Woman's Hour - The jailed Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, Early onset dementia & Cleaning Tips

Episode Date: March 15, 2019

We discuss the case of Nasrin Sotoudeh the Iranian lawyer, who’s been jailed for 38 years, and sentenced to 148 lashes for defending women’s rights. We hear from Mansoureh Mills Middle East Researcher from Amnesty and from Rana Rahimpour from the BBC Persian Service.Five years ago Wendy Mitchell was diagnosed with young onset dementia, she was just 58 years old. She tells us how she copes with the disease which is robbing her of her memories.After winning the SheBelieves Cup in America recently England’s women are now setting their sights on the World Cup. Nike and Adidas have come on board with sponsorships but what difference, if any, will this make? Rebecca Myers, Sports Journalist from the Sunday Times explains the significance of big brands getting involved in the women’s game.Baroness Liz Barker, the Liberal Democrat Peer and an ambassador for Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Women’s health week, tells us why lesbian and bisexual women say they feel invisible to their doctors and nurses.Fern Champion was raped three years ago but has waived her anonymity to call on the government to provide more support to people like her. She tells us why she’s set up a petition to ask for rape counselling to be made available to anyone who needs it and Rebecca Hitchin the Campaign Manager at End Violence Against Women, explains why there is a funding shortfall for these services.Margaret Busby the editor of the anthology New Daughters of Africa and writer and contributor Candice Carty-Williams tell us about the new volume.And with Instagram full of cleaning tips we ask if cleaning has become cool? Lynsey Crombie Instagram’s Queen of Clean and journalist Zing Tsjeng discuss.Presented by Jane Garvey Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Erin Riley Interviewed Guest: Mansoureh Mills Interviewed Guest: Rana Rahimpour Interviewed Guest: Wendy Mitchell Interviewed Guest: Rebecca Myers Interviewed Guest: Baroness Liz Barker Interviewed Guest: Fern Champion Interviewed Guest: Rebecca Hitchin Interviewed Guest: Margaret Busby Interviewed Guest :Candice-Carty-Williams Interviewed Guest: Lynsey Crombie Interviewed Guest: Zing Tsjeng

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, good afternoon and welcome to the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. This week you can hear Wendy Mitchell telling us what it's like to live with early onset dementia. If we don't do something every day, we forget very quickly. So what does it matter if I take an hour to put on my coat if I can still put on my coat? She is an inspiration, Wendy Mitchell, more from her a little later. Lesbian and bisexual women say they often feel invisible to their doctors and nurses. Why?

Also the case of the Iranian lawyer Nazreen Sotoudeh who's been jailed for 38 years and sentenced to 148 lashes for her work trying to defend women's rights in Iran. And we celebrate the rich tradition of black writing with the anthology New Daughters of Africa. Candice Carty-Williams is one of the contributors. So why was the original Daughters of Africa so important to her? My parents don't read. I'm not from a family of readers at all or anyone who really understands feminism as it is. And this book always piqued my interest because just to pick it up and to see the size of it and to understand that there were so many contributors from the same place as me, that was amazing. That's all coming up in this edition of Weekend Woman's Hour.

We start this week with two examples of women who've campaigned on behalf of other women suffering for their work. In Saudi Arabia, 10 women involved in trying to overturn the driving ban and arguing for equal rights appeared in court in Riyadh. They've had no access to lawyers, and there are allegations that some have been tortured or suffered sexual harassment in jail. And in Iran, as I mentioned in the introduction, Nazrin Sotadeh, a lawyer, has been jailed for 38 years. She spent her career defending women's rights and protesting against the law which forces Iranian women to wear the hijab. Jenny talked to Rana Rahimpoor, a reporter and presenter for the BBC's Persian service,

and to Mansouray Mills, a Middle East researcher for Amnesty International. Nasrin Sotoudeh has been convicted following two grossly unfair trials. In her first trial, she was actually initially charged with two offences, but when the case went to trial, she was convicted of an entirely different offence, which is unusual in Iran cases. In that trial, she was not allowed to enter her trial because on the day of the trial, as she was trying to enter the courthouse, the court authorities refused her entry because they said that she was not wearing proper Islamic dress. So she wasn't actually present at her own trial.

She didn't find out about that conviction until she was arrested in June 2018. Now, in her most recent case, she was charged with seven offences. She recently found out in the past week that she has been convicted of all seven offences and sentenced to 33 years in prison. This brings her total sentence over the two trials to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. Rana, what are the events that have led to this? Because I think your family even knows her. Yes, as Mansouria said, that there are several reasons why she's got such a sentencing, but there are political reasons behind this as well. Nasreen has been defending women's rights for many years, but more recently she has been involved in the campaign against

compulsory hijab or headscarf. This is an identity issue for the Islamic Republic. Nasrin is not the only person who's in prison because of her campaign against compulsory hijab. There are dozens of other people, including men who are in prison. But I think the reason why we're seeing this unprecedented sentencing is because they want to send a message to anybody who's fighting against compulsory hijab to back down and stop their fight. She is courageous, brave, and she has been involved in a legal matter that my parents were involved with as a result of me working for the BBC. There are some reports that she was charged with insulting the Supreme Leader.

