Woman's Hour - The Queen's funeral, Male friendships, PM Liz Truss as diplomat, Death of Mahsa Amini in Iran

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

183 key workers and community volunteers were amongst royals, politicians and world leaders in Westminster Abbey for the Queen’s state funeral on Monday. One woman who was asked to be an eyewitness to this historic day was Lynn McManus, from North Shields, in Tyne and Wear. She's the founder of The Tim Lamb's Children's Centre and Pathways4All, a parent-led charity providing play and leisure for disabled children. She was recognised in the Queen's last Birthday Honours List in June 2022 with an MBE for her services to children with disabilities.A 2019 YouGov survey found that one in five men have no close friends — twice the proportion for women. What pressure might this be putting on their female partners, to fulfil the role of best friend and hold the social calendar? And what tools can men learn to help maintain friendships? Max Dickins is an author, playwright and comedian, and has written Billy No-Mates: How I Realised Men Have a Friendship Problem. He joins Emma to discuss.Liz Truss is heading to New York today, making her first foreign trip as Prime Minister as she attends the annual United Nations General Assembly. During her two-day trip she is due to have meetings with US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron. This will be her first test in building international relationships and trust in the UK. So does the former foreign secretary have the interpersonal skills to build strong relationships? Joining Emma to discuss are deputy political editor for the Spectator Katy Balls and Bronwen Maddox the new director and CEO of Chatham House.A 22-year-old Iranian woman has died days after being arrested by morality police for allegedly not complying with strict rules on head coverings. Eyewitnesses said Mahsa Amini was beaten while inside a police van after being picked up in Tehran last Tuesday, and died on Friday after spending three days in a coma. It is the latest in a series of reports of brutality against women by authorities in Iran in recent weeks. Tehran's police chief says the death of a woman in custody was an "unfortunate" incident he does not want repeated. BBC Woman Affairs correspondent for the Near East, Faranak Amidi joins Emma with the latest.The Married Women’s Association was formed in 1938 by a former suffragette and its main aim was to ensure that men and women would be treated as equals in the union of marriage - both legally and financially. Their members included the first female barrister and the first female BBC executive, as well as the writer Vera Britain, so why are they not well known, and how influential were they? Dr Sharon Thompson, presenter of the Quiet Revolutionaries podcast, who has also written a book of the same name, joins Emma.

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. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to the programme. The period of national mourning for the Queen is over, but continues for the royal family and the new head of state, King Charles. That means the political path is clear once more for the new woman at the head of the UK government, Liz Truss, to proceed with her agenda, having been beamed into the homes of more than four billion people yesterday

as she gave a reading at the Queen's state funeral in Westminster Abbey. Shortly, we'll hear some more details about the new prime minister and her ability to forge successful relationships with global leaders. She was the foreign secretary just before this role. After the death of a 22-year-old woman in custody in Iran, Marsa Amini sparked protests. She was arrested by morality police for allegedly breaking hijab rules. We try to understand what may have happened and we'll bring you the latest.

But what I wanted to ask you about today We try to understand what may have happened and we'll bring you the latest. But what I wanted to ask you about today is friendship and the men in your life. Because one of my guests, Max Dickens, has written a book, a book bravely called Billy No Mates, after he realised he had no male friends to ask to be his best man after he proposed to his then girlfriend. And he wants to explore why women are often so much better at friendships and alleviate the pressure on women to help the men in their lives form bonds and keep them. That's the key part of friendship, isn't it? You've got to keep at it,

keep being in touch, keep making dates, remembering key dates in each other's lives. Do you find yourself worrying about the men in your life, trying to help them socialise, whether these are friends, brothers, other halves, sons? Tell me what you do, what your thoughts are on this. I know we also have a lot of male listeners. Do you have friends that you can rely on? Have you found a way of forming those bonds? And why does it still seem to be a difficulty for a lot of men? Because we've got the data on that. We've got the latest studies, which shows that fewer men can say they have close friends. 84844, that's the number you need to text me here.

And as the women in those men's lives, what role do you play in trying to help them have those support systems and those bonds. On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour or email me through the Woman's Hour website or send a WhatsApp message or voice note using the number 03700 100 444. Just be aware, data charges could apply, so you may wish to use Wi-Fi. But first, a pair of Australian TV presenters may not have been able to recognise her yesterday when commentating on the Queen's funeral, questioning when she arrived whether our new Prime Minister was in fact a minor royal. But today Liz Truss is going global, heading to New York, making her first foreign trip as Prime Minister as she attends the annual United Nations General Assembly. During her two-day

trip, she's due to have meetings with the US President Joe Biden and the French President Emmanuel Macron. This will be her first test in building international relationships and trust in the UK as the very top politician. She's already admitted that there is no US trade deal on the horizon and that the main focus of her talks with President Biden will be global security and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And it will be the first meeting with Macron since Liz Truss said during the Conservative leadership race that the jury's out over whether Macron was a friend or foe. So does the former Foreign Secretary have the necessary interpersonal skills to build those strong relationships? Joining me now, Deputy Political Editor for The Spectator, Katie Balls, and Bronwyn Maddox, the new Director-in-Chief Executive of Chatham House, the international affairs think tank. Bronwyn, if I can start with you. Good morning. Good morning. That special relationship first, of course, we were looking at all of these leaders yesterday in a very different

way as they attended the state funeral of Her Majesty. But now on to the politics. How important is that bond? And should we be worried about it at the moment between Liz Truss and Joe Biden? I don't think we should worry, but we should recognise that it has been changing for some time. And it is cooler, more distant, more complicated than it was some decades ago. I think the UK will always be for the US. It's one of its main allies, maybe its main ally in dealing with the big foreign questions and certainly Russia, to some extent China. But there are prickles there. And one of the things where Liz Truss will want Joe Biden to be an ally is over Northern Ireland. But she may underestimate just how strongly many in the US, Joe Biden, absolutely one of them, feel about anything that jeopardizes the peace in Northern Ireland.

