Woman's Hour - The Favourite, Abortion in Ireland, Mid Winter

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

New film ‘The Favourite’ set in 18th century England features a frail and irascible Queen Anne played by Olivia Coleman whose attention and affection is being sought by her political adviser Lady Sarah Churchill (Duchess of Marlborough) and ruthless chambermaid Abigail. It is a story of sexual politics and power games, starring Olivia Coleman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone. Jenni talks to screenwriter Deborah Davis.Abortion will be legal in the Republic of Ireland from the first day of January 2019. A bill to legalise abortion services passed all stages of the Irish Parliament last week, but given the tight time frame, how will this work in practice? Jenni is joined by Ellen Coyne, Senior Ireland Reporter at The Times and Dr Peter Boylan, consultant obstetrician and former master of the National Maternity Hospital.In May we heard from 25 year old Samantha Jury-Dada who, concerned by the surge in knife crime in London, was going to several parts of the US to find out how young women and girls associated with gangs are supported. She’s back and tells Jenni what she found out and how that information will help her forge better support for young women at risk here in the UK.Gillian Monks is the author of ‘Merry Midwinter: How to rediscover the Magic of the Christmas Season' and she joins Jenni to discuss the history and significance of Winter Solstice celebrations. She’ll be sharing some simple tactics on how to shut out Christmas stress and remember the spirit of the season.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Laura NorthedgeInterviewed Guest: Deborah Davis Interviewed Guest: Ellen Coyne Interviewed Guest: Dr Peter Boylan Interviewed Guest: Samantha Jury-Dada Interviewed Guest: Gillian Monks

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the podcast for Thursday, the 20th of December, and of course it's Woman's Hour. Now, The Favourite is said to be the big new film of the holidays. What inspired Deborah Davis to write about Queen Anne and the competition between two women battling to be her closest ally, the Duchess of Marlborough, and a ruthless maid called Abigail. Girls and Gangs, Samantha Juridado returns to the programme after carrying out research in the States. What

has she learned about the problem? And Merry Midwinter, a book by Gillian Monk, sets out to rediscover the magic of the Christmas season. Now, a bill to legalise abortion services passed all stages of the Irish Parliament late last week, so termination up to 12 weeks will be legal in the Republic from the first day of January 2019. But it's Christmas next week, then New Year, so there's very little time for things to be ready. How will the new law work in practice? Well, Dr Peter Boylan is a consultant obstetrician and former master of the National Maternity Hospital.

Ellen Coyne is the senior Ireland reporter at The Times. Ellen, I know you've seen the guidelines. Ellen Coyne is the senior Ireland reporter at The Times. Ellen, I know you've seen the guidelines. What are the most important things those guidelines say? The most important thing is that up to nine weeks, women in Ireland will be able to access legal abortion services from their local GP clinic. I know that's slightly different to the abortion law that you have existing in the UK. Most of the guidance is very solid and clear and

firm, but there's still a little bit of uncertainty for GPs for abortion services between nine and 12 weeks. In some parts of the country, they still don't know exactly which hospitals they'll be able to refer women to, because between that nine and 12 week period, you won't be able to access it in a local service. It would have to be at a major hospital. There is a slight bit of concern. There's been a lot of controversy over the last couple of weeks about the fact that this is going to be, in early pregnancy, a GP-led service. There's been a lot of protest from a small cohort of GPs who are conscientious objectors. They're morally opposed to abortion

and they don't want to be involved in the service at all. That includes after refusing to offer abortion services to women, meeting their medical guidance requirements to refer her on to another service. So the fact of the matter is, abortion is going to be a legal public health service from next month. There might still be cases of women travelling,

but rather than them travelling from Ireland to the UK, it might be a case of travelling from a small rural village to maybe a bigger city or town where the services are definitely available. Peter, obviously this is a completely new service and a complete cultural shift in the Republic.

