Woman's Hour - United Arab Emirates launches its first ever mission to Mars. Author Dorothy Koomson. Visiting care homes

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

Tomorrow the United Arab Emirates will launch its first ever mission to Mars. The probe, called Hope, aims to give the most complete picture yet of the Martian atmosphere – and will cement the UAE���s role as a space-exploring nation. We talk to Her Excellency Sarah Al-Miri Minister of State for Advanced Sciences and the Deputy Mission Project Manager for the Emirates Mars Mission and Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Theoretical physicist and presenter of The Life Scientific.Ghislaine Maxwell will appear in court in Manhattan on Tuesday charged with recruiting girls for Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. She’s always denied any wrongdoing, and has also denied knowing that he was doing anything wrong. But if we looks back over the decades, news coverage of women accused of aiding and abetting men in their crimes, especially if sexual abuse is involved, has provoked some double-standard reactions. We hear from Baroness Helena Kennedy and Consultant Clinical & Forensic Psychologist Naomi Murphy Leading charities say relatives of care home residents with dementia should be treated as key workers. In a letter to the health secretary, they say that the care given by family members is "essential" to residents' mental and physical health. We hear from listener Sara McMahon about the impact not benig able to visit her dad has had on his condition.Plus Dorothy Koomson discusses her new novel All My Lies Are True, sequel to the bestselling The Ice Cream Girls, about two teenage girls accused of the murder of their teacher. Presenter Jane Garvey Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Baroness Helena Kennedy Guest; Naomi Murphy Guest; Her Excellency Sarah Al-Miri Guest; Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Guest; Dorothy Koomson

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. This is the Woman's Hour podcast. Hi there, good morning. Welcome to another week on Woman's Hour. Today we have a new novel from Dorothy Coombson with us. It's called All My Lies Are True and it's a sequel to her previous book, The Ice Cream Girls. A lot of people were desperate for a sequel. Now they've got one. Also today, we'll be exploring what it's like to be the child of somebody with dementia now when visiting a care home can be extremely difficult. Visiting has been opened up, up to a point, but it's still limited.

And you still might feel that actually getting a chance to spend time with your mum or your dad or whoever it might be is a little challenging. So let us know what you think. We're talking to one listener who is going through real guilt about all this on the programme this morning at BBC Women's Hour on Twitter. Or you can email the programme via our website as ever. Now, tomorrow, Ghislaine Maxwell will appear in court in Manhattan via video link from jail for a bail hearing. She was arrested last week and charged with recruiting girls for Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. She denies any wrongdoing and has also denied knowing that he was doing anything wrong. Jeffrey Epstein died in jail in 2019. News coverage of women accused of aiding and abetting men in their crimes,

especially if accusations of sexual abuse are involved, provokes very, very strong reactions, to put it mildly. This morning, we're asking, do we judge women more harshly? Do we expect women simply to be better? If we do, why do we feel that way? Baroness Helena Kennedy QC is the author of Eve Was Framed and Naomi Murphy is a consultant, clinical and forensic psychologist based at Whitemore High Security Prison. Helena Kennedy, good morning to you. What is going on here? Why do we think, for some reason, that women should behave better? Well, particularly in relation to sexual matters and particularly sexual matters involving underage people, children or adolescents or young teenagers, that a woman has played a part in their exploitation, their abuse, their violation is repugnant. There's something particularly thing about the complicity of women in that kind of abuse. And it's partly to do with our continued feelings that women are those who give birth, who bear children,

who are the nurturers usually within families. And the idea that they would somehow pervert that role is particularly, I think, distressing to the public and objectionable. And so it turns the woman often into someone who creates even greater horror than the men who are doing these things. Whatever the truth of any situation, when a man and a woman are accused of similar crimes, the majority of the coverage, the acres of newsprint tend to be devoted to the woman. There's no doubt about that, is there? Well, I'm sorry, you're cutting out for me.

No, don't worry. You're slightly cutting out to us. So don't worry, Helena, we'll see if we can sort that out. Naomi Murphy, consultant, clinical and forensic psychologist. What do you think of that? First of all, the idea that we want women somehow to be better, whatever the logic of that position, that's what we want. I think that's right. I think we hold women up to

higher standards women are less likely to be violent and they are less likely to be sexually violent and i think because of our relationships to our mothers we expect women to be caring and nurturing um and i think in cases around involving sexual offenses that's particularly difficult because we also have real double standards when it comes to women and their sexuality. So it's very hard to think about women's sexuality and having sexual desires in a neutral way, never mind thinking about whether women might be sexually aggressive. Naomi, tell us about your working life. You have worked with female offenders. You've spent the last, well, over the last decade working exclusively with male. Are they so different? Yeah, I would also say I've also worked throughout my career with women who've ended up with partners who've abused their children, repeated partners who've abused

their children. I suppose what I've learned from working with men and women is actually there are actually more similarities than differences. So I think we're much more comfortable thinking about female offenders as victims. We find it really hard to tolerate those kind of thoughts about male offenders. But I also think it's really hard to grasp that women might at times also sexually offend of their own volition. So whenever we talk about women who are caught up in sex offences, it's quite often a focus when they are women who've offended alongside a man to enable the man. But I also know of many women who've sexually abused on their own of their own volition.

