Woman's Hour - Skin lightening creams, the film Lynn and Lucy & Panama's sex segregated lockdown

Episode Date: July 4, 2020

The Domestic Abuse Bill 2020 is currently making its way through Parliament, and will reach the House of Lords by the end of July. For the first time there will be a statutory definition of domestic abuse. The Centre for Women’s Justice is asking for an amendment to the Bill, to create a free-standing offence of non-fatal strangulation or asphyxiation. We hear from Sandra who was strangled by a former partner and from Nicole Jacobs, the first domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, on why she too is calling for this amendment. We discuss the popularity of the skin lightening industry, despite the dangers and controversy? We hear from Nimmi Dosanjh who is Indian-Kenyan and light-skinned. Her 11 year old daughter is dark-skinned, from Linasha Kotalawala who is a beauty and lifestyle blogger and from Geeta Pandey the Editor of BBC News Online India Women and Social Affairs. The actor Roxanne Scrimshaw tells us about the new film Lynn and Lucy about the lives of two best friends in a close-knit community in Essex whose relationship is tested after a tragedy happens A new government report in Ireland shows that 6,666 women accessed abortions there in 2019. This is the first annual report to be published since medical abortion on demand became legal in Ireland up to twelve weeks of pregnancy What do the figures tell us about abortion care in Ireland now? We hear from Ellen Coyne, a journalist at the Irish Independent newspaper and Dr Trish Horgan, a GP in Cork City and member of START - Southern Taskgroup on Abortion and Reproductive Topics.We hear from Dawn Bilbrough the critical care nurse from York who in the early stages of COVID-19 posted an emotional video on social media that went viral. She was appealing to the public to stop panic buying as she was unable to get the basics in her supermarket after her shift ended. She tells us about the impact of the video and what it has been like working on the frontline. Brit Bennett’s new novel, The Vanishing Half tells the story of twin sisters who run away from a black community in the South at the age of 16. One returns to the town they grew up in, while the other passes for white, withholding her identity from her husband. Dr Janine Bradbury, Senior Lecturer in Literature at York St John University, discusses the history of passing novels and films, many of which offer deeply problematic representations of mixed race women. Clare Wenham, Assistant Professor in Global Health Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science tells us how Panama implemented a state-enforced lockdown, to combat the spread of COVID-19. She explains how the restrictions which were sex-segregated worked.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Lucinda Montefiore

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.

Good afternoon. In today's programme, just over a year since abortion became legal in Ireland, what's been the impact of the new law across the Republic? The popularity of the skin-lightening industry, despite the dangers and controversy, and the effect on women, particularly of South Asian origin. As a darker-skinned South Asian woman, I continuously face this on an everyday basis. Things like lightening creams and bleaching creams are constantly pushed right onto my face.

So many women feel pressured to use them. Dawn Bilbre is the critical care nurse who videoed herself at the start of lockdown when she couldn't find any food in the shops after a long shift. Roxanne Scrimshaw plays Lynn in the new film Lynn and Lucy. She hates it being called a working class film. I am from a working class family. It was set for a working class environment.

I don't understand why everything has to be titled Black Ethnic Minorities. Like, we're just people. Just because you come from a different background or you have a different, like, pay packet or you have children younger, you have children older. We all majority go through the same life cycle. A new novel, The Vanishing Half, has been an instant bestseller and tells the story of twins, one of whom denies her black heritage and passes for white. We examine the history of books and films with a similar theme. And Panama's single-sex lockdown, how well did it serve women? Now, as the domestic abuse bill continues to make its way through Parliament and it's expected

that by the end of July there will for the first time be a statutory definition of domestic abuse, an amendment to the bill is being requested by the Centre for Women's Justice. They want non-fatal strangulation or asphyxiation to be added to the bill as a freestanding offence. Well, Sandra has had experience of such abuse. Nicole Jacobs is the first domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales. Why does this need to be a standalone offence? Just to give you some context, one of the things that we routinely ask people who are subject to domestic abuse about is strangulation, because we know it's a risk factor for further harm or homicide. And we know that there were 2 million people last year who were subject to

domestic abuse or more. And of those people who we were able to ask those questions, those risk assessment questions, 28% told us that they had been strangled in the past. So this is something that is happening in huge numbers. And we know that it's linked to serious harm or death. You have an eightfold increased risk of death if strangulation is part of the abuse that you suffer. The government though, Nicole, rejected the amendment earlier this year saying it's already covered by existing law, is it? Well, I would argue it's not. I mean, it is covered in that you could charge a common assault and ABH in this way. But what we know in actuality is that that doesn't happen very much. And the

reason it doesn't is because it's not a standalone charge. It's not something that police officers are particularly looking for, investigating, making sure that they collect evidence for. It is a challenge because obviously this kind of offense often won't leave a visible injury, although there's significant injuries, obviously, but it's not visible to the officer at the time, so it may not be noted. And then it starts the kind of ripple effect of being impact in terms of the gravity of the offence, but it's not reflected in the criminal justice system, it's not reflected in the charge, sometimes it's not reflected literally at all. Sandra, what happened to you?