How prepared would you say the medical profession is for it happening on the 1st of January? Well, you're correct. It is a major cultural change both for Irish society and for Irish doctors. And certainly on the GP side, there are plenty of GPs around the country with a good geographic spread in order to provide the service in their own locality within reason. perhaps of sitting beside their mother's best friend in the in the surgery and somebody saying oh what are you here for that sort of thing um so it is likely that a lot of women will still travel to the larger centers because of anonymity and so on that's less likely with much younger women i think who don't see the same sort of difficulties surrounding the whole thing hospital doctors on the other hand um are more fearful i think um because there is a lot of strain on hospital resources in Ireland,

probably no different to every other European country. And our infrastructure in our hospitals is not great. The hospitals tend to be crowded. So there are genuine concerns. However, when one looks at the actual numbers spread across the year, and of course we don't know for definite, but if you take the number of women who have traveled to the uk and have given an irish address and then if you effectively double those numbers you still end up with if supposing there was only 10 hospitals across

the country that were providing terminations at less than 12 weeks then you'd end up with each hospital having to do maybe three or four a week so the imposition in terms of workload is not great but i think there is a genuine fear of change there's a genuine fear of cultural change you have said though you have said peter that abortion services will be unrecognizable in a year's time what did you mean when you said that yeah because it's such a new service and a new big cultural change i say um people will be a bit wary at the beginning there will inevitably be problems with the induction of any new service no service is perfect but the glitches i think will be worked out progressively as time goes on and there are um methods being put in place

in order to identify what the problems are and remedy them as time goes on. So that while the service will be, it will be reviewed on a weekly and then twice weekly and then monthly basis as time goes on so that these little problems can be fixed. And in a year's time, I would anticipate that it will be not of any public interest at all. It will have embedded in the overall health service. And I think people's fears about, doctors' fears about the whole service will have been allayed substantially. Ellen, what are women's groups saying?

Sorry, so the big concern among women's groups is the fact that the government have decided to include a mandatory three-day waiting period in this abortion law. That effectively means if I went to my local GP on a Monday, I wouldn't be able to access the service until a Thursday. The reason this is so controversial is that there weren't any kind of medical reasons for it. It was essentially a political construct because certain politicians, including the Deputy Prime Minister, were very nervous about supporting repeal of the Eighth

Amendment and reform of Ireland's abortion law earlier on this year. The major concern is, as you know and as Women's Hour listeners know, Northern Ireland remains the only part of the United Kingdom where abortion is still legal in almost all circumstances. The government had been very keen for women like that to be able to travel to the Republic to access legal abortion, but obviously that's quite difficult if you need to book three nights in a Dublin hotel or make two trips to be able to go through the mandatory three-day waiting period.

Obviously, there are concerns as well that it could have a disproportionate effect on more vulnerable women, maybe women who would struggle, might be in a domestic abuse situation, women maybe in rural areas who would have to make a long journey twice, or just women who would struggle to get the time off work. There's a lot of frustration about this. The European Council's Commissioner on Human Rights immediately called for the

waiting period to be scrapped as soon as the abortion law was passed. And the biggest source of frustration is that Simon Harris, our Health Minister, had kind of already indicated that to these groups that when this abortion law is reviewed in three years to work out any problems or barriers to access, he had kind of hinted that it might be removed then. So a lot

of people see it as being at best pointless and at worst a little bit paternalistic. You've mentioned conscientious objectors of which of course there will be a number of doctors who will not want to do this and there have also been protests against the new law being introduced at all. What's happened so far, Ellen? So during the referendum, there was a huge amount of concern about anti-abortion activists who decided to stand outside maternity hospitals holding up graphic imagery. And there was a lot of public concern about that. So the government decided that they would introduce this law, which kind of includes buffer zones or safety zones. I

know that some London councils have been doing that on an individual basis, but this will be a countrywide law. The problem is that law hasn't been passed yet, so once we have legal abortion services from next month, there will be scope for people to do those kind of protests or vigils legally. Immediately after the referendum in May, we covered quite a number of stories about British and American anti-abortion groups, which immediately started flying some of their activists over to kind of train them up for this sort of thing.

