Woman's Hour - Sonita Alleyne, Play, Beth Hart

Episode Date: October 12, 2019

Chanel Miller, who was sexually assaulted while she lay unconscious on the grounds of Stanford University campus, talks about reclaiming her identity.Annalie Riches who's the Winner of the RIBA Sterling Prize for Architecture 2019, tells us about the eco-friendly council estate in Norwich she co-designed. She discusses women’s role in architecture with Zoe Berman, an architect and founder of Part W, which campaigns for more women in architecture.Michael Rosen who's written a new book called Book of Plays tells us why children and adults need to play more.Sonita Alleyne OBE is the first ever black leader of an Oxbridge College and the first woman to lead Jesus College Cambridge. She tells us about her new role.Dr Anne-Lise Goddings, a clinical lecturer at the Institute of Child Health, and Edwina Dunn, a data entrepreneur, tell us why they believe social media can be a force for good and can improve teenager’s mental health.The Grammy Award-nominated Blues singer Beth Hart performs a song inspired by her sister.Presenter:: Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Siobhann Tighe

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. Good afternoon. Anna Lee Riches and her partner won this year's Sterling Prize for Architecture for housing in Norwich. How much of a mark are women making on the profession? Michael Rosen and his book of play. Why it really matters for children and adults alike. If social media can be bad for girls in its obsession with selfies, likes and fashion and makeup, a project to provide some different influences. You've never met anybody who's a doctor but you kind of quite like science, you

think you might like to do it. Potentially social media gives you avenues to connect with people who might be able to open doors and make that possibility a reality. Beth Hart is a Grammy Award nominated blues singer who sings a song for her big sister. And Sunita Alain on becoming the first woman to lead Jesus College Cambridge. Women have got a lot of strength really and I think that sometimes we kind of keep perpetuating this idea that you know yeah we're all going to be rolled over. No I don't think so. I've been to those board meetings where men kind of feel they have to talk lots but that doesn't mean we're rolling over. Emily Doe was the name allocated to an unidentified woman who in 2015 was sexually assaulted on the campus of Stanford University in the United States. She'd been at a party, drank too much and was consistently described as the intoxicated, unconscious woman.

Her attacker, Brock Turner, was given a six-month jail sentence and she read out a victim impact statement in court. It was published by BuzzFeed and read online by more than 11 million people in four days. It was also read on the floor of Congress, inspiring changes in California's law. Well, she's now written a memoir, which she's called Know My Name, and has revealed that she is not Emily Doe, but Chanel Miller. What was it like to have no identity apart from Emily Doe? It's truly terrifying, because when you're in this windowless courtroom, and this identity is sort of repeatedly being beaten into you and you're not allowed to speak freely, you're not allowed to exist as anything else, you truly forget in that context who you are. And when I would leave the courtroom, I'd be completely despondent and I would have no grasp on what I had been wanting to do previously.

I couldn't remember why people would like me, what qualities I possessed that were of any value. I genuinely felt stupid and I felt like I was constantly humiliating myself for not being able to testify in a composed manner. It's like wetting your pants repeatedly in public. And then I'd read the news and it would just say that I cried. They would remind everyone how drunk I was. And alongside that, you know, my assailant's character was being rounded out. And in the trial, you know, he had character witnesses come in and testify. His high school swim coach, his ex-girlfriend, his high school French teacher, all these people were sort of painting him as a full human who deserved to be loved, who had exhibited nothing but upstanding behavior his entire life and didn't deserve to be properly punished. Meanwhile, I disappeared over time and

was reduced really by the end to nothing. What was your response when you actually heard his father say, prison with a high price to pay for 20 minutes of action? I was stoic. I had just finished my statement. So hearing his words, I was astounded. It was that feeling of like, did anyone hear me? Did I just read anything? It was so strange to feel like you can speak and pour your heart out and have it amount to nothing that people can

choose to remain deaf to you. And I write in the book that erasure is a form of oppression. You know, even though I sat with his family in the courtroom, our families were feet apart. And still by the very end, after they had seen photos of my naked body, they refused to even acknowledge my existence. That was really painful. And it's hard to continue telling yourself, I matter, I matter, I matter, because in that context, everything is telling you the opposite. Your victim impact statement was published by BuzzFeed, and lots and lots and lots of people read it.

