Woman's Hour - The best of Takeover week

Episode Date: July 27, 2019

Dany Cotton the Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade talks about how she dealt with trauma in her years as a firefighter. Dr John Green Chief Psychologist for Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust and Gill Scott-Moore CEO of Police Care UK discuss how best to help first responders with their mental health.We discuss the power of grime music to politically engage young people with the campaigner Amika George, Dr Joy White who has a Phd in Grime and the author and performer Debris Stevenson.The Great British Bake off winner from 2015 Nadiya Hussain talks to us about how her pets help her relax. Dr Katherine Garzonis a psychologist, the author of gardening books Hollie Newton and the food writer Bea Wilson tell us how they switch off.Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell tells us why we all need to find someone like us in literature and why more diversity is needed in books - especially for children. We also hear from Aimee Felone a publisher and the author Patrice Lawrence.Harriet Wistrich, the lawyer and founder of the Centre for Justice for Women tells us about growing up and losing her disabled brother Matthew. We also hear from the Playwright Atiha Sen Gupta who’s disabled brother Nihal died when he was 17 year old and she was just thirteen.Presented by Jane Garvey Produced by Rabeka Nurmahomed Edited by Jane ThurlowInterviewed guest: Dany Cotton Interviewed guest: John Green Interviewed guest: Gill Scott-Moore Interviewed guest: Amika George Interviewed guest: Joy White Interviewed guest: Debris Stevenson Interviewed guest: Nadiya Hussain Interviewed guest: Katherine Garzonis Interviewed guest: Hollie Newton Interviewed guest: Bea Wilson Interviewed guest: Cressida Cowell Interviewed guest: Aimee Felone Interviewed guest: Patrice Lawrence Interviewed guest: Harriet Wistrich Interviewed guest: Atiha Sen Gupta

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, good afternoon and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. This week it's about our takeover 2019. Five very different guest editors of Woman's Hour chose our content this week. They were Nadia Hussain, the Bake Off winner of course and TV cook, the lawyer and the founder of the Centre for Women's Justice, Harriet Wistrich, Amica George, the teenager who started the campaign with the hashtag FreePeriods,

the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, Danny Cotton, and the children's laureate, Cressida Cowell, whose guests included the author Patrice Lawrence, who told us who her book heroes were when she was a child. I loved Heidi because she was living with her granddad and I lived the first four years in a foster family, so in a different type of family. And then I loved Mole from Wind in the Willows

because he was deeply short-sighted like me, had a home that wasn't like others and liked his food. And we talked too this week about grime and young people and politics, something that Amica George wanted to talk about. And here the author Debris Stevenson praises the influence of Stormzy. What Stormzy has done for me has just been needed for so long. I think there's such an obvious intersection with the media wanting to reduce anything that feels black British. And I think his bluntness, his honesty, his use of his position and power has really said there are so many other stories in relation to this music.

That's the view of Debris Stevenson. More from her and from our guests chosen by our guest editors this week during the course of this edition of Weekend Woman's Hour. Let's start then with our guest editor yesterday, Dani Cotton, the Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, and the first woman, of course, to hold that position. She wanted us to talk about supporting the mental health of first responders. Dani joined the fire service at 18,

and within weeks she was at the Clapham rail crash, in which 35 people died and hundreds were hurt. What impact does she think that had on her? Clapham, I had no after-effect from Clapham. I had no lasting effects whatsoever. I just got on and carried on doing my job, which I think probably now, in hindsight, might just have been luck, or it might just have been because I was so young and inexperienced

that it didn't have the same impact. Grenfell was different. Grenfell was massively different. And I think part of the reason I felt so deeply after Grenfell was the level of responsibility. You know, being there, being over-responsible on the scene, being responsible for my firefighters who were risking their lives. And, you know, I was without a shadow of a doubt convinced

that one of my firefighters could possibly die in their extreme efforts to go and rescue people. then knowing all those people in there the the feeling that builds up inside you I've never experienced that level of responsibility feeling before. Were you diagnosed with PTSD? So I've never been to a proper clinical diagnosis but my counsellor says I exhibit all of the symptoms of PTSD so. And were you signed off sick or did you spend time at home? No, not at all. There was too much to do. I think that, you know, in my job there is so much to carry on with, there's so much to get on with,

that I didn't allow myself the time to, you know, sit and think about myself. It was far more about concentrating on my crews, my firefighters and our response to the situation and then the learning we've taken from that. So you are really keen to acknowledge that back in the day, it was probably almost impossible for male firefighters to say, you know what, I had to carry a child's body out of a house, and I'm shattered, and I need help. Did you ever hear anything like that back in the 80s or 90s? No, not at all. I think that there was a very

much more of a kind of macho stiff upper lip environment where people were just not ever encouraged to, you know, talk about that. I think they'd go back to the watch and talk about things. People would go home and internalise it for definite, especially if, you know, it was a young child, people with children, you know, they'd think about that situation for themselves. But very rarely would there ever been a conversation about how that made you feel. And what do you think has changed now? Is it that the men have changed or is it that we have changed as a society? I think there's a mixture. But I know from my own experience with London Fire Brigade that had I not been as open and honest in talking to my firefighters about my own experience, about my own counselling. I directly had a number of my officers come and talk to me and say, if you hadn't been open, we would never have gone for counselling.

We would never have admitted to ourselves. And I had one guy who was literally broken. He came in and he said, I can't do this, I need help. And I said, you need to go and talk to somebody. But they genuinely just wouldn't have done it if I, as the leader of the organisation, hadn't been as open and honest. For some people like me, when you suffer a major shock like that, what I had was lapses in my memory, huge lapses. Your brain just fires pieces of information to different areas.

