Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Afghanistan, RFU President Deborah Griffin, Pregnancy sickness, Goalkeeper Hannah Hampton

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

Four years after Taliban fighters retook the capital Kabul on 15 August 2021, UN Women, the gender equality agency, is warning that the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan is increasingly untenable. They say without urgent action, this untenable reality will become normalised and women and girls will be fully excluded. To discuss further Anita Rani was joined by Fawzia Koofi, former deputy speaker of the Afghan Parliament & peace negotiator, and BBC senior Afghan reporter Mahjooba Nowrouzi, recently returned from Afghanistan.As rugby fans across the UK look forward to the Women’s Rugby World Cup, Anita speaks with rugby trailblazer Deborah Griffin. An amateur player since university, Deborah co-organised the first ever Women’s Rugby World Cup, held in Wales in 1991. Earlier this month, she became the first woman to take up the role of President of the Rugby Football Union.A woman in Wales who felt forced to terminate her pregnancy after being unable to access the anti-sickness medication she needed is calling for the drug to be made more widely available. Sarah Spooner was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum which left her vomiting more than 20 times per day and unable to eat or drink. But she found it virtually impossible to access Xonvea, a medication which is recommended as a first-line treatment in England but not in Wales. Nuala McGovern hears Sarah's story, and speaks to Dr Caitlin Dean from Pregnancy Sickness Support about why there is a postcode lottery across the UK for women needing Xonvea.Emma Holten tells us we need a feminist revolution. The author has spent years investigating the true value of care - and how rethinking it could transform our societies. Her debut book, Deficit: How Feminist Economics Can Change Our World, examines how mainstream economics systematically undervalues care work and advocates for reshaping policy to reflect its true worth.England goalkeeper and Lionesses legend Hannah Hampton joins Nuala on Woman's Hour fresh from winning the UEFA European Women's Championship. Born with a serious eye condition, doctors told her she should never play football. She came into the recent Euros with questions over her ability to fill the gloves of recently retired Mary Earps. To add to that, she revealed her grandfather had died just days before the biggest tournament of her life began earlier this summer. Despite this, Hannah had an extraordinary tournament, particularly in those agonising penalty shootouts. She joined Nuala to chat all about it.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Emma Pearce

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BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome. Coming up some of the highlights from this week. Ahead of the Women's Rugby World Cup, which begins next week, I talked to Deborah Griffin, who co-organised the very first Women's Rugby World Cup back in 1991. We hear from one woman whose severe pregnancy sickness was so big. bad. She says she had to have a termination. She's calling for better care for women who are

suffering like she did. Emma Holton makes the case for how she thinks feminist economics can change the world in her new book, Deficit. Where Does Value Lie and Why? Also football, England's goalkeeper Hannah Hampton on taking on the mantle of the number one shirt on winning the euros and how she kept her cool during those intense penalty shootouts. People say keepers are crazy. I disagree. You know, I'm quite normal, I like to think. Goldcum is a unique position. It's a very individual position and one that requires a lot of resilient determination. But look, it's a great position at the same time.

It feels you with so much joy. I've played with a smile on my face because I enjoy it so much. So if it's what little girls, little boys want to go and do it, then I say go do it. If it's your dream, you go follow it and you do whatever puts that smile on your face because life's hard in the best of times. Lots to get into. Let's begin. First, four years after Taliban fighters retook the capital Kabul on the 15th of August 2021, UN Women, the Gender Equality Agency, is warning that the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan is increasingly untenable.

They say, without urgent action, this untenable reality will become normalized and women and girls will be fully excluded. The report says after four years and waves of directives, Afghan women and girls have been stripped of their rights. Women are living shorter, less healthy lives. Maternal mortality risks and child marriage rates are rising and violence against women is growing unchecked. The state of women's rights in Afghanistan has made it the country with the second widest gender gap in the world, second only to Yemen.

While I was joined by Fosia Kufi, former deputy speaker of the Afghan parliament, and peace negotiator and regular Women's Our contributor and senior BBC reporter for the Afghan service, Mahjuba Naruzi, who recently returned from Afghanistan a month ago after spending three weeks there. I started by asking her what she'd witnessed. It depends which part of the country you go to. In Kabul, it was more or less relaxed,

and I saw women, like, yeah, walking, kind of, I could say, freely, basically in groups of two or three women and going to restaurants and doing shopping and sometimes without a male guardian and could ride a taxi but again in groups of two or three and I didn't see any women on their own walking alone life was going on as normal when you say they were working in groups of two or three do you think that was because they can't walk alone or for safety or what was the reason you didn't. Definitely, because there's the restrictions on women not like traveling alone from, I mean, even some women cannot travel from one corner of Kabul to another without a male

guardian, especially if you're a woman on your own and you don't work and you're a single mom and you have like several kids and you have a job, but you need to travel from one corner of Kabul to another, then you need to have a male guardian because even the taxi drivers will not give you a ride. And in Kabul, if they're traveling and going out as groups, small groups, are they, is it still a dangerous situation for them or are they safer? In some places they are safer. It's not too bad if I can say that. I saw women navigating the city with extreme quotients and careful not to draw attention outside Kabul in more remote provinces. The restrictions filled

even more pronounced. Women and girls were largely absent from public spaces, schools and workplaces. The sense of exclusion and fear was palpable, basically, and it was hard-working to see the scale of the restrictions firsthand. I'm going to bring you in Fosier, because I read a summary that said in 2021, an Afghan woman could have run for president, although none did. Spool forward to 2025, they can't even speak in public. There's an edict from the Taliban which labels public speaking by women a moral violation. Does that sum up the enormity of the changes for Afghan women in the last four years? So many people regard this as a black day in the history of Afghanistan. Today, protests are organized across the globe, I would say, by women mainly, also by men. Over the past

