Woman's Hour - The consumer power of women, The week in politics, Author Sue Cheung

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

Researchers tell us women are responsible for the majority of consumer decisions, making an estimated 80% of purchases, and most of the final decisions on which clothing, food, or even family holidays to buy. We’re also told that women are typically more concerned about the climate, and keener to make environmentally conscious decisions. So how much power and responsibility do women consumers really have? And what are the most efficient forms of sustainable consumerism?In a week of extraordinary politics, how have female MPs and advisors fared? We discuss the sacking of special advisor Sonia Khan, the female Conservative rebels, and the “macho” culture of parliament with Katy Balls, deputy political editor at The Spectator and Helen Lewis, staff writer at The Atlantic.A few weeks ago we asked listeners to send us a picture that somehow captured them at their best. Not just looking it but feeling it. Hundreds of you got in touch with pictures of your best day, and we’ll be running as many of your stories as we can. Today Helen Childerhouse tells Laura Thomas about a photo that changed the way she saw herself.Author Sue Cheung reflects on her up-bringing and how it informed her young-adult novel Chinglish: the funny and sometimes tragic diary of a girl and her family who live above their Chinese takeaway in 1980s Coventry.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Helen Fitzhenry

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and thank you. You have downloaded the Woman's Hour podcast from Friday the 6th of September 2019. Today we have the author Sue Chung on the programme. Her book Chinglish is about growing up above her family's takeaway in Coventry in the 1980s. Women as consumers today, we want to get you involved on this. What about our duty to the planet? Should we all start buying less or buying better? What do you do about food, food packaging, plastic in particular, holidays? Should you

fly at all? Fashion, fast or not? Are you still buying clothes in the quantity that you used to? Do you think twice before you buy anything these days? And why is it always lumped on women to do all this stuff and to make change when actually, ultimately, most of us feel pretty powerless in these areas? So please do contact us, get involved in that conversation, which is towards the end of this edition of Women's Hour. We're starting with politics because you've got to say this has been quite the week. And if Westminster was a Netflix show in its fifth season, well, you'd say it had completely jumped the proverbial shark over the last couple of days. It's just been manic. Helen Lewis is here again, staff writer at The Atlantic.

Good to see you, Helen. And Katie Balls, deputy political editor at The Spectator joins us again. We last saw each other on Tuesday. Quite, I mean, it's tranquil, really, Tuesday compared to what's happened since. Where would you like to start, actually, Katie, in terms of what has developed over the course of the week and where women have been in the conversation and in the national story? Well, we've had a situation where Boris Johnson currently finds himself with no working majority after he actively withdrew the whip. So Tory rebels who wanted to vote against Brexit, many of whom were female MPs, have been told they cannot stand at the next election as Tory candidates

and they cannot sit in Parliament currently as Conservative MPs. And that was a big decision for a lot of Conservative MPs to make. And if you look at the names there, you have people like Antoinette Sandbeck, Caroline Noakes, who I since then, I think that's just defined the entire week for the Conservative Party. It feels very fraught. I think we're still having the consequences of that yesterday with Boris Johnson's brother, Joe Johnson, quitting both his role around the cabinet table, but also as an MP. And now you have figures like Amber Rudd and pressure on them in terms of, are they going to stay in this party, in this current government, as it seems to be undergoing this transformation. So I think there's a lot of disquiet in the Conservative Party

as we reach the end of the week. OK, and in some ways, people like Antoinette Sandbach and Caroline Noakes, they have been somewhat lost because the emphasis was on Nicholas Soames and Kenneth Clarke, for reasons that most people will understand. Yeah, I think the most attention has been on the fact Nicholas Soames and Kenneth Clark for reasons that most people will understand? Yeah, I think the most attention has been on the fact you've had former chancellors or Winston Churchill's grandson in the sense of Nicholas Soames. So Nicholas Soames has done things in his own right, but people are upset about that connection. But yeah, so you look at

the numbers. And I think it was such a powerful statement because you had a broad group going for this. And someone like Caroline Noakes served in Theresa May's government. She was a minister in it. So you have the sense where these aren't people that... You could argue with someone like Nicola Soames, they're reaching the end, perhaps, of their parliamentary career anyway. And some would say, well, they might not be seeking re-election anyway. I think for a woman who is probably in the middle of her career,

who was in government, it's actually probably a weightier decision in some ways to decide to rebel and actually find yourself exorcised from the party you've been in for such a long time. I mean, I think it has been a very chap-heavy week, but I think that's a really important thing to notice and stop and notice, actually, because what it shows is that politics does tend towards being male-dominated unless people constantly push and fight back against it. And you talk about that. Well, you know, you can't have a female former chancellor from the Conservative Party. Because there haven't been any. The Conservative Party is only a fifth women now. It's actually flattered by broadcasters who are constantly trying to achieve gender balance

because they will put the women from the Conservative Party forward. Actually, when you look at those benches still, it is a massive navy suit, and more so in them than at the other parties, actually. Well, we have language as well, which I think has been notable this week. Boris Johnson to Jeremy Corbyn at the Big Girls Blouse. It was actually shouted at him. It wasn't part of a formal exchange. This was Boris Johnson shouting at Jeremy Corbyn.

Sit down, love. That was the unnamed MP to the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Joe Swinson. And then the, I was going to say curious, although that isn't the right adjective, the moment when the shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, referenced the police being called to the Prime Minister's home. He wasn't the Prime Minister at the time. How do you feel about all this, Helen? I think language is a really difficult one because every individual instance looks very trivial. And people are just waiting to pounce and say, oh, God, you feminists get upset about everything. But what you want to say about big girls blouse is that that is a fundamentally an insult, which relies on the idea that for a man

to be like a woman is demeaning and degrading. So you know, I'm not getting I'm not burning my bra about it. You know, they're very expensive, actually, I need to hold on to them. But I do think it is worth saying that it reflects, actually, a misogynistic culture. It absolutely does. And before Percy Pedden gets in touch, we do know that phrase was coined by the comedian Hilda Baker in the sitcom Nearest and Dearest.