So it's like going to look for your socks, which should be in your sock drawer, but you filed them in the fridge. So you're never going to find them because you're never going to look in the fridge for your socks. Since Grenfell, we've seen a thousand members of staff through our counselling services that have had some sort of impact to do with Grenfell. And for some people, it has been about a cumulative number of events they've attended and Grenfell was just the sort of final straw for them. In terms of mental health provision then in the fire service, what would your ideal be? I think it's a range of options. So people respond in different ways. So some people want to talk to somebody who's got nothing to do with the fire service. Some people want to speak to somebody who understands, who's in the fire service. Other people like peer-to-peer support. So what we're trying to set up is a range of options so that people can choose what suits them. edition of Woman's Hour. Dr John Green is head of the Grenfell Tower Mental Health Response Team and also here Jill Scott-Moore who's CEO of Police Care UK which is a charity for serving

and former police officers. So much to unpick there but can we just go back John first of all to the idea that an 18 year old Danny Cotton could get through the horrific events of the Clapham rail disaster, but not be able to cope entirely, and I'm not in any way criticising her, with what happened at Grenfell. Is it simply that younger people process these things better? I don't think so. There may be, in her case, perhaps so, but it's not a general rule. I think she picks out two things. One is cumulative. There's a cumulative impact.

And the other is, so that's very much the case in many of the blue light services. It's not just the incident that they're at. It's the ones before and the ones after. So that is one element. The other thing is the relationship that you have with the incident. So she spoke about the responsibility that she felt and that put her in a different position from the position she was in with the Royal Crash. What about the way things have changed? In 1988, she says there was no help beyond the help that firefighters could offer each other. That was the way things were done or not done, wasn't it? Yes, I mean, I had a long relationship with major incidents.

I co-coordinated the response to the Labrador Grove Rail Crash in 1999, and so I've also followed a lot of the other incidents. And it's been a gradually changing programme, gradually improving programme, the way that we respond to these incidents. And I think there's a greater recognition of what needs to be done and the best way to do that. I don't think we're all the way there yet, but we are certainly going in the right direction.

How many people are you still helping around what happened at Grenfell? Are we talking about Blue Light specifically? I think we're over... We've certainly seen over 200 people from various first responder services. We're particularly closely working with the Metropolitan Police. We've got a big programme with them. And we've got a commitment.

We're underway at the moment with a commitment to increase those numbers. And we also take people from the firefighters and from the ambulance services but we take a range of other people including of course local community survivors and so on as well and there are a lot of organisations impacted so we've got a very big programme but we are very intent, have been from the outset, working with the emergency services to make sure their staff get the services they need. And as I say, we're midway through quite a big programme with EMET

and talking to firefighters and the other services. Jill, Dani is passionate about the mental health of first responders and, of course, of her team, the firefighters. In your experience, is it harder for men to admit to a feeling of inadequacy around events like this? I think that it's difficult to say, in all honesty. I mean, certainly we see as a charity just as many women coming forward as men. I think that how they're affected by those incidents varies slightly between men and women. Certainly we see more complex post-traumatic stress within women,

which is the type of PTSD that develops with that cumulative impact that we talked about. In relation to Dani, Dani says that she has been told she has all the symptoms of PTSD. She hasn't had an official diagnosis. What would you say about that? I think that's very common. I think that many people sent you that we see within the police service and research that we've done with the university of cambridge would suggest that you know there is a reluctance for people to come forward for a diagnosis or to recognize the symptoms in themselves well what impact would a diagnosis of pdsd have on

you well within policing you need to declare that that diagnosis so let's be honest it might hold you back potentially and certainly that's the let's be honest, it might hold you back? Potentially. And certainly that's the perception that exists within the service. Whether in reality that would impact, difficult to tell, but certainly that's what people tell us. John, what would you say about that? First of all, on the diagnosis, what the actual words of the diagnosis are matters much less than the symptoms that someone's got and how you treat them that's the critical issue and so the first point i think the second point is that many people function very very well with post-traumatic stress disorder they just struggle it's it's very unpleasant

and post-traumatic stress disorder is just one point on a continuum there are lots of people who don't meet the full diagnostic criteria, who've still got lots of problems and who we are going to treat in exactly the same way as if they got PTSD. It's a rather artificial point on a line. So I'm much less concerned with that than I am concerned with helping people

who've developed problems as a result of... I mean, with Grenfell, the community, it was a community incident involving a settled bunch of folk in that part of West London. Something like a rail accident can involve people from any number of different places, all happened by pure fluke to be in that incident. Is that more challenging in a way?

Yes, so rail crashes and terrorist incidents often are dispersed because people don't know each other and they go back to their home widely dispersed. But this sort of centred event, it's important because you get ripples out. Everybody knows someone in the tower or who lived in the tower. And so it's got a big impact on the community. I think we've seen that in the reaction of the local community, how distressed they are by what's happened. Very briefly from you both, actually, we are making progress here, aren't we? Because as Danny said in that interview, in 1988, they just went back and put a brew on after what they'd seen at Clapham. Nobody would expect anyone, Jill, to put up with that now.

