Woman's Hour - WASPI women, Puberty blockers, Black female journalists

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

The government has announced that a ban on the private prescriptions of medicines used to delay puberty to young people questioning their gender in the UK, is being made indefinite. They are no longer prescribed on the NHS. Following the recommendations of the Cass review, the only new access to these puberty blocking drugs for young people will be via a clinical trial, due to start in early 2025. Deborah Cohen, former BBC Newsnight health correspondent and Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Health has been looking into what this trial might look like and the debates around its design and ethics. She joins Nuala McGovern to explain further.The Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) say they are furious at the latest government announcement that they won't be paid compensation. They say they weren't properly informed that their state pension age was rising and therefore weren't able to prepare for retirement. A Parliamentary Ombudsman investigation in March recommended that they be paid compensation, the government says the cost - which it says would be up to £10.5 billion - would not "be fair or proportionate to taxpayers". Nuala speaks to the current Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Rebecca Hilsenrath.Before Taylor Swift, there was Kay Swift - the first woman to compose a hit Broadway musical. She also worked alongside George Gershwin on many of his works such as Porgy and Bess – and they had a long affair. But Kay has largely been forgotten by history. A new Radio 3 Drama: Gershwin & Miss Swift, seeks to change that. Nuala is joined by Kay’s granddaughter, the author Katharine Weber, and actor Lydia Leonard who plays Kay in the drama.A recent report by the National Council for the Training of Journalists found that 91% of UK journalists come from white ethnic groups. This has increased by 3% since last year. Amid large numbers of job cuts within the sector, what can be done to help keep female black and minority ethnic journalists within the profession? Nuala is joined by Habiba Katsha, a freelance journalist considering an alternative career, and award-winning writer and journalist Afua Hirsch.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Lottie Garton

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Nuala McGovern and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello, good morning, welcome to the programme. Well, here were some of the headlines I was reading in the newspapers. In the Telegraph, Labour betrays WASPI women. The Guardian, fury after Labour rejects WASPI women payouts. And the Times goes with Labour MPs rebel over new blow to pensioners.

They are in response to a decision by the government to not compensate millions of women affected by an increase in the state pension age. We will hear from the parliamentary ombudsman whose office investigated the cases and recommended compensation this hour. Debbie Despon, who is from the WASPI campaign, from the women who were campaigning and were directly affected by that increase in age, gave her reaction to the Today programme this morning.

Well, it's disappointing. Labour MPs have been very supportive when in opposition, and obviously we expected that once they came into power that that support would continue. And indeed it does. We have enormous crossbench support, over 300 MPs in Parliament support WASPI, and many, many of those are Labour MPs. So they'll be sharing our disappointment, I think. We're certainly not giving up the fight. I mean, the Ombudsman carried out a six-year investigation and it makes rather a mockery of that system if the DWP can cherry-pick

which parts of that investigation they choose to accept. Liz Kendall said there was an error and they're really sorry, but they don't agree on injustice and there'll be no compensation because there's no money left. Or we can trade numbers on the Ombudsman's report. In 2004, the DWP ignored their own research that showed that three out of five women just didn't know that the state pension age was due to increase. It's very clear to us that many WASPI women didn't know. And even to this day, women are saying, I never even received a letter, let alone when I received the letter. There is no doubt that there was maladministration. The ombudsman found it. And if the government choose to ignore that,

then it's a very sad day. And as I mentioned we will hear from the Ombudsman this hour and if you're wondering because I saw there was a lot of searches online what does WASPI stand for? It is Women Against State Pension Inequality and so called WASPI women. We'll get into that but I do want to know what are your thoughts on the government's decision? The government says it would not be the best use of taxpayers' money to pay an expensive compensation bill. We'll have more on what they said this hour. But whether you were directly affected or not,

I want to hear from you this morning. You can text the programme 84844 on social media or at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website. For a WhatsApp message or a voice note, the number is 03700 100 444. Also to another announcement by the government, this was last week, however,

they said the ban on giving puberty blockers to under 18s questioning their gender identity is to be made permanent. However, a planned clinical trial by NHS England into the use of puberty blockers will go ahead. We'll talk about that in just a moment. We'll also have a conversation on why black female journalists

are leaving the profession. Plus we'll hear about Kay Swift, the first woman to compose a Broadway musical hit. But let me begin with that announcement on the ban of private prescriptions of medicines used to delay puberty in young people. They're no longer prescribed on the ban of private prescriptions of medicines used to delay puberty in young people.

They're no longer prescribed on the NHS, as you might know, for new patients in any of the nations or the UK. The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, he said the use of so-called puberty blockers in young people represented an unacceptable safety risk. But he said he was determined to improve the quality of care for transgender people. You might remember that the Cass Review of Children's Gender Identity Services in England found that children had been let down by a lack of research and remarkably weak evidence on medical interventions and called for gender services for young people to match the standards of other NHS care. Following Dr Hilary Cass's recommendations the only new access now to these puberty blocking drugs for young people will be via a clinical trial which is due to start

next year. Deborah Cohn is a former BBC Newsnight health correspondent and a current visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics Health. She has been looking into what this trial might look like and also some of the debates that are happening around its design and also its ethics. So this announcement, Deborah, was made on the 11th of December. How significant do you see it? Well, it is pretty significant because it means that young people,

if they're going to access puberty blockers, it's only going to be through a clinical trial. And all eyes around the world are going to be on the UK generating the evidence that West Streeting hopes will be generated from the trial. We don't know what that's going to show yet.

