Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Candace Bushnell, Lisa St Aubin de Terán, Ideological Gender Gap

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

The creator of Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell, whose column in the New York Observer was the inspiration behind the TV series, joins Anita in the studio. The real-life Carrie Bradshaw is bringing her one-woman show about creating the hit series to the West End and then doing a UK tour.After 20 years of silence, prize-winning author Lisa St Aubin de Terán is back with a new book. Aged 16, Lisa married a Venezuelan landowner-turned-bank robber; she eventually ran away from him with her young daughter only to end up trapped in a castle with the Scottish poet George MacBeth. From there she eloped to Italy and in 2004 she settled in north Mozambique, establishing the Teran Foundation to develop community tourism. She lived there until 2022 when a cyclone took the roof off her house, and returned to London with a bag full of manuscripts including her memoir, Better Broken than New. She joins Emma in studio.A new study says that an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women in countries on every continent. These increasingly different world views could have far-reaching consequences. One of the leading researchers in gender studies Dr Alice Evans, Senior Lecturer in the Social Science of Development at King’s College London tells Emma why Gen Z is two generations, not one. Emma also speaks to Professor Rosie Campbell, Director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London.Emma talks to the TV presenter Kaye Adams about her 10-year battle with HMRC over their claim she owed almost £125,000 in unpaid taxes. Best known for her role on the Loose Women panel show, she also hosts the morning show on BBC Radio Scotland. She says the protracted legal case has left her feeling “utterly, utterly beat up and gaslit”, despite her vindication.From cute cat memes to plush toys, a new exhibition at Somerset House explores the power of cuteness in contemporary culture. But is buying into a cute aesthetic regressive or even sexist, or can cute be reclaimed as a form of protest? And how would you feel, as a grown woman, about being labelled 'cute' or 'adorable'? To discuss, Emma is joined by Dr Isabel Galleymore, a consultant on the Cute exhibition; and the journalist Vicky Spratt.Have you ever thought about where your name came from? Perhaps you were named after a favourite relative, a character in a movie or maybe your parents just liked the sound of it. Photographer Deirdre Brennan wanted to mark the 1500th anniversary of Saint Brigid, one of the patron saints of Ireland. To do this, she photographed Brigids all over Ireland and asked them how they felt about their name. She joins Emma to discuss the project - as does one of the Brigids involved in her project - Brigid McDonnell, a sheep farmer from County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

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 Anita Rani 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 and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour, where we bring you the highlights from the week just gone. Coming up on the programme, TV presenter Kay Adams on her fight against HMRC. Do you share your name with a historic figure? We discuss one of the patron saints of Ireland, St Bridget. We look at the ideological gender divide with Professor Rosie Campbell and Dr Alice Evans. And what do you think about the term cute? We discuss a brand new exhibition at Somerset

House. Now, Sex and the City, the series that's said to have redefined modern relationships in the 90s and noughties, for some at least. For six years, it told the stories of four women living in New York City, navigating the complications of relationships and careers. Starring Sarah Jessica Parker, it was hugely popular and still is today, winning multiple awards and leading to two feature films. The original series finished in 2004, but it was revived in 2021 in the sequel, and just like that. Well, international best-selling novelist and author Candice Bushnell,

often referred to as the real Carrie Bradshaw, whose column in the New York Observer and subsequent novel were the inspiration behind the TV series, joined me in the studio. Here to bring her one-woman show to the West End and then a UK tour, True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex in the City, Candice began by telling me why it was time to tell her own story. You know, it was something that I had the opportunity to do it and and I, I took it. And it's, it's the show is really the origin story of Sex and the City. It's how I wrote Sex and the City, how hard I worked to get there, why I invented Carrie Bradshaw and what happened to me afterward. And it's mixed in with the, you know, my story of coming to New York with a couple of naughty sex stories thrown in there for good measure. And I play a game with the audience, real or not real, because there's so many things that

happened on the TV show that happened in my real life, but they were either better or worse. And do they get them right? Not all of them. Not all of them, but some of them, yes. Intriguing. Your first performance night in Southampton, how are you feeling? Feeling great, actually, and feeling excited. It's wonderful to do the show in a big theater. And I did it off-Broadway in New York, and I love doing it. You really sort of ride on the energy of the audience. The hardest performances to do are a matinee with people over 85. That's difficult.