No, absolutely not. I mean, I think that there's a huge amount of work that's been going on around stigma to get people to start to talk about it, to come forward. But there's still a huge amount of work to do around actually providing the treatment that people need and the support they need when they need it. And, John, speak up if you can. If you've been through something like this, even if it was 40, 50, 60 years ago,

you can still get help. You can still get help. And, you know, you'll be very welcome to come forward get help. You can still get help and you know you would be very welcome to come forward to help and remember that you can also be traumatised by everyday events. You can develop PTSD from everyday events. It's not just major incidents, it's car crashes, deaths in the family, accidents, all sorts of things. So it is something you should seek treatment for. That was John Green and you also heard from Jill Scott-Moore. And if you'd like to see more from Dani,

there is a video now on the Woman's Hour website at bbc.co.uk slash womanshour and she talks in that film. It's also available on Twitter and Instagram as well about coping with the trauma she's been through in the years of her career in the fire service. Now on Wednesday, Amica George was in charge of the programme. She was a teenager when she started the hashtag Free Periods campaign

about period poverty and about trying to get free menstrual products in schools. Now, as Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, Amica wanted to talk about the influence of grime and urban music on the politics of her generation. then just be honest I can never die I'm Chuck Norris The government and f***ing Boris yeah Roundabouts in swings, swings and roundabouts You're round my kid, grass ain't always greener Where the other side lives, nothing great about Britain Tea and biscuits, mash jellied eels and a couple of little trinkets

East End you Phil Mitchell, Get stabbed with a fillet. And on my heart, I swear I'm proud to be British. Run, run for your freedom. That's a run, run. You don't want to see the kingdom. Run, run if you want to see the sun. We don't want to lose another one. Run, run for your freedom.

Ray Black, Slow Tie and Stormzy. Amika, why were you keen to explore how this type of music influences the politics of the younger generation? This genre of music has always been kind of political and commented on social issues, but I feel like in the last few years we've seen a real rise in young young people looking to hip hop and grime artists as a source of political inspiration and really taking action on the back of their lyrics. It's not just that people are listening to Stormzy and going, oh, yeah, that's true. I agree with that. It's this is how I feel. This is not something that I'm seeing in Parliament.

These aren't the issues. Ray Black's song about knife crime, that's obviously something that MPs aren't talking about enough because it's become the role of artists like her to comment on these issues and then make young people talk about them. Well, we're joined on the line by Debra Stevenson, who's a grime poet and academic who's worked with the Royal Court Theatre, and Dr Joy White, whose PhD was a study of Grime,

and she's a lecturer of Applied Social Studies at the University of Bedfordshire. Joy, let me start with you. How do you define Grime? I suppose if I had to come up with a definition, and it's not my definition, it would be 140 beats per minute it would be the sound of the inner city it would be a sound that draws on sonic influences from the caribbean from africa

filtered through reggae dance hall uk garage jungle i would try and define it in that way, if I could. Debra, who would you say it speaks for and to? I mean, so, you know, I grew up in East London as grime was being invented. So I have a very sort of first-person narrative in terms of being, you know, 10, 11, 12. You know, I went to a school where the only thing we got the highest in was truancy. I was severely dyslexic at the time.

You know, Mormon family. Things were a bit weird. And, you know, suddenly your peer group and people one or two degrees away from it are articulating your experiences your feelings for me particularly I think an accessible version of rage and I know debris you were particularly influenced by dizzy rascals boy in the corner how did that influence you I mean I think it was a very instinctive sound I think for all of us it just made you know when I heard it when I was 13 it just made sense and I think it was that that thing of which has already been touched on in the show not feeling like anything articulated in my narrative or my experiences and it was just

brutally honest I think about what he was experiencing as a teenager in East London at that time and it made complete sense to me and it's the first time I'd heard that. Joy you've described Grime as a positive entrepreneurial force why? When I started out doing my research initially that was in 2007 and we used to take young people on work placement and they come. And I think you would have to be in year 10. Then I suppose you'd come for your your week's work experience in a business. And I was in East London. The borough I was in, 100 languages are spoken. Young 14 and 15 year olds from a variety of cultural backgrounds, not the slightest bit interested in business, by the way. Nobody turned up with a pen,

but everybody had a phone, ringtones on, and had this sound. That's what connected them. And it was in talking to these young people that were, as the school described them, not the A star to C students, that actually these young people were either listening to music

that their friends had made, the type of music that Debris is describing, listening to that music or creating it. And the entrepreneurial bit was at the time, it shows how long ago it was, it was MySpace. People were putting their work on MySpace. They were selling their CDs in the playground. They were practising their craft, you know, going back to back with their peers in the playground and these were young people that pretty much even at that young age had been

had been written off and so the entrepreneurial spirit was that spirit of well let me let me make something from the from the meager resources that i have let's let's collectively put together what we have and make something out of it and so that positive entrepreneurial spirit that is not often seen because we don't see entrepreneurs in that way do we don't see them as you know 15 year old teenagers 15 year olds from east london that's what sparked my interest and that's what set me on off on my um research journey debbie whose would you say now are the most influential voices i mean i think what stormzy has done for me has just been needed for so long a mentor of mine charlie dark once said grime inspired and otherwise disenfranchised generation to dedicate their life to words

you know and i think the entrepreneurial spirit that it represents the skill and resourcefulness it represents yet the reductive media attention it has drawn over the 15 years of its existence you know you can really liken to things like carnival and you know I think there's such an obvious intersection with the media wanting to reduce anything that feels black British and I think his bluntness his honesty his use of his position and power has really said there are so many other stories in relation to this music this felt like a long time coming and I just think yeah it just makes me very very happy I think what Ori said is really really true you know other people need to step in that position and the reality is it's a music form that things like form 696 which the Met Police brought about and where I was

living in Nottingham for some time literally I lived with a DJ that was blacklisted you know just for the music that he played he had no previous convictions so I think yeah other people need to step into that space and other people running policy and running the police need to be aware of these prejudices and the fact that crime isn't isn't just this thing that you can associate with gun gun and knife crime and violence it is so so so much more joy that that form 696 has now been disbanded it was considered discriminatory how well represented are women on the scene? Well represented, not as visible in the same way as if you looked at any other music scene. Debris can speak on this in more detail, I'm sure. And it is that thing about that what we see, what we see is the person

at the front of the stage. don't see the what goes on behind an emcee doesn't get on stage and perform on their own there's all of these other allied activities that go along with it and often women are in those roles they're performers as well but often women are in those roles so it depends where you look and who you look at in terms of women's contribution. Debbie briefly how well represented would you say women are? I mean, I've always felt, you know, people like Lady Leisha, Nole, Miss Dynamite, which obviously preceded Grime slightly. I think there's always been really charismatic women