Obviously, that's the point of doing the trial. So it is a significant announcement. And as you alluded to, there's been some significant debate around the ethics of doing a trial and whether a trial should even go ahead in the first place. Yes, I was saying clinical trial, misspoke saying critical trial, but many people are seeing it like this. And I saw with your article, you were asking, could this be the trial to answer some of the controversial questions that it raises. The drugs will be still available, I should say, for those that suffer from precocious puberty, which is a separate condition.

But with these drugs, how do they work, Deborah? So essentially, they're called granadotropin-releasing hormone analogues, complicated word there. But ultimately, they work on the brain to stop the rise in sex hormones and that's estrogen and testosterone that accompanies puberty and they're hormones that lead to breast development and period starting in girls and the voice breaking in boys and the idea was that this is one of the reasons they were given is by stopping the onset of these changes in a child with gender dysphoria it would give them time to think it will cause that development

and the idea that it would alleviate their distress now what um dr cass found is the evidence for this is very weak and we can't always be sure who which children will go on to have a an enduring trans identity later on so there there are questions over whether the drugs do what they said they did in the first place because what we understand as well is the majority of young people that start on puberty blockers then go on to take cross-sex hormones so in many ways it might be the start of a of the whole clinical pathway onto full medical or surgical transition. There are big questions over that, and we don't quite understand why that is the case.

We did hear from Dr Hilary Cass, who was on this programme back in October, that puberty blockers had in the past been, and I quote, oversold to young people as the thing that's going to make them feel better, unquote, but that it is based on limited evidence and went on to say, again, quoting, as many young people felt worse on puberty blockers as felt better, unquote. So the issue here is trying to figure out

if the harms outweigh the benefits. Yeah, and that's the cornerstone of medicine. Do the benefits outweigh the harms of any treatment? And what we don't know is if that's the cornerstone of medicine. Do the benefits outweigh the harms of any treatment? And what we don't know is if that's the case, and it's called clinical equipoise, and that's one of the grounds for a clinical trial to go ahead. Is the genuine uncertainty about whether a treatment is, you know, the benefits outweigh the harms,

and that's ultimately what we need to know. There's also low quality evidence for psychosocial interventions as well that may or may not help the distress that that comes alongside gender dysphoria and there's other ethical debates around the trial as well so the world professional association of transgender health and they are nominally pro-medical intervention they say there's already evidence that puberty blockers can help with mental health and it's ethically problematic to make participation and trial the only way to access the type of care that in their words

evidence-based widely recognized as medically necessarily and often reported as life-saving now there's a counter-argument to that, and some question the negative impact that the drugs might have on the brain development among teenagers, as well as the evidence around the negative impact on bone density. And what some people are arguing is that data from 9,000 young people that came from youth service, and Dr. Cass tried to access this data as part

of her review should be analyzed before we press ahead with any trial. And there's another question that they raise is the rationale, as we've just discussed, was time to think. And can a child actually consent to long-term fertility issues and perhaps loss of sexual function when they start to go on puberty blockers. So there's some questions that the ethics committee will look at and have to think about. Can we go back to that word again, equipoise, that you briefly mentioned? Can you expand on that and some of the thinking around it with this issue yeah so equipoise is is is basically what that means is is that is the absolute clinical uncertainty do we do we know do we have good evidence whether the benefits outweigh the harm so for example we've got very very good evidence that smoking causes lung cancer so it's's highly unlikely whether a trial to test cigarettes

see if they cause lung cancer would ever be given ethical approval. So clinical equipoise is kind of essential for a trial to go ahead. And there's some debate whether there is clinical equipoise. Some people argue that actually we've got medium quality evidence

that puberty blockers impact bone density and there are questions around the impact on brain development so so what an ethics committee will try to do is establish if the clinical equipoise and what sometimes happens during a clinical trial the data are constantly monitored and if a treatment is shown to be beneficial during the trial, it then becomes unethical to withhold it from the people who aren't getting it. Conversely, if it's shown to cause harm during the trial, a trial can be ended. And that's what happens during clinical trials, whichever the intervention.

Interesting. So we've touched briefly on some of the ethics of such a trial as well. And may I ask where we are? Because you've talked about the issues of equipoise, but the government has said a clinical trial will go ahead. Do we know when? No, from what I understand, it's still got to go through several processes and the methodology, then the ethics committee will look at this and other committees will look at this,

they'll consider the methodology, then the ethics committee will look at this, and other committees will look at this, that they'll consider the methodology. Because when the early intervention study was done, and this was back in 2011, and it was done by the Tavistock and UCLA, it went before an ethics committee, and this study only had one arm, and that means it only followed up one group of people, and they were young people who were put on puberty blockers and what the ethics committee wanted at the time was a comparator

group the gold standard of medical evidence is a randomized control trial and the argument was that the control group would not accept a placebo and because if you notice your body developing you will realize quite quickly that you're in the placebo group and you might withdraw from a trial and that will undermine the feasibility of the results. What's that happening the the clinicians running that that particular study went and found an ethics committee that gave approval to go ahead without a control arm and this is one of the key questions that's coming up in the methodology now is what does that control group look like now one argument is you can give it at different points in puberty because there's arguments around when is the best time to give a puberty blocker earlier in puberty or later in puberty because what you're trying to do is

maximize the benefits and minimize the harms so if you give it early in puberty are you helping to alleviate the gender distress but are you causing potentially more damage to bone and brain development rather than later in puberty and there's another methodology that's being talked about is is that once you referred into the trial, you either go on to the drug straight away or you go on them after a delay. And in the meantime, during that delay, you will have psychosocial interventions and support. And the question is what that will do to a young person's gender distress.