But that is still rare compared to the likelihood of a male offender behaving in that way. I think it's less frequent, but I'm not entirely convinced it's as rare as we think it is. So within the population that I work with, when we did kind of like an audit of the men's histories during childhood, 65 to 66 percent of them had been sexually abused at some point during childhood. And it was typical that they'd been abused on multiple occasions by multiple different perpetrators. But what was really interesting is that over 50 percent of them had been abused by a woman at some point. And not a woman doing that in cahoots with a man, but, you know, a mother, an older sister, a babysitter, an aunt, mother's friends, doing that sexual abusing on their own,

not because they're coerced into it. Right. And it's that truth, is it? The fact that, in fact, many male offenders have themselves been victims too. That is a truth, Naomi, that you believe most of us are somewhat uncomfortable with or in total denial. Yes, I think we are. I think it's easier to locate all the badness of society in people who commit crimes crimes whether that be men or women I think it's really obviously the vast majority of people who are abused do not go on to recreate those dynamics with their own families or with other children but of the minority of you know the minority of people who do commit serious violent or sexually violent acts in adulthood kind of like maybe 25 years of working with people who commit those kind of crimes,

I've not encountered somebody who hasn't had a really abusive upbringing. Helena Kennedy, what do you think of that then? The fact that there are many, many male offenders who have also been victims and that some feminists in particular perhaps might not want to hear about that. That's certainly true. And women do abuse sexually as well. And there's a sort of denial of that taking place. And it's often taking place, I'm afraid, within families as well. One of the things that I also know is that if you look, I conducted an inquiry into trafficking and heard many, many accounts from women testifying about how they were introduced into trafficking for sexual purposes. And often the enabler, the person who provided the

reassurance that they were going to get a job in modelling or in a hotel and that they would be able to study when they came to Britain. And they were often women who were in that role of being the person who provided the reassurance in order to bring the girl into the situation in which she was then exploited by men. So that enabling role, that role is often played by women. And I'm afraid in brothel keeping, it's often women who are running brothels, which isn't to say that men aren't profiteering from it, there's a sort of partnership in it. So I don't think that we can deny that women do bad things. And the whole nature of the psyche is that most people who end up in prisons

are people who have themselves suffered some forms of abuse. Now, you know, I mean, I'm not going to talk about Ghislaine Maxwell. I don't know about her situation. She's described as being somebody who was a daddy's girl. All I can tell you is that her own brothers, of course, spoke about how their father bullied them all their lives. And they were acquitted themselves in a trial on the basis that they had been subjected to duress. So, you know, deep in people's experiences of being bullied or having to please someone who is bullying. I don't deny for a minute that women commit these kinds of offences,

but in truth it's much less often the case in my experience. Now that could be, there's less willingness, but I think it's actually also because of their power position, usually within families. And what about the public's fascination, our own fascination with so-called evil women? There is no doubt that we are more invested in that narrative than we are in the idea of bad men. Quite frankly, Helena, it sells papers, doesn't it? Absolutely. And, you know, we remember the names of Rose West and Myra Hindley.

And we remember, you know, that Maxine Carr covered up for Huntley in the Soham murders. There's a special revulsion that we feel for women being complicit, abuse of young people and of children. And that does go back to our sense of what womanhood is about. And that is deeply, deeply immersed in our society and in all of us individually. Well, it is, isn't it? We're all playing a part in this. I mean, I'd be the first to admit I am probably more likely to read as much as I can about this sort of case.

So, Naomi, as a society, where does it leave us all? We have to acknowledge our own part in all this, don't we? Well, I think we do. I think, you know, what we tend to avoid is actually how dreadfully poor we are at keeping our own children safe and protected. It's much easier to try and locate all the badness. It's very interesting, I think, to watch as children get older, we have less and less empathy for them. So, you know, the way that the media treated the boys who killed Jamie Bulger, for instance, you know, they were kids kids but the way that they were spoken about in the media as monsters but you know ultimately um we we can have empathy for

very young children but the older they get the harder it is to have any kind of empathy for the for this other part of them and we we treat them as if they're different to us when actually in some ways um the people's people embracing a life of victimising others is a very poor coping strategy, but it has been a coping strategy to help them deal with the horrific things they've experienced themselves. And in your professional experience, Naomi, you would challenge the notion that women and men are actually all that different? There are some differences but you know in terms of women are more likely to take their distress out on themselves and men are more likely to act that out externally but some of that is about how we what options we allow children and men and women to express their emotions you know it's okay for men to be angry, whereas it isn't OK for women to be angry.