This is more difficult in Ireland because we're not going to have abortion clinics like mary stopes or b pass like you do have in the uk um it's going to be in maternity services and gp clinics and it's going to be very hard to discern who is there for a termination and who isn't but i suppose it is important to remember you know the government had said when this law passed that it marked a new era for women's health care we are also entering a new era of anti-abortion activism in ireland that's going to be completely different how it was before this group of people have effectively dusted themselves off from the referendum are coping with the fact that they've lost the eighth amendment which was internationally viewed among anti-abortion groups as the best kind of law you could have to have a constitutional ban on abortion we already have groups existing here which have set up fake crisis

pregnancy agencies and in London set up fake abortion agencies. Those same activists are already based in Cork, Dublin, Galway, all across the country. So, you know, there might be other legislation that has to follow that seeks to regulate protest practices

that are kind of aimed at harassing or stopping women from accessing legal abortion services. But that'll be a matter for the government next year. Peter, I know this morning you're going to be talking to doctors during a training day, but I wondered, what have conscientious objectors said to you about the very difficult position they're going to be in? Well, they're not really going to be in a difficult position

insofar as they don't have to get involved. And all they have to do is to refer the woman on dealing with her sympathetically obviously um to another doctor who is willing to look after her needs and they may not even be happy to do that they won't want to be involved even in referring a woman on well current medical council guidelines in ireland are that if you have a conscientious objection to doing something you need to refer the person whoever it might be on to another doctor who is willing to meet their needs so they will be acting against their own medical council guidelines and just just one other point peter what will happen if doctors don't have the equipment to let's say ensure the pregnancy hasn't exceeded 12 weeks

which may be the case in some areas but still go ahead with it yeah no they do have the equipment what you need um what what a doctor has to do is uh determine that a woman is less than or not more than 12 weeks pregnant if there's any doubt a doctor can refer a woman for an ultrasound scan, which will determine whether or not she is more than 12 weeks. And those facilities are available throughout the country.

A private company has been employed, contracted to provide that service. And where that service is not provided by them, it will be provided in the local hospitals. And that has been arranged

by the health service executive which runs our health service. So that will be available to all doctors. So there's no reason why that should be a problem. Dr Peter Boylan and Helen Coyne, thank you both very much indeed for being with us this morning. Now a film called The Favourite is set to be the success of the season. The critics have found it hilarious and have raved about the performance of Olivia Colman as Queen Anne, Rachel Weisz as her friend Lady Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Emma Stone as a scheming chambermaid, Abigail. The period is the early 18th century.

England is at war with France and the behaviour in the court is, well, rumbustious, to say the least. The language is often beyond bawdy, as are the sexual relationships between men and women and women and women. Central to the film is the battle for power between Churchill and Abigail as the Queen, who's ill and exhausted, struggles to perform her duty. Dearest Queen, you are mad, giving me a palace. It is a monstrous extravagance. Mrs Morley, we are at war. We won.

Oh, it is not over. We must continue. Oh. Oh, I did not know that. The Queen is an extraordinary person. They were all staring, weren't they? I can tell even if I can't see, and I heard the word fat. Fat and ugly. No one but me would dare, and I did not.

She's been stalked by tragedy. Everyone leaves me and dies. Ah! Well, the film's writers, Tony McNamara and Deborah Davis, have been nominated for Golden Globes. It was Deborah's radio drama series Balance of Power on which The Favourite was based, and you may indeed have heard it on Woman's Hour.

So, Deborah, how did the writing relationship with Tony McNamara work when you'd already done the whole story for Radio 4? Well, before I did the story for Radio 4, I wrote a film script. And that script has been in development for a long time. And I wrote the radio version, which came out in 2008. And I was also attached to the film producers, Cece Dempsey and Element Pictures. And they brought Yorgos on in around 2010. As a director.

As the director of the script and eventually the movie. So initially, I worked with Yorgos for around two years, and we worked together to realise his vision, which was an extraordinary and unique vision of this period of history. How different was his vision from yours? story is exactly the same because he came closest to my vision of three women running the court from a bedchamber and a very complex female triangle on which the political events of the day pivoted. So in that sense, the story is exactly the same. But Yorgos treats all his material in an extraordinary and unique way. And he was far more interested in playing with the genre of historical drama than in worrying about historical facts. So you see that across the spectrum from the costumes to the stage setting and even to the music where Rachel Weisz dances an extraordinary dance which has been described as voguing