That's where it comes from. We checked. Katie, does language matter? Are people just getting into a little bit of a tiz about it? Which tiz is in itself a word more closely associated with the female of the species. Look, I think Boris Johnson particularly uses lots of phrases on all sides which people can take offence on. I think sometimes it's part of the tactic to almost distract by getting people having a row about a specific word and almost stop scrutiny on what he's actually doing.

So I think that can be on purpose. I think that if you look at the reference to the row that John McDonnell made in the sense that referring to what was reported in the papers some time ago about police being called when there's a row between Boris Johnson and his partner, I think the idea that you would joke about that, I mean, no one knows for sure what happened,

but I think everyone can agree it seemed fairly serious. And I mean, it was a private matter. I don't know why MPs would be. I think it's a strange situation for a man to joke about that, to be honest. And it did, it was met with laughter. Yeah, exactly. And I think that if you're going to start making jokes about those things, I think you're heading into tricky territory. But also there is the fact that I think Katie's exactly right to say that we can focus too much on language at the expense, particularly policy. One of the things that will happen if the Parliament is now dissolved, a new Queen's speech, is that the Domestic Abuse Bill,

which is now long delayed, will therefore drop off the parliamentary timetable. Jess Phillips has been trying to get to the bottom of what indeed will that bill's fate be. Do we know? Has anybody found out? So I've been hearing fairly encouraging things this week after there are lots of reports saying that people are worried it's going to be dropped, that it's not seen as a key piece of legislation by Boris Johnson. Theresa May saw it as an important thing, partly because she wanted to have a domestic legacy. But I do get the sense that people are fighting for it. I think you have figures like Amber Rudd pushing

because she did things at the time in a Home Office. So I think that there is a good chance it does carry through. Can we just talk a little bit about the Prime Minister's appearance yesterday, which, if it had been made by a female politician, particularly one, say, of the same vintage as Mr Johnson, so 55, I know exactly how it would have been interpreted. What would you say about that, Katie? Well, I don't think it has been broadly well received, but I think if... Well, Alison Pearson is still very much on message.

Lots of comparisons to Alan Partridge, as seen in the various points of that delivery. I think if you look at the week that Boris Johnson has had, if Theresa May had had this week, I think we'd be hearing that it was the most disastrous week of her premiership. It was another example of the calamity. I think partly what's happened here, though, is that Boris Johnson works with Dominic Cummings, he gets a lot of press, and partly perhaps because he was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a film, but also his role in the Leave campaign means that people really rate his strategy. So you have the sense where things appear to be going wrong and then others say, maybe we just don't understand what's the strategy behind this.

So there must be a genius at work here. I'm just too dim to follow it through. I think there is a sense of that. I think by Friday, I think that's getting harder to say, but I don't think you had that with Theresa May. And when you did, it was when she had Nick Timothy around her, actually, and people were saying Nick Timothy is the brain. So there is something there.

I think there's a lot about the way we make excuses for men. And I do think it is a double standard. When they are scatty or haywire or they can't manage their personal lives, they can't get dressed in the morning, they turn up with toast down their jumper. And it is read as being a sign that they are so focused on the thing that they're doing. Their great genius means that everything else is just sort of secondary. we don't you know if a woman turns out with a bird nest hair and like you know rip tights we don't go oh no she's probably just been solving world peace or you know coming up the answer to fermat's last theorem you think god look at this old you

know scatty old bird right and i do think that is a very very gendered way that men get away with being chaotic because it is assumed they have a support structure of women around them doing all the kind of rough bits. I just want to tell you that as we speak, actually, judges have thrown out Gina Miller and Sir John Major's fight to stop Boris Johnson shutting down Parliament. So that's news from the High Court. And then there was also the challenge by Jana Cherry for the SNP in Scotland,

which again is now thrown out at its first instance. But what that did do is it revealed something interesting about the fact that Boris Johnson's Number 10 were talking about prorogation, about suspending Parliament in the middle of August. So actually, it disputed the timeline they'd given it, proving essentially they had lied when they denied that story in The Observer. So these court cases might not have succeeded, but actually they have done something quite important in holding people to account. The funny thing is, by the end of this week, the prorogation could actually perhaps work against Boris Johnson, because we have a prime minister who has failed in his bid to stop this legislation, which is to have a Brexit delay to make the government seek an extension of Article 50. You have Boris Johnson

saying he won't do that and trying to call the general election. Opposition parties won't let him get that general election. He doesn't have a working majority. And they're going to try again next week. Now, Boris Johnson is on limited time to try and bring get that general election. He doesn't have a working majority and they're going to try again next week. Now, Boris Johnson is on limited time to try and bring about a general election before this extension because he's tried to prorogue Parliament. So I think in a sense, it could maybe again,

that I don't understand the strategy, but it could actually come back to haunt him. I know it is bad for the country, but on another level, it is very, very funny that people do end up playing such 12 dimensional chess that they end up kind of painting, and this is a terrible mixed metaphor, painting themselves into a corner made of chess pieces. I almost went with you there, Helen, and then you lost me somewhere around the move of the bishop, I think.

