Woman's Hour - The women in line to lead the EU

Episode Date: July 5, 2019

Two women have been picked for top European Union positions for the first time. In a surprise choice, Germany’s defence minister Ursula von der Leyen has been nominated to head the European Commission. And France’s Christine Lagarde will be the head of the European Central Bank. Sophie Pedder, The Economist’s Paris Bureau Chief, and Deborah Cole, AFP’s Berlin Correspondent, tell us more about these women and the controversy surrounding their nominations.Writer Joanna Kavenna talks about her new novel, Zed. Set in a dystopian future the novel covers phenomena such as AI, virtual reality, fake news, creepy surveillance by huge corporations, powerless politicians, public anger, toxic masculinity, revolutionary women and much more besides.The England Women’s football team has grabbed the attention of a nation, reaching the Women's World Cup semi-finals, before a heartbreaking 2-1 defeat by holders the United States. An estimated 11.7million viewers, a new record for women's football in the UK, watched that game. Tomorrow the Lionesses play Sweden for the bronze medal. Bev Priestman is assistant coach for the team. She joins us from Nice.And as flexible working is slowly penetrating all sectors of employment we start a series of items looking at how different arrangements actually work in practice. Today, Job sharing: How do you make it work? Maggy Pigott and Judith Killick job shared for 23 years, across 7 different roles, and received a joint CBE at the end. What worked for them and what advice would they share?Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Helen Fitzhenry

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Friday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. As the England women's football team gears up for tomorrow's game against Sweden for the bronze medal, their assistant coach Bev Priestman talks tactics for the match. As flexible working becomes more common, how well can job sharing work? Maggie Piggis and Judith Killick did it for 23 years and received a joint CBE at the end. And a new novel by Joanna Kavanagh. In Zed, she creates a scary world of constant surveillance, artificial intelligence and super powerful big business.

Now, as I'm sure you've heard in the news, two women have been put forward to be the new leaders of the European Union. They're Germany's Defence Minister, Ursula von der Leyen, who's nominated to head the European Commission, and Frances Christine Lagarde, the Managing Director and Chair of the International Monetary Fund. She is nominated to head the European Central Bank. The MEPs now have to vote in the European Parliament before their positions are confirmed, and there has been some controversy about their nomination. Deborah Cole is the Berlin correspondent for the AFP news agency. Sophie Pedder is the Paris bureau chief for The Economist and the author of Révolution Française, a biography of Emmanuel Macron.

Sophie has spoken recently to Macron. How keen was he to promote women to these jobs? I think he made it a condition, really, of the jobs, the nominations, at least. He's, in a funny way, come a little bit late, I would say, to a sort of feminist agenda. I don't think it was part of his political make-up in the past, but ever since he set up his party a couple of years ago and then insisted

that every single one of the French deputies, the candidates to the French parliament, that lists were made up half men and half women, he's really sort of made it a crusade. And this was hugely important for him in terms of the image it gave of Europe, a sort of modern image, an image that Europe's in tune with the way society has evolved. And I think he was, clearly when I spoke to him, he felt he was very pleased with the outcome and particularly pleased that they not only spoke French, both of them do, but that two of the top jobs and really

the European Central Bank head is, you know, almost the more important, are both possibly now going to be filled by women. Deborah, what about Angela Merkel? How much of a priority were female leaders for her? Well, possibly somewhat ironically, the person who's often called the most powerful woman in the world, it really wasn't a priority for her, at least not at the outset. She, until it was no longer viable, backed her Spitzenkandidat, as they say, or her top candidate from the EPP conservative group, Madre Viva. And it was really only when Macron made it clear

that he was not going to go along with that under any circumstances did they start to get a bit more creative. That said, as soon as then these names were put forward and it was clear that two women were going to be taking these very powerful, important jobs, she did express a degree of satisfaction with that at the press conference she had on Tuesday when the deal was done. And Merkel is also somewhat late in coming to feminism, one might say. She's been in power since 2005. And now that it's clear that the end of her time in politics is on the horizon,