And we're equally much more uncomfortable with men talking about sadness or fear or shame, where we might allow that with women in a way that we're more comfortable with. Helena Kennedy, briefly, if you can, do you honestly think we're anywhere near a real position of change in the way we view male and female offenders?

Is this for me? Yes, Helena, sorry. I know it's difficult technically this morning. I know. I would disagree with Naomi because I think that what she's not taking into account here is the power imbalance between men and women in society. You know, it's two to three women a week are killed by their male partners. You know, the domestic violence, the preponderance of it is in the direction of women, which isn't to say that women don't at times behave in a violent way towards their partners. But we have to look at the consequences for this in our society. and also the reading of that into these relationships and into the business of abuse. And it's by and large women who are at the receiving end of this. And that's why we're so horrified when a woman is involved in doing it to children and to other women.

But it remains the case that most people are happier with the notion of a woman committing offences as a hapless victim herself of an oppressive male figure, rather than the notion of a woman acting violently of her own volition. that's true and uh and the autonomous woman um you know a sophisticated socialite is moves in high circles who is the connector the person who gives connection to some man and who then you know there's a there's a problem um in us always wanting to make women into uh victims who are passive there are autonomous women who do wicked things and we have to accept that. Helena Kennedy QC, thank you very much indeed for talking to us.

You also heard from Naomi Murphy, consultant clinical and forensic psychologist and of course Ghislaine Maxwell denies all the charges against her and her bail hearing is tomorrow. No doubt full coverage of that across the BBC. Now let's welcome the novelist, best-selling novelist, Dorothy Coombson, who joins us, I think, from her home. Dorothy, good morning to you. How are you? Hello. I'm good, thank you.

Actually, where else can you be? Why did I suggest you might be anywhere other than home? But let's face it, you are at home. I am at home. Your new novel is All My Lies Are True, which is the sequel to The Ice Cream Girls. Now, first of all, we should say The Ice Cream Girls was televised. It wasn't a faithful adaptation, actually, of the book, was it? But it was on ITV about two or three years ago. Is that right?

It was back in 2013. OK, right. Well, sorry, just shows you how quickly time goes. It's about the two teenage girls accused of the murder of their teacher. And you always said you'd never write a sequel, and now you have. So why have you done it? Well, I don't do sequels in general of any of my books. I did one because of the Ice Cream Girls,

because I wanted to look at how abuse has moved on since I wrote the Ice Cream Girls and how, I mean, abuse hasn't moved on. It still comes in the same sort of forms as it always has done, you know, mental, emotional, physical, financial. But I wanted to see how the rest of us, how society, knowing more than we did before and how we are more aware of the mechanisms of abuse, how we've changed, and if we stopped being bystanders and got involved more and tried to help more. So that's why I wanted to update

the story and see. So the Ice Cream Girl story, that was originally about the two girls, teenagers having an affair with their teacher and one of them going to prison for his murder and the other one going free. And then 20 years later, Poppy getting out of prison and seeking out Serena to get revenge. It's moved on so that we've got now more of their families involved and the people who are also touched by the abuse.

Right. And going back just to our previous conversation, you know this, obviously your bestselling book was about it. The whole idea of evil women, evil girls in the case of the ice cream girls, although of course they had their reasons, is something, it is a subject matter that is deeply fascinating for all of us, if we're honest with ourselves. Yes, it is fascinating. But my book was slightly different in the fact that they weren't evil, but they could have done.

They could have been pushed to kill Marcus, the guy they had the affair with. But also, it was more about how the world perceived them because they were thought of, he was thought of as an innocent man who was weak and had an affair with these two girls, whereas they were coming from it and the book was coming from it, looking at it from the more realistic angle about the power imbalance between an older man

and teenage girls. Yeah. Now, this sequel, All My Lies Are True, the central character is Serena's daughter, Verity. She is the one locked in an abusive relationship. Now, this is where we get to the point of how society has evolved and the degree to which those of us outside such relationships might be prepared to interfere there have been that there's been progress made in this area hasn't there i think there has been progress there has been law i mean the thing with the with all my lies are true is you're not sure who verity is in the relationship she's in is she the perpetrator or she the abused

um you're never quite sure until a lot further into the book because um because we are more aware of abuse and we are more aware of how it differs from relationship to relationship i mean there's an underlying thread in all of it but there is it does differ um quite a bit and you don't know there's so much there are so many nuances and subtleties and there has been progress made you know there are new laws on coercive control which are meant to help um you know prosecute people who perpetrate abuse in relationships but it's so hard to prove these things and that's what part of the book is about. There are so many nuances and abusers are very clever and have always been very clever at making themselves look like the victim and getting people on side. And a lot of us who are sort of the friends and family of people in abusive relationships, a lot of us aren't willing to get involved. A lot of us don't want our lives to get challenged. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because you can have the laws and we've talked in great detail about the laws now on coercive control in relationships.

