Woman's Hour - Sterilisation in the United States, Carmen Callil, Kate Beaton, #StayAtHomeGFs, Helen Gittos & East Kent Maternity Report

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

An independent review launched after up to 15 babies died at a hospital trust will be published later this morning. The report into maternity services at East Kent Hospitals, which is expected to be "harrowing", examined up to 200 cases involving mothers and babies. The medical experts reviewed an 11-year period from 2009 at two hospitals in Margate and Ashford. Two mothers who lost their babies at a hospital trust at the centre of a maternity scandal say they felt they were blamed for the deaths. Earlier our presenter Krupa Padhi spoke to one of those mothers Helen Gittos as she and her husband Alan, and other families, waited to be allowed to read the report. They lost their daughter Harriet in 2014.The cartoonist Kate Beaton has written a memoir about her time working in the oil fields of Canada aged 21 to pay off her student debt. Her memoir 'Ducks' tells of her loneliness and vulnerability in the male-dominated space and the kindness she found there too. The dirty machinery and blasted landscapes alongside the Northern Lights inspired her as an artist and her book offers a rare insight into the lives of the people who surface our oil .Carmen Callil, the publisher and writer who championed female writers and transformed the canon of English literature, has died of leukemia aged 84. She founded the feminist imprint Virago Press, where she published contemporary bestsellers including Margaret Atwood and Maya Angelou. She worked with writers such as Angela Carter, Alan Hollinghurst and Toni Morrison. She was also the first publisher of Hilary Mantel. We discuss her life with chair of Virago Press, Lennie Goodings, a long-term friend and former colleague of the late publisher and writer. Child-free women in the 20-something age bracket are sharing videos outlining what their day-to-day lives look like as #StayAtHomeGFs on TikTok. The hashtag has garnered 170 million posts and refers to one partner in a relationship whose role is to stay at home to look after their breadwinner boyfriend who goes to work and funds their lives. The content appears to be quite aspirational for many. We discuss the trend with the digital culture commentator Hannah Van de Peer and Alex Holder, a personal finance expert and author of Open Up: Why Talking About Money Will Change Your Life.Google searches for sterilisation peaked in the US in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v Wade – and the morning after pill sold out. It’s even made some women rethink whether or not they want children, and reports suggest younger women are even considering permanent sterilisation so they can’t become pregnant again. 23-year-old Olivia from Massachusetts joins Krupa, alongside USA correspondent Holly Honderich and NHS gynaecologist Dr Larisa Corda, to chat about the implications of female sterilisation. Presenter: Krupa Padhi Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Helen Gittos Interviewed Guest: Kate Beaton Interviewed Guest: Lennie Goodings Interviewed Guest: Hannah Van de Peer Interviewed Guest: Alex Holder Interviewed Guest: Holly Honderich Interviewed Guest: Dr Larissa Corda

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.

Hello, I'm Danny Robbins, host of the spooky podcast Uncanny and the Battersea Poltergeist. Just before you settle down for your usual podcast, maybe you're out walking or maybe you're at home. But are you alone? Are you sure? Because this is a warning. Something wicked this way comes. My brand new podcast series, The Witch Farm, mixes documentary and drama

to investigate a real-life paranormal cold case. Listen out for The Witch Farm, the true story of Britain's most haunted house. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Krupa Bharti and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, thank you for joining us. June the 24th, 2022, it's a day that will remain etched on the minds of women in the United States. It was then that the country's Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a person's constitutional right to a safe and legal abortion.

The right to abortion is now up to individual states, many of which have already outlawed the procedure. And since that decision, a growing number of women have been considering or seeking sterilizations. We will speak to one of them. And staying in North America, the oil fields of Canada are some of the largest industrial projects in the world, a sector dominated by a male workforce. We speak to The New York Times best-selling cartoonist Kate Beaton about her years spent working on the oil fields, a story she tells in her memoir Ducks. Carmen Khalil, the founder of the feminist publishing agency Virago, has died.

More about her life and commitment to women's writing coming up. And here's something we want to hear from you about. Britons are giving up trying to be trendy at 35, says a new poll. They're feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of trends, especially on social media fields, feeds rather. It's knocking their confidence. Some are feeling judged and others just don't think the latest styles suit them. Do you recognise any of these

feelings? Have you given up trying to follow fashion? Maybe you found your fashion mojo post 35. We'd like to hear from you and here is how you can do it. You can text the programme, that number is 84844. Over on social media you'll find us on the handle at BBC Women's Hour and of course you can email us through our website. And we're now on WhatsApp as well. You can send us an audio message using the number 03700 100 444. That's 03700 100 444. But let's begin with a story that we heard just there in our bulletin. Later this morning, more than 200 families in South East England will learn the results of a major inquiry into the maternity care

that they received from a hospital trust. The report into maternity services at East Kent Hospitals is expected to be harrowing. The medical experts reviewed an 11-year period from 2009 at two hospitals in Margate and Ashford. Two mothers who lost their babies at a hospital trust at the centre of a maternity scandal say that they felt that they were blamed for those deaths. Earlier, I spoke to one of those mothers, Helen Gittos, as she and her husband Alan and other families waited to be allowed to read that report. They lost their daughter Harriet in 2014,