at the forefront of Grime that, you know, often are really embraced by the male MCs around them. But I think, yeah, I really agree with Joy on that I think there's a wider issue with music in terms of empowering women I think even I often think women are the melody not the content that's like a stereotype that's perceived on us so if I walk into studio people will assume that I'm a singer people won't assume that I'm a lyricist and I think that's not a problem that's like justin grime i think there's a general issue in terms of our perceptions of leadership our

perceptions of protagonism our perceptions of you know who is the person driving the content debris stevenson joy white and amica george on that edition of women's air they were of course talking to jenny and if you missed any of our guest editor takeover programmes, they are still available, of course, in podcast form via BBC Sounds. And if you're frustrated because you feel that you'd love to influence the content of the programme, but we're unlikely to ask you to be a guest editor, please do get involved in Listener Week,

which kicks off this year on the 19th of August. So three weeks away now. Nothing is off limits. We will find time and space to talk about something that you feel is really important. It might be quite trivial. It could be something that's having a real impact on your life or the lives of people you care about. Please do tell us. Last year, we loved hearing about the books that changed your life. So do let us know if there are more that you want to share with us. Last year, we loved hearing about the books that changed your life. So do let us know if there are more that you want to share with us. I actually love that element of Listener Week last year. So we could easily do that again. If that's something that appeals to you, let us know via

the website bbc.co.uk slash Woman's Hour. As part of Nadia Hussain's takeover programme on Monday, she talked about her own anxiety and about her attempts to switch off. We talked too to Holly Newton, a former creative director, now an author of books on gardening. Holly moved from London to Dorset after years of doing 80-hour weeks in her previous role in creative directing. The food writer Bea Wilson was involved as well, and we got the thoughts

of the psychologist, Dr. Catherine Garzonis. Nadia first. Social media is the first thing. You have to detox from social media sometimes. You've got to give yourself a couple of days to just come off it. I love it. Don't get me wrong. I love the connection that you get on social media with people. There's a lot of positive stuff, isn't there? Of course. It's fantastic. I love it. I love that you get to see an insight into people's lives and I love sharing some of the things that I love sharing I love sharing my kids but I love sharing my rabbit you know I like everyone to see that I share your rabbit what you mean you show pictures show pictures of my what's the name of the rabbit

Cornelius yeah he's lovely oh I love him tell us a bit about Cornelius he's wonderful he's just he is a part of the kind of treatment for my anxiety. So I got him because I feel really, there's something chemical, there's some chemical things that happen in your body when you stroke animals. And they say having pets is really good for people with anxiety.

And that's why I got him. Is he a long eared? I don't know. He's a lop eared crossbreed, little black rabbit. And when I went to see him, I took the kids with me and I said to, I went in and my husband said, oh, I don't want that black rabbit. And I said, whoa, like, why can you not want the black rabbit? He goes, oh, because when I go to lock him in at night,

he's going to creep me out with his beady big eyes. And that's not even an excuse. And then I asked the lady and I said, does anyone buy the black rabbits? Oh, no. And she said, no, nobody buys. She goes, we put them out there, but nobody ever buys the black rabbits. I said, I'm having him. I'm taking him home this minute.

And I literally picked him up and I walked out the store with him with all the stuff. I was like, buy the stuff. We're taking him home. And we took him home. And he lives. Does he have a he has an area? Yeah. He has a cage he has

his hutch he has a little hutch sorry he has his little hutch my kids don't like cage they say no he's his home um so he has a little hutch and he has a he has a big three meter run and then he's got a run that the kids sit with him in every evening so sometimes when i'm feeling really anxious i'll open up his little run and then I'll sit inside with him and then I'll have a cup of tea and he'll sit on my lap and we'll have a little chat um and he's lovely to have so it's really helped me in the last sort of six months in you know I've what I've learned about myself is that only I can help myself sorry it's interesting that um you anxiety has been a factor of your life for as long as you can remember but actually if you're me and I think I probably speak for a lot of women here, it was when I had children that I did probably experience something like anxiety for the very first time in my life.

Did you know that when you had children that it was likely to, well, you tell me, did it get worse after you had children? Oh, yeah. I mean, I've suffered with anxiety from as early as maybe six or seven as far as I can remember so and as a child you always get told oh they're just an anxious person or they're just very kind of stubborn or you get a label there's a label there's always a label but they we never spoke about anxiety and I mean we're not very good at talking about it now we're getting better I think there's definitely more to be said now people are talking about it a lot more but I'd never prepared for motherhood so I mean I didn't expect to be a mum at 21 but there I was 21 a very young mum it felt like a child looking after a child and I remember there were moments where I remember when I had my son

and I said to my mum I said mum do you want to just look after him for like a month let me get better when I feel better I'll just have him. She's like, no, no, no. He's yours. You've got to have him forever now. And I remember saying, so I have to keep him alive. And that moment, the pressure of just, you know, like just staying alive myself was hard enough. Suddenly I've got this human being to keep alive.

And this isn't a rabbit or a chicken. This is an actual human being. Then comes, as they grow up and as they get a little bit bit older you realize the responsibility isn't just to keep them alive it's to then nurture them and to make them into these wonderful human beings and that's quite scary as well because that's a lot of pressure because i myself was suffering that i'm suffering with anxiety i don't even know myself at 21 that i'm then i've got this pressure to make this human being. Yeah. A wonderful one at that. Yeah.

Well, I'm sure he's wonderful. He is. Yeah. Okay. We're going to move back onto the chickens. Yeah. We definitely, well, we, and they're loud. They're louder than you think.