And certainly her hardline stance over the Northern Ireland protocol, that famous phrase, hagging still over the aftermath of Brexit, you know, that is one of those things. So she's got some tricky things there. She'll want to get American support to take a toughish line with Europe, but he will be telling her don't do anything to jeopardise the peace there. Katie, to bring you into this, has she got those skills? We know she's been our Foreign Secretary, but you go another level up when Prime Minister, because you've got to try and establish these personal bonds quickly to do what you need to do politically. Yes. And I think it's always hard to know really how much charm gets you in the sense that you saw David Cameron when it came to the negotiation, the EU deal, believing that he had a good personal relationship with some of the key

EU leaders. And that would mean that they were offered something which he could sell to his party that would keep the UK and the EU. And actually it turned out just getting on with someone and perhaps being the person they prefer to speak to over dinner isn't enough for some of these tough things. I think that Liz Truss, she is someone who is very direct. Sometimes he speaks to officials who have worked with her to the point of rudeness,

in the sense that she knows what she wants and will be very clear about it and persistent. And therefore, that does run the risk, of course, that you turn someone off in a conversation or they find you too forceful. Then at the same time, as some of these issues, we have been going around in circles for months, if not years. So perhaps a direct approach is what can concentrate minds. Because while she's been campaigning to be prime minister, she's had to speak to a very different group of people, a much smaller group of people, which is the Conservative Party membership, in a way that might not have endeared her to some of these leaders. Katie, first to you, I'm thinking of Emmanuel Macron when she talks about the friend or foe sentiment. Yeah, I think when she said at Hustings, you know, almost the jury's out on friend or foe,

and Emmanuel Macron upset members in her party. He thought, you know, you should be more statesman-like. And it was very much seen as, you know, red meat on the campaign trail, rather than actually what she would have said if she was, well, she was foreign secretary. But, you you know if you took her away from campaigning would Liz Truss have said that and I think there's some skepticism she would have now of course I think it plays to her domestic audience and I think Macron can be guilty of doing the same when it comes to uh some of his

comments uh and vice versa but when it comes to actually finding agreement I would expect her to have a much more diplomatic tone now the contest is over. But I think there is that side of Liz Truss. I mean, the nickname that she had when she was a junior minister in education was a human hand grenade because she is a very instinctive politician

who will just often say what she is thinking or go for the more drastic approach. And obviously that does have downsides as well as upsides. Bronwyn, to come in on that, because Macron's response to that, without naming her at the time, was saying that the UK was a friendly nation for France, quote, regardless and sometimes in spite of its leaders and their little mistakes. What do you make of the idea of, well, as Katie just said, this idea of a human grenade going into this relationship with France and Europe at this key time?

It was a mistake. It was a mistake to have said it. It allowed him then to come in with that marvelously, slightly patronising, but undisputably statesmanlike response. And it made her look inexperienced, combative, picking fights with friends, never mind enemies. She did when offered a chance to repeat it about other countries, she didn't, she'd learned that lesson. She now has to show that she can, you know, recognise, distinguish friends from foes and try and build on the former. Grenade, she definitely prides herself on being a disruptor. And this, to me, is one of the things that makes her very unpredictable because she relishes these moments of saying something unexpected,

what people haven't said before. And that can be a dangerous thing in foreign policy, or it can just sometimes let you make a breakthrough. But you really probably need to have done an awful lot of preparation first. People who work with her describe not that she won't change her mind, but that when she comes out with one of these sudden things, people have to do a lot of legwork around to try to convince her. And that can be just quite hard work for the whole team. Casey, where do you come out on this, whether it's going to be breakthroughs, because you talked about some of these issues that we've been talking about for years,

or do you think we're going to feel what it's like to have somebody who's inexperienced at the very top? I think the problem when you're talking about the protocol, which is clearly the barnacles on the boat, as I think Liz Truss has said, when it comes to the UK's relationship with France, potentially the US, depending on, you know, where they fall, how much they prioritise it, is that it's really hard to work out how you ultimately square things, no matter whether you go for a charm, charming approach, or you go for an abrupt approach. I just think that the problems when it comes to actually just finding a solution which both sides will go along with,

which also the domestic Tory party will support the UK Prime Minister on and that the EU will agree to, it's just such a tricky thing to come together that almost I wonder if actually, yes, the diplomacy is a key part of it, but the fundamentals are actually I think what's calling it an issue here. I think in terms of more broadly um how she operates I think that Liz Truss in a way um it's quite clear which country she prioritizes I was struck that as foreign secretary her first visit as foreign secretary to France was this summer um and I think if you go back to her first conference speech um as foreign secretary

she didn't mention the EU ones but she did mention lots of these other countries I think if you go back to her first conference speech as Foreign Secretary, she didn't mention the EU ones, but she did mention lots of these other countries. I think she sees more as probably where the UK's future in security is, so actually Australia, Japan and others. And therefore, I think that in a way, some of her comments reflect that she has a priority in a policy shift that is a bit different than what came before. But she does have the advantage of pledging quite a lot of money. I mean, this is one strong point about her. It puts her on the front foot as prime minister. She's flying out to the UN saying we're about to spend a lot more in military aid for Ukraine. We want to spend more