What decisions will they make after that support, after a delay, for the kinds of therapeutic interventions. And alongside that, you'll have a matched arm of young people that aren't on puberty blockers that may have, that have gender distress. So you can measure things like bone development, brain development, IQ, and all those are the measures that the trialists will be looking at. So there's still quite a bit to be decided. Yes, there is a lot there.

I do want to bring what the government has said. They said NHS England and the National Institute of Health and Care Research are working together to set up a study into the potential benefits and harms of puberty-suppressing hormones as a treatment option for children and young people with gender incongruence.

This forms part of a wider joint programme of research underpinning the design and delivery of new NHS gender services and that's subject to securing all usual approvals, including ethical approval. The study aims to begin recruiting participants in early 2025. Does that timeline chime with what you're hearing? Yeah, there's still some steps to go through and still decisions about methodology and ethical approval. And there's a lot of discussion and people are raising these questions and they're all questions that an ethics committee will consider and other committees, scientific committees will consider. And these are not questions they'll take lightly.

Do we have any idea of the numbers that might be in such a trial no and that's one of the big questions um because it's it's what's called a pragmatic trial because quite often when you have clinical trials let's say for an obesity drug a drug company say for example will set up a and we'll decide how many people they want in it so to the bigger the size of the trial the more reliable the results on the whole it's a bit of a generalization but on the whole that's how it works so they might decide they want to recruit 30 000 people to a trial this is a pragmatic trial which means it takes part in clinical practice as routine clinical practice so it will all depend on a multidisciplinary team's decisions

clinical decisions about who they feel may be eligible for a puberty blocker and and that still has to be hanged out we do not know the numbers because one of the things that dr cass pointed out is we don't it's quite hard to identify who will benefit from these drugs we don't, it's quite hard to identify who will benefit from these drugs. We don't really know. You reported on the use of puberty blocking drugs, among other things, at the Gender Identity Development Service or JIDS at the Tavistock Clinic.

That was a few years back at Newsnight. That clinic has closed. There are three new clinics operating in England on a very different model. We heard that from Dr Cass more to be added over the next two years. Did you expect then, when you were doing those investigations,

that things might have changed and the landscape so much by now? No, it was a very, very difficult series of investigations to do, which I did alongside Hannah Barnes. And it was toxic, and I'm not going to pretend it wasn't um i think i slightly waded into the debate naively i've got a long history of doing quite complicated medical investigations when i was on the i was an editor on a british medical journal um but i i wasn't expecting this to happen um and it's it's some ways quite surprising how quickly things have happened don't always expect that to happen when when you investigate something or when you do a story these things often take a long time to change

this this is quite quick you mentioned toxic in what way well Well, I was referred to, I mean, it's a very polarized debate and I was repeatedly attacked. I was referred to the GMC. I was suspended by what was then Twitter. It was pre-Elon Musk and I was investigated for being transphobic by Twitter.

I was attacked repeatedly in certain sections of the press um i was put on various hit lists for for being a transphobe and if people sometimes sent me to a tweet for example i wouldn't be able to see it because i'd been blocked um and it was and often health reporting is quite toxic. COVID was toxic. So I was doing this along the same time as I was doing reporting, I was reporting on COVID. And that was polarised as well. And what you often see in healthcare,

and this is a point that Gordon Guyatt made, who's a professor of evidence-based medicine at McMaster, is sometimes when the evidence is uncertain, you do get a lot of polarisation. Medicine is about reducing uncertainty rather than certainty. And when there is a lot of uncertainty, the evidence is low quality,

you'll get polarisation. But this was a different level reporting on gender dysphoria and the interventions for young people. But Debra continues to do it. There is a BBC in-depth piece on this topic by Deborah online now, and that is Deborah Cohn. Thanks so much for joining us on Women's Hour.

Thank you. A lot of messages coming in at the moment in reference to the next item we're going to discuss. WASPI women campaigners who wanted compensation because they say they lost out on state pension payments. They're calling the government's decision, which I mentioned at the top of the programme, not to pay out.

Bizarre and totally unjustified. This is an issue we've gone to many times. WASPI, in case you're new to that acronym, it stands for Women Against State Pension Inequality. They say women born in the 1950s weren't properly informed that their state pension age

would rise from 60 to 65. It later rose to 66 in line with the men's. And they say they therefore did not have the opportunity to plan properly for retirement. Let me fast forward to the parliamentary ombudsman investigated and recommended compensation

between £1,000 and £2,950 per woman. But yesterday the government announced it would not pay because the cost, which it says would be up to £10.5 billion, would not be fair or proportionate to taxpayers. A lot of

comments coming in on that. Joining me now is Rebecca Hilson-Rath. Rebecca is the current Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, took up the role just after the report into this was published in March of this year. Good to have you with us, Rebecca. First, your reaction to the government's announcement not to compensate. Well, I think it's important to welcome the government's apology, their recognition that they got things wrong. Obviously, this was neither this government's error nor the one before that. But we welcome that.

