Woman's Hour - Teaching 'grit', Amnesty International UK, Brain Aneurysm play, New Age of Sexism

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

How do we teach children to have grit? That's what the Government is suggesting needs to be a new focus in schools, to bolster children's mental health. To discuss how parents can help their children develop resilience, Anita Rani is joined by Sue Atkins, parenting coach and author of Parenting Made Easy and child psychologist Laverne Antrobus.We are currently hearing different perspectives on the recent Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman under the Equality Act, and how it could and should be interpreted on the ground. Today Anita speaks to Sacha Deshmukh, Chief Executive of Amnesty International UK.At age 20, actor Sam Ipema was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. Her highly successful play, Dear Annie, I Hate You details this experience and is currently on at Riverside Studios in London. She joins Anita Rani and neurologist Dr Faye Begeti to discuss.Founder of the Everyday Sexism project, Laura Bates, has been looking into artificial intelligence.  Laura argues that existing forms of discrimination are being enforced by AI through historic coding, prioritising profitability at the expense of women’s safety and rights. But also worrying is how simple it is for AI to enable users to create deepfake or AI girlfriends, that can perpetuate the abuse of women. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rebecca Myatt

BBC Sounds music radio podcast. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to the programme. The government has stepped in to try and improve mental health in schools. The Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and the Health Secretary Wes Streeting have joined forces and said, by deploying NHS-led, evidence-based intervention during children's formative years, we'll not only halt the spiral towards crisis, but cultivate much-needed grit amongst the next generation,

essential for academic success and life beyond school with all its ups and downs. So how do you build much-needed grit in children? This morning I would very much like to hear from you. Is this the job of the government or is it about parenting? Is building grit or resilience high on your agenda? How was resilience built in you? What is your parenting style? Are you doing things differently to your own parents? Is it all about being able to say no? How important is it to teach children boundaries? And also that life might chuck them a few curve balls once in a while. Your opinions and thoughts on this, we're talking about resilience and grit.

That text number is 84844. You can also WhatsApp the programme on 03700 100444 or you can contact us on social media, it's at BBC Woman's Hour, and if you'd like to email us then please go to our website. Also on the programme, we continue our series of interviews around the Supreme Court ruling last month that the term woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. Today I'll be speaking to the head of Amnesty International, Sasha Deshmukh.

Also the founder of Everyday Sexism Project, Laura Bates, will be telling us about her latest book, The New Age of Sexism. Laura has done a deep dive into how AI is reinventing misogyny. And what happens when at the age of 20 you discover you have a brain aneurysm? You write a funny and moving play about it of course. Well that's what Samantha Ipema did and she'll be telling me more. That text number once again, if you'd like to get in touch with us about anything you hear on the programme but particularly how you build grit in children is 84844. So how do we teach children to have grit? That's what the government is suggesting needs to be a new focus in schools to bolster

children's mental health. Many minors are experiencing serious mental health issues and at times may not be getting the support they need to deal with those. But there's also discussion around how to help kids, particularly in light of increasing numbers of school absences. This morning the Education Minister Bridget Phillipson spoke to the Today programme and explained what the government is proposing. It's about having the grit, the resilience, the ability to cope with life's ups and downs

about the challenges that are thrown at you and young people today face many challenges, very different to some of the challenges that I faced and what I'm announcing today with the Health Secretary is that a million more young people will be able to access mental health support teams in schools. That's about getting in there early when young people are struggling, making sure they've got access to trained qualified professionals who can help them manage all of this. Bridget Phillipson, Education Minister there. So we want to know what can parents do when it comes to teaching their children grit and about the challenges of life's life and all its ups and downs. Well here to discuss this with me is Sue Atkins, parenting coach

and author of Parenting Made Easy and child psychologist Laverne Antrobus. Good morning to both of you. Laverne, I'm going to come to you first. What do you make of the government's proposal? Well, I think it's an amazing and fantastic idea, but I'd say that some schools are already doing this. It's's not so new, and that's important to recognise. And even if schools haven't got dedicated mental health staff in schools, there are a lot of teachers and a lot of teaching assistants who are dedicating a lot of their time to noticing when children need a little bit more help, a little bit more noticing because they're not quite you know where we would want them to be in terms of their mental health or their resilience. So I think it's a good idea but I'd want to say you'd be that the government are building on something that some schools

have already feel is a very important part of the school day. And I'm reaching out to all parents and teachers if If you're listening, get in touch as well, 84844. Sue, how did we get to this point that the government is having to legislate on this? Very interesting, isn't it? And it's always saying, oh, it's the nanny state interrupting. There are a lot of factors in it

over the last few years that I've noticed. Obviously the pandemic has exacerbated some aspects of this in terms of anxiety. And also the idea of parents working from home, perhaps, putting on their, you know, keeping on their slippers, not putting on their school shoes sort of approach. But it's complicated, but I think it's also needs modeling. You know, parents need to model what I call tenacity or resilience

or, you know, perseverance. And it starts, I think think even from toddler age where you help them persist at trying to do up their zip or pull on their wellies because those sorts of things are building their stickability and you don't always get things right the first time, you've got to keep at it. So I've done a whole host of tips that are very practical I think for parents on my blog this morning. We're going to talk about those, we're going to come to all of it but before we move on to practical tips about what parents should and shouldn't be doing or should be doing,

is there anything, is there no such thing as shouldn't, or maybe there is, I don't know, you're the experts. Is school the right place to be tackling this? Laverne just mentioned there that some schools are already doing it and teachers are already noticing and quite rightly they should be but is it the right place? Should they have more on their plate? Of course as a former deputy head and head of PSHE in a school for many years schools of course some schools are doing a fantastic job at that but teachers are being asked to do more and more and more, I think, really. But I think teaching these basics starts in the home, doesn't it? As I mentioned from toddlers onwards,

you model and talk about having another go or trying, you know, and you don't praise them for the, you know, you praise them for the effort, not the outcome. So all of this mindset comes really, first of all, from parents, but parents and schools need to work together and they often do. But I think it's not just one or the other, it's both. So Laverne, how do parents do it right? Well, I think I think Sue's absolutely right. I think it's the sort of bread and butter of parenting.