The best performances are women. They come with their girlfriends. I've had groups of women come. I've had an entire sorority sisters group come. And do they come particularly to hear you talk about sex freely, which is what you did with the series, right? You know, there are a couple of naughty sex stories, but it really has much more of a feminist bent. And it's really about my philosophy of really being your own Mr. Big as opposed to finding your Mr. Big. And I've been, I mean, really driven ever since I was a little girl

to try to show women a different way to think as opposed to what society and the patriarchy tells women we should think and we should do and what we should feel. And as a little girl, I never felt any of those things. And I was actually very angry because the world was such an incredibly, obviously sexist place back in the 1960s. And I was always really inspired to somehow try to make change, you know, get a message out to women in the world and to somehow change the world for women. And I had absolutely no idea how I was going to do that. So my creativity is really a reflection of that. And, you know, that's what inspires me. And I have so many women who come up to me afterward and just say they feel so inspired. So, yes, there are a couple of naughty sex stories.

But it's about empowering women. But it's really about empowering women and being your own Mr. Big. And, you know, I take the audience through my life from, I mean, really from a little girl to the age that I am now in my 60s. And for those of those people listening don't know, you, as you said, you moved to New York when you were 19 and then eventually started writing your column. And tell us a bit more about who you were in the 80s and 90s and New York City and the scene that you're in and why and how the reaction to what you were writing about. Well, I think I was pretty much the same person that I am now. I started writing professionally at a very early age at 19. And then I wrote for women's magazines because, you know, if you were a woman and you didn't go to an Ivy League school, then that was pretty much where you could get work, was writing

for women's magazines. And I wrote really what were precursors to Sex and the City. I was writing about women, money, power, sex, and where those things intersect. So I was writing about that all through the 80s and the 90s. And, you know, even back in the 80s, I was really wanting to have my own column. And I just, you know, never gave up. And then finally, in the 90s, and this is one of the stories that I tell in True Tales, I got an opportunity to have my own column. And that column was Sex and the City. And that really was my big break, even though I'd already been writing professionally for 15 years. Yeah. Why do you think the series had such an impact? And why do you think it continues to resonate today? I mean, honestly, I think it had an impact because I mean, everybody says it's inspired by my work. It actually isn't. The title is based on the book by Candice Bushnell. So the series is really

based on my work. And the fact that my work was really about something very specific. It was about women in a new phase of their lives. And was single and did not need a man in the same way that women had needed a man basically to access the income stream. Yeah. In, you know, all of the time before really the 80s when we were encouraging women to go to college to get their MRS. I wonder how different it was. And to get a career as opposed to having their MRS. I wonder how different it would be. To get a career as opposed to having their MRS. Yeah. So I saw this is really a new kind of woman who doesn't need a man in the same way.

She does not need a man to survive. And what does that mean? That means that she has a very different sex life. Hence, Samantha. We love Samantha. I wonder how different it would be if you were writing it now. Well, I think the sex in the city years are now, you know, they're a kind of normal phase in women's lives. You know, there's they go to college and then they have their sex in the city years.

That's a time of, you know, freedom. And then they have what sex in the city years. That's a time of, you know, freedom. And then they have what I call your reproductive years. Well, there was a report out today saying that women are, for the first time in the 1950s, the average age was, you know, in the 20s. And now women are having their first child at 32. Yes. So that's changed. You were married for 10 years.

You're currently single, out dating. Are you on the apps? Yes, I am on a couple of apps. How's that going? I am. Probably the same as it's going for everybody. I'm not particularly fussed about finding someone. I'm really busy.

I have a lot of projects that I'm working on. And if somebody comes along and it works, that's great. The dating show sounds really interesting that you're working on. Tell us about that. Yes, it's a dating show for women over 50 in their 50s and 60s. And it would put women in the driver's seat. I mean, the idea would be four friends who are going to really take basically a month to be in a very immersive dating experience. And that is loosely based on the last book I wrote, Is There Still Sex in the City?, which is all about women dating in their 50s and 60s.

Candice Bushnell there. Next, prize-winning writer Lisa St. Aubin de Teran featured in a generation-defining list of authors in Granter magazine in 1983, which included Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Salman Rushdie and Rose Tremaine. Lisa's career trajectory, however, has been anything but conventional since then, and she's spent most of the last two decades living in northern Mozambique, not publishing any books. When a cyclone took the roof of her house off in 2022, she returned to London with a bag full of manuscripts, including her memoir, Better Broken Than New. She spoke to Emma and began by telling her how it felt to be back in

London at 70 years old and living on a houseboat. It feels pretty good actually and yes I'm living on a houseboat so that's new for me but I'm in Kensington and Chelsea which is where I was actually born so that feels rather sort of come full circle. A return in some ways. Why are you back? I came back to pick up my literary career really because I'd been 20 years completely out of it living in the bush. I'd been writing several novels, my autobiography, two collections of short stories but not publishing anything and meanwhile the agency that I was with had closed down and I just needed to come and be proactive, get it going. Had you missed being in the publishing world? Had you missed this circle that people thought you were going to spend a lot more time in?