How true is that? So the judge who pronounced her verdict, who resided over her most recent case, told reporters on Monday that she had been sentenced to seven years, including on the charge of insulting the Supreme Leader. As far as we know, she was never charged with this offence. Her charges actually relate to her peaceful human rights work, including her work on forced hijab. So one of her charges is inciting corruption and prostitution in direct relation to her forced hijab work. It could be that the Iranian authorities are trying to create confusion around this time when reports about her sentence has hit the media and they're just waiting for the media storm to die down before they quietly acknowledge domestically that they

have indeed sentenced her to 33 years. Rana, how is her case being presented by the Iranian media? Well, state media hasn't reacted at all. But social media and the Iranian users of social media have immediately reacted to it and they have called for her release. It was unbelievable. Even people who are not very involved in politics have started reacting to it because I think people are deeply shaken by this sentencing. And obviously, media like BBC Persian that covers Iran from outside the country, they have covered it extensively. So generally, how extreme is her sentence considered to be in Iran? It's unprecedented.

Don't forget, the Islamic Republic is only 40 years old itself. To sentence someone to a 38-year imprisonment is unbelievable. It's almost as long as the Islamic Republic has lived. And I can't remember any cases similar to this. I don't know about you, Mansoura, if you probably remember anything, but it's unprecedented. How well known generally is she in Iran, Mansoura? Is she a really well known figure? She's an extremely well known figure and has been for many, many years now in Iran. She's very popular with the Iranian public, with MPs as well. She's very well known and very well respected inside Iran and with

the Iranian diaspora and actually with the international community who know of her. She's won many accolades for her human rights work. She's done a lot of work on the death penalty. She took on cases that other lawyers were too afraid to take on to avoid. So she's been known as a very fierce women's rights defender and human rights lawyer in Iran. Rana, what might it take for her to be released? A miracle. A miracle?

Yeah. Really? Short of a miracle, what Amnesty is campaigning for is obviously for the Iranian authorities to release her, but we're also urging the international community, especially EU countries like the UK, to use their influence over the Iranian authorities and ask them to release her immediately and unconditionally. Monterey, if we can just talk about the activists in Saudi Arabia, which I know Amnesty is interested

in as well. What are the charges they face? Unfortunately, at the moment, we do not know what charges they're facing. We know that 11 women's rights defenders actually were taken to a court yesterday, a criminal court in Riyadh, facing unknown charges at present. We understand that they still have no legal representation. And we also understand that a number of foreign diplomats who tried to gain access to the court in order to observe the trial were denied entry. To what extent, Rana, do you get a feeling that there's a hardening of attitudes to women campaigners in the Middle East? It's certainly getting worse. And I think it's because most of these countries and the politicians are men

and they feel intimidated and they feel threatened by the fact that women are finding their voices and they're finding their causes and they're getting together and they're fighting for it. And as a result, we're going to see more and more crackdown on women and activists. Mansa Reddy, do you have the same feeling? Yes. As more and more women boldly, fearlessly go out in the streets, take off their headscarves, film themselves, share those videos on social media, the Iranian authorities are becoming

more and more aggressive in the crackdown against these women. And I don't see that this movement, peaceful women's rights movement, is not going to stop. And these women are no longer scared of the Iranian authorities, which means that we will see more and more arrests of women, unfortunately. But they will be scared. I mean, a long prison sentence like that and 148 lashes. You would think so. But actually, yesterday, in support of Nasrin Sotoudeh, a number of women went out into the street, took their headscarves off, shared their videos on social media saying, I am Nasrin Sotoudeh. Even men did the same. They went out onto the streets, videoed themselves in support of Nasrin Sotoudeh. Mansourie Mills and Rana Rahimpour.

Now to Wendy Mitchell, who is one of those guests that appears on the programme and gets an incredible reaction from the listeners. Just five years ago, Wendy was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. She was 58 and working in the NHS as a manager in York. She was also a single mother to two daughters. Wendy has written a book, Somebody I Used to Know, and she took me back to when she first realised that something just wasn't quite right. Dementia never entered my head because, like so many other people, I thought it only affected older people. And so I thought maybe I had a brain tumour or something drastic like that. So when dementia was first mentioned, that was a bolt out of the blue.

But strange enough, when I did get that diagnosis, I was actually relieved because it finally put an end to all the ifs, the buts, the maybes, and I could start planning my future and I knew what I was dealing with. Now in a way your diagnosis of dementia has, it's had a profound impact on your personality because I gather you were not a particularly outgoing individual. No I wasn't. My daughters just laugh their socks off when they hear all the things I'm doing because I was an immensely private person. I would never have done this in a million years back then. But I was so shocked at the lack of awareness and the lack of understanding.

And dementia actually helped me to become this gregarious alien that I am now compared to the person that I was. Can we acknowledge though just how frightening it can be when that fog descends on you? Oh absolutely. I know I come over as very positive and always look at the good things, the positive things. But it's a bummer of a diagnosis to get. And when the fog descends, nothing around you makes any sense. All your surroundings are alien. The time is alien. The people are alien. But where might you be? Oh, I could be anywhere. When I was at work, it happened when I walked out of my office

and I didn't know where I was, who all the people were, who the voices belonged to that were actually my team. And so I simply hid in the washroom for several minutes. Knowing those words ringing true in my ear and not to panic. And are those fogs happening more frequently now? They happen differently because as the diseases progressed there were different challenges every day. But I always look at it a bit like a game with dementia, and I don't like losing.

So I try and play this game with dementia that I'll outwit you first before you throw anything else at me. Can that mean on a practical level things like post-it notes and little guides to getting up and when you should eat? That's right. People think that I just turn up out of the blue to places like this. Yes, exactly. But the immense organisation that goes into getting anywhere. Just to nail down exactly, let's take you through the experience of getting here today then. Because here you are, you and I are live now. We're in a room on our own on national radio. I can't believe that you've been able to do this.

