Woman's Hour - The Yardley Girls, Harassment of disabled women in public spaces

Episode Date: August 6, 2019

Disability campaigner Dr Amy Kavanagh describes how she experienced harassment in public spaces when she started to use a white cane. Now she has started a project with Dr Hannah Mason-Bish, Director of Centre for Gender Studies at Sussex University to tackle the issue and the intrusions that she and many others face. ‘Beauty is your duty’ was an official propaganda campaign during WWII and the wearing of bright red lipstick seemed to be a patriotic duty and flash of glamour during tough times. While many factories and workers were commandeered for the war effort, the production of lipstick at Yardley’s cosmetics factory in East London continued apace. Kate Thompson’s latest book Secrets of the Homefront Girls features the lives and hardships of the women working in these factories. She joins Jane with two of the original Yardley Girls – Ann and Eileen. What is breast milk donation and why are some people calling for it to be better funded? Jane talks to author Francesca Segal whose premature twins needed donated breast milk, about why the experience made her want to donate her own breast milk to repay the favour when her next child was born. Plus Dr Natalie Shenker, co-founder of Hearts Milk Bank, the UK’s first independent, non-profit human milk bank talks about the process and problems faced when dealing with donated milk. Wrestler Heather Bandenburg aka La Rana Venenosa – Queen of the Sewer describes wrestling as her main vehicle of feminist resistance. She joins Jane to talk about its growing appeal and why she thinks more women should take it up. Her new book is "The Unladlylike: A Grrls Guide to Wrestling"Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Caroline DonneInterviewed guest: Dr. Amy Kavanagh Interviewed guest: Dr. Hannah Mason-Bish Interviewed guest: Kate Thompson Interviewed guest: Francesca Segal Interviewed guest: Dr. Natalie Shenker Interviewed guest: Heather Bandenburg

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. It's Tuesday the 6th of August 2019. A really interesting programme today featuring some fantastic voices from the East End of London. You can hear from Anne and from Eileen with their memories of working in the Yardley factory in the East End. They also help with Kate Thompson, the author's book about working women during World War II. So that's why they were on the programme today. We also have wrestler Heather Bandenberg.

And we'll talk, too, about breast milk donations. So a lot on this edition that I really think you'll enjoy. We started with a conversation about sexual harassment and it was actually something that featured on the podcast yesterday. We talked about the fact that Emma Watson, the actress, had given a huge donation to help set up a helpline to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace. Today, another aspect of sexual harassment and an aspect possibly that most of us haven't really thought about. What happens when you are a young disabled woman going about your business in any part of contemporary Britain? You're about to hear the very powerful voice of Dr Amy Kavanagh who is visually impaired and started using a white stick in public relatively recently. Amy is 30 and she gets

involved with Dr Hannah Mason-Bish, the Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at Sussex University. Hannah actually read Amy's tweets about what life was like for her when she started using the white stick. Here is Amy. Yeah, I was born visually impaired, but I only started using a white cane to aid my mobility about two years ago. I had a slight deterioration in my vision and I knew that

using a white cane would help improve my confidence and my independence. I got special training to use it and it's helped me sort of get into full-time work. And it's changed a few things as well. Yes it's taken me from an invisible disabled woman to a visible disabled woman and I think that's given me quite a unique perspective on the experiences that I'm having now. So pretty much every day complete strangers, members of the public touch me. They pull me onto trains, they grab me at the side of the road and drag me into traffic, they try and pull and push me around a coffee shop and it's constant and unrelenting and pretty unpleasant to be honest. How much of it is well intentioned do you think? I think a lot of

people in the UK panic about disability it makes them feel very awkward we know that a lot of people don't want to interact with disabled people very much and so they panic and their natural instinct is to use their hands instead of their words. I navigate the world very differently. I am visually impaired. You know, when I'm stood at a road crossing, I think it causes a lot of people panic. But all I want them to do is just ask me if I need help first. Because regardless of how good their intentions are, being grabbed suddenly with no warning is absolutely terrifying and good intentions

can have really unpleasant consequences like being injured pain damage to my mobility equipment and amy what about when it is rather worse than well much worse than that when actually you are touched in ways that are well criminal and clearly unwelcome yeah Yeah, I would say that it probably happens at least a couple of times a month that persons, usually men, will use the offer of help or the opportunity to interact with me to grope me, to make inappropriate sexual comments, to try and physically stop me leaving a location. And it's very difficult to distinguish when that first person puts their hands on you, when it is, you know, a nice person trying to help me across the road,

or the next person that's going to grab me by the arm until they've finished groping me. Twice a month, you say, this happens on average? Yeah, about that. Sometimes more. Depends on how busy my life is, you know, if I'm travelling around for work. But yeah, I mean, being touched by strangers is every single day. And even those well-intentioned touches, like I'm not a slim lady. Like when someone grabs my arm, they're often, you know, grazing a bosom or, you know, it's just a very intrusive and personal act without my consent.

And when did you start tweeting about it? So it was about a few weeks into using a white cane. I enjoy social media. It's a fantastic way for disabled people to connect with each other. There's a big community on there. And I started saying, well, people keep touching me. Why does this keep happening? Is it something about me?

Is it something about London, perhaps? And hundreds of disabled people got in contact to say it happens to me as well you know people push my wheelchair people grab my guide dogs lead they pull my crutch from underneath me it just seems an absolutely normal part of everyday experience for disabled people well Amy somebody who read your tweets can join us now from our studio in Kent Hannah Mason-Bish Dr Hannah Mason-Bish, Dr. Hannah Mason-Bish, Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at Sussex University. And you're carrying out some important research, aren't you, Hannah?