So I'm really pleased that our neighbours don't hate us. Or maybe they do. But what I do do is because we get lots of eggs, I kind of drop off eggs at doorsteps and stuff. I think that probably shuts them off, doesn't it? Yeah. And they get lots of eggs, I kind of drop off eggs at doorsteps and stuff. I think I probably shussed them off, didn't I? Yeah, and they get lots of cake, so hopefully that means they're not going to complain. But they are really loud when they're laying eggs. Are they?

Yeah, they are. Can you do an impersonation of a... I really couldn't. No, okay. But they lay whoppers, like really big eggs. So I can imagine that can't be comfortable. No. No.

So they are quite loud. that we i mean before we even got the chickens we had uh so we've had we've got 18 tropical fish in my son's bedroom he loves fish and he finds them very relaxing so we've got a tropical tank in his bedroom and we've also got a budgie called rafe um and then we've got the four chickens and then we've got cornelius yeah it's quite a household yours yours, actually, isn't it? It really is. Nadia, first of all, I love the idea of a comfort rabbit. You ever been tempted by that, Holly?

No, but I think the first thing I did do when I stepped back from that career was I bought a puppy, which was one of the nicest things that could have happened. I think my whole adult life, we grew up with dogs, and the whole time, I just want a puppy. We had no way of having one. So when I stepped back, we got just the silliest dog and it was one of the best things I did. She did paint a fantastic picture there of sitting with the rabbit, having a brew and just stroking it. It's very appealing, Bea.

Yeah, it's deeply appealing. I have a comfort whippet. And when I got my dog, I've dreamed of having a dog all my life, but my husband doesn't really like animals. So it took a lot of persuading. When I got my Whippet two years ago, I have a friend who's a vet. He said, oh, he really suits you because you're a bit anxious and trembly as well. And I feel that having a trembly dog, I've become less anxious. I'm now wonderfully serene.

Well, not all the time, but I completely related to what Nadia said. Yes. And we're talking and she talks very lightly about anxiety. But actually, we should we need to acknowledge, Catherine, this can be utterly crippling for some people. Yes, I mean, anxiety is something that affects a huge amount of the population and especially women. Women that women are more likely to talk about it and they're more likely to share their anxieties, whereas men tend to sort of keep things in. So they might be anxious, but it's in a slightly different way. So women will say like, oh, actually, I'm having a really tough time and I'm worried about this, whereas men just, they tend not to share at all.

Is it also possible that women, particularly as you enter your 40s and 50s, you simply have a colossal amount of responsibility of one sort or another, which might not necessarily apply to men? Yes, absolutely. There was a study that came out recently that was looking at how much free time men and women have. And women have a lot less free time because although they work the same number of hours as men, we also tend to spend a lot more time with childcare, with housework, things like that. So we have a lot less time to ourselves. Bea, what do you think of that? I think that's completely true. I think there's this huge cognitive burden on women. You can see

it through food. People are endlessly talking about the decline of home cooking. What they mean is the decline of cooking by women. If you look at home cooking by men, it's a gross activity. It's gone up. And while it might, it should go up even more. But women still feel, even if they're not the ones actually cooking the meal, they've got these kind of just burdens of shopping lists in their head. I was going to say that the cooking isn't the bit I find difficult.

It's the thinking. The cooking is the joy. It's thinking, this person needs this. This person is going to reject that food because they're picky. And you're putting your own needs last half the time the pile you're constantly thinking I mean you must be thinking this with your baby um what does he need what does he need in the course of the day and even if you might feel that sometimes you've got kind of acres of time to fill that that time doesn't feel like it belongs to you and I think that's something that can make women very anxious we We should say, of course, she mentioned Cornelius, that the rabbit, obviously, and we've alluded to Cornelius and his importance, like your whippet. This is a growth area.

People are beginning to take this really, really seriously, as indeed they should. Gardening, Holly, is a place, would it be fair to say that it's, I mean, I think it was very telling that Nadia felt the pain of her chickens as they lay those enormous eggs, and it's something we can all think about but that sort of activity it's not that far away from gardening can be tremendously therapeutic and I think that's why I started you know when we still lived in London we had it started with just a small rented balcony and I think it was just

we thought oh we better grow something on there and some herbs and before I knew it it was probably the one respite I had from that mad world and it's something about suddenly because I spend my life on a screen what we all do don't you wake up you look at the screen you look at the screen you look at the screen again you look at it before you go to bed but suddenly to actually plant something in earth and get your fingernails completely covered and and you sort of immediately it takes a little time you're outside you can hear birds oh there are birds out here just it was so it was so deeply calming it was something that I hadn't actually experienced for years it's almost you haven't had it since childhood maybe. Holly Newton, Bea Wilson, Catherine Garzonis and of course our guest editor Nadia Hussain. Here's Kath who says I can can confirm the joy of chicken ownership, she says.

When my daughter left for uni, I quite literally had empty nest syndrome. So went out and bought three brown hens. I called them Diana, Mary and Florence and they of course became the chicken supremes. With a teenage son, an absent daughter and a husband with depression, a small business to run as well on top of that.

Believe me, those times spent with my birds at the beginning or end of a difficult day saved my sanity. Let's hear it for the Chicken Supremes. And Emma says, after being a mental health patient for seven years and spending a decade keeping myself well, I get endless enjoyment walking with my dog,

sitting in my greenhouse and chatting to my hens. Keeping things simple is the best, says Emma. Well, actually, in Danny Cotton's guest editor programme on Friday, she talked about therapy dogs and about how important she thinks they can be, quite possibly in the future, they could have an enhanced role at helping with the fire service or people who have been through traumatic experiences as first responders and I delighted in the company

of Crumble who was a therapy dog who sat next to me during the course of the program and I have to say did make being on Women's Hour a little bit easier so maybe that could be a permanent thing now if I could perhaps have a therapy dog with me when I'm exposed to my colleagues, that would be hugely, hugely helpful. I can't see waves of sympathy from next door, but OK, so that's not going to happen. Elsewhere in the week, we talked about how important it is for a child to be able to identify with a character in a children's book. That was the question put by the children's laureate, Cressida Cowell. To discuss why there needs to be more diversity in children's books, she brought along Amy Filoni, a publisher responsible for setting up a bookshop in South London, and Patrice Lawrence, the author of the award-winning Orange Boy and Indigo Donut.