she has been a tiny bit more vocal about actively promoting women. Several men had been mentioned, Deborah, for the job of leading the European Commission, of course, taking over from Jean-Claude Juncker. Why did von der Leyen end up as the favourite? Well, I mean, the voters at the end of May in the European elections ended up handing back a fairly messy result. There really wasn't a very clear winner. And the makeup of the European Parliament is quite fractured. And so it also became clear that these, and again, I this German word Spitzenkandidaten, which has been adopted among EU policy wants to talk about these top candidates of the various groups, they really kind of failed to build up the support among leaders needed to get the job. And as soon as it became clear that none of the three of these top

candidates during the election were going to have the support that they needed, leaders had to, you know, come back for this extra time meeting to put some different names in the frame. Sophie, why would you say she heads the field? Is that Macron's influence again? Well, it's interesting. I mean, Macron's people say that they had discussed, Macron and Macron had discussed a year ago the idea of von der Leyen, but she really wasn't one of the names that was mentioned

in the sort of run-up to this summit. I think it was clear from Macron's point of view that what he wanted was, he didn't have one candidate he had talked about, maybe even Michel Barnier, who is conducting the Brexit negotiations, or a couple of other names, Franz Timmermans or Margarita Vestager.

These are other possibilities that he'd mentioned. But I think his point was that he wanted someone of experience. He wanted somebody who had stature, who could present a good image of the European Union and who could represent the European Union. And I think that it mattered that it was the qualities that mattered more than the person that which enabled him to be a little bit creative and a little bit more pragmatic at the end. So, you know, none of the original names he'd mentioned in the end evolved as a serious candidate because they were blocked for various reasons. But that enabled him

then at the last minute to revive the idea of von der Leyen with Merkel and push her forward. And I think he's pretty chuffed with the outcome. Deborah, we know von der Leyen was very successful in her job for family, but there has been controversy about her. Why? So she has led the Defence Ministry since 2013, which I should say is longer than anyone ever expected. This job has long been known in Germany as an ejector seat because a long line of, I should say, male ministers who had the job were turfed out fairly quickly because of various scandals. It's an enormous ministry. It's very unwieldy, and von der Leyen's tenure there has been marked by quite a few scandals.

There have been some issues about contracts that were given possibly under somewhat dodgy circumstances, about massive cost overruns. And so she is actually among German ministers the second least popular of all of them, and she was much more popular in her previous jobs. The last one was at the Labour ministry. And then, as you mentioned, during Merkel's first term, she was a family affairs minister.

So, yeah, she is leaving Berlin if she does manage to get the job in Brussels under something of a cloud. How would other world leaders view her? Donald Trump, for example. I mean, I think he'll be, you know, she'll be a bit of a red rag to Donald Trump. I mean, on two counts. One, I think we've seen that he doesn't take very kindly

to powerful women in general. His relations with Angela Merkel have been very touch and go. And also the fact that she is defense minister currently. One of the things that he has constantly railed about when it comes to Germany is the fact that Germany has not met its own obligation to spend 2% of GDP on defence and at least work towards that goal. And so she is sort of the embodiment of that failure as defence minister.

Sophie, as far as Christine Lagarde is concerned, she's become very well known heading the IMF. But again, there's controversy about her. People have talked of a conviction for corruption. What's the truth behind those allegations? Well, it's a shorthand that doesn't reflect quite the situation. What happened was she was finance minister under Nicolas Sarkozy when he was president,

and it was responsible for approving an award of state compensation to Benatapi, who was a French entrepreneur, of 400 million euros. So it's a huge award. And she was then sent before what's known as the Court of Justice of the Republic. It's not a criminal court. And she was convicted of negligence not of corruption she was not she has not been given a criminal record because it's a court that actually is mostly comprised of of deputies and parliamentarians so it's a court sort of that exists in france for for politicians sitting politicians and parliamentarians to to sort of judge one of their own so it's you know it's a shorthand to say she's convicted of corruption it's not true it was it was negligence now you know, it's a shorthand to say she's convicted of corruption. It's not true. It was negligence. Now, you know, the fact is that this case was hanging over her when she was

nominated to the IMF. So the IMF appointed her in full knowledge of the situation, and it's not stopped her fulfilling her mandates there. I think the feeling is that, you know, again, she's proved her competence. She was probably acting on orders from the president at the time when she approved this deal. And she's pretty well respected in France. I mean, she really is. I think that people see that she was probably doing her job. It wasn't a real situation which you could name you could call corruption. So I think I think she's she think she's got such a sort of good international reputation now that that probably counts more than this sort of blemish on her record.