But do you honestly think we are any more likely to, frankly, interfere when we're not? And this is the point your book makes brilliantly, when we're not always sure, because, well, you can't be sure, can you? We can't be sure, but also you can be sure. You know the people who are involved. You know your family member. You know your friend. You know when they've changed. A lot of the time we don't want to see that, I think.

We don't want our lives to change because, you know, a relationship is set up. You know, you like the the person both people in the relationship you potentially like the abuser so you don't want to get involved because then you won't be able to see them again you'd have to think badly of them you'd have to think badly of yourself for having liked them i mean we have this problem i think with thinking people are all good and all bad bad people do good things sometimes and that we we find that hard to square in our heads so we we spend a lot of time trying to avoid looking at the good and bad side

of people and um so yeah when you're in a relationship when somebody you know is in a bad relationship you can see them changing you can see them not wanting to talk as much, not wanting to go out as much, working really hard but having no money to show for it, changing how they dress, changing how they talk, being different people, but we kind of think, you know, we kind of ignore it because we don't want to basically step in, you know, we're always constantly being told you shouldn't get involved in other people's relationships and to a certain extent that's true but also when you see somebody who you love and care about diminishing right before your eyes do you I mean that's what I wanted to explore yes do you just do you accept it or do you step in and try and do something how can I just ask a really broad question about your lockdown? Has it

allowed you to work and to concentrate on your work? Or have you found yourself distracted by all the bad news coming from the outside world? A bit of both really. I mean, I did get two puppies just before lockdown. Well, I was hoping you'd mention them. Yeah. Because yeah, Fufu and Jalof, I mean, they're great. They've been a real joy but they are very distracting and um I've been I've had a I've had a fine time in in lockdown you know I um I spent I mean I spent a lot of time working from home anyway so I didn't go out that much um if I did go out it was to do an event and I was traveling three or four hours. So I don't have to do that. But I have, I try to work no matter what.

I try to push through all the bad things and because, you know, I need to get my job done. But it has been difficult. And there's lots of things that have distracted me and pushed me and made me think about the different things that, the different ways that other people live in the world, you know, the things we can ignore that happen to us. Well, exactly. And I wondered whether perhaps you were thinking about, obviously part of this book is about coercive control and about abusive relationships.

Are you thinking about the impact of lockdown on such relationships? I know there's been a reported increase in domestic violence. Has that all crossed your mind? Absolutely. I think about it all the time. And I think about the people who are now isolated. You know, sometimes not just the fact if you're in a physically abusive relationship, but mentally and it's very lockdown has made it very easy to isolate people so you know you could they can see you

on on a zoom call or a house party call or facetime and you can for those few minutes you you can pretend everything's fine but the other 24 hours a day 23 hours of the day you know you're not fine and it's awful and it has I think about those people all the time I think about you know the connections that you lose from being able to go to the shop say for example or you know being able to go to a coffee with people and you know not necessarily talking about the hideous things that are going on with you but um just being able to sit and be with other people even though when you go home you'll obviously get questioned and you know the grief that comes with that not being able to um do that yeah it's what i thought about

those people all the time yeah thank you very much dorothy was that fufu or joloff which one was it was both of them they can hear someone at the door so they've both gone rushing to the door to bark to bark they're now quiet and down again so but it was good to hear them just what brand of dog are they so everybody knows because they'll be they're both Yorkshire Terriers although one's really tiny

Fufu's really tiny and Jalof's really big so they're very different they're litter mates so they're both they're twins as it were but they are very different right okay're littermates, so they're both twins, as it were, but they are very different. Right, OK, well, enjoy. You live by the sea, I know, don't you? I do, yes.

So no doubt you'll be able to go out for a breezy stroll at some point today. I think it's reasonably good weather today, at least. Thank you, Dorothy. Good to talk to you. Oh, thank you. That's the novelist Dorothy Coombson. Her book is All My Lies Are True, which you will want to seek out, particularly if you have read The Ice Cream Girls, which was her previous novel about some of the same characters. We've had a lot of dogs, actually, on babies, dogs.

It's all been livening up Woman's Hour over the last couple of lockdown centuries. And on we go. Now, here was an email that I really wanted to draw to everybody's attention. It arrived, I think, in our email inbox here at the programme on Friday and it's from Sarah McMahon. And essentially it is about her dad. So let's bring Sarah in. Sarah, good morning to you. How are you today?