Just remind me the words you used to begin it. You don't know me, but you've been inside me, and that's why we're here today. You know, you had had no memory of the assault at all after it happened. How did you discover what had happened to you? I was sent home from the hospital with the only knowledge that I had been discovered, passed out behind a dump about how I was found half naked with one breast out with my necklace tangled around my neck, my hair undone. digitally penetrating me and denied running away, who said that I enjoyed it, but at the same time could not describe what I looked like and said he would not be able to pick me out of a lineup. How hard was it to tell your parents and your sister what had happened? I had prided myself in my composure and my self-sufficiency. When I told my parents what happened, it was like something unclipped and everything, I just let it go. I basically

collapsed in the living room. My mom held on to me and was just sort of rocking me as I cried and she cried. And you really just need that moment before all the questions start pouring in, before you try and make sense of things. You need to create space just to feel that support and say, no matter what this story is, no matter what happens from here on out, I love you and I'm here and I want you to be safe. Now, you went through the trial and Turner, his family had hired a very expensive lawyer. What helped you keep fighting against his cross-examination? Yeah, there were every force possible was being conjured to keep me silent. There was a blackout expert hired for $10,000 to testify against me. I was terrified and intimidated throughout the process. It felt like this perpetual state of powerlessness where I couldn't

properly testify because I had no memory and was constantly being reminded of that. At the same time, you know, the night I was assaulted, I was also saved by the two Swedish graduate students who chased away my assailant, tackled him and pinned him to the ground and made sure that I got medical attention. And even though they were in school, they returned repeatedly to testify at the preliminary hearing and the trial. They kept showing up because they knew what had happened. They knew right from wrong. And I thought in my head, as long as there are people like that in the world who understand how to treat a person, who understand I deserve better and who want me to be okay, I will keep pulling myself in that direction. And that's what

kept me going forward throughout. You have met them, obviously, and spoken to them. What was it like to talk to them, the men who'd actually saved you in a way? Yeah, I kept saying thank you. And they said, you know, the way you are changing the world is thanks enough. They're so selfless and humble and kind. And what's most striking to me is they don't see themselves as heroes to them. They think, well, any human should have done that. Isn't that all of our responsibility? Of course that's wrong. And that

clarity is so refreshing and continues to ground me and keep me going. And when they were interviewed and asked how it was to meet me, they said it was like meeting family. Just that tenderness with which they exist and continue to care about my well-being has really saved me for the last, you know, four and a half years. What was your response when you heard Turner had been given six months? Total humiliation. I didn't even understand that that was an option. You know, I had filed to press charges within 24 hours of my assault, which is the fastest you can do it. And it still took me a year and a half just to get to the sentencing. So I thought, what am I doing here?

Why did I bother going through all this for six months, of which he would only serve three. I also think, you know, that's a small amount for three felonies, which he was convicted of for the initial assault, but that's completely failing to factor in each abuse that came after that. Everything I was forced to endure beyond the assault, and I don't think we process how traumatizing the aftermath of an assault can be, how there are so many layers of damage that continue to accumulate. You say in the memoir that you want to challenge the way victims of sexual assault feel about themselves. How can you do that? After my statement was released, I received multiple letters who said, I wish I had been as brave as you or I didn't do anything.

And I watched victims continue to put that burden on themselves to not only blame themselves for the initial attack, but for being inhibited afterward and not being quote-unquote courageous enough to move forward. And I wanted to make it clear to them this is not about your courage. This is about society's failure to have systems in place where you would feel safe reporting, where you could believe that justice could be achieved. The way it is now, we know that as soon as we speak, we'll be immediately discredited. If you testify, you'll be interrupted. Your character will be attacked. Your safety is at stake.

Your whole family will be hurting. Of course I understand why you would try to continue living your life, try to contain this, because that's what we have been taught to do for so long. So I want them to not carry that burden, because I understand why it's so difficult to come forward. And it's us as a society who needs to do more for survivors. Now, the law has changed as a result of your case.

But what about attitudes and opinions? You know, alcohol and the fact that you had been drinking kept coming up and coming up. Is it still unacceptable for a woman to have drunk alcohol at a party? Right. It's such a small way of thinking to me and so outdated as if you drink enough, you forfeit bodily autonomy. If you drink enough, he's allowed to do whatever he wants. And that is never, ever the case. I don't care how much you drink. He doesn't get to touch you, really. And I think we still have an issue wrapping our heads around that or

realizing you weren't assaulted because you were drunk. You were assaulted because he assaulted you because he made that choice. It doesn't take a genius to know that. And yet we still get so caught up in what she was doing and the choices she made rather than what he was doing and the choices he made. And we assume that assault is a given, that of course it's going to happen and it's your job to know better and to keep yourself safe. It shouldn't be a given. We should be focusing on the perpetrators realizing that acting on someone, penetrating someone is a choice that is made. We need to revoke the ability to do that. And when it happens, we need to relay punishment to say, no, this is not an accident or a mistake or slip up in