four years, Afghanistan have even become more marginalized politically and diplomatically. The people are suffering from poverty, according to credible UN report, 90% or more population of Afghanistan are under poverty. And it actually is heart-wrenching because Afghanistan is a rich country in terms of natural resources and their location it locates. But the impact of all of this is, of course, on women more than anybody. More than 100 edicts by the Taliban leader to completely erase women. Last year, in this time in August,

you referred to the vice and virtual law. This was issued publicly. Most of it actually was to suppress women, to limit their freedom. One of that was women not being able to speak in public because their voice was regarded as intimacy. I think after four years now, you see gradually, and I mean, Mahabhajan has just returned, but you see gradually the impact of

those edicts on social structure of Afghanistan. After maybe another four years, if the situation doesn't change, it's, Afghanistan is going to change to a radicalized country because the Taliban definitely do not allow women and girls to go to school or university, but they allow women to go to religious schools that they call them madrasas, and there is no age limit. is no distance limit. So you can go to a madrasa and like a far away from your house without a male company, but you cannot go to school. Let's talk about how the social public is going to change through the prism of what's happening to women. So just to pick up

on what you said, Fuzia, Mahjuba, what was your experience of schools? Because two million girls, Afghan girls remain out of school. That's the figure we have. That figure aligns with what I witnessed it, probably even more, to be honest, in rural provinces. entire villages have no operational schools for girls behind primary education, even not primary education, if I'm being honest. Even where schools exist, many families are afraid to send their daughters, given the Taliban's restrictions and the risk of harassment. Access isn't just a matter of infrastructure in these places. It is a matter of safety, fear and government policy. If I'm being honest, it was a problem in the past as well in rural provinces and remote areas of

Afghanistan, but it has got worse. So now more girls just avoid going to school. Yeah, and you went to a maternity ward in a province. I did. I went to this maternity ward where it was absolutely overwhelmed with only two female gynecologists for over a million people. And Women faced long delays there in that maternity ward for care and sometimes risking life-threatening complications. Supplies were limited because they were saying that they were not receiving any kind of aid from any organizations or NGOs. And the infrastructure was basic. And there was an acute shortage of trained staff. And can you imagine just two guys.

gynaecologist for the entire province. The resilience of the women and the doctors, they were working tirelessly. And despite the impossible circumstances, the risk for both mothers and newborns were, in my opinion, very real because one of the doctor was saying that two mothers on average and three babies die every month in this hospital alone. And and so many women even do not get to the hospital. The UNG report, it has also said that if women are not allowed to enter higher education, they cannot become doctors. And if women are banned from receiving treatment from male doctors,

which in a whole case, they would not go to male doctors. In a situation like that, you cannot expect to live healthy lives. And it's the women who are suffering as a judge. result of this. Forziah, you're speaking to women. I know you haven't been there for a long time, but what are women telling you? And we need to discuss the generation of women who are living throughout. I know, Fosier, you've described this as the Taliban Mark 2 in the past. It is a generation of women who have grown up in an Afghanistan that's a post-9-11 generation that grew up under the US and British intervention. So life has changed dramatically for them in the last

four years. What are you hearing? And how does it make you feel listening to what Mahjuba is is telling us right now. Well, actually, Anita, Afghanistan already had the highest number of maternal mortality in the past due to the fact that women did not have access in remote areas to health facilities. However, the Taliban banning women from becoming doctors, banning women from becoming medical staff, including nurses and midwives. In some cases, actually, also the UN report indicates, but also. my own contact with local communities. They have instructed hospitals and clinics to do not

admit women who come to the hospital without male company. That have even further exacerbated the lack of access to health facilities and eventually increase maternal mortality. In the whole province that Mahjuba was referring, I was running community-based nursing and midwifeary school until the December 2024 with a hope that we will be able to train 30 young women become nurses and midwives and be able to at least deliver basic health services to women and children because my fear is that as also the UN report says mater mortality might increase to 50%. My fear is that in two or three years our health system will completely be disrupted because of the fact that we don't have new graduates of doctors, nurses, midwives.

So we had to close our school in our province that was supposed to provide education for 30 girls to become nurses and midwives. Do you hold any hope that the Taliban can be held to account? I think the Taliban need to be hold accountable for their commitment that they made during the peace talks when we were negotiating with them. They say women can go to school. They can get PhD. they can become minister, even prime minister.

I'm quoting one of their ministers during negotiation. He said, women can be even prime minister according to their interpretation, which was, of course, you know, a narrative that it was a lie to whitewash themselves. And there were a lot of diplomats who were in the same line with them. They were saying Taliban 2.0. Now my hope is that more pressure internationally, especially from an organization like the ICC, ICJ, Human Rights Council, women groups, as well as, you know, resilience from women and men inside the country will lead to change.

We are working for that. You know, we are working to mobilize more and more forces to create an alternative. Because many people think that there is no alternative for Taliban, which I don't agree. Because, you know, the Taliban were a rebellion group. They were brought to power and became a kind of a power that controlled the whole country. Ninety percent of people, plus in Afghanistan, are not supporting Taliban. So all those people are alternative. We need to just empower them, give them the space, listen to them, and hold the Taliban accountable.