and I asked her how she's feeling ahead of the release of the report at 11 o'clock this morning. I have a lot of faith in the way that the inquiry team have worked because they have taken a few numbers of cases and treated them really um they've taken a few number of cases and they've really worked very hard to understand what happened in each case and obviously we don't yet know what that will look like in reality but i think they have also tried to really be analytical and more so i think than the ockenden report was in terms of trying to work out what happened and who knew and who was taking what decisions and for that reason I hope that they will get a really detailed understanding of exactly what would happen in that place and that that will allow them to put

together recommendations that will be sufficiently better and stronger than they were for um than they were for balkan bay let's talk about harriet your little harriet i understand she passed away in 2014 tell us about her um she was She was a completely healthy, full-term baby. And when I first saw her, she looked so well. She had beautiful shock of hair and these lovely half-moon fingernails. She looked like a baby who was sleeping, but she was a baby who couldn't open her eyes and couldn't cry. How did it end up that way?

What happened, if you are able to share with us? I think problems began in the antenatal period, and I think that was really important. I think I had had an emergency caesarean section with my first child, and that had been quite traumatic and we were lucky that he survived. But he did. And I went to my very first consultant's appointment wanting to know what had happened

and what we could do to prevent it happening in the future and whether it was likely to happen again and to use those answers to those questions to plan my labour with Harriet. And I didn't get those answers and I was left for the entirety, almost the entirety of my pregnancy, trying to work out for myself where would be a safe place to give birth.

And the first chance that I had to talk through what had happened in my previous labour and to plan this one was about a month before my due date. And by that stage I had come to the view that I wanted to be in a co-located midwifery lead unit and I felt that if I'd had better midwifery care in my previous labor then we could have avoided what happened and I didn't want to have another c-section unless it was necessary and I was told that it was unlikely to happen again and so I asked if I could go on to the um the midwifery led unit within the hospital so I would be close enough to emergency care if I needed it um and that request was refused and I think by that stage I had just not been made to feel safe and I tried very hard to persuade myself to go onto one of the labour

wards I went and looked at them at both of them and in the end I just couldn't feel that that was a place where I could feel safe. And so we laboured in a house very close to the hospital, five minutes or so away. And things progressed quite slowly. It was a back-to-back labour. And eventually we were transferred into the hospital because of the slowness and the progress and and i think probably what happens in hospital was really crucial but that's also the bit that i'm least um certain about what happened because my contractions were very strong and were really very overwhelming.

But essentially, I think nobody really took control of the situation and responded to the signs of her distress fast enough. And so by the time she was born by emergency caesarean section she was she was very poorly and i think what you share helen is what so many women who have had traumatic birthing experiences can relate to the idea of not being listened to and not being made to feel safe that is a hugely powerful thing you've just said there and one that I too can relate to as a mother who has also lost a newborn baby. That feeling of not being made to feel safe when you are under the care of medical professionals, it is so powerful. There was a moment not very long ago when we gathered some of the families involved together for the first time.

Most of us had never met before. And the thing that we all shared was that about women not being listened to and women's medical care not being listened to. And being met so often with arrogance, with a sense of we know best and with a real lack of compassion but also a lack of curiosity and interest in finding out what this individual woman in front of you really needs in order for her to feel safe and really i just needed someone to sit down and talk it through with me who was interested in hearing what was what what I needed to feel safe and to work together to make that happen and I never found that person and I knew that I had not found a place where I felt safe even before she was born. So there was no one who you felt listened to you, not a single person? I had one excellent midwife and I saw her a few times in my pregnancy

and she was there briefly in my labour and she simply held my hand and looked me in the eyes and I was able then to talk to her about my fears and to ask her whether we were doing the right thing and I remember that vividly because it was so important to me but there was not enough of that. Helen, you are minutes away from going into a room with fellow bereaved parents, and you are all going to sit down and have, as you should do,

that first access to the findings of that report. And we have been told that what has been found is going to be harrowing, it's going to make for difficult reading. I imagine you all know each other very well by now but how are you all feeling as you embark on what is going to be 60 minutes of what's going to be a very testing experience for you for you all it's a really powerful mix of exhaustion and anxiety and hope. But it's terrible that we are only in that room because Sarah and Tom and Derek Richford,

in honour of their son and their grandson, have sacrificed so much to make it possible. And I just pay tribute to them with all my heart. And that's extremely gracious of you, considering all that you've gone through and all that they have gone through as well. One thing I do want to ask you before I let you go and be with the other parents is, when my little girl died and I just thought, how am I going to put the anger to rest? How will I put this to rest? Are you confident that this report may be able to put you on some kind of path to healing?