We welcome their offer to work with us. And we are absolutely ready to do that. But it obviously comes late. A lot of women have been waiting for this a very long time. And sadly, it comes too late for some and we're disappointed that they haven't accepted all of our recommendations we have two jobs to make things right for those who are affected by failings in public services and to support improvement in services and while we're really pleased the government is saying that our intervention will

lead to improvement and people who come to us are overwhelmingly motivated by wanting things to improve for others. It is very unusual. We do not expect a public body to acknowledge that they got something wrong and then refuse to make it right. So are you saying there that you think the compensation should have been paid? You're reiterating that part of your predecessor's findings? with the women affected has left so many of them who will never know

whether earlier information could have given them the chance to make better decisions. And that's about autonomy and financial empowerment for women, which is a key piece. Some of the comments I'll just read that are coming in.

I was very disappointed with the Labour decision not to give minimal compensation to us WASPs. Sad day. Expected much more from them. What would the government do if an insurance pension company

refused to pay out after the term ended or increases the term without notification? I feel robbed. Another, let's see, of course it isn't good value to the taxpayer

to pay compensation. It never is. The only thing that is good value is to get it right the first time and no need to pay compensation. But if is. The only thing that is good value is to get it right the first time and no need to pay compensation. But if that fails, compensation is due. Power to the waspies

from one just too young to benefit at 63. But coming to this, the government say this morning, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, was speaking not that long before we came on air. And she says that most people, most women,

did know about the changes to the state pension age. That is something that your report concluded as well. But that the delays in sending the letters didn't result in direct financial loss. Why did the Ombudsman still push for compensation if there was consensus that many women would have known? Well I don't think anybody's ever suggested that no women knew, obviously many women knew but our investigation found that an internal government memo in 2006 found that 50 percent of women whose state pension age was between 60 and 65 thought it was 60. So this is not about the whole cohort of women in general it's about the specific group who were

directly impacted and the same memo proposed a direct mail to that group because it was the most appropriate way of minimizing the risk and they therefore decided that they were going to look at direct mail targeted at those who needed it and failed to do that for more than two years for for 28 months, which they acknowledged. They acknowledged yesterday. So there's actually no question that at the time, it was generally known and acknowledged that lots of women didn't know. And of course, you know, different polls, different results. But we do know that the government themselves acknowledge that more needed to be done at the time. Yes. And of course, we heard a little at the top of the programme from

Debbie who's one of the campaigners we're hearing from other people that are getting in touch there. What do you say to them? You talk about the apology being welcomed but it's not cold hard cash. No and I know that they will be frustrated. I know that they'll be disappointed and i think it's important to point out our role because we are not a regulator or a watchdog i'm an office holder for parliament we are a parliamentary body and we hold government departments on behalf of parliament it's now for parliament to decide what the government should do next, what their response is to the government and what they want to do going forward in terms of accountability for what's happened. Because some might be asking what's the point of the Ombudsman in the sense that you made, your office made recommendations and they have been ignored by the government. And I think that's the point

that this is actually about Parliament. This is about parliamentary accountability, which is critical in a democracy. More than 99.9% of cases we investigate the compliance by the bodies we investigate. Thousands and thousands of individuals that we've helped will attest to that this is a sort of once in a blue moon case and it is for parliament to address and for parliament to take forward and i would wait

one other point because the government is talking about cost and the government is talking about affordability. I think as a country, we are used to compensation schemes that are over-engineered, bureaucratic and take far too long. And I suspect that part of the government's response is that that's the sort of model that they're used to, that they have in mind. And I think if we routinely had streamlined user-friendly pasty compensation schemes they would be much easier for a government to agree to engage with. Is there another way for the women to fight on? I know you speak about parliament but is there anything more that people like debbie can do i think it's a parliamentary piece and i think um what be women who are concerned should be

contacting their mps because this is about mps power to hold government to account this is where it bites and this is about what parliament wants to do next in your report it stated that you didn't think that then conservative government would pay the compensation you were recommending the shadow business secretary andrew griffith says labor has betrayed the waspy women while accepting that a conservative government his party might not necessarily have paid compensation either did you get any sense that there was going to be any difference under either government? Well, we laid the report in Parliament

in the first place, as opposed to giving it directly to the government, because we'd been given to believe throughout our dealings with the government during the investigation, they wouldn't accept our findings.

So obviously we've been waiting for a response for nine months now. And I do welcome the fact that, although I know this is hard for the WASPI women to hear, in many parts it is positive. They have apologised, which is something that, in our experience, complainants need and want to hear. And they've recognised that they did it wrong and that it is an injustice.