How have you got here today? Well, I have the help of wonderful people to sort out tickets and things like that for me, the practicalities. But I always print out pictures of where I'm going. I always print out what stations I'm going through so I know that I'm on the right train when I forget. Am I on the right train? And I have alarms going off all day long telling me time to get up, time for the taxi, time for etc. So I'm very lucky because I was always highly organised before dementia and that has enabled me to cope with dementia far better than if I was not an organised person.

I haven't had to learn that new skill. Does it help to be single at this time in your life? Well, I always say, again, I'm so lucky to live on my own because I don't have to worry about upsetting someone else, about someone else, a husband, seeing me turn into someone that he didn't marry. That must be very hard for couples. But also it means that I have to find a way.

Whereas if you're in a couple, the wife, for instance, will often do things for the husband for the kindest of reasons. But actually, if we don't do something every day, we forget very quickly. So I always think it's better. What does it matter if I take an hour to put on my coat if I can still put on my coat? That means you can do something else in that time. Now, I was going to ask you about this. still put on my coat. That means you can do something else in that time. Now, I was going to ask you about this.

On the whole, how have... Let's talk about strangers. How do strangers treat you? Until I had my walking stick, strangers are very cruel because we have an invisible disability. We can look totally normal. And so people don't understand if we're holding them up in a queue because we can't work out the money.

They don't understand if we can't get through a door quick enough because there's a black mat that looks like a hole. People simply don't see that there's anything wrong. And bizarrely, as soon as I got my stick, because I now have such a wobble, people have been immensely helpful because they've seen that practical thing next to me. But I know that you, for example, your local cab firm...

Oh, yes. I know, and I totally relate to this, you'd worry a bit if the cab your local cab firm. Oh, yes. I know, and I totally relate to this, you'd worry a bit if the cab didn't turn up. Oh, yes. But you've just gone in now and you've told them, look, I've got dementia. Yes, I used to hear the sigh on the other end of the phone every time I rang,

because I didn't know if I'd forgotten to book it. So I went armed with goodies and chocolate biscuits and goodness knows what for them and explained why. And then since then, they've been wonderful. And they always help me if my train is late and things like that. So as long as you talk to people and tell them, then they know how they can help you. And you work for the Alzheimerzheimer's society yes i'm their ambassador you are going to carry on doing this work aren't you oh yes uh i'd rather die of exhaustion than dementia and i know you've also said um and so it's painful for people to hear this but you have said this and it's in the book that you want to donate your brain oh yes because there is something truly miraculous about your brain clearly well i always think why wouldn't i because if it can help future generations not have this inevitability that a diagnosis currently

brings how wonderful would that be for future generations? The absolutely inspirational Wendy Mitchell. It really was a great pleasure to meet her this week. England's women footballers have just won the She Believes Cup and of course it's the World Cup this summer and suddenly the team is attracting some serious sponsorship. Nike are supplying a separate England kit for the women. The organisation has also provided 14 national kits for the World Cup in France. Adidas say that for the first time, all the individual players they sponsor on the winning team in the Cup will get the same performance bonus payouts as their male peers. Here are the thoughts of Rebecca Myers, a sports journalist at the Sunday Times.

I think it's absolutely fantastic and it's a hugely significant move, especially with brands with names like these. These are massive names in the world of sport and they bring with them authority and they bring power with them that means that naysayers and people who don't think that the women's game makes money or has impact can't really argue with a brand like that coming on board and adding weight to it. And what does it do for the image of the companies? How much do they actually need to be seen to be involved in women's sport? That I think is a really important point and increasingly what we're going to see is this sort of arms race almost where especially with

brands like Adidas and Nike where they're in kind of direct rivalry one really needs to be seen to be doing what the other is doing so you know you get this kind of arms race where they don't want to be seen to be being on the wrong side of history and they don't want to kind of look back in five years time and think oh gosh it looked really bad that we hadn't got anything in this marketplace and i think we should welcome that too i mean we need to look at the longevity and obviously we want them involved for the right reasons. But there's no bad thing that they're saying we need to now have a women's kit or have a women's sponsorship deal

because it looks bad if we don't. Are they drawing in any other big companies now that those two have made a commitment? Yeah, so after the She Believes Cup, Lucas Aid announced that they would form a deal with the England women's football team. They have an arrangement with the men's team already. So that was fantastic. And again, you have that element of why wouldn't they get involved with the women's team? They're doing so

well. They could be in line to win the World Cup. And it's the right time for LucasAid to come in on that. The World Cup as a kind of whole competition has got companies like Visa and EDF Energy involved. These are big name companies. and I'm sure we'll see many, many more. What about investment from FIFA in the World Cup? How much parity is there there between the women's and the men's team? Not a huge amount always. I think it's important that we recognise and have an awareness of where we've come from. So certainly even just a few years ago,

back in sort of 2011 to 2013, it was estimated that 0.4% of sports sponsorship was for women's sport. So that's, you know, that's the bar. It's very low bar. FIFA have tripled their investment from the last World Cup, which was four years ago. So it's gone up to around 23 million pounds.

And they'll also put 1515 million into kind of travel expenses and things that smaller nations might struggle with. But the total prize pot for the Men's World Cup last summer was £312 million. So you're still looking at, you know, thousands of percentage points in difference. So there is a long way to go. What about that old argument that women's sport just doesn't draw enough support? Has that gone altogether now? It certainly hasn't gone. And there are plenty of people who will come out with that argument.