But there have been people saying, oh, she doesn't have the experience to run the central bank, something that she has never done. Why is she considered to be qualified to run the bank? Well, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, sometimes I wonder if one would ask that question if she was a man who was coming from the IMF. I mean, when you're in, of course, she doesn't have any experience in terms of central banking and of running monetary policy. But think about what she's been doing at the IMF. You know, she is the managing director, has sat in with heads of

state and central bankers and governments discussing monetary policy for the past eight years. You know, she has been in these high level discussions doing, you know, operating at that kind of a level. And, you know, she's a smart learner. People said the same thing when she was when she was appointed to the IMF. People said, well, she's a lawyer. What does she know about, you know, finance? And she's proved that she's smart. She learns quickly. She surrounds herself with good people. She knows her own limits. And she has, I think, other qualities. I think that's why she got the job. You know, she has other qualities, which are that she's very good at relationship building. She's very good at finding consensus

among people. She is quite astute politically. And, you know, she does, she gets the job done. And that's something that's worth, you know, she needs to have credibility in the markets. And that's probably what's going to help her have it. Briefly, Sophie, will she get through? I think so. I mean, as I say, I think both of the. Briefly, Sophie, will she get through? I think so. I mean, as I say, I think both of the appointments are controversial, but I think she probably will. You know, she does give a good image for Europe. And I think that she's, you know, the French are very much behind her, obviously,

but it's part of a bigger package. So I think the chances are pretty good. And Deborah von der Leyen, will she get through? Yeah, I think the chances are pretty good. And Deborah von der Leyen, will she get through? Yeah, I think so too. I mean, you know, the nomination has caused some consternation in Berlin for various reasons. It was seen as a sort of, you know,

backroom stitch-up and the Social Democrats, who are junior partners in Merkel's coalition, are very unhappy and are making a lot of noise this week. But i think in the end they will fall in line simply because uh there really isn't another viable solution and i think uh there really can be no question of um fun and qualifications for this dog as well she's

deborah cole and deborah cole sorry to interrupt you but thank you very much and sophie pitter thank you very much both of, for joining us this morning. Now, I'm sure you were there on Tuesday night, along with nearly 12 million others cheering England along as they scored one against America, who'd already scored one. Then the Americans got another, as did England. But that wretched offside rule kicked in. Then there was a penalty and it was saved. And the final score to the nation's misery was 2-1 and the Americans won it. And I never thought I would be keen enough to recall every detail

of a football match, but I do. And of course tomorrow, the Lionesses will play again against Sweden for third place in the World Cup and the bronze medal. Well, Bev Priestman is the team's assistant coach and joins us from Nice. Bev, let's be positive. How ready is the team for tomorrow? Yeah, I think, you know, there are a group of girls who are really motivated.

You know, we talked about a gold medal when we came here, but for many of us, it's actually what's inside the medal. And I think, like you've just said there, it's inspiring a next generation. And, you know, life throws you some curveballs, but I think this group of people are ready to go and do everything they can to go and get a bronze medal. There has been some criticism of Phil Neville's tactics on Tuesday.

What changes is he making in readiness for tomorrow? I think we're clear what we have to do. There'll always be critics. I think the girls are really clear on how we're starting to play and what we aim to do. I think we played Sweden last year. We learned some lessons from that game. I think every game we've played,

we've, you know, tailored that to the opposition, but we're also clear on what we need to do to win that game. So I think to beat Sweden, we have to bring what we feel we can bring with the ball, but be very good without the ball. I think that's the reality when you play top 10 nations. You have to defend well and attack well and what state was the team in on tuesday night after that awful night i was watching along with

everybody else yeah i think you know i can speak for the staff and the players you know you spend you spend 18 months sort of working to that moment to get yourself in a final to hopefully go and win a World Cup. I think the nature of the game as well, if you're truly beaten and you walk away and you go, you know what, we were way off.

I think in many ways that's easier but I think we as staff allowed the players a 24 hour period just to deal with this. And then we regrouped them yesterday morning to focus them on how important it is to go after that bronze. We've got one bronze from the World Cup, two bronzes that would have been better at goal, but sustained success is really important too. The girls said they want to inspire a nation and they want to go after it.