But I think when we're thinking about building resilient children, there's something about noticing as a parent when things aren't where you'd want them to be and helping a child to sort of tackle that. I mean, this is, in a way it's nothing new, but it's the building blocks of how are we as parents using our support mechanisms around us to help us? Because this takes time and actually takes confidence. And I think often parents lose their confidence because they feel they're not doing it

in the right way or they look over their shoulders and think that somebody else is doing it better than them. You are the only person that can be in a relationship with your child and know what they need and also know how you want to raise them. I think the way in which this meshes with schools is that schools then have your child for six hours a day so you want to be in a relationship with them and you want to be thinking with school about how you've prepared your child for some of the very real challenges that they're going to come across. Not feeling so happy on a particular day, you know not getting things right however that looks

at school but parents and schools I think do work together. I agree with Sue there's a sort of building blocks that parents put in but once they're in school it's about a joint effort really. What if the parents don't have the building blocks in the first place? What if they're feeling all the anxiety and they don't feel gritty or resilient or tenacious themselves? Well and therein lies a real dilemma because you know I think we imagine that as a parents things are going to come naturally but I'm very much in the school of thought that actually we've got because I think we imagine that as parents, things are gonna come naturally. But I'm very much in the school of thought

that actually we've got to give ourselves a little bit of a break here. I think most parents are trying very, very hard to get things as right as they can do. And when things go wrong, the parents that I encounter, and it's not just that I'm encountering them in the clinic setting, are relying on the resources around them.

Sometimes parents are quite isolated, but often picking up the phone to a friend and saying, I don't think I got something right today. Can you help me think this through? Is a really valuable resource. We have to be a bit kinder to ourselves, I think, and know that actually this isn't something that comes naturally to everybody.

It is work that we've all got to be doing. Sue, what's going wrong here? Have we set up a society that makes things too easy for children? I'm just thinking of all the conversations you have here where people say, you know, it was very different when we were growing up and all the stuff that pops up on my social media about Generation X compared to Generation Z. Is it that the world is so much, we've just made it too easy for children? Or is it that the world is so much, we've just made it too easy for children or is it that the world is too challenging right now? I think a lot, I've noticed over the last 25 years I've been doing this, I think a lot of parents want to be their kids friend not their parents so they don't

like saying no to them or you know keeping at things with them. They helicopter parenting has been a thing that has developed where they rush in to rescue rather than let a child sort of struggle a bit. Now I'm not talking about leaving a child struggling for ages but you know struggle with your zip, struggle doing the the jigsaw, struggle with that homework that you've got, you know keep going when things get a bit tough. That's the difference and I am mindful and I don't hopefully sound like an old fuddy-duddy but you know my mum or my grandparents would have found this rather you know how extraordinary that people are not just getting on with it but I always talk about it as failing forward. We all make mistakes, we all get things wrong, we all need to kind of get

back up and have another go no matter how old we are so we need to kind of get back up and have another go, no matter how old we are. So we need to model that and teach children that, that they struggle a little bit sometimes in life, because it's not easy, and it's not always straightforward, but we do them a disservice if we rush in to rescue them, I think. You're not coming across as a fuddy-duddy, wise, I would say, Sue.

What about you, Laverne? What do you think you were nodding? I am, because I think that actually, you know, there's a real pull to rescue and I think it's wrapped up in an emotional connection that you can have with your child where you think, oh actually if I just do that last bit of the lace then we can get going. But actually stepping back and having the confidence to know that actually you saying, go on keep going, gosh didn't you do that well, is the making of, you know,

I can overcome the challenges that are there. That's a tiny challenge, much more difficult if you're sitting with a teenager who's had a really difficult day at school and fallen out with friends and you want to sort of rescue that situation. You've then got to give the time and appreciate that actually you might not have the answers but actually giving a space for your child to think about how terrible they feel and you saying you know what it's really great that you can think with me about this is what we want so the rescue sort of way of thinking that that's going to cause you know get something out of very quickly is not the way we want to do it want people to have confidence to sit back just a little bit, but be present.

Okay, well I think we should help them because we've got lots of messages coming through. I will read some of them out in a moment. But Sue, you just mentioned teenagers there. Let's stick with the teenagers. Lots of them facing exams at the minute, GCSEs, A levels. How do parents who themselves might not feel very gritty teach their children to get through these real, real world big pressures like exams? What the practical things that can be done? And at the same time they might be falling out with their friends and they might have you know telephones and all the rest of

it. What practical things can be done? Well you break things down into bite sized steps really because what happens is people get totally overwhelmed and I think if you go alongside them instead of rescuing them, so ask them questions what are you struggling with, is there anything I can help you with, what can we do together, those sorts of language words and things I think those sort of scripts help children feel not abandoned but not necessarily you know rescued so they don't have to try. And it is more complicated with smartphones, let's face it, I have a whole campaign about delaying those with kids

and smartphones and social media etc. It is complicated but, you know, it is about teaching children by talking to them, not at them, listening to them and supporting them and as I said going along with them that we actually eventually, it's not one size fits all, not one instant moment is it going to work, but it's a mindset, it's a growth mindset that you help your children not disable them by rescuing them I think. I'm going to read out a couple of these messages, I think you'll find them interesting as well. Annie says, I think we as parents want to be and be seen to be our children's best friend. As good parents, we're not always going to be liked by our children and our rules can