But I think increasingly it's becoming a hard one to rely on. And it's a lazy argument, but it's often used. I think, you know, we've had some amazing recent examples of women's sport just selling like hotcakes the the women's world cup final sold out in about 30 minutes the women's six nations which has been going on recently they sold 10 000 tickets last weekend just for the women's game you know this weekend they'll be doing a double header with the men's but last weekend that was just just people coming to the women's game we've sold out hockey world cup last summer,

the Netball World Cup this summer is fast selling out, and these are tens of thousands of spectators who just want to see women playing their own sport. And what's happening to individual players? How much support are they getting? This really varies across different sports, and certainly this is part of the reason why the battle is not won as it were. Women's footballers for example could be earning up you know hundreds of grand a year at certain

clubs but at smaller clubs might only be earning sort of 20 grand a year and they will have to supplement their income with other sponsorship deals but you're seeing especially in football and sports where players can have an individual profile they'll look a bit outside the box for sponsorship maybe they'll go to local companies or you've I've heard of athletes working with jewellery companies in the same way that a lot of athletes in tennis for example get watch sponsorship or watches so people are thinking quite outside the box in women's sport and I think that's that's a really positive thing. So what do you predict for the World Cup for the home nations England and Scotland will be going through but playing in the same part yes it's it's a tough group so it's it's England Scotland Japan

and Argentina it's not an easy group by any stretch Japan are a very strong team and it's Scotland's first World Cup so I think it will be a tricky game for them but they've got so much passion such great spirit and they've been playing brilliantly. So I'd like to see them get through to kind of quarterfinals. I think that would be fantastic. And England, I mean, dare we say it, they could go all the way. You know, it really could be coming home this summer. Are you serious?

I mean, they were in the semis last time. Are they actually going to win the World Cup? I think they've got every possibility. I mean, the She Believes Cup is certainly a real massive moment for them. They've played in that tournament for years and never come more than second place. And this year they won it. And that was a real statement of intent. Brilliantly, they came away from that and sort of said, well, it's still not good enough.

We can still do better. And when you have that mentality, I think, yeah, we'd be foolish to write them off at this stage as anything more than in that final. Let's hope so that's Rebecca Myers the sports journalist at the Sunday Times. A quick heads up about next week Mary Berry will be on the program there's some talk of a trifle and on Tuesday if you've got teenagers in your family you won't want to miss a conversation about ketamine. That is on Tuesday of next week. Now, lesbian and bisexual women say they can feel invisible to their doctors and nurses. Some report being asked completely inappropriate questions or just ignored. Others say they've been actively discouraged from taking up vital screening. This week, I talked to Baroness Liz Barker, a Lib Dem peer

and an ambassador for LBT Women's Health Week. The NHS constitution says that it exists for everybody, regardless of sexual orientation, but the reality is that it doesn't. Many, many NHS reports, the NHS long-term plan, the five-year forward plan, the five-year forward plan for mental health, and even plans which are about women's health consistently ignore and omit completely lesbian women. And in addition to that, the professional bodies ignore us too. Last year, you might remember that the BMA, last August, produced a huge report on women's health

inequalities. Didn't mention us at all, even though you did a lot of programmes about it. And because we get ignored and because there is a lack of medical training, that means that it comes down to whether or not individual practitioners actually bother to read the many reports that have been in the last decade. What about the government's LGBT action plan? Well, that was interesting. 110,000 people replied to the consultation and across all of the four initials health was by far the biggest issue and what they have done is to respond by making a part-time post

in NHS England with an advisory board which is due to be appointed sometime soon. Not sure what resources they're going to have or what the plan's going to be. And interestingly, Maria Miller's Women and Equalities Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into LGBT and health. And I'm hoping that quite a lot of that will go towards giving us the ammunition to challenge the NHS leadership, once a failure of leadership, and the professional bodies. One of our listeners has tweeted to say, the assumption is that you're straight and you've got children. And I think this is at the heart of what you're saying, that too many women engage with the NHS, and those assumptions are made about them and their lives. But what I want from you is how that impacts on a woman's health.

Well, how it impacts is that you will be there, and I can say this from my own experience, you'll be there perhaps going in for a cervical smear, and suddenly the person starts talking to you about contraception and about your husband and all of that, and at that point your faith in that health professional just goes, and you've got two choices. Do I brazen it out and have a big argument here?

You don't need to have a big argument? Or do I? Or do I just think, I'm going to leave and get out of this? And what I think happens is that all of us make the calculation about whether or not it's safe to come out to our health professionals. And if it's not right, and there's no indication in the room or in the building that it's safe to do so, probably you don't. Maybe if you're brave, you do. But as you know, that's the main interaction that most women have with health services. And they're not just an opportunity to talk about your reproductive health. They are the opportunity to have the general health care. And that, I think, is what a lot of lesbian women miss. Because some women,

and I do know them, professional women who absolutely understand the importance of screening will not go because they have been treated so badly. Right. I mean, it's disturbing to hear that, by the way. But of course, we have to acknowledge that there are plenty of health care professionals who are not themselves heterosexual. Correct. And surely they would not behave in that way. No, they wouldn't. But it's a matter of a lottery. When you turn up, who's your appointment with? And I don't think it should be like that.

I think we should have a consistent standard of treating women, lesbian and bi women. And we have the same right to be respected as anybody else who uses the health service. And I just don't think it's good enough that there is this sort of corporate thoughtlessness throughout the NHS. Right, so how do we change things? Well, we've got lots and lots of research, a lot from the

Lesbian and Gay Foundation, Beyond Babies and Breast Cancer. We know that what we need to do is first of all to start monitoring, start asking people what their sexuality is, to get some data, to get some proper research funded, to challenge the professional bodies and those who do education to make sure that it's not down to individual practitioners. I mean, I have to say, Jane, you know, I guarantee you the one way to watch a GP's head explode is to tell them you're a lesbian. It works every time. Just take me there, please, because this is 2019. And you're telling me that a GP expresses amazement. Yes, I am. A woman in one of the reports said that the GP asked her, did she use condoms?