in defence. And if she doesn't disappoint on those things, then other countries will notice and the US will be very glad of that. But also, she's been quite clear, Bronwyn, about who she isn't to be close to and some of the issues she even has with where she's going, the United Nations. Her views on Russia and China also, you know, strongly known, Bronwynwyn by now. Absolutely. China is a difficult one for the UK. We have practiced a long kind of ambivalence wanting the commercial ties but wanting the freedom to talk tough at the same time and it's sloshed backwards and forwards. I think bringing some clarity to that will help but she's then going to be faced with the question what do you do about the commercial ties, the Chinese students, the universities and so on. Katie just as a final thought kind of zooming out almost on the the last week that was the last 10 days that were some saying you know a very difficult time for for liz trust to have started

yet the same time it's also been a time where she can she can establish herself and you know put some some things down in place perhaps without the usual scrutiny? Yeah, I think there are pros and cons from the situation she has found herself in. To be honest, had in any other scenario, if you announced what seemed to be one of the largest state interventions when it comes to her plan to freeze price of gas for two years

and not having any specific costings for that, that would have received a lot of scrutiny. And the fact that, obviously, the news agenda changed drastically meant none of that was there. I think she's now, you know, we're coming back to politics, we were banged this week.

But over the past 10 days, her team have had time to quietly go over their plans at a time when they have the machinery of government. They're no longer at grace and favour home wondering what happens if you become Prime Minister. They have all the tools at their disposal. So that does mean that she has had more time ahead of some of the big announcements this week, which means that she ought to be in a better place if they've used that time wisely. Katie Balls, Deputy Political Editor for The Spectator. Final question, very briefly, if I can, to you, Bronwyn Maddox, as the Chief Executive of Chatham House International Affairs think tank.

Are you impressed by Liz Truss on the global stage because she has been the Foreign Secretary? I'm prepared to be impressed. She has done, she's made the most of quite slender trade deals. She's announced them with quite a lot of trio. She's achieved some things. She's a whole lot better than Boris Johnson was, although that is to set the bar low. I think I would judge her foreign policy, though, by what she now does, because actually foreign secretary is a much

more limited job than it sounds. And now she really has the power to set Britain's foreign policy. We will talk again, I'm sure. Thank you for your time and insights this morning, Bronwyn Maddox there. Well, your insights are coming in about friendships because of my next guest who's just walked into the studio. He realised he lacked male friends when he needed to ask someone to be his best man at his wedding and didn't have any men around him. 2019, a YouGov study was done which found that one in five men have no close friends, twice the proportion than for women. A similar poll from the Movember Foundation found that every man in three has no close friends. And when close was defined as someone they could talk to about health or money worries, that rose to one in two.

What pressure does that put on, of course, the men, but also the women in these men's lives? And what tools can men learn from female bonds to help maintain their friendships max dickens is the billy no mates in question comedian and playwright the book is called billy no mates how i realize men have a friendship problem good morning good morning it's a real double-edged sword being the face of having no friends i've got to say but i'll i'll take on the mantle why not your book was sent to me and i enjoyed putting it on the the bedside table of my husband. Nice look.

Yeah, he has had a good look at it. I think he slightly objected to a sign which basically said Billy No Maze. We've got some messages coming in about this already, as you may imagine. A lot of people got strong views on friendships, but there's one from Trevor that I wanted to share with you. We do have a lot of male listeners.

He says, your question, because I asked about how women can help and the sort of pressures there, your question is based on the assumption that people need friends. I have never felt the need to have friends. I would be surprised if I was unique in this view. What do you say to Trevor? Well, Trevor's right.

I mean, loneliness is not an objective thing. It's a subjective thing. Are you happy with your social world or are you not? So that's entirely up to you if you look at the research introverts tend to need or want less friends and extroverts so it's entirely up to you but I think a lot of men do want more friends and maybe keeping quiet about the fact that they don't have enough but Trevor I completely hear you what you realized you had a problem after you proposed tell me about that yeah I went went to a jeweler's in Hatton Garden with a female friend of mine. And she

said afterwards, when we were having a glass of wine, who are you going to have as best man? And my mind went blank, went home that night, got a piece of paper out and a pen, made a list of the candidates I consider. And I realised I work with most of these men. And the rest of them I haven't spoken to in some cases for one, two, three years. And I thought, oh my gosh, where have all my friends gone? and then when i did a bit of light googling i realized tons of men have this problem and in fact since they started measuring this stuff social scientists in the early 70s men have had less friends especially less close friends than women and it gets worse as men get older to the point that if you look at uh bereavement if you look at divorce if you look at retirement men

suffer worse mental and physical health outcomes than women because of that isolation. So this stuff compounds over time. What did you do about it? Well, there are loads of things I tried to do. But essentially, the first thing I tried to do was become open to having close friends rather than just mates, right? So a lot of that was about overcoming maybe some of the uh rules i'd inherited about how i go about being a man in order to actually access close friendships so i used to have all my friendships defined entirely through the prism of humor and

banter and that would put this moat of aggression around me i try to communicate affection to friends tell them i like them for a change. Try to be vulnerable. These things. But also, that was maybe one angle. The other angle I looked at is trying to consider maybe what are differences between male and female friendship. And when you understand that, you start doing slightly different things. So I spoke to the world expert on friendship. It's a guy called Dr. Robin Dunbar. He's an evolutionary anthropologist. And he said to me, essentially, female friendships,

and this is a generalization, tend to be face-to-face based around talk. There's quite a lot of emotional disclosure. Women will often say they have one best friend that they often know more closely often than their romantic partner. Men's friendships tend to be side-by-side based around sharing activities together and often in groups. So if you want to keep your

friendships going as you get older and you turn 30 40 50 it's about making sure you keep those activities those structures in your life where male friendship tends to thrive so a real simple thing I did for one example was I started running a five-a-side football league fortnightly and organized that and we went to the pub afterwards. A real simple thing made a massive difference. And were you aware also that can sometimes happen in relationships, and I'm saying here, of course, in heterosexual relationships, that a lot of the social work was being done in your life by your female partner? Yeah, absolutely.