And they've said that they will do things differently going forward. And I think that is key and important, and it's a win. And it doesn't take away from the frustration and the hardship for women who are not, at this point, likely to get what they have deserved and have asked for in terms of compensation. So Rebecca, you see the government's decision as a win for the WASPI women? I think it is a win for future practice by government. And somebody you quoted a couple of minutes ago said the cheapest way is to get things right first time

which of course i agree with but what i'm hoping is that the government is now going to put in place an improvement plan that this is not going to happen to future recipients of pensions or other benefits that communication piece is obviously completely critical that does not make this anything other than a frustration and a disappointment for those involved and for those who have campaigned such a long time. But you can understand the disappointment of women like Anne, who wrote in, born 1954. I was one of the thousands who did not receive a letter and was unaware of the changes to the state pension. The DWP, the Department for Work and Pensions, is perpetuating an injustice and the Labour government for whom I voted has performed a despicable U-turn.

I know so many women my age who have suffered because of the decision taken by the major government. Perhaps they thought such a cruel decision characterised by expediency and maladministration would not be challenged by the group of older women affected. Perhaps they thought we were an easy target.

Thanks so much to the women fighting our corner and to those MPs with integrity who still support our cause. But is this, as I'm hearing it, that these women have really taken one, but for future generations that there's, with this particular decision, as you see it? Obviously, we worked with many of the women impacted, those who cases we investigated. And I've met some of the organisers and leaders of Watsby around various tables. And I have a huge amount of respect for them. I think they've been strong. I think they've been articulate.

And I think they have been let down. And I feel for them enormously. Thank you for coming on. Rebecca Hilson-Rath, who's the current Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, took up the role in March this year. I do want to read

some of the statements from the government. We did ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, that's Liz Kendall, to come on the programme. She was unavailable. The statement they sent us is this. The government has accepted

the Ombudsman's finding of maladministration and has apologised for there being a 28 month delay in writing to 1950s born women. Evidence showed only one in four people remember receiving and reading letters that they weren't expecting and that the great majority of 1950s born women

did know that the state pension age was changing. Earlier letters wouldn't have affected this. For these and other reasons, the government cannot justify paying compensation. Lots of you getting in touch on both sides, I should say. This is Dorset Munn. Although I sympathise with this group of ladies, I agree with this governmental decision

that the taxpayer cannot afford to pay out this compensation. With regard to these ladies born in the 50s, that they have reaped the rewards of low house prices, high unemployment, forgive me, generous pensions in the workplace

and governmental and of course the triple lock, talking about securing pensions. I'm not convinced that in the future our young people are going to achieve any of these benefits at all. It is time we thought with the future generations

rather than constantly whinging about the past. 84844 if you'd like to get in touch, many of you have. I'll try and read out more of your messages as we continue through the program. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. I'm going to turn to something quite different now.

If I talk about a Miss Swift, your mind might go to Taylor Swift, a musical star. But did you know before that Swift, and maybe distantly related, there was Kay Swift. Kay Swift was an American composer and musician. She was the first woman to score a hit Broadway musical. That was in the 1930s. She had an almost 10-year affair with the composer George Gershwin and worked closely with him on his huge hit musicals

like Porgy and Bess, for example. And there's now a new Radio 3 drama called Gershwin and Miss Swift in the telling of the story of Kay, her music, her relationships, both with her husband, Jimmy, who wrote the lyrics for her musicals, and with Gershwin. Lydia Leonard, welcome. Hi, hello. Good to have you with us.

You play Kay Swift in the play, and the play is Gershwin and Miss Swift for people just tuning in. We also have with us Catherine Webber, Kay Swift's granddaughter. Good morning, Catherine. Good morning, Nuala. Good to have you both with us. So what are you feeling, Lydia, when you hear that music coming through? Oh, well, I think, I mean, that music just does that to you, doesn't it?

You just kind of want to jump up and dance. But also it just reminded me of the joy of recording it all, and particularly that moment. Although it's worth pointing out, and I'm not making excuses, that the whole thing from read-through to performance in front of a 600-strong audience at Ali Pali was two days. And that moment, and you do kind of feel it when listening to it, that slightly clinging on

no mistakes can be made because there are no retakes or anything That's a pretty short run up time It's really short but I hope that that sort of fed into the dynamic sort of brilliant character of Kay Swift who well Catherine can tell us more about this

Let us turn to Catherine Tell me about your grandmother, Kay. She was a dynamic, you know, maverick who didn't feel that rules necessarily applied to her, unless they did. But she was someone who felt that she could do anything that suited her in a certain way. I mean, she didn't like rules and conventions. She liked breaking rules, I would have to say.

But she was also just immensely talented. She was an immensely gifted musician before George Gershwin met her. And the basis of their attraction, I think, really began with this shared admiration of each other's musical sensibility. And there were lots of other women in his life, but there was no one else like her who was just so deeply connected to his work, his genius. And their relationship lasted for about a decade. She continued to be married to Jimmy, who was a lyricist, as I mentioned. his work, his genius. And their relationship lasted for about a decade.

She continued to be married to Jimmy, who was a lyricist, as I mentioned. But why do you think, Catherine, that we don't know the name Kay Swift in the sense of the first female composer of a Broadway musical hit? You know, at the time, nobody even observed that. I actually think I may have been the first person to say that when

I did the research to see that there was nothing else. There were women who contributed to shows, and I think there were some Doug shows, but she was certainly the first composer of a huge hit Broadway musical as we think of them today. I don't know. If someone asked her a question, as a woman composer, she wouldn't have cared for that. She would just have thought, as a composer. I mean, she didn't want to own anything specifically connected to her gender, you know, for better or worse. I mean, she had no advantage as a woman in a man's world. I mean, when you think of the people who she was surrounded by, whether it was Rodgers and Hart or Cole Porter or Jerome Kern,

Harold Arlen, all of those people, you know, they were men. They were, you know, cigar-chomping men, you know, backstage. And there she was bringing something very, very different. Why do you think she was so different to other women of that time? That's a wonderful question. It's hard to say. She wasn't raised to be different. She was raised by religious people who played a lot of church music.