So I was with my ex-partner for about three years and he didn't get violent, physically violent, until our baby was born. But he strangled me six times on five occasions. And being strangled is, it's absolutely terrifying. I mean, he's not trying to break a bone or bruise me. He's trying to stop me from breathing, and if anything, demonstrate that he controls whether I get to live or not. But as the violence was escalating in frequency, I was getting more and more afraid that he would kill me so I started secretly collecting evidence and opening up to support services like Women's

Aid who eventually helped me and my child escape to a woman's refuge and it wasn't until we were safe in refuge that I reported him to the police but the police officer told me that strangulation is only a common assault which has a charging period that expires after six months. So we had run out of time to charge him for most of the strangulation by that time. And I mean, I had photos of the marks he'd left on my neck. I had admissions via text messages. He had made admissions to a social worker who left a statement to the police. And I had a voice recording where he is admitting and he's also saying that it will happen again.

And they still wouldn't charge the strangulation as ABH, which they could. And I had even given them evidence that he had strangled his mother in the past and that it wasn't a new behavior. And I did a victim's right to review where I appealed twice to the CPS and I cited their own guidelines that at the time read that aggravating factors such as significant violence like strangulation and repeated assault on the same complainant could be charged as ABH even where the injuries sustained are on the lower end of the scale. And they also have to consider public interest if a child is present. And in our case, the child was in either mine or his arms on almost all of the assaults.

But he walked a free man. And we had a family court proceeding and a two-day fact-find trial that found him guilty for all the assaults. And he was deemed too high risk for any direct contact with the child, even supervised. So we're safe, but we still live with protected details. And I was contacted by a new girlfriend and the police after she had made a Claire's Law request. And it was confirmed that he already has a new victim of domestic abuse. Nicole, one of the things you said in a statement published yesterday with Vera Baird, you say it's commonly used as a tool by perpetrators of domestic violence. What do you mean by that?

You just heard so eloquently from Sandra that feeling of not being able to survive the attack, you know, it's got to be the most terrifying experience to not be able to have oxygen. It's a primal fear of any of us. And so that's a tactic used by perpetrators. Literally, I will show you how close I can bring you to death or that I will kill you. And that goes along with threats and the whole context of coercion and control. So it's extremely powerful. And yet we have a situation where we've just heard we have police who are not supported or trained or encouraged by law to really look into this to the extent that they should. There's a great coroner's report from Anne-Marie Neald, her case where the coroner referenced the fact that the non-fatal strangulation

wasn't part of the police force's domestic abuse policy and there was a lack of understanding of the issue among the officers involved and I'm afraid that would be the case throughout the whole of England and Wales and we have an opportunity to change that now and I think the government should really grasp this opportunity. But why are you raising it now as the bill is coming close to completion? How positive are you that it will be included? I think there's still time and certainly there's a few changes to the bill that are needed. It is a landmark bill but it could be even better and there's certainly time for ministers and for the bill committee and the lords to influence last changes to the bill. So

if listeners are interested, if there's ever a window of opportunity to contact your MP about these issues, please do it now. Sandra, just one last question to you. I know people say that the physical and mental repercussions can last for a very long time. How were you affected long term? I mean, I still have flashbacks. And, you know, I have a young child who's affected by it as well. And I think these are things that never go away. You know, you can be cooking and it just flashes in your mind or, you know, you're always going to be haunted by your experiences. And, you know, I've lived in refuges, women refuges, women's refuges for quite a long time.

And I've seen young children in the refuge strangling their toys because that's what daddy did to mummy. You know, no one should have to live with, with these things. And I think it's like Nicole said, statistics doesn't show that you're eight times more likely to get killed by a common assault. You are, however, eight times more likely to be killed if you've been strangled. So it needs to be its own offence that reflects the severity of that. I was talking to Sandra and to Nicole Jacobs. We had a lot of response to this.

In fact, a surprising amount of response to it. Let me just read you a couple. No one wanted their name to be used, but this one says, I was in an abusive relationship when I was 21, having just emigrated to a new country. On one occasion, I was strangled and suffocated and thought I was going to die. The point I would like to make is that even now, when I'm in my 70s, the effect of this still has an impact. I have difficulty with various dental treatments when I have a general anaesthetic. I still struggle with losing

consciousness and have flashbacks when I come round and I can't bear anyone touching the front of my neck. The long-term impact of violence like this has had a profound effect on my life. I now know it will always be with me. And this one says, between 2016 and 2018, I wish it to be known that I was coerced, groomed and abused by a man who said he'd previously worked in Whitehall, writing legislation for members of parliament. I now believe this man to have borderline personality disorder. He systematically, psychologically abused me and gradually this became physical until one day he strangled me up against a wall and screamed into my ears so loudly it was deafening. He later kicked me between the legs while pushing me out of his back door down three concrete steps.

Luckily, at Christmas 2018, I ended the relationship, but I have reason to believe he went straight on to someone else and is always, in fact, busy trying to coerce many women at once. I've been too traumatised to report it until now, but as the law is changing on misogyny and coercive control, I would definitely like to add my name to those pushing for the amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill to create a freestanding offence of non-fatal strangulation or asphyxiation. I shall be writing to my local MP with this information. Now, Johnson & Johnson has announced it will stop making skin lightening products, which are sold in countries across Asia and the Middle East.