Hi, good morning, Jane. Very well, thank you. Good. Now, you were telling us in the email about your dad and his dementia and how it's been for you as obviously a very caring child since the lockdown was introduced can you just tell us a bit about your dad what he did for a living how old he is and all that sort of thing of course yeah he's um he's 69 now he was um a lorry driver for most of his life um yeah he lovely man full of life he life. He was diagnosed with dementia when he was 65. So he's been fortunate enough to have a lovely year living in an assisted living complex. But then as his dementia got worse, spent the last year living in a residential home,

a dementia-specialised home. But he was still managing to go out and about, have lots of interaction and to keep busy really within the framework of his quite organised sort of life within the residential home. And you had quite a nice system going, didn't you? Because you would go, I think, three times a week and do very specific things on specific days and you knew exactly what was going to be happening. Absolutely. On Saturdays, we'd go to town. We'd go for a meal in his favourite restaurant, walk around the cathedral. On a Monday, we'd go swimming. And on a Thursday, we'd go and have chips and a pint in his local pub. So he knew what was happening on all of those days.

All of which he'd look forward to. And they were fixed points in his week, which was a good way of working it. Well, of course, in lockdown, did it end for you in March? You just couldn't go anymore? Absolutely. So I knew it was coming. The lockdown in his specific home was two weeks before the official lockdown.

I was fortunate enough to spend the evening with him the day before, wasn't able to explain what was going on because he has no concept of a pandemic because his cognition isn't great but yeah but then nothing no no contact at all I would I would go every week to deliver him things that he needed so things like shower gel or toothpaste or cigarettes or you know whatever that that he would need to make sure he had everything but no no contacts within that time and what's happened since because i think he really began to suffer he really missed the contact with you didn't he

absolutely absolutely i think i mean i all i can think is that he felt abandoned by you know all of his family members. You know, it wasn't just myself that visited him. My sister and my auntie also would go and see him and then just nothing. And he deteriorated to the point where we had to bring in the adult mental health team. They had to introduce some quite heavy medication, which then led to him being sectioned and he's now under section two on a 28-day section in a psychiatric hospital. And is it your belief or your worry Sarah that this has actually happened to quite a few people with vascular dementia which is what your father's got they just haven't their health has really deteriorated

because they obviously don't understand what's going on around them and they really miss their family absolutely absolutely i mean i have um i have a good support network and you just it's amazing when you talk to to people and you explain that you're you know you have a parent that has dementia it's it's incredible however how many other people are going through this? And I do know within the lockdown of two other families that have experienced exactly what I'm experiencing now. What, that their relative has just really deteriorated? Has been sectioned. Yeah, has been sectioned. So do you have any idea when you'll be able to see your dad again? Not really, not really.

He's going to stay longer in the psychiatric ward than the 28 days, purely because he went into the hospital and then had to be in isolation for 14 days because he was going from one health setting to another. So that has prolonged the assessment of him. So I find out today um how you know what the next stage is whether he's going to be sectioned under a section three um under the section three mental health act or whether he's going to be kept under a deprivation of liberty

and and then we have to you know wait until until the assessment comes and we find a nursing home so previously he was in the he was in a residential home yes but now because of his deterioration he's now going to need to go to the next stage which is a specialist nursing dementia unit and i know that this would have happened eventually but everything has just been speeded up his condition has worsened more quickly but because of the lockdown just just because yeah he hasn't he hasn't been outside he hasn't had any other stimulation so that's you know I really feel that the lockdown has made it has made it much worse it's not anybody's fault no well I know that um you don't have any complaints about the care he's had indeed I think his condition has

actually improved as far as you you know in the psychiatric hospital, hasn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. So he's put on a bit of weight, which is something. Yeah, he's put on some weight and he's been doing jigsaws and we've sent him some photographs. He's making a memory book. So hopefully some memories will come back for him, you know. And yeah, it may be positive in the future for him for a little while but I think you wanted the program just to draw attention to well I don't want to put words into your mouth but but to the to the guilt you feel you shouldn't feel guilty you were doing everything you could for your dad

but is that how you're left feeling slightly guilty it's like you've just abandoned somebody that you really care for you know I think that's and you you know I would spend my days because obviously I'm furloughed so I've got you know some time on my hands just wondering what he was doing what he must be feeling I mean at one stage I even tried just before he was sectioned to get a job in the care home because I thought I'm not going to see my dad I might not ever see him again you know I really had those feelings because you don't know how long it's going to go on for. And, you know, how how much is he deteriorating? So I thought about trying to get a job within the care home so at least then I could work in the day and then spend an hour with him in the evening before going home.