and that is Yorgos' style. Now, we've long known about the childhood friendship which continued into adulthood between Queen Anne and Sarah. How did Abigail enter the story? Abigail was Sarah's cousin. And that's what is so extraordinary about the betrayal that Abigail had exercised against her cousin. So she came into the court via Sarah. She was a poor relation and Sarah looked after her,

first in her own home, and then she came as a bedchamber woman to the Queen. And it was during that period as a bedchamber woman that she became very close to the Queen and formed an attachment to her. And Sarah found out very late on in the events that she had been replaced in the Queen's favour and that, as she wrote in her memoir, Abigail had become the absolute favourite. Now, Queen Anne in the film is ill, bad-tempered, a bit stupid, worried about being called fat. Really rather a tragic character. How fair a depiction is that?

She was a tragic character. She was ill. She suffered from gout. And she was caught between her passion for Sarah and her newly developed passion for Abigail. And to a certain extent, she was a prisoner of her emotions. This story is really about who was the Queen. And I think that Anne had a tremendous struggle to be the Queen herself. and she was surrounded by much stronger characters who probably knew what they were doing better than her. Now you use the word passion and that is very clearly demonstrated in the film but what's the truth about the relationship between the three? How true is it that Anne had sexual relationships with both Sarah and Abigail? Well, let's start with Anne and Abigail and the source material for that. So most of the source

material comes from Sarah. Sarah wrote a memoir and she wrote letters and in them she made allegations, quite clear allegations, that Abigail and Anne were in a sexual relationship. Sarah was also very involved in the composition of a ballad and that ballad, which was sung in the coffee houses of London, described Abigail as a dirty chambermaid and described Anne, the Queen, as conducting dark deeds at night. But this might have been the work of a very jealous and put-out woman, might it not? It might have been. And I'm not saying that definitively they had a sexual relationship.

But I am explaining that at the time time those allegations were running around in a very extreme way. Queen Anne had 18 pregnancies none of the children survived into adulthood some were still born some were miscarried why does the film show her kind of replacing her children with rabbits? Well, I can't answer that for you because that's very much a Yorgos idea and in fact reflects his extraordinary way of making movies that he chooses to represent events with a visual motif that actually was very effective. How true do you feel that was then to Anne's character,

that she might have done that, tried to replace those children? I don't have an answer to that, but certainly, as a woman myself, I imagine that she would have been very affected by her inability to produce an heir. Now, some people have detected an element of misogyny in the film, pitting women against each other and making a rather interesting queen appear a fool. How would you respond to that criticism?

Well, first of all, I have to say this is a female-driven drama. It stars three actresses who are engaging in a power struggle to run the country, and each has a very complex range of emotions, which reflects exactly what happened historically to these characters. So I would emphasise that we are looking at complex female characters who are exploring the themes of love, loyalty, rivalry and revenge. Deborah Davies, thank you very much indeed for being with us and the very best of luck with the Golden Globes. Thank you.

Thank you. Now, still to come in today's programme, Girls and Gangs. What does research carried out in the United States teach about how they need to be supported? And midwinter, how to celebrate this time of year without falling into the horrors of commercialisation. Now, on Late Night Woman's Hour this week, Emma Barnett and her guests Viv Groskopp, Kenya Hunt and Juno Dawson

discuss their choice of Christmas tree and Christmas adverts. Do they enjoy the tearjerkers or not? I blame a certain very famous department store, which has set this trend for mockish Christmas adverts with drippy music. Like, let's take the most banging Ibiza tune and do a slowed down, bedwetter version. And for some reason, everybody's got on board with this.

And it's awful. They are my absolute favourite thing, the adverts that Gino's talking about. Although weirdly, actually interesting, that department store has gone a different route this year and has done something completely much more uplifting. But I don't know, why would you want to sit around and have a little cry at a Christmas advert?

I want to cross the empty land. Oh, it just makes me cry. I love it. I love that stuff. Let's be honest here. I love a cheesy Christmas advert and that is why I'm speaking up in favour of the Working Mother Girl advert. I wonder if next Christmas advert and that is why I'm speaking up in favour of the Working Mother Girl advert.