So Naomi's probably listening to this and I probably lent on her a lot. So I think men often treat the women in their lives as like the HR department they sort of organize the friendships men will will will rely on their partner for their social group there's a great I heard a great line from a stand-up called John Mulaney this weekend he said men don't have friends they have wives who have friends who have husbands and I think it's often because we're not socialized to do that social work that that work of checking in with people, organising meet-ups, sending cards, all that small bits of effort that go into maintaining and creating bonds,

I think we're less socialised to do. And I certainly reflected on that in myself. And I know it's true of a lot of my male friends as well. There's a message here from Jane. He says, I've been married 23 years to a very genial and friendly man however he has no friends he's lost touch with his best man best friend from childhood and many others over the years he gets all his social needs met at work an extensive and international busy network of male colleagues he openly admits he prefers his male relationships to be based around a shared purpose to your point he has no interest

in sharing his emotional or personal life with other men he happily engages in social events i organize rubs along nicely with my friends partners but he has no interest in investing any further it would be taxing and draining for him my only conclusion is that men are from mars and women are from venus how the hell this will work as we approach impending retirement remains to be seen i'll be in touch again soon that's a promise from jane but there are quite a few women getting in touch saying they are worried about this so that you know women are worrying about all sorts of other things they're quite angry a lot of the time about other things but they're also taking this on do you think it

is something that men need to take more responsibility for absolutely um they need to own their social world a lot more. So they often rely on hubs, like their workplace, as we just had in that example there, their wife, their wife, the Rotary Club up the road, they need to take responsibility for it.

And it doesn't have to be that complicated. I spoke to someone in researching this book who he had great male friendships and I said to him, you know, what's your secret? He says, well, my friends call me the Sherpa, as in like those people that carry everything up the mountain for everyone. Because you organise everything, but if you didn't organise everything,

we'd never get together. So I thought it was a great way to think about it. Be the Sherpa. The best way to have a friend is be a friend. It's pretty simple stuff, but generally men don't put the effort in. We sit in this holding pattern with our male friends, waiting for the other person to make the move, or just rely we've explored on our partner's social world and this puts a lot of pressure I think not only in terms of organizing everything but if men don't have avenues to talk

about the bigger stuff to talk about things maybe they're less likely to share with their partner or or or even just to share the burden i think it's important men have these relationships because again it's it's just another inequity in male and female although again there's there's you know more messages to trevor's point who talked about you know my other half doesn't seem to want them or need them lucy says have you considered the fact many men might not actually want them my husband prefers not to have any as a woman i've never had really close female friends i don't feel i've missed out. I'm very self-sufficient. I find females quite shallow, annoying and a bit cloying, says Lucy listening. But I mean, we sort of covered the fact that you can accept that. Although perhaps there is an argument there to say why has that become the norm and why is that a view? Because we also know how much this can affect men in a good way if they change their mind or get something to change their mind if something opens them up

but I wanted to read you this from someone who just described themselves as M who says thank you for covering this topic this is slightly different I'm a husband and father of two children I'd love to maintain more male friends but I'm too busy my work isn't too bad but I have to do so much aside from that parenting houseing, housework, husbanding. I think much more is expected of men compared to previous generations. While there's much that is good in this, it does make it hard to keep up friendships in any meaningful way. And added to this, my few close friends are dispersed around the UK. I don't have a group. Forming one doesn't work because we all just have too much to do.

I'm not in a great place. My marriage is touch and go and I just don't have time to go to the pub. I don't really see it getting any better. Well, thanks for sharing that. And look, one of the hardest things with friendships as you get older is the availability of time. And that affects both women and men. But clearly, it's very difficult to do it it's especially difficult for men I think if your relationships are more time intensive in terms of sharing activities going to the pub so there's no one great solution there if I had any advice it would be can you fit in some meetings that are much shorter around sharing coffees or sharing cups of tea phone

calls in order to to fit things into your schedule a lot better but it it definitely is harder and I think to kind of talk to something we've it's been coming in on the messages is maybe we think of close friendship um for want of a better phrase in quite female terms these days it's about emotional disclosure and intimacy looking as it being about talk whereas a lot of male intimacy is based around, it's a very active form of intimacy. And I think we can sometimes ignore close male friendship that is there, but it's maybe not shown up in some of these bits of research you shared at the beginning of our conversation today. So I think it's important to notice it when it's there as well

as wanting to improve conversations. I want to bust a myth, if I may, which is that it's really hard to meet up with people, you know, in this day and age. It can be, you know, especially if you're at that point of your life where you're doing lots of different things, if you have got children. And I sometimes feel, you know, it's like trying to piece together a map with your friends.

And I have seen some of the men in my life just give up if the first time they try and bring together a group or more than one person just doesn't well we can't do it yeah well i mean it's like peace negotiations sometimes with my friends trying to get everybody in you know not that it has to be a big group i'm not somebody who has a big group i've got i'm often in twos and threes yeah but you do just have to persevere there's a sort of understanding on that have you found that as a difference yeah absolutely um and men can be quite hard work when organized stuff i've certainly learned if i had three rules when i was

going through this it was show up when you're asked go first when you're not and keep going even when it's hard um and i think i think that's uh really important i should say though that friendship is harder than it's ever been i think the world is not built for friendship anymore because of this lack of time, because of so much is mediated through social media, digital world, consuming content, however you want to phrase that. So we have less and less of a landing spot for our friendships.