I thought that that could be an option, you know, just because, yeah, you're left feeling desperate, really. What about the rest of your family they feel the same do they absolutely absolutely I mean through this my I have two brothers and a sister so we've been having regular sort of Skype meetings just to discuss things to keep everything you know everything up to speed and we've been making decisions together as well because I feel even though I have lasting power of attorney with one of my brothers it's a big responsibility when you're making decisions I mean it was you know the when we got the adult mental health care involved I had to make a decision I had to agree with my dad being sectioned you know because he doesn't have his own because his dementia is so

far and that's a big responsibility and you know to have on myself as a person so you do feel incredibly guilty you think you know all the time you're questioning am I doing the right thing what would my dad want me to do because you know ultimately it's it's his life that we're that we're trying to influence in a positive way well I'm really sorry to hear about it and I know a lot of people will be going through similar experiences, you hope not too many but we're very grateful to you Sarah for telling us about Dennis your dad and obviously I really hope things improve

for him and indeed for the rest of the family as well but as Sarah said in her email she doesn't think she's alone, I'm sure she isn't email the programme if you're concerned too about a relative of yours or you just feel that like Sarah's dad the lockdown has really led to a deterioration in their health. bbc.co.uk slash womanshour is how you can reach us via email.

Now, next week on the programme, we'll be discussing recovery from abuse and hearing from people rebuilding their lives. Please do, if you have an experience to share or a question you'd like answered, email us in confidence via the contacts tab on the website, bbc.co.uk slash womanshour. Now, let's journey to Mars. The United Arab Emirates is launching a mission to Mars.

The probe is called HOPE, and it aims to give the most complete picture yet of the Martian atmosphere. The scientific team for this mission is, we are told, 80% female. Her Excellency Sarah Al-Amiri is a Minister of State for Advanced Sciences and the Deputy Mission Project Manager for the Emirates Mars Mission. She's in Japan. We'll talk to her and to Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Theoretical Physicist and presenter of the Radio 4 show, The Life Scientific. Sarah Al-Amiriili, theoretical physicist and presenter of the Radio 4 show The Life Scientific. Sarah Al-Amiri, good morning to you. Good morning. How are you, Jane?

I'm well, thank you. Now, your probe is setting off from Japan and it's all systems go. It will be happening tomorrow. It's all systems go. It will be happening tomorrow late in the evening European time. Now, why is it that a country like yours, which isn't known for its human rights and ensure that they had equal access to education, both within the public domain and in grade school, all the way up to higher education. And 77% of enrollment in tertiary education is by women. Graduates are 70% women from all of the public universities. And with regards to STEM, 56% of grads are women. And that shows a great gender parity in an area of education that's typically around the world dominated by men.

And it's the same on the Emirates Mars mission. The Emirates Mars mission team is made up of 34% women. And in the leadership posts within the program, 50% are women. And like you've mentioned, the science team is 80% women. A lot of it comes down to pre-perception of the region and understanding of the role of the women in the region. For us, it's never been a challenge to be part of this mission or be part of this program. We've been working, I have been working in the space sector in the UAE since 2009. Right. Yeah, you're a very small country. What's the population?

About nine or 10 million. It's absolutely tiny. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So for a country the size of yours to be aiming at something that has been barely done and is extremely difficult is a phenomenal achievement. But you take my point. If someone were to mention a country at the vanguard of human rights and certainly rights for women, I don't think many people would pick the United Arab Emirates, to be fair. The purpose from having the Emirates Mars mission has always been at the root, developing skills. space program overall, a lot of engineers like myself who graduated would have worked in support of various systems that have been procured from abroad. Upon starting the space program, we've had a chance to work on design and development, and it's created new opportunities for development. Now, why have we gone from developing Earth observation satellites since 2006

to developing a Mars mission? It's because our skills have been propelled because the system is five times more complex. And like you said, there's a lot of challenge with getting to Mars. And that has driven the team to develop their skills and capabilities and leaps and bounds together with our knowledge partners. And the other differentiating mark is that this was the first time we went into planetary exploration, and that allowed both scientists and researchers to work in conjunction with engineers to design a system that will categorize Mars' atmosphere for the very first time and provide us a full picture of the weather system on the planet.

Right. Stay with us. Thank you very much. Jim Al-Khalili, what good can a mission, any mission to Mars do for those of us here on Earth? Well, of course, you'd imagine first and foremost, it's about the science and what we can learn about our sister planets. And for me as a scientist, that's, you know, that's what it should all be about. But I think it's fair to say this mission and indeed, you know, a lot of the current space missions that are being planned around the world isn't about, you know, it's like, you know, climb Everest. Why? Because it's there. Visit Mars, find out about atmosphere. Why? Because we can. It is, you know, as Sarah says, it's really much more about shifting attitudes. It's economic rather than scientific.

The Emirates, as a lot of the Gulf states, are oil rich, but they know that can't last forever. So they do, to their credit, they're trying to change and shift to a knowledge-based economy rather than one based on oil. But I think probably overriding all of this, this is about inspiring. If we think back to Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut, and just how she inspired a young generation, this is inspiring.