character. This is deliberate and it's not okay. And now you are Chanel Miller and no longer Emily Doe. How soon do you reckon a time might come when being Emily Doe no longer defines you? I think it will always be a process of becoming that I will continue to, you know, fill my life with color to show who I am as a person. You know, before I came forward, I wasn't sure if I would be able to break out of this box that I've been trapped in for so long. But I thought, if I come out with my name, and I'm still defined by this case, then at least I'll be able to say, look how wrong that is. Look at the way we confine and limit victims how even when you have every wish to grow and move on, you will always be reminded of how drunk you are. You will never be forgiven and you will always be put back inside that case. Or I could come forward and be liberated. I realized that was an option too. And so far, the latter seems to be happening. The more I speak, the more people see me and understand that I, as every survivor is, is multifaceted, that we have so much to offer,

that our lives will go so far beyond the violence that has been inflicted on us. I was talking to Chanel Miller, and when Brock Turner was sentenced, his crime was not described as rape. But as a result of the case, the law in California has changed and there is now a mandatory three-year sentence for penetrating an unconscious person or an intoxicated person, and the definition of rape has been expanded to include any kind of penetration. Earlier this week, the RIBA Sterling Prize for Architecture was won by a husband and wife partnership Anna Lee Riches and David Mikhail for an eco-friendly council housing estate in Norwich. On Tuesday before the announcement Jane spoke to the architect Zae Berman a founder of Part W which

campaigns for the increased visibility of women in the profession and to Anna Lee Richards. She described the project they'd designed. It's 100 homes. It's about 10 minutes' walk from the city centre and it's a mix of houses and flats and it's all very ecologically designed. It's a cheap passive house, which means that its fuel bills will be very low for residents.

Now, when you design a scheme like this you're not designing it for prizes are you? Well presumably you're not. You're designing it for people so just take me through that process. I think one of the kind of generators of the design was thinking about children playing and people meeting each other to make spaces where people could effectively build communities because the people that have moved in there don't know each other, they're new to the area. So we've designed in safe places for children to play, places for adults to meet. So that's been a really important generator of some of the ideas about the landscape.

Yeah, but forgive me, what you've said sounds to me like common sense so what distinguishes what you've done here in Goldsmith Street from any other kind of social housing project? I mean in a way it's it's quite a standard project it's based on streets and the you know everyone has a front door onto a street but there are car-free spaces for children to play and I think that's one of the things that's quite unusual that at the back of every back garden there's a gate onto a shared communal play space so small children can play out. And they'll be absolutely safe and people can see them and everyone can play a part in keeping an eye on them. It's the old-fashioned way isn't it? It's a ginnell. Yeah it's playing in the alleyway. I think we all remember that and the freedoms that came with the childhood.

And actually, that's been lost for a lot of children. Why is it that a project involving social housing has never been nominated for this prize before? I think partly it's because we've not been building much social housing. Well, there's that. That's true. This is really unusual being all council housing. Well there's that, that's true. This is really unusual being all council housing so it's an unusual project and I think that's probably one of the reasons. Also I think housing works to lower budgets than other types of architecture and perhaps it's seen as less glamorous I suppose. It's a long time in the making all this isn't it? When did you start working on this? We've been working on this for 11 years which is a long time for a project. It stopped and started and I think one of the reasons it went forward was that councils can now develop themselves so I think we'll see a lot more council housing coming

forward now. Zoe Berman from Part W, why do you need to campaign for the increased visibility of women in architecture? So we as a group we were talking about the issues that women face within our industry and one of the things that we kept coming back to in our conversations was the way in which we have felt that women are consistently being overlooked within our industry, that their contribution is being under-recognised and under-acknowledged. And so we started this campaign in two parts. First, to create what we call the alternative list, which was a crowdsourced list of members of the public putting forward suggestions of women who have done amazing things over the years and have not been recognised

within the conventional award systems. Why is that important? Well, partly it's important for those who are within the industry to feel that they are valued and that women are getting equal recognition to men. That is only fair and just and particularly when architecture is very much a collaborative industry. Well women enter it in equal numbers to men don't they but they don't stay in it so where does the problem start? At the moment within schools of architecture there is a 50-50 intake of men and women and then that that slips away and actually the statistics at the moment, we're looking at around 12,000, just over 12,000 female architects registered with the Architects Registration Board

to just over 30,000 male. And there's a number of reasons for this. Recognition, I think, is part of it. Mentoring and support. And of course, pay and salaries and women. Within our industry, you tend to be kind of tipping the moment when you're able to make the next step within a practice in terms of associate positions. Right. You know, the sort of the moment when people might be having children. Yeah, sure. Which is something we've discussed on the programme before.