Her father was an organist. Her grandmother was an organist and wrote many hymns. You know, there was this spark, there was this spark in her from her earliest days and she also was a musical prodigy. I mean she was writing and performing compositions at the age of seven. So that gives us an idea but I'm wondering about that spark I'm going to throw it back over to Lydia How much did you know about Kay before the project? Absolutely nothing but actually our

which I sort of pretended I did and thought I'd find out later but our lovely director Tracy Neal met Elaine Page the other day at a party and apparently she hadn't known much about Case Swift either so if Elaine Page didn't know, that's okay. You're forgiven.

So nothing and it was such a it was so brilliant having Catherine there with us as we recorded who could fill us in fill in so many of the blanks but she just comes over in the script as such a sort of determined optimist and brilliantly clever and talented,

obviously charismatic. She's, well, I would love to be friends with her. I mean, the parties sound fabulous with Fred Astaire arriving and rolling back the carpets to dance. So what will people hear with this story? What are you getting at? Well, it centres around this push-pull.

She's sort of torn in half between the constraints and commitments of being a wife and mother and this deep, creative and passionate love affair with George Gershwin. And also, which I hadn't known about George Gershwin, I don't know if everyone, perhaps everyone else did, that he died when he was 38 of a brain tumor. So young.

So it focuses on that relationship and this thrown in this rather problematic psychoanalyst who was seeing a whole bunch of... Yeah, what's his role? Why did he figure so greatly in their lives well i think well katherine can probably fill us in a bit better on that katherine well i mean it's sort of a whole nother story in a way isn't it well it is but but he's um in some ways the fulcrum of the story and i think the playwright andrew mAlden, has done such a brilliant job and has such a sensitive, nuanced understanding of the emotional authenticity of so much that he brought to life.

The real dilemma for Kay Swift was that she loved two men at the same time. She was married to my grandfather, who was a banker, James Warburg. He wasn't, you know, it was the first hit musical with music by a woman, also with lyrics by a banker, James Warburg. It was the first hit musical with music by a woman, also with lyrics by a banker. But they had three daughters. My mother was the middle of the three girls. She loved him. She loved him enormously. She didn't stop loving him. So that was the dilemma of loving two men at the same time. And for that, she went to Gregory Zilborg, who turns out in retrospect to have been a charlatan in so many ways. He's the psychoanalyst.

He's a psychoanalyst with actually what turned out to have been counterfeit credentials, which is not in the play. He was eventually struck off, wasn't he? Yes. Well, or he stepped off just before he was struck off. But my grandmother went to him because of this dilemma of loving two men at the same time. And her sister-in-law, Bettina Warburg, was a psychoanalyst who'd been trained by him,

and she recommended him. So she went to him to solve her problems, and he promptly made them much worse. And Jimmy and George both started seeing him as well. Well, let me stop you there for a second. So don't give any spoilers away about it. But it begins to give us this kaleidoscope of characters at this particular point. And I have listened. I mean, it's great fun as well to listen to.

I should let people know. Performing it, Lydia, I hear it wasn't, it was very different from a normal radio play. You talk about the two days run up. You talk about Alexander Palace, for example. But also you had a full orchestra. Yeah, the full BBC concert orchestra behind us and the brilliant Keith Lockhart,

who'd come over from boston the conductor um probably the closest i'd get to and you can hear it in that clip we heard to feeling like you're in a sort of you know in a big musical because the actors were cued you know with the music and our brilliant writer andrew mccaldon is a perfectionist and had uh written all the kind of clips the music intertwined so well with the story so you're there waiting for the cues and anyway it was it was it was a very unique and joyful experience um uh yeah which haven't had before and um it was i'd heard i knew it was going to be wonderful because i'd heard the hitchcock bernard herman one that they did in a similar way tracy our producer last year on radio three um and with the same team, with Andrew.

So, yeah, totally different, but kind of excruciating. Like I say, you can't, there's no retake, so you've got to get through it perfectly. And it sounds fantastic, that much I can tell you. I want to ask you about the gold bracelets, Lydia, that you wear for the performance. They're actually Ks. Catherine, tell us the story behind those bangles.

Well, George Gershwin gave this pair of gold cuffs. They were antiques when they bought them in 1928. They were actually to celebrate the great success of an American in Paris, which is central in this play. And the way you hear how American in Paris came to be and the taxi horns he brought from Paris, which is central in this play. And the way you hear how American in Paris came to be and the taxi horns he brought from Paris, you'll never hear an American in Paris the same way again. And it was just the most riveting, marvelous performance by the orchestra. So he gave her these bracelets. Andrew used poetic license to locate them later, you know, a couple of years later on in the story when Jimmy notices them when she's wearing them on opening night for the Fine and Dandy premiere.