It's the first, you know, the Arabs go into planetary space mission for the very first time. That's huge. But to see so many women in these key roles in this mission, surely that's going to inspire more girls and young women to go into science and engineering. I mean, of course, the Emirates or Muslim countries and indeed all countries around the world are still patriarchal.

And so showing that women can achieve and to get to the very top and do something as exciting as this is a positive and probably overrides the science itself. Well, OK, I absolutely take that. But do you understand, Jim, how a country like the UAE has got, to its credit, so many women studying STEM and excelling at STEM subjects? I think part of the reason is, I mean, of course, you know, women are going into education in the same sort of numbers roughly as men

in the Emirates and in other Gulf states. They value education. The problem, of course, is, you know, career progression after that. But, you know, why STEM? Why physics? Why maths? Part of it is because those subjects that are deemed to be the most prestigious, medicine, law, business, even engineering to a large extent,

are going to be dominated by men. Women who want an education are going into these subjects because there aren't those career opportunities in science. And we're seeing that women are excelling in maths and physics. Why wouldn't they? Anyone who's good at maths and physics and chooses it to study at university, one would think they would excel. It's got nothing to do whether you're male or female. But there are more women in these subjects because there aren't yet the opportunities for women to be entering into the business

and the other sort of patriarchal sort of career paths. Are not yet open to them, no. Sarah Al-Amiri, your probe your probe hopefully will get to mars in seven months i think when we all hope the world will be a rather different place i hope so too it's been um quite interesting to uh we'll work on an international mission in the midst of a pandemic where we've had to move a probe and had to move a team to start a launch campaign in March at the height of the pandemic when a lot of countries were shutting down. It was really difficult to travel, let alone send a spacecraft that needed a very clean environment

and needed constant monitoring during the travel. Come February, when we arrive in Mars and get into orbit, and that will be one of the most challenging times that this mission is going to go through and hopefully after that by April we start our science mission and release our science data to the public by no later than September 2021 is a target that the science team is working quite hard towards and ensuring that we've got everything covered from today to be able to get that data to scientists around the world as soon as possible. That's the voice of Sarah Al-Amiri, the UAE Minister of State for Advanced Sciences

and the Deputy Mission Project Manager for the Emirates Mars Mission. And as she was saying, they should be able to start pinging back all that fantastic data sometime next year. But it is, to put it mildly, a difficult time to undertake a mission of that nature, which, if we're honest with ourselves, is a tough call. I'm not sure I'd be able to land a probe on a planet travelling for seven months in order to get there. Let's be honest about it. I can barely drive a Mini Cooper. So that was one of the topics this morning. And thanks to our contributors. Good to get Jim Al-Khalili on Woman's Hour.

We should have more of Jim, shouldn't we? That would be good. Now, on our first conversation this morning, female offenders, Claire says, re-child abuse by women. We don't look and we don't ask about it. I think that's the only reason why the numbers are so low. Another contributor, Nigel, says,

Interesting and, I thought, fairly balanced views from your contributors on this subject this morning. What wasn't mentioned is that one of the reasons the public is so outraged in these instances is that a person sees that a crime is being committed and does nothing to prevent or report it. Prevention of this sort of crime is difficult as so much goes on behind closed doors. To witness sex crime and do nothing is at least a moral crime, aiding and abetting doubly so. From Bridget, this will be controversial but it needs to be said, says Bridget, until we accept that women can be as bad as men, e.g. in terms of sexual offences, albeit less frequently, and are complicit in many cases, I don't think we can ever get true equality.

And Anonymous says, when I first became a magistrate, my biggest struggle was coming to terms with the fact that I was expecting women to behave to a better standard. Once I recognised this bias, I was able to sentence equally. But it was a shock, a real shock to realise that this expectation existed within myself. Yeah, I do. I do think that's intriguing. I think all of us have it, don't we? Clearly, that correspondent is someone who became a magistrate or perhaps still is a magistrate, but still had that peculiar, and is peculiar expectation of women to be somehow better. Claire says, I feel I must explain to the people discussing this issue this morning that there are numerous women who've been bullied as children by overbearing fathers, manipulative mothers, bossy siblings, vindictive teachers, etc., who make a choice not to continue to allow this behaviour by deciding that despite everything, their guiding tenet will be kindness.