make us unpopular and that's okay. Our role is to be a parent, our children can make other friends. Simon says, you can't teach grit but you can create an environment in which it will grow, resilience is built on a sense of safety and Charlotte who's a primary school teacher says we're living in a world where so many parents coddle their children too much. They don't like saying no to them and often cave in to have an easy life. If their children are told off at school the parents instantly attack the teachers in brackets verbally showing the children

that they're never wrong and can never be told off, putting them on a pedestal like this is not preparing them for the world. 84844. What do you think about those, Laverne? Well, gosh, they're complex, aren't they? I think in some ways they really move to the sort of protect model, you know, sort of getting in there quickly, the rescuing that we've talked about, you know, if your child gets told off at school, you know, you're straight in there. Rather than taking a bit of a beat and thinking, actually, what's gone on here? You know, maybe my child is fallible. We would like to think, you know, we could have that point of view.

And something has gone wrong. And actually stepping back is quite difficult, I think, for parents because the instinct is to protect, is to look after. And what I would say is this idea of being your child's friend, yes, I think there can be a real muddle in a relationship. I mean, lots of young people that I've encountered in my work quite astonishingly have said,

if I'd met my parents at school, they wouldn't be my best friend, because they have a way of being able to see their difference. And I think what Sue's saying about where we are, because I'm sure there are a lot of parents at the moment their difference and I think what Sue's saying about you know where we are because I'm sure there are a lot of parents at the moment who are having to think about exams. You know I absolutely agree you're alongside your child you're basically saying help is available what you're not doing is I think this is such a trap you know putting your own anxieties into

the mix and say you've got to do your work you've have to be there for my child and say help is available. I spoke to a colleague yesterday who said this time of the year when exams are really at the forefront, she is there with food, with snacks, with refreshments, let's do it. I think that is a great way to do it. I think that is a great way to do it. I think that is a great way to do it. I think that is a great way to do it. to a colleague yesterday who said, you know, this time of the year when exams are really at the forefront,

she's there with food, you know, with snacks, with refreshments, looking after all those bits that a child doesn't want to be distracted by. Sue, how much of all of this, talking about building grit and resilience and this entire conversation, come down to parents not knowing how to discipline their children?

And even the word discipline might get some people's backs up. Or is that just, isn't the word too difficult for many to consider? Yes, because when people hear the word discipline, they think punishment and it should be about consequences and it should be about better choices. It's, you know, language matters in all of this. It's not about yelling and smacking or getting angry. It's about guiding, nurturing and encouraging. And I think praising, you know, a child's effort rather than their success means loads to them. And everybody goes through that dip, don't they? I mean, I remember when I was learning to play the piano, I just thought, oh, I don't like this. I'm

not doing very well. I've plateaued. So that's the same with golfers or anybody in sport or anything like that. And so what you do then is you sort of push through. And once you sort of push through, you start to feel a sense of your own personal satisfaction as well. And you do get a bit better at things. And one of the magic words I think that I'm always using with parents I work with is to say to their kids about you haven't managed to do that yet. Because learning your times tables, you haven't mastered, you know, your eight times table yet. But if we practice and we do it together or you do it, you know, with the school and we all work together, you will master your eight times table or the piano or the violin or whatever you're trying to achieve.

So I think that's an important aspect of it too because I think you have to have short-term, medium-term and long-term sort of goals and that will then keep you focused on where you're trying to get to. Thank you both very much and I just want to end by this there's lots of your messages coming through, keep them coming through, but Liz has sent in a very interesting message she says and actually Laverne I'll come back to you on this before we move on. The concept of building grit is a very ableist, it's very ableist. I say this as a mum to two autistic children who are by nature very sensitive. I mean I think you know what we don't want to do is create another thing for children to fail at you know I like the idea of developing

resilience let's stick with that because that's about facing things, knowing that you face challenges, thinking that you'll never get through it, and then being reminded by other people and reminding yourself that actually you did survive something. And I really agree with Sue that hope is what we've got to have.

We've got to have a hopeful way of thinking that we can go through things, either on our own or with the help of other people. Thank you both for joining me. Sue Atkins, parenting coach and author of Parenting Made Easy and child psychologist Laverne Antrobus. 84844, keep it coming through. On to my next item now. We're currently hearing different perspectives this week on the Supreme Court ruling last month that the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The judgment has implications for many organizations. The Equality and Human

Rights Commission has issued interim guidance, for example, in workplaces and services that are open to the public. Trans women, those people with gender recognition certificates and those without, shouldn't use women's facilities such as toilets or changing rooms. We're looking at the practical dilemmas this ruling creates for organisations, businesses and individuals. On Monday we heard from the barrister Robin Moira White, a trans woman and activist who specialises in taking discrimination cases. On Wednesday, it was the turn of Sex Matters, one of only four organisations allowed to present arguments and evidence in the appeal.