And she said no, but he'd stopped ranting for 10 minutes about STIs and all the rest of it. She said, I'll tell my girlfriend to be careful in future, at which point the bloke went puce and stuck her for an injection that she really didn't need. Now, that's funny, but actually it's not. It is funny. It's funny, but it's not. There's a really serious underside of this because we have poorer health outcomes than you do we have gotten problems with weight we've got with higher incidence of problems with mental health that's because we face

discrimination and we have to get through that we've got figures we've got higher incidence of smoking and alcohol our health outcomes are not as good and being just being treated in a somewhat dismissive way by health professionals does not contribute to decent mental health, does it? Nor does being ignored, no. Okay, so answers then. Let's tackle the, I didn't know about the fitness issue. Yeah. Why is that an issue? Well, we're not really sure, but there are a number of different studies that tend to show that lesbians tend to have a higher body mass index than the heterosexual counterparts.

Gay men, on the other hand, tend to be underweight. There's a whole load of lifestyle factors probably going on in our community. It's a community which until recently was, you know, organised itself around bars and so on. So what we need to do is get health professionals to engage with us, to understand that we've got a load of, we need more research data, but we have certainly got a lot of discussions with people where they talk about their lives, and to get that training into the medical professionals so that when they do see us, they're not working on a basis of either total ignorance or in some cases fear

that makes them come out with things which are completely inappropriate. That's Liz Barker, Baroness Liz Barker, who's a Lib Dem peer. Some interesting emails from you on this. This is an anonymous one. We can all encounter poor treatment and attitudes from medical professionals over our sexual and reproductive health. I have always found smear tests painful. Some years ago, an older woman doctor actually gave me a sharp smack on the stomach

and told me not to be a silly girl. I was over 30 when I flinched in pain as she struggled to insert the speculum. Recently, during yet another unsuccessful attempt to do a smear, a sympathetic practice nurse asked if I also had difficulty with intercourse and suggested options I could talk about with my GP. However, the GP was dismissive and said the nurse had no business making such suggestions, which I'd actually found helpful and tactfully done and would have liked to follow up. Maybe many medical staff could do with updating their attitudes to dealing with sexual and reproductive health matters for all women and men.

Another anonymous email here. My partner of 18 years was diagnosed with cancer. We were both very upset and anxious, not surprisingly. She was then asked to give a urine sample to detect that she was not pregnant on more than one occasion. Well, I did explain this couldn't be possible as we had a stable relationship. The health professional was sympathetic but said it had to be done. We both found this upsetting as it implied that our relationship was not truthful. Another listener, it seems to be a bit easier for men, at least in my experience. My own GP has never shown any difficulty in accepting my orientation, possibly because she's a woman.

I also attend various clinics in Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, where my partner is down on my referring to my partner as such, then slipping a male pronoun in a few sentences later and waiting for the double take. Thanks to everybody who emailed on that topic and indeed anything else this week. Please do get involved. You are so welcome. Go to the website bbc.co.uk slash women's hour and you can find a link there to emailing the programme. And we welcome all your thoughts and your ideas. If there's anything you'd like us to talk about, please do feel free to suggest a way. A young woman who was the victim of rape three years ago has waived her anonymity to call on the government to provide more support for people like her. Fern Champion was attacked when she was abroad. to call on the government to provide more support for people like her. Fern Champion was attacked when she was abroad. When she got back to Britain, she tried to get specialist help but couldn't even get on a waiting list.

She was told there was a funding shortfall. Now more than 138,000 people have signed Fern's petition calling on the government to provide rape counselling to anybody who needs it. Rebecca Hitchen is the campaign manager at End Violence Against Women. Before that, she'd worked for Rape Crisis. I talked to Rebecca and to Fern, who told me what happened when she tried to get help. I was told that I wasn't able to access any support. I first tried to in August 2017 when I first returned to the UK. I tried to access Rate Crisis and they just said that they weren't able to help, that their waiting lists were closed. I tried a few different centres and it was the same story every time I

tried over a period of eight months. What did they say exactly? They were very kind on the phone that they just said that their waiting lists were closed and they encouraged me to try again in a couple of months and they would hope that the situation would be different but each time I did try it was the same story. And you say tried it can't be easy to pick up the phone and ring up an organisation like that and ask for help. That's a tough thing to do. Yeah, absolutely not. I think it's important to state as well that I spent my year in New Zealand on a waiting list as well.

I tried to access help as soon as I got there as well. So I had spent the entire time since my attack, trying to access help in one way or another, and each time being told that I wasn't able to access it. What happens if you go to your GP, for example? I did try that as well, and they were directing me to the same services that I was already trying to access. So it didn't really matter which avenue I was going down.

Everyone was telling me the same thing thing that they weren't able to help because the funding wasn't there. Now in your case help came from an unlikely source in some ways explain what happened. So the last time I tried to access a rate crisis service was around this time last year and And for me, that was when I hit my rock bottom. I felt like I'd been... That was the last time I was turned away. And by that point, I just felt like I'd been going on too long by myself and everything just kind of, like, crashed in on me. Just explain what life was like, actually, if you don't mind.

So by that point, it had been nearly two years since my attack up until relatively close to that point I felt like I'd been coping relatively well you know like to the outside while I was like relatively like high functioning like I was still like maintaining jobs like friendships relationships but each time I was denied help it was like my mental health started to spiral a little bit more because it was becoming more and more apparent to me that there was no help available but I needed specialist help I was under extreme stress I wasn't sleeping very well I was having nightmares and like these nightmares started to creeping into like my waking hours as well you know I was having flashbacks I was experiencing symptoms very similar to PTSD.