I think one of the effects of the way that we were treated afterwards has been to really delay my ability just to be able to grieve for my daughter and I so hope that today marks a change for us in being able to do that but I also know that I won't be able to stop watching this trust and I cannot bear the thought of being here in five years time and hearing similar stories and so I definitely hope that this will be the moment from which I can really begin simply to think about my daughter but I also know that I owe it to future parents that we have to ensure that the recommendations that they make are put in place and are not just a checklist of actions but are actually made to be meaningful. And that was Helen Gittos speaking to me a few minutes before we came on air and our thanks to

her taking the time to speak to me at what is such a difficult time for her and her family. We are expecting a response from East Kent Hospitals when the report is released later in the day, but this is what they've previously said. They've said, the death of any baby in a hospital maternity unit touches all of us. The loss of a life before it has barely begun

is always deeply saddening. It was clear that for some time the NHS had not provided all the people of East Kent with the high level of maternity care they need and deserve and we apologise from the bottom of our hearts. It is a story that we will continue to watch closely here on the programme and across the BBC. COP27, the UN's climate change conference, begins in a couple of weeks and the climate emergency is never far from the headlines. And since the war in Ukraine, energy security is at the top of the agenda for so many. How often, though, do you get an insight into the lives of the people who were getting oil out of the ground?

Well, Kate Beaton is best known for her feminist comic strips Hark! A Vagrant, a New York Times bestseller. And her new book, Ducks, is a graphic memoir which tells the story of her experience of two years working in the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. She first went there in 2006 at the age of 21 to pay off her student debts. The oil fields are the largest industrial projects in the world and their scale is hard to grasp. The reserves in Alberta are the third largest in the world and the black and white panels are an account of the loneliness and vulnerability she experienced during her time working there. She joins me now from her home in Cape Breton. Thank you for your time, for waking up so early for us there, Kate.

Let's start with the title of your memoir. It comes from an incident in 2008. At the end of your time there, can you tell me what happened and why you chose to use it as a title? Sure. In 2008, in the spring, hundreds of migrating ducks flew into a tailings pond at Sinkrud, which is like a large wastewater, basically. And they got stuck in the pond and they drowned. And it was an international sort of scandal at the time. It was because of the scale of the deaths.

It wasn't just a few animals, it was hundreds of animals. And it was the first time that Fort McMurray and the oil sands and what was happening there to the environment seemed to outside of Canada in a personal way, I think, to people. Because before then, there wasn't that much talk about it. But after then, the oil companies had to come out and apologize. And they were made to pay a fine. And they were made to put up things so that it wouldn't happen again. And so it was a really big changing moment for how people viewed the oil sands and I think how maybe people saw themselves. But also, there's a clear metaphor there as well, because the ducks were flying into a place, they were migrating and landing somewhere that they thought was safe,

but it was toxic. And you could say the same thing for different workers that come there. So the metaphor was quite apt. And possibly yourself as well, because you came from a small, close community. You made a journey that many of your fellow community members made. Tell us how you came to work in the fields. Sure. I'm from Cape Breton. And like many places on the Atlantic coast of Canada, we have exported labor for many generations. There's been a pattern of leaving and going to wherever the engines of capitalism

are running. And so for us at that point in the early 2000s, the big booming place was Fort McMurray and the oil sands. And that's where the money was. And that's where the jobs were and the opportunity. And it wasn't even really a question of like wanting to go or not. That was where everyone was going. And when you were from a place that exports labor for so long, it's very ingrained in you. You have to leave for work. You have to go where the work is. And often as a community, you sort of go together to the place where it is.

So I didn't really question it at the time. I went. I went with everybody that was going. It's very ingrained in the culture. There are songs, lots of songs about leaving and going for work and following everybody who's going and you know when you are from where I'm from that this is going to happen. There's an ingrained kind of melancholy about leaving home before you ever even do it. And that sense of place of belonging certainly comes through in what you've shared for us. And you capture also what is a complex working and social environment. And there are so many layers

and you beautifully tell this through this powerful monochrome art. You worked in a tool group, very male dominated. I know you said that lots of people left from your community, but it is and continues to be a largely male-working environment. And it was male-dominated, both in terms of the body language, the verbal language towards you, men rating women out of 10, being called pet names like Ducky, like Little Doll, and cases of sexual assault. Can you kind of paint us a picture of what you experienced and what really sounds like

became normalized in so many ways? Well, yeah, in an environment like that, it does become normalized. It's very shocking in the beginning because you don't have the social skills to deal with it, especially if you're young and inexperienced in that way. You go to a place that is predominantly male and you find out what it's like to work in those environments where the culture is, I would say, sort of toxic in that way. And the comments start coming and the advances start coming and they can be all kinds of shades of activity

from benign comments to aggressive ones to things that you can brush up easily to things that you can't. And you get very used to it. You get inert to how you would have felt in a real situation. And I say real as in like in regular society. But in these work environments, you're cut off from regular society. They are sort of liminal spaces that exist in their own rules and everyone is re-socialized.