They're called interveners in this instance. Another of those intervener organisations was Amnesty International UK, and its CEO is Sacha Deshmukh, who joins me now in the studio. Welcome, Sacha. It's been a month since the ruling, so I think we should start by finding out what your members have been telling you about the impact of

this hearing. Thanks so much for having me on the programme, Anita. We have been hearing from a number of people, trans people, who sadly, and this has been a long-standing issue in society, in the UK and around the world are very fearful, facing discrimination, facing harassment. That was one of the reasons why Amnesty International put evidence in front of the Supreme Court. You know, we work on human rights all around the world, we believe in everyone's right to privacy, a family life, to be protected from discrimination and wanted to make sure

that the Supreme Court heard those arguments. I think the judgment in this case was a long judgment, it was about 30 pages or so, lots of detail and the court was quite precise on what it was making a judgment on and indeed things that it also wanted to see like discrimination against trans people absolutely not allowed in the law. Perhaps some people are kind of rushing to judgment as to what exactly the judgement means, how to implement it and I'd heard some caution because I think that's causing a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety and even a sense of threat for a lot of trans people at the moment. What have they been saying to you?

Well sometimes we're hearing things actually it's important to recognise a really important and good, so for example we've heard recently from a number of organisations that run refuges for people who have been affected by domestic violence and we should remember trans people sadly are very affected by domestic violence as of course are our other women and those people have said we know how to run our services, we know how to protect people in those services, we know how to safeguard, we do that for all individuals from other individuals, those are protected before this judgment, they still

are now, nothing changes, we're open for trans people. That is really important and it's very welcome that we're hearing that. We're also hearing people, trans people saying things like I don't know whether I can go to the gym anymore. I'm afraid even to leave my home because actually people are using the judgment perhaps as an excuse to abuse me on the street, which of course is not what the Supreme Court said should happen. So that sort of implication from the judgment, I think now we really need to see some calm and emphasis on the protection of trans people, which the law very clearly says. You linked to Stonewall on your website and you say that you're proud to work with them and other organizations

such as Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence. But according to Aqua Reindorf, who's a commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, no trans rights organizations applied to be interveners. Were you surprised by that? Well, we obviously applied to be an intervener ourselves because we've got a great deal of human rights expertise and I you know I was a little bit surprised that the Supreme Court didn't hear from any trans people themselves in making the judgment. But if you do read that judgment I think what's also really important now it's been made is in its length those parts where the Supreme Court talked about the importance of protection of trans people from discrimination, from harassment,

that being very very clear in the law. So that's I suppose what I'm really now hoping that people don't forget in the debate after the judgment too. We did invite Stonewall onto the programme to give their reaction to the ruling and to reflect on its implications but they declined and on what what you were just saying, the former High Court Judge Victoria MacLeod and academic and activist Stephen Whittle, both of whom are trans, applied as individuals to be heard and were turned down. Aqua Rindorf, who I just mentioned is one of the EHRC's commissioners, said, the Supreme Court does not hear evidence about lived experience. It considers legal legal arguments thus an individual is never likely to get permission. We had Helen Joyce from

the organisation Sex Matters on the programme this week and she said trans women are men, that's what the Supreme Court confirmed. What's your response to that? Well again I think if you actually read the judgement, 30 pages, it's got points in that that really very clearly say that that's not an accurate representation of what the judgment said. The Supreme Court made a judgment on the definition of the words women and indeed then by implication men in the Equality Act in a very specific piece of legislation but the Supreme Court itself in its judgment made very very clear that it was not saying that what was being litigated was the meaning of

gender in wider society. And so, for example, anyone listening who's worried that if they're in their workplace and someone would come to them and not call them by the pronouns that they've asked and think that the judgment has removed that protection, that's absolutely not true. And that sort of comment, not just maybe what happened on the show earlier in this week, but maybe that kind of misunderstanding of what the judgment is saying, I think is very dangerous. The law is very clear about those protections, including, for example, Anita, I believe that I should call you by

the pronouns that you would like, you're protected here in your workplace The law very importantly protects you on that but just perhaps more broadly in this debate I believe that that's polite and kind and respects your humanity And so we don't need the law to also perhaps remind all of us that we should treat each other with that kind of respect too isn't Helen just reflecting what the Judgment has stated that the word women means biological women? The judgment stated that in relation to that word in the Equality Act, but the Supreme Court was very, very clear to say that it wasn't litigating on the broader question of gender identity in society.

So I think that for someone to say that the judgment and what it said about that specific word in the Act has that implication more broadly, maybe their point of view of what they would like, but I don't think it's actually an accurate representation of the judgment. You believe this is a human rights issue for trans people, that's why Amnesty International UK got involved, but others would say that women's rights are also human rights, and if the two sets of rights can't be balanced, then the ruling means women's sex-based rights should now be prioritized. What's your view on that? Well, women's rights are human rights. Human rights are universal. All people have human rights. All of us deserve the rights to privacy, family, life, protection

from discrimination and indeed wider rights which are human rights as well such as access to adequate social security, health care etc. It's often the case in history that people who have a particular point of view try and say that one person, one group set of rights can only be protected at the expense of others. That's not what we believe and I think again I just sort of remind people the levels of persecution, violence, discrimination faced by trans people, less than 1% of society, but even perhaps the level of attention and noise and debate has shown how much that particular

community is being targeted. I would just remind people that the protection of everyone's human rights does not require one group's human rights not to be respected and certainly now it absolutely the law is clear and indeed any reasonable interpretation of human rights is clear trans people cannot be discriminated against and they certainly can't be discriminated against because that's allegedly protecting someone else's human rights. The interim guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission states that in workplaces and services that are open to the public trans women or biological men should not be permitted to use the women's facilities and trans

men or biological women should not be permitted to use the men's facilities and this will mean that they no longer single sex facilities and must be open to all users of the opposite sex. However where facilities are available to to both men and women, trans people should not be put in a position where there are no facilities for them to use. What's your advice to trans women? What should they do? Well I think one thing to remember in relation to that interim guidance, it's an excellent question that you ask, that guidance was put out by the Equality and Human Rights Commission very quickly. It's actually not statutory, that particular guidance, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission is consulting and indeed had to extend its consultation from perhaps some of its initial plans

because it's really important that it takes into account those aspects of the law the Supreme Court emphasised on the lack of discrimination. I think my advice, not just to trans people but perhaps more broadly service providers etc, is not to rush to judgment on what the court case says and indeed that Supreme Court, that Equality Commission guidance that will come after the consultation will be important to see. The law continues to say that actually the bar to excluding people is a high one. It has to be proportionate, it has to be legitimate. That's perhaps why we've seen, for example, those organisations running refuges saying, no, we absolutely can continue to serve people.