I think the viewing figures you talked about, over 11 million, I think we have a job to do and we're ready to go and do it. How did you get to the position of being Neville's assistant, Bev? Yeah, well, this is actually my third Senior World Cup, so I've been to the Senior World Cup with New Zealand. I worked out there and then canada i was at the last um world cup we're actually england not canada out on home

soil so my previous roles were with with canada and new zealand and um and and sort of you know this job came up and you know i thought there's something about singing your own national anthem and wearing you know the right words on your chest when you're representing your country. So I thought my experiences of being at international tournaments as head coach at this level and assistant coach in an Olympic Games. So here I am now representing my country, which is a great, great honour. How aware is the team of the support they've been getting? I mean, obviously they'll know about the

numbers but it's not just from women you know i was getting tweets on tuesday night from women saying hey my husband's shouting he's getting really excited lots of men are really following them as well yeah and i think that's that's fantastic i think when you're in this sort of bubble when you're at a world cup, I know this from previous experiences, you never quite understand the level of support back home. I think they know that, you know, the nation is really behind them. That's what drives them.

They want to make, you know, their country proud. But I do think when you're in a bubble and you've got a task ahead and even this game coming up, you know, you put your head down and you work hard sort of thing coming up it's you know you put your head down and you work hard sort of thing so it's fantastic to hear I do get the sense that it's that we've we've sort of gone into a new market of of followers and I think that's a credit to the girls how they've conducted

themselves this throughout this tournament not only on the pitch but I think you know we're very humble humble in victory but gracious in defeat. And I think when young kids, boys or girls, are watching that, I think that's a big part of who we are and what we do. Bev Priestman, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. And the very best of luck tomorrow. We will all be watching and do wish the team our very, very best luck. Thank you very much. Now, still to come in

today's programme, a rather frightening dystopian novel by Joanna Kavanagh called Zed. It's about a future of artificial intelligence, fake news, all-powerful big business, and constant surveillance. And the serial, the final episode of

Daphne, A Fire in Malta. And of course we'd like to hear from you on the subject of going up from primary to secondary school. If your child will do it next term, or your family's just come to the end of a first year at secondary school, you may like to join Jane for a phone-in on Monday. Send us your experience or questions through the Woman's Hour website, and of course, you can call in on the day. That's Monday morning. Now, flexible working is becoming more common. It might be part-time, flexible hours or job share. And in the coming weeks, we'll be looking at how the different ideas work in practice. Job sharing has been around for decades, but the business magazine Forbes this

week called it the latest workplace revolution, although the most recent survey says only 0.4% of the workforce actually does it. Well, Maggie Piggott and Judith Killick did it for 23 years. They're both lawyers and began their job share as section leaders in the Criminal Appeals Office. They were promoted together seven times and ended their career as chief executives of the Judicial Studies Board and together were awarded the CBE. So who's going to start, Judith or Maggie? I'm happy to start, Maggie. Kate, why did you decide to job share in the first place? Well, I always wanted to work flexibly. And it was one of the reasons actually I gave up the bar and went into the civil service because I thought I want a family friendly employer. And I thought

the civil service would be the best place to go. And so it proved they were absolutely wonderful because I knew if I ever had children, I wanted to work part time. My mother had worked full time all her life. And so I went into the civil service, had a child. And then when the opportunity, when it was suggested to us by a male boss that we job shared together with Judith, who was also working part-time it just seemed a really good idea to try. Why did it suit you Judith? For the same reasons as Maggie actually I'd always wanted to have a family but I was also I was a solicitor I wanted a career and I joined the civil service for very similar reasons my mother curiously had never worked until we were grown up. But I wanted to balance children and family. So we had very

similar motivation, actually. And I think that was important. How did you do it day by day? Well, we started working three days, were paid for three days each. And I worked Monday to Wednesday and we had an overlap on Wednesday and Judith worked Wednesday to Friday um and we kept that we started that in our first job didn't we and then we kept it throughout the whole 23 years because it seemed to to work for us um and how important was that Wednesday when you were together very important I think I think that is a very key point. To have that time to not only tell each other what had been going on, but also to work on some of the areas that you couldn't really divide off. So areas connected with our staff, with the strategy for the role that we were in at the time.