But in fact, these bracelets, I would say, have not been worn by anyone but Kay Swift until Lydia put them on. Let me throw that back over to Lydia. What was that like? No, I was wondering, when was it, Catherine? I think it was sort of, was it just before the day of the performance? Yes, you had them on during the dress rehearsal as well. Yes, yes, yeah. Said, would you, you know, I've got these bracelets. And would you like to wear them in the performance?

You know, of course, no obligation. Absolutely. So it was really special. They're beautiful and very of the time, aren't they? But yeah, it felt like there was a bit of Kay Swift with us in the room. That is so lovely. What was it like to hear Kay's music being played live, Catherine? Oh, it was incredible because in some cases, you know, everyone knows Can't We Be Friends.

Everyone knows Fine and Dandy. Even if you think you don't know it, you do know it. But the very unknown work, like the marvelous song Up Among the Chimney Pots, some of the ballet that she wrote for Balanchine's first American production, these things have not been heard and certainly not heard on this scale. So one of the things I could do as someone who manages the body of work with the K-Swift Trust was make available the orchestrations and arrangements so the BBC Orchestra could play these marvelous works of music you don't know, alongside the marvelous works of her music that you do know. And hearing the work of Gershwin and the work of Swift together was an enormous thrill and an enormous part of the joy of this marvelousvellous, unusual sort of hybrid sort of play. You know, it's not a concert but it's certainly not just a play with music either. It's its own thing.

It's amazing. That's why we wanted to play a little bit of it, why we wanted to have you on, Lydia Leonard and Catherine Webber, thank you both so much and I need to let you know you can listen to Gershwin and Miss Swift, it's on Radio 3 at 8 o'clock this Sunday evening, the 22nd of December

and afterwards on BBC Sounds as well. It's a riot. Thank you very much for coming in. More of your comments. Let me see on Waspy. I'm a Waspy woman, but as an accountant dealing with tax returns,

I knew of the change to the pension age for women. However, surely the women who weren't aware are those least financially aware, I knew of the change to the pension age for women. However, surely the women who weren't aware are those least financially aware, lowest paid, least able to be working at physically demanding jobs after reaching the age of 60.

Here's another. I'm a WASPI woman. I agree with the government's decision. Although the compensation would be useful, the impact of an extra couple of thousand pounds would be very low, whereas the impact on the government funding would be huge.

I would prefer government to spend its limited funding where it has more impact, which is improving public services. One more on the Ombudsman. This is from Karen. The government ignoring the Ombudsman is not only yet another incident of the government ignoring the public, but also

destroys the reputation and effectiveness of the Ombudsman. Any future complaints regarding anything can just be ignored as precedent has now been set. 84844 if you'd like to get in touch. Now, to a freelance journalist who says she's thinking of leaving

the industry because of the apparent decline of black female journalists in the media. A report by the National Council for the Training of Journalists from September this year found that 91% of UK journalists come from white ethnic groups. This has increased by 3% since last year. It also found

that there's been a 12% drop in the number of female journalists in the UK since 2020. So amid large numbers of job cuts within the sector, what can be done to help keep black and ethnic minority female journalists in this profession? Joining me is Habiba Kacha, a freelance journalist who's considering an alternative career.

Welcome. Hi, welcome. And we also have a writer and journalist, Afua Hirsch. Hi, Afua. Good to have you back on the programme. Habiba, maybe I'll start with you and what you have been writing about and exploring. Why are you thinking of leaving the profession? So when I wrote this piece, I wrote this piece a few months ago, and I think it was less about me wanting to leave the profession

and more so me feeling like I was forced to leave the profession and more so just thinking about the conversations that I was having with my black female peers within the profession. So I was working at a publication for two years I really enjoyed it and then I just felt burnt out and I was freelancing but I was finding that as I was freelancing I wasn't getting as much jobs as I was before in previous years just because I feel like the journalism industry right now is really tough on top of that I'm someone who speaks about race a lot in my writing. And I find that unless there's been a worldwide event or it's Black History Month, I don't get commissioned to write about race. So it just feels like there aren't many opportunities

for me as someone who prioritises black storytelling. And do you see that as the industry as a whole? Just looking at some of the figures here, 2,500 media jobs lost in journalism across the UK and the US this year. This is according to Press Gazette, 8,000 last year. I'm wondering, do you see it particularly for an issue for black female journalists or is it just this is journalism right now? I think it's an issue for journalism right now but I feel like it's a more of an issue for black journalists because a lot of us firstly don't come from homes um we come from working class backgrounds so if you come from a background where you can't freelance it's really hard to get a job you just you just can't afford to be in this industry so I do feel like yes most journalists right now are really struggling but I do think it is worse for black journalists. Interesting. What impact do you think the departure of people like

yourself or some of your colleagues that you talk about that are black female journalists what impact might that have on journalism? I think it is a lack of nuance for stories, not just black stories, but stories in general, because I think when in the media in general, we still don't see a lot of black faces and black stories in storytelling. So I think it's a real loss if we don't have black people, black women in journalism, because there's going to be a lack of nuance when it comes to storytelling. Let me bring Afua, you're hearing a little bit there from Habiba. Was there ever a heyday for black female journalists, do you think? Not in my lifetime. I just want to say I really relate to everything Habiba's saying. And you know, it is sobering that I mean that I first became a journalist in about 1995.