So I think a lot of people who might be rushing to say trans people should be excluded as organisations are actually putting themselves at risk of being challenged in the law on discrimination. Well they're only following what the interim guidance is telling them. I think again the interim guidance is not statutory. So you're telling them they shouldn't follow it? Well I think that it's going to be really important to see how the Equality and Human Rights Commission takes into account everything that is in the consultation and produces quality guidance that does represent those anti-discrimination points. What I would certainly advise any organisation to do and make sure they're doing

is they continue to respect the law on protecting trans people from discrimination or not having access to services because that's just important for any organisation to do. Sasha, when there's such diametrically opposed interpretations of the same ruling, what are people and organisations supposed to think and do? It's a really excellent question and of course the law is a complex thing sometimes for anyone to absorb. I think my advice would always be to any of us, including ourselves, a judgment that's this long, 30 pages, with this much detail in it,

I think a critical thing for us all not to do is to rush to judgment or perhaps, if people have a particular point of view on the judgment, to make a statement or an implication if people have a particular point of view on the judgment, to make a statement or an implication beyond that that the judgment makes, we now all need to have things like high quality guidance that's properly taken into account, consultation, including of course with trans people, to ensure that the protection from harassment,

discrimination that's there within the law continues to be respected. And perhaps people who are rushing to say, it definitely means this or it definitely means that. I think that's a difficult thing for anyone to do with any real confidence from any judgment, let alone one this complex. I want to use a real world concrete example, if I may. We know a group of female nurses in Darlington are currently taking their trust to tribunal for allowing a trans woman to use their single-sex changing facilities under a policy of transitioning in the workplace. Why do you believe trans women should be in these spaces? I don't know the specifics of the changing facilities

in that case but even to use that particular example that you said for example, if changing facilities or any other kind of facilities are a space with safeguarding, with the right protections for people, regardless of which is any other person that's coming in that space, that's what anyone deserves from any kind of space. I think what I would be reminding people of is this point about the proportionate legitimate need for the exclusion of anyone from any particular service or facility. So again, places that may have a large throughput

of people, places where actually any facility is a private space for changing or anything else. What would be the argument for the exclusion of anyone from that? There's obviously in any space, any public space or any private space that any of us are in, we should be protected from any kind of threat or any danger. Perhaps again in this big debate that's happened about 1% of people within society who are trans, we shouldn't forget that 80% of the violence targeted at women, much much too high overall levels of violence, but 80% of

that is from partners, ex-partners or friends, the overwhelming, overwhelming amount of which, sadly and tragically, is from cis men, men who identify as men. So that's my, the point that I would make about all facility services. We have an obligation, any of us running organizations, including public organizations, private companies, et cetera, to make sure those services are provided to trans people who cannot be excluded from them.

And we need to take that into account in the way that those services are designed and provided. And that has not been affected or changed by this judgment. If anything, the Supreme Court reminded us of it. But what about the privacy of biological women? Privacy is something that all people deserve. Privacy is a right for any of us to have. I'm not sure why I can quite see the argument that the privacy that any individual deserves

in their own life is any more or less required versus anyone from any other different background. I can't quite see the argument myself as to why the exclusion of some people from services, from facilities is required for any of us, whichever identity that we may have, to have the privacy that's our right. Sasha Deshmukh, thank you very much for coming in to speak to me this morning from Amnesty International UK. On Monday, Nula will be hearing from the LGB Alliance, who also submitted evidence to the Supreme Court in this case. And if you missed our previous interviews with the barrister and trans woman Robin Moira Wright, White and Sex Matters Director of

Advocacy Helen Joyce, you can catch up on BBC Sounds by listening to the 12th and 14th of May episodes of Woman's Hour. That text number once again 84844. Now at the age of 20, Samantha Ipema was coming to the end of her university studies when a chance accident resulted in a life-changing discovery. A scan revealed that she had a brain aneurysm and she was told she'd be needing surgery in less than a month and that her life expectancy could be a lot shorter. Samantha, an actor, decided to put pen to paper and write a play about her experience. It's called Dear Annie, I Hate You and after a successful run at the

Edinburgh Fringe Festival, it's currently on at Riverside Studios here in London. Joining me now are neurologist Dr. Faye Baggetti and Samantha. Welcome both of you. Samantha, give us some context about all of this. Where were you in life when this first happened to you, when you were 20 years old? I was a bumbling 20-year-old, just kind of in college, quite directionless at the time, to be honest, and didn't really know what I wanted to do in life and was kind of stalling with that decision. And was just playing soccer and enjoying my life as much as I could and avoiding growing up and then got the diagnosis and everything changed.

How did you get it? I was just playing soccer with a bunch of my friends one day and had gotten hit in the head and I never go in for those kind of things and had been a few days and I decided I just had some sort of nagging voice in my head telling me to go in and then I got the scan and found out a few days later that I was diagnosed. And what does that do to a 20 year old who's living her life about to go on spring break? Right, right, yes my first question when they told me I was gonna have to get brain surgery in three weeks time was, can I still go on spring break? Big holiday in America. Big teen holiday.