At the same time, Unilever, who own the skin lightening cream Fair and Lovely, have announced that they will change the product's name. How significant are these moves? And why does the skin lightening industry continue to be so popular despite the dangers and the controversy? Nimmi Dasanj is Indian Kenyan and light-skinned. Her 11-year-old daughter is dark-skinned. Linasha Kotalawa is a beauty and lifestyle blogger. Geeta Pandey is the editor of BBC News Online India Women and Social Affairs. She told Jane how profitable this part of the beauty industry is.

Fair and Lovely is really, really huge and I think this is probably one of the biggest products that Unilever has in this country. Just this product is estimated to be more than $317 million, right? I mean, you know, if you look at it, millions of creams of Fair and Lovely sell in the country every month. And it's really popular. It's bought in big cities, in small towns, in rural India. It's just everywhere. And what does it claim to do? It's in the name, right?

It claims to make you fair and lovely, right? It was launched in India in the 1970s, and it's been hugely popular since then. They offer the product as a fairness cream, but they also put the, they tried to put the message across through a series of ads over the years. And all these ads, which generally had like some of India's biggest actors and actresses, would be about, you know, like somebody who had a duskier skin and then she used Fair and Lovely

and she got either the preferred job that she wanted or she got the promotion or she got the man of her choice that she wanted to marry. So it was, you know, it was that kind of messaging which was given out that, you know, if you're fair, you are a winner. If you're not, you basically have no place. This is making people squirm all over the place, I'm quite sure, for very good reason.

It was always a pretty diabolical message. Right now, it sounds positively horrific. So little wonder, Geeta, that this decision has been made. Well, yes, I think, you know, it was essentially sort of, you know, had to do with what is happening in the United States and the Black Lives Matter campaign. And what Johnson and Johnson did that kind of really forced the hand of Unilever in India, because they were, in fact, their CEO and a whole lot of other people were trolled quite a bit on Twitter. And a lot of people pointed out that do not just pay lip service to race relations, right? Or, you know, to the importance of skin colour by, you know, sort of selling a product which actually goes against everything that, you know, that one would want to stand for.

Well, quite. I should say I have a statement from Unilever. Their president of beauty and personal care says, we are fully committed to having a global portfolio of skin care brands that are inclusive and care for all skin tones, celebrating greater diversity of beauty. We recognise that the use of the words fair, white and light suggest a singular ideal of beauty that we don't think is right and we want to address this. This brand has never been and is not a bleaching product. And Johnson & Johnson, they say conversations over the past few weeks highlighted that some product names or claims

on our Neutrogena and Clean & Clear dark spot reducer products represent fairness or white as better than your own unique skin tone this was never our intention healthy skin is beautiful skin but what we need to make clear is Unilever are changing the name Gita they're not actually changing the product are they well they haven't said anything about that all that they've said is that they're going to drop the name or drop the word fair from the name, and that they are going to change the name and that the new name is in the process of getting approvals. And that is why they have been criticized a fair bit with a lot of campaigners who have been campaigning against these types of skin lightening creams. They have been saying that, you know, it is still a fairness cream,

no matter what they call it. It doesn't matter really, you know, because if the product is the same, the ingredients are the same, then it's the same thing. Well, thank you very much for that. That's Gita in our office in Delhi. We should say that it's very naive to think that these products are not available in the UK. But the NHS says this, skin lightening creams containing hydroquinone, corticosteroids or mercury not prescribed by a doctor are banned in the UK because they can cause serious side effects if used incorrectly. That's the official NHS advice. Linasha Katawala, listening to that, it is really, it's very discomforting, isn't it? This is deeply unpleasant stuff.

It truly is. And as a darker skinned South Asian woman, I continuously face this on an everyday basis. This is what I go through and this is what I face. And the fact that things like lightening creams and bleaching creams are constantly pushed right onto my face. And so many women feel pressured to use them. I still believe that colorism is absolutely rife. And we're going through movements like right now through understanding racism and capitalism and anti-blackness and colorism. But it's still out there. Nimmi, you have a daughter who is, well, about to be 11,

and you are of Indian heritage. You're light-skinned, your daughter is dark-skinned, and we should say that you have had conversations with your daughter about this. This is something you've discussed in the house. Just tell me a little bit about that. I wouldn't even say she was dark skinned I'll just say she's lovely she's got lovely brown skin she's herself isn't she she's yeah it's never been a conversation that we've had we don't discuss it in those terms I would

say the only reason it's come up is because it has been commented on from other people who are these people when people say oh she doesn't look she doesn't look like you does she I know what they mean by that it was commented on when she was very small whoever said it my husband and I we dealt with them immediately but I just believe like I can hear it in Linasha's voice it makes me so sad actually makes me really angry because the origins of these belief systems that exist in our community come from a place of racism and prejudice and assuming that darker-skinned people are primitive, less successful. It is an awful by-product of British colonialism, actually.

When we discuss this issue, we're confronting something that is so ingrained in our community, even here, I feel like it's a much bigger industry in India. I personally don't know anybody that's used these nonsense creams, but it's still an issue. So with my own child, I have spent her 11 years counteracting the comments that she might have taken on. And luckily, because of the BLM movement, we've talked about these things now. And it's led to people thinking everybody's been sort of, they're stirred a want to change things. Yes. And one person living in Bromsgrove, you know, a really, really white town, by the way, thinking, what can I do to challenge prejudice in any way?