And I'm happy that at least the ICC issued arrest warrant for two Taliban leaders recently during June 17th. We need to have more of those announcements. is going to create more division among the Taliban. The Taliban were very proud of their unity, but now there is more fragmentation and division. It will lead to a change. Fosia Kufi and Mahjuba Naruzi.

Now, the Women's Rugby World Cup begins on Friday, and we'll be live from a rugby club in Gateshead, not far from where the first match is being played later that day, England v. the USA, at Sunderland's Stadium of Light. Well, earlier this week, I was joined by a women's rugby trailbo. Blazor, a very inspiring woman who's a pivotal figure in developing the game. An amateur player since university, Deborah Griffin was co-organiser of the first ever Women's Rugby World Cup held in Wales back in 1991, and earlier this month, she took up a new

role as the President of the Rugby Football Union, the first woman to hold that role. I began by asking Deborah whether she ever thought this would happen in her life. I only ever looked one step ahead, really, and it wasn't until so, a few years ago that I thought, well, actually I could apply for this and do this role. So no, it was never in my dreams. Yeah, you're very well qualified to not only apply for it, but to get the role, because you, as I mentioned, started the first ever women's rugby World Cup. Take us back to that.

It was in Wales. It was in Wales. We'd formed the Women's Rugby Football Union, WRFU in 83, with just 17 sides. 16 of them were university sides. so it was very early days. We'd played a couple of internationals against France and Wales had a team as well. We were all together.

We were both Wales and England in the WRFU. And I put a paper together for the WRFU and said, I think we should have a World Cup. You've brought me the programme. I have brought you the programme. It's fantastic. What, great, I mean, I'm looking through it. You've got Japan represented.

I mean, where were the teams from? Well, it's interesting. So we knew that there were a few going. We knew that, for instance, the Netherlands and Sweden had a team. But we literally, and you have to bear in mind, there was no internet or email at those times. We literally wrote to something like the Japan Rugby Union,

said, have you got any women playing rugby? And so we put it together. So we had 12 teams, which was absolutely incredible. What was the budget? The budget was, I think it was about 35,000. And what we hoped for originally was to raise funds so that we could pay for the accommodation of the teams and their travel and their food.

They actually stayed at the Cardiff Institute so it wasn't hotels, salubrious hotels but we failed to raise that money we tried very hard, we had a sponsorship agent people didn't want to sponsor women's sport let alone something that was very, very young in the days and so we wrote to the teams in the January and said, look we're really sorry

we just can't raise this money we're probably going to have to fail and they all wrote back and said, nope, we're still coming, we'll pay for it ourselves. And that was only four or five months later. So we carried on and arranged it. How did you get into rugby? So I was from a sporting family

but didn't do any team sports and I don't think my family knew anything about rugby. But I went to university, went to University College London, went out with a lad who played rugby and started watching him and there was a group of us watching. And for some reason,

and I still don't know why it's a long time ago we decided to challenge King's College who were our varsity rivals to a game of women's right thing. I thought you said you were going to say I'm going to challenge the boyfriends. But no, yes, so King's College. And they took up the challenge. So, you know, we got one of the husbands

of one of our players to help coach us and took to the field. And absolutely, you know, the feeling I've had and I know other people do this as well, I came off that field thinking that was the, best thing I had ever done. I just loved the whole game. Love tackling, but I love the, you know, the fact that you were looking for space. I love the fact that you had to work as a team, you know, that everybody has to take part. And so after that, it was a case of encouraging other universities

to play us. And that was literally how it built because, A, I wanted to play more, but also I wanted other girls to have the opportunity to play this great sport. But you were told no, weren't you? I mean, I know that as a woman you were refused membership at the Finchley Rugby Club, for example, where you were training. Well, that was after a few years when we realised that everybody was playing for UCL wasn't at UCL because we'd left and the girls were coming down from other universities like York and Warwick and coming to UCL. So we went up to Finchley. There were connections there and we asked if we could play there. We were there for two years. We played in Finchley colours, played as Finchley. had a fantastic time, supported the club, you know, helped clean the baths, work behind the bar.

But we wanted to become members because we were paying to play there. And the committee at the time, it was a big leap for them to have female members. And they were worried that we might skew the elections for the men's captain or something like that. And so they said no, which was a great disappointment to the lot of the lads that were playing there. and we had just a few months before organised an international against France the first international, it was Great Britain versus France because we were England and Wales

and Richmond wrote to us and said we'd love to have a women's team so we had a very big vote of the club not everybody was in agreement but we moved on block to Richmond and that was another success story and I mean success story after success story after success story I mean, in some countries, though, women's rugby has grown up alongside the men's game.

But in England, the Rugby Football Union for Women and Rugby Football Union operated separately. And I only joined forces in 2014. What impact do you think that separation has had? I think it was interesting. I mean, we didn't, I don't think we tried to join up with the RFU. As the WRFU, we just did that because we wanted to bring people together to organise competitions, get insurance and those sorts of things. And it went from there.

And it allowed us to be flexible. It allowed us to do what we need to do for our game. And we ended up with a staff. We didn't have any full-time staff till 94. And then we ended up, when we went into the RFU in 2012, we had about 32 staff by that stage. And that was funded by UK Sport and Sport England, which was brilliant. But of course, going into the RFU,

all our players were playing in RFU clubs. Yeah. And they were members of RFU clubs. So it just made sense. and to be able to use the RFUs, better network, better resources than we had to develop the game. There might be somebody listening thinking, you know, we can't get the head around women's rugby still,

for whatever reason. What are the biggest misconceptions do you think when it comes to rugby and women? I think people don't realise or they don't realise that women play it because they enjoy the game. You know, it's nothing to do with trying to get one over men. It's because the game, we all love the game, and it's so enjoyable to play.

