Woman's Hour - Supporting young mental health

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, we look at why it’s important to discuss mental health and trauma with young people. The Mental Health Foundation reports that 70% of children and young people who experience a mental health problem have not had appropriate interventions at a sufficiently early age. Why does this matter and what impact can it have on a child’s progression and adulthood? Ebinehita Iyere is a youth practitioner and works with young people who have experienced trauma or grown up in difficult circumstances. Anneli Roberts is a mental health campaigner and blogger.Could Covid-19 lead to the end of the some girls' right to an education? Room to Read is a global NGO working in 16 countries supporting literacy programmes and girls in secondary education. Sarah Myers Cornaby , Senior Development Director for Europe and Africa says many of the thousands of girls they mentor may never return to school after the pandemic.Woman’s Hour Corona Diaries are creating a unique social record of the thoughts and experiences of women during this extraordinary time. Today listener Polly, who lives in Normandy tells us how her daily online musings help her keep in touch with friends and family back home. The Plague in the 14th century took millions of lives. But those who survived led to increased wages, higher employment, migration to towns and, ultimately, to greater independence for women. Professor Marion Turner teaches at Jesus College, University of Oxford and is an expert on medieval England and argues that pandemics and major unexpected events have had some positive consequences.Presented by Jenni Murray Produced by Jane ThurlowInterviewed guest: Ebinehita Iyere Interviewed guest: Anneli Roberts Interviewed guest: Sarah Myers Cornaby Interviewed guest: Marion Turner

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 20th of May. In today's programme, an international organisation called Room to Read. As girls in this country get ready, hopefully for a return to school, thousands of girls across the world will find the pandemic means an end to their right to education. What can be done to help them? Susan Cadogan, whose 70s song Hurt So Good with a massive hit, has had a series of summer concerts cancelled thanks to the virus. We meet her in London. Today's Woman's Archerona diarist is Polly, who moved to Normandy

six years ago. How does her experience in France compare with that of her friends at home? And the history of the Black Death in the 14th century. Why did the plague lead to more employment, better wages and greater independence for women? Now, as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, today we'll discuss mental health and trauma among young people. The Mental Health Foundation says around 70% of young people who experience such problems don't receive the help they need at a sufficiently early age. What effect can that have as they reach teenage and become adults?

Annalie Roberts is a mental health campaigner and blogger. Ebonita Yeri is a therapeutic diversion practitioner. Ebonita, how would you describe the kind of work you do? Hi, so I would describe the kind of work that I do as working therapeutically with young people who first come into contact with the criminal justice system. And my work involves offering them emotional support when they come into police custody, as well as I'm the founder of Milk and Honey, which offers young girls a safe, expressive space. And Anneli, what kind of work do you do? Hi, I'm a mental health campaigner, as you said. I'm also a domestic violence survivor. So I write and podcast about my journey and recovery

and encourage others to open up about their own mental health and ask for support. And how often do they come to you? Do they find it easy to ask for support? People do sometimes come to me, but I'm not professionally trained, so I would be signposting them to other services in that case. I can only listen as a friend, not as a medical professional, but yeah, regularly, daily. And Ebonita, what sort of experiences have the young people you work with had? A lot of the girls that I work with have a range of different experience. A lot of the girls that I support come from backgrounds where they already feel unheard

before they come into contact with the systems that support them so that could be through the education system or through the justice system and even social care and or experience domestic violence through physical or even witnessing it but what through the work that I found is that offering them the emotional support and being able to ask them how they are and how they feel rather than why did they do what they did offers them a space to open up and we can support them on that journey and how do they come into contact with you so we get referrals from social care education and of course if they come into contact with the justice system but the girls recently we started getting a lot more referrals from schools and social care and that's where the

work I would say of milk and honey kind of progressed to understanding the need of a certain demographic of young girls that we support what do you mean by a certain demographic of young girls that we support. What do you mean by a certain demographic? So the girls that I get referred tend to be young black girls and that doesn't mean that I only work with young black girls but I tend to get younger black girls referred to me because of the lack of understanding of their mental health and the lack of understanding around their experiences navigating society and safe spaces. Annalie, you mentioned that you had experienced domestic violence, but I seem to think that you've had quite a long experience with mental health problems. What have those experiences been? Well, I was aware of my mum's mental health issues while I was growing up. She

had borderline personality disorder and she really struggled throughout different times of my childhood. She was very loving though you know my parents were not abusive of me. The domestic violence was later. I've lived with panic attacks and anxiety for as long as I can remember, but wasn't really aware of what was going on until I was around 17. And also I've had the experience of domestic violence later in my life and now live with the effects of the trauma from that. What sort of help were you able to get when you were young? Very minimal. I had a counsellor for a very brief period while I was at school that one of the teachers referred me to and that's it really.