I think we can all have those uncomfortable conversations with our own families and our own communities and just try and change the mindset. Linasha, what would you want to say to Nimmi? I would say that I am so glad that someone who is lighter skinned and a mother actually cares about the effects of colourism and the psychological effects of colourism on their child because I rarely see South Asians who are very open to speak about uncomfortable topics like this and have the strength to do so and I'm really really proud of that. I think the BLM movement has stirred something up and I think you have to show that you are an active ally against any prejudice and where you want to feel like you can change the whole world.

We often feel like we can't. But what we can do is start those conversations in your own communities again. And just hope that if you live with integrity and you call out racism, colorism, any sort of prejudice when you see it, it doesn't always need to be confrontational, but I think with South Asian parents, it often is. Or not even just parents, just anybody. Anybody that doesn't like being challenged. Nimi Dosanjh, Linasha Kotalawa and Gita Pandey. Lin and Lucy is

a new film about the lives of two best friends in a close-knit, working-class community in Essex. Roxanne Scrimshaw plays Lynn in her first role as an actor. Here, at a christening, she describes what the friendship has meant to them both. I've known Lucy since we was both 11. It was our first day at big school.

I remember I was so scared because I got sent to take a note to the office. I never did find the office. But in the empty corridors, I did find Lucy. Wow. It was seven years after that that I had my Lola. And for a while, whilst I was up to my elbows in that face, Lucy was being scraped from the club floors. Yay!

So although it took a while, I'm thrilled that she is now a mum and I get to be godmother to beautiful baby Harrison. Cheers. But as the film progresses, their friendship is harmed when Lucy, played by Nicola Burley, suffers a tragedy

and incurs the disapproval of the community. And I'm joined by Roxanne Scrimshaw. Roxanne, how would you describe Lynn, the character you play? She's quite comfortable. She's a mum, a wife. She's got her best friends. She's got everything going that she's used to and that she knows and understands. There's nothing really exciting happening for her.

But as the film does progress her personality sort of changes for the worst yeah we don't want to give away what actually happens do we to spoil it for people who want to come and see it but how would you describe the friendship is it something you've had experience of having such a close friend who do everything together? Yeah. Growing up, I had the best friends. We went to school together. We was literally inseparable until we had our children.

That's when you sort of, you have to change. But previous to children, we would wake up in the morning, eat at each other's houses, get ready, go to school, finish school, go back to someone's house, get changed, go back out. It was sort of like a relationship. This was your first ever acting role. How much of an ambition had it been to become an actor? It was something I had never previously thought of. At that point in my life, it was a case of I knew there was more to life than what I was living like if I didn't change something or if something didn't change I'd be going through the same life cycle then my daughter would grow up and she'd probably

meet someone get married have children get a dead-end job around the same area and it would just be a continuous cycle but acting had never ever crossed my mind before people like me we don't act like I didn't go drama school I didn't have no previous knowledge of anything to do with it but obviously people like you do act because you've you've actually won awards for it but how did you find the whole process because as I understand it they didn't even give you a script. Yeah. From the start until even now, the whole process has just been so amazing. Filming was absolutely amazing.

And down to the script, because I was the only person on set who didn't have it, there was this huge secrecy around it. And so I would literally go in every day, not knowing what I was going into, unless it was sort of like a big scene. I would get information maybe a day or two before just so I couldn't get my head around it or learn lines if I needed to but other than that it was just an overwhelming amazing experience that I enjoyed

so much. What did you make of the depiction of young mothers because you are a young mother yourself. When you have kids younger, it gives you more of a, for me personally, I always wanted kids young anyway. I didn't want to be going into my 30s and then starting out in a family because when I get to 30, I want to be living my best life still. But it kind of puts this betrayal on young mums, like you don't know a lot. All you know is changing nappies. Like even when it comes to parenting, people assume that you don't know what you're talking about

or what you're doing because you are so young. It's like, how could you possibly have these experiences or knowledge when you're only 17, 18? It is a challenging one, but for myself personally, and so many people I know, when it comes to things like that, it doesn't matter how old you are. When you have a child, your life changes. Instinctively, you get these instincts that you never knew before that you could even acquire. The film is set in a very close-knit community in Essex. I know you grew up in Dagenham. Yeah.

How accurate did you find the depiction of a community where everybody knows everybody else's business? They make judgments of people if they do something they don't quite approve of. How familiar was that? It was spot on. It was literally spot on in terms of how small and enclosed the area is. When I first responded to the iCall, I actually told them, like, I live at Robin Hood. Because that's the name of the little area

that we live there was a pub there that's where the shops are and that's where we all hang about in my mind I honestly believe that these casting directors or whoever I was sending an email to knew where Robin Hood was like I didn't realize how big the world was and how small that little place was we had a hair salon very very similar it's the case if somebody does something everybody wants to know or most people already know and then before you know it you are the talk of the town what was your response to people describing it as a working class film that I mind it is what it is like I am from a working class family it was set for a working class environment I don't understand why everything has to be titled it's like working class it's like black ethnic minorities like we're just people like just because you come from a different background or

you have a different like pay packet or your skin tone is a different color or you have children younger you have children older we're still all humans like we all majority go through the same life cycle it's that some people have different experiences now as i said you have won awards for your performance as has the director so where do you go now oh hopefully onto more amazing things i don't want this experience to stop like if i could do it all over again a million times i wouldn't even bat an eyelid. So hopefully from this, there'll be more and then more awards. I won an Oscar. I've got my sights set high.