Yes, so Amy and I are doing some research together. I came at this from the other side in that I'm not disabled, but I've been researching hate crime for about 15 years and I've always been interested in gender and why gender is often excluded from hate crime policy and when Nottinghamshire Police started to classify misogyny as a form of hate crime two or three years ago it struck me that the experiences of disabled women were often missing from research and from the discussion and that when I saw what Amy was writing about it

made me realise that the touching that people are experiencing sits on a spectrum from hostility, violence, sexual harassment to everyday touching. So I saw Amy's tweets and then we got in touch and started chatting about what we could do to raise awareness and bring women's voices out and do you acknowledge now hannah with retrospect that you were you were like myself actually entirely ignorant of all this yeah i mean i'd probably had a bit more of an idea because as i said i've been researching it for a long time and i'd done a lot on disability way back but unless you've lived it you can't really know it can you yeah and actually where our discussion started with amy was the only thing i could think of that was in any way similar was when i was pregnant and um i was being touched and it came it came from nowhere suddenly people

were touching me moving me around and things like that but of course once the once the baby appears the touching stops um but for for disabled people, it doesn't stop. Amy, I know you've been outspoken on this and you're proud, I know, to be outspoken. You have said that you believe that disabled women have been excluded from campaigns like Everyday Sexism and the hashtag MeToo as well. Yeah, I think it's just an uncomfortable truth. I think disabled women are simultaneously portrayed as vulnerable, sexless, undesirable, but also... What, fair game, effectively? I think it's a complicated combination because we're similarly childlike and innocent, but also an easy target.

You know, disabled women and women with a long-term illness are twice as likely to experience sexual assault. That was found in the 2017 crime survey. But people don't talk about it. It makes them feel very uncomfortable that a blind woman gets groped. Hannah? Yeah, I mean, I agree. And I think where it comes down to and what's coming out in the stories is about consent and about the consent of disabled people,

and particularly disabled women where we're talking about sexual harassment is not valid or not warranted or not even asked for and even when the women say no can you not touch me please don't do that and they're completely ignored or it escalates quite quickly towards hostility and that you're ungrateful and various other things so this issue of consent is really at the key of what we're finding and what women are talking about. Amy, how have you reacted? Let's say a man has groped your breast on public transport in London.

What are you able to do about it in the moment? To be honest, very little. I think two years of these experiences has taught me that, as Hannah says, pretty much any reaction usually creates a very hostile and aggressive response. What about the people around you? Do they not notice? Is there not someone you could speak to? The thing is that it's done in quite a tactical way. So often there is an announcement from the individual like, oh, I'm going to help you. And then the minute I start making a fuss it's seen as oh that ungrateful woman that nice man's just helping her off the bus or whatever

and they do it in a really sneaky tactical way and there was another activist online who talked about a man who physically took hold of her wheelchair and started pushing her down the pavement and she was screaming help me help me I don't know this man and no one intervened yeah I mean it is I mean on your behalf I am livid for what it's worth And she was screaming, help me, help me, I don't know this man. And no one intervened.

I mean, it is. I mean, on your behalf, I am livid for what it's worth. But I just want to know, I know that you have said, Amy, that the worst offenders are actually people like myself, in some cases, middle-aged women who, to be fair, I would say that back when I was 25 or when I was nearer your age, I would have been too shy to intervene, too hopeless and helpless. Now I'm likely to intervene, but I might get it wrong. So how do I get it right if I see you, Amy, going about your legitimate business as a working woman in London? How do I help if I want to get it right? So I think the first thing is always assess the situation.

Often people want to help and they feel this urge when actually, you know, I'm quite happy. Just because I navigate the world differently from you doesn't mean I always need that intervention. So see if there is a hazard or an issue or if someone is just merrily going about. Introduce yourself. Say, hello, you know, I'm Jeff or Kirsty or Brian or whoever. Would you like some assistance? And then listen to the answer and respect it. A no is not rude. You haven't offended anyone.

It's just someone that doesn't need help in that moment. Listen to what you can do, how you should touch that person and their mobility aids, because often people will jump in and get enthusiastic. And if you do have good intentions, the worst thing you want to do is frighten someone or hurt them. I definitely get that. And I think you're on the waiting list for a guide dog, aren't you? Yeah. And I believe that you believe it's going to be less likely

that the sexual harassment when you've got a dog. I think some men are scared of dogs. And I think they think the dog might be a threat. Obviously, guide dogs are extremely well-trained assistance animals. They're not a threat to anyone. Anecdotally, I've heard it slightly improves the situation. But really, I'm bored of taking personal measures. I'm bored of never stopping in the street for fear of being touched.

I'm bored of trying every single set of train doors to avoid someone dragging me in. I want people to share the message that you must always ask before you touch a disabled person. Respect them like you want your own consent because we are adults and we are capable and we just want the same autonomy as everyone else. Thank you very much for that. Hannah, it's worth saying you are undertaking a research project, you welcome people's involvement, don't you? Yes um as amy said i mean we're receiving examples across the board um and obviously you were just talking about people's intentions and help but actually unfortunately a lot of the examples

we've got are of people who are it's just hostility being pushed grabbed shoved um moved out of the way pushed down a hill thrown out of their wheelchair, having their white stick broken, all of those kinds of examples, unfortunately, as well, we're picking up. But yeah, we want people to read the stories. I mean, if you don't want to contribute, that's fine. But I think everyone should read some of the stories about the consequences of what disabled women are experiencing and the impact it has on them. Thank you very much. There is a link on the Woman's Hour website, bbc.co.uk, co.uk slash Woman's Hour. That was the voice of Dr Hannah Mason-Bish from the Centre for Gender Studies at Sussex University. And you also heard from Dr Amy Kavanagh.