And there used to be what sociologists call third spaces. So a work is one space, home is another. There's a lot of third spaces, whether that be a church or a coffee shop or a gym or a park where we get together and socializing was easy and we go in groups and we meet people those places have disappeared or we're showing up to them less and therefore it's a lot more pressure on us to do the organizing and for people to reciprocate so in a sense it's no wonder it's so hard did you end up with a male best man not that you have to have a man, but it was your realisation?

The twist in the tale, Emma, is I had two best women instead. And I fixed and mended loads of my male friendships and I could have chosen a best man. But authentically, my two best friends in the whole world are two women called Philippa and Hope. And so they took on the mantle on the day and they did a great job. Of course they did.

Yeah, and I'm very glad they were there. I don't doubt that. Are they still your friend, even though you've got this book out, Billy No Mates? Yeah, they're still my friend. I mean, maybe the title... I don't feel devalued that you haven't got any friends

that certainly are men, is it? No, well, I tell them a lot, but they're listening now. Philippa and Hope, love you lots. Well, I'm sure we're going to get many more messages on this. It does seem to have struck a chord, as I'm sure you're finding as you talk about this. The book is called, to give its full title, Billy No Mates, How I Realise Men Have a Friendship Problem.

Max Dickens, thank you very much for coming on. And I should say, of course, with some of your messages talking about the more very serious ramifications of some men not having friends, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line website, which you can look up. There's a message here. M, just in response to that message about very difficult trying to fit everything in, has just described the situation for most working mothers. But it doesn't stop us having and relying on close friends, says Jay. There's a bit of advice there.

Regarding male friendships, bring back working men's clubs. I belong to a club. I drop in. I see people when I have time and share experiences with other guys, says Rob, who's listening in Dorset. When you're young and you have male friends, once you start a relationship, you slowly lose your own friends and take on the friends of your partner. Then you get divorced and you find you have no friends of your own once again. What about gay men's friendships? My best friend is gay. He maintains a large circle of close friends. Perhaps examining the differences between heterosexual and gay men's approaches to friendships could provide some insight,

says Alice. Thank you very much for all those messages. I will come back to them as I can, but plenty coming in. But let's now turn our attention to a particular story in Iran. A 22-year-old Iranian woman has died days after being arrested by morality police for allegedly not complying with strict rules on head coverings. Eyewitnesses said Masa Amini was beaten while inside a police van after being picked up in Tehran last Tuesday and died on Friday after spending three days in a coma. It is the latest in a series of reports of brutality against women by authorities in Iran in recent weeks. Tehran's police chief says the death of Masa Amini, a woman in custody as he describes it, was an unfortunate

incident he does not want repeated. I'm joined now by BBC Woman Affairs correspondent for the Near East, Farinak Amidi. Good morning. Good morning. What do we know about the details of her arrest? Well, it is really hard to know the exact details. There were CCTV footage released on the state-run TV of her arrest. But they were cut and edited. So people started saying that this doesn't seem to be right because they show her being very okay in a room with other people who were arrested. And then all of a sudden she collapses. But what happens before that, nobody knows, except the people who were arrested with her,

the other young women who were arrested with her, have said that she was beaten in the van. And that is not something unusual. There are footage of women being beaten and forced into these vans, their heads hitting the sides of the door of the vans, or they're literally beaten by the officers. So it is not unusual for women to be violently arrested by the morality police. It is something that needs to be understood that this is a law that has been imposed and enforced by violence and by force for the past 43 years. And which law are you talking about? The mandatory hijab law.

And it is something that women have few days after the victory of the revolution in 1979. And it was against a mandatory hijab. 100,000 women took to the streets of the capital Tehran back then to protest it. And the protest has been going on for the past 43 years. Police have denied allegations about this particular case, just to say her name, because we want to keep it in our minds, Masa Amini, saying that she had suddenly suffered a heart problem. How has the family responded? The family have been furious about this. They keep on saying that she never had pre-conditions, health conditions at all. And their father had an interview and he said that there were bruises on the body of his daughter, Mahsa Amini, and that security forces wanted to take the body away and bury it in the middle of the night. He fought against them, and he insisted that he wanted the funeral and the burial to be happening

at the time that they had set in the morning, and they were finally able to do it. But we see this kind of pattern by security forces when these kind of deaths happen in Iran, that they try to force the families to bury the body of their loved ones without a public funeral, or to bury them in the middle of the night. And it seems that allegedly, they want to hide the evidence of any kind of torture or beating or bruises. Well, there is going to be an investigation of some kind into this. Iran's judiciary said there will be into her death. We'll see what is published about that. Do you have faith in that?

Do women have faith in that? I think by what is happening right now on the streets of Iran, across Iran, people are now waiting for the result of the investigation. People have taken to the streets. Last night was the second night that people took to the streets from Kurdistan all the way to Tehran and Rashid, Isfahan, all of these cities. Thousands of people took to the streets. And on the forefront, there were women. Women were taking off their scarves.

They were burning their scarves. Women are cutting their hair on camera, on social media to protest. Nobody is actually waiting for the result of that investigation. People have made up their mind already because throughout the years, these kind of investigations really haven't come out with any results that make sense, at least to the public. And you were starting to talk there about this feeling already about not wanting to wear a head covering, not being forced into. Is that a difference between generations?