But what I suppose I've never been able to pin down is, is there proof that women design better for women? I'm not sure about women designing better per se, but I think it's really important that the way in which our spaces and places are designed, are designed equally by both women and men. And if you only have 28% of architects who are women, then of course, we all bring our own experiences and knowledge into what we design and the way in which we design. So it seems immensely important that half of the population is properly represented in the way in which we think about spaces and places. Now that is not designing for women more than men, but designing equally. And so if you think about the way in which we all negotiate cities, for example, if one designs in a way that spaces are more generous and kind

to a woman who might be pushing a pushchair or who might be carrying heavy bags of shopping or who might be in a wheelchair or caring for somebody, if we design our streetscapes, our homes, our houses, our built environments in ways that are supportive and generous and considerate to women, then that's good for men as well. That's creating better spaces for all.

Which brings us on to the vexed question of toilets. Now, this problem never entirely goes away, but on the whole, Zoe, public buildings and women and toilets are rubbish. What we would also encourage people to think about is, of course, we need toilet provision that is equal and designed in a fair way to everyone. But actually, to look at the genesis of where projects are started and who projects are being, the briefs are being written by, who holds the purse strings also on a project because that is really where value and decisions about value and what is considered important are being made.

And so the women should be being taken into account at those early moments at the inception of a project, potentially before an architect comes on board, to encourage clients to be thinking about well how are we designing spaces that are going to be enjoyable and easy and supportive of everybody and women need to be being taken into account much more by those people who are making those decisions around budgets and briefs and that is essentially what part w is all about annalee i was reading about Goldsmith Street.

And what is really interesting is that if you have a public space, the Ginnall, where women and children are happy to be and safe to be, then that will encourage older people to come out of their spaces and enter a public space. Yes, there's a really interesting study that's been done called Making Spaces for Play, which looks at the positive effects that children playing out have on everyone feeling secure in a space. And it's a really simple thing, you know, children playing, parents meet, older people feel happy out. And, you know, I think it's really worth reading like studies like that to kind of work out how we start thinking about designing housing differently. There is a class question, isn't there? I just wonder how many people who design social housing grew up in social housing. What would you say about that, Annalie?

Probably not many, and I think that that's a real problem. The architecture profession is not diverse enough. It's not just about men and women. It is very monocultural, and we need to be encouraging people from all sorts of backgrounds to design. There's no reason why it should all be men. Annalie Riches and Zoe Berman were talking to Jane. Michael Rosen's voice is not an unfamiliar one to Radio 4 listeners.

He's the presenter of Word of Mouth, a former children's laureate, and I'm sure lots of you will have read his stories and his poems to your children. His new book is called Michael Rosen's Book of Play, Why Play Really Matters, and 101 Ways to Get more of it in your life well he describes himself as a chancer ad libber and a blagger and he says we all share those qualities well how are they useful when it comes to play play is about trial and error without any fear of failure that's what how i see play a lot of things that we do we either don't have much trial and error without any fear of failure that's what how i see play a lot of things that we do we either don't have much trial and error about it or if we do something that is a bit gamey i

would say in the gaming area we do have a fear of failure it's not bad it's not bad to have a fear of failure in a sort of gaming situation because that's part of the fun of it but the important thing about play is that it's open-ended and if there are rules, then you're the one who makes them. So the idea of improvising and blagging and chancing it are really important in play because you have the sense that anything can happen here. I could just work this out on my feet. So what kind of things do you include yourself under the term play?

I was quite surprised to find that you try to see how much of the dishwasher you can empty without actually breathing. That's right. Because we have these things around us, dishwashers, washing machines, front doors, and all the rest of it, and these are all very rule-bound.

They've all been created by the wonderful world of science. But for them, and you can treat these things in a very passive way, as if somehow or other they're there and permanent, and you have to do how you've been instructed to do it. But actually, all around us, there are things that you can play with. So I know it sounds weird, you know, kiddies will remember in the old days of very loud flushing toilets and chains,

you know, could you get from the loo to the kitchen, holding your breath before the loo stopped flushing you know things like that well why do kiddies do that why do i go on doing it because it's to make the world more of your own so you're not a passive receiver but somehow or other you make it part of yourself so it's it's you treat the world as something that you can be active in instead of it's something that you receive what do we know about the idea of play, its origins, as a concept? I think we can say that when we look at ancient artefacts of one sort or another, when we look at some of the great scientific discoveries, that at the core of them is an idea that somebody had

to play with possibilities, had to play with what was there. So, you know, there's an ancient flute that has been found, 30,000 years old, possibly more, and it's been made out of the wing bone of a vulture. So this is one of the oldest artefacts we have, and it's a flute. So just if we think, how would you arrive at the possibility of making what must be one of the world's first flutes if you weren't playing with the materials around you to find what could make noises that enabled you to make that kind of cawly sound that a flute does and it's got holes so it's got you can stop the notes on it i mean i just think this is incredible it's thousands tens of thousands of

years old and it could only have come about with play. If you think again to the double helix and DNA, and you think, well, they had to play with things like pipe cleaners to figure out how it was that you could replicate one human being to the next. They had to work out. And we know Rosalind Franklin, Crick and Watson and so on, they worked out how it was. But it can only come with the mind being able to think of something in a playful way in order to arrive at what's the truth. How easily do children play naturally? And I'm not talking about having lots and lots of toys to play with, but pretending things, dressing up and being different people.