Well, actually, for about the first 10 years, no. And then after that, yes, I really did. I missed I used to do lots of readings and meet my readers and I missed all that. I yes, I really did. I missed. I used to do lots of readings and meet my readers. And I missed all that. I did. I really did. Life in Mozambique, in the bush, as you call it. Can you tell us a bit about that? Describe it? Well, the first year or so, I lived in a safari tent on a beach in a very, very isolated district. And then I... Not on your own we should know with my then uh new partner

who's a Dutch cameraman who was building a hotel a barefoot luxury hotel in Mozambique so I went to Mozambique as a groupie you know he was there he was doing stuff I followed and then I saw incredible poverty and the fact that nobody was in this area helping at all there weren't any of the charities that you hear about and they weren't there. They'd never been there. So I started my own. And you also had a, you write about this, but very, very scary experience while you were there where you and your partner were attacked. Yes, that was when we rented a house in a city some hundreds of miles away.

And there was a home invasion, you know, like you see on the movies. But it happened to us. For hours? I mean, you were sort of fighting off. Yeah, they took the wall down to get in. It took 23 minutes to smash down the wall into our house. And so for 23 minutes, we knew that there was this gang coming in. And they said in Portuguese, you know, we're going to kill you. So forgive me, I meant minutes that feel like hours. That's what I meant. Because that

is actually a long time to be in that situation. It is a long time. And we kept calling, calling the emergency service and they kept saying, oh, the number you have called could not be reached at the moment. Please try again later, because that's what you get with the phone lines there. But you really had to fight, you and your partner, didn't you? Yeah, my partner was very heroic and actually eight of the people came in to the house and he fought them off and he saved my life, really did, and his. He was quite badly injured, but he saved us.

But you, I mean, you describe this as well, it's very visceral, blood and all that went on, but you say, and I think this is an interesting moment for anyone but you talk about until that moment you feel like there's an invincibility about oneself and then you're in that moment and you realize there isn't that was my reality check i had never before felt that i was really at risk with anything and i have lived a sort of different and slightly odd life but always in a kind of in a bubble sort of way and that day it was this is really happening to me and actually they're going to kill us how's your life changed do you think since or your outlook uh it's like waking up it was very strange

so um that had never been the case before but afterwards i just noticed a lot more things around me one of the things I noticed there was that a lot of people took advantage of the charity that I'd set up so they say in the village I swallowed the word no which I didn't used to have but I became more selective about who whose funeral we would be paying for in future. Big houses and Edwardian dresses. Talk to us about that, if you can. I was very shy when I was growing up in London. I was so shy I could hardly speak to anybody. So I sort of tried to express myself in dress. And in those days, the sort of maxi skirt was in.

So there were quite a lot of people with the hippies. And I wasn't actually really standing out so much because a lot of people dressed quite extravagantly in London in the late 60s and early 70s. But when I went to Venezuela, where such fashion had not arrived, they just thought I was barking mad. They just thought I was absolutely nutty to be wearing these dresses. And yeah, it was a problem when I arrived. And life in Venezuela, how would you look back on that? I look back on it with tremendous fondness.

When I was living it, it was hard. It got easier, but it was very difficult. I was in the Venezuelan Andes on a semi-feudal sugar plantation with a schizophrenic husband and 52 families of peasant workers. And I grew up in London. I didn't know anything about growing sugar cane or avocados or, you know, there weren't doctors. And I had to sort of do medical procedures. And all that was pretty weird. I mean, I watched television. I seen some, you know, Dr some you know dr. Kildare I thought I'll try that one in some ways you said you do some fearless throughout your life following different people and living such different lives and obviously it did provide in that instance inspiration

for for your novel I think that I became less scared I didn't start out fearless. I was a complete wimp. And that's a fact. I became more courageous because life pushed me to make a decision, be courageous or, you know, don't make it. That group of largely men that I talked about, those writers that you were kind of in a cohort with, were you friends with them were you peers how did that work well I'd met Salman Rushdie before because he was a university with my then husband George Macbeth and I later became friendly with Rose Tremaine who was absolutely lovely and a couple of the other people but they had a sort of the most of the men had a clique, and it was the literary clique, and I was not part of it. I came from nowhere and had immediate success. And I think because of the fact that I was able to publish a new book right in the middle of that campaign, because I had a whole suitcase full of books waiting to publish, it gave me a kind of unfair advantage, which didn't endear me to

those who were already at the top. You'll see this kind of upstart suddenly leaping up higher. But I was at the time married to George Macbeth, and he was part of the literary establishment. So I got a little bit of an easy ride there too. It sounds like in some ways, and you've done so many things in between with your life but it sounds like you're sort of almost back for unfinished business and coming back now with with your book because those names in some ways are going to be for some people more household names and what they've continued to do since that moment. Yeah I think that's fair to say yes. And for you now are you are you trying to write?