What did your mother make of the film? I loved it. My mum really did like it. Even a few weeks ago, she was still asking me, can't you ask Faisal what happens next and stuff like that, without giving too much away. But she's still wanting answers I can't even give her. I was talking to Roxanne Scrimshaw and Lynn and Lucy can be found on BFI player or through

Amazon Prime or Apple TV and it will apparently be released on other digital platforms later in the year. Still to come in today's programme, the critical care nurse Dawn Bilbre, who couldn't get food for her family after a long shift. Passing for White, the literary and cinematic history of the mixed-race woman. And the sex-segregated lockdown in Panama, how did it work for women? It's just over two years since Ireland voted in favour of the legalisation of abortion in the referendum on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. The law was passed on 20 December 2018 and then in January last year the provision of abortion services began. It's now legal to have a medical abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. It's also legal in cases of fatal fetal abnormality or where there's a risk to the

health or life of the woman. A government report was published on Tuesday which details the number which were carried out in 2019. The total is 6,666. Well, Dr Trish Horgan is a GP and member of START, the Southern Task Group on Abortion and Reproductive Topics. Ellen Coyne is a journalist at the Irish Independent. What does she think can be read into that figure of 6,666 terminations? Unfortunately, what can be read into the figure seems to depend on whether you're coming from a pro-choice or anti-abortion perspective. In the referendum in 2018, the government was saying that legalising abortion could help reduce crisis pregnancies, but those who were anti-abortion were saying that it would increase it.

We know that there were over 6,000 legal terminations in Ireland in 2019. The only figures that we have to compare with that are the number of women who travelled to the UK for a legal termination in 2018, which was 2,879. But the problem with that figure is that is just women who gave an Irish address when they were at the abortion clinic. As you can appreciate, when you're travelling from a country where abortion is illegal, there might be many reasons why you might not give your real address. We also know that by 2018, a lot of Irish women were choosing to buy illegal abortion pills on the internet because it was cheaper than travelling. Women on Web, an international charity which provides these abortion pills to countries where

abortion is restricted, claimed that there were about five Irish women a day ordering these pills. So that would have been 1,825 terminations a year. That would bring you up to a figure of about 5,000, but we still don't know how many Irish women might have travelled to other European countries to access a termination. At the moment, we just don't have robust enough data to know if it has actually been an increase or a decrease in overall terminations. Trish, how does this figure, the 6,666, compare with the number of abortions that happen in other countries?

If you look, for example, at Portugal, which also implemented a new service quite recently, the rate of abortion care provision there per 1,000 women within the relevant age group, that is within the 15 to 44-year-old age group, was not, excuse me, 9 per 1,000 women. And the number that we see in the report here published just yesterday reflects a rate of roughly 6.6 per 1,000 women

within the relevant age group. And actually, that's not really outside the realms of what we were seeing in terms of the rate reflected in the indirect evidence that we were getting in terms of women providing Irish addresses at abortion clinics in the UK and in the Netherlands from 2001 to 2017. Those numbers certainly had decreased over time. But as Ellen pointed out out the number of women accessing abortion care in terms of pills online increased dramatically over the time. I think what's important in terms of this figure is to look at the number of women who accessed

care in early pregnancy and to look at there were 6,500 women accessed abortion care safely within family medicine in Ireland in 2019 and that's a new type of service in Ireland and it's incredible that that service was implemented so quickly and so so efficiently for the women of Ireland. Ellen what about Northern Ireland how many women may have come across the border for a termination? Yes, this is a very interesting figure. So according to the government report, there were 67 women, just 67 women in all of 2019

who gave a Northern Irish address when they crossed the border to access an abortion. And you compare that with UK government figures, which says that in the same year, over a thousand women from Northern Ireland

travelled to England and Wales. Now, that may be because, as your listeners are well aware, the UK government now covers the cost of travel and the abortion procedure for women in the north. But also there's a very controversial aspect to the Irish law called a three day mandatory waiting period, which has been criticised by a lot of leading obstetricians as maybe being a little bit misogynistic because it suggests that women haven't made up their own mind and need to be forced to wait three days before asking for an abortion and accessing one.