So I think that's what people don't, some people don't understand why you would want to run around tackling people, you know, getting hurt, scraped knees, all those sorts of things. Why do you? It's just a brilliant game. And not only on the pitch, which, as I said before, you know, it's both intellectually and physically exciting, but I think it's that playing together means that you have friendships for many years. And the men have that. And, you know, that's grown up with the women. I've just come back from Italy with a group of friends I played rugby with, nine of us. And that was our 26th annual trip away.

And that's repeated across the country. I hear people say, you know, I've got great friends from playing rugby. Impressive, Deborah Griffin there. And don't forget to join me next Friday when I'll be live from Bladen Rugby Club in the northeast, just down the road from where England begin their World Cup campaign. be speaking to England star Abby Ward and also World Rugby's Sarah Massey, who's the director of the tournament. I'm also apparently going to get stuck into a scrum myself with the Blade and Women's Team, so wish me luck. And don't forget to join me on Woman's Hour at 10am next

Friday for all the excitement if I survive the scrum. Now an upsetting but important story. My next guest suffered with such severe hyper-emesis gravidarum or extreme pregnancy sickness, often referred to as HG that she felt forced to terminate her pregnancy. Sarah Spooner from Wales was unable to eat or drink and was being sick more than 20 times per day

but was unable to get hold of Zonvia a medication which can be offered by GPs in England as a first-line response to pregnancy sickness but is more difficult to access in Wales. Well, Nula spoke to Sarah and also to Dr Caitlin Dean from pregnancy sickness supports and she began by asking Sarah when she first experienced sickness in pregnancy.

So I've had two HG pregnancies. The first one was with my daughter, who's now two. I didn't know that I had HG with her. I knew my sickness was abnormal. I was having days where I was being sick, sort of 10, 15 times a day. And I was sick up until I was 40 weeks with her, so right up until the point she was born. I had blood in my vomit every day from 20 weeks.

But it was my first pregnancy and I was kept being told, you know, some people are just sick when they're pregnant. That's normal. But I had a complicated birth as a result of being sick. And then my daughter was ill when she was three days old. She aspirated on her vomit and that may have been due to complications from an antimetic I was on. Antimetic, which makes you so you don't vomit. Yeah. And so the whole thing was very traumatic and I was later diagnosed with PTSD.

and a lot of that came back to the sickness in the pregnancy rather than anything else. And it was then that I started to do a deep dive on what had happened and I realised that I probably had had HG and that's when I got in touch of pregnancy sickness support and they were, they sort of really validated that for me. They were like, no, you did have high premises.

It's so extreme as well as you describe it there, Sarah. I imagine then becoming pregnant again would have been a very difficult decision Yeah. I've spent the last year and a bit volunteering for pregnancy sickness support as a HG advocate, so working with health professionals to raise awareness for the management and treatment of the condition. I've done a lot of research and I thought that we would be okay because I thought that, okay, I know the treatment algorithms. I know first line, second line, third line treatment. I know how to advocate for myself. But actually the reality was far worse and far worse. harder than I ever imagined it would be. So you did get pregnant again. And what happened during that time? So I found out I was pregnant in February of this year.

And the first thing I did was go to my GP to try and get some first line antiometics. I was given a medication called prochlorperazine, which didn't really help very much. And then a medication called cyclone, which didn't help very much. And then after, when I was about seven weeks pregnant, I'd had a couple of days where I hadn't been able to see properly. I had this visual migraine for two days, and I'd eaten quarter of a piece of toast over two days, and I'd not been able to keep any fluid down, so I went back to the GP and said, please can I try this medication, Zambia? I know a lot of other people have had success with it, and I was told, well, it's off formulary in Wales, so we can't give it to you. I ended up

having an early scan at the hospital, and they gave me some Zonvia, but they gave me a fortnight at a time. I live in a very rural area, and my husband had to drive me a 50-mine. round trip each time to pick it up which when you're being that sick is horrendous and one time we picked up a prescription it wasn't dated so I took it to the pharmacy and a couple of days later they said we can't give it to you there's no date on this prescription they've missed the year out then you think I've got another 50 mile round trip and it just that whole time you're getting sicker and sicker and it's getting harder and harder to do anything and when you took the zombie and I know how difficult it was to procure it how much did it alleviate your symptoms it didn't

get rid of them entirely. It did help a lot in the mornings. So with my daughter, I'd be awake from 4 a.m., 3 a.m. 4 a.m. being sick. It did get rid of the morning side of things. I'd start being sick maybe about 10 or 11 in the morning instead of 4 a.m. I did need to then start taking other anti-sickness tablets, and they were a battle to get hold of as well. I had to, the only place that would give me another medication was an abortion clinic that was 90 miles away. But it did help and actually we made an appointment after a lot of things went wrong at about 13 weeks pregnant at an abortion clinic and I ran out of Zambia at 1am sorry the day before I was going to just discuss to see how long I had to try and get the sickness under control but the day I ran out

I woke up at 1am and I couldn't stop vomiting and then if it's okay to tell us as well when you began to consider a termination was the only way for you to really be able to survive Yeah, so when I was nine weeks pregnant, I developed a serious eye infection called orbital cellulitis. I'm an optometrist, so I know how serious this condition is. It was on Mother's Day. And then my husband came home. He'd been out for a few hours to see his parents. He came home to find me lying on the floor vomiting and excruciating abdominal pain.