Have you got lots of books ready to go? I mean, what's the situation? Because you sound like you had a case full last time. I've got lots of books ready to go. I've got, I brought my suitcase full of stuff. And so, yes, in November, I'll be publishing a new novel, The Hobby. And the following spring, probably, I'll be publishing another another novel which I finished writing years ago. And as I've also got two collections of short stories,

I'll probably just put those on a blog or something when I work out how to make a blog work. Is there another adventure or you think this is it with you and where you live now and the houseboat or you never say never? It's good to have a peek inside the mind of someone who's lived all around the world and done different things. I'm not mad keen on adventures. I'm quite cautious.

I try to avoid them. I'm not mad keen on having another one. The way I've just described your life, you're not mad keen on it now? Now. Now, OK. You know, I've reached that point in my life when I would just very much not like to have an adventure. The rather marvellous Lisa St. Aubin de Taran there. Now, historically,

the views of men and women in the same generations have been relatively similar. It makes sense. Similar upbringings, formative experiences, coming of age at the same time. But recent research seems to show there's an ideological gap opening up within younger generations, in those under 30. The data shows that in countries on every continent in the world, young women are becoming much more liberal than young men. While women under 30 are increasingly likely to identify themselves as progressive and take more liberal positions on issues like immigration, gender and racial justice, their male counterparts remain more conservative.

And this week, an Ipsos polling of 3,600 people for King's College London's Policy Institute and the Global Institute for Women's Leadership found that one in four UK males aged 16 to 29 believe it's harder to be a man than a woman, and a fifth now look favourably on the social media influencer Andrew Tate. So what does this ideological gender divide really mean? Well, Professor Rosie Campbell is Director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's, and Dr Alice Evans, also from King's College, has been looking at the global data. They both spoke to Emma, and Dr Alice began by explaining what she's found. So first of all,

I think it's important to recognise that in many of these countries, everyone is becoming much more gender equal. The world has made enormous progress towards gender equality. Young men in particular are more gender equal than their grandparents and grandparents. But there is a sense, and it seems associated with economic resentment and frustration, that men feel threatened, that some men, a small minority, maybe 16% of men, so a small, small minority of men, do feel that women's gains might be at their expense. So there is a minority of men who do feel threatened

that women may be getting these handouts that they don't have. And is that driving the conservatism? So young women are becoming much more progressive, concerned about gender inequality, concerned about racial bias. But young men aren't becoming as liberal as women are. And do we know what that is? You've mentioned that it could be because of the gender equal games. I like the fact you started with a positive.

Always good to get that perspective. Is it only because of that? Are there other forces? Absolutely. So I think there are likely three possible explanations. One is that younger generations across in many countries see these zero sum mentalities, the idea that there is a fixed basket of goods. And if you are getting an apple, that means fewer apples for me. And so the zero sum mentality seems associated with economic stagnation or economic immobility. So in parts of Europe and indeed England where there's been economic stagnation, long-term or rising unemployment, we've seen votes for the far right, votes for Brexit, votes for populist parties.

And that's a similar idea that immigrants or women are taking our gains. So that's partly an economic cause. But also young people are coming of age where there have been cultural changes. So news corporations in a bid to garner publicity have been pushing negative stories like terrible atrocities, pumping people with terrible stories. And social media bubbles can also create these filter bubbles, you know, highlighting the most extreme examples, highlighting these outliers that don't represent everyone else's views, and then making them into seem into a larger story. And then cultural entrepreneurs like Andrew Tate, for example, can harness that economic resentment, harness that negativity, and then speak to men and say,

hey, listen, you're struggling economically and that's not your fault. It's the fault of these immigrants or it's the fault of these women. So it could be partly technological that these filter bubbles sort of reinforce that group thing. So on the manosphere, if men are self-selecting into these echo chambers where they're hearing negative stories, that story is reinforced because social media corporations want to keep users hooked. And they do that by feeding them information that appeals to their priors, and then showing them sensationalist polarizing content, which only makes them more inflamed and stay tuned. So this is partly a

story about technology, about culture, but also economics. Professor Rosie Campbell, let me bring you into this. What is your research showing? Well, we're looking specifically in the UK and we were digging into attitudes towards gender equality and feminism. I have to say, starting with a positive as well, there are lots and lots of different survey questions where men and women and young men and women didn't really differ. We're highlighting where they did. When it comes to questions about whether feminism has done more harm than good, whether toxic masculinity is a helpful or unhelpful term, or whether Andrew Tate, you know, his views are abhorrent or whether you support them. We do see this gender divide that Alice is describing with younger men more supportive of the anti-feminist position and younger women, particularly one thing that I've noticed is that younger women being very strongly feminist in their position compared to older generations of women. What do you take from that then? I'm so fascinated. When we started to see this about four or five years ago, I thought the difference we're seeing in young men was a bit of a blip in the data because what we've seen for a very long time is a trend of convergence with younger people becoming more liberal in their attitudes towards gender equality.