I didn't know that at the time, but that's why I was reaching out to these great crisis services. So in March last year, when I tried for the last time to access this help and I was told that I couldn't get it, that's when, for me, I just plummeted. I didn't know where I was supposed to turn. It was a really, really scary time. And luckily for me, I did feel comfortable to confide in my employer,

not to ask for help, but because I just didn't know what else to do. So I just said to my boss at work, I was just like, look, this... You said or you spoke or you... I emailed, I just emailed my boss and I was just like, look, I can't... I knew I had to be honest, but I just didn't know what else to say. So I just said the truth. I was like, look, this is what happened to me. This is what I've been trying to do ever since.

And I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know where to turn. Luckily for me, she was kind and compassionate but she went above and beyond that and put me in touch with a private trauma therapist and arranged for my employer to pay for that because that's something else that people need to understand as well is that and I have had some like a small amount of backlash since um since this campaign's campaign's come out in the last couple of days of people being like, well, why couldn't you just go to a private trauma therapist yourself? And I couldn't do that.

And so my employer doing that for me was just so much more than I ever expected. And how much of a difference has that counselling made to you? A huge amount. And in the long term, you know, it's enabled me to kind of carry on with all of this. Actually, there is no way that you'd be able to take charge of this campaign. But this isn't easy. No, I'm sure it isn't easy.

And of course, you shouldn't be here doing this because it should never have happened to you in the first place. And I think that's a point we all need to acknowledge. But we know, Rebecca, from the figures that I think your organisation has assembled, that there are thousands of people waiting for counselling. Why? Why are there so many? It's over 6,000. Yes, it is. In March of last year, there were around 6,350 survivors on waiting lists across England and Wales.

And how many are being counselled? I'm not sure of those figures, but what I do know is that specialist sexual violence and abuse support services like Rape Crisis have been asking for more funding for an incredibly long time. Historically, they've been extremely, extremely underfunded. Where does that funding or where should that funding come from? So there are various sources, and this is one of the things that we wanted to highlight in this campaign. We did a survey last year, a YouGov survey that revealed that the majority of people think that

there is a readily available access to specialist support. They just make that assumption. Yeah and that's understandable but actually when it comes to it, as Fern has sadly discovered, because there is this failure to fund services, it means that provision is quite inconsistent and patchy across the country. They are scrabbling around, in effect, pulling on different funding sources. What are those funding sources? So the Ministry of Justice provides some core funding, but that's set to change and it's set to be devolved. Police and crime commissioners sometimes give some funding. Sometimes there's funding from clinical commissioning groups, charitable trusts, foundations give some, and local authorities as well provide some. So a lot of centres will be just trying to pull in as much as they can

from different sources. But that isn't enough, and we've seen this huge sort of movement of survivors feeling maybe more able to talk about their experiences and try and access support, and they deserve to. They have that right to specialist support. We're seeing reporting to police go up year on year. I think last year there was a 15% increase in reported rapes to the police. But we shouldn't be in a situation where victims of rape like Fern have to go public and actually

she has to come here and talk to me about it. We shouldn't be here. Absolutely not. And I think it's just testament to Fern's strength and courage that she's able to. And she has advocated for herself such an incredible amount to access any form of support and be here today and most survivors aren't able to do that. When we think about more marginalised survivors who are out there unable to access the support because of failure to fund.

Rebecca Hitchen and Fern Champion. In 1992, the writer and publisher Margaret Bosby edited a huge anthology of writing called Daughters of Africa. It featured work by 200 women and included pieces by Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Alice Walker and a young Jackie Kay. Margaret has now edited New Daughters of Africa with another 200 writers, the likes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mallory Blackman, Andrea Levy and Zadie Smith.

Candice Carty-Williams is also in that anthology. Jenny spoke to her and to Margaret. I suppose it's the fact that there are so many people that weren't in the first volume that could have been, as well as all the new blood that has come to the fore since then, I couldn't not do another volume. How differently, though, would you say, women writers of African descent have seen 27 years on? I think there is certainly more attention being paid to the younger generation.

I mean, as you mentioned, people like Chimamanda and Zadie have really opened doors and reached great heights. So that is undeniable. But I wanted to say that beyond the names that everybody will have heard of, because they've made such waves, there are so many people, not only the younger generation, oh yes, there are lots of the young generation like Candice and all the others. But there are people who I didn't get in the first volume because I had to stop somewhere. I mean, it was over a thousand pages. Now, Candice, we worked out you were all of two in 1992, which has upset Margaret and I somewhat.

How come you were aware of the original Daughters of Africa? So my godmother is a professor of race. She's Heidi Safia Mirza. And she had this on her shelf. And she was my only access point to feminism when I was growing up. Because my parents don't read. I'm not from a family of readers at all. Or anyone who really understands feminism as it is.

And so her shelves are where I understood my place in the world. And this book always piqued my interest because just to pick it up and to see the size of it and to understand that there were so many contributors from the same place as me, that was amazing. How did you decide, Margaret, this time who to include? And how willing were they all to say, yeah, sure, we'll do you a piece, even though you weren't paying any fees to the writers? Well, the reason that the fees were all waived

was because we wanted to do an anthology that this time really made a big difference to the lives of African women in some way. So we thought this was going to be a charitable venture. So how did I choose them? Well, I started off with a spreadsheet of hundreds of possibilities. Many of them I had email addresses for, some I didn't. And I was just trying to get a spread of ages,

a spread of countries, a spread of possible genres. So one of the really exciting things was that I would approach somebody who was known for being a novelist and she would come back with poetry. So I'd explain this and it was just amazing what came through. Candice, what did it mean to you to be selected alongside Andrea Levy or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? So I would have paid to be part of this. But just for me, these writers are all completely legendary.