And I ended up in A&E with two separate medical emergencies in one night. And the doctor there said to me, you're really ill. Your body's not coping. and I have a little girl she needs her mum and you start to think I can't do this anymore so we made an appointment

at an abortion clinic and I was really upset I was so upset that they said they couldn't do the procedure because they couldn't in good faith do it someone who was so traumatised by the prospect of it I really wanted that baby

and they said worst case scenario you've got seven months left of this and I thought seven months of this is going to kill me but I held out for a few more weeks and then at 13 weeks we went to that other appointment and to discuss options. And I was told in Wales, you can't have an abortion after 14 weeks. So I knew at that point it was, I had to make my mind up.

And I was so scared of being dismissed continuously like I was in my first pregnancy, but I thought, okay, I've got no choice. It's so sad. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. It's really heartbreaking. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's the worst decision you could ever have to make. And I wish I could say my case was the only one, but there's 3,000 women in a year have to terminate their pregnancies because of HG. That's five to six women a day. Stay with me, Sarah, because we want to bring in Dr. Caitlin Dean, who you'd be familiar with, of course, from pregnancy sickness support. I mean, the story that we're hearing it's just so sad. Tell us a little bit about how HG or hyperamous gravadarum differs from

ordinary morning sickness. So regular pregnancy sickness and we try to move away a little bit from the term morning sickness because it just sort of belittles it even further and it's rarely limited to the morning. But regular pregnancy sickness, it shouldn't affect your ability to eat and drink to the point where you're losing weight, you're struggling with hydration, you're struggling to just live a normal life, to wash, to get dressed, to go to work. Anything more than that really is starting to get into the realms of abnormal. I mean, if it was normal to have sickness to that level, I think the human race probably would have tied out a rather long time ago. So really, once it starts getting into the realms of

I am actually not managing to eat enough to stay healthy and I'm losing weight then really at that point we should be looking at treatment but it is on a spectrum and at the far end of that spectrum is hyperamesis and with that

it can be very very extreme I mean you can have women throwing up sort of 50 times a day literally not managing to eat anything for days on end becoming very dehydrated and you know suggesting that that's what all women experience just is nonsense. It's not.

Most women don't have it like that. Most women just have waves of nausea now and then throughout the day, maybe being sick once or twice, but still managing to go about their day-to-day life. And, you know, Sarah explains it so well, the difficulty she had procuring medication to help her with the symptoms. Is this a problem just in Wales or? Sadly not. No. Things have improved. My children are 17, 15 and 13 and sadly her story is extraordinarily familiar even from that time ago.

Because it's something you went through. Yes, it is. Yeah, which is why I got involved with this. But yes, it's quite depressing that it's still that same familiar story happening nearly two decades on. But things are improving and there are a lot of women who are managing to get treatment more easily. But it should. be a battle at all. I mean, Zonvia, for example, is a licensed treatment. It's been licensed. It's recommended in guidelines. There's no real risk to the prescriber with a medication like this because it's been licensed by the MHRA to be used for this condition in pregnancy. So if women were getting access to that much earlier, we'd probably be preventing an awful lot of women going further down the line, needing hospital admission, needing, you know, weeks and weeks off work and ultimately needing abortions and there's

been cases of suicide as well. I'm so sorry to hear that. If you're affected by some of the issues that you're hearing about, we do have links on the BBC's Action Line. The Department for Health and Social Care in England, they say they recognise that HG is a debilitating condition. They can have a devastating impact

on women and their families. They say decisions about what medicines to prescribe are made by doctors or healthcare professionals responsible for that part of the patient's care. Prescribers must satisfy themselves that the medicines they consider appropriate for their patients can be safely prescribed that they take account of the appropriate national guidance on clinical effectiveness, as well as local commissioning decisions

of their respective integrated care boards. Coming back to you, Sarah, you are calling for change for women in Wales particularly. Yeah, so obviously I'd love it to change elsewhere, but I know Kea Starrmo has recently mentioned, they will be looking at it in England. Unfortunately, decisions in England don't affect NHS Wales. Zonvia is the only licensed medication for pregnancy sickness, but in Wales it's off formulary. That means that GPs can't routinely prescribe it.

It is safe and it is effective and it won't help all women, but it will help a lot of women. The argument was made by the All Wales Medicine Strategy Group in 2019 that it is not cost effective. Since then, things have changed. So it is now recommended on the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Guidelines and on the Nice Guidelines, as a first-line treatment. I appreciate it's more expensive than other first-line anti-aemetics, but it could certainly be used sooner.

I do have a statement from the Welsh government. They say healthcare professionals across Wales can prescribe a range of effective treatments for women suffering extreme pregnancy sickness, including Zambia in exceptional cases where other treatments have failed. I know that hasn't been your experience or not having it close to hand,

definitely in an area. GPs in every Health Board in Wales regularly prescribe Zonvia with more than 750 prescriptions to spend since January. We rely on independent advice from NICE or the Old Wales Medicine Strategy Group to make medicines routinely available on the NHS in Wales. Without formal Nice guidance, the All Wales Medicine Strategy Group appraisal remains the most current formal evaluation of Zonvia in Wales. They did not recommend routine use due to insufficient cost-effectiveness data

and goes on to say that they continue to engage and the All Wales Medicine Strategy Group with the manufacturer about an updated submission later this year. Neither if you look very positive as I read that statement. Sarah? My feeling is that it's putting the onus on GPs and GPs are already under immense pressure. They can't be expected to know everything about a condition that isn't something they've seen that often

and exceptional is a very subjective statement. Sarah Spooner and Dr Caitlin Dean there. Still to come on the program, The Lioness's number one goalkeeper, Hannah Hampton. And remember, you can enjoy Women's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10 a.m. during the week, all you need to do is subscribe to the daily podcast via BBC Sounds and it's free. Now, we talk a lot about unpaid care on this program,

the work of raising children, looking after elderly, sick or disabled relatives, and keeping households running. In 2024, women spent an average of three hours and 32 minutes a day doing unpaid work activities, including housework, caring for others and volunteering, 57 minutes more than the average among men, according to the Office for National Statistics. We know the work can feel undervalued, but do we really know why? Well, one woman believes she does. Feminist activist and author Emma Holton has spent years investigating and how rethinking it could transform our society. based in Denmark, she's in the UK for a series of events to talk about her book, Deficit, how feminist economics can change our world.