But what we've seen is more and more data. And Alice brings this global data into the conversation that reinforces this. And I can't help but think that Alice is right. What's what's the big thing that's changed? It's not suddenly that we have achieved gender equality and gone beyond it and that women suddenly we've got a matriarchy. That's not what's happened. So why would young men feel so differently from older men? And I think the one big change we can see is how we get our information. So I agree with Alice. I think it's very likely that the way we use technology has an important role to play in this. I'm looking through the messages. We are getting many. For one here that says, I have two sons aged 20 and 23, both at university. Both despise Andrew Tate and what he stands for.

Both despise and are alarmed by a right-wing agenda. Both are active in socialist politics and campaigning for equal rights. They don't feel threatened by women. I'm very proud of them, says Laura. Because we just had a whole space, I don't know if you could hear them,

you were with us at that point, of messages from younger people talking about the groups that you're talking about that some would find very concerning. But another one here from a 41-year-old man saying, I've noticed an unsettling culture

among frighteningly young boys as young as 11 of overt woman hatred, aggressive sexualised attitudes towards women and girls. One friend's son, who young as 11, of overt woman hatred, aggressive sexualised attitudes towards women and girls. One friend's son, who's now 13, openly talks about being predatory towards girls his age and looks forward to going out on the prowl using language my generation had left behind 20 years ago. He's an Andrew Tate fan, of course. He openly despises women having prominence in sports and sports commentary, and he's extremely hostile towards women and girls, generally starting with his own mother.

I think we are witnessing a worrying new trend, a sort of reactionary misogyny, and what's unprecedented is the age at which it starts. Just a chance to respond to both of that, knowing both of you, knowing the research as you do. Alice, what would you say to that? Well, I think there are always going to be people who've seen misogyny and seen sexism, right? But systematically, the world is, and especially Britain, is the most gender equal it's ever been. And I think we need to be careful not to give our daughters and young women the false impression that the world is stacked against them and that everyone is going to be incredibly sexist because that could only bring breed despondency and anxiety and mistrust which is not what we want and because it's not accurate or helpful but it's it's that question isn't it rosie about the other side of that is if if boys and you know i think about this myself having a boy and a

girl now but i've thought about it anyway but if boys receive and see a lot of the feminist messages and they don't have the context for it, there could be this reactionary misogyny that we're hearing about. I think that's right. And I think we do need to remind ourselves, it is a minority of boys, just like the first listener said. But, you know, 20%, you know, that's a lot of kids in a classroom that could be exposing both other boys and girls to really harmful behavior and messages so I do find that really alarming and I do think you know unwittingly some of us have had a role to play now I've got two daughters they're teenagers now and you know when they were kids there's so many books about inspiring women through history and so on and I do worry whether we do enough to communicate with boys to sort of

to talk about what it is to be a man in the modern world. And I think all young people start to look beyond their family and their immediate circle to find their identities. And we have not been aware enough about the dangers of social media, and actually about exactly what Alice describes, how you can end up in a completely, completely parallel universe. And I think we are beginning to understand that, but we need to work much harder to think about what are the interventions. I mean, my daughter said to me about a boy in primary school who was shouting at other girls down the corridor to turn around and drop themselves and show their bums. I mean, it's just shocking. I can't imagine that would happen when I was at school. So it's a big problem. And I think we need to recognise it. And we really need to think about what we're going to do to address it.

And have you, I mean, where is it with your research? And just because of your UK lens, is there anything you're seeing that is a good response to this? Well, it's early days to understanding. I mean, our traditional research methods tend to ask things like, what newspaper do you read? So we've got a lot to do to understand this phenomenon better.

But I do think... What snippet of news have you watched for 10 seconds more to the point? But I do think that actually identifying the problem is a big part of starting to resolve it. And we're having this conversation. And, you know, young men, they're seeing more women go to university.

We don't talk enough about issues like men's mental health. We suddenly we need to talk about gender equality and the benefits for men. And we need to have a corrective to the conversation so that more men feel included in that conversation. Professor Rosie Campbell and Dr Alice Evans there, and loads of you got in touch about this. One message here says, my 21-year-old son is a feminist. He mainly lived with me, his mum, growing up.