Emanita, why would you say so many young people don't get help early enough? I think it's the way that we talk about mental health to young people, the fact that we don't speak about it, the fact that young people are not taught right from the start of education what mental health is, how it impacts them, is why I think young people struggle to be able to reach out to adults when they're going through things. What difference, Annalie, would it have made to you if someone had recognised that you were having problems and had spoken to you about it when you were young? A huge difference. It's difficult to know just how much, but definitely a huge difference. I think that there's this assumption that, you know, mental health is something for adults, but children are just as likely to encounter traumatic events. And I think, for me,

it certainly would have meant that I had the skills to reach out for help earlier, because I would have known the correct language to use and being able to recognise what I was going through. And Ebenezer, what sort of traumatic events have the girls you deal with experienced? So like I mentioned earlier, it could range from domestic violence to even school exclusions. We don't talk about the impact of school exclusions. It could be loss of a friend and or family member but all these experiences layer they layer on top of each other and impact the girls more because of the lack of services that directly attend to their needs and like she mentioned earlier the language that is used also sometimes makes them feel more of a victim and more negative than they should so what sort of language do you use when you're talking to them?

I use very empathetic, focused language. I use language that is digestible. I also let them lead the conversation. And I don't always expect a young person to talk. There's various different ways that we use in communication. So whether that's through drawing, poetry, even photography, allowing young people to express themselves in the way that they want enables them to process what they're going through. And that's why language around mental health for young people should be digestible. And how easy is it, Evanita, for you to reach the very young the very young um since i did my training so i'm currently doing a therapeutic well-being um diploma since i did my training i worked in a primary school it's a lot easier i think people think that young people under the age of 10 are going to not understand what's going on or understand mental health but they have a vast

they have such colorful communication is the way that I love to describe it with them that they show that they do understand the things that we are saying it's just the language that we use is too big for them. Annalie what happens to young people who don't get the kind of help you and Ebonita are talking about? Well I suppose if you send people into the world possibly who have experienced trauma and don't have the tools to deal with the trauma or to be able to communicate clearly about it then they're not going to be able to cope with adult life as well as they should. And it could potentially cause them and others unnecessary pain. And what sort of improvements, Ebonita, have you witnessed in the youngsters you have helped? I've witnessed them develop strength, resilience.

I've witnessed them teach me, my team and the sector that I work in so much about ourselves. And I think sometimes we focus on the progress that they're making, like they need to be fixed. That's not my aim and the role that I play in their lives. The whole thing around working with these girls and the young people that we support in general is the progress that they make through life and through society and being able to express themselves in a way that other people would be able to understand but the main thing is I see strength a lot of strength in the young people that I support well Ebenita Ieri and Annalie Roberts thank you both very much indeed for being with us and if

you've had experience of this whether it's your own children or you were a child and suffered like this and found a way of getting help then do let us know about it we'd like to hear from you you can either tweet us or of course you can send us an email now the heated discussions about when children in the united kingdom might be allowed to return to school continue. But what's certain is that the right to education for both boys and girls is a given. That is not the case in many other parts of the world and there are concerns that thousands of girls may find the pandemic will mean they will never go back to school. Room to Read is a non-government organisation which works in 16 countries around the world supporting literacy programmes and girls in secondary education. Sarah Myers-Cornerby is

the Senior Development Director for Europe and Africa. Sarah, why are you concerned that girls may not get to go back to school well good morning yes we are deeply concerned that this is the case there are over 1 billion children out of school around the globe and it's unprecedented we do know from past epidemics such as Ebola that all aid agencies reported that girls did not return to school and that they saw an increase in teenage pregnancies. So Room to Read is very concerned that there needs to be a global momentum