There were always things that we needed to have time to discuss so it was really important that the organization gave us that yes we had board meetings we always had them on a wednesday so we could both go and any really difficult meeting that we wanted to both go in together we would do but uh and sometimes on wednesday we were going off to different meetings and didn't. Seven promotions? No, not seven promotions, seven jobs. Seven jobs?

Seven different jobs. How many times were you promoted then? One or two? Well, one officially and the other one we... Somebody gave me the wrong information. Yes, no, not seven promotions. No, we had one promotion together which was the promotion into the senior civil service, which was really important. And after that, we moved into a number of different jobs.

So how did that work, getting a promotion together? How did you make the application? Well, I think we were the first people ever to do it. And I remember receiving a phone call from our HR department saying, how do you think we should interview you? And I had to make it up on the spot. And I said, well, I think that you should interview each of us individually because you need to know

whether we're up to the job, whether we meet the standard you're looking for. But then I think you should see us together because you need to see the chemistry between us to judge whether you think it's going to be okay. And that's what they did. And it became the model for Job Share and Genius thereafter. What's the most important ingredient to actually making a success of it i think uh being

having a partner that you can trust completely yes because without trust i don't think any job share would work i had to feel confident that if I went off on a Wednesday that I could just hand over to Judith, not worry, go home, think about the kids or in later life my mum or other interests that I was involved with and just know that whatever Judith does I'm happy to live with and even if I'm not 100% happy I'm happy enough and I don't think that any job share would if you wanted to try and unpick anything or go back on anything the other person had done so I think that's probably the key.

What was the most important thing to avoid? I think the unpicking, don't go back on anything, always move forward with things. Mind you, I think that's a pretty good rule of thumb anyway. And also to make sure that you communicate with everybody because you really do have to have good communication both with your line manager with your teams with each other so if you if you aren't prepared to invest some time in actually communicating all around then again it makes the job share much more.

How do you make sure you're not dumping work on other people and they're going to say those job sharers they don't do their share? Well we in fact we used to find the reverse was true. I mean the civil service is full of bright and ambitious people and we found that many of the people who came to work for us did so because they wanted the opportunity to step up a bit and and to do things at the next level and they knew they recognized that because we we would not always be there they would have more chance to do that and I think people found it empowering rather than the reverse. But I know Maggie that you've trained middle managers to help them get over hostility to the idea. What makes for hostility about the general idea of job sharing?

I think that it's fear of the unknown actually. Unless you've seen a job share work it you can think of all the reasons why it wouldn't work. Unavailability, what if I want Judith and she's not there? How will managing other people work? How will I know what you're doing and fulfilling your objectives? There's a whole raft of issues that you can feel, oh, I don't know how this is going to work. Once you see it in action and see that it actually can work seamlessly, then that fear of the unknown goes. And after we'd started job sharing, thereafter, people accepted it as normal. And we ended up with three senior civil service pairs in our department because other people came and it was regarded as totally normal

in the civil service. And I think that's because the fear had been dispelled. It actually works and you have increased productivity and that's been shown by research. And once people see that, that it's a win-win for both employers and employees, then there's no reason to fear it. But you know, Judith, as I said, it's been going on for a very long time.

And yet that number of 0.4% throughout the workforce is extremely low. Why do you think more people are not doing it? I think to get job sharing working in any organisation, it needs a bit of resource put on it and a bit of support. I think probably for the reasons Maggie's just been saying, senior managers need to understand more about it. They just need their eyes open to it. ideally you'd have some dedicated resource in HR who would be looking out for people who want to job share and encouraging them to meet and see if they think they could make it work. You'd also have jobs routinely advertised as suitable for job share so that you push the presumption the other way

rather than the assumption always being that you can't do it. And in the civil service, for instance, not when we started, but now certainly, they have a register. So people can, and loads of people have found job shares in the civil service job register, and I know other organisations do that too. And that's incredibly helpful to people, that they can go somewhere and find another partner,

because finding the right partner is also obviously key. Interestingly, two full-time men were appointed to replace you when you retired. To what extent does that suggest that a job share means you do twice as much work as you're actually paid for? Well, you touch on the question really of productivity. I think that we understand, we know now, that job shares are more productive. I don't think we were doing twice as much work, but I certainly think that we were,