It advocates for reshaping policy to reflect the true worth of care and argues for what she calls a feminist economic revolution. Emma Hulton joined Nula this week and she asked her first about her own experience. I have a chronic illness called ulcerative colitis. It's kind of like Crohn's disease and most times I feel fine. I eat a lot of medicine, but I'm good. But sometimes I get really sick, and I need to admit me to be admitted to hospital. And the last time I was in hospital, it was in 2019.

And I was in hospital for a week, and I think I can say without exaggeration, that the people I met there, which was, I think if you've been in a hospital, you know that it's the nurses running the show most of the time. But doctors also, of course. These people saved my life. They completely fixed me in many ways. And about a year after I'd been to hospital, I read a headline in a Danish newspaper that said that, women were an economic net deficit to society. And one of the reasons that they were that was that many of them worked in the public sector where pay was low. And what that taught me was that in politics, the way we think about value and the way we measure value is not through what the work creates, but what it is paid.

So I realized after researching this that in all of the ledgers and Excel sheets, and graphs and all these numbers that were served nowhere in the government budget, was it shown or recorded that these people had saved my life? And these nurses were seen as an expense, not as an investment in the health of the society. And I wanted to understand how we got there. You talk about care work, which I think is quite evident to our listeners. But you also talk about reproduction, but there's nothing to do with making babies. What is it?

So reproductive work is kind of the more academic way of saying that every person needs to be maintained. We're reproduced every day. So we need to, even though we slept last night, we need to sleep today. And even though we had dinner, we need to have dinner today. And sometimes we get sick or we're children or we're elderly or we're disabled. So we constantly need to support the body and other people's help to support the body. And what I show in my book is that all work, whether paid or unpaid, that is about supporting the body and mind and maintaining the human being is stupendously devalued in the way

we think about economics today. I'm going to go back a little bit because you do too in your book. I mean, it's fascinating and it kind of gives it a different worldview. But you talk about the move, particularly the Enlightenment, moving from the non-mechanical to the mechanical world, shall we say. And that value was really placed on things that could be quantified in a mechanical way. Yeah, exactly. So what happens during the Enlightenment and kind of the birth of political economy, as we know it today, is that you start looking at society like a machine. And every human being is a little machine that's a cog in the big machine. So you want to make these perfect mechanical systems where you can predict. And I think that's how many of us view economics today, that they can predict what happens when you do X, Y and Z.

But the issue with care work and the reason that there's issues both with paid and unpaid care, is that carework is not like a machine. Human beings are not identical cogs in a machine. You can sit in a classroom and you'll have two kids who are getting the exact same education, the exact same resources, but getting completely different things out of it. I think any nurse would tell you that there's no such thing

as an average patient. So what happens in economics is that care work becomes perceived as, you know, unreliable, chaotic, unpredictable. and what happens is that everything that cannot be quantified and that cannot be predicted, the value of it is set to zero. But why can't it be quantified? We are advanced human beings. We have a lot of tools at our disposals for sure.

I think we can say quite a lot about what care works, but what we can't do is put a price on it. So if you have a teacher that has a class of students and you invest a certain type of resources into that class, you don't know necessarily when you do it, what will happen to those students. Some people will become career criminals. Some of them will win a Nobel Prize.

But we don't know when the care is given, what it will create. So what happens is that because we cannot quantify, you know, the return on our investment, the return is at to zero. And I think that is kind of the big issue here, because when the return on care is set to zero, when it's seen as an expense as something that costs or something, not something that creates something, it becomes, of course, incredibly easy to cut money from it. So you just had a nurse on, obviously, who said that we've seen an increase in violence against nurses. But nowhere was it said when we cut money for the NHS that it would lead to violence.

It was said that we were going to save money. We would get richer from it. But that's because all of the human consequences, the social consequences and the health consequences was not recorded anywhere. And of course, as I mentioned with the health department, that they talked about investing to alleviate any violence against NHS workers and other various issues that I mentioned in the statement that we got from West Streeting. But I understand your hypothesis. You talk about it as well when it comes to cutting benefits, for example. Yeah, so for example, in Denmark.

In Denmark, yeah. In Denmark, we're seeing similar movements as you're seeing in the UK with a decrease in disability benefits. And this is touted as a big save, and the local governments will get more money at their disposal. And the first couple of years, it did look like, you know, they were saving a lot of money. But what started happening was a couple of things. So first of all, people with severe disabilities were seeing decreased quality of life. They were getting more aggressive, frustrated, losing capacity for some of them to contribute to their families, to be friends because they had no time to come out because no one was helping them leave the house.