around girls' right to return to school. So what happens to them during the crisis, before it all comes to an end? Well, you need to look at the position prior to the crisis in that girls are not well represented at secondary school as it is. If you have 100 boys in secondary school in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, you likely only have 82 girls, maybe in some places only 66 girls. So that was why Room to Read developed its secondary school programme in order to support girls to transition into secondary school and stay in school. And the risks that they report, the reason that girls drop out of school is poverty, is the burden of care within the

household maybe on girls, is that they are entering child marriage or that they're at risk of trafficking. And all of those risks in the context of the pandemic are exacerbated. What do you know that actually happened to girls during the Ebola crisis? So there were widespread cases of abuse reported. There was definitely an increase in teenage pregnancies. To put it into context now, we've heard just recently from our team in Nepal of one girl, a 14-year-old girl, who is on our girls' education programme since the school closures that child has got married and that simply wouldn't have happened if she'd been in the school context she would have

had ready access to her room to read mentor she would have had teachers she would have had a school friends around her i just don't think she would have dropped out and you'll hear more cases like that. How could the school have prevented that in in a community where it's considered perfectly okay for a young secondary school girl to be married off? That is exactly the challenge that Room to Read tries to work on and the tools that we use we have a risk and response tool that in the normal school context we would monitor is the is the girl attending her life skills classes are parents coming to parent teacher meetings do we have word that the child is struggling academically in any way has she failed an exam recently? We would look for

red flags that might point to the fact that the girl will drop out of education or be persuaded to drop out of education. And we've adapted that tool to adapt for the pandemic so that we're monitoring things like on a yes or no basis so that the girls can easily answer. Are you able to study at home? Has anybody in the family lost income? Do you see any risk to not being able to return to school? And when we have that data, we're able to intervene and see what we can do to reach out to the parents

and ensure the girls' safety and wellbeing and that she do to reach out to the parents and ensure the girls safety and well-being and that she will be coming back to school as far as getting education at home presumably a lot of these parents would not be capable of doing home education because they may not have had education themselves what can you do to help the young girls have an education whilst they are stuck at home? It's exactly that. So we've been pivoting our programs. We're very well bedded into the communities that we work in and very well connected with government. And so we've been trying to make sure that we make our literacy materials available. So when families come to collect food parcels, for example, they'll receive

colourful local language books that we publish. They'll receive teaching materials. We're trying to connect with families by any means over radio, over TV. As you say, there's a digital divide, so we can't easily access these children but we're making sure particularly for girls that we find a way to them through the phone wherever we can we're working through all the networks of their neighbors their family to make sure that we can get a phone call going between the girl and her mentor what difference we can continue to provide life skills support through that route and ensure that she's continuing to engage with education and what what difference does even a short spell in secondary school make to a girl's prospect it's fantastic and that's the thing education endures. Education is such a game changer. If you take a girl and you have just

one year of secondary education, that girl's future earnings will be 15 to 25 percent higher. And if she completes secondary education, she will marry later, she'll have fewer children there'll be less infant mortality and she'll be able to teach the children to read and write herself so everything changes in her life sarah myers cornaby thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning still to come in today's program susan cadogan hit Hurt So Good was very big in the 70s. She was to have performed this summer in the UK and Europe. We meet her in London. And the history of the plague, why it led to greater independence for women.

Now, looking ahead to next Monday, we're going to be discussing having a baby during this global pandemic. We'd like to hear from you about how you're coping with pregnancy, birth and becoming a parent. We'd really like to hear from you if you're black, Asian or from a minority ethnic community or if you had COVID-19 when your baby

was born. Whatever your experience do email us the program through the website with your contact details and then we can come back to you. And then earlier this week, you may have missed a conversation about musicals and why so many people see the same one over and over again. And yesterday, what gardening can do for your mental health. You can find The Woman's Hour podcast, of course, on BBC Sounds. Now, as you may be aware, ever since the crisis began,

we've been putting together the Woman's Hour Corona Diaries, which is making a unique audio record of what's been happening to women in recent weeks. Polly moved to Normandy from the UK in 2014, and she's been writing her own diary to keep in touch with her family and friends and record how different are the experiences of those living in the UK and those who are in France. Polly I know you kept a diary when you were younger and then gave up what prompted you to start again? Unprecedented coronavirus really the lockdown and the fact that we were forcibly separated from friends and family and to record what was going on in France so that we can look back on it in in years to come to see what how we coped and what we did. So what sort of things have you been writing to them about how you've coped um the way you feel

in the morning when you get up and you can't hear anything it's silent absolutely silent uh the birds are louder i talk about the animals we have on our farm we talk about the the food i cook um pairing socks uh putting makeup on for the first day in 20 days putting on my watch after 60 days just mundane doings of of the day really to let people know we're doing okay and it's all right but how it's also changing in comparison to france and the uk because there are differences obviously why did you not put on a watch for 60 days? I don't know, just out of habit, really. I just stopped wearing it because time became irrelevant.