Let's just briefly discuss the special advisor situation, because it did look and sound dreadful, the idea of that young woman being escorted out, although I understand that's actually quite normal for the police to escort employees off premises. But the optics, which is one of the words of the week, and then there were other women as well. It wasn't just Sonia Khan, I don't think. There were three others who were also dismissed in that fashion. Didn't look great. Special advisors are in a really difficult position in Westminster because they are employed directly by the minister they report to. They have essentially no job security. you might say you know everything happening

in the Westminster bubble but this is reflective of a lot of people how a lot of people experience the modern world of work right with no real employment protections at at a whim and it's one of the big things that came out of me too actually is you know if you're like an agency cleaner how actually do you deal with workplace harassment what is your venue to complain when your employment is so insecure and there's a similar problem i think with special advisors that you know their recourse is so low and actually the biggest structural issue alex wickham of buzzfeed reported that you know there are more female special advisors in the lowest pay bracket there are far more men than women in the top pay bracket and there are women who think that they are being paid less than the man who did

the job before them in theresa may's government. So there does seem to be a structural problem with gender and pay among special advisers. I know, that's the situation some men choose to interpret as women clustering in lower paid roles. I think women actually don't even want to be paid. It would make them feel bad, probably. Yeah, I'd rather not be bothered being paid. It's a nuisance having money in the bank. Katie? I think the exit of several female special advisers, particularly reports of being escorted off of police, has caused a lot of unease in the Tory party. I know that Amber Rudd said to me that it reminded her

of when she'd worked previously for J.P. Morgan and people were, women are frog-marched off the floor and you always had that hanging off you. And she said that she didn't think that's how the Tory party should be treating people. So I think there are people who are concerned about how it was handled. And it also just creates an unease.

Now, clearly working in government is a very stressful job. I don't think anyone expects it to be a cuddly workplace, but I think there are lines in terms of what you expect to do and just knowing the rules. I don't encourage gambling but I did notice yesterday that Amber Rudd was 20 to 1 to be the next Prime Minister so look I don't know which party

Thank you very much Katie Balls who works for The Spectator and has a very interesting podcast, don't you Katie? You know what a shameless plug with Amber Rudd this week if we haven't spoken about her enough already. And Helen Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Good to see you both. Thank you very much.

And I suspect we might be seeing more of you over the next couple of weeks. You'd both be very welcome, of course. Now, on Monday, we are having a phone-in on the programme. We would love to talk to you. I would love to talk to you about the continuing conflict over Brexit. What impact is it having on you, on your family,

on your personal friendships? I know lots of people in my circle of friends are saying that the whole situation, whichever side of the argument you're on, is genuinely making people stressed. And let's face it, this is a very, in many ways, a very lucky and a very stable country to live in. Most of us have not known turmoil of this nature on this scale in our lifetimes. It is having an impact on us, no doubt about that. Let us know how things have been for you and your friends and family and personal relationships. Honestly, have you stopped talking to some people in your life? You can call us on Monday, but you can also email us over the course of today or the weekend and get your message across. We will read out plenty of emails as well on Monday, but you can also email us over the course of today or the weekend and get your message across.

We will read out plenty of emails as well on Monday morning. Best way to contact us is via the website, of course, bbc.co.uk slash Women's Hour. That's Monday morning, a live phone in on the impact of Brexit on your family and your friendships and your relationships. Sue Chong is here, the author. Welcome to the programme, Sue. How are you? Hello there. I'm dead excited to be here, Jane. Thank you very much for having me. Well, great pleasure. And that is the right reaction to appearing on Woman's Hour. It's really good to have such enthusiasm. Your book Chinglish, which I've been reading over the last couple of days, is about the life of a young woman called Jo Kwan. Now she is growing up,

it's the 1980s, it's Coventry and she's living above the family takeaway. That's right, yeah. So this is like a memoir about my time growing up as a teen and so we've just moved to Coventry and we're living above the shop in a Chinese takeaway and just like with any other teen you just really want to fit in But I found that extremely difficult because not only do I look different. So, you know, if your listeners don't know already, I am totally Chinese. And I also lived in a Chinese takeaway, which was just so, you know, for me, it was just so shameful and embarrassing at the time. In hindsight now, it was just normal. But I didn't know that at the time.

So, yeah, yeah I mean this story is just all about the crazy times that we had um in the takeaway and about you know just the cultural clashes that we had in general like just explain more about the shame you felt yeah so in actual fact uh when my agent approached me to uh and asked me to write this book I really didn't want to do it in the first place because um I'd spent like most of my adult life trying to brush it all under the carpet um because um I I just wanted to be like everybody else I wanted to be like the western kids I wanted to look like Madonna I wanted to like have my hair dyed blonde and look like Madonna but that wasn't going to happen um and I just wanted to blend in and just be popular,

just like everybody else at school. But the shame was that, so, you know, living in a life where you've got, like, two different cultures and you're just trying to kind of fit into one or the other the whole time. The difference for you, and you do say that Chinglis is, and I'm reading the cover now an almost entirely true story um is that you were working yes that's right you had to work I did so you know coming back from school going home and then um being asked to mop the floors get the prawns serve

customers even so you know I think I was about 12 or 13 when I had to start serving the customers um which was quite young I mean back then, especially in that part of Coventry, it was a bit rough and people didn't really bat an eyelid seeing a kid sort of serving behind the counter. Did anybody ever question it? No, no, not at all. I mean, a lot of them, to be honest, a lot of them were kind of like, we had the Talbot car factory across the road and we had,

and there was, you know, so pub kicking out time, we had people coming in and occasionally fights would break out. And for me, that was like a really normal thing to kind of see. And I always had to be on standby to kind of like call the police as well, because I was the only one that could actually speak any good enough English to kind of explain. But, yeah, so the shame as well was like it was it was. Well, it's this. By the way, this book isn't all doom and gloom. It's very, very funny. I should say it is funny. There are, you know this yourself, there are Sue Townsend-esque elements to this.

