2019, and I always wanted to be an involved father, really prioritised that from day one. Took four weeks off at the start, so that was two weeks of paternity, two weeks of annual leave, and I was doing nappies,

getting up in the middle of the night, beads, soothing him, rocking him to sleep. So that was really important to me from day one. And with the nature of my job, I know I'm very fortunate that I could work flexibly and not everyone has that opportunity but for me that was really really helpful and I really found that really important in my future career as well but when the lockdown hit so my wife's a hospital doctor and she just returned to work just before that point and we just had our son going into um nursery at that point as well and obviously as you might be aware the the nurseries closed down mostly that our nursery was open but

for very limited numbers and so they asked if people could keep them at home and that was our choice and so for me that was my first opportunity to do sole care in in with my son so i'd spent a lot of time with my wife caring for our son but that was our first opportunity and I'm looking outside today and it's a sunny day and I remember a year ago sitting outside really looking to have a garden as well and being able to actually spend some really quality time quality interactions with him and crawling around and getting to know him as a person and although that was all brilliant I was also still working I was still trying to squeeze all of that in to my working day so I was getting up before he was waking up I was looking after him

and then I had nap time when I tried to squeeze in some more work and then evenings as well. And so I mean that's obviously something that many people will recognise but also specifically from the year that we've had are you going to change the way that you're working moving forward now absolutely yes so it really crystallised to me how important it is to protect that time um and I've recently negotiated I'm going to be starting as a lecturer at Northumbria University in September um so I've negotiated around flexible working my main priority was to make sure I was there for my son for our nursery pickups to make sure I was always able to be there I didn't want to outsource that and so I had two options really my I was really anxious about asking them and this is an important point I'm someone who's really aware of this stuff I do this research all the time and I was still anxious about it and and when I asked about it I

was so pleased when I got a positive response. Well that anxiety is very important to reflect and that women have had for a very long time and maybe men are now coming to, which is why we wanted to include you in this discussion. And also, if men are worried about it, perhaps to hear what Danny was saying about those structures to be put in place. Elizabeth, I'm very aware, though,

that this is not going to be possible for lots of people to even change anything at all. What has your research shown you on that? Yeah, you're absolutely right, because this research that came out not too long ago, that, you know, proof that flexible working is a battle for equality across the board with diverse companies, you know,

ending up with more flexible working policies. So, you know, meld on with firms more likely to insist on workers going back into the office. And so there is a real tug of war going on at the moment. And it's really important that we keep having this conversation because, like you said, it's not going to be, you know, one size fits all, but it's also, we can't, I guess, you know, and why I like to say, you know, back down

and not really kind of challenge how, like, how we want things to change because, you know, we advocate for ourselves in so many other parts of our lives and when we kind of when we are back and you know when work comes into it we kind of default to um what i talk about in the book you know real parent-child relationship well people are scared you know it's how they pay their mortgage it's how they have their money they don't want to upset the apple cart too much danny to come back to you if you're a smaller business you want you want your staff

in, don't you? You want to be together. I mean, even in bigger businesses, like I believe it was Goldman Sachs who said, everybody's got to come back in. We've got to be together. And I can see on the messages, some people really just want to go back in. Yeah. I mean, there are some people who do really want to go back in. And there are people actually who probably can't work from home and don't have a suitable place to work as well. But I think you just, when you look at the work that people do, the last 18 months has really bust some myths about the fact you don't need to be standing behind somebody to know whether or not they're doing work. But there are elements of work and elements of, you know, some of the joy of work,

of working for an organisation and having colleagues, that you need to be physically present I think to really have those so innovation collaboration those little serendipitous moments by a by a coffee machine that you know there's some of the sort of sparks of joy that people really love about being part of a community. So I love nuts and bolts where are you going to draw the line how are you going to say it to your staff are they all coming back in what are you doing? What we're doing is having five sort of profiles. We've put everybody's job into one of these profiles and said, right, that sort of role. So for example, our customer facing colleagues,

we think probably you're going to spend about 50% of your time in the office, 50% of your time at home. When you're at work, you're there because we want you to be having training or having someone sitting in coaching and observing you or doing some collaboration with colleagues or learning or talking about your future careers or doing a review. So being really clear about what kind of work can be done effectively at home, what kind of work can be done effectively in the office, looking at how a job is made up of the different types of work and then giving people guidance but I think really importantly having it leader-led

so that the individual and their boss then have a conversation and say right but what works for you because if as an individual you don't have a space to work at home some people are just not going to get that are they I mean this sounds dreamy but I'm just I'm just aware of the the reality and I think Elizabeth what you said about that parents and child thing is another really interesting point that a lot of people are going to resonate with. I'm going to have to call it time on that one, but I'm sure we're going to have many messages in on this. Thank you to all of you for talking to us, Elizabeth, Danny and Mark there. A message here saying, Dear Women's Hour, I do hope that working from home becomes the new norm for those who can. I live 45 minutes drive from work, no suitable train route.

It would seem crazy now to travel for one and a half hours a day to do the same desk job. We're living through a climate crisis that requires actions rather than more words to make a difference. The least we can do is to work from home wherever possible. And I should say many messages that I can't even come to yet about changing your name or not. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. 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.