Amy, you're a fantastic speaker. Thank you very much for coming on this morning. Thank you. Really enjoyed. Well, if not the subject matter, it was great to get your passion and your commitment on the programme. Thank you very much. Now, Kate Thompson is a successful writer, hugely successful, actually. And she's someone who's proud to specialise in sagas, with women and their experiences at the very heart of everything she writes about. Her latest novel is called Secrets of the Homefront Girls. And it's about

the lives and hardships of the women working on the lipstick production line at Yardley's factory in East London during the Second World War. Now, the book includes a devastating real life incident, which was, well, some would say downplayed. Other people would say covered up at the time. That was the bombing of a school in Canning Town where hundreds of locals were sheltering and it's thought that many many people lost their lives in that incident. I've been talking to Kate the writer and to Anne who's 87 and Eileen who's 91. Now both worked at Yardley's just after the war and they helped Kate with her research. Here is Kate. Why are we always documenting the history of sort of the military

and the kings and the queens and the people who started wars and made laws? What about the people like Anne and Eileen, the women that history books forgot, who have such incredible, vibrant social histories? And, you know, unlike them, they're actually reacting to history as opposed to instigating it. And therefore, I think history viewed through their eyes is so much more personal, takes the true temperature of the times. And I've had such a reaction since these books have started coming out, all the time saying, thank you, because this is my family's history. This is our shared people's history.

And for me, it's fascinating because I guess when I started, I knew very little about the East End. I'm not a historian. I'm not an academic. I'm a journalist, really, by trade. So in order to kind of feel my way into, into I suppose what you call an authentic experience of the past I seek stories. So I'll go to coffee mornings, bingo halls, I mean I met Eileen and Anne in the cafe at Morrison's. I'll just go anywhere to find a story and then everybody always says the same thing, oh I'm nothing interesting, I'm just ordinary and then you speak to them and you find

they're anything but ordinary, they're extraordinary. You know, they've taken part in the Battle of Cable Street or they've dug babies out of bomb sites or they helped to take over the tubes when Churchill shut them down and said there was no access to civilians for shelter. So in actual fact, these stories are ripe and rich with history. Eileen, tell me, Kate met you, she says, she claims, in Morrison's. Is that true?

It's true. It is true, OK. What do you remember about that? Well, I remember standing outside when I should have been in. They were inside and I was outside and I came in and I saw them. Saw what? Anne with Kate? Yes, they was there. I was sitting there, I knew we had to meet, and I kept looking and I said, oh, does this look like Kate?

I didn't know Kate. So just to contextualise, I had put a thing on Facebook saying, does anybody know any former Yardley workers? And two people had got in touch, and it turned out to be Anne's son and Eileen's nephew. And I thought, oh, I'll take a punt and interview them at the same time, little knowing that they actually already knew one another. And so when they walked in, there was that sort of moment of recognition

and they had both brought with them the same photograph of them as young girls working on the same conveyor belt and it was an amazing moment it made the hair stand off on the back of my neck I don't know how that photo stayed with me because I've been through a lot of moves in my life some photos I ain't got now

but that one I've still held on to it's the most beautiful but I wish we could show it it's so evocative of everything about Yardleys and what was wonderful about working there. When did you start at Yardleys? In 48 I think, 47, 48 something like that. Okay and that was just after

the war. That was before, but before Anne. Yeah. Okay and what was it like then? You couldn't beat it. It was a lovely lovely firm. The people themselves were lovely. The girls that worked there were lovely. I remember each one of them, and they educated me in a lot of ways. I bet. Well, give me some idea of what they educated you in.

Well, their life at home. When you realise they came to work, one little girl in particular, Christine, she had beautiful blue eyes, she had long fingers and I used to watch her working and when she went home she had a mother who was an invalid so she spent all day working and then she went home to an invalid mum. There were people that you listen to them and you realise how lucky you were for what they went through. I don't know what it is about when you strive, when you're working. It seems to make you stronger.

I couldn't say anybody that was there on that belt system was nasty. What was the system? A belt system. A belt system. Yes, as the creams came onto the belt, there was a B on the top of the jar and they had to be in tune with the label that went... Oh, in exactly the right position.

Yeah. And you had to keep up with it. And very few people fell out. Everybody helped each other. Just out of interest, did you get free products? Did they give you a reduction? No, you could get a reduction. You could get a reduction. But I never did. I never went... You didn't use the stuff yourself? Well, I was a bit of a scrooge, you see. Because they did tell you to go and save 10 shillings

or whatever you could. I used to put 10 shillings in there. So I didn't used to buy make-up. But you were very young in those days. Presumably you didn't... Well, 19. Yeah. Yeah, I was 19. So your main concern was what?

Saving money. Saving money for the future. Yeah. Yeah. Because this is what you're educated to. You know, Mummy used to say, a little on one side, what we've got we share, what we haven't got,

we go without, we go without together. We had nothing, but we had everything. I mean, we never had new clothes, I never had new clothes, new shoes or nothing like that, but we had happiness. And what led you to work at Yardleys? Why were you there? The road where it was was just all full of factories, so you knew you could get a job at one of them so then I went to Yardley's got the job and landed up in there. And you were doing the same thing as Eileen? Yeah I was on the bill and she was the baby. I was

only 16 that's why I don't remember much about it sort of thing. But did people look after you? Yes, and when you say about the people, we had like a lady sitting at a desk. She was our supervisor. Lovely. Normally like a schoolteacher looking over you. But even she was so nice. Even when I left and had my baby, I went up there and saw her. You know, you didn't think, I'm glad I'm out of there.

She was so nice. An enormous camaraderie, wasn't there, between you girls? They brought their babies up and showed you their babies and all that, you didn't think, I'm glad I'm out of there. She was so nice. There was enormous camaraderie, wasn't there, between you girls? They brought their babies up and showed you their babies and all that, you know. Can I ask you both a little bit about what you remember about the war? Where were you, Anne, during the Blitz? You were very young, I know. Yeah. What do you recall about it?