Yes, there's a total nod to Adrian Moore there because Sue Townsend was my favourite and still is my favourite author of all time. Because the character that she wrote for Adrian was me at the time, sort of downtrodden and a bit of a geek and an outcast and all that kind of thing. But like, yeah, so the cultural clashes with things like so you know in hindsight some of them are very very funny but at the time I was like absolutely cringing so for instance my mum did and actually still does belch audibly and freely in public because that's the sort of thing that you know I'm not and I'm actually just speaking from my personal experience here it's just not every British Chinese does this but my you know my mum wouldn't think twice about kind of like burping in public and stuff like that but for us it was like oh my god what are you doing and my dad would walk around in his flip-flops all year round even in arctic conditions to go

and see his bank manager you know and you're like oh no you know put some shoes on also you never closed this was the thing I suppose I hadn't appreciated this, although like everybody else in Britain, I've used many a Chinese takeaway in my time. Yeah, and that's the thing because you don't really know what... That's the thing, it's a bit of a mystery. You don't really know what happens behind the other side of a Chinese takeaway counter. So with us, my parents actually worked all the year and they only had Christmas Day off. And it was about sort of 12 to 14 hour days as well. So we witnessed the hard work that they actually put into the year and they only had Christmas day off. And it was about sort of 12 to 14 hour days as well. So we witnessed like the hard work that they actually put into the takeaway

and they always wanted us to inherit the takeaway. So they didn't really bother about our education. They weren't bothered about us bettering ourselves or anything. They wanted us to take the takeaway over. We were just like, no way is that going to happen. This book ends with you leaving. And I know it's not unfair to say that you were, it wasn't an especially happy childhood for any number of ways which are included in the book. Yeah, so the topics that are actually discussed in the book, they tackle things such as domestic violence and there's bullying and racism and general teen angst.

And just to let you know as well that there are actually a list of charities and helplines at the back of the book. And I actually, there was one point where I actually was going to jack it in and not finish the book at all because I was having, so this, I haven't touched on the communication problem with my parents actually. So my mum hardly speaks English. My dad speaks English but doesn't like talking. And then all the kids can hardly speak Chinese so we had absolutely

a massive problem communicating. This is why it's so important that this perspective the British Chinese perspective it needs to be heard. To my shame I'd not thought about it. You've not heard it before. You know what Jane, neither had I because like I was saying before

I just brushed it all under the carpet and I really didn't want to know up until the time that I had to start writing the book and then I had to start digging it all up the carpet. I really didn't want to know up until the time that I had to start writing the book. And then I had to start digging it all up. And I've only just found out kind of like new things. So with the communication thing, I'm actually estranged from my parents right now. They don't even know I've written the book. And I actually nearly didn't finish writing the book.

So I was thinking to myself, well, what would happen if my dad got hold of the book and read it? But I actually spoke to another wonderful author called Ariane Shireen, who went through a similar thing in her childhood, if not worse. And she actually said to me, this is your story, you deserve to write it. And that's what kind of got me through. Well, we should say, I did say that you leave home, you went to fashion college. Yes, yes. The problem is that that wasn't the happy I mean you said people listening will think well this a bullion to enthusiastic young woman how marvelous but you've had a tough time

along the way yes it was tough so um so what happened was so the book actually ends on a kind of like a happy note yes and not a lot of people would actually know what happened after that so living coming from a dysfunctional family in a Chinese takeaway environment kind of doesn't set you up very well for real life in the real world. So I ended up, I'm not going to do any spoilers. So I actually went to London and thought, oh, you know, I'm going to make myself, you know, I'm going to become an artist and all that kind of thing. But I actually ended up living in a squat, pregnant and living in a squat at the age of 19. And yeah, so things actually took a bit of a dip after I left home all of which means you're going to have to stay for the podcast and you're

going to have to write another book but I suspect you will um and I really enjoyed this and I meant what I said I'd never read a book like this before and I'm really glad you did it so thank you thank you so much Jane um really worth reading Sue Chung's book is called Chinglish and there'll be more from her in the Woman's Hour podcast which will be available later on today. A couple of weeks ago, it seems a long time ago actually, we asked you to send a picture of you, a picture of your best self if you like, something that captured you at a truly happy time in your life and we were inundated. Thank you so much for taking part in this project. We had some fantastic images of people with their parents out walking with

friends, doing what they're best at, doing what they're happiest at, happiest doing, if you like. And we're going to hear some of your stories now. We're going to start with Helen Childerhouse telling our reporter Laura Thomas about a photo that changed the way she saw herself. Okay the photo I've got in front of me was taken a couple of years ago in Southwold which is somewhere where I go every year with my family. I did as a child and my parents now take us. We are stood on the edge of the sea there's me and five little girls my three daughters and my two nieces and we are wave jumping and it's obviously a warm day because you can see the shadows in the sand and in the photo I'm actually airborne so you can see that I'm jumping and they've all got wonderful smiles on their faces and it's just one of those photos that makes me really happy it's a time of when we're all

happy and I love the way the girls are enjoying themselves and how they see me very differently to how I see myself. Over the last especially four or five years I've suffered quite a lot from depression. I chose to take seven years out as a full-time mum which was a brilliant decision and I love spending time with the girls but having returned to work over the last couple of years I went back to work when my youngest started school has been a really difficult time teaching is my passion I taught for 10 years before I had my children and I'd always intended to go straight back I was a head of department when I got pregnant with my oldest Dorothy and to return to teaching schools are so pushed it's tight on money it's tight on responsibilities quite a lot of the middle management has has been stripped away to

make efficiency savings which means when you're in, your workload is a lot higher than I think it was when I first started teaching sort of 20 years ago. And that's really hard. And it's hard teaching a full day and then coming home and being mum and getting the tea and all that emotional labour that falls, tends to fall on the woman. It's trying to get your identity and trying to be... For a lot of the last few years, I haven't felt like Helen. I felt like the geography teacher, the mum,

all the other responsibilities I have, the taxi driver quite a lot. And it's sometimes hard to remember who Helen was. I think when I'm feeling down, I need to try and think how they see me through their eyes. And how do you think they do see you? I think it's the fun side. The photo is really that sort of start of realising it doesn't matter what I look like. I look in the mirror and I'm

very critical but the girls look at me and see I'm their mum. I'm the person who puts on their wetsuit and takes them swimming in the sea or jumping on the sand. And I need to keep hold of that through the day and that keeps me going. Do you have the picture up in the house anywhere? Well, I don't have it in the house. I have it on my wall at work. So when I'm at school, I've got that picture up.