I wonder if next year the BBC will just, because last year they did the one with the dance, where the dad goes to the dance recital and he learns all the dance moves to the daughter. Oh, that's the one I was thinking of. Yeah. So last year was Busy Dads, this year's Busy Mums. But I'm just like, next year let's just put a nice

display card up saying this is your Christmas Day schedule done. There's no markage sign. This is what you watch when everyone's had a fight, got a bit drunk, and everyone's looked at their presents. I like the Britishness of the message. Why not spend some time with your family this Christmas? Oh, radical idea!

Around the wild. Just a little thing here. Have you got your trees up? Are you doing trees? Yeah. Decorations? family this Christmas. Oh, radical idea. Around the wild. Just, just a little thing here. Have you got your trees up? Are you doing trees? Yeah. Decorations? I'm done.

Have you done a filmic? Viv, if you love this kind of cheesy, let's make everyone cry around the family. Do you have a ritual of hanging? No, I'm afraid it's just me weeping on my own. Okay.

With, um, Wham's last Christmas on repeat. Are you doing handmade, handmade sort of decorations? We have horrible collections of things that my children made decades ago. Decades? Yeah, crumbling in the bottom of a box that we're never allowed to throw away. Okay.

So does your tree look a bit... Oh, it's hideous, really. Okay. But it's how it should be. It's like the anti-consumerist tree. Mine is deliberately hideous. We established in the groom that I have hipster tree in that I salvaged a white plastic Christmas tree

from my mother's attic circa about 1987. And it's decorated with bright pink tinsel. And I have acquired a set of vintage 70s baubles as well. So it does look like something your nan would have had in West Yorkshire around 1978. We do need to see a picture. But it's great for Instagram. It looks good on Instagram. But I was saying that's because I feel like I don't live in my grown up house yet. And I'm flat hunting at the moment. And when I have a proper home, I will have a proper tree. But for now, it feels like role play slightly. It's a tongue-in-cheek tree. What's the tree situation, Kenya?

Are you doing a tree? We have a tree, yeah. And I love a vintage bauble. I'm obsessed with these sort of glass acorns. I can't seem to get enough of them. I search eBay for them. So whenever I see them at a market on eBay... I don't think Junos are stylish, though.

I think we need to make that distinction. I think they're retro-fab feel like deputy editor of l's talking about something slightly different my husband's just making fun of me because he said of the three of i mean my tree is i think a little it's a little slightly kind of instagram bait tea kind of thing but not intentionally i just like a pretty tree but um yeah and it's got all my son's like cute little like crude looking um ornaments like things that were like crudely drawn and that sort of thing like um in like this little um acorn ornament that he made and you know all those is a very polite way of describing abominations child just abominations a child and a husband, a salt dough thing

I need to be invited round everyone because as the only Jew I think round the table I'd covet a Hanukkah bush just about but I'd never got one so you know I just don't even know what you're talking about here I'm like one of those people you know on a film that just presses their nose up against the window

and even though I'm my own person with an adult home, I think I do I'm my own person with an adult home, I think I do live in an adult home. I still can't do it. It was the last night of Hanukkah, so, you know, I did that. And there's a new Late Night Woman's Hour every week and you can subscribe to it on BBC Sounds. Now, earlier in the year,

Samantha Juridada appeared on the programme discussing her plans to go to America, paid for by a Churchill Fellowship, to find out more about how women there are supported if they become involved with gangs. She was a counsellor in Southwark and had become concerned by the surge in knife crime in London. So, what has she learned and how might it be put into practice? I'm joined by Ebonita Ayeri, who works with young girls affected by violence, and Samantha joins us from Salford. Samantha, what did you discover about how young

women associated with gangs are supported in the United States? So people were quite frank and honest about how they were identifying women and girls who are involved with gangs, but also how they're working with them. I think one of the biggest eye openers was when I went to New Orleans. And there I was with the police service there. And actually, they were really kind of frank and said, actually, we haven't been very good at acknowledging that women exist. And, you know, they'll stop a car which have you know known gang members in it and they'll make a make a note of who was in the car and what they're what they were stopping them for and they'll