It's not only a difference between generations. You know, as I said, the protest has been going on against mandatory hijab for as long as the Islamic Republic has been there. But yes, the gap is getting able to comprehend how the younger generation looks these days, you know, with their tattoos and piercings and listening to Western music. I grew up in the 80s in Iran, where music was banned and where you couldn't wear color at all. But still, back then, women were protesting. My mom, my aunts, all the women around me were wearing their red nail varnish.

And, you know, they would put their hair a bit out and they would get arrested. They would get harassed on the streets. But we are seeing this gap widening. And also there is this thing about mandatory hijab that I think is very important, especially for Westerners to understand that it is not a culture. It is a law and it's a state weapon of oppression. Culture, in Iranian culture, there's a variety of hijab. Women wear different kinds of hijab. And not only for religious reasons, it is part of a costume.

It's colorful. It can be in different shapes and forms. But this mandatory hijab is a certain kind of hijab that is promoted by the state. And it can target even women who are believers of hijab, but they don't comply with that ideal hijab, which the state calls hijab abartar or the superior hijab. So in terms of just, again, to bring it back to this particular case, this particular woman, Masa Amini, who we're talking about this morning, her arrest, was that unusual?

It wasn't unusual. This is how women are getting arrested. She was wearing a hijab. It was just not the state-promoted hijab. The way that it was. Yeah, the way they wanted, which is a full-on coverage and it has to be dark and everything. So you're kind of invisible, basically. That's the way the state wants you

to cover up. But she was basically arrested for having bad hijab. And bad hijab is a very vague term, which actually includes the majority of Iranian women. Iranian women wear the bad hijab. And bad hijab is a very vague term, which actually includes the majority of Iranian women. Iranian women wear the bad hijab, not the official hijab that is promoted. If you were picked up by the morality police, it would be unlucky in some respects, depending on what they were doing that day, how they looked at you, how you seemed, because it isn't going to be all day, every day that these arrests are made. They are, you know, intensifying it and they're putting more forces on the streets right now as a sign of, you know, as a reaction also to women having their hijabs looser and looser

day by day, or even some women even totally taking it off and walking down the streets or sitting in cafes or going even on the tube in Tehran and big cities. So this is also a reaction. So they're intensifying the crackdown. So they're putting more forces on the streets. But still, of course, because the bad hijab, that term that they use for these women, is so that I mean, there are so many women who wear that kind of hijab, which is not the hijab that the state wants. It's really hard to arrest all of these millions and millions of women.

But they do try to make an example so that they put fear into women, so that they are scared that if they want to go to certain places and certain streets and they know that the morality police is going to be there, that they will cover up and be more modest. And there are now these apps. There's an app called Gershod, which women can actually go and check to see if morality police is there. So people put information and data. So they say, for instance, at this hour, I came out of this tube station. And was yeah and I saw morality police there so women can plan around that basically. Farhan Akhamidi BBC Women Affairs correspondent for the Near East talking about the case of Massa Amini the 22 year old Iranian woman who has died days after being arrested by the morality police for allegedly not complying with strict rules on head coverings. Iran's judiciary has launched an investigation into her death and we'll bring you more on that as we have it. Now more than four billion people around the world watched the Queen's state funeral on television yesterday. Only 2,000 were invited to the London part of the ceremony in Westminster

Abbey and of those 183 were key workers and community volunteers sitting amongst all the royals, those politicians and world leaders. One woman in their number was Lynn McManus from North Shields in Tyne and Wear. She's the founder of the Tim Lambs Children's Centre and Pathways for All, a parent-led charity providing play and leisure for disabled children. And she was recognized in

the queen's last birthday honors list in june 2022 with an mbe for her services to children with disabilities lynn good morning how was it yesterday surreal it was absolutely absolutely surreal it was an amazing service um i just had to keep pinching myself to think, my God, I'm actually here. Among all the dignitary and everything really was just fantastic. Were you able to take it in? Yes, but as I say, it really was just such a surreal time that you sort of thought like you were looking on to it from another sort of dimension really and were you sat with i was going to say were you sat with other people who'd been invited in similar situations as yourself or are you going to tell me you were sat next to joe biden

no it was absolutely wonderfully organized i mean it went off like clockwork and basically all had a different colour ticket. We were coming in they have three entrances so people were brought in from different entrances depending on the colour of your ticket and then they would direct you to an area. You could pick your seat

in that area. It wasn't a named seat but it went like clockwork the arrangements to get everybody in and security checked. No, it wasn't a named seat, but it went like, you know, a clockwork, the arrangements to get everybody in and security checked. No, it was a phenomenal thing to see. I was part of the commentating team at Royal Horse Guards and just even watching the various parts of the military, you know, fall in and do everything and walk in lockstep. It was a sight to behold, certainly from where I was sitting. But you were sitting somewhere that, you somewhere that not many people would be and could be. When you received the invitation, what was your response to that? It was shock, basically, and then obviously a little bit emotional.

I mean, it was one of those sort of... I was in Marks and Spencer's with my sister, having a good old moan about the sort of challenging summer that I'd had with the children, and then we got the phone call. It was actually my husband who ran me because he'd taken it first at home. Yes. And my sister's words were,

you know what it is, Lynne? You'll never know what's coming out of your mouth next. I'm sure that definitely enlivened the conversation in Marks and Spencer between you. But equally, at the same time, it must mean a lot and it must mean a lot to have been recognised in the honours list. That was a surprise as well. Certainly means a lot to your dogs.