Yes, it's the pinnacle of your 20s when you're in university and everything. But yeah, it thrust my life upside down. It changed the entire trajectory of my life. A key part of the play is the impact that this had on your friendships. Tell us more about that. Yeah, in this iteration we really focus on that and I think what is in the incredible thing that happens is that you're going through this immense amount of change and everyone else is just staying 20 and staying the same. So your world shifted, but there's necessarily, hasn't necessarily shifted. So I think that was the even more, I mean, there was so many physical things

like learning how to walk and talk and do all of those things again, but it was really the emotional side of losing all of those friendships and not for anyone's fault necessarily. It was just that I was going through a vast change and they didn't have to, you know, and no one knew how to, yeah, cope with it. Samantha, it's a sucker punch. We've just been talking this morning about how we teach young people and teenagers resilience and grit. And one of the things we all know what happens

during our school years that kind of really tests us is friendships, falling out with people and how devastating those things can be. And you're going through this experience, being diagnosed with an aneurysm, having to rethink your entire life and all of it. How did you build? What did that do for you in terms of resilience?

What did that do to your personality? Oh my gosh, so much. To touch quickly on what you just said though, there's a bit in the play where I'm sure our neuroscientist friend here could speak more on this, but I talk about how being cool and the desire to fit in isn't, it's not just a desire, it's actually a neurobiological reward system that says, you know, good job, you're staying alive. So it really was the pinnacle of, I mean, kind of the darkest part of the play

was a conversation I had with my dad that's very real when I was in the hospital, where I just kind of said, I don't really, I had made it out of the surgery and I just didn't really want to continue to be here anymore because I knew the life I was going back to was gone. And I didn't understand how to pick up the pieces from there. But I was also saying this yesterday to someone that truly it gave me myself.

And it's hard for me to not be grateful for that time in my life because I don't think I would have ever been forced to discover myself. I don't think I would have ever gone into the arts, even though it was what I always dreamed of, what I felt like I was made for. And it made me really build new relationships in a different way than I never had before and, and, and yeah, find new things to value in, in, in the world and in relationships. So yeah, I, I, it changed who I was completely and everyone in my life who's still in it from that time will say that as well. Incredible. And Faye, we're going to come to you in a moment because we do have a neurologist here ready to talk to us about aneurysm and you can talk to each other. But before we

do, it did change your life. You decided to write about it. I must say you are a very talented, I can't believe you weren't always going to go into the arts because you're very talented on stage. You command, you've a real presence. Please could you read something from the play for us? Yes, I would love to. I'll read, this is my favorite little bit of the play and I think sums it up well. I think if you look carefully in these moments, you can actually see the walls starting to crumble and the pillars of your old life, your old reality starting to flake apart. I actually think that there's something

beautiful about it. Terrible. Awful. But beautiful. Because in these moments, nothing is ever clearer. What's ahead of you, everything that's behind you, and you in the middle of it with a choice to make. Oh, very powerful. In the play, you choose to humanize your aneurysm. You call her Annie. Why? Several reasons. At the time I thought I was just sort of being clever and it was a coping mechanism that I was using. A way to kind of not have to use the word aneurysm because that felt very serious and very intense. And when you're dealing with life and death decisions at 20 you kind of want to find ways to make it not as big. So Annie was an easy way to

be able to try to talk to people about it in a place that no one really wanted to talk about it because they were all scared. And then I had started developing this piece. And to be honest, I just started developing the piece as an easy A on an assignment in drama school because I figured no one could get me a bad grade for doing it about my brain aneurysm. But I'd called her Annie and then I was scrolling a Reddit feed after an appointment one day to kind of get some information from other brain aneurysm survivors and every single one of the people on that feed that had been diagnosed with an aneurysm called them Annie. And they all seemed like they had their own personality traits. And we actually

did a Q&A the other day after the show with a neurosurgeon. And the way he talked about each of the aneurysms he operates on, it was as if they each had their own sort of personality traits. So yeah, that's kind of where it came from. I'm going to bring Faye in here. Morning, Faye. Welcome to the program. I know you've been listening along to Samantha. Can you give us a bit much more information about all of this? I know that brain aneurysms are more common in women than men, for starters, but how common are they to be found in someone so young? Yes, I mean, what a powerful story. They are more common in women than men. I think firstly it's important to tell people what aneurysms are. Yes, many

people are not aware. So we have blood vessels that supply our brain and what happens is they usually weaken at one part and if you think of a blood vessel like a tube and one wall has weakened, they tend to pop out and they look a little bit like a tiny balloon. Some people will describe them like a berry, so sometimes they're called berry aneurysms. And the danger of having that little balloon is that it expands and it can either compress nerves in the brain or sometimes it can rupture and you can get blood around the lining of the brain, which is quite a serious thing to happen.

What are some of the symptoms that people should look out for? When should you seek help? The biggest symptom that people get is headache and it's a really specific type of headache. We call it a thunderclap headache and the features of it is that it goes from zero to the maximum severity and it can be severe, but some people, we all have different pain tolerances so some people will not describe it as very severe But it could go from zero to having a headache within one minute Because you know people have all sorts of headaches migraines

But they typically come on much slower than that over the course of sort of 20 minutes half an hour an hour You have a headache that's worsening, but in that situation you are fine And then a minute later you have a really severe headache. Is it treatable? The thing to do... Sorry, yes, go on. The thing to do when that happens is to actually come to A&E. I know we need to use our emergency services wisely, but that is an emergency. And actually if we see people within six hours, then our scans for those aneurysms and the

subarachnoid hemorrhage that has happened are much more sensitive. So it's important to come quickly. Is it treatable? It is treatable, yes. So it depends, there are various characteristics as we said, it depends on the size and the location and the two key things is whether the aneurysm has burst or it hasn't burst. If it has burst and you now have a hemorrhage then you need to come into hospital. There are various consequences that can happen but we're really good at keeping on top of them, treating them, trying to do the best that we can for every single patient. Do we know why they're more common in women? Yes, so that is actually a really active

line of research and they're more common in women but actually at a later age. It tends to be after the menopause and we think there might be a protective role of estrogen in keeping the blood vessels flexible and after menopause we get quite a rapid estrogen drop and we do tend to see more aneurysms in women over the age of 40. So it is slightly unusual to have an aneurysm so young but it's not unheard of. I have seen patients, unfortunately, that are hit with these big things at a very young age. You're nodding away, Samantha. You've done all the research.