And actually, after having done this, I'm going to get Julio down by the schoolyard. That was our listener, Helen Childerhouse. And you can see that image she was talking about on the Woman's Hour website and we'll punt it out on Twitter as well, at BBC Woman's Hour if you don't follow us already. That is, though, the best way to keep in touch with the programme. And we're on Instagram as well, at BBC Women's Out There 2. Now to the planet, she said cheerfully.

We've got about a quarter of an hour here to discuss the planet and its future. Researchers tell us that women are responsible for the majority of consumer decisions making. And this is important, an estimated 80% of purchases. All the big stuff, really. Family holidays, cars, clothing, food. We're also often told that women are honestly more concerned about the climate and keener to make environmentally conscious decisions. Why is this? Or is this just yet another burden that women are meant to bear? All products, of course, whatever they are, have some sort of environmental cost.

Is it increasingly our responsibility to limit our impact? But is it hard actually to find time to do exactly that when you've got other stuff to think about? Lauren Bravo is here, author of a forthcoming book, it's out next year, called How to Break Up with Fast Fashion. And you've done exactly that. You haven't bought new clothes for how long, Lauren? For eight months now. So I started on the 1st of January this year, news resolution. And I've only been buying secondhand clothes all year. All right. Well, you can tell us about that in a moment. Kate Cawley is the owner of Veris Strategies, which is a sustainability agency doing what, Kate?

So we work with businesses, basically, to help them become more ethical and make sure the products that they are providing for the consumer have a much lower impact on the environment and hopefully start to benefit society as well. But they've still got to seduce the consumer. They do, yes, and we're a firm believer that you don't need to compromise on kind of the commercial bottom line with community, social, environmental benefits, that it's a win if you can get all of it right. Okay. And in our studio in Leeds is Dr. Lucy Middlemiss, who's Associate Professor in Sustainability at Leeds University.

Lucy, good morning to you. Good morning. Well, let's start with you, actually. Just how much power do women have as consumers in terms of sustainability? So you started off that introduction by talking about women taking responsibility for household buying decisions and that's true. We're very familiar with the idea that women will choose kids clothes, their own clothes, sometimes husband's clothes. They will buy often food for the family and other households goods but obviously the gender pay gap means that women have actually a lot less money available to spend and the gender housework gap

makes us question whether this is a power in terms of the amount of money they have to spend or actually it's a form of inequality so i think we risk further reinforcing gender inequalities by implying that it's women's responsibilities both to shop and to shop sustainably. All right then so in simple terms women get lumped with this responsibility we haven't necessarily chosen it. Yes I think so and I or rather the yeah that's right but probably the more significant indicator of environmental impact from spending money would be wealth or income. So if you, generally the pattern is that richer people have a larger environmental impact. And I think that's a more interesting thing to think about than whether you're male or female. It

might be that the women are making the decisions, but if you look at the household income as a whole, the more wealthy households will have a bigger environmental impact. Kate, are you conscious of that in your organisation? Yeah, I think that definitely, I completely agree that sustainable consumerism needs to move well beyond gender. I think we're all in this together. And I certainly don't think this added pressure on to women should be used as a get out clause for men. I think that certainly the trends that we're seeing is that, yes, women maybe naturally have more empathy and actually want to understand the story behind a product. Can I just pick you up on that? Women naturally have more empathy.

It is a sweeping generalisation. I refuse to believe that we're necessarily always more empathetic than men. Well, they want to understand the story more, would say behind the product i think there is yeah naturally uh there's a lot of research out there that they want to understand how a product is made whereas i think men and again this is a generalization tend to be a bit more transactional in their relationship do they need the product and is it good value whereas women can be swayed by sort of more eco-marketing messages, wrongly or rightly, I think, because there is more of a natural desire to understand more about it.

Okay, let me just, very briefly, I'll go back to Lucy on that. What do you think, Lucy? Yes, I mean, the statistics would say that women are more environmentally conscious and more environmentally concerned, so they are thinking about these things more. And then also, since they are making a lot of those kinds of more day-to-day decisions, perhaps it's being brought to their attention more. So, you know, the movement around trying to reduce waste from supermarket shopping, or if you are on that front line and you're making those decisions on a day-to-day basis, it's a bit more in the front of your mind when you're thinking about these things.