And you have new rules to play by because you know that even though the companies say that they have zero tolerance for sexual harassment or whatever, that that's not actually the case on the ground. And there isn't always people there to help you. There are plenty of people there who are friendly and would never say anything to you and were fine and were nice, but it didn't matter if there were plenty others who made you uncomfortable. And when you're in that environment for long enough and it chips away at you and your sense of self or your sense of safety, sometimes, I think, at least for me, you become less aware of the danger around you because it's everywhere. It's important to stress that this was a number of years ago and the Canadian government has indeed been working on practices

to better the work environment on many levels there in the oil fields. But equally important to say that whilst you were there, there were people, men and women, who did have your back, that there was a sense of looking out for one another and that certainly came through especially when reading it amongst the women that you were working with yes definitely there were um it like i say it was a male dominated workforce but there were plenty of women there i said somewhere in the book book that the workplace could be 50 men for every woman. And that number got bounced around a lot in a lot of the reviews, but it wasn't always that

high. Sometimes it'd be 10 to one or something like that. It's still quite, you'd be quite outnumbered, but there were a good number of women there. And, and that, of course, that would be very meaningful when you made those connections with people. And, and I had friends and colleagues there who no one understands the way that you feel the way that, sorry, in way that uh someone else going through it does you know you're not crazy sorry excuse me i have a cold um and you're not very early for us so thank you yeah yeah and um uh and i mean i i am that's not uh that's not the right word, really. It's very, very difficult to explain to people who haven't been there exactly how it feels. And if you read the book, I've had different people from different industries, because this isn't just isolated to Poor McMurray or the oil sands. It happens in a lot of places where people read the book and say, I really feel seen reading this because I worked in a place like this.

And the way that it sort of broke me down made me feel very isolated and alone and you do feel that way I want to ask you just just before I let you go what would a 38 year old Kate say to a 21 year old Kate about the experience of working in the oil field oh god I don't know. Putting you on the spot there. Yeah, yeah, you are. I think that at the time, I believed what people said to me when they told me that I wasn't able to ask for a raise or that I wasn't able to demand better treatment or that I wasn't able to bring my grievances anywhere. And because you would be seen as the one complaining. And as an adult now, because I was almost a child you know i was i was 21 but i wasn't uh i was very inexperienced but i would tell that younger version of myself that i had more power than people told me i had and i don't have to believe them. Yes. Thank you so much, Kate Beaton there, behind the book, Ducks, a graphic memoir telling the story of her experience of two years working in the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. We thank you

for joining us here on Woman's Hour. Many of you have been getting in touch to share your reaction to this new poll that suggests that after the age of 35, we are losing interest in being trendy. That might feel that might be because we feel that we are being judged, that the styles don't suit us or simply because social media is putting too much pressure on us. Lots of you have been getting in touch and I do want to slip in a few of these messages. We've had this one from Kay who writes, I'm 60 and I do want to slip in a few of these messages we've had this one from Kay who writes I'm 60 and I love clothes and I've just had an email pop up in front of that and I love clothes but not fashion I'm trendy for my age you've had this one from Eleanor who writes 35 I don't think I've ever been trendy I've not got the body for it I'll settle for smart and fits well and this one another text that's come through from Melanie, who writes, I'm 46.

I love fashion as much as ever, although I rarely buy new now and try and buy secondhand fashion as much as possible. Thank you to all of you for getting in touch. And so many of you are. I will try to read you a few more of those messages

towards the end of the program. Carmen Carril, the publisher and writer who championed female writers and transformed the canon of English literature, has died of leukaemia in London yesterday at the age of 84. Khalil founded Virago Press, where she published a whole host of lost women's classics, including works by Elizabeth Taylor and Edith Wharton, as well as bringing in new writers to the list, such as Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood and Pat Barker. In 1982, she went on to be the publisher of Chateau and Windus, working with writers

such as Angela Carter, Toni Morrison and Alice Munro. She was also the first publisher of Hilary Mantle. Here she is last summer on Woman's Hour telling Emma Barnett why she set up Virago Press. I'd left publishing at that time because I couldn't stand working for lazy men anymore really, that was some of it. And I put in an ad that said anything outrageous suitably publicised. So I did that, They put my ad in and I did the publicity for them. And then a couple of weeks after I saw the first issue, I thought, well, if they can do that for magazines,

I can do that for books. And that's how it started. And the name Virago? Well, Rosie came up with, we were sitting on the floor in my sitting room in Chelsea, I think it was. Yes, Chelsea. And we were going through a book of gods and goddesses, you know.

You like to do. It was called Spare Rib Books. And the company that we got to finance our first books didn't like the name Spare Rib Books. They said we had to have a new name. And so Rosie and I went through the thing. And, of course, typical Rosie, she said, Virago's by far the best. And I said, absolutely right. And of course, typical Rosie, she said, Virago's by far the best.

And I said, absolutely right. And on we went. Well, let's bring in Lenny Goodings, the chair of Virago Press and also a good friend of Carmen, a very strong spirited character, a very robust natured character. We can hear that simply in that clip there.