I think I was about seven when the war started. And all I remember, we had air raid shelter out the back. They dug out a thing and you had this Anderson shelter and you might be walking to school and then you'd hear the sirens go. Then you didn't know if something was going to drop out of the sky and come on to you, innit? Like a nerving sort of feeling, yeah. I was lucky there in a lot of ways.

He was lucky, really, because my dad took us up out of the shelter when he said it was getting too hot to handle because he could hear you know being in the first world war he said come on he got us up got us out put a boat round us

dragged us through the streets and we ended up under St Simon's Church in Bethnal Green and then from there we went when we did come home because our house was down. What is interesting is that you do uncover in the course of your research for your books Kate really important but often forgotten chunks of social history and there's one incident at the heart of this book, isn't there? Tell me about that. Yeah, so that was an absolute tragedy.

The bombing of the school at Canning Town, I'm sure you two ladies will have heard of it, but it's so little known, and that's what I still find astonishing. I mean, in my first book I wrote about the Bethel Green Tube disaster where 173 people were... And I think people do know a bit about that. Do you think? Yeah. I think that's sort of filtered into the public consciousness. But the disaster at Canning Town, where basically what

you had was 600, mainly women and children, but some of society's most vulnerable people who were pressed into this school hall that had been turned into a rescue centre. Now, they've been told repeatedly by the authorities, well, you wait here, because in a rescue centre, you're only supposed to be there for sort of four hours. but these people have been there three days and nights and they were repeatedly told by the authorities we're going to get you out of here there's coaches coming and they never arrived and to this day nobody really knows what happened there was some rumour that the coaches were sent to Camden town as opposed to Canning town but basically on the third night a bomb dropped through the reinforced concrete roof into the basement below where the majority of these people were sheltering

and pretty much killed everybody within it. Nobody really knows the true death toll. I think West Ham Council said at the time that 73 people had died. But I interviewed people who said, I saw more people than that dead on the rim of the crater because it caused this huge crater. Now, the rescue workers dug for 12 days and i think eventually they were ordered then to to give up and they sprinkled it with quick lime

and they concreted it over it and that was it there was no more discussion about it after that no memorial um as far as i know there's a little memorial it's still actually a school today and i i believe that there is a memorial sort of plaque attached to the wall but so few people know about that and I mean a lot of people say I you know that believe the death toll to be somewhere in the region four to sort of possibly even 600 but it was never acknowledged at the time because obviously because of morale Churchill said we mustn't talk about these things you know it would be extremely damaging to the morale of of the East End but you can imagine what effect that had on Canning Town I mean I think one street alone lost 13 families.

Devastating loss of life. And I think for that suffering never to be acknowledged, I think is extremely damaging to the psyche of the area. Can I ask you all really a little bit about how the East End has changed, Anne? What would you say about that? I think it's changed a lot, yeah. Because, you know, in our day, like everyone says, you left your thing on your door, you left your door open.

No-one never walked in or nothing like that. And everybody was willing to help each other. But these days, nobody knows their neighbours and it's not the same, is it? Not what it used to be. No. I think it's just been buried under a kind of avalanche of gentrification. I mean, we talk about this, but there are a few women I have interviewed

who still remain resolutely in their homes and the only way they're leaving is in a box. But they're surrounded on all sides by glass structures and luxury developments that bear very little resemblance to the original premises. You know, you've only got to look at... See, we had a little terrace house where there was a back garden.

You had chickens. I mean, Susie and Henry, I think. I don't remember them. Your memory for names is quite phenomenal. And Binky the cat, and I remember catching tiddlers with a piece of string on a Your memory for names is quite phenomenal. I know, yeah. And Binky the cat, and I remember catching chitlers with a piece of string on a piece of sacking, get chitlers and put them in a moment,

putting them in a sink by the outside, and Daddy saying, they're not going to stay there, you know. They were swimming around in the morning, they'd gone. How much does it mean to you to be back in touch with each other? It's lovely i just just want to make a point that i think that women of eileen and anne's age and i think a lot of women in england will feel reflective of this is that they all complain of of sort of fading into invisibility as they age and so that's a really important point for me to get across is that these women and their memories are lifeblood of our country and i think we really should listen more to them like particularly when i first met you Eileen, you said I might have snow on the roof

but I'm not old, I've got stories to tell and I really believe that And actually, very briefly from me when will we stop reading about World War II, do you think Kate? Never. Well, it's certainly having its moment, it never seems to lose its appeal, I mean I've

sometimes tried to write outside of that time frame but my publishers, you know, is a big, they love it, you know, people still love reading about it. So as long as people still love to read about it, I will still continue to write about it. Kate Thompson, who is the author of that book, Secrets of the Homefront Girls. And you also heard from two of the women who helped with her research for that book, Anne and Eileen. And as I say, fantastic to talk to them yesterday and hear just some of their stories. I suspect they both have so much more to tell. And if you're interested in the bombing referred to in that interview, it was at a junior school, Hallsville Junior School

in Canning Town. And it's actually now thought that 600 people lost their lives in that incident. The rumour is that the buses sent to evacuate them went to the wrong place. So that happened in London in 1940. Now, there's been a lot of talk and a lot of newspaper headlines, loads of stuff online over the last couple of days about the menopause. This because a new treatment has been in the news which claims to be able to delay it.