Does it come absolutely naturally to them? I think it flourishes, put it that way, with our encouragement, and it can be easily discouraged if we tell children that they're being silly. So I think we can create an environment that encourages it. In other words, if you have an old clothes box, and if you have things, and you're not too bothered immediately as to whether the clothes go back in the box,

and so they can spread them out on the floor and create a mess in the room that my mother used to call a mission among, that you can pick it up and pick up a hat and drop it. And then in that situation, then I'd say between the ages of three and nine, children will do a lot of dramatic play. They'll also do it, of course, with whatever they've got, a little combination of dolls or Playmobil or whatever it is, any of these little people that they can play with and

role play through it. And listening through the keyhole of my children's doors sometimes, you could hear them. Quite handy if grown-ups aren't actually in the room. They'll start playing out, being the people in these little scenarios in these plays that they create and it's thought we know that this is incredibly important you're basically re-enacting the world as you've seen it and trying out what would it be like to be an ambulance person what would it be like to be traffic control or something like that you're trying out these things but also trying out those important things about your close personal relationships. And of course, again, that's what

play enables you to do. Try it out, see what it feels like. And also with children to try out omnipotence, to try out what would it be like if you're bigger than yourself? What would it be like if you could run everything and be, you know, fly through the air? Why do we tend to lose it as we grow up? That's a tricky one, isn't it? I think it's because we're invited to be serious and productive. So we connect this word play with childish, childishness. We've got these words that are pejorative about children. Why? We like children.

Why do we have this word childish? And so we connect that idea, and then there's this sort of bit where you prepare to be productive let's say it's secondary school onwards and then you've got 18 to 60 where you're being productive and then you're this sort of not very useful person post 60 so there's this idea that that's what's important so on either side of it and also of course in leisure time that's unimportant now if you've got that hanging about then play can seem like unnecessary unimportant an add-on rather than if we treat human beings in a holistic way and say well it's all of you your ability to play to work to be ill it's all of you you're a big fan of what my mother used to call rather figuratively dolly daydreaming why well i think

dolly daydreaming or whatever you want to call it reverie we've got lots of words for it haven't we this is when we if you like chew over who we've been what happened what we would have preferred to have happened and what we would like to happen so this this is powerful stuff. This is all stuff to do with how we really feel about ourselves. When I work with children, I work with the idea that you can harvest your daydreams. And that's a nice thing to do because you can harvest them by drawing, by painting, by photography,

by writing poems, by all sorts of things. When you harvest your daydream, then you, in a sense, you go one step further because you put the play thing out in front of you and then you can then speculate even more about it. Just briefly, just two things that you would like to see a family doing when they've heard the words, oh, mum, I'm bored. With wordy games, it's ever so, it's good fun to make up tongue twisters

because all you've got to do is find two sounds that are a bit like each other, you know, sh and su, and then you think of all the sh find two sounds that are a bit like each other, you know, sh and s, and then you think of all the sh and s words that you know, and then you see if you can repeat it. So that's one nice thing. But doodling is just a lovely thing to do. What way do you doodle? And then to colour in your doodles and then to swap round.

Take your do-your-doodle, pass it to someone else. I was talking to Michael Rosen. Now, still to come on the programme, Disrupting the Feed, a project to provide teenage girls with social media influences who are interested in more than selfies, likes, fashion and make-up. And Beth Hart sings live. She's a Grammy-nominated blues singer whose album, Whore in My Mind, has reached number one in America's Billboard Blues chart. Sonesia Allain is the new master of Jesus College, Cambridge. She's the first black woman to lead an Oxbridge college. She was born in Barbados, was raised in London, studied at Cambridge and founded the successful media company Something Else when she was only 24. She sat on numerous boards with a focus on

diversity, including the BBC Trust and the London Olympics Legacy Development Corporation. And she was awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting in 2004. But what does she make of her title being Master? If you got rid of it, how much money would you be spending in directional signage which you have to change? Now, I'm quite happy with sitting in that. It's a name, it's a word, and really it's about the person who does the job. I've been officially the Master since October 1st. And yesterday I did my kind of swearing in ceremony in front of the fellows and also new fellows who are about to start. And it's a mix of men and women, obviously. It's a good kind of mix at Jesus.

And it was actually one of those rare moments in society where you get to say an oath. You get to kind of commit to a community. And it's a community which I have begun to really love, actually. In a way, you kind of understand what that community is about, meeting the alumni. It's very special, actually. In a way, you kind of understand what that community is about, meeting the alumni. It's very special, actually. You know, I think it's something that I...