What can you share with us about her early days? Well, when I first met her when I was in my early 20s, and I remember going into the Virago office, it was after they graduated from Carmen's dining room table, they took an office in Wardour Street above seedy Soho. And I walked up the staircase, four flights gasping for air by the top. And there was this room filled with three women, Carmen Kalil, Harriet Spicer and Ursula Owen, madly typing. And Carmen was ebullient. Carmen was passionate. She was exacting. She was she had very high standards, but she was also hugely generous, very passionate, taught me so

much about publishing, about caring for authors, about the importance of detail. Devil is in the detail would definitely be her. She had a little poster up on her notice board. The room was very tiny. We were all very crowded and three typewriters and two telephones and we all shared everything, including the cleaning. She had a little note on her notice board from Alexander Kolontai, a Russian revolutionary, talking about the importance of love and work. And work really mattered to her. Because like you say, work mattered to her, but she was someone who liked to have fun, wasn't she? Oh, she had so much fun. She had a big, big sense. She had a big personality, very tiny woman, but she had a huge personality. In fact, it took me years to realize that she was actually shorter than me.

She felt so big. And I'm not short. I am not tall, rather. Yes, she loved to sing. She used to sing in the office. I was an Ealing comedy song called I Just Want to Set the World on Fire. In fact, when she left Viraga, we got her a little jug and etched that, you know, thank you for setting the world on fire. Yes, no, she had she had huge appetites in every sense of that word.

And she had to have been quite the personality because I understand she didn't respond to an ad for a job to get into the sector, but she advertised herself. Yes. Speaks volumes about her nature. You've written a book called A Bite of the Apple. It's part memoir, part history of Virago and the last 40 years of feminist publishing. And listening to one of her previous interviews, Carmen talked not of seeing the sex of a writer, but simply looking at their writing instead. So keeping that in mind, how did she go about making Virago Press one of the most important and influential English language publishers in the world for women? She had a very strong sense of mission, I would say.

I mean, we all, I think most of us who work at Virago even have a vocation. Here I am still. But she had a mission. And one of the things she did is she looked around and she could see slightly what your last interviewer was talking about, actually, is that women's experiences were not on the page. And you have to remember, it was the 1970s, 1973. and it was the rise of the women's liberation movement. But in the publishing houses, it was mainly white, male, Oxbridge men, and who were not reflecting what was actually going on in the world. So what she did with Virago, and the other women who set it up with her, was she gave women the power to take their

own decisions. And that doesn't sound like a very revolutionary thing now, but it was. There were a lot of women in publishing at the time, but they weren't necessarily in power. They couldn't say, this book should be published. And there were a lot of books that weren't published as a result. I mean, I'm not saying that nobody was doing feminist books, but they weren't doing it in a concentrated way.

They weren't putting it under an umbrella and saying, you know, standing up for women, a sort of beacon for women, for saying that women's writing is not second class. Women's experiences deserve to be on the page. So there was that going on. And the other thing, which is still going on, for God's sake, which is there's not enough women were studied in the curriculum. You know, it's still today that is true, actually. Still today, women's writing is more read by women than men. And the reverse is not true. So, you know, she saw all of those things. And I think by putting it together, as I say, under this sort of beacon of the apple with the bite out of it, you know, sort of reminiscent of Eve taking a bite of knowledge. She put all of that together, put green spines on the books,

you know, so it was very visible. And it was, yeah, a beacon of hope, a beacon of protest. And it was also great literature. And an idea that came to her sitting in the pub. Yes, she sat in the pub. And it came out of, as she just said there, she did the publicity for Spare Rib Books. She also did the publicity for Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch. They went to the same convent school in Australia. And she had that, she could suddenly see from those two things that actually books could change the world. And in fact, that is what she said. I remember one of the nights of cleaning and I asked her when I was there and we were late at night and I said, why did you set up Virago?

And she said, to change the world, darling. That's why. She's grown or she grew to become your friend. She did. You know, we've, that kind of strength, I mean, one of the things I've been really reflecting on is that changing the world is not a job for people pleasers. And she was not always an easy person to work with because of her high standards, because of her exacting, and because she had a vision that she felt, you know, the rest of us should fall in with. She also wanted to set the world to rights on so many fronts, not just in terms of feminism, but also she was anti-Brexit and she felt very strongly about class. And so that kind

of strength is sometimes, you know, it's like a flame. You can get burned or you can get warmed by it and you can be inspired. And I've had all of those things. And you've continued to be loyal to the brand, to the company, to the ethos since you started working there at the age of 25. Going forward, what is the vision for this industry, for this sector, for the company? That's the funniest thing to be asked. This is, Vraga was a hugely successful imprint. And I always wonder, do other imprints who are successful get asked you know, are you still necessary? Do you still want to go on? You know.

I mean, the fact is, we represent women's voices and that is a job that's not over yet. Lenny Goodings, thank you so much for coming in to share some of your memories of Carmen Khalil. Thank you. Thank you. I do want to try and squeeze in a few

of your messages about being trendy. We've had this one who goes under the name of Lesley-Ann Green at Life Therapy, who says, my mom's 79 and she shops at Zara. Women don't stop being fashion conscious at 35. Life's just beginning, for goodness sake. A message there for you from Lesley.