Now, Lauren, women and fashion are inexorably, they're always going to be linked together. And it is true that women are not only more likely to buy clothes, they are expected to buy more clothes, aren't they? Well, absolutely. I mean, I think when we know that women overwhelmingly buy more clothes than men, I think it's actually very hard to find statistics for this,

but in the global supply of second-hand clothes, there are more than seven times as many women's items as men's. But I think we have to think about why that is. And surely it's because most of us, almost from the get-go, have been told that our value is in our appearance, primarily. And for a lot of us, that translates as believing that we are only as good as our last outfit. So inevitably we shop, of course we do. and I think it's interesting when we're talking about the

women's kind of being more like women being more likely to take on the responsibility of sustainable consumption because I think a lot of that as well is because these days it does feel like self-optimization is an inherent part of womanhood so we're always being told we ought to be better healthier shinier you know more virtuous and I do think the sustainability comes into that as well I think a lot of my friends are constantly wracked with guilt over how sustainable or otherwise our habits are in a way that I don't see male partners being you know. Okay well what about as we are talking about clothing and you are the person who has given up buying new clothes was that hard to do or actually eight nine months in has it just become completely

normal not to buy anything new no do you know it really was hard at first i think um it was a real lesson in learning my my triggers so all of the the reasons i would shop and there were plenty of them so i would shop to celebrate i would shop to commiserate, I shopped if I was in a good mood, if I was in a bad mood. And more than that, I think I really had kind of inextricably linked my worth to my outfits. You know, I really felt like I was failing somehow to keep up if I wasn't wearing the latest thing that the magazines were telling me I had to have, social media. But the cost to the of, say, and I admit to this, I've got a bit of a white T-shirt habit. Stupidly, it only just occurred to me that even a white T-shirt has got to be dyed white.

Yes, I mean... Has it? Well, no, I think it would be bleached. Right, there you go then. To achieve that perfect, that box-fresh whiteness. And cotton as well. I think people don't perhaps realise that cotton, if it's not organic cotton,

is also one of the thirstiest crops on the planet. It uses a lot of water to grow the crops. And there's a lot of humanitarian issues around the growth of cotton as well. So there are no kind of silver bullet solutions. I know Kate was saying this earlier. It's very hard to find one answer to give people that satisfies everything in ticks or boxes. We have to find our own roots. Steve the Vegan asks, Kate, what about the discussion on diet anyone for veganism well this is you yes

this is a very hot topic at the moment and i think um it's confusing about what to buy and what to eat and i think food is a basic human right that everybody has access to i think closing clothing isn't so essential um but i find it it's frustrating the situation we find ourselves in that to buy sustainably is currently really only accessible to the wealthier parts of society um and that's you know people that um have the luxury of time and also money to to buy high welfare more sustainable products that that isn't something that is um available to those on a tight budget and and yeah that that's it's system change that we need and i think this needs to come from a governmental level but i think we are all becoming

much more aware of um the impact of our diets and obviously it's a very hot topic with some um reports that have been released recently. And the general message is that we do all need to eat less meat and dairy that we are used to and embrace more of a plant-based diet. Mary, this is back to clothes actually, says how we look is judged. I still buy most of my clothes secondhand

and people are often surprised by this. Can I just, I mean, I think class is significant as well, Lucy. I know you feel strongly about this. If you're rich, you can afford to look poor, actually, because people will just think you're a raging eccentric. However, if you're genuinely poor, you can't. Yeah, and just to pick up on something that Kate said,

so sustainability only being for the wealthy is really misled, actually, because if we go back to this idea of rich people having more impact than poor people, what that means is that the ecological footprints or the carbon footprints of the poorer members of society are much smaller than those of the more wealthy. However, we kind of associate the agenda with the middle class. We associate it with solar panels, organic food, and actually practices going on in sort of daily life for poorer people are more likely to have a lower impact than they are for those of us that earn more. So I think it's really important to remember that many of the visible things that we do that are about sustainability, yes, they are

associated with being middle class and probably being wealthier and spending quite a lot of money. But actually, the less visible things can actually have much more of an impact. So to give you an example, many people in the UK, one of their biggest impacts is taking flights. And when the statistics are done, usually only about half of the population flies in any one year and then there's about 10 of the population flies multiple times so that means most people are taking one flight or none and actually that 10 of the population that's

flying multiple times a year and then perhaps also flying um in a work context um is is having is having the most major impact on the environment. So we should really be celebrating poor people as quite environmentally friendly. Right, OK. Surely you don't attend foreign destinations for academic conferences anymore, Lucy, and certainly not by plane.

Well, I try not to. So you do, sometimes. Seriously, do academics fly to conferences to discuss sustainability i can't say it's sustainability yes they do and that's ridiculous many of my colleagues are committed to not flying and um certainly uh many of us have reduced quite substantially the amount of flying we've done and i think i think that's a sort of trend that's passing throughout academia actually not just um through uh sustainability colleagues because we the amount of flying we've done. And I think that's a sort of trend that's passing through our academia, actually, not just through sustainability colleagues,

because we see that it's just hypocritical, isn't it? So I generally would go by train if it's in Europe. It just kind of depends on other things, of course. And I'm a parent, so I also have to sometimes get back for caring responsibilities. Sure. I'm not getting at you personally, but I know you can see the point. It is interesting. I just noticed, happened to hear this morning, that Boohoo, the online fashion retailer,

their profits have soared up nearly 40%, Lauren. So for all the blether and the discussion about fast fashion and what young people can do to change the way the world works, they are, I'm not accusing Boohoo, I'm sure they're a decent company and they're paying their taxes and all the rest of it. But people are saying one thing and perhaps doing something else. Yeah, I think it's partly a trickle down effect. I think it is sort of, you know, these ideas take a while to catch on and they take even longer for us to feel confident enough to put them into practice something that I write about in the book is I feel like we do need a bit of a collective mindset

shift that almost allows us to kind of you know put our foot on the brakes a little bit and wear the same outfits again and again so social media I think is a big culprit in this you know young people we look at social media we look at the influences that we admire they have a new outfit in every single photo and the accessibility of social media has given everybody this feeling like they should be a celebrity with a single wear wardrobe to match. And then we wash our clothes all the time. Yeah, so this is something else that people can do if they want to be a bit more sustainable quite easily,

is to not wash your clothes as often. So actually one of the best ways to prolong the lifespan of a garment, which in turn is one of the best ways to stop clothes entering landfill and not buy as many, is wash it less. Stops it fading, stops it losing its shape. As we know, a lot of fast fashion, it's not great quality. It's not that durable. And that's something else, I think, particularly if we're talking about the lowest income customers. They deserve clothes that will last for a while.