The dogs and the doorbells. It's all right. The Queen would approve as a keen lover of dogs. Go on. Yes, it was a surprise because it had been two years previous i believe that the application had gone in and they'd heard nothing so they just the people my sort of daughter and the center manager who put it in surmised that it wasn't going to happen really so it was as much a shock to them as it was to me because i had no idea yes and you're talking

here about of course the application for an honour for the MBE and for you had you ever met Her Majesty the Queen? I haven't actually met her but we did attend many years ago one of the garden parties at Holyrood House. That was an invite for me and then Tim Lamb, who the centre was named after. And sadly, he died before we went. So I attended with his wife. yesterday's events which so many people did you know more than four billion watching it is that you you do think about your own uh situation you do think about grief and and how to process it was there a particular moment in the ceremony for you yesterday that stood out um one of the one of the things was just before um the royal family and basically the coffin and everything arrived, they stopped the music in the abbey. And then when you listened, all of a sudden you could hear the bagpipes

and the sort of drum beat and things like that. And you knew everything was getting closer and closer. And there was just the deathly silence in the abbey where you could have heard a pin drop until obviously the procession all started and everything. What, which is an unusual thing as well, was quite lovely because prior to that at different points they brought different groups of people in, it could have been the heads of state, it could have been military and things like that and took them down the aisles but it was the lady in waiting they were absolutely

stunning and so sort of well presented and regal when they came in with all the finery on and things like that, it was just amazing just fantastic to see and something that you'll not see again

You were very close to her, I suppose. And those women who... Touching distance. We were literally touching distance, yeah. I mean, when the royal family came down, going in, if I'd reached out, I could have virtually touched Catherine. I was just on the third row, but it was just the aisle so narrow. It was really, really close. Well, and those ladies in waiting that you it was you know really really close well and those

ladies in waiting that you describe you know those women that have been around the queen and had been around the queen for for a very long time for for most of them yes yes we were all very old dignified very dignified Lynn we have slight issues there it's gone a little bit in and out but we've got through it with them with your microphone we have heard the majority of what you've had to say. I'm very happy to be able to talk to you this morning. Thank you for coming to talk to us. And I'm sure, as you say, many more stories for the Marks & Spencer cafes, other cafes available, of course. Liv from Manus there, founder of the Tim Lambs Children's Centre and Pathways for All,

who received an honour in the Queen's last birthday honours list. Well, today, the national mourning period is over, as we talked about earlier, but a further seven days is being observed by the royal family. And as the grieving moves from the public to the private sphere, I wanted to share with you some of the beautiful messages you had been sending in response to a question we asked on Friday's programme about those items of clothing which belonged to your loved ones who have died messages you had been sending in response to a question we asked on Friday's programme about those items of clothing which belong to your loved ones who have died and what part of the

grieving process physical items can play. As I say, a lot of you have been in touch. Thank you so much for that. Let's listen to Emily who left us a WhatsApp voice note. My father died about six years ago and when I was going through his wardrobes um with my mother we found his amazing ski suit from the 90s which is like an all-in-one green suit with kind of really multi-colored patterns on it and bat wings and it's amazing and I'm quite a big woman and he was like a tall man so it fits perfectly and I wear it when I go camping and I wear it at festivals and and everybody's like whoa I love your suit and every time they say it I'm like it was my father it's my actual father's he actually went into a shop and bought this so it really brings me joy and makes me remember him and I love it and I'll never give it away. Emily thank you so much for that we had also a lot of messages on email from

Joe for instance he says my mother died on Palm Sunday this year two months after she died I collected up her beautiful jumpers one a Norwegian cardigan she'd hand knitted intent on getting them dry cleaned and as soon as I opened the bag at the shop I was engulfed in grief because the smell of her perfume was so strong. I went straight home. I knew the time will come when I can do this but it's not yet and not now. Jill messaged to say when my dear mother passed away 90 years of age the item I kept which was the epitome of her her handbag with her compact and pen inside to me she was so like the queen always hair perfect makeup just right immaculately

dressed and that was just to go shopping or even swimming her bag is in my wardrobe and in times when I miss her so I fetch it out and just hold it so comforting we all miss her in our little family these are such sad times I have a dress here that says this is from Diana who says my mother knitted in very fine wool on circular needles. She started in the 50s but put it aside while she knitted and sewed for her five children. She finished it in time for one of her granddaughter's christenings in the 80s. It's a very classic style. I wear it at Christmas and I feel encased in the love she surrounded all her children with. And Kay says, when my Nana died in the late 60s, my mother gave

me her wedding ring. I decided that if I ever married, it would be my wedding band as my grandparents had been married for 62 years and I felt it was a good omen. I married in 1980 and it has never left my finger. Kay, thank you so much for that message and to all of you who have continued to keep messaging about that. We do appreciate it and especially with such personal memories. And talking of marriage, my next guest has a lot to say about it, certainly through the prism of a group that you probably haven't heard of, the Married Women's Association.

In fact, she's made a new podcast about them. The organisation was founded in 1938 by a former suffragette, and its main aim was to ensure that men and women would be treated as equals in the union of marriage, both legally and financially. The association has consisted of women who broke barriers in their fields of work. Dr Sharon Thompson is the presenter creator of that podcast who's also written a book of the same name and Quiet Revolutionaries alongside it. Good morning. Good morning. Tell us the Married Women's Association not many have heard which is what

you realised have heard of them what who were they and what were they about? Yes that's true so my background is in family law and I, as a family lawyer, had certainly never heard of them. And we just don't know their story. It has been almost completely ignored. But they were a group set up, as you've said, just before the Second World War, a group of women and men who were established to reform the law that affected housewives. So they had the goal of equal partnership and marriage, which they wanted to achieve by trying to tackle the poverty that women faced in relationships. So basically, they wanted women's work inside the home to be valued as men's work was outside it. And there were quite a few high profile members within the group.