Days became irrelevant. Luckily, I've been able to work, but I didn't need to know the time. I didn't need to have a timetable for anything. Just get up, eat when you're hungry and sleep when you want to sleep and garden when you want to garden. So it's been really liberating in that respect. Now you do run a small holding. What difference has that made to your food situation?

Presumably you're pretty self-sufficient. Well, we are actually. We have sheep and lambs. In in fact a lamb was born this morning so that's really good news um and we make sausages and we have bacon we make bacon and and things so we are fairly self-sufficient obviously it's not quite the time for um our big uh allotment to produce vegetables just yet but everything is planted We've been able to spend really good eight weeks of clearing the garden and clearing the four hectares that we have so that we have for this year an absolute, well, we should hopefully have an abundant crop. But no, it's

good. It has helped us out incredibly. And I've delivered bits and pieces to friends with proper COVID measures, of course, to make sure that people have got eggs and sausages and bacon and things. So it's been great. So how do France and the UK compare when it comes to dealing with the virus? The main difference that we have recognised is we get British media and we hopefully see French media, the French have been very much more specific. It's been very much more prescriptive, if you like, from a lockdown point of view.

We haven't been able to leave the house unless you want to go out, unless we have a permission slip. We have the déconfinement now, which is we're allowed to go out up to 100 kilometres without having a permission slip. We have had the déconfinement now, which is that we're allowed to go out up to 100 kilometres without having a permission slip. But it's been very clear what we've had to do, what we need to do. The relaxing of the lockdown has been much clearer. The schools are just starting, but it's every two weeks and it's every only 10 children in a class and things like that. So it's very gradual. And regardless of how one feels about political leaders, they've all got a job to do. But the clarity of communication appears to have been much more clear and concise.

What about your children then? How has their schooling progressed through this? So a big challenge. The French aren't very used to working from home or used to working remotely, but the teachers have really stepped up. My daughter is in her final year of middle school and she has her brevet to do, but that's been cancelled. Brevet is the equivalent of the GCSE. so she's been doing her online classes with her cohort and with her teachers doing her homework which has been a really good a real good learning lesson for everybody. My son is doing an online A-level course anyway so we've had a challenge

with the British system with regards to making sure he can have his grades assessed online and at a distance. So it's in terms of physically, they haven't seen any friends, they haven't seen anybody, but they've been in contact using social media. Of course, at 14 and 18, they're very much into that. And they have the opportunity of having British friends and French friends. So they have a world. But school, educationally wise, they seem to have flourished. Jessica seems to have been able to pick up everything. And our son also is doing well.

So, yeah, it's good. Polly, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. And I hope things continue to go well for you. Thank you. Now, Herd So Good was a massive hit in the 1970s, launching the career of a young woman from Kingston, Jamaica, called Susan Cadogan. You may remember seeing her on Top of the Pops. Well, Susan was actually a librarian called Anne. She'll be 68 this year, and she's still singing and would be giving concerts here and in Europe had they not, of course, been cancelled because of COVID-19. Joanne Tai went to meet her in a chilly rehearsal room in London.

Drum kits. Drums are set up, the keyboard. Sarah is here. She's a saxophonist and flautist. And I am chilly. You're going to get warmer. Oh yes, in here we'll get hot. Just like under the lights on the stage. Sweat. When I finish doing my show, I mean, that's what brought you to the public attention all over the world. And certainly from a UK perspective, there's a very famous appearance of you on Top of the Pops.

Now, I've heard a story to do with your glasses and your contact lenses. Oh, mercy. Well, from I was 10, I've worn glasses. I'm very short-sighted, and I had thick lenses back in those days. So when I came up, my glasses were thick, and of course I couldn't go on television with them, so they just took them off. I was supposed to get some contacts, but I weren't ready in time, so the very first top of the pops that I did, I really couldn't see.