Then we saw suddenly mothers, especially stepping up and taking their kids out of the system because the quality of the care was so terrible. So they were leaving work. And the last thing we saw was healthcare professionals leaving disability services because they said they could not stand for giving care of such low quality that had so few resources. So what looked like in the first couple of years, oh, big savings, we're getting so rich. which actually what happened around these savings were long-term decrease in capacity in local communities and everyone getting poorer, but in a more subtle and difficult way. You would perhaps call it, don't let me put words in your mouth, but kind of more impoverished culturally. Exactly. So what I'm noticing in my book is that we're living in a paradoxical time because actually our countries have been getting richer. There's a lot of money going around, but it doesn't show up in mental health.

It doesn't show up in well-being. Actually, many of us feel much worse. So what I show is that we're losing a lot of the things that are difficult to measure, care, rest, community, art, green spaces. And all of this is showing up in our mental health. But on all the lines and the beautiful graphs, it looks like we're getting richer because we're losing a lot that cannot be quantified. And also in the UK benefit changes that you mentioned there. In certain cuts, we did ask the Department for Work in Pensions for a statement on that. They say we're changing the welfare system,

so it helps people to live with dignity, genuinely supporting those who can work into employment and ensuring the safety net is always there for the most vulnerable. We're also putting the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of a ministerial review of PIP, which is the personal independence payment, a welfare benefit, to ensure the benefit is fit and fair for the future. I know if we dug into that, you'd probably have issues with it.

But there's a lot of points that I want to get to on your book as well in the time that we have here with you. You talk about the 1960s. I'm jumping back in time again, not as far as the Enlightenment. But the sort of economy that we're in at the moment is established economics, as you call it. And you're calling instead for a feminist economics. However, in the 1960s, the established economics,

and feminism, we're kind of hand in hand in trying to get women into the workforce. But why are they not good bedfellows? Yeah, so I think many of us perceive of economics as a science that is like chemistry or physics. But what I show in my book is that it's much more

like sociology. So there are different eras and paradigms. And right now we're in a paradigm where it is not that modern within economics to really value care for what it creates. But when we made the welfare state in the post-war era, there was a much bigger sense in economics that schools

and hospitals were long-term investments in a sustainable society, whereas the way we're looking at economics now, and I have a quote in the book from a former chief of the Bank of England, where he says that we shouldn't be looking at the value that the public sector creates. We should be looking at the value that it takes out of the real economy. So what What is seen as creating value now is IKEA, H&M, all the shops on Oxford Street. But there's not at all the same energy being spent on thinking about, well, what is the value of a good school? What is the value of a hospital?

And that is a paradigmatic change that there's been in economics and the way economics works. And I think this is something that is so central that right now we are much richer than we were in the 60s. We have much more technology and knowledge at our disposal. yet we seem to think that less is possible than people did 100 years ago when they were fighting for something like a day off, which they got, free school, free health care. And I think that is not a crisis of money.

That is a crisis of ambition and of collective imagination that we think less is possible than a person thought 50 years ago. Emma Holton there and her book, Deficit, is out now. To football now and our next. Guest probably had you jumping for joy last month, assuming you are an England fan. But let's be honest, the accomplishments of Lioness's goalkeeper Hannah Hampton are an inspiration wherever you're from. Hannah was born with a serious eye condition, which means she has impaired depth perception. Doctors told her she should never play football.

She also came into the recent UEFA European Women's Championship with questions over her ability to fill the gloves of recently retired Mary Earps. Add to that, she revealed her grandfather had died just days before the biggest tournament of her life. Despite those challenges, Hannah had an extraordinary tournament, more than rising to the challenge, particularly in those agonising penalty shootouts. It was announced recently she's been nominated for the Ballandor, the top gong in football. No doubt helped by the fact that she played a key role in helping her club Chelsea win the domestic treble last season. Well, Nula spoke to the extraordinary Hannah a few days ago and started by asking her how she was feeling.

It's going well, I'm shattered, I can't lie. But it's lovely to see the impact that we've had on the nation and how many people we really get behind us. What's the standout moment for you? What is it when you think back when I say, let's cast our mind back to a few weeks ago? Is there any particular match or any particular moment that you're like is seared in your memory?

I think the Netherlands game was more of my favourite from how as a team we got behind one another and we really encouraged and supported and made sure that everyone was really playing their own game and playing with that freedom and showcasing their abilities in a way that helped us get that win and it showed. You know, that's so interesting that thought of freedom or like letting, surrendering to it in a way instead of closing down because a lot of people talk about that and the magic of the team is the belief you had in yourselves to achieve even when chances of winning look slim.

There's a staggering statistic from the tournament, you probably heard this, that the team were only in the lead for less than five minutes of the knockout stages. Yeah, that's England. We saw that at the end of the final and we were thinking, no, it can't be. Can't be.

And then we actually were thinking back and it really is. And yeah, I just think that's that never-given-up attitude that us English have and wanted to just keep going until the end and fight it out and we're quite a resilient team and determined

and it probably showed in getting those results and scoring the goals in the last kick of the games in some instant but it's more lovely to think that I don't know we backed one another from the get-go and we knew that the qualities that we had from

the players starting and the players on the bench coming on as subs and even the ones who didn't come on as subs there their impact that they had and the support and the positivity that they gave from the bench was just gave us that little extra boost to go and make something happen and we knew we had the quality in any player that was coming on that

pitch so yeah they really showcase what they've got and yeah somehow we won tell us a little bit as well because there was some controversy when you became england's number one and some were upset the mary arps who had achieved so much wouldn't be in the squad But how do you keep your composure and a levelhead when there's so much scrutiny and noise, I suppose, I might describe it at coming at you? For me, it was more I'd worked hard to get to what I wanted to achieve. And for that to be happening, I didn't want anything to take that away from me. I knew I had to stay focused to almost repay Serena and say thanks for the belief and confidence that she put in me and making me. number one but it was obviously hard at times when you saw people making comments or comments