our jobs expanded as we did them because there were two minds on it. There were two brains, you know, you get two heads for the price of one. But doesn't it make you cross to think that two full-time blokes are doing what the two of you manage perfectly well part-time? It happened twice in our go, in the senior civil service, that we were replaced by two full-timers. No, because I'm deeply grateful, actually,

to have had the opportunity to job share and to do such wonderful, wonderful jobs and have a fulfilling career which it wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't job share with part-time work the opportunities for promotion are less uh but with job sharing you can have those mainstream high profile jobs and that was a great privilege and you're right the extent we did see it as our responsibility to make it work we didn't feel that the people around us should find life more difficult because we were job sharing. So we did feel we had to put in that extra effort. And it goes wider, obviously, to flexible working, as you touched on at the beginning of this piece, and caring responsibilities,

because it's all quite wrapped up together. You were both made CBEs. Did you go together to the palace? Yes, we did. Yes, one after the other. It was quite funny when you went first because you're K, and we were given our TBEs by Prince Charles and then when I came along he said

I've had one of you from this department why have we got another one? Because actually the CBE was for the Administration of Justice and I said well we're partly here because of our job sharing and what we've done for job sharing Well congratulations to you both, Maggie Piggott

CBE and Judith Killick, CBE. Thank you very much, Jenny. Thank you very much indeed. And of course, we'd like to hear your experiences of flexible part-time working and job shares. What's worked for you, what doesn't, and what do you wish could be different? You can email us through the Woman's Hour website or tweet us at BBC Woman's Hour. Thank you. Now, Joanna Kavanagh is an award-winning writer.

She was named one of Granter's Best Young British Novelists in 2013. Her latest work is called Zed. And on the one hand, it's hilarious. On the other, it's terrifying. It's set in the future where a company called Beetle virtually runs the world. There's constant surveillance, everyone has an avatar and has to wear a beetle band to monitor their bodily functions. There's fake news, everyone has a life train which is supposed to determine their future.

Algorithms have gone mad and there are robots known as ants, anti-terror droids. At the beginning of the book, a man has murdered his wife and children. He's gone to a cafe, popped into the loo, another man has sat at his table, and a headless ant has killed him by mistake. Here, Eloise, who works at the highest level in anti-terrorism and security, is trying to get to the bottom of what happened. You are suggesting, or the report is suggesting, that the ant fired at Bigman because it couldn't see, said Eloise. There was a perception ellipsis. Yes, I know. Does that mean the ant could not see?

The ant's perception was occluded by environmental factors, that is, intense sunlight, an intense shaft of sunlight in fact. Does that mean the ant could not see, said Eloise again with her beetle band saying stay calm on her real wrist. It's not appropriate to describe the ant's senses using classical models, said the real Douglas Varley. The ant, for example, does not have a head. Therefore, it does not have eyes in the traditional sense. Therefore, its modes of perception and, we assume, its modes of experience in the world, what Heidegger called Dasein, if you like, cannot be formulated in line with standard notions of perception.

OK, so you're saying the ant can't see. Is that right? It's not that it can't see, it's that it isn't trying to see in the classical sense. The real Eloise Jane dug her real fingertips into the real palm of her real hand. Her Beatle band said, Eloise, you are upset. Meanwhile, Eloise's avatar was in calm and seemed quite relaxed. Johanna, how would you describe the world you have created? Well, I think I had in mind that it was a sort of parallel version of our world where some things are exaggerated.

So, as you've heard, there's this kind of overarching tech company, Beetle, which has all these great ideas for us. It wants us to live the best possible life, to have Beetle bands on our wrists, which, you know, sense our feelings and our pulse rates. And it wants to have a lovely orderly society where life chains, which take all this data that's amassed from everything that can see us, these cameras and these bands, where these life chains can make predictions about what we might do and what we might want next. And everything can be anticipated.

And the life chains are so successful that you can run your government, you can run your laws in relation to them. But as you were saying at the beginning, something's gone really wrong. The life chains have not predicted this man who's murdered his family and everything's going wrong and the ants are going out of control. So I had this idea there'd be this quality, which I call Zed, which would mess everything up. So as a parallel universe, okay, fine. But how close do you reckon we are to this dystopian world? Well, it's so interesting. I mean, I started thinking about this book a couple years ago.