First of all, who was Cressida's hero? It was very important for me to have a female hero. And I'm going to talk about a woman in my personal life. The men were all out there doing public things in my family. I was quite a traditional British family. But there was this one woman who people actually don't know about, very much his story rather than her story, called Trudy Denman. And she was extraordinary. She was involved with women's suffrage. This is my granny's aunt. She was the first chairman of the Women's Institute. And she was that for 20

years. She was the first chairman of the Family Planning Association. I mean, that was a big deal in 1920s, 30s, 40s. And she was president of the Ladies Golf Union. I love that. Bit of an all-rounder and she was also i mean at the third i mean astonishing women's right rights kind of thing that she did was she led the women's land army i mean she was extra in the second world war an extraordinary woman who we don't really know much about and she was in my personal history you know she died before i was born but my granny used to talk about her my granny who was a very splendid woman who I adored, would talk about her. And I needed that hero to know that women can do stuff. They can be out there, you know, fighting for stuff. They can be

out there on the public stage. So even if you're a strong woman or a little girl, as I was, a fierce little girl, you need those heroes out there doing stuff. And you need heroes in books. And George was a hero of mine and also Pippi Longstocking. Produce, what about you? Who was yours from a book? I didn't really have any heroes in books. I was a massive reader.

I loved stories. I loved absorbing every element of a story and following that story and getting emotionally involved. But I think for me as a child, even though I didn't realise it, always always had this little ethnic hop um because nobody in certainly none of the children in books looks like me or have family structures like that and that's an issue and so I take little bits I love Jo in uh Little Women because she was in a single parent family wanted to be a writer I loved Heidi because she was living with her granddad and I lived the first four years in a foster family, so a different type of family. And then I loved Mole from Wind in the Willows because he was deeply short-sighted like me, had a home that wasn't like others and liked his food.

And what about you, Emmy? Who was your main character? I think I'm quite similar to Patrice actually in that i was a voracious reader as a kid but i couldn't pick out one person you know that a looked like me or b was somebody that i truly felt an affinity to in kids books you know i was a big jacqueline wilson fan and it's only when i've become older that i realized that jacqueline wilson at the time was quite controversial in what she wrote in that she was writing single parent stories or she was writing about kids who have lost their parents. And I think I drew more inspiration from the characters that she wrote just because it was the situations, it was the friends' stories that were familiar to me.

Now, Patrice, I know you began your career as a writer for magazines and your characters were white. Why? Oh, and every character I wrote up until I was 32 was white not that I didn't think our stories were important but if you and I grew up in mid Sussex as well in the 70s and 80s so my school curriculum everyone around me every book that was written by someone every character in that book most characters on tv programs were white so the whole cultural industry as far as i had absolutely absorbed was white so it did not absolutely occur to me that i could write a book that would have a black or asian character so you

were just doing it unconsciously you were just unconscious it was it just wasn't actually on my radar that that was a possibility so i wrote stories for my little brothers and that was a different thing but a book that was in a shop that would have somebody that looked like me no Amy what prompted you to set up a bookshop well firstly we set up a publishing house so Nightsoft was set up two years ago and the whole point of the company is to address the lack of representation both in terms of workforce and publishing and the bookshop came up out of a publishing house you know we did a pop-up celebrate our one-year birthday and the community of Brixton really loved it and they were asking us why aren't you here permanently how can we make you here

permanently and we said well we kind of have to put our money where our mouths is and we set a target to open up a permanent store in Brixton market and managed to exceed our target of thirty thousand pounds and we're there now who comes to buy the books everybody everybody and regardless of that yeah and i think that's really important to say is that when we did the pop-up a white man came in a parent and he said i find it really hard to find books that feature the school kids that my kids you know exactly and they're like exactly and i think you know, are friends with. And they're like, exactly. And I think, you know, there is this kind of wrong assumption that prevails in the industry that diverse books are for diverse kids, whoever they may be, and that's absolute rubbish

because everybody should be reading about everybody. The magic is for everyone. How much diversity, Patrice, do you reckon there is in the school curriculum? Well, I mean, I did my, it was then O-Levels in the 80s. I did O-Levels as well. We weren't that far back, were we? But most of the English GCSE, as I knew before, has the same books with maybe a little hint of

Benjamin Zephaniah if you're lucky a hint of John Agar and I just think that discussion around how you can use different types of language how you can explore different characters is still very much missing so and I think young people are now so bogged down in the exam curriculum that it's really hard to read for pleasure and find all the other lovely stuff that's out there. So how easy has it been for you to find books for your mixed-race daughter? When she was a baby, because I said I was born in Sussex and she's born in London, in East London,

which is obviously very different from where I grew up, so I thought, yes, this is going to be so different. And then trying to find a book, a UK book, that had a black mum and a white dad and a mixed race daughter and the one that we found was uh by Tony Bradman and Eileen Brown called Wait and See which I kind of found by accident and it was a one book I found and we read it over and over again and did she love it she I don't think she kind of got a significance but there was another book by Helen Stevens, I think,

called What About Me, that had a little girl that looked mixed race and had curly hair. And my daughter, who was one years old, used to kiss that picture because she thought it was me. So I thought representation matters so much. Amy, as a publisher, how much do you think, I mean, obviously you're doing it, but you set up a special company to do it.