to you about the whole situation but I wasn't going to let them stop me from achieving what I wanted to achieve I knew what my dreams were and I knew I could go and do that and the summer just gone so just wanted to stay on myself stay playing with that a smile on my face with that enjoyment and then I knew I'd be able to showcase what I can do I love that I love that self-belief you know Mary Arps was credited with many things and one big thing which you're talking about there really was making goalkeeping cool again how important is that to you to see little girls as well

wanting to be goalkeepers? It's lovely I think like you just said Mary made it cool and I've got to try and keep that legacy going it's a very hard legacy to fill but no I'll look she started something incredible and I'm going to try and help finish that and push it to the next step And if that's encouraging one or two more girls to want to take up goalkeeping, then that's amazing.

But just from seeing the amount of girls or boys wanting to get the goalkeeper shirt instead of the normal shirt in itself is an achievement and a success for us and a little bonus. Do you have any advice for a girl who might be listening, who wants to be a goalie? I mean, some say, and you can tell me whether this is true or not, that goalkeepers are quite unconventional, some people might say. Yeah, people say keepers are crazy. I disagree, you know. I'm quite normal. I like to think. Goldcum is a unique position. It's a very individual position and one that requires a lot of resilient determination and a lot of self-belief. But look, it's a great position at the same time. It feels you with so much joy. I've played with a smile on my face because I enjoy it so much. So if it's what little girls, little boys want to go and do it, then I say go do it. If it's your dream, you go follow it and you do whatever puts. that smile on your face because life's hard in the best of times.

And speaking of hard and difficult, you announced recently, and I'm really sorry for your loss, that your grandfather died just a couple of days before the euros began. And he was often there on the pitch with you. Tell me a little bit more about him. Yeah, my granddad did a lot. If my parents couldn't come to football games or take me to England camps, then my grandparents were the first to volunteer. and say they'll step in there's many times when my granddad's been

on the side of football games in those muddy fields watching me play at Stoke or at Birmingham and yeah just the support that he gave all the time was immense and we had so many conversations

so many honest conversations if he thought I performed awfully or did quite well he didn't hold back even when I was younger so it's nice that he was able to see women's football

become a profession because even when I first started and he probably was thinking there's no profession for you here Hannah but he never judged he never told me to give up and he just kept pushing me on and him then see that become a job for me and see it become full time and the women's games changed massively he saw the first euro's win and he saw the success in the world cup he probably didn't get to see the euro's just gone and me achieve one of the dreams that we both set in playing in a major tournament but 100% I know he was there with us

and I made sure I carried him every game in the back of my shirt and believing in those penalties he definitely helped me with that extra push and trying to save whatever I possibly could and yeah, as much as the win was a lovely moment it was also emotional moment knowing that I couldn't share and celebrate with him.

Yeah, I'm sure and I'm sure he knew you were destined for greatness you know, I'm sure he saw it in you. One other aspect, another exceptional aspect about you you were never meant to play sport let alone be one of the most talented goalkeepers in the world you were born with an eye condition that's called strabismus so your eye is misaligned one eye turned in a direction that's different from the other and you were told by doctors to not that you

wouldn't be able to play sport if I've understood that correctly but your parents decided of course to let you play tell me a little bit more about the story of your eye I mean, the easy way of saying it was born cross-eyed, I was born with the squint. And I had multiple operations before I was three years old to straighten them. And my left eye is not completely straight right now. It will drift off. It's obviously just a lazy eye. And when I get overly tired, people will be able to tell.

And I got told later in life, obviously my parents got told before I did that I have no depth perception. So I can't judge distances as well. And I think that's probably what made doctors say that I wouldn't be able to play professional sports rather than. just having a lazy eye, I think not being able to judge anything, it probably doesn't make much sense being a goalkeeper, but like somehow we've made it work. Everyone says how do you adapt? I just think it's because I don't know anything different. It's normal for me. So as a young kid, you're able to adapt to things a lot easier. So no, it's helped out. But yeah, my parents got told by doctors that I wouldn't be able to play professional sports. I wouldn't be able to be a brain surgeon or

or a pilot and they never told me more so that they just wanted me to find what my enjoyment was in life and go and follow that. And even when they kept telling my parents that I shouldn't be doing it, they always just kept saying, we're going to let Hannah do whatever makes Hannah happy and let her keep going. And if so be it later in life that she can't do it, then we'll come to that. But right now, if it makes her happy, we're going to keep her going. And yeah, I've not stopped. It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah, I think if my parents told me something different, then who knows what I'd be doing, who knows where I'd be, and I probably wouldn't be sat here right now with everything that we've accomplished as myself personally and as a team, both at Chelsea and

England, but I think it's more just trying to say to everyone, go do what makes you happy rather than being told. Hannah Hampton there, and you can watch parts of the interview with Hannah over on our Instagram account, which is at BBC Woman's Hour. Well, that's it from me. Don't forget to join Noola on Monday when we'll be investigating why there are so many Vietnamese women working in nail bars in the UK. How do they get here and why? We'll be speaking to a journalist who's tracked their route back to a nail academy in Hanoi.

And it's been on our screens for almost 20 years and has spawned series across the world. And now the Real Housewives franchise is coming to London. But is the way it portrays women helpful? We'll be discussing it with a superfan. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.