He's very aware of toxic masculinity and growing up we had many conversations regarding feminism and masculinity. I am so proud of him. And another here says, I think it's harder in many ways to be a young man today. It strikes me that women are broadly supportive of each other. We can be whatever version of a woman we want to be,

and it's all okay. For young men, there seems to be enormous tension around what kind of man you are and what this means in terms of how other men view you. Who do you choose as a positive role model, and how do you cope with other men's reactions to this? Still to come on the programme, we discuss the term cute with Dr Isabel Gallimore from the University of Birmingham and journalist Vicky Spratt. Do you know much about one of the patron

saints of Ireland? Irish photographer Deirdre Brennan tells us about her new project. And remember that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at 10am during the week. Just subscribe to The Daily Podcast for free via BBC Sounds. Now, what's it like to go up against a system year after year? TV presenter Kay Adams knows after her tax liability turned into a life-changing ordeal and a 10-year battle with HMRC. The tax authorities claimed she'd been underpaying her taxes, owing almost £125,000. She said she didn't and took HMRC to tribunal, not once but three times, and has been vindicated.

You may know Kay from Loose Women and BBC Radio Scotland. She joined Emma and began by explaining whether she felt vindicated. The email that I got from them is we have decided not to pursue this. And that was at full stop. They gave a slightly fuller statement to the press, which was we decide that this is not proportionate to pursue this at the time. At no point have they conceded that actually I have won. In fact, it's quite obvious they are not conceding it, which kind of leaves me with the question, but says that an error in law has been committed by one of the earlier tribunals.

So refers it back down to the original tribunal. And I win that one. And yet, you know, HMRC are saying, well, we have decided that it is not proportionate to pursue it, which, you know, I have described that as gaslighting. And some people have questioned me on that. And I've thought about it. But I do think it is gaslighting because if you go through three tribunals and you win every one and they have never won on my case and yet still they

decline to say, OK, right, we take the word of the tribunals here. We're listening to what they're saying. That's just leaving me in this limbo. And, you know, after 10 years of fighting this, I waited for this moment that they would say we're not going to, we're going to leave you alone. And I expected to feel elated. And I feel like a punch bag. Hold that thought and let me come back to it.

For those who don't know what's happened to you, why were you accused of not paying enough tax?. But anyway, so IR35, so this is legislation which covers what was called disguised employment. So basically people who would work for the same person, the same employer, most of the time, nine to five. And they were being paid in such a way that the employer was being able to pay less national insurance. So that's really the bit where the less tax comes in. Now, in the media business, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, Emma, when you're a freelance person, you want to work for as many people as you possibly can. You want to get as many jobs as you can with as many different engages as you can. the late 90s, I left a very secure job where I would have had all the pension benefits, redundancy, thickness, maternity, etc. because I decided to take my chances in the freelance market. And that's the way that I organized my affairs. It was perfectly routine in our industry and another industry that I have to say. I'm not saying it was the majority. I don't know. For

people like me, it was incredibly common. You had a portfolio of work. You were out there as a self-employed person. You didn't want any of those benefits or employment rights. And this is the way we organised our affairs because you have an agent nowadays, someone to help you with social media, etc. Your own little business. And around 2014, there was no change in legislation, but HMRC decided to interpret the legislation in a different way. And that's what I have an issue with, to, quote, crack down on people and to try and get more tax out of them. So one of the really egregious things about this is that it's retrospective. You're going along for 10, 15 years, filing your tax returns, everything's fine. There's nothing secretive about it. There's

nothing hidden. And then suddenly what you've been doing for 10 or 15 years is not okay. I mean, when I first got the letter from them, I thought they'd made a mistake. I genuinely wasn't worried about it. I thought they'd clearly made a mistake. And this has carried on, as you say, for a decade. And you've had many letters in that time. And you've been through these processes. You've carried on doing this. What would you say the experience of dealing with HMRC has been like? Well, you're treated like a wrongdoer. You're treated like, well, I mean, I wouldn't say a criminal. Maybe that's too much, but you're treated like a wrongdoer. You're treated like, well, I mean, I wouldn't say a criminal, maybe that's too much, but you're treated like a wrongdoer. I mean, you know, I'm just an ordinary Joe who went to university, who tried to work hard, who's built a career. You know, I might

have had a few parking tickets, but that's about the limit, I think, of my wrongdoing. I generally am somebody who sticks by the rules. But suddenly you're cast in this position of a tax dodger, which to me, Emma, I cannot express to you how horrific that is. You might as well call me a thief. I want to pay my taxes. I want to contribute. I work hard. I pay a lot of tax. And I'm delighted to do so. So to somehow be cast in this role as somebody who's trying to cheat the system, that has been the most awful part of it. And for a long time, I carried a level of shame about that. But, you know, as it has gone on, and I, you know, and so at first, when I went to the first tribunal, I thought, you know what, I'll take the verdict. I'll take the verdict. If I've made a

mistake, I'll take the verdict. But I won it. And then you go to the second one and I win it again. And then you think, well, what is going on here? Because I don't have the resources to fight these legal battles. HMRC has the bottomless pit of the taxpayer's purse. I mean, this has cost me personally £200,000 to fight and get a victory. And they are offering virtually no costs whatsoever. If I had decided way back in 2014 to settle, I would be so much better off. Now, so the reason I am talking about this now is, what is justice? Where is the accountability here? And we're back to this David and Goliath scenario whereby a government organisation decides what the answer is and is ruddy well going to keep going until they get the answer they want.