How much generally are things moving in the right direction? There is a lot of conversation in publishing at the moment around diversity. And I think there are schemes and things that are being done and certain houses are realising, but I think it's a lot more reactionary than it is genuine at times I understand that there is a lot of years behind this problem and a lot of people are trying to turn very large ships but I do think

that some of the things that are being done are a little more tokenistic than maybe genuine. But what is it they're worried about? I think people are worried about giving up space. I mean you say that people of all colours come to your shop and buy your books that have black and mixed-race children in them. Yeah, black, mixed-race, disabled, across the board. Are the publishers thinking,

if we publish books with black kids in, the white parents won't want to buy them? Is that what's going on? I wouldn't want to say that because I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, but I do think that it's not something they've had to talk about or had to deal with or had to even you know speak

to anybody in their office who doesn't look like them I think publishing on the whole is a very white space very white middle class female heavy kids publishing at least uh space and they these conversations just haven't been happening and now it's just a bit more like oh uh there's something wrong here how do we how do we fix it what progress are you beginning to see, Patrice? Have you ever had difficulty getting your books published? I started quite late, I think. For all of those reasons, actually. Because I was writing since I was little

but it just didn't occur to me that my work could be published. And when I was 32, talking of representation, I saw a BBC production of Mallory Blackman's Pickhart Boy with a black UK family. I said, oh, my days. We can write that. And I found my voice. I still feel so.

Book Trust are doing Book Trust represents. Yes, I know. Because I'm going to be working with them as laureate. I'm going to be working with Book Trust because that's the charity who does that. Yeah, that's exciting. But I also think people in their own communities are doing lots of work as well.

So I think it's happening. Some it's happening mainstream, but I think with today's technology, people from different communities are saying, we won't wait for you, we'll do our own stuff. Amy, I know you speak to a lot of libraries. Yes, I speak to a lot of libraries, yeah. What do they tell you?

Librarians tell me that they're crying out for literature that is more representative and that they are constantly seeking to find books that are you know are featuring the kids that are in the libraries and who are in schools and that there's just a lack there's a massive dearth of literature for kids and they're literally knocking on publishers doors being like where are they we need them now. Amy Filoni, Patrice Lawrence and Cressida Cowell. Sarah says I work in a primary school in Manchester and we really struggle to find books representing British Asian families.

We don't just want tales of tigers and jungles or RE texts about Eid, but interesting stories that depict lives. Please, says Sarah, can somebody write some? Well, there you are. If you're sitting at home twiddling your thumbs this afternoon and you'd be able to write that book, why don't you get started?

Sounds like there's a market waiting for you. Ali says, my favourite book with a black protagonist is I'll Take You to Mrs Cole. I can't remember who it's by, but it's got beautiful illustrations by Michael Foreman. My son loved it. He's 24 now and I give it to all my friends' kids, says Ali. Well, the book apparently is written by Nigel Gray and it's I'll Take You to Mrs Cole. So perhaps other people would enjoy that too. Georgia says, isn't it a bit self-obsessive to say I can't enjoy this book because nobody looks like me

or it doesn't reflect my life? Georgia says, I'm of mixed heritage, thick black hair, bright red cheeks, spectacles and a good few inches taller than my classmates in primary school. No one ever looked like me. I was always carried away, though, by the story and taken to places I'd got no experience of, like boarding school or pony riding. I could have told you everything you needed to know about how to tack up a horse. My heroes were the ones who were brave and did the right thing and made jokes, says Georgia. Widen your horizons, people, she says. I do see your point, Georgia. I read books

about sailing and ponies and boarding school, and I had no experience of any of those three things. Well, unless you count donkey rides on Blackpool Beach and being sick on the Mersey Ferry. And boarding school never cropped up at all. But anyway, on Twitter, Lotta says, I once went to a village school for my job and they rejected our material because it had black faces in it. And they said it wasn't relevant for their all white infant school. Well, that's not great either, is it? And another email, we couldn't find books that showed our single parent family. So we set up little box of books to supply families and Or clearly it is, as other people have also made similar points. Now, on Tuesday, the human rights lawyer and founder and director of the Centre for Justice for Women, Harriet Wistrich, was our guest editor. She wanted to talk, amongst other things, about the impact of losing a disabled sibling.

Athea Sengupta is a playwright and her disabled brother Nihal died in 2001 when he was 17 and she at the time was 13. When Harriet was 11, her disabled brother Matthew died. My older brother Matthew had, at an early age, he had brain tumours and he was actually at high risk, but my parents were able to find a surgeon from the United States who was able to perform quite a dangerous operation which saved his life. But as a result of the brain tumours, he had developed disabilities,

particularly around his functioning, mainly mental disabilities, or as we used to call it in those days, mentally handicapped, but you'd describe it as learning disabilities now, and behavioural problems that resulted. And, you know, it was quite challenging for my family to have a child who had those sorts of special needs. Was there an element of shame about it?

Well, I think my parents were, you know, kind of quite liberal about it but I think for a younger sister seeing being in the company of somebody who behaved in a in a way that um was was perceived by me as as embarrassing so I kind of wanted to hide and pretend I wasn't connected and I think that was probably quite a an issue for me as a child that that that I um kind of didn't want to sort of be connected or associated with that because you know when you're children you don't want to be different from other kids. And so I guess that that was quite a significant part of my childhood was dealing with that. And also, obviously, to some extent, my family, my parents had to be focused a lot on Matthew because of his special needs. And when he died, how was it dealt with

it was a shock we weren't weren't expecting it I think um earlier on my mum you know was expecting that he he might die because of of you know having gone through these operations and so on but by the time he died he was actually doing really well and he was in in a school community where he he was actually thriving so it was a big shock and it was obviously you know hugely traumatic again for me I think that I um uh struggled really with again with that thing of of difference I remember going into school and we had to go off uh for a few days days because he died up in Scotland to the funeral and my parents had given me a note to give to the teacher and I didn't give the note to the teacher