It's interesting. Boohoo apparently have a recycled range, so it's not as if they're not trying. And you imagine that long term that might have an impact and change thinking. Yeah, I think it's very important that a lot of the most accessible fast fashion brands are seen to be making a difference as well. And I think actually we've seen since 2013 the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, which was one of the biggest catalysts for change in the industry.

We've seen a lot of those names, the high street chains, the sort of Zara's and H&M's, the online retailers. They have had to buck up their ideas considerably because the heat has been on them. But actually, when we talk about perhaps, you know, more wealthy consumers, one of the things people don't realise is that a lot of the more premium brands, those kind of lovely mid-range, you know, £150, £200 for a dress kind of brands, they are no more sustainable. No, no, I mean, they're not. I think that's clear. A brief word, if you can, Kate, on what we can do. I'm doing a food shop tomorrow. What don't I do? I think it's really important to be conscious about what you're buying. Yeah, but does that mean I say no to anything in plastic? No, not at all. I think you need to be conscious not to buy over-packaged product.

But I think what's actually more important, and for some reason this is the issue of food waste, hasn't quite connected with the consumers in the same way plastic has, which is something around the blue planet effect. I think it's about buying what you need and not being sucked into this buy one, get one free and buying too too much and then it going to waste because a third of all food is wasted around the world and yet we're having these conversations about how are we going to feed the world

sustainably by 2050. Some advice from you Lucy very briefly. Well I guess I would say that sustainable living isn't just about spending money so there's a lot of things that we do in our homes that have a really major impact on the environment okay on you go but quickly so for instance showering which we do now daily we use a lot of water to do that and we take long showers we that that creates creates a lot that uses a lot of water and a lot of a lot of gas for heating and so those kinds of things are worth thinking about as well thank you very much um i won't get onto my bath habit which is appalling and which I know I need to change. Thank you very much, Dr. Lucy Middlemiss, Associate Professor in Sustainability at Leeds University.

You also got the views of Kate Corley of Various Strategies and Lauren Bravo, who's the author of the forthcoming book, How to Break Up with Fast Fashion. You can do it. To your thoughts on this, this is Ella. I feel really lucky that my community is coming together to try to consume more ethically. My friends set up a zero-waste shop in Penrith. I use cloth nappies and I've used them for both of my children. Our electricity is 100% renewable. I also made a pact to myself not to buy new clothes and to make my own from repurposed fabrics as much as possible.

It is hard, though, and sometimes I just need to buy things in plastic. My husband was paying lip service to most of this, but now he is fully on board. Vanessa says richer people have more environmental impact and women in households do not necessarily hold the spending power, she says. Anna says, I'm setting off on my holiday in the Western Isles today. I'm travelling by train from Devon to London, then going on the Caledonian Sleeper to Inverness. Tomorrow, it's a mini bus to Ullapool and the Kalmak ferry to Stornoway. Not flying is the way to go. Anna, have a fantastic time.

You're very, very lucky, I think. Angie, I love clothes and the buzz of new purchases, but I was horrified to learn of the impact of fashion on the environment and on the lives of clothing industry workers. So I challenged myself 18 months ago to give up buying new clothes for a year. I still got the buzz from finding new wardrobe pieces in charity shops. In fact, I felt even better by supporting the charities. I also repair my clothes much more often now. I've totally changed my relationship with clothes and I haven't bought anything new except underwear. Alison says, I try to buy goods with minimal packaging, hard as it is. I believe that some plastic packaging is recyclable

and that some is not there appears to be little difference in its purpose between crinkly plastic not recyclable and soft stretchy plastic that is why do producers not use the recyclable plastic as little as possible for all goods if the reason price, then surely legislation should be made to force this. That's interesting, isn't it? Brenda, related to your discussion just now, please could pressure be put on supermarkets to buy, to stop buy one, get one free on perishable goods. I tried to get the Women's Institute to take this up years ago, but I was fobbed off. Most households are either one or two people so they've got no wish to buy two melons, two bags of potatoes etc. And Anna makes a good point listening to

Woman's Hour about fast fashion. Am I the only one who does buy budget clothes but wears them for years? I've got tops, pants, dresses and skirts from the likes of H&M and Primark that are over a decade old. They are still going strong and they look all right. And from Nicola, I take climate change very, very seriously and I'm a single mum of two. In 2017, I took a no shopping pledge apart from food. I haven't bought anything new for two years and apart from saving lots of money and being able to go part-time at work, I am having less impact on the planet and I'm not on that rat race treadmill of having to work more in order to buy more stuff. And Lorraine has a practical note to

add, really wash clothes less, shower less. I'm afraid that and the menopause really don't go together, points out Lorraine. Right. Thank you very much, Lorraine. Sue Chung is still here, the author of Chinglish. And we sort of left the conversation where you left home because you had this. But then things you were pregnant. You were living in a squat. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You've written about this for The Big Issue, which is.

I did. Yeah. So they approached me and asked me it was quite strange actually because I've just written a a novel a memoir about the time up to the time they actually go to London and end up living in a squat and I really didn't even think about that year that period um after um leaving home until the big issue approached me. So it was a pretty hard piece to write because I hadn't actually revisited that part of my life really since then. Because whereas my memoir from earlier has funny moments in it, when I'm living in a squat and I'm pregnant,

that's kind of not really funny at all. It isn't funny. I was actually really shocked when I came across that. Yeah. Can I ask you, how did you come across that? Did you just buy the big issue? Yeah, I happened to see it. Oh, right.