be girlfriends of gang members in that car and they won't be put down and actually in the u.s. that's that's really important because access to services such as you know domestic abuse services and things like that are nearly always referred through the criminal justice system. So through the courts or through the police. And so if the police aren't even acknowledging that they exist, those services aren't taking them and not existing. And what role did you find the girls have in the gangs in the United States, Samantha? Yeah, so I think it's quite varied, just as it is here. You'll have girls who are quite central to the gangs and actually in some places,

so in Northern Virginia, for example, they have MS-13, which is an international gang, and the girls involved with that are very very violent and have been responsible for quite a lot of homicides and kind of proving that they're just as violent as the boys but actually kind of going a step further a lot of the time but actually there's also this kind of hidden victim which is girls who are going out with gang members or have some kind of sexual relationship or otherwise with a gang member who are just kind of ignored by the system and who will be experiencing abuse in their own relationship, coercion, and actually will know a lot about the gang, which makes them really fearful of trying to leave. And I was with a judge in Baltimore and we were discussing, you know, why don't we see these girls? And it's actually, first of all, they don't want to be seen. Secondly, they don't consider themselves as victims. And when they do consider themselves as victims, you might be approached to police. Their fear of the gang will always be stronger

than their fear of the police, because a lot of them have seen the consequences, the violent consequences of not being, you know, faithful to the gang. So, yeah. Ebi, you were nodding vigorously at the girls don't see themselves as victims. Why? I think it's because, as a society,

we don't allow women to not identify as victims. I think, as a society, it's easier for us to victimise women. And then when we look at the issue of girls and gangs and the research that has been done for so long around girls and gangs, it's always coming from a central victimisation point of view, whereas some of these girls are not necessarily ready to admit to statutory or authoritative, let alone their their self that they're actually victims and there's a kind of victim of self so how do you identify as a victim of self if you don't really know yourself as a young lady who is involved with these groups i also feel like um

she identified you samantha identified a lot of key points around the consequences around being involved in these groups to these young women are more detrimental coming from the gang or the group itself rather than an authoritative service. What role, Ebby, do they have in groups in London? To what extent are they involved in the actual violence? I think we have a very different narrative and a very different problem than the US. I think in the UK, there's so much roles that the young women play that there's not enough time currently to even say all of them. But I think we know the roles that they play, whether it's within county lines or as girlfriends, as sisters, as transporters, we know those because there's a lot of research done on those I think the roles that are not identified are the young women who are violent or deemed as violent and their trauma is not looked at or the young women who actually have no direct involvement per se but to nurture and

look after these males and look after the people who are affected by the violence and I think those young women are not looked at enough and what they go through and the trauma and the experience of having to play a mother in your home because you live in a home where your mother is not stable, your parents are not stable, but having to do that on your estate or having to do that in your school and your youth club and in your peer group, I think that's also not looked at around this issue of girls and gangs.

So how much are they on the radar of the police, these girls? I would say not many. There's one in a few. Through the work that I've been doing and I've done, there's not so much police involvement. The police will know of them, but I think the more violent, then the police will be made aware. They're not really aware of the girls

who are not necessarily publicly violent and doing things or they're not aware of how serious and in-depth girls involvement is which means that when a girl is presented to them if she's not presented as a victim of cse or presenting as a victim of dv then police or statutory involvement is kind of missed. So what could be done about it? I think a lot more services need to focus on where these girls are coming from and the trauma that they've been through. So there needs to be a lot more teen DV projects like Project Yana, because they offer a service that looks at teen domestic violence that is not spoken about.

Also, a lot of young women are living in areas in silo. A lot of young women don't get along with each other. A lot of young women are arguing with each other predominantly about one boy that is part of their friendship groups. So we need to start doing a lot more work with young women around healthy relationships, a lot more around the trauma of a young woman because as I said when a young person dies for the longest what I've known is that it's the women that come out first it's the young girls that come out on the estate to put the flowers it's the mothers it's the aunties it's the female cousins it's the female youth workers that come out and

harbor and contain that trauma of the males. Samantha, how similar is that to what's going on in the States? So it's really similar. And I think actually the various roles that women and girls are playing with gangs are actually quite similar. So one of the things we talked about in Baltimore was actually about how these girls don't present as the ideal victims and so services such as domestic abuse services or even some youth services aren't designed to work with them because they're not complicit and they're not cooperative. They may be facilitating gang activity and they may have been in trouble with the police