Actually, we rush to change too many things, I think, sometimes. Well, they haven't rushed all that. They haven't rushed it, Cambridge, have they? I mean, you're the first woman to be the Master of Jesus. And although things are improving slightly, Cambridge last year,

the figure I got was 58 black students admitted out of 2,612. Yeah, I can only go on what I've seen since I've been there. And obviously that's a figure which I think across the board and all the Cambridge colleges, they're seeking to improve. Over the summer, I saw a lot of the work that's been done at Jesus in terms of its fantastic outreach team, our student ambassadors. And we work not just on black students. I mean, we're kind of like, we're twinned with Newcastle, North and South Tyneside and Sunderland. We're kind of looking at the whole kind of class issue in terms of Cambridge.

But this year, I'm the 146th fresher. We have 145 freshers. Of that 145, 131 are from UK schools. And of that 131, 20% are BAME and 25% are from areas of underrepresented or disadvantaged. When you see stats, there's another one I'm going to throw at you now, that 68% of the students at Cambridge were state educated. Sounds okay until you realise that actually only 7% of British children are privately educated. So there ought to be 93% state educated kids.

No, no, because 82% of state school students go to sixth form. So let's look at... So you've got a smaller pool, you mean? It's a smaller pool, but I mean, I think that those are the stats across university for Cambridge. If you look at kind of stats which are for other Russell Group universities, Cambridge actually features quite well. Again, for this year, for me, going at Jesus College Cambridge, 74.2% of the students are from state school.

So we're doing well. The stats are moving and it's improving. I just want to read a quote. This is from Lady Hale. She went to a girls' state school in Yorkshire, now,. The stats are moving and it's improving. I just want to read a quote. This is from Lady Hale. She went to a girls' state school in Yorkshire, now, of course, the head of the Supreme Court. And she was talking, she was giving a speech to a girls' school last week.

She says, I was a girly swat when I went to Cambridge. There were quite a few young men who were similarly girly swats, she said. But sometimes supervisions were invaded by the other sort of male student. Now, do you recognise this person, Sunita? Not particularly interested in doing much work and who concentrated on trying to put the supervisor off with silly questions.

You'll all be familiar with that as a pattern, says Lady Hale. I think she might be referring to the sort of man who currently occupies No. 10 Downing Street. I mean, maybe. Well, I can only speak to the truth of my own supervisions, and it was just me and Jenny Teichman doing philosophy, so there were no males, kind of. But you know exactly what Lady Hale means there.

There is a type, and they're not just British men, and they're certainly not just white British men, but men who occupy the space with utter entitlement and roll over everybody else. i'm not really sure i come across that many men because i try not to occupy a space back so what do you say that it's the fault of the women to allow themselves to be dominated no i'm not saying that i'm just saying this women have got a lot of strength really and i think that sometimes we kind of keep perpetuating this idea that we're all going to be rolled over. No, I

don't think so. I've been to those board meetings where men kind of feel they have to talk lots but that doesn't mean we're rolling over. We're not rolling over. I mean this is like for our college this is our 40th anniversary

and the big celebration this weekend of women being admitted into the college. And yes, as you say earlier. It's only 40 years ago. Only 40 years ago. But, you know, when I was at Cambridge,

I think in 1988 when I left, I think one of the colleges was just admitting women and one was just admitting women when I started. But, you know, I do think that,

you know, you've got pioneering women at Jesus, like Lisa Jardine who was one of our first But, you know, I do think that, you know, you've got pioneering women at Jesus, like Lisa Jardine, who was one of our first fellows. You know, she wasn't rolling over. I think she used to have these badges that she'd give out to people saying, behave badly. I did bring one for you,

but I left my handbag in the other room. So I'll post it to you. Thank you very much. And I will hold you to that. You've sat on a lot of boards with a focus on diversity. You were a member too of the BBC Trust, which doesn't exist anymore,

but you were a member of that. Yeah, I was a member of that and I was a member of the Editorial Standards Committee. Right, so which brings me on to the Nagamonchetti situation, which has been occupying the newspaper columns and lots of social media space and indeed the minds, particularly of people of colour who work for the BBC.