So on Friday's Woman's Hour, we're going to be asking, why is the menopause being reported as something we need to fix? I know there are lots of writers who've got plenty to say about that subject. Suzanne Moore, India Knight have both had their say. And we'll talk more about it on Friday's edition of the programme. Your thoughts welcome, as ever, of course. On Monday, the long summer holiday, well it's almost over actually for people

in Scotland of course. Children go back to school there pretty soon. But if you're just starting the summer holiday you might really feel like you've got an eternity to fill and maybe not that much money with which to fill the time. Places apart from the

park I guess which is free. But even then, the kids will want an ice cream or a bag of crisps or something else. It isn't easy and it certainly isn't cheap to occupy children during what can seem like the endless summer holiday. How are you managing? And with free school dinners suddenly gone as well, of course, do you think there's a case to make the school holidays shorter at this time of year? Let us know on Twitter or by email via the Woman's Hour website. Kathy Burke is also on Friday's programme, so that should be something to look forward to. She's made some cracking documentaries for Channel 4 called All Woman,

and we're going to be talking to her on Friday. So breast milk donation. Why are some people calling for it to be better funded? Why is it so important? It literally can save lives, of course. Francesca Seagal's premature twins needed donated breast milk and she wrote a book about her experience. She's already talked about that on the programme. The book is called Mothership. Francesca is in our studio in Oxford. Hi Francesca, good morning. Hello, hi, thank you for having me. A pleasure. And with me in London is Dr Natalie Schenker, the co-founder of Hearts Milk Bank, the UK's first independent non-profit human milk bank. She's also a research fellow at Imperial College in London. Hi, good morning. Welcome Natalie. First of all, there was a time, wasn't there, when all maternity hospitals would have a milk bank? Of some description, yes.

So a lot of my work over the last three years has been going out and talking to the community. And often women in their 80s and 90s would come and tell me how their milk was used to feed a baby whose mum couldn't produce milk after the birth or where the baby was sick. And that existed in every single hospital, some formalised to have pasteurisers and a team of staff who could make sure that the milk was as safe as possible. And basically, when HIV was discovered to be transmissible through breast milk during the 1980s, milk banks that didn't have that sort of setup were effectively closed down. And so by the early 1990s, there were only six milk banks left in the UK. And the reason those survived was largely to prevent necrotizing enterocolitis, a disease that most commonly affects preterm babies. What is that?

So it's a dreadful condition. Babies used to die very prematurely of lung problems. Their lungs weren't developed enough. But medical technologies advanced to the point that they do survive that. But several weeks later can develop very swollen tummy. And the disease is shortened to neck, is where parts of the gut, or indeed all of the gut, can suddenly die over a few hours.

It's a devastating condition. And human breast milk guarantees that a tiny baby won't get it? Well, nothing in life is guaranteed, but if the baby's receiving mother's milk, then it is unusual for a case of neck to develop. Any mother's milk? Their own mother's milk is used as a bridge to mums producing their own milk to getting over that really terrible first few days of the shock of a preterm baby, perhaps being ill themselves, then the average use of donor milk in neonatal units is only for five days. And that's long enough for mums to build up their own supply. Then that can reduce the incidence of NEC, particularly in the most preterm babies. Francesca, I know many listeners will recall your previous appearance on the programme,

but tell us a little bit about what happened to your twins. I had a very straightforward twin pregnancy, and so far as a twin pregnancy can be straightforward, and then had a very unexpected haemorrhage at 30 weeks and gave birth to my twin girls at 30 weeks plus zero and so 10 weeks early and they were immediately taken to neonatal intensive care where they needed to be fed by a nasogastric tube. I wasn't able to feed them myself. Can I just interrupt you weren't able to feed them yourself because obviously your body had not expected to be asked to produce breast milk at this stage. No, I mean, that was the thing, you know, my breasts were as unready as the rest of me. You know, 24 hours earlier, I thought I had another 10 weeks to go.

And all of a sudden I was painstakingly hand expressing colostrum for these babies. And, you know, mothership was a diary of my time caring for the premature twins. But more than that, it was a celebration of the time caring for the premature twins but more than that it was a celebration of the sisterhood of the fellow mothers on the ward and we met while we were expressing breast milk for our babies in this room that we very quickly came to call the milking shed but I think my first clear awareness of the incredible sorority of neonatal intensive care was when the nurse caring for my daughters explained that she was upping their nasogastric feeds from half a milliliter to a full milliliter an hour and so these scant drops of colostrum that I was painstakingly

hand expressing weren't enough and from the freezer she produced this bottle of donated breast milk and it really would be impossible to overstate my gratitude to that anonymous mother I felt her linking arms with me I felt us feeding my daughters together I almost saw her reaching out and holding me up until I was strong enough to do it alone. Why do some women, Natalie, and there'll be plenty of people listening, by the way, who are wrestling perhaps at this very moment with breastfeeding. It's not easy. We've said it before. We'll say it again. We'll keep on saying it. Not everyone can do it. Don't beat yourself up if you can't. But why can some women produce much more breast milk than others? Do we know?

Oh, gosh. So we don't know particularly the reasons why some mums do, but some mothers can be absolutely disabled by the amount of milk that they produce. We've had donors who've donated over 80 litres in the course of a couple of months and are unable to leave the flat because their breasts are producing so much milk. They can't leave the flat? They're constantly hooked to the pump and too engorged to feed their own babies. Wow, which is just as bad as the opposite end. It's a huge frustration because as a doctor and then as a research scientist,

the amount that we actually know about what women's breasts are designed to do is vanishingly little. So that means we can't help when there's pathology. There aren't enough diagnostic tests, there aren't enough treatments for women who are at either end of the spectrum, not enough milk or too much. And it's really at the moment we're relying on volunteer organisations largely to support mothers over the first few days and weeks trying to establish breastfeeding or trying to manage difficulty with oversupply. So you're the co-founder of Hearts Milk Bank. That's right. How many people, tiny babies, are you able to help during the course of a year? Okay so we've sent out just over a thousand liters last year and that will have fed about 1500 babies. And they are what the length and breadth of the country? No we work regionally