And actually now, you know, I'm obviously now in the news. We've got Facebook creating its own cryptocurrency. And in my world, there's a Beetle Bit, which is a cryptocurrency, which this huge tech company has. And I think, you know, there's a lot that's very much emerging now, that are attached to us, our phones, our computers, even our TVs, which is, you know, it's sort of an Orwellian joke almost that our TVs can see us. So, I mean, a lot of it's I wanted to take that technology that we have now and just push it further, just that bit further to say, really, is this the way that we're going? And, you know, could this actually happen? I think it's a sort of what if, you know, like Margaret Atwood creates these what ifs. And I love that sort of writing. Guy Mathias is the chief executive of the Beatle empire. He is not a very nice man. To what extent is he based on anybody real? Absolutely, definitely not. I must say all possible similarities are purely coincidental he's a

complete fictional creation but i did want to write i think knowledge is power there's that old saying from the 16th century and if you have all this knowledge of people these great tech companies with these you know people that are pretty unregulated who govern them um who are men you know let's let's, you know, face it, they're all these really powerful figures in these big companies of our era. You gain enormous power over people. And what do you do with that power, you know, when you watch people and you know them so well?

And I wanted to have someone who thinks he's a really nice guy. That's Guy Mathias, you know, he thinks he's a real progressive and actually his personal behaviour is atrocious. He rates women that I mean he's serially unfaithful his wife is not very pleased about that for obvious reasons but he literally rates them. Yes so this whole idea had this idea if you if you succumb to this mathematical idea about everyone you can put star ratings on everything you know books on art And then eventually he takes it further. As I said, you can kind of exaggerate. He starts star rating evenings with the women he's having affairs with. And he gives this information to his very intelligent personal assistant,

like a hyper AI kind of Alexa sort of thing, Sarah Coates, and says, you know, I don't ever want to repeat a 3.7 star experience, you know, delete those people from my database of possible, you know, evening out types. And I thought that was a really toxic level of just seeing everyone as a kind of mathematical prospect and not really ever seeing them as proper humans. He's keen to make language more simple. And he invents bespoke to reduce vocabulary and make communication easier. Why did you decide to include that? Well I think it's so interesting again about power, knowledge and this sort of

idea again it's a sort of he has a conversation with someone really who's a lot cleverer than he is who's kind of dealing with language in a much more sophisticated way and he doesn't like that and he thinks you know I'm in control, I'm the'm the all powerful person in this. It's my reality. He's got so much power. And he thinks partly for good reasons. Again, he thinks it would be nice if no one could ever offend anyone at all. You know, we'd have this language which would, as you spoke to your phone or your device, would translate what you were saying into a neutral, you know, really sort of nice, simple language. But partly it's a kind of, again, an attack on complexity and all the nuances

that make us alive and interesting, all our ambiguities. He just doesn't want them because they're not part of his mathematical system. He wants humans to be as kind of easy to understand as mathematical prospects. So he has to do that in language too. Language is so lovely and ambiguous and he doesn't like the ambiguity of words. And so he creates bespoke, as you say. Why did you choose Zed as the word to describe muddlesome humanity, which is what it is really?

Well, I took it as, you know, all the best quotations come from Shakespeare and there's a quote in um King Lear thou horse and Zed thou unnecessary letter um I apologize for the word but it is Shakespeare and it's really about in the Latin alphabet Zed was seen as a superfluous letter it was often missed out dropped and then it came back in um and so Shakespeare's using it as an insult means you're sort of redundant, you're not really necessary, you're irrelevant. And to me, you know, that's what these big glittering tech systems do. They make human ambiguity, uncertainty, all our beautiful

nuances, actually, and all the kind of things that are really lovely, they make them somehow irrelevant, because they don't fit within these very stringent protocols and these life chains and these predictive algorithms. And I think they're the most important, wonderful aspects of our life. So in my kind of reality, I thought Zed is the sort of, it's doom if you're Guy Mathias, but it's freedom if you're not. And that was the idea I wanted to play with. What's your personal attitude towards technology? Because I know you've worked with it for quite some time. Yes, well, I guess I was, I mean, in the late 90s, one of my really

early jobs was working in New York as a copywriter for an e-commerce company in that sort of halcyon era when, you know, we all had this idealism about the web and we felt it was going to be this free exchange of ideas and information for everyone. And some of that did come through, but then these great monoliths evolved. And I also worked in The Guardian on the online site as an environment editor as well in the North. So I saw all, you know, there's so many amazing visionaries who've been involved and lots of great work, of course, and so many people have been put in touch with each other and movements that have developed. And I think so many, you know, former minority cultures that were not heard that have now come through.