Let's move on to something that we spotted on social media child free women in the 20 something age bracket are sharing videos outlining what their day-to-day lives look like using the hashtag stay at home girlfriends on tiktok the hashtag has had more than 31 get this 31 billion views of videos using that hashtag and it's garnered 170 million posts it's all about skincare and what their routines are from morning till the evening we are joined now by the digital culture commentator hannah van der pier and alex holder a personal finance expert and author of open up why talking about money will change your life Hannah, let me start with you. Good to have you on the programme. So these videos, they take viewers along for the day.

What do they show us? Yeah, so the stay-at-home girlfriend trend was once a deadly serious lifestyle blog kind of content, a very sort of day-in-the-lifestyle video. And usually we'd see these like incredibly, often incredibly affluent women, basically being bankrolled by a partner or perhaps parents. And it would be like this very idealized version of a daily routine.

So they would sort of wake up at 11 o'clock in the morning because they've actually had a restful sleep not because they've been on their phones all night and they'll sort of peel back the sheets the satin sheets and like these marble uh bedrooms about twice the size of my living room they'll go out they'll go out and they will run very light errands like posting a letter and maybe they'll go and have brunch in a high-end coffee shop or go to the gym come back do some yoga and slow cook a chili for their boyfriend and and that's their evening and um at first it was very aspirational content that people

really enjoyed and it is dividing the internet yes very much i think we're having a few problems uh with your line there we're just going to try and see if whether we can get your sound back there but let me move on to alex holder whilst we try and connect back to you alex welcome to the program what do you make of these of these videos well i think people are reacting because of what they say about the wider societal issues and because i guess at least on a surface level it goes against everything we've ever been taught about female empowerment um yeah and while we shouldn't have an issue with domestic work and being aspirational you know cleaning and caring or labors that we should definitely recognize but when they're prescribed to a gender I guess it can become dangerous. And there is a sense that from from

some who are concerned about what they're seeing is that these women are entirely financially dependent on their partners and there is a fine line between financial interdependency and codependency isn't there yeah and i don't think i mean we shouldn't mix mix this up with kind of financial control but i guess there is a reason that it's stay-at-home girlfriends and not stay-at-home boyfriends and it's because of the gender pay gap which in the uk still stands at 15.4 percent and it's rising last year it rose and so i guess that's why it's the stay-at-home girlfriend trend you know is it's reliant on men's earnings being greater than their girlfriends but some might just say these are young women making decisions about their own lives this is how they want to lead their lives in some for example, being a partner who stays at home to tend to the needs

of their husband or boyfriend would be called a homemaker, a job within itself. And many women, for example, go to work, come back and still carry out this role, still look after their partner for time. So is this not just giving women the autonomy to make that decision for themselves, but how they want to lead their lives. Absolutely. I think it's important to recognise that female autonomy and female empowerment comes in many forms. And I'd never want to say that a happy, free woman making choices is, say, an anti-feminist movement or goes against female empowerment. But does it reinforce outdated gender stereotypes? I think possibly. Yes, absolutely.

I'm not sure whether we have got Alex back with us, but a question really to... Hannah, excuse me. Yes, a question to both of you. I mean, is this a bit of fun? How problematic could this become i don't think we've got alex back so um oh we've not got hannah back okay i can answer go ahead go ahead so um well i guess you know one of the biggest problems is it's underpinned by the belief

that men's value in a wider world the men's value is in the wider world and women's value is at home. And I think it's kind of interesting that wags and housewives are still everywhere in culture. And we've always been obsessed with girlfriends of rich and famous men, you know, football wags or first ladies. And, you know, I think where it does get really problematic is always sending out the message that a woman is only as valuable as the man she is dating and how much he earns well there's lots to get into there and I'm afraid we are struggling to reconnect with Alex so we are going to have to leave my apologies I am going round in circles here Hannah van der Peer we are struggling to

reconnect with Hannah but we have had Alex speaking to us about her take on what is a trending hashtag over on TikTok with millions, billions of views and clicks. So thank you so much, Alex. My apologies for getting all the names mixed up as I try and figure out who we have on the line, but very good to have your insight. Alex Holder there, a personal finance expert

and author of Open Up, Why Talking About Money Will Change Your Life. And my thanks also to Hannah Van Der Peer, digital culture commentator, who we did hear from briefly about her reaction to this growing trend of stay-at-home girlfriends. More comments coming in on your desire to be or not to be trendy after the age of 35,

according to this new poll. This message writes, my desire to be trendy ended in age of 35 according to this new poll this message writes my desire to be trendy ended in my mid-20s when punk rock exploded on the scene i clearly remember thinking thank goodness i'm too old from this that is from julia this one from carrie who writes i'm 57 and have always worn what i like whether it's fashionable or not my clothes are all charity shop and many are kept for many, many years. And we've also had lots of you getting in touch in response to that maternity care report coming out shortly in about an hour's time.