Well, this time they haven't. The statement that we have here from an HMRC spokesperson says we always seek to resolve disputes out of court and only take action to litigate. They did not. I'll finish just this bit but I'll let you respond. Sorry. No, no, no, don't apologise. I get that this is hugely personal for you. And only take action

to litigate where this isn't possible. We carefully consider various factors when deciding whether to appeal litigation cases including the tax we think is due under the law, whether clarification of that law would be helpful and whether we can achieve that clarification in other ways. We're committed to treating all taxpayers with respect. What were you about to say there?

Yeah, well, let me just respond to the first bit. We seek to resolve without going to litigation. In my instance, that is a lie. And that's a very strong statement from me, but it's true. And I also know of many, many other people in my profession and other professions who've got in touch with me who would back me up on that. They do not feel that there is any real, genuine, reasonable attempt to resolve things without litigation. But the other one, which is so important here for the bigger point, you know, we seek clarification, right? The HMRC seeks clarification. Now, it's not a

lawmaking body, HMRC. It's supposed to apply the law. Well, the law has been clarified to HMRC, in my particular instance, on three occasions. What I don't understand is why are they not saying, okay, that's lovely. Thank you very much. This case has now been heard in three different courts. They have all come to the same conclusion. We now have the clarification that we were looking for. Thank you very much. What do you think it is, Kay, about the culture?

Because I've spoken to many people over the years, as I'm sure you have, where if they have come up against a system, they actually don't get a resolution at the end of it. There's no either apology or it was wrong, even when it's been found in your case for you to have won these repeat tribunals. There's no closing of the case and there's no conclusion. So you're left, as you've described it, in this limbo. You know, I can't even believe I'm saying this because I'm a politics and economics student. I believe in the rule of law. I believe in the establishment.

But this has seriously diminished my faith because it does feel like the big guy with the power, and when I say guy, I'm not genderizing that, you know, the big force with the power does not want to be proved wrong. Has it changed you as a person, this experience? No, I've always been bloody minded. I take it from my mother.

I should have given up a long time ago. You know, that would have been the easy way out. I should have taken the easy way out. Why? If you felt shame and you've been proven that you hadn't done the wrong thing, a lot of people would say, no, you keep going. But they still haven't conceded it. They still, what they have done with that statement that so angered me was that they retained the power by saying, we have decided not to pursue this any further. So they've retained the power. Instead of saying, three tribunals have found in this woman's favour and therefore we accept their verdict.

And for me, there is a critical difference in that. It can be hard to explain these sorts of cases. And sympathy can be short on the ground, which I imagine you... And I'm not looking for sympathy. No, no, no, but I imagine you've kind of baked that in when deciding whether to speak out about this experience. But something must have driven you to do that. And what is it? And there's lots that's great about our country, you know, and I know we are very negative about it at times because these are difficult times. But our institutions, our government has to work for us. It has to be fair. It has to be transparent and it has to be accountable. And that is important. And in this instance, I don't feel it has been.

And if you had your time again on this, a couple of quick fires, if I may, would you fight it again? Yes. And going right back to that initial advice that you and many others were given about how to structure your affairs, do you think about that differently? No, it was absolutely commonplace. I know it was, but it's interesting when somebody's come to the end of something, and you will have given this great thought, it's been 10 years of your life. So it's good to hear what you feel about it. No, I think the advice at the time was perfectly legitimate. And more importantly, HMRC thought the advice was perfectly legitimate. For many, many, many years, they never questioned it. They were quite comfortable with

it. They changed their position on it, but they just failed to tell the rest of us. How are you going to get over this? How are you going to, because it's not, that closure, if I could call it that, isn't coming from HMRC. How are you going to move on, do you think? You do move on in life, don't you? You get perspective. I know I'm a lucky, lucky person, but on this occasion I just think it's important to make a bit of noise. TV presenter Kay Adams there. Now how do you feel about the word cute and things being deemed sweet from cute cat memes to adorable toys a new exhibition at Somerset House explores the power of cuteness in contemporary culture but is buying

into being cute regressive and a retreat from adulthood? Or can cute be reclaimed as a form of self-expression or even protest? And how would you feel as a grown woman, as one of our next guests has, being labelled cute or adorable? Emma spoke to Dr Isabel Gallimore from the University of Birmingham, a consultant who worked on this cute exhibition, and the journalist Vicky Spratt. Isabel began by explaining how we can define cuteness. There are many different ways of thinking about cuteness. We might go right back to the baby's face. We often think about the baby's