And that means that obviously, if you're travelling from Belfast to Dublin, you're going to have to take three days off work or else make the trip two or three times and book accommodation for two or three nights before travelling back, which kind of makes the legalisation of abortion in the Republic of Ireland not very useful to women in the north who still didn't have access to the procedure at the start of 2019. Trish, what impact are you finding in your practice this three-day wait rule is having? Well, I suppose the three-day wait,

it's distressing to women to have to wait because the vast majority of women have already made up their minds. They've already discussed a decision with a significant person in their lives and they rarely want to wait to access care. I suppose the difficulty is compounded by the fact that there is a very strict 12-week gestational window within which we can operate within the legislation. And beyond that 12-week gestational limit, we are operating within the realms of criminal law, and there's a potential 14-year custodial sentence for anyone who is assisting a woman

to procure an abortion outside of the terms of the legislation. And so my experience as a GP is that whilst most women are aware of the 12-week cut-off limit and are coming very early in their pregnancies, we're seeing women coming at four, five and six weeks. And for the vast majority of women, accessing care in that regard is not an issue. There are women for whom there are personal, medical, family, logistical reasons why there may be a delay in their presentation and those women are disproportionately disadvantaged then because of the three day wait and we have seen circumstances, providers in Ireland have seen

circumstances where a woman has presented just within the 12 week gestational limit but unfortunately given the three day wait she would not be able to access care legally in Ireland once the three-day wait and she would not be able to access care legally in Ireland once the three-day wait has expired. Emma there was concern that it might be difficult to obtain an abortion in some areas that it wouldn't be available across Ireland how much has that proved

to be the case? It has proved to be quite difficult. So initially, the government came up against a lot of resistance from anti-abortion GPs who were saying that they wanted to conscientiously object to providing abortion care, which is fine, but they also wanted to object to referring a woman on to another GP which would provide the service. And I think we saw that initially, in some parts of the country, maybe in a very small town where there might be one GP, a lot of anti-abortion activists were kind of putting pressure on GPs, misusing the National Crisis Pregnancy phone line to find the names of doctors who are providing abortion services. And as you know, so the early abortion care is kind of local GP led up to 12 weeks.

Beyond that, it's in maternity hospitals. There was a few maternity hospitals where anti-abortion obstetricians were kind of saying they didn't want to provide abortion services. The former health minister was saying that entire hospitals absolutely could not opt out of providing a legal health service. But the government ran into trouble in some very small maternity hospitals, maybe along the west coast of Ireland, where there might be only three obstetricians. If all three of those obstetricians conscientiously object to abortion, then abortion services effectively aren't available at that hospital. And that has been an ongoing issue where there seems to have been no progress either way. And I guess the government would kind of be conscious

of getting into a row over that, because as we we know the principle of conscientious objection is a well-known well-established medical protection for practitioners which applies to a lot of services beyond abortion so that's a very very difficult one and just just one final point the last government promised better sex education and free contraception with the intention of trying to reduce unplanned pregnancy. What's happened to that proposal? That's a very good question Jenny and we've been very disappointed that this has not come to fruition as yet.

We absolutely feel that this needs to be addressed urgently on the new programme for government. Providers are on the ground are meeting with women who would like to opt for long-acting reversible contraception and for whom, unfortunately, the upfront charge of that in terms of buying the device and inserting it is simply financially prohibitive. And we know that those longer-acting forms of contraception are much more reliable for women, much more convenient for women.

And it's very distressing when you're dealing with a woman who's had termination of pregnancy and unfortunately her choice with regard to contraception has been limited by her financial means and by her circumstances. So we'll certainly, within the START group, be pressing the new government to come forward and to provide universal contraception for women. I was talking to Dr Trish Horgan and Ellen Coyne. Dawn Bilbre is the critical care nurse from York who in the early stages of COVID-19 posted an emotional video on social media that really went viral.

She was appealing to the public to stop panic buying as she was unable to get the basics in her supermarket after a very long shift had ended. So I've just come out of the supermarket. There's no fruit and veg. I heard a little cry in there. I'm a critical care nurse. I've just finished 48 hours of work. I just wanted to get some stuff in for the next 48 hours. There's no fruit, there's no vegetables.

I just don't know how I'm supposed to stay healthy. And there's people and people are just stripping the shelves of basic foods. You just need to stop it. Because there's people like me that are going to be looking after you when you're at your lowest and just stop it please dawn it's it's pretty painful um to hear that again you were really really at the end of your tether weren't you i certainly was and yes it is quite painful to hear it's quite surreal it's like it's not me it's yeah it's very strange.

So are you before you did this are you the sort of person who would have done it if you see what I mean do you recognise did you recognise that sort of behaviour in yourself I mean these have been extraordinary times so I guess we've all behaved differently. No, no, I rarely use social media. I use it to keep in touch with friends, usually. But, yeah, that was all very bizarre. I posted the video. There was just something inside me that thought, I just need to post this and hopefully locally it will be seen

and people will have a little bit of, I don't know, raise awareness, really, of how your actions have consequences. But, well, we all know what happened it ended up going onto every platform and went worldwide so yeah and did you regret it at any time no no like i say it is very difficult difficult to hear and see it now because it is like it's a different person but no i don't regret it at all i think it had the desired impact well bigger than the desired impact actually because, because I wasn't expecting the fallout from it. Yeah, but you're actually good. Well, you're pretty confident it really did change behaviour.

How has your working life been over the course of the pandemic? I know that you you're a locum, aren't you, in critical care. So you work for a number of different hospitals and trusts. Yes, that's correct. It's settling down now. Initially, it was the sheer volume of patients that we were seeing with COVID. We were all pushed out of our comfort zones quite significantly. It was quite a difficult experience. What we have now is we're all very exhausted. It's been three and a half months now working out of our usual critical care environments a lot of

the time. So yeah, definitely still working out of our comfort zone generally on every shift and of course we have to work in PPE because we have so many patients that we're not sure if they have Covid because we've had quite a few negative tests that have come through and then they've gone on to prove that they are positive so yeah how often does that happen when when somebody actually initially shows up negative? Frequently, yeah. And you yourself had symptoms. Did that ever develop into anything or don't you know? I haven't been tested, but I was quite unwell. And it took me three weeks to get myself back together again and to get my energy levels back to where they were previously.