You know all of this. Yes, yes, it's been a big part of my life. You also feature your family in the play, because it's a multimedia play. And you particularly talk, you talk about your brother in particular play? Because it's a multimedia play and you particularly talk about your brother in particular who sounds incredible. Tell us about him. Yeah he's my best friend, he's the best. He has Down syndrome and he's adopted from South Korea, joined my life when I was three and he was four. And yeah, he's kind of the ethos of the whole piece. There's a big line in it of wanting to be a superhero

for him and kind of setting up that that was what we grew up enjoying and loving about each other and playing in superhero battles and all of these things together and that she tries to be a superhero throughout the whole thing until eventually she can't be and then kind of realizes that it wasn't ever the things that made her, you know, super that made him think that it was just that she was the way she was and that she is who she is. It's beautiful. And how are you? What's your relationship with Annie like now? Yeah, it's great. If you come and see the play,

you'll kind of get an insight into where I'm at with it now, but we have a lovely relationship. I think of Annie as the voice in my head. So sometimes she's the annoying companion that you can't get rid of, and sometimes she's your best friend. So yeah.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come and speak to us, actor Samantha Ipema, and neurologist Dr. Faye Baggetti. And you can watch Sam's play, Dear Annie, I Hate You, at Riverside Studios in London until the 1st of June. And I know after just that little snippet you gave us,

Samantha, people will want to come and hear more because that was just very talented. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. 84844 is the text number. Now to my next guest, the founder of Everyday Sexism Project, Laura Bates. In her latest book, The New Age of Sexism, Laura writes about how the AI revolution is reinventing misogyny, how existing forms of discrimination are being enforced and even

exaggerated by AI, for example, with the rise of AI girlfriends and deep fake. Some of the areas that we'll be talking about are disturbing. Laura, welcome. Thank you. What's the book about this time? We are standing on the edge of a precipice where our society is about to be transformed in almost unimaginable ways by AI, by emerging technologies. The problem is that when people worry about this, they're often thinking about potential dystopian future threats, you know robots taking over the world.

What people aren't necessarily aware of is the extent to which some of these forms of technology are already affecting our day-to-day lives and risk really re-encoding the hatred of yesterday into the foundations of tomorrow. Where do you even begin when you set out to write a book like this? What areas have you covered? I've looked at advances in technology around robotics, so particularly around the use of sex robots, the generative AI that's being used not just to create outbound content that we know is discriminatory, but also in apps like AI Girlfriends, the kind of deep fake technology that's having a devastating impact on the lives of women and particularly young girls around the world, but actually also other things that you don't necessarily have to opt into. All of those things people think,

well, I'll just stay out of those spaces or I won't be going online. I won't go into the metaverse. But what people don't realize is that already if you're applying for a loan, global financial services companies are using algorithms to determine credit scores that we know actively discriminate against women. 40% of UK companies are already using AI in their recruitment processes that we know actively weaves out and discriminates against the CVs of women. Because really what a lot of these AI particularly are designed to do is to really ingest vast amounts of data, they train themselves on that data and then

they try to guess the best possible answer for their users. So if you're looking at a big company and you say you've got 3,000 applications for this job, we'll whittle them down and tell you the 50 people best suited to your company to interview. It sounds great but if you're doing that and you're looking at who's been successful before in getting jobs at that company, in a situation where we know there are almost three times as many men named John running FTSE 100 companies as all the women put together,

inevitably you're going to be looking at a talent pool where you will assume that perhaps privately educated white men are the best suited CVs to be looking at. And even if you turn off gender, even if you make them race blind, if they can't see these categories, they'll discriminate by proxy. So they'll look for a word like netball in your CV for example. So they're just going with what's out there in

society already and running with it. Can we go through some of the things that you've mentioned and break them down a little bit? So there is the more obviously upsetting elements like deepf fake. What's the issue for women and minorities? Who is doing this and who's at risk? This is a huge impact, particularly for women. When we hear deep fake technology hitting the mainstream news, quite often people are talking about the threat to democracy of potential disinformation. But the reality is that actually 96% of all deep fake videos are pornographic and 99% of those are of women. So already there are teenage girls across

this country and around the world whose male peers at school, and we're seeing this from the age of about 11 or 12, can easily download a free app, go to a free website, put in a picture of a girl or even a female teacher quite commonly, fully clothed that they screen grab from the internet or from anywhere and it will immediately generate images and videos that are extreme pornographic and incredibly realistic. And it's children that are actually doing it, creating the deepfakes because they've got access to the technology.