What would you like to say about all that? I can only really answer the question with the background of having been a member of the BBC Trust and the Editorial Standards Committee. In a way, there was three factors, I think, that kind of compounded that. One, I think that it's really important to support women of colour who are out front kind of doing their job. I think that the nature of the programme,

in a way you've got a programme which is, on the one hand it's their news journalists, but there's a kind of chat element to it. Yes, there is, yeah. And so you're trying to be kind of accurate on the one hand and also come across as authentic so that your audience are there with you in the morning. I don't think that actually Naga was done a lot of favours

because actually Dan asked that question. And she replied. Wouldn't have asked that question if it was a white woman sitting there or a white man sitting there. So she she had to replied authentically i do think though that again with the kind of editorial standards committee head on people have to be able to be genuine but they also have to be able to do their job i think you have to define what that job is i do think that there is a whole issue in our society about accuracy and impartiality what does the bbc stand for growing up if maura stew Stewart had been in a situation reading the news

and it was like, oh, she's got to kind of say something, I'd have been quite surprised to see that. Sunita Alain. Let's generally assume that social media is not necessarily a good thing for girls. Too many selfies, too much worrying about not getting enough likes and too much attachment to influencers who concentrate on makeup and clothes. Well, some research carried out at Cambridge University and commissioned by the educational charity, The Female Lead,

has found that if it's used in the right way, social media can be good for teenagers and their mental health. Dr. Anna-Lisaisa Goddings lectures at Great Ormond Street's Institute of Child Health and Edwina Dunn is the founder of The Female Lead. What did her research show? The research showed that girls were very much taking on a diet of almost exclusively celebrity and fashion. They even called it a kind of cringe binge, which involved Love Island and Kardashians.

They knew it was bad, but they were almost with peer pressure forced into participating. And Alisa, what would you say we know about the impact of social media then on teenage girls, if that's the kind of thing they're looking for? So the research that's available is quite contradictory. Some studies show quite a close link between using social media and poor mental health particularly in teenage girls. We conducted a recent study that looked at nearly 13,000 young people and looked at how they reported their own mental health and well-being

and how that related to how much they access social media. And we found there was for both girls and boys a link between those young people who access social media a lot and poorer self-reported mental health as well as life satisfaction, happiness and higher levels of anxiety. But the interesting thing about the study we did was we tried to look and see what might be driving that. And particularly in girls, we found that a lot of the underlying association seems to be driven by being subject to cyber bullying, as well as how it impacts on everything else you're doing. So particularly how it impacts on poor sleep, and a little bit on exercise as well so that social media itself doesn't have to be negative but the things that it stops you doing

otherwise and what you're accessing and what you're being exposed to can result in higher levels of mental health concerns and problems in young people. Edwina I know in the 1990s you were behind the Tesco club card and I wondered how does your experience of kind of spying on people's shopping habits influence your interest in the behaviour of teenage girls? I think what big data has shaped for me is the idea that measuring what people actually do versus what they say they do is very revealing. And once you know the problem, you can actually do something about it. And so although all my work was until now very commercially orientated, this was something that, you know, really interested me when we were looking at social media. And we always look for the differences in the way people behave. And of of course the opportunity is then to intervene in some way

and to say can that flow be changed in some way and and make that a force for good. So what are some of the positives of social media that you suspect even if it's not yet proven that it can be good? Adolescence is a period where you can become anything, where you have so much potential and so much opportunity to look beyond what you've seen within your own family, within your own upbringing. And social media gives you the opportunity to access that in a way that nothing else has done before.

So wherever you come from, you have the opportunity to associate with an astronaut, to associate with a singer, but perhaps somebody who's really interested in the singing rather than just the social side of their lives. Whatever you might want to go into, even if you don't know that person. And we know within my own field of medicine, actually, if you've never met anybody who's a doctor, but you kind of quite like science, you think you might like to do it, potentially social media gives you avenues to connect with people who might be able to open doors and make that possibility a reality. So Edwina, I know you're concentrating on the kind of role models that social media can provide. How can you provide the astronaut, the doctor, the kind of people Anna-Lise is talking about? Yeah, I think today, the way social media works is that the more you consume, the more you

get served exactly the same content. And so the campaign that we've devised is called Disrupt Your Feed. So the study we did was to take young girls and to say, we're not going to change what you love consuming, but we're going to introduce up to four new women who may be in the sphere of interest, like science, like saving the planet, like business. And so we introduced just up to four and measured these girls over a period of year to see whether that had changed their outlook and their belief in their future and their career opportunities. And the research that Dr. Terri Apter did basically showed an absolute link between new feeds that were more in their sphere of interest

and an outcome that led them to believe that they could do this. So, Annalisa, what kind of advice would you give to a parent with children who are older? How can they control this or help them control it? So, as I say, our study shows there are definite things that seem to drive some of the mental health problems associated with social media use so from that we would think about cyber bullying as a huge issue particularly for young people. So engage with your children, children now

learn about safe online use and internet and social media use so learn what they're learning make sure you've got things set up to protect them, but also engage with them as to why they're doing it. And then if young people are getting cyber bullied, we know that most of them don't tell adults, they don't tell their parents, and they don't tell other trusted adults. So making sure that your young teenager has got somebody they can talk to, whether that's you or whether that's others. And then thinking about what young people aren't doing because of social media. So good sleep practices, not using Facebook, not using social media in that sort of hour before you go to bed so that you have a safe space and a safe time. And thinking about whether or not you should be out doing things with real friends and exercising as opposed to just social media.