I'm convinced that I did have COVID, but I never had the test. So it's difficult to say. And when you see images, as we all have done over the last couple of days, of crowds on beaches in city centres, and we know that the pubs are going to reopen, though not in Leicester, this coming weekend, what's your take on all that? I think psychologically people do need to get back a little bit of the normal lives but I think we also need to be remembering the social distancing guidelines are there for a reason, they're science-based. As a healthcare professional, well as an e-key worker actually seeing those images, personally I found it very very hard to watch in a sense it kind of makes what we do every day seem a little bit unimportant to people

when actually we need support right now and we're going to need to continue that support over the next few years we're going to need the support well in a way i suppose we're going back to the point that you were making in that viral video that the work you'd done um you felt had been dismissed and that people were behaving in a way that simply wasn't right in the circumstances and that you appear to be suggesting that some people are doing exactly that again, all over again. I think it's important to realise that all of our actions, no matter how small, can have an effect on somebody else and I think it's just key to remembering that at the moment, especially now.

Dawn Bilbrough was talking to Jane. A new novel, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, has gone into the New York Times bestseller list and has been snapped up for dramatisation. It tells the story of twin sisters who run away from a black community in the south at the age of 16. One returns to the town in which they grew up, the other passes for white, withholding her racial identity from her husband. There is a long history

of novels and films where mixed-race women pass for white, many of which have offered problematic representations of light-skinned women of colour. Dr Janine Bradbury is a senior lecturer in literature at York St John University. How would she define passing for white? I would define passing for white in a specifically American context as any circumstance where somebody with African-American heritage is perceived or read as being white because they are light-skinned or they have other features that we as readers of race and we're all readers of race might think of as being white. Why has it been such a problematic genre? Oh goodness, where to begin? It's problematic certainly in terms of literature because

most passing novels and narratives have been written by white people or men. So it's very unusual to find passing novels that have been written by black women or women of colour or mixed race women. And there are examples of those. The Vanishing Half is, you know, a fabulous contemporary example of that. Other examples might be Dan Zissena's book, Caucasia, or Nella Larson's book, Passing. But yeah, mainly these books are written by white people and by men. A second kind of major issue would be that the genre kind of maligns black women, darker skinned black women, who kind of features these hopeless mammies who watch helplessly as their light skinned daughters grow more and more estranged and feel that whiteness is, you know, the most important thing to them. And of course,

the representation of light skinned women is offensive. The passing genre is a hotbed for colorism. It equates lightness and whiteness with beauty. And that is, you know, a difficult issue and isn't one that I think a lot of light-skinned women are comfortable with. Or, you know, darker-skinned black women, it's not helpful. And additionally, these light-skinned women are always punished. So they might be devastatingly beautiful and celebrated in the genre, but they are always punished in the narrative for transgressing that racial line. They often die or they lose somebody close to them. They are depicted as tragic mulattas, as we kind of refer to them in literary criticism, and they never have happy endings. What novels might be

in this genre might actually be worth reading from the past or would you dismiss them all? I wouldn't dismiss them all. One that I would recommend that certainly upholds a lot of these stereotypes and tropes but is a really good example of a kind of riveting melodramatic read would be something like Charles Chestnut's The House Behind the Cedars which is a really good example of a kind of riveting melodramatic read would be something like Charles Chestnut's The House Behind the Cedars which is a turn-of-the-century romance novel in many ways that has a passing plot at its heart you know certainly for anyone who's interested in contemporary writing The Vanishing Half is brilliant and then if you use that as a starting point, as I say, Dan Zissena's work is fantastic. But Nella Larson's Passing is, for me, one of the best passing novels, if not the best novel ever written. But why? Even if it falls into the traps that you can't read about passing now without understanding the genre out of which these contemporary works are emerging and responding to. Passing doesn't come out of nowhere. So in order to understand why something like Brit Bennett's novel is so brilliant in its handling of the subject, I think it's useful to compare it to predecessor texts.

What about films? Well, the most iconic film, I would say, in the genre is Imitation of Life, which was adapted not once but twice from a novel by Fanny Hurst, who is a white woman writer. Hurst published her book in the 30s. And there's a 30s adaptation of it. And there's a really interesting late 1950sned black woman named Annie, who has a lighter skinned white child called Sarah Jane. And Sarah Jane is resentful of her heritage. She hates being black or perceived as black historically, which at the time she would have been regardless of how she looked, heritage was everything. And she disowns her mother and decides that she wants to pass for white and live her life as a white person. And her mother, Annie, dies of a broken heart, spoiler alert. It's a fascinating film at the conclusion of the film. I was going to say,

I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but it is iconic. I think a lot of people have seen it. But we see kind of at the end of the film sarah jane repents she shows up at the funeral of her mother she throws herself dramatically across the casket and kind of repents for what she's done and that funeral scene in imitation of life is one of the most iconic in american cinema but certainly is one that is indelibly etched onto the minds of of people of color i would say who have seen this film. And Mahalia Jackson's in it and does this amazing kind of gospel performance. So problematic, hard to watch if you're a mixed race woman, which I am.