and actually one of the judges said, you know, she's a victim that nobody cares about and I think that that's really true. And, you know, on that point about the police and, you know, do the police see them? The Metropolitan Police have the gang database, which is very controversial. And, you know, that's pushing that point to the side because it has got a lot of issues with it. But there's over 3,000 people on that gang matrix and only 18 of those are female. And if you think about how services are being commissioned they're being commissioned now because of budget cuts is you

know that early intervention services early help services are being cut it's all statutory programs only so therefore the need of those young people have to be much higher to get help and you know the metropolitan police have a commissioning arm, which is linked to obviously Sajid Khan, which is MOPAC. And across the country, you have police and crime commissioners. And if I was a commissioner, and I said, right, I need to commission some services that deal with gangs and that work with young people who might be at risk. And I look at the data and say, oh, actually, less than 1% of those people are female. I'm not going to be commissioning services for them. And actually, we know, as Ebi said earlier,

there was a report just this summer by London South Bank University that said that girls are increasingly being used by gangs and things like county lines, and they're very, very vulnerable. And no one sees them, and that's a problem. Ebi, briefly, nodding vigorously again in total agreement. Yeah I do I do agree especially with the commissioning of services of course if the data doesn't reflect that these girls are actually involved and actually going through things how will services be commissioned? I run a project called the Milk and Honey Project where I work

with young women who have been affected by I I wouldn't say gangs, but affected by a wide range of different traumatic experiences. And gangs obviously are included. And what I found with that is that even I didn't want to work with young women because sometimes to work with a young woman, you have to be healed yourself. And that's also where the problem kind of lies that we don't have enough women per se who are ready to work with young women. Ebonita, Ayuri and Samantha Joridada thank you both very much indeed. I must just say that the Deputy Assistant Commissioner Duncan Ball, National Police Chiefs Council Lead for Gang said police are fully aware of vulnerable girls and young women within a gang context specifically

in relation to potential sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation thank you both very much indeed for being with us this morning now tomorrow is the winter solstice the shortest day of the year and for so many of us it'll be last minute shopping, wrapping and cooking, ready for the main event on Tuesday. Well, Gillian Monks is the author of a book called Merry Midwinter, subtitled How to Rediscover the Magic of the Christmas Season by Turning Away from the Phrenetic Consumerism. She advocates rediscovering what's described as the authentic and meaningful realities of the oldest and most precious celebration of the year, midwinter. Gillian, why Merry Midwinter rather than Christmas from your perspective?

Because midwinter is more relevant to all of us. There is no boundary of religion or spiritual belief. It's a solar event. So in actual fact, we are all subject to this solar event and we can all enjoy it and we can all come together at midwinter. How far back does the Midwinter Festival go? Thousands of years. But there is this connection to the fourth morning after the winter solstice, which has always been celebrated by many different historical peoples

in their religions and spiritual beliefs as the birth of the son of their solar deities. So we have the solar deities like Isis, Mithras, Sol Invictus, Apollo, Mabon in Wales, that were all solar deities born on the fourth morning after the winter solstice. And this is actually when the daylight, although it's the pivotal time is the winter solstice on the 21st, sometimes the 22nd, which is the shortest day and the longest night but then we actually go into three days of relative darkness where the daylight doesn't appear to get any longer and actually the word solstice comes from the latin which means sun stands still so it appears to be the same and it's only on the morning of the 25th that you can perceptively measure

that the daylight is just over a minute longer. And this gives birth, literally, to the belief in that is when the sun, S-U-N or S-O-N, was reborn. Now, what have we brought with us from that time into the Christian festival? Yule log is something you mention in the book and I have to describe what you're wearing. You've got a red top with a white fur

collar and a white fur hat. It's a Mother Christmas outfit frankly. Yes it is. And a bit of holly. Yes I've got a little Christmas decoration. Yeah, OK. So what's continued from the earliest festivals? One of the things is light. All the lights that we have at Christmas, the putting up of fairy lights, the lighting of candles, especially the advent candles, the growing of the... There's this growing of light and the use of light at the darkest time of the light. There's this growing of light and the use of light at the darkest time of the year.