So this is almost 30 years later. And I feel word for word what Habib was saying and the kind of things that my peers were saying when I first entered the profession. Then it is depressingly familiar. And, you know, as I've gone through my career in journalism, I've realized that this isn't a problem for us. You know, I think there's this tendency to think that we feel bad, we're missing out on careers in journalism, which we are. But, you know, there's also a really important point that newsrooms are not doing their job properly. They can't actually do the work they exist to do of telling stories, of reporting the news, of achieving nuance and truth if they are not representing the communities they report on. And, you know, this is a different landscape now from when I entered the profession.

There are ways in which people are taking control of their own storytelling if they can't find the work in newsrooms. Or, and I think, you know, Habiba's story speaks to this as well. It's not just that black journalists aren't finding opportunities, which they're not at the same rate as their white counterparts, but also they're finding it's a hostile space. It's not one in which they can have autonomy over their careers. They can tell stories about black people if they want to. They can also tell stories about other communities, other ideas if they want to, that they can explore and grow. They get put into boxes. They get treated in a way that's different from other journalists. And it honestly can be very draining.

So I think that one of the problems the media profession is going to have is that Black journalists are going to vote with their feet and go where opportunities are. They're going into other industries like scripted work. They're writing books. They're podcasting. They are using subscription-only platforms to tell the stories

they want to tell. And as a result, we're losing that crucial voice in the mainstream media. And that's only diminishing trust, in my opinion, because I think a lot of people are becoming skeptical that the mainstream media doesn't really understand the nuances that are happening in our increasingly polarized society. So it really is a loss for the media and but I say that also not saying that it's fine for black journalists because we can all just go on sub stack you know that's not the reality it is really really hard out there and I teach journalism now so I have a generation of students who I'm also really nurturing and encouraging and really believe in their voice but also have to equip them for a world in which they are not going to find the doors open to them in the way that they should. Let me throw it back to you, Habiba.

There's a number of issues there that Afua was bringing up. First, you know, taking control of your own storytelling in some of the ways that Afua spoke about, but obviously that voice would be detracted from mainstream media. Is that something you're thinking about, talking about? Well, I think when it comes to newsrooms and storytelling, I think it really just depends on who's your editor. I think I was quite fortunate in the sense that I had an editor who very much on from the early set knew that I wanted to write about black stories.

However, she always said, if you don't want to write about black stories, that's fine as well. But what happens is there are a lot of black journalists who are pigeonholed into being the black writer that writes about race when they don't want to do that so I think it really just depends on who your editor is and things like that but I do find now that there is a surge of black people who want to get into journalism or black journalists who are now having to like Afua said create their own subzack, of which I've started,

go on TikTok, create podcasts and stuff like that. Because, again, as someone who writes about race and is a freelancer, you often find that when you are getting commissioned, because you are writing for, if you are writing for a big publication that has a white audience, you often find that you are having to explain specific concepts to white people. And that's something that you don't have to do when you're working for like a black publication. Interesting, because Afua,

I know you've been put in that position of explaining at other times with various instances on some of the stuff I was reading and talking about that being very draining and at times exactly what you don't want to be doing if you were on air, for example, in some incident that had been racist in one particular instance. I suppose. Can I just say something quickly?

Because, you know, this conversation is a great example. I am enjoying this conversation because I feel like it's generally trying to get to the root of what's happening in journalism but you know five years ago when I was doing that kind of journalism I would have been put on with somebody who was saying if black people aren't getting jobs in journalism it's their own fault it's because they're not good enough and you know diversity is tokenism and if they're not good enough to be journalists what's the problem anyway and then my role in this conversation would have been to explain why we exist. We have a different perspective. And if we're not represented, something's gone wrong.

That's unfair. And you can imagine how exhausting that is to constantly have to persuade people that you have humanity, that you have a lived experience and that you deserve to exist and do the work you're good at. And so in a way, this conversation for me is also evidence of the evolution we've experienced, that now I think someone like me, Amin Habiba, can have a conversation where we agree that something's gone wrong and you're interested and curious in what that is. But for most of my career, the only platform I would have been given would to be the black person up against the person who denies

my blackness and my humanity, having to explain that I deserve a voice. And that is still the experience, essentially, of so many black journalists, that the point of them, as far as their news organisations are concerned, is to justify their existence and to translate it for people who have no understanding or no education or, many times, no real interest in why that is. And I can understand why that would be exhausting.

Abiba, there was an Ethical Journalism Network report last year that found that racism was commonplace in the UK journalism industry. What has your experience been when it comes to treatment? Actually, forgive me, I'm throwing in such a long question. We're going to have to have you back. I've just become too engrossed in the programme. I want to thank both my guests,

Abiba and Afua. You've been listening to Woman's Hour. We're back again tomorrow. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Sean Diddy Combs has occupied a top spot in the music industry for decades.

He earned his stripes during the golden age of hip-hop and he's been called rap royalty. Now, Diddy's sat in jail awaiting trial. He denies all the allegations. I'm Anushka Matanda-Dowity and from BBC Sounds, this is Diddy on Trial. Every week, I'll be examining the latest allegations,

interrogating the rumours and answering your questions. Listen 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. Available now.