But again, I think the contextual history makes it really useful to see what contemporary writers are doing with the genre. How did you become as passionately interested in this subject as you clearly are? I suppose for me, I love literature and I knew that I wanted to study it really early on. And when I was looking at university courses, which is a while ago now, a couple of decades ago, the only place that I knew and could be confident that I would definitely read books about people of colour, black people, would be if I studied American literature. That's not the case now, which I think is a very good thing. And so I studied American literature. And of course, I'm constantly looking out for representations of women that look like I do.

And I found very quickly that the narrative home of mixed race women in American literature is the passing genre. And that is quite an uncomfortable realisation that that is how your experiences are depicted. And to sit, you know, in classrooms with people going, oh my gosh, this book, the character is so torn, she just doesn't know who she is. And I thought, well, do you know what, I know who I am, actually. Let's challenge these readings. Let's unpack them a little bit more. So yeah, that's what I do. I was talking to Dr Janine Bradbury. In April, Panama imposed a coronavirus lockdown, but it was slightly different from any others in the rest of the world. It was sex segregated. Women were allowed out of the house on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and men on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. On these days, either sex was only able to go to

the supermarket or the chemist. Claire Wenham is the Assistant Professor in Global Health Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She told Jane how it was supposed to work. What they decided to do in Panama was they wanted to reduce overall circulation of people, right? And they thought the easiest way to do this was if they divided the population into half, and doing that by sex seemed the most straightforward way of doing that. And that meant that you would only at most have at least half your population out any one day. So they were just trying to use it as a public health measure. And so they then divided it up, as you said, by men going out on certain days and women going out on certain days. This was obviously with the exception of key workers

who were able to go out every day. And again, people were only allowed to go out to the grocery store and to pharmacists. Right. Did any other country in the world even think of doing this? So Peru started this at the same time, which was at the beginning of April. But within a week, the Peruvian government decided it was increasing inequalities between sex. And so they actually ended the policy saying it was actually increasing inequalities and they didn't want to put it forward. Okay. What was happening? Well, they thought that actually it was putting additional burden onto women and that they were required to do more of the household work, more of the going out to the grocery stores, where there was anecdotal evidence of long lines outside shop on female days and not on male days. And so this led them to think actually this wasn't the most effective way of doing this and they didn't want to add burden to women as opposed to men. Interestingly, Bogota as a city also implemented this policy.

And that was relatively straightforward for them. But it wasn't replicated across the whole of the country in Colombia. Okay, it's just fascinating stuff this. So in Panama, did it are we now to assume it worked reasonably well with some kind of solution? So what was really interesting, and the research we've done on this has shown that overall it reduced people on the street. So it worked from a social distancing perspective. However, what we've demonstrated in our research is that actually people were going out more on men's days and not on women's days. And this really surprised us because we thought it would be the opposite. And this was the opposite to what they saw in Peru and obviously we don't know why this is we don't know why it was busier on men's days than than female days yeah so from what we can

assume in Panama men went out more on their days yes yeah but we don't know why and we don't know were they I don't know why do you think that might be the case? Well, so we have a couple of ideas. One might be that simply women are better at lockdown than men. We know in other areas of public health, we know women are better at hand washing and at sort of sanitisation. And so maybe women are better at adhering to social distancing than men. Is it that actually going to the shops becomes a new form of household bargaining with this? And actually, when you've got nothing else to do, this becomes the one thing that everyone wants to do. And it shows more that there is this divide between the public and the private and that men are able to go out and women have to stay at home.

Or is it that actually women were so busy with everything else? They were looking after the kids, performing all the other domestic tasks in the house that they weren't able to go out as well on top of that. We don't know which one of these it is, but we think it raises a lot of broader questions for women in Panama and for sex segregated policies more generally. So the lockdown, I think, was lifted, but now it's been imposed again in Panama. Yeah, so the sex segregated policy was relinquished as part of their exit strategy. But within a week, they saw the numbers creeping up again. And so they have re-implemented it in Panama to back to where they were, to make sure that the numbers don't creep up. Right. And really briefly, Claire, did people object to the sex segregation version of lockdown?

Did it cause any controversy at all? Or do people just think, okay, well, why not? So the first group that was very worried about this was gender based violence advocates who Did it cause any controversy at all or did people just think, OK, well, why not? So the first group that was very worried about this was gender based violence advocates who thought that actually women being kept in the home and not being able to go out on any day might be a risk to women. And also from the trans rights groups who felt that a gender identity wasn't being included in the sex segregation policy. Claire Wenham was talking to Jane and she, by the way, was the star of the BBC News when her daughter Scarlett interrupted the interview. Now do join Jane on Monday when she'll be talking to a specialist in data privacy, Ivana Bartoletti. She talks to Jane about how she believes artificial intelligence is connected to inequality and oppression. She also discusses getting more women into coding, our addiction to being online, and how what we type into our computers can make us vulnerable. That's Monday morning, just after 10, with Jane from from me for today Enjoy the rest of the weekend Bye-bye

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.