Okay. Yeah, so it was quite a random piece, actually. And yeah, so basically, the details, it was quite a short piece. So I had to try and make it sound not too depressing um because I only had a finite amount of words to do it in um uh so what happened was I left home and went to college and because I was uh I had an upbringing where we didn't really converse with our parents they weren't really concerned with our education or our welfare well-being um so I didn't really converse with our parents. They weren't really concerned with our education or our welfare, wellbeing. So I didn't really get that kind of talk from my parents

about, you know, what do you do when you're with boyfriends and when you leave home and, you know, how do you look after yourself? How do you stand on your own two feet? So I was kind of like just cast out there and left to my own devices. And I didn't really know much about booze or boys or contraception.

And when you get those all in the wrong order um you end up it's a very good way of up the doff yes yes you can do certainly yes yeah so that was a bit of a surprise um and I'd only just kind of like finished my course so I was hoping to go on to bigger better things you know I had like a whole kind of plan in ahead of me and um and then obviously this kind of uh was kind of put to a sharp end um because then I was pregnant um so then I had to kind of rethink things I decided to tell my mum who I kind of thought it was best to because it was going to be her grandchild that I was expecting and the response that I got was kind of not surprising I mean she was really angry and she said you either

get rid of the baby or you get out of the house and so I chose the latter. I was just thinking you know what you know I think this is just kind of just says it all really like you've done this closure for me now and I was going to ask, was that what finished your relationship? Yeah, it is. And if she couldn't help me out in that situation, then it wasn't really worth pursuing. Obviously, your mum isn't here to defend her. So I just wonder whether she was living in a strange country,

couldn't speak the language. I don't know about her background, but I imagine she'd been through some tough experiences herself. Yeah, and that's another weird thing, is because I actually don't really know much about my parents history no because they didn't sit down with us and converse with us in that way you know we a lot of people don't really understand our relationship with our parents because it's so unconventional um whereas you know I used to go to my friends houses and uh see how they kind of um talk to their parents and just thought they're having an actual conversation like they're friends. And, you know, how does that happen? Like we don't do that at home.

So the only kind of like Chinese that I know, and this is really weird because most British Chinese people speak Cantonese. But for some strange reason, my parents decided to speak a dialect called Hakka, which is very rarely spoken. And so not only did we not speak very much Chinese the only Chinese we knew was hatga so when friends and family came along um they'd say to my mum oh your children they don't speak very good Chinese do they my mum would go yeah they're really useless aren't they and we were like well that's not our fault um so yeah so that communication problem was a real kind of, well, obviously when that incident happened and I explained to her that I was having a baby and it wasn't only the communication problem, it was a cultural thing as well. So the fact that I was actually not married and it was a white man, that all kind of just made everything worse. So that was kind of when I decided to just walk away from the family altogether.

And I'm actually still estranged from my parents. I don't speak to them very often at all. And the thing is, as I've got older, it's become more sort of, well, you know, we don't speak the same language anyway. What are we going to talk about? You know, they phone phone they used to up to about a few years ago phone every now and again but it was never to say how i was ask how i was or anything it was always with some sort of family problem issue yeah um yeah so uh it was like well

why why even bother you know would you say that your life now was steady and stable and you live in a part of the world, Bournemouth, if you don't mind me mentioning it, but I couldn't think of a more, in the nicest possible way, place to live. Insert adjective. By the way, Bournemouth is actually quite trendy now it's not like the old seaside kind of OAP town like people got yeah it is actually getting a little bit trendy no okay yeah um so uh yeah it's a beautiful place it is a beautiful place um so I it's taken a lot of hard work and time and effort to actually get to the place where I am now. It's taken about 15 years of self-help book reading, yoga, meditation, and therapy as well, actually. And writing my memoir, Chinglish, that actually saved me a lot of money on therapy, because it was a very cathartic kind of experience

as I was like digging up the past that I was trying to hide away for so long. Yeah, now that I actually am in a really happy place now, but I will say that because my siblings, who feature in the book, they have both moved the furthest away on the globe, away from my parents as possible, and that's actually no accident. So my older brother lives in Oregon in the States and my little sister lives in Sydney in Australia. Whereas I am kind of like, I guess I'm the sort of person, I'm the person in the family that still kind of like holds everyone together, even though I don't speak to my parents. I'm still there just in case.

Our families are nevertheless pretty complicated. I think most people listening will have a great deal of sympathy for your story, but also perhaps being able to see the other side of it too. But thank you so much, Sue. I did enjoy the book. And enjoy is the right word, because it is funny. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, you're welcome. Sue Chung, and the book is Chinglish.

And join us, if you can, for Weekend Woman's Hour tomorrow afternoon. That's the best of the week, of course. And then live Monday morning, two minutes past 10. It's a phone-in about the impact of Brexit on you and your family and your friendships and other relationships. I'm Simon Mundy, host of Don't Tell Me the Score, the podcast that uses sport to explore life's bigger questions,

covering topics like resilience, tribalism and fear with people like this. We keep talking about fear and to me, I always want to bring it back to, are you actually in danger? That's Alex Honnold, star of the Oscar-winning film Free Solo, in which he climbed a 3,000-foot sheer cliff without ropes. So, I mean, a lot of those, you know, social anxieties, things, and certainly I've had a lot of issues with talking to attractive people in my life, where I'm like, oh no, like I could never do that.

And it certainly feels like you're going to die, but realistically you're not going to die, but realistically, you're not going to die. And that's all practice too. Have a listen to Don't Tell Me The Score, full of useful everyday tips from incredible people

on BBC Sounds. 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.