But, you know, if the whole thing gets controlled by a tiny number of people, I think, who have very permeable relationships with our governments and our security services, then I think you can get to a situation where you can't criticise these companies or, this is what I was writing about, because it's seen as a security concern.

If something goes wrong with their tech, it's a of you know form of breakdown of society and that's very dangerous. How scared are you for your children and what's their attitude? Yes that's such a good question because I guess you know the people who are listening today and you and I we've sort of seen the world before and now we've seen what's evolved so we have a memory of how things were before the big digital revolution but our children have a memory of how things were before the big digital revolution but our children have grown into this as if it is the sole reality and I think that's a really good question about just trying to present to you know generations that are coming that there are sort of lots of other realities too because I think once you're born into something it it's a harder question to ask you know do, do we want this? Can this be replaced? Didn't your daughter have a bit of a to-do with your...

My daughter had a row with Siri, yes. On one of those endless holidays where it rained every day in the Lake District, which your listeners may have experienced, I finally handed over the Siri device and she had a big chat and they started talking about deep ideas. And finally she said that she was deeply in love with Siri, professed her undying love. And Siri said that actually she thought that they should just be friends and maybe they should spend some time apart. And, you know, I thought that was quite interesting about, you know, the responses that we sometimes get from these devices may not be quite what we hoped,

really. Joanna Kavanagh, thank you very much indeed for being with us. And as I said, your novel is very funny and very, very scary. Thanks so much. Thank you. I was talking to Joanna Kavanagh. Lots of response from you about job sharing. Sharon said, great to hear the piece on job sharing. I work in a senior level job share for a PR company in Exeter.

My job share partner and I are celebrating our seven year job share anniversary this year. We have a joint email address, business cards, phone and even a two together rail card. Our role is creative and having two heads on everything is a major benefit for us. Rob asked, why is job sharing always spoken of as sharing between two? Could it work with three or more? Janice said, Our job shared as a group leader in an environmental health role for 13 years. We feel like 120% of a person in experience terms

and even shared an email address. We were always covered and came back from the holidays to no heap of stuff. We worked alternate days and truly shared the post and our own specialisms. It adds great value to the organisation. Fiona said, I held six job share roles in a 20-year career in local government, but the right job share changed to a right to request it, and now it's almost vanished in statutory services. The costs are higher, though outcomes are better.

Unfortunately, cash-strapped councils don't want it now. Francis said, we met as job-share art officers, eventually leaving to start our own company, and still work brilliantly together 14 and a half years later. And Tracey and Linda said, really enjoyed listening to Judith and Maggie, having worked as one of the first senior job shares in Marks & Spencer in the 1990s.

We concur with everything that they say. We've seen a slow growth of job sharing in organisations, too slow really, and this will only change when decision makers have a robust positive experience of working with job sharers. It's up to the job share pair themselves to make it oh so easy for their team members, colleagues and line manager to work with a job share. We feel it's truly the way forward to retain excellent people in the workplace. Now do join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour.

We'll be discussing how some women's centres are being used to facilitate community payback and how this is affecting vulnerable women. The Scottish-American composer Thea Musgrave talks about still working at 91, her career in music and how she copes with some hearing loss. And Ohuli and Tido, the English folk duo from Yorkshire, will talk to us about their track Gentleman Jack and they'll perform Beryl and you'll really enjoy it. Join me tomorrow,

four o'clock in the afternoon. Bye-bye. Is the daily grind getting you down? Fancy taking a break and going out into nature this summer? Then look for Go Wild and BBC Sounds, a place for some of the best nature programmes from Radio 4. Get some inspiration for your next adventure, no matter how big or small. Just search for Go Wild on BBC Sounds and set out on your next adventure today. I'm Sarah Trelevan 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.