I couldn't focus, so I was just lost in my song. But they said I was very professional. Do you look back at that performance ever and think of the young woman you were then in 1975. I am forced to look back at it because people are always posting it you know in this what I call the dreaded red jumpsuit that was made for me by some um some male seamstresses. This was a red jumpsuit with a big opening showing my navel. I was very upset, almost in tears.

I wouldn't go on. They had to run to the dressing room and get a piece of cloth and sew it in and stuff. What kind of person do you see there in 1975 compared to now in 2018? Gosh, what a long time. When I look back at that, I was what in Jamaica you call young, fresh and green. I consider shyness. I was so slim. In fact, I was what Jamaicans call mauger, meager.

You know, they say that as a young black woman to be on BBC, every black person was tuned to watch. And my big Afro thing. I remember they put these big earrings on me. Every time I swung my head, the earring would box me in my cheek. It was so funny. To me, looking back, it was fun. But I don't relate to that person at all. Honestly, it's hard. What about the song though? Because it was that song that made you famous. It was a cover of a Millie Jackson song. And I always think that the lyrics are so interesting. Does love have to hurt like that? Yes, I think that's what made this song. Two opposites, because you don't associate hurt with good. To get the good, sometimes you have to go through the bad. But it's about a love affair full of pain. Yes. And this person is causing you pain,

but yet you love them so much. They're putting you through turmoil. Isn't all love like that? I don't think you can find someone who has been in love or in a love affair who can't tell you that. Are you grateful for that song? I have to be.

I mean, I never kind of went out with the intention of being a singer. I didn't go around to studios and try and record or send out tapes. I just happened to have a good friend who had a boyfriend who wanted to produce a song, and she told him that I could sing. I was always singing. I knew all the popular songs, and I'd sing with my broom. I just happened to be down at Lee Perry's studio singing for him. And Lee Perry said,

Oh, I like your singer voice and all. Let her to me now. But one thing he didn't like was your name. After I finished singing, I said, So what's your name? And I'm Anne, because my name is Alison Anne. And he said, Anne? Oh, man. Susan. He said, that's sexy, man, because you have a sexy voice. Did you accept it there and then, or did you think, why are you giving me a new name? You know, nobody has ever asked me that. Let me tell you I'm very cool and easy going. After all these

years I think most of my family including daddy they're a bit jaded over the whole thing because I've never been able to earn my living from it. So now I'm older they think I should just, why are you bothering but that's all I have and all I love at this stage of my life. So talking about earning a living you didn't always just stick with the music did you because you started as a librarian and you bounced back to that several times. Like a rubber ball as the song says you know. I was working in the library when I recorded Hurt So Good. And I resigned four times from the library to go and sing. Because I wasn't earning.

And I'd sign up for a couple weeks and I'd be off. Next thing it turned to months. Next thing I resign. Come back in six months. Can I have my job? Yes. Love me baby. Like I love you.

I think the kind of voice I have suits love songs. I sing some conscious lyrics. Like I did write a song called Homeless, Born to Lose, about some people I saw on the street, and that always touches me. I wrote one called Sign of the Times about the bombings but I think mostly love I write about and to me there's so much hurt in love for true you know. They have more unhappy people out there and it's love that causes it. There's an album of yours called Two Sides of Susan.

What are the two sides of Susan? I do have two sides, it's all the same, you know. Because you see me sitting down here talking to you, I'm Anne. And when I put on my contact lenses and stuff and get on the stage, something goes on and I change into Susan

and I start to get dramatic and carry on. I'm highly influenced by Dame Shirley Bassey. You see, she uses her arms and things a lot. See, that's how I am. Of course, you all know that there's been a lot in the news recently about the Me Too campaign and sexism and sexual harassment in the entertainment industry. What about in the music industry? What have you been through or have you been through it? Oh, I look back and I know I have been through it a lot. I suppose most female artists will know

that a lot of producers like to want to have an affair with you, and then they record you more or push you more. I remember once I went with this promoter. When I got there to do the show, he said, Oh, I can stay by his house with himself and his wife. So I said, fine. When I went to the house, where is the wife? But anyway, after the show, I went to my bed and this

man comes in my bedroom. He thought we could spend the night together. I said, what? Excuse me. And you get paid less too. You cannot even be nice because they take it the wrong way or whatever. Sometimes you would really genuinely fall in love with somebody but you know harassment different from that kind of true feeling but I think it's interesting that you say you weren't able to make a financial success of music for all these years was that a form of discrimination sometimes just because you're a woman they might might treat you, deal with you differently and less seriously. They will offer you less art because they've realized your personality, your soft-on thing, you know. Can I ask a favor? Can you sing a little bit of Hurt So Good? First you take my heart in the palm of your hand