And so initially we missed the first email because it was sent to my agent and months later she was like oh my gosh I've just seen this you should try and get involved and I was like if I had not been part of this there would have been problems and so just all of these groundbreaking women and I've watched them and they're the reason I'm a writer and they're the reason that I know that I have a voice and a voice that is valid and so to be part of them as a collection is just next level. Why did you decide to put forward a piece about the politics of hair removal? It's something that I have thought about forever and it's something that I often feel guilty for thinking about because I know that body hair is such a mystical thing and it's so about the patriarchy and how

women are meant to be seen whose body is this about whose body is my body so I shouldn't worry about what people think of it because I'm looking at it through my lens but actually I realised you're talking to my friends and I have friends who are white and I have friends who are black I have friends who are Asian and it's something who are black. I have friends who are Asian. And it's something that we all talk about and all think about. And I grew up with my white friends having really fine blonde hair on their bodies and me looking at mine and being like, oh, my God, what am I? And I come from a family of South Asian women and they are very hussy. I'm going to get in trouble for that.

You know, the language around body hair was just, it was the worst thing that you could ever have. My aunt said that people used to bully her. My mum said people used to call her a werewolf. And so when you have this, there is no way that you're going to grow up and not think about it. And I really wanted people to understand that it's not just something that you can take lightly.

It's something that I think about every single day. And I feel guilty when I think like, ah, should I shave my legs in the summer? Should you? I do. I still do. I get them waxed it's awful so painful for what Margaret women's anthologies I think are often seen as as ways of honoring our literary foremothers and I was fascinated that you decided to include a real mother and daughter this time, Zadie Smith and Yvonne Bailey Smith. Why did you do that? One of the things that I love about this anthology is the sort of intergenerational

feel and the fact that, well, Zadie apparently gave her mother Yvonne a copy of Daughters of Africa when it first came out. So now that Yvonne, who was a full-time therapist and she's now retired and is becoming a writer, it just seemed irresistible to have them both in the same volume. And there are other sort of intergenerational things. I mean, there's a woman in the current volume called Attila Springer and in Daughters of Africa, her mother, Ayn Tupel Springer, was. So there are these connections which I love. You, Candice, are still in the early years of your career,

but there is a novel coming out next month, Queenie. Yes. How hopeful are you that things are really changing in actually putting women of African descent right at the forefront? The gatekeepers are still who they were before, and that's something that we need to consider so and you had some problems at school didn't you oh i've always had problems school i was yeah at school i was in all the lower sets i would always ask to be put in the higher sets but

i asked a lot of questions and i spoke out quite a lot because i didn't quite understand what i was being taught and so i was basically penalized for being vocal about wanting to learn. And so I kind of see the same thing now in institutions. So, you know, this novel is amazing. It's amazing that it's being published, but it's being published because someone, you know, a white woman and a white man have signed off. And so until we have more people like me and Margaret as the gatekeepers, I don't know how much change can happen. It's going to take a long time, but I think positive steps are being made. Candice Carty-Williams and Margaret Busby. Now, your Instagram feed,

I'm sure you follow Woman's Hour. If you don't, you should. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. It could well be bursting with recipes for homemade dishwasher tablets and tips for the old classic, how do you get red wine out of your shag pile? A new wave of influencers are pretty desperate to share advice

and inspiration for keeping your house spic and span. Yes, I know, in 2019, this can be difficult territory for shows like Woman's Hour, but on Friday we did ask, is cleaning suddenly cool? I talked to the journalist, Xing Zheng, and to Lindsay Crombie, Instagram's Queen of Clean and author of How to Clean Your House and Tidy Up Your Life. We've made cleaning fun. We've made it sort of bearable. We've took that boredom away from cleaning.

Cleaning is a job that we all have to do, you know, to live in sort of a clean environment. And it's about just putting a spin on it just to say, yes, you've got to do some cleaning today, but let's do this in a fun way. Let's use natural products and let's just, you know, have some fun. Now, your ideas spring from all sorts of places, but I gather some older women who you met when you were working in a, was it a care home? Yes, yes.

So when my son was born, I ended up working in an old people's home, just doing some shopping, a bit of cleaning and sort of bits and pieces like that. And basically, I used to take with me a big bag of cleaning products, cloths and all. They used to say to me, Lindsay, please stop bringing this big bag. And I used to be like, why? I need all this stuff. And then they started showing me the white wine vinegar, the bicarbonate of soda and the lemons. And the first trick they showed me, I was mesmerised and that sort of fuelled the fire for me to sort of explore this in a lot more detail. What was the first trick?

It was cleaning your plug hole using white wine vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. Just sloshing it down? Yes, it was a nice big heap spoonful of the bicarb, white wine vinegar poured on top and then, oh my God, all this black stuff just rose to the top and started shooting out lord what black stuff it was like all the stuff that's clogged in the drain yeah it was gunk and the lady admitted openly at the time she hadn't had any help for a long time it hadn't been cleaned for about a year and she really wanted it doing and she couldn't reach up

to get the vinegar for me it was heaven yeah but of course the combined cost of the white wine vinegar and the bicarb would be nothing exactly but compared to buying one of those specialist drain exactly exactly and it's natural yeah okay um zing are you won over by all this i find it fascinating because influencers if you are you know know the phenomena is mostly tend to be younger women you know posting sexy selfies like exotic travel shots. I'm really fascinated by this idea that someone has taken something so mundane, like cleaning, for instance, and actually turned it into a form of influence in and of itself. So that phenomenon itself just fascinates me. So you applaud it? I mean, I think it takes a lot of innovation to actually look at

something like a dirty plug hole and think, you know what, I'm going to put it up on the most image obsessed social media platform, Instagram, and see what, I'm going to put it up on the most image-obsessed social media platform, Instagram, and see what I can do with it. To me, that's some kind of... It's counterintuitive and brilliant. It's counterintuitive, yet it somehow works. It is, can I say to you, Lindsay, it's an explosion of pink. It is, it is.