Behaviour, after all, is a choice and each of us, consciously or sub or unconsciously, decide to behave in a certain way. Thank you for that, Claire. Now, many people listened with interest and with recognition to what our listener Sarah was saying about her dad, Dennis. Sandy says, outside through railings three times a week until a fortnight ago. The care home put a stop to this because they are now letting relatives inside. Mum can only have one visit from one person for one hour once a week. So actually she is effectively worse off, says Sandy. She feels even more abandoned than before. I do feel that quality of life is equally important and I'm at a loss of what to do. I'm considering moving

her from this setting if the situation is to go on endlessly. I do feel sad for her and indeed for everybody in similar situations. Jenny says my husband died in May due to lockdown. His Lewy body dementia was variable and he couldn't see me or understand why we couldn't meet. The home were brilliant but talking through a glass door using phones just made him even more muddled. I believe he just turned his toes up and gave up. He'd become ill just before the lockdown and there was nothing for him to fight for anymore. If there'd been more testing I could have seen him more before he died says Jenny. Carrie says, my grandma is 97

and has also deteriorated over lockdown. She has dementia and she is deaf and lip reads, so she can't lip read the carers, of course, because they're wearing masks. She thinks she's in prison or that her family have fallen out with her. Oh dear, that is so sad, isn't it? Nicola says, our mother is 95 and has dementia and lives in a care home. We hadn't seen her for months up to June when we were able to see her outside. My sister and I visited her on a couple of occasions, very concerned to see how she was getting on, having heard how understaffed the home was, even more than usual.

And we were told the residents had been confined to their rooms for weeks on end. She was actually better than we'd feared, although obviously she had been suffering from a lack of exercise and stimulation, which we used to supply in the form of regular weekly outings. Phone calls have been better than nothing, but are pretty difficult, as you can imagine, with somebody who has dementia. I usually do things like massaging her feet or filing her nails, which gives me a lot more satisfaction than our repetitive conversations. I'm also really

starved of physical contact with mum, says Nicola. And this is an email from Susan. Your item on elderly parents with dementia today struck a lot of chords, I'm sure. I am 70 and I'm an only child. My mother has mild cognitive impairment so far and lives independently, but she is nearly 97. Like your contributor's father, her life was marked by my taking her out on set days to the supermarket, the hairdresser, garden centre, church. Lockdown deprived her of this stimulation and the exercise it involved. She became morose, confused and very lethargic and I can't help thinking this inactivity contributed to the cluster of strokes she had in June. For this and other reasons we are all desperate for a break but any stay in a care home includes two week isolation, which will not be ideal.

I do feel very guilty about pushing this, but she has become a lot more frail. Yeah, I'm not sure, Susan, from that email, whether your mum is now living with you or you're living with her or whether she's living on her own. But anyway, it certainly sounds like a difficult situation. Diana says my husband is only 68 and has a rare advanced dementia. Though apart from that, he is physically well. He's in a hospital assessment unit. I and the family haven't seen him for over three months apart from looking through the window. I know he's getting excellent care,

but it's been hellish not seeing him, knowing these are months we may never get back. I'm seeing him today for the first time and I'm both excited and apprehensive. No touching and I've got to wear a mask. My greatest fear is that he won't know me. The virus has taken its toll in so many different ways. Diana, our very best wishes to you

and I hope today's visit goes all right. This is from Hazel. My father was taken into care a week after my mum died on May the 8th. He was either unaware of her death or had just blocked it out and I was only able to say goodbye to him at the door of the home. He must have thought he'd been abandoned by his family. Sometimes he had moments when he would recognise us. I've spoken to the lovely care home staff but I do feel guilty about leaving him there although I know how well he's being looked after. Phone calls twice a week are okay, but as a friend said, what can you do with the information you're given? So it's almost not worth phoning.

They will, of course, phone if they have a medical emergency. I'm almost afraid of going in now in case it stirs memories in him and actually makes him worse. Hopefully we can be tested and perhaps watch from a distance. I do get occasional pictures from the girls at the home. It's a horrid situation. I haven't really been able to grieve for the loss of my mum as I've been so worried about my dad. Hazel, I absolutely understand that. That's horrible for you and for your dad as well.

But please try not to be too concerned. It does sound as though he's getting excellent care where he is. Thanks to everybody who reacted to particularly that item about Sarah and her dad, Dennis. I know lots of people are Two minutes past ten is now the time the programme starts. It was three minutes past ten. Yes, we lost a minute. Now we've got it back. No one told us, of course. So I had nothing prepared. So we're back tomorrow. Hope you can join us for the programme on the podcast then. Bloodsport is the story of how the Russian state

doped the 2012 Olympics and everything that followed. 2012 was just a bit of a kick in the nuts. A lot of us naively believed that we were through the worst of it. ...had been placed here by the Kremlin to try to find Dr. Rechenkov.

They could have stopped that. They had the information. They had the sources. I'm just clarifying. The most extraordinary sports story of all time. How many people were working in the laboratory then, though, at that time? We were working in shifts. Russian doping control is like fake doping control.

So join me, Matt Magendie, as we tell the complete story for the first time. They're incredibly brave people, aren't they? That's Bloodsport, how Russia doped the 2012 Olympics. You can subscribe to it on BBC Sounds. 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.

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