and there's milk banks in different parts of the country but we're quite unusual as a milk bank because about half of the milk that's donated to us goes into the community and that's to feed babies where the mum is suffering with cancer receiving chemotherapy or has another reason that she can't breastfeed her own baby. And how quickly can you get the milk to a baby? We've had calls from mothers who are literally in tears, in extremis, desperately trying to produce milk for a very sick baby at home or about to start cancer treatment. We have got milk to a mum within a couple of hours. Is it byte there? Yes, so we work with the CERV riders, the blood bikers. They're a national network of volunteer blood bikers. We work with Serv Hearts and Beds in our locality and all the way across

the southeast and Midlands. But it seems odd to me, and I know you've made the point before, that this is the responsibility of a charity. And it's literally funded by bake sales and people running marathons and so on. And part of my older team at Hearts and our supporters' endless frustration is we can't seem to convince policymakers, large pots of funding, that this is a pressing need for mothers in particular. I thought I was setting up a milk bank to help babies, but actually what we've done is set up an organisation that markedly improves the mental health of mothers

because, as Francesca says, it feels like people have got your back. Yeah, oh, I don't doubt it for one second. I can't think of a harder experience. But there is, we don't want to pretend, not pretend, we don't want to tell people or worry them suggesting that there are no NHS milk banks. There are. Absolutely not.

They're working double shifts to keep up with the demand. But there are not enough. But there could be so much more. The National Blood Transfusion Service faced the same difficulties in the 1980s as the Milk Transfusion Service, and yet got investment, got funding. And now you can have blood products wherever you live in the country. You can donate blood wherever you live. What we see is a future that milk donation is ranked alongside

and that people have the same equity of access and assured access. So how can any woman donate? So if babies are under six months, then the best thing to do is to go onto the UCAM.org website, and that's got a list of NHS milk banks banks who recruit mums under the age of with babies under the age of six months if um you live in our region in the southeast then the hearts milk bank dot org website will take you through the process thank you so much natalie really appreciate it and francesca you've had another baby since and i think you did you donate milk this time i did yeah i so clearly remembered the feeling of being a recipient and I knew always that if I was

lucky or brave enough to have another baby that I would donate. And I was already pregnant again when I was writing Mothership and I was reliving those first days in intensive care and it just redoubled my resolve. Well, congratulations to you and thank you very much for talking to us. Francesca Seagal, listening to that very

intently is no lesser person than Heather Vandenberg La Rana Venenos I knew I wouldn't be able to say this, say it for me Heather La Rana Venenos I mean you did make it up to be fair I didn't make it up, my coach made it up, it's very spanglish

Well I've fallen out with the wrong person because Heather is a wrestler and she is also known as the Queen of the Sewer and you've been a wrestler you she is also known as the Queen of the Sewer. And you've been a wrestler. You regard wrestling as the main vehicle of feminist resistance, it says here. Absolutely. Weaponising your feminised body. But you're also pregnant, yes?

Yes, I am. Yeah, there's absolutely no avoiding that. Even I could spot it. And you've written a book called The Unladylike, I never know how to pronounce this either, A Girl's Guide to Wrestling, only it's girls G-R-R-L-S. Yes. How do you say that?

Girls. Thank you. So you are not an athlete, you're not that interested in athletic pursuits, but you are a wrestler. Yes, I was put off exercise by netball, most definitely, and punk rock at school um and I but I in order to become a wrestler you have to reach a ridiculous level of peak fitness as well as you know being essentially um part of a violent pantomime so I've really found again vehicle of feminist resistance also the only exercise I've ever enjoyed in my life why do do you enjoy it? I can't really explain it other than even in sports when I like to hope that it's changed since I was a child but as a girl you're told to not take up too much space and you're told to make sure you're prim

and proper and you're not clumsy. Wrestling requires you to make so much sound and be strong and take up space and be aggressive and all these things that I think are really important parts of being a woman and I find strength in them and it celebrates that and it also essentially means you can become a complete alter ego while doing it and make up a character and basically become your own superhero. Is it sexualised? Oh, yeah. I think that it's changed a lot in the last 10 years. And I'm so grateful. And it's because of so much hard work from a community of both male and female wrestlers to get women respected.

But women have been wrestling as long as men, you know, for about 100 years or so. And since day one, just because they're not men, they're seen as trying to be part of a male sport. So, you know, the easiest way to get a woman as part of the show is to make her into some kind of sort of cheesecake or sexualized attraction. The novelty thing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Even when I started off about seven years ago, you know, you basically couldn't get bookings if you're a woman unless you wore a bikini had nice hair and had a tan and even then your match would be referred to as the p break

essentially because the audience would use that opportunity to have a break so that they could stay and watch the actual wrestling you do wrestle men don't you i do absolutely and tell me about when you first started doing that um so i first started wrestling by accident. I was a stand-up comedian. I used to have a show about Cher, the other love of my life, the singer. And I went to a place called the Resistance Gallery in East London and the guy behind the bar said, oh, you clearly don't mind making a fool of yourself. We need more women like you in wrestling would you like to come and try a free session so I turned up to the London School of Lucha Libre and it was my London School of what Lucha Libre so Lucha Libre is free fighting it's like a form of wrestling but basically I went with my friend Rebecca Biscuit and um we we both hated exercise

and we turned up and there's just this room full of these enormous men all sort of throwing themselves around. And about three women who were all actually, you know, stonkers and were very friendly. And everyone was so kind. And we basically just did forward rolls and took it in turns to pretend to throw each other into a wall. Now, it wasn't Rebecca's nose that you broke, was it? It was not Rebecca's nose. Whose nose was it? La Tigressa, who's a close personal friend.