The southeast of England, that report into maternity services at East Kent Hospitals. This message writes, there is absolutely no doubt that there are some appalling and unacceptable failings in our underfunded maternity services, but there are also some very unreasonable expectations from parents. My daughter was a dedicated caring midwife and she left a very stressful job

two years ago when the final straw was a threat of physical violence. So concerns there about the pressures that midwives face, which my guest Helen Gittos also mentioned, the fact that midwives were there to support her. But there are clearly concerns within the system. And another one here who writes, just listening to your report on maternity services, distressing stories for myself as I was a midwife. The reports of not feeling listened to are so awful. May I just tell how I helped one woman. She did not want a home birth and did not want

to labour in hospital. Her conditions were to have an elective section with a six-hour discharge. I negotiated with various professionals and her wishes were fulfilled and we were able to support her and not create difficult barriers for her. So an example there of how the system can work for many women but equally concerns about how it does not for so many we will learn more about that report at about 11 o'clock on to something else in the in the united states the decision to overturn roe v wade in the u.. may have been a few months ago now, but the impact is still being felt. There are growing concerns that access to birth control may be at risk. And in the days after the news broke, Google searches in the U.S. peaked for the words sterilization and vasectomy. And the morning after pill sold out with major chains being forced

to ration supplies. So are women in America changing the way they feel about having children? And what else has changed as a result of Roe v. Wade? Female sterilization remains the most popular form of birth control in the U.S., and reports suggest that more young women are requesting sterilization. Well, let's speak to Holly Hondrick, a BBC journalist based in Washington, D.C. Good to have you on the programme, Holly. Just tell us, if you can, what impact Roe v. Wade and the changes to that,

what impact that's had on young women in particular in the U.S.? I think it depends, obviously, who you ask. For the women, I think they see this as a victory 50 years in the making. But, of course, the majority of Americans do support abortion, and for women on the pro-choice side, they're devastated. I spoke to an advocate just yesterday who said that it's been months of just sort of unabiding rage as their rights are taken away from them. I think as well, there's a lot of confusion and anxiety about what comes next. How far will states go to ban abortion? At what point in pregnancy? And how may states go forward in banning other forms of reproductive care, including birth control? Because those debates do continue. We had President Biden yesterday

saying that if he kept control of Congress in the midterm elections, he would sign a law guaranteeing the nationwide right to abortion. This might sound confusing to our listeners. How would this even be possible? I'd say, first of all, it's highly unlikely. This will be up for election next month for the midterm elections. So not presidential, but senators, congressmen and women, they'll be up for election in a few weeks. Biden is saying if he gets a strong enough majority, if his party rather gets a strong enough majority in both House and Senate, so both bodies, they'll pass a law guaranteeing abortion rights. That was something he likes to say. Highly unlikely. I think the Republicans are expected to take the House. The Democrats simply won't

have the numbers to do so. But he's basically suggesting the legislature will circumvent the court's decision. And there are concerns, aren't there, that some states could try to challenge forms of birth control because of the wording of their abortion bans and hence our conversation about sterilization. What more can you tell us about that? I think it's first to make clear that birth control is legal in every single U.S. state. So right now there are no bans on birth control. There can be in some states prescribers and providers are allowed to deny coverage, but there's no bans on birth control in the U.S. The concern is that the Supreme Court might use the rationale they used in Dobbs, which

is the case that overturned Roe, to then overturn other precedents that guaranteed birth control. Because the way the judges worded it, they think, okay, they're going to use this logic and expand it across to birth control. I think there's also worries about a chilling effect when laws, you know, say that you can't have abortion at the point of conception. What does that mean? Are IUDs allowed? Are birth control pills allowed? What gets in the way of these bans? And Idaho, for example, where there is a ban on abortion at the point of conception, a university there has told staff they cannot provide any birth control because they're worried about getting in trouble with the law. Interesting. Thank you for putting this all into context for us. That's Holly Hondrick there my colleague in Washington DC well let's continue this conversation and bring in Olivia Downs who is 23 years old and from Los Angeles and Dr Larissa

Calder an obstetrician and gynecologist for NHS England thank you to both of you for joining us Olivia let me start with you because you are someone who doesn't want to have children in fact you want to get sterilized how did you come to that decision? Well when I was younger and I had first gotten my first period I was talking to my mother and I knew that she didn't get her period because she had had endometrial ablation which is where they kind of sear off the inner uterine lining and I was like well why can't I just have that like I don't want to end up with my period and And she was like, well, if you do that, you won't be able to have kids. And also you're like 13, so they're not going to do that for you.

And I was, I thought about it for a second and I was like, you know what? I think I'm like totally okay with not having kids. And I've kind of just been that way ever since. And now it's 10 years later and here we are. So a decade later, you still feel the same way. What kind of a reaction have you had from family and friends? My parents were a little bit disappointed. My mom was understanding.

For the most part, my friends are understanding, but I've actually gotten the most pushback from that decision, pushback on that decision from my guy friends, which is kind of, it's a little odd to think of. What kind of things do they say to you? They're like, well, what about your husband? He's going to want kids. Like, you should just be a mother.