And squeeze it tight And then you take my mind And play with it all night You take my pride And you throw it up against the wall But then you take me in your arms, baby And bounce me like a rubber ball. I'm not complaining what you're doing, you see.

Because this hurting feeling is so good to me. Because don't you know that it hurts so good? Well, don't you know that it hurts so good? Well, don't you know that it hurts so good? It hurts so good. See? You're a singer now. Susan Cadogan spoke to and indeed sang with Siobhan Tai. Now, in the 14th century another pandemic known as

the Black Death had a disastrous effect on people across the world. It's estimated that around 75 million people died but for those who survived there were unexpected positive consequences. I'm joined by Professor Marian Turner who teaches at Jesus College in Oxford and is the author of Chaucer, A European Life which is on the short list for the Wolfson History Prize this year. Marion what were these positive consequences? Hello Jenny, well about a third to a half of the population died. So this is a pandemic on the kind of scale that it's really hard for us to imagine. And I'm sure for those who survived, the psychological consequences must have been absolutely appalling. But the financial and economic consequences were actually good for those who survived because there was still the same amount of land to farm, for instance,

but many fewer people to do it. So what happens very generally is that wages go up, because labour is very much in demand, there is a labour shortage. And that means that if your local landlord isn't paying enough, you go somewhere else, and they're willing to pay you more. So people started moving more, literally, but also metaphorically, there was more social mobility, people had more opportunities. And one thing that they did was lots of people started to migrate to towns and cities, people started to take their chances there more to go and see what other kinds of things they might be able to do in life. How was women's independence improved? So this migration to towns affected women in particular. There's records of a high number of women migrating to towns. And so what we see is many more women entering into the labour market.

So women had more economic independence. So rather than moving from their parental home to a husband's home, you've got more women having a period of time in their life in which they are earning money. And of course, as we all know, economic independence and sexual independence are very much linked, because now a lot more girls are, were able to earn money and then think to themselves, well, if I am going to marry I've got more choice I don't have to do what my parents say because I've got other other options I can still earn money and then when they did marry it was easier for them to set up their own homes they were also then marrying later and this is also a really crucial point because of course

if you marry later you have fewer fewer children. That has health consequences. But it also meant that those women were then often able to invest more in those children. Now, the wife of Bath is, I think, the best known of Chaucer's characters. How does she exemplify the opportunities women had? So Chaucer writes the Canterbury Tales at the end of the 14th century. So Chaucer was a man who was about six when the plague hit and grew up right through this post plague economy in this world of social change. And he was someone who came from a mercantile background who lived in the city. His whole Canterbury group, I think we can see as emerging from this post-plague

world, because he focuses a lot on cities, on merchants, on all kinds of economic activity. And the wife of Bath, who I absolutely agree, she is the best known character. She was also Chaucer's favourite character. So he talks about the wife of Bath in lots and lots of different texts. And although she has lots of literary antecedents, she's also very much a product of the late 14th century environment. The wife of Bath is a woman who married many times, who took advantage of England's good inheritance laws, which meant that women could inherit very large proportions of men's wealth. She was then economically independent, was able to choose her later

husbands much more freely because she had economic independence herself. She was also a working woman. So we're told that she was a clothmaker. She was involved in the cloth trade. And we see in The Wife of Bath, a woman who has an independence. And she talks about the fact that women in the past haven't had the opportunity to tell their own stories. So she emphasises the fact that women in the past haven't had the opportunity to tell their own stories. So she emphasises the fact that the canonical texts have all been written by men in the past and that they are all biased against women and that women need a chance now to tell their own stories. Why was it not the same in other countries, Italy, for example? Why was England so much better? So this is a really interesting point, because I think that what we see with a crisis like the plague is that it then is a catalyst, it exacerbates conditions that already exist. And so you don't have automatically the same