I was talking to Dr Anna-Elisa Goddings and Edwina Dunn and in an email Gillian said how committed are we about mental health and social media? My grandchildren's homework is all on the computer and competition online is encouraged. This is all lip service. But Hugh said myself and my son make use of social media for our sporting activities. We regularly watch and contribute to other clubs' discussions. It's an excellent tool for our members to be informed of what's going on, whether we're shooting, archery, indoors or outdoors, or other events during the week. Now, Beth Hart has been singing the blues for more than 30 years.

She's been nominated for a Grammy and her latest album, War In My Mind, has just reached the number one spot in the Billboard Blues Chart in the United States. There's a war in my mind Seeking each other That is howling all the time There's a war in my mind Beth, you have such an amazing voice. But why war in my mind Beth, you have such an amazing voice, but why War in My Mind? What's the significance of the lyrics of that song? So that song is specifically about bipolar 1 disorder, which I have,

and this wonderful pastor at a church I joined five years ago, she really helped me to get my second time at sobriety. And I was out on the road and I came home and she announced she was helped me to get my second time at sobriety and I was out on the road and I came home and she announced she was being moved to another church and so I just thought well that's it I'm going to go back to drinking and if I do my medicine doesn't work at all so I thought well then the illness is just going to come back full swing and it was just really being terrified so I just ran home and I wrote that song that day about that yeah and has it helped you deal with the problem or did you go back I have been I've remained sober thank god uh coming January uh

third will be five years yeah now why after 30 years at the age of now 47 have you become more open about all this I've always been ridiculously open to a fault I just can't keep my big mouth shut and it's not because I don't care what people think I do care what people think I just can't keep my mouth shut I've always been that way since I was a kid and it's probably due to starting in therapy at six so I got used to meeting strangers and talking about all my personal stuff really young. But there have been changes in recent years, like deciding not to wear makeup for photographs or allowing airbrushing of your pictures. Where's this confidence about your appearance come from? I don't know if it's so much confidence as it's just the jig is up. Like I'm wearing makeup right now, but just for

this record that day it wasn't even premeditated i was on my way to the shoot i knew it was going to be a photo session and i knew it was going to be a video and i just thought why do it today just let's just try it without you know so i mean i still look like me just in color now you're going to perform a song from the album, which is very personal, I think. It's called Sister Dear. What's the background to this? People think that this song is about my sister who died,

and it's not. It's about my oldest sister, Susan. And we recently did therapy. About four years ago, we started. And that very first session, I realized something. I realized that it's been unfair of me to hold her to such a high bar just because she's my oldest sister you know I think I expected her

to do everything and protect me all the time and it's impossible she's only human and it just took me forever to kind of start to get that so it's really an apology to her for being so hard on her and expecting her to do so much. And then in the song, I list the things that I had forgotten that she'd done that were so beautiful growing up. So we hear it. Yeah. I hope to God I don't cry. Please, you guys say a prayer.

I keep crying every time I do this song. Please, Jesus, don't let me cry. Sister, dear, are you there? Are you there? Oh, I want wanna talk to you On the phone, in the house, on the hill Wherever you want to I was hot, I was hot, I was so for so long Could you ever forgive me?

It's a miracle I didn't cry. You didn't cry. Well done. It's a beautiful song. Thank you. What does your sister make of it? So as soon as that first session was over, I ran downstairs with the intention of writing her a song where I was really mad at her and the song wrote me like they usually do right

and so as soon as I was done I immediately called her and I played it for her on the phone and she cried and I think I even cried harder because it was such a release it was like that everything I wanted from her all I had to do was give it to her. And then it came right back into my heart. And it literally was like the healing of the beginning, you know, of bringing us back to where we were as kids. But when you say a song writes itself, what do you mean? Well, I can always tell when I'm writing it and then when something else is writing it. When I'm writing it, it usually turns out like crap. And, you know, and it takes forever.

But I can tell, like, it just seems like I get a visit. And I like to think that it's God or the angels just coming to guide me, help me to feel better, help me to see things that I cannot see, feel things I wish I could feel but I don't have the courage to feel. But then sometimes I just think it's my own ego and my own head trying to prove myself that I'm right, I'm right. And then it gets nowhere. But I really felt like that one was a visit. I was talking to Beth Hart. On Monday, as the Pre-Raphaelite Sisters exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery, we'll be hearing the first of five untold stories of the women of Pre-Raphaelite art whose contribution has been overlooked. On Monday, Elizabeth Siddle, who was so much more than a muse. Join Jane, Monday morning, two minutes past ten if you can, 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 was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

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