And this is actually to remind us of the importance of light and warmth to, in more primitive terms, to encourage the light to come back to us. But also it's a very good time because it is so dark and cold that we need that light and warmth more at this time particularly. And some people will light big bonfires. Traditionally, historically, people lit fires. And that's where the Yule Log comes in, I suppose. It would have originally been a real log. The Yule Log, which was actually Anglo-Saxon, so we're going back about 1,500 years. And also the 12 days of Christmas, because that's where, again, we get the 12 days of Christmas,

and a lot of people only celebrate Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but you could take the whole 12 days. And the Yule log, it must have been not just a log, but a whole tree trunk that was put on the hearth, because it had to actually last the 12 days, and then a little remnant of that log would be taken from the hearth and kept till the next year to help start the fire with the next year it was this continuation okay now what about the red with the white fur where's that from there i can't tell you definitively there are there are different um different theories i tend to go with the one of, and this is quite a bit complicated, of the fly agaric mushroom that is red and white. Traditionally, in all the fairy stories, we have the red cap with the white dots on it,

and they always have fairies living in or under it. But historically, this is something it has hallucinogenic properties which the northern shamans used to use to attain the feeling of flight and of course the traditional flight of the shaman to go to higher worlds especially at midwinter to bring back information to bring back the gift of fire he often in in his community, certainly in northern countries, was the only person to know how to start a fire. So it made him very important. And the flower Greek mushroom is something that he used or uses to attain this feeling, this sensation of flight. The book has lots of ideas for making gifts and decorations

and not spending tons of money buying them. What sort of things would you recommend to people really trying to do the holiday on a budget? I know it's a bit late, but it's not too late to start. It's never too late. And I would say it's not how much you do or how much you spend, but making the most of the little that you do have or are planning to do to come together.

And even if it's only with one other person, but certainly if you have family, and I know families don't always get on or agree, but this is a special time of year where you can always agree to disagree, at least for the short time that you're together, no matter how difficult it might be to make the most of it. And to make that is to make the most of everything in actual fact, so that if be realistic at this time now, I've been talking to somebody who is only just starting to put up her decorations after today. She hasn't been able to do otherwise.

Be realistic. Make the most of what little you can do. Don't beat yourself up about what you can't. And be happy and bring people together and get people's help. Just one other point. It's the winter solstice tomorrow, then there's the week next week, and then Christmas and New Year will be over, and then we enter the dark days of the rest of the winter.

How do you mark those days? To me, they are not... Well, for one thing, Christmas does not end with Christmas Day or New Year. We keep the 12 days, which go to January 5th. And then there are other things that you can do to celebrate that dark time of the year actually the quality of daylight changes after tomorrow and even though it still goes dark early if you look the actual quality of light is lighter there's an impenetrable darkness about the darkness of autumn and winter before the solstice. Afterwards, apart from the lightening of the light,

there are other things like wassailing and different things that you can do to actually keep the feeling of celebration going. And I was talking to Gillian Monks. On abortion, Dr Brid Connolly sent a tweet. Great coverage of the new abortion services in Ireland. Well done to Ellen McCoy and Dr Boylan for clear, articulate, intelligent contributions. Makes you proud. And Devlin MacDonald said,

Agree. A well-produced Irish version of Woman's Hour would serve Irish society well. Thank you for that. On youth violence and girl gangs we had an email from Joe who's a retired police officer and he said the whole trouble with the amount of knife crime in this country is the courts. Sentences are not severe enough and parole is totally wrong. If someone gets five years for And then on midwinter, Sabina tweeted, I love winter solstice as the darkness starts to abate. Even a second more of light is welcome. And then Penny tweeted Christmas tree ornaments, acorns, fur cones, surely. Well, thank you for all your responses to this morning's programme and do join us tomorrow when we'll be asking

is it really the most wonderful time of the year? We'll be talking to two women who are planning to escape the Christmas traditions this year for something a little more satisfying. And the poet Caroline Bird will join me as part of Radio 4's Four Seasons to read seasonal poetry and explain why the winter solstice inspires her. That's tomorrow morning, two minutes past ten. Try to join me then. Bye-bye.

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.