And it's kind of just like, okay, that's a super outdated way to think, but, you know, to each their own. And it's like, I'm not getting married to you, so why are you so upset? So you stand by that decision. In terms of having the procedure carried out. What have been your options? Have you faced any hostility from any of the medical centers you've been to, for example? I've only been to one gynecologist so far and she said absolutely not when I asked and she gave me a whole bunch of like a laundry list of reasons as to why not.

Saying that I was too young, I might change my my mind what if I get married and my husband wants kids it was just kind of like a whole bunch of stuff she didn't really even offer to hear me out as to why I wanted to get sterilized she just kind of immediately wrote it off so I am seeking you know other OBGYNs to go see and ask about that decision so you are standing by your decision you are young you are 23 years old you have many years still to be a mother um is there even a tiny voice in your head that says one day you might want to have children there is a little voice but for the most part it's my thing is that i just don't want to physically give birth myself i would love to you know if i did just choose to have a child, I would adopt or maybe go through a surrogate or something like that. But my main thing is that I don't want to be pregnant myself.

So it's something that's not really like ever going to change my mind. It's the actual process of being pregnant. Olivia, thank you for your honesty. It's really good to speak to you and get that insight from a young woman there in the United States who is seeking sterilisation. Let's get some medical expertise on this now and speak to Dr Larissa Corder, an obstetrician and gynaecologist for NHS England. Good to have you with us, Larissa, I think practically all of us would agree that the decision over in the state is appalling in terms of overturning the right to abortion, that the fundamental pillars of all our democratic society should be choice and consent and removing that from women, whether

it be to do with their right to abortion or their right to a form of birth control, is just wrong. And it's going to lead, I suspect, to many, many complications and problems, which will not just be mental and emotional, but deeply traumatic, especially for the children that are born through this way. But I want to go back to this point of sterilization and, you know, the rise we've seen, the reflex rise we've seen over in the USA, because it strikes me that what is happening here is that reproductive injustice is kind of spilling over into reproductive coercion, where women are kind of being forced into now undertaking sterilisation. Olivia's case is entirely different to this, I must stress, because she seems like she's doing this for her own personal reasons and she's taken the time to actually reflect on what she wants to do with her life and has come to that decision herself without it necessarily being related to the Roe v. Wade argument.

But for other women, there is the potential that what is happening and removing this right to abortion is going to lead them to taking more permanent more shall we say um you know potentially dangerous options of birth control because doing a laparoscopic procedure to cut off or tie your tubes is associated generally with more complications so this is a really serious form of birth control that women will choose to undertake just because they don't have a right to abortion. And if you look at things historically over in the States, but globally as well,

there are very sinister echoes of what happened before where marginalised groups of women, so women with disabilities, women suffering with certain illnesses, women of colour, those who were underprivileged or poor were forced into mass sterilizations in the past, which led to huge consequences and trauma for them. And what we're seeing now, if you look at the figures in the USA, that Latina and indigenous women are twice as likely to be approved for sterilization. So, you know, is this a form of also eugenics where, you know, white, able-bodied, cisgender women are going to be the only ones able to travel and access the kind of, you know, birth control and procedures that they need? I think there are, you know, huge distortions going on here. And I'm really worried for the

people of the U. the US where birth control you know isn't necessarily free access to birth control isn't as easy as in the UK paid parental leave just doesn't exist as far as I understand there's no sex education which is compulsory there's no proper child care or health care in place that you don't have to pay significant amounts of money for and those concerns that you that you that you highlight are widely debated in the u.s both with regards to to roe v wade options for sterilization as well um but we've also seen that um what has happened in the united states has spilled over to other countries that women elsewhere are concerned about what they're seeing that they could see

something similar happening in their country. Are we seeing a rise in the number of young women here in the UK seeking sterilisation, for example? Well, you know, thankfully we're not seeing any significant rises in terms of the number of women requesting sterilisation. If you look at the figures between 2018 and 2019, there were around 13,000 sterilization procedures performed in the UK, and 2,000 of those were in women under the age of 30. Most of those women also had had children.

So, you know, we're not quite seeing the spillover in the UK, but there are huge differences in the UK and the US at the moment in that, thankfully, we are allowed access to abortion services here and all these other things that I mentioned you know birth control is is free here um parental leave is better it's it's not great or ideal by any means but it is better than in the US um and also sex education has become compulsory here yes so you know there's a lot of things that are, thankfully, much better on this side of the Atlantic. But inevitably, we do continue to watch what happens in the United States closely. Thank you so much, Larissa Corden. I do have to leave it there. Larissa Corden, an obstetrician and gynaecologist for NHS England.

Earlier, I was joined by Olivia Downs. And prior to that, Holly Hondrick, my colleague at BBC Washington. This is, of course, a debate surrounding Roe v. Wade and what happens going forward. That debate does continue in the United States. Hugely divisive, of course. And we will keep across it here on Woman's Hour. Thank you to all of you who have been sending in your many messages about fashion trends. Do keep them coming in on the handle at BBC Woman's Hour.

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