Absolutely and we're seeing girls who are not feeling able to leave the house, who are developing PTSD, who are not able to go to school. It's really important for people to recognise that while the images aren't real, the impact absolutely is. And as part of your research, you tried to create a deep fake of yourself. How easy was it? Absolutely simple. I mean, it's important to say that this was something I'd already experienced. Men had already sent me deep fates, pornography of me, showing themselves, abusing and forcing themselves on me sexually as a means of power and control. And what I wanted to

demonstrate in the book was just how easily accessible, just how easy it is for anyone of any age to do that at the click of a button. And this isn't about sex. It's not about prudishness. When those men sent me those images, the effect was immense and it was about shutting me up. It was about power and control. And Laura, you are someone who's been talking about sexism for a long time. You're an incredibly empowered woman. You're very outspoken. You speak for a generation. And when you received those pornographic images of yourself, what was the impact of seeing that? And they were sent anonymously, weren't they?

They were. I mean, it made me feel physically sick. Your brain races. You start thinking, who else has seen this? What websites is it on? Is it going to get to my parents? Is it going to be on social media? You start wondering who it could have been, who's made it? Is it someone you know? Is this a form of revenge? Is it somebody out there that's close to you in your social group? How long is this going to last? Will you be able to get it taken down? Will there be any action? You spiral into a form of panic and the worst part for me was the idea that at some future point, my potential future children might search for me online and this could be the thing that outlives me. This could last longer than I do. It's really hard to explain and if that was the extent of the

impact on me, think about the 11 and 12 year old girls who are dealing with this stuff in schools. It's just devastating. Then you also looked into the issue and you mentioned at the top AI girlfriends. She's quite shocking. I think for some of our listeners, they won't have ever heard of that phrase. The female founder of Replica, which is a digital AI companion, had a wholesome intention.

They wanted to keep alive the spirit of a dead friend. Go on, you can explain, but it's evolved into something completely different. Yes, I mean, Replica is just one example. There are hundreds of these apps and they are promoted and marketed as kind of positive AI companions who can keep you company, stay for loneliness, even teach you relationship skills. But that completely belies the reality, which is that

the vast majority of these companies are giving men the opportunity to create a very young, hypersexualized woman. They can customize her, her appearance, her personality, her name. She will be eternally available to them in their pocket. It's a way to present a woman, they can customize her, her appearance, her personality, her name, she will be eternally available to them in their pockets. It's a way to present hypersexualized women as an object for men to own, to abuse, they will jump into rape scenarios, I must say with the exception of Replica which was the only app which told me to stop when I tried to do that but all of the others were perfectly willing not just to entertain abusive scenarios but to encourage. And this is being promoted to a vast extent.

People have never heard of these apps, but just in the last year alone, just on the Google Android Play Store alone, they were downloaded a hundred million times. I'm just going to read out a couple of statements. A government spokesperson for the department of science, innovation and technology said women should feel safe, both in the on offline and online world under the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology said women should feel safe both in the online and offline world. Under the Online Safety Act, social media platforms, regardless of their size, must

take action to protect users from illegal material, including extreme sexual violence. And an Ofcom spokesperson said no woman should have to face the trauma of a deepfake intimate image being shared without her consent. Whose responsibility is this? Well, I think that there are a number of different pressure points in terms of responsibility. What I'd most like to see is regulation of tech firms. There is so much pressure at the moment I think on schools and on parents. The reality is these apps should not be readily freely available at the click of a button to

children and that's not just about the apps themselves actually. It's also about Google making them so readily available. It's about the App Store. It's about companies like Visa and Stripe and anywhere where people are facilitating payments to these companies. But what that regulation is going to look like in practice really, really matters from Ofcom, because by the end of this year, we're on track to see 8 million new deep fake pornographic images made and referral links to the sites that host them have increased 2,000%. So how do we stay ahead of the curve? We need regulation. We need our government to be brave about saying actually we need to think about really bold transnational legislation.

This isn't about being anti-tech. It's not about saying don't develop and research AI and use it for the brilliant things it can do for society. But actually we need to step up and recognise that this is too important to leave in the hands unchecked of obscenely wealthy tech tycoons who are using it to catapult men and boys forward and leaving the rest of us behind. It needs to be developed in a safe and ethical framework so it can truly serve all of us in society in a safe way. Can we get AI to help police the internet? Can AI get them to identify content and get AI to take it down? If AI can do so much, why not get it to do that?

Yes, and there are incredible women working in AI developing tools to do just that. The problem we have is that women are only 12% of AI researchers globally. They're only 20% of AI professors. And when they apply for funding for projects like that we know that venture capital firms give six times as much funding to male-led AI teams. Okay well so all those girls who are sitting their GCSEs and A levels right now, there you go, so get into STEM, get into tech. Absolutely, we need you. It's always a pleasure to speak to you, thank you so much Laura for coming in.

Laura Bates and the new age of sexism is out now. And if you've been affected by any of the issues raised, please check out the links on the BBC Action Line website. Now, in reference to our item earlier on the Supreme Court ruling of what a woman is under the Equality Act, the Equality and Human Rights Commission would like to clarify that it has released an interim update, not guidance. Guidance, they say, will follow.

The update is intended to highlight the main consequences for employers and duty bearers of the Supreme Court judgment. And we've also been talking about how you build resilience and grit in our children. Diana says, listening to the programme, I so wish I had the advice with my own children. Although as a busy working mum, it was often fraught getting kids and self out of the door on school mornings and if I had to help with a zip, so be it. It's certainly something I will keep in the forefront of my mind now when I interact with my five-year-old grandchildren. Don't do up their zips. Enjoy your weekend. I'll be back tomorrow.

That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Manushka Matandodawati, the presenter of Diddy on Trial from BBC Sounds. Join us again next time. We'll be bringing you every twist and turn from the courtroom with the BBC's correspondents and our expert guests. So make sure you listen, subscribe now on BBC Sounds and turn your push notifications on so you never miss a thing.