So people such as authors Vera Brittain and Dora Russell, Helena Normanton, who was the first woman to practice as a barrister, and the MP Edith Summerskill, who was involved in the establishment of the NHS. And were they able, I also believe Doreen Gorski, the BBC's first female executive, was involved. Were they able to be open about their involvement? Well, they were quite open. And, you know, people said you see the summer school where, I guess, she was one of the first women to call herself a feminist in Parliament and was very strident about her views about reforming the

position of housewives and I suppose in that way the group was pretty radical in what they were doing. The idea of equal partnership and marriage is quite an orthodox view today but at the time many people saw the Married Women's Association's proposals as being quite extreme. Like what? So for example the Married Women's Association wanted a new marriage law that would give spouses a legal right in their partner's property during marriage such as a portion of the income, a right to a share in the family home, a right to know what their husband earned and a lot of people thought it was unthinkable, really, for the law to get involved in the rights of married women, because that would mean

interfering in the private world of the home. And were they successful? In many ways, no. They don't really fit conventional notions of success in the sense that they didn't achieve their new marriage law. They did achieve some piecemeal reform. So, you know, for example, they reformed the law around, or, you know, helped Edith Summerskill reform the law around securing the right for deserted wives to stay in their home through the Matrimonial Homes Act 1967. But what I argue, you know, in my book is that they, although they didn't fit these conventional notions of success, their real influence was more subtle. And what they were doing was changing the conversation around equality in marriage.

So, you know, raising awareness about the financial vulnerability and often destitution faced by married women who would have had very limited property rights at the time. Do we still have some of the issues, though, in law today? Well, yeah, we do in some ways. You know, of course, things are obviously very different now. The idea of the 1950s housewife is, of course, a rather antiquated notion. It's easy to think that this is a thing of the 1950s housewife is of course a rather antiquated notion it's easy to think that this is a thing of the past but a lot of the broader problems of inequality in relationships not just in marriage but in unmarried relationships to exist today of course in a different social context but you know

we know the UK is facing a cost of living crisis, but as I know you've been covering on Women's Hour, there's also a crisis in the cost of care. With spiralling childcare costs, what we're seeing is that it's increasingly the case that women simply can't afford to return to work, for instance. And at the heart of the Married Women's Association's story is this question of how to value caregiving in law and they did see reform of property rights as being the answer to this so this certainly does have relevance today you know in the sense that we're seeing statistics coming through as the Times reported in June for the first time in at least 30 years there's been a sustained increase in the number of women not working to look after the family because of the cost of childcare. And even, you know, in the mid 20th century, that was what the Married Women's Association was trying to bring attention

to. Quiet revolutionaries, though, at the same time. Do you think there's something to be learned from that? From their quiet methods? Yeah, the approach in some ways, because, of course, you know, it's one thing to tell people about a group they didn't know. But what perhaps could they apply to their lives today? Yes. Well, they were trying to sort of work behind the scenes. And that's why I refer to them as quiet. And I suppose learning about their methods shows, on the one hand, how difficult it actually is to reform the law. I think there's a lot that we can learn in terms of their strategies behind the scenes. that the Married Women's Association show us is that they were publicising the experiences of middle-aged, often destitute wives

in the middle of the 20th century. And we do see still this demographic is repeatedly ignored. It's still a marginalised experience. And I think it's still important to draw attention to that. Dr Sharon Thompson, author of Quiet Revolutionaries, telling us about the Married Women's Association. Thank you to that. Dr Sharon Thompson, author of Quiet Revolutionaries, telling us about the Married Women's Association.

Thank you to you. And thank you to you for the messages this morning, especially about male friendship and the role that often can be left to the women in men's lives to try and fill, either to form friendships around the men or to try and create a social life that the men can go along

with. I'm just going off some of your messages here that then they do not necessarily put the same effort in. But of course, also we're hearing from men this morning talking about the ways that they have done it. And in particular, we had a response from a male listener who says he just feels he doesn't have time. And to another response to that woman said, well, that's how working mothers feel feel but we still have our friends Simon says I think online spaces are undervalued in maintaining friendships in December 2019 I persuaded a group of old friends I had more or less lost contact with to play dungeons and dragons with me on an online call using discord because it was online no one had

to travel or find child care it was easier to fit into everyone's schedule now despite babies and house moves we talk online every week and have started meeting up monthly and all have a much stronger friendship so some tangible advice there about how it could start i am a man i have very close friends that are female and male i have two jobs was a single parent and had no trouble maintaining these relationships my son is close But another one here saying, he's close with. This is anecdotal, but we both feel frustrated with a couple of our male friends who got into heterosexual relationships and completely forget to take care of their friendships and it falls to their female partner to be their main psychological and emotional support system. This can't be healthy. There must be studies demonstrating this. My dad is 70 and has plenty of friends while my mum's partner has none. I think this is a generational issue too and definitely needs to change. An anonymous one here, which you can always choose

to do, I should say. I have a few friends who have recently left their relationships and recognise when looking back that the men simply left it to them to arrange and manage their social life, whether it was holidays, outings, meals or nights out, the men seem to not make much effort at all. And so it continues. The concern about this and the one here saying female partners acting as social secretaries. Oh, gosh. So, so true. I didn't realise until I started talking about my frustrations with female friends that it is a common phenomenon. And I do get concerned about my husband not having any male friends. Well, thank you for treating us as a friend this morning and for your company. I'll be back with you tomorrow at 10.

That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Hi, Charlotte Williams and Amit Katwala here. We are here to tell you about All Consuming, our new podcast series from BBC Radio 4. Where we'll be exploring our culture of consumption through products that have changed the world. In each episode, we'll be looking back at the weird and wonderful history of an everyday product

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