Now, why that link to pink? It's just because I'm sort of quite a fun, happy person and I genuinely love the colour pink. Cleaning is about lifting your mood as well. I always think if you get up in the morning and you're feeling a little bit sluggish and a little bit low, if you just suddenly think, I'll do a quick vacuum, you're releasing those endorphins and you're using your body

and all of a sudden you will feel better. Well, will you? Yeah, a clean space is a happy space and that's what i say dairy milk you could do just as elevated and i would as well but you know i think hover calories are burning off you're you're you know you're then vacuum lines are so exciting to see is it anti is it anti-feminist thing what do you think so i think with as with anything there are degrees to this right so if you go to an extreme and you start telling women you what you have to absolutely do is have a clean home and you must take fun in it you must

have pride in it and it's where that kind of you know dictatorial kind of impulse comes from that's when it starts getting a little bit weird and a little bit too much for me but I do kind of think that if people took more fun or pride in cleaning, you know, maybe the university students I used to live with when I was younger might actually have gotten their deposit back, for instance. Yeah, well, that's a thought. How disgusting was it at its very worst? Oh, it was terrible. And you know, one of the interesting things that when I wrote about this for Broadly, and I talked to Lindsay about it and other influencers was the number of young people who are absolutely clueless about cleaning and how

many people actually reach out to them saying I've spilled red wine on my carpet and I'm afraid my landlord's going to revoke my deposit what do I do? Let's get a quick one on a red wine on a carpet what do you do Lindsay? I shave in foam. Shaving foam? That's my go-to product at the moment and I discovered this trick by myself getting mascara all over the carpet upstairs in my dressing room and the first thing that i could grab was shaving foam and it's amazing it's absolutely brilliant and it's so cheap that is that cheaper than specialist carpet cleaning 45 pence right and a carpet cleaning product would be about five pounds you look at the difference i see and it works just as well okay and and serious more seriously because there is a link i think between ocd in some forms and and a passion for

fascination with cleaning isn't there yeah i mean i'm not ocd diagnosed but i do believe i've got an element of it um and i feel sort of my my cleaning come from a bad situation that I've turned into a positive and I suppose I'm quite ritualed these days I get up I follow a routine but that just keeps my motivation going it keeps my day running well in business life and with my children so I suppose there is quite a strong element of OCD to it. Now when I saw you this morning I first met you your handbag was well you were unapologetic about this, bulging with lemons. It was. Now I did say at the beginning, is there anything lemons can't do? Well?

Lemons are like the best thing for cleaning. They can clean absolutely everything. Plus they leave a beautiful fresh smell behind. I tend to cut them in half, add a big spoonful of bicarbonate of soda onto them. And if you give it the tiniest squeeze, you'll get this amazing chemical reaction. And that is pure cleaning power at its best. And it's toxic free. It's good for the environment. And it's just amazing. You also swear by denture tablets. I do.

Pop them down the toilet to get rid of those sort of, you know, you get those brown marks sometimes. You speak for yourself, Lindsay. It's like lime scale that's been there for a while. Good grief. If you pop one of those down and leave it overnight, that will be amazing. Really?

Honestly. I'm so shocked, I can't speak. I'm going to use this because I swear there's a toilet in the place I live in that has exactly those stains. Yeah. And a toilet brush won't get them and bleach will just mask them. It will just make it look white for a few days and it will come back.

Right. The denture tablet will actually break down that dirt and they are cheap they are cheap they're about a pound for quite a few yeah okay well that's brilliant and one other thing that nobody will have thought of that's in your locker lindsay i'm quite big on recycling at the moment so the mascara brush when you've finished with your mascara keep hold of that brush give it a wash keep it in your cleaning caddy it's really good for air vents, for getting down to plug holes, to get into those small

spaces that you can't often get into Lindsay Crombie and Zing Zeng, Jane says you're being sexist in your definition of people who clean, no one said it's only women who follow cleaning blogs or get excited by clean spaces lots of men clean, certainly lots in my life.

My husband, my son-in-law, my sons and step-sons. Like women, cleaning, some are, of course, better than others. Sally, I've had stains on my quartz kitchen worktop for months, says Sally. Sally, honestly. And I just haven't been able to get rid of them, she says, until I just used lemon and bicarbonate of soda and they wiped off with ease. Sally then puts amazing in capital letters. Jill says, please do be careful using vinegar and lemons if you have granite worktops or any limestone surfaces or floors. The acids could damage them eventually. I had a cleaner

for a short while who loved chemical spray cleaners. She thought I was crackers using bicarbon vinegar. P.S. I have now fizzed my kitchen sink. It was extremely satisfying, but I was quite pleased as no black stuff came out. Yes, that was the bit that worried me, actually. It was this, mind you the bit that worried me, actually. Mind you, don't get me wrong. I know exactly what I'm going to do when I get home. Do a bit of exactly that and see what does come out. I was also able to impress Lindsay, at least I think so,

with my own tip about chopsticks, but I think that was exclusive to the Woman's Hour podcast on Friday, so you'll have to get that to find out more. Thank you very much for listening and join us live, of course, Monday morning, two minutes past ten. 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.