because I was so embarrassed about it. And we just, you know, it's just like I didn't want people to know and I remember some girl saying, oh, you know, why are you going away and is it something that's happened to your brother? And I just, I was absolutely mortified, which is awful really that's happened to your brother and I just I was absolutely mortified which is awful really that you feel like that but that just was the reaction that I had as a as a kid at that time so I think it's really important that we want to get across you want to talk today about what it's like to have a disabled sibling and also how if unfortunately they do they do

pass away how that is dealt with. And with us in the studio is somebody I have met before, actually. It's good to see you again, Athea Sengupta, who is a playwright. And how, Athea, do you know Harriet? So Harriet and my mum are friends and they've been campaigners together for a long time. So I've met Harriet through my mum. Who was involved in the Kiran Jitalawalia campaign I mentioned earlier. Yeah, with the Southall Black Sisters. Southall Black Sisters. Southall Black Sisters, yeah.

Okay, got you. That's the connection. And your brother Nihal died in 2001. That's correct. Yeah, he died when he was 17 and I was 13. Right, okay, so very similar experience to Harriet's in some ways. Hearing Harriet's story, do you recognise some of that? I do, and I also felt a strong sense. I think when I was younger I was very defensive of my brother so I remember going to India and when we were younger and lots of people were

staring at him and it felt like a freak show and I remember staring back at them because I wanted to kind of defend his honor as it were but as I got towards my he died when I was 13 but as I crept towards my teenage years I started feeling embarrassed and I wanted to fit in and fitting in meant not having, you know, disabled brothers or disabled siblings who, you know, they were a marker of difference. And I feel very sad that I felt that way. I thought when we talked, actually, I was struck. So when I reached out to Theo when her brother died

and we had this conversation about her experience, I actually thought that you were much more mature about it than I had been. But I think in retrospect it also reflects the huge changes that have happened around awareness of disability. So I was a child, a small child in the 1960s, where disability I think was much more hidden and not spoken about and not celebrated at all and not not celebrated and inclusion wasn't a thing your brother actually went to a mainstream school yeah so I definitely agree with you Harriet there was definitely a paradigm shift from the

medical model of disability to the social model so which the social model doesn't look at the person as the problem but society that disables disabled people and my brother my mum fought a campaign to get my brother into mainstream education and he enjoyed several years in a you know school with disabled and non-disabled peers alike yeah which is a obviously a huge advance and yeah important although i think what remains what was i'm sure the case with your sibling to your brother is that people need advocates don't they and unfortunately not everybody does have one not true in your brother's case a theory from the sound of things yes he had my mom quite and i'm sure you as well to a degree

but but you uh you say you weren't ashamed or embarrassed you were defensive i was defensive of him at the beginning when i was a child but i think when i became you know more teenage then it became a thing of you know because i think when you're a teenager you want to fit in and you want to not have anything that sets you apart. And did you feel in any way sidelined by him and by the demands he put on your mum and dad? I definitely think so and when I was a child I think I felt a jealousy that he was taking all the attention and all the resources which now I understand is completely legitimate but I do wish someone had just taken me aside and said this is why you why your sibling is getting more attention. It's not a personal thing, as it were.

I think when you're young, it can feel very personal. And when Harriet spoke to you about all that because she'd been through something similar, what did it mean to you? It meant the world. And I think I do what Harriet does now to other friends of mine. So we've lost a few young people in our circle. And I've always, my first instinct is to always reach out to the siblings because I think sometimes the siblings can get overlooked yeah did

you feel I mean honestly your parents obviously did their best yes no I mean I I I haven't no criticism of my parents and they've they really put a lot into it and they set up a a trust after Matthew died Matthew Wisterich trust which gave money to disabled kids to go on. And my mum's done the same thing with the Michal Armstrong Trust. Yeah, and my mum was a governor at special needs schools as well. So, you know, it's absolutely no criticism of them. I just think that, you know, I probably had the best possible environment. But even with all of that there there i think that the attitudes are so

difficult um and uh that that it that it's really quite a struggle as a kid to to deal with that i mean you know there may be maybe certain benefits one thing that my mum said was that you know after after your brother died uh we were so kind of enmeshed in the grief and stuff that we we didn't really sort of concentrate too much on worrying about what happened you know to our other kids or doing that thing that a lot of middle class parents in particular do about to make sure they go they get their exams and they do this and they do that they were kind of must put things in perspective quite liberal yeah they put things in perspective and so actually both me and my brother have gone on very different paths. But, you know, I've sort of gone on to the radical feminist lesbian

and my brother is a Hasidic Jewish fundamentalist living in Israel. So it couldn't be more different. But we both actually, you know, still talk to each other and get on. I was going to ask you about that. I was going to ask, Harriet, if you talk about your brother with your other brother. Is that something that you... We do a bit, but actually I think Daniel, my other brother, was better at talking about Matthew than I was.

I always found it quite difficult. My parents used to say, you never talk about your brother. I'm trying to put that right now. The fantastic Harriet Wistrich in conversation on Woman's Hour this week with Athea Sen Gupta. Thanks to all our fantastic guest editors. But a reminder that you too can influence what we talk about on this programme in Listener Week, which begins this August on the 19th of the month. We want your ideas now.

Basically, what we're after is the stuff of your life, the things that are important to you, that are having an impact on your home, your family, your community, that you don't think you'd hear talked about anywhere else on Radio 4. Give us your ideas now. We are mining you. We're mining your brains, please. At BBC Women's Hour on Twitter or Instagram, or you can email the programme via our much discussed website.

Do it now, please. You won't regret it. On Monday, Tina Dehealy is presenting and she'll be looking back at the legacy of Theresa May and Angelique Kidjo will perform live. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

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