And your bridesmaid, in fact. And my bridesmaid at my wedding. And how did you break her nose? My finisher involves me jumping off the top rope and aiming with my lady parts to my opponent's face. It's not a very... I can't say the name of my finisher on the radio no you can't and um just had a minor panic there yeah no she didn't turn her face in time

and unfortunately i almost broke her nose and my pubic bone that's uh probably the worst injury i've inflicted on someone i just think this is worth repeating you broke your bridesmaids okay you almost i mean i'm a journalist you can exaggerate a bit you almost broke your bridesmaid's... Okay, you almost... I mean, I'm a journalist, you can exaggerate a bit. You almost broke your bridesmaid's nose with your pubic bone. How many of us can say that, honestly? I don't know. I'm so pleased that that's what's come from this interview. Not that I've wrestled in front of 2,000 people, but the fact that I almost broke someone's nose.

She was a model and she had a photo shoot the next day. She was furious. It took about a year. I'm not surprised she was a model and she had a photo shoot the next day she was furious took about a year i have i'm not surprised she was furious love um okay the new series of glow i think it's about to start on netflix i mean do you watch it is it is it true to your experience so glow actually i think is great because on one hand it it kind of brings people who don't know necessarily about wrestling particularly women into the world of you know fake choreographed violence and it's one of the it's the first show to my knowledge actually looks at things like sexualization racism representation drugs in wrestling in a way that

actually tries to tackle them and talk about them instead of just covering them up well you are of course uh a lady in waiting you're pregnant so you are not wrestling for any of our more delicate listeners thinking oh she's got about tonight you you are not wrestling at the moment klondike kate actually famous wrestler realized she was pregnant eight months in did you yeah um no i'm not wrestling uh when will you be back in the ring i I will be back in the ring hopefully next year. But Lucha Britannia, who I wrestle for, perform every month in London. They have shows, I think the next one's next week. But yeah, I will be very much still training as soon as I can.

Obviously, breast milk depending. Natalie, there's absolutely no reason on earth that Heather won't be able to breastfeed with magnificent success rates, I'm quite sure. Yeah, utterly convinced. But I always think never, I mean, some people, some women can breastfeed, some can't. Life is too short. Well, sure. I mean, your kids will be at Maccy D's anyway by the time they're 10.

You can always. So let's not take it all too seriously. But people do, don't they? Well, I think the serious thing is that more than 80% in our recent survey of 5,500 women, over 90% of them wanted to breastfeed during pregnancy. Nine out of 10 stopped before they wanted to. And it wasn't necessarily through choice that they were making that

decision. It was that they literally weren't producing enough milk or they thought they weren't producing enough milk. And there's such a lot of upset that goes along with that when women have wishes to breastfeed and to some extent are programmed by the baby during pregnancy to extend the pregnancy into the fourth trimester. It's what the body's expecting to be doing once you've carried a baby for nine months. Sure. I mean, we often hear about how natural it is. And the truth is, it is natural. And it comes very easily to some women. It's evolution. What we've managed to do, though, as a society is create a culture that

isn't supportive of it and also hasn't necessarily given us the skills. When I gave birth the first time, I hadn't a clue how to hold a new baby. And I'd worked as a doctor in pediatrics, but I didn't know what they did in the first hour and how to latch and what they were expecting to do and how baby's instincts are geared up to go. And I'm a medic, you know, i stand by evidence base and so on but actually some of the interventions we do in medicine will put barriers in the way of breastfeeding it doesn't mean that they shouldn't be done but we should acknowledge that those women might need extra support and heather you were actually telling us that your mom was one of the women that natalie referred to who produced colossal amounts of milk mom yeah my mum and one of my friends as well,

they just produced a lot. It was my friend actually at the moment, one of my really good friends. She can't leave the house because she's just constantly full of milk. And she's actually, I have another friend who's trying to go back to wrestling and she's just struggling

because she's literally just full full of milk and it's really hard for her to just crack on and you know do a backflip when you need to milk yourself sorry i'm haven't got the terminology down no this is fine and this is woman's eye you can sit literally so one of the many things about this which is brilliant is that you can say what you like but i think there's a serious point here is that the donor that i talked about briefly we worked with her our lactation consultant joe was on the phone almost every day managing, helping her to manage her supply down until she just had enough milk for her own baby. One of the reasons we set apart so quickly was to stop the for-profit milk industry that's largely coming from the States where mothers are paid for breast milk. I was going to ask you about this on the live show, but fact I thought it might just confuse the issue but that is real and it is to a degree we believe

happening in this country too? It is and unofficial milk sharing on the internet's certainly exploding because women are looking for breast milk but not necessarily with the safety screening. OK, so is that dangerous? So, I mean, we've evolved as a species to expect babies expect human milk, right? And throughout our evolution, mothers have died during labour. Mothers have not been able to produce enough milk. And in those cases, babies have been fed by people within that village not necessarily a real village but the aunties the sisters your neighbor your next door neighbor

somebody that you knew and that's just how the species has got through um what we've replaced that with is milk sharing between strangers often meeting on the internet for the first time often with parents unprepared for the questions that they need to be asking to make sure that this is going to be a safe relationship. And I would never, you know, call for any sort of ban. But what we're worried about is that parents need information about how to do this safely. And milk banking has a lot to offer the milk sharing community in terms of screening and safety consciousness. Now what was wonderful about your appearance this morning on the live show was that almost immediately there was a huge reaction to what you said with people women wanting to donate milk now we have to make clear that actually at the moment you're a small organization yes you

you can't you simply can't deal with any more donors Is that right? So I've already had messages from the team working at Harts saying the phones have started ringing. And it's a wonderful thing. Women want to be able to donate their surplus milk. They don't want to be pouring it down the drain. Unfortunately, there is a limit to how much milk we can process and also how many mums we can support adequately. Some of the donors who come to us have got complexities that need careful management. Some of them have lost their baby and we need to make sure that we have time to support each donor. What we really need is the infrastructure, the funding to go into expanding. Just be really honest, you need someone to come

along. We need a big pot of cash yeah are you that person if you are um then we can put you in touch with natalie yes because any time of the day yeah and she'll take your money and would you name the milk bank after somebody oh gosh we could certainly be naming all sorts of rooms and freezers and yes come on come on people out there who listen to the woman's Hour podcast with loads of cash. Get in touch with Natalie. You never know. So thank you very much for that.