consequences everywhere that the plague hits. So Italy also, of course, was terribly hit by the plague and again had a labour shortage. But it didn't have the same background traditions that England had at this time, where England did have some traditions of women working more outside the home, of female inheritance, of women marrying a bit later. That was already happening. And then it was intensified by the plague. But in Italy, there were in general traditions of early female marriage and not so much a tradition of women leaving the parental home. So the way that Italy tended to fill the labour gap was through slavery. slaves. In 1363, for instance, Florence passed a law which said that they could import an unlimited number of slaves. These slaves were coming from Caffa over on the Black Sea, which was also where the plague itself had actually come from into Europe. So when these slaves were imported into

Florence, there are many lists that show that the vast majority of the slaves were young women. They were women between the ages of 12 and 30, and they were filling the labour gap. And of course, there's all kinds of appalling aspects of this big influx of slaves. And you see lots of foundling hospitals, for instance. What we also see is that we don't then have women who are earning their own money, able to make their own sexual choices. So the knock on effects that we see in England, where these are women who are being paid and are sexually more independent, that's not what we're seeing in places such as Florence at this time, which is instead depending on slave labour,

where the girls don't earn money and don't have sexual choices. And briefly, Marianne, I know a number of female authors emerged, Julian of Norwich, Marjorie Kemp, Christine de Pizan in France. How significant were they? Extremely significant. So it's in the late 14th century that we first see named female authors writing in English. And we see them writing in a number of different ways. Julian of Norwich, who was an anchorite, so an enclosed nun. And then the early 15th century, Marjorie Kemp, who was a married woman who'd had many children, who travelled all around the world. And Christine de Pizan, I'm glad you mentioned her as well, who was an author writing mainly

around the court in Paris, but who had many, many connections with English culture as well. And writing just shortly after Chaucer, she echoes many things that the wife of Barth was saying. So Christine de Pizan writes about the fact that she was reading lots of books which all say terrible, terrible things about women. And she can't understand it because she says none of the women that I know

are like that at all. And then she is told by these allegorical female figures that she must start writing books about women. She must emphasise how there are good women in the world and that women shouldn't allow any more of their stories only to be told by men. And that was also very much what Chaucer's wife of Bath was saying. So we do have this upsurge in the late 14th and early 15th century of women who are in this more exciting economic environment. Professor Marion Turner, fascinating. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. On the question of young people and mental health, Mercedes wrote, I grew up in Argentina in a middle-class loving family but with

severe mental health problems, mum with dependence problems etc. In Argentina it's very common to reach up for help to a psychologist or similar although sometimes privately but not stigmatized at all. I attended a psychologist as a teenager for a couple of years and this gave me good tools for the future. It was also very good to be able to share my experiences with someone outside my family with my parents' support. As an adult now living in the UK I looked for this kind of help a few times. The main thing for me was being able to recognise when I needed help and also what therapy was helping me. I hope my children can see that mental health is another thing in their lives to take care of, even with things that are not very traumatic but worrying, and have the tools to deal with them.

Adrienne wrote, I'm very sad that money has been withdrawn from things like Sure Start because in my opinion the work has to go on. Parents need to understand their children's mental health and then future conversations with the children will be useful. On Susan Cadogan,

Susanna said, oh what a delightful character and singer. And on the 14th century pandemic, and Professor Turner's discussion about it, Christine said, influx of female slaves, didn't know that. Such enthusiasm for her subject. Great interview. Thank you very much, Christine.

Now do join me tomorrow when I'll be here at three minutes past ten. Join me if you can for the live programme. Bye bye. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. Usually I host the You're Dead to Me podcast and work on horrible histories. But while we're all cooped up indoors, I'm presenting a new podcast for the whole family. It's called Homeschool History and every episode is is a fun 15-minute guide to a fascinating historical subject. It's cheery, informative, and suitable for anyone who likes silly jokes and funny sound effects.

And who doesn't? We'll have episodes on the Restoration, the Space Race, Charles Dickens, Florence Nightingale, Stone Age Britain, and plenty more. So that's Homeschool History with me, Greg Jenner, on BBC Sounds. 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.