Huge reaction from everybody today and thanks to everybody. Here's one from a listener who says, 41 years ago, my son was born prematurely and taken away into intensive care in a different hospital. This was in Johannesburg in South Africa.

I was in a separate hospital. It was difficult Johannesburg in South Africa. I was in a separate hospital. It was difficult to visit him and it was touch and go. I was encouraged to keep my milk going and I had lost a son a year before and so I was obviously very anxious. Of course you were. However, I was in a room on my own and the nurse came to say they had a baby up for adoption. They were having difficulty feeding and would I mind helping him out by putting him onto my breast? I'm sure this was totally incorrect but I agreed. He latched on beautifully and I will never know what happened to that little boy but my own son survived and my milk used to keep him going even though he was tube fed for a while. He's now a strapping father of two boys but I've often

wondered what happened to baby X. That's a fantastic story. Thank you for it. And I don't suppose you will ever know what happened to that little boy, but how wonderful you were able to help him. From Kate, I'm really glad you're talking about this. It used to be the norm many years ago and it needs normalising now. I'm breastfeeding my three-month-old son. And this is interesting for you, Natalie. And also sharing my milk with a friend's baby son as she wasn't able to produce enough.

This feels quite normal to us and it's the way it should be. I mean, you said it happened in the past. Is it happening now? I'm sure it is. We don't want to upset anyone, but is that safe? It's built on trust. When you know somebody, maybe it's your best friend or your sister uh in say for example africa one of the commonest ways babies whose mothers die during childbirth are fed is when the grandmother relactates once the breast yeah one of those mind-blowing facts but once breasts have gone

through pregnancy then they will always remember what to do if not the right stimulation chain just saying no no this is not the right time or place natalie um but what um seriously seriously so the breasts the really unusual organs they're the only organ that reaches its final stage of development during adult life and that's during pregnancy so you know when um you might see a new... I think as you get older actually, I'm 55 and there comes a time when you start noticing babies more. Right. And I wonder whether I'm at the same way. You see a baby and you think, ooh!

And you would do almost anything to hold it. We did a study with the parenting science gang at Imperial and we brought 120 lactating mothers to imperial uh it was quite a day and by the end of the day all of the women who'd been mothers we were all uncomfortable because even though none of us were breastfeeding at the time and some had been many many years since last breastfeeding but it's being triggered by seeing babies touching being around wow our brains are doing things on a very fundamental level that we just don't understand. That's so cool.

It is cool. Yeah. It's a good survival network. Well, I never thought... Deidre says, in the good old days, I spent 10 days in hospital after the birth of my two children. Oh, Deidre, that does sound lovely. Mind you, I suppose it depends on how noisy the hospital was. My doctor said that I produced contented milk from a contented cow.

Well, the doctor sounds absolutely lovely. Both my children were over eight pounds, very hungry. My breasts were like marbles. I was told that what I pumped out every day kept ten babies very happy. Deidre, congratulations to you. I'm not sure I like the sound of the doctor. And lots of you loved hearing from Anne and

Eileen with their stories. Lee said, the Yardley girls, fantastic. Reminiscent of the Dagenham girls. Wonderful story that really opened my eyes to struggles that so many women had. Kate, my mum was a Yardley girl and her sister. I was put into a local nursery while she worked and I

remember all the boxes and the packages and the smells. My mum died five years ago and I made a short film about her life. It's called Dear Miss Bassie. Like Kate, I wanted to preserve her voice and the social history of her life in the East End. Well, Kate, I'm glad that you enjoyed hearing that item this morning. And from Barry, that bombing of the school was widely known about actually. And after the war, when the area was redeveloped,

and Barry, this is fantastic information. When the area was redeveloped, local streets were named after the families who died, e.g. Appleby Road and Boreham Avenue. The lorries did take many families out to Epping Forest, where they slept under the stars,

which was a better option for many than staying put in the East End There's so much social history around World War II that we've barely scraped the surface of actually so fair play to Kate Thompson and the other people who were getting those stories out there and Kat was impressed by

you Heather, she just says I'm listening to Women's Hour and quite simply I now want to become a wrestler. Absolutely you should become a wrestler Kat, it's not, if anyone can do it, if I can do it, anyone can give it a go. It gives you so much self-determination to do something that you're not doing to become fit or thin or to sort of be more attractive. You're doing it because it's in a way a kind of therapy

to have your body and be doing something where no one except yourself and i don't think that i don't think we do enough of that in in modern life i don't think we take up weird hobbies half as much as we should thank you very much i've really enjoyed this morning and good luck with everything um may your baby be a little wrestler it's a boy isn't it is a boy. Natalie, thank you to you for coming in. And may your phone keep ringing, although I know you're going to have trouble pressing. Actually, the only person you do want to hear from is the guy or the woman with all the money. That would be great. Jenny is here tomorrow, once again, wrestling with the patriarchy. That's the programme and the podcast.

Hello, I'm John Ronson, the author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed. This is my journey into the lives of the shamed, people ruined by a badly worded tweet or work faux pas. Along the way, I turn from being a keen shamer myself into somebody unsettled by this new zeal to judge and condemn, often on very weak evidence. That's So You've Been Publicly Shamed, read by me, John Ronson,

and abridged specially for BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. 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.