face as a blueprint for cuteness, so those big eyes and chubby cheeks, triggering a kind of vulnerability that we might then respond to with care. And Conrad Lorenz, an anthropologist, described this as baby schema. But of course, we see this within all sorts of things far away from the realm of babies. We see it in tree frogs. We might see it in a hot dog stand that's trying to attract our attention with a cute hot dog. And we see, of course, some really strange kind of subversions and embraces of cuteness when it comes to gender, which I'm sure we'll have time to talk about this morning. We definitely will. And it's also been used commercially, hasn't it? You know, if you think about different brands that are cute, look like they're for children, but hugely appeal to adults.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think this comes really from the 1950s where women were becoming a new consumer market to target in terms of consumerism. So lots of commodities with cuteness on that are supposed to kind of be targeted towards women in terms of their maternal instincts, in terms of their caregiving nature, their empathy, so that we buy that cute thing in order to look after it. But of course, we're also purchasing the commodity in that process. Is that a problem when you've looked at this? Is it an issue that women are thought of as the ones who are susceptible to cute, and then we find ourselves perhaps being susceptible, and it kind of follows trend, follows suit? To some degree. I mean, I think, you know, back in the 50s, they were probably onto something.

But I think it also appeals to so many different people. We see, you know, children obviously taken in by cuteness. I think men are taken in by it too. There are some really interesting subcultures where men are really attracted, well, get a lot out of My Little Pony, for example. So we have this whole subculture called bronies, which are men who find life advice through the commodities of My Little Pony and of course through the animated series as well so I don't think it's just women that this is targeting. Is that a retreat from adulthood though that should be you know examined is there a concern about it and you know I'm trying to draw a line between the sinister side of that of course and what some would be concerned about I'm not ignoring that but you are looking at this in a very specific way. Yeah, I mean, we can certainly understand cuteness as a kind of aesthetic of childhood.

And I think nowadays, you know, there's a lot of talk about adulting and a very kind of self-conscious attitude towards what we might be as adults versus, you know, kind of a desire to go back to childhood. In terms of Japan and its culture of kawaii, which is often described as a culture of cuteness, certainly there are ideas, at least from the Western world, that that sense of cuteness is a retreat from adulthood. It's a desire to get back to the childhood that people have left behind. But I think it's actually more complex than that. So we see lots of talk of kawaii fashion. So we often talk about lolita fashions that Japanese women might

be wearing and of course to us lolita immediately speaks of Nabokov's novel and of really uneasy relationships between men and much younger girls but for Japan I think lolita means many different things it means elegance it means comfort and women are dressing in these kind of quite beautiful costumes, often involving lace and Victorian style dress, but also repurposing toys into handbags. And sometimes these fashions have quite a grotesque side to them as well, where kawaii is mixed with other aesthetics. So the monstrous as well as one which comes into the exhibition at Somerset House. So cuteness isn't just about this kind of saccharine, sweet, infantile aesthetic. It's also about something quite subversive, I think. So subversive, but also it depends the audience as ever, who it's for. Is it for, you know, in Japan, is it for the women or is it for the male gaze?

Exactly. So, yeah, I I mean I think there's always a little bit of a kind of difficulty around what an individual might think that they're doing with cuteness versus how society sees them and again as you say with the male gaze this can be a real problem. I think with kawaii cultures of fashion I think there's a sense of empowerment of creative expression and women who dress and make their own costumes, imagine themselves and speak of themselves as creative practitioners. So really leaning into, you know, strength, self-expression, individuality. And I think this links into Western ideas around dressing for serotonin levels, you know, increasing serotonin

through bright colours, making ourselves happier and maybe hopefully making people around us happier too through a cute aesthetic. Vicky Spratt, the journalist on the line I mentioned in our introduction, have you been called cute? I have actually many times and I often think it might be because I'm five foot one. So there is this sort of link that's often made with things being small or young and sweet and cute. And I have to say, depending on the setting, I have a very, very different reaction to it. Everything we've been discussing in an academic context of dissecting this is actually very, very important. But I think there's a difference between choosing to do something and having it being being applied to you so if i deliberately have done something that i might consider to be sweet for someone and they're

like oh that was really sweet of you um i wouldn't mind it so much particularly not in my intimate relationships but i was recently referred to as sweet um by a sort of more senior male colleague and i did it it wasn't in intention at all, but it did make me think, wait a second, how do you see me? I'm 36 years old and we're having a very, very serious conversation. I don't think it was, it wasn't intended with any malice at all, but it definitely made me bolt slightly. So I think it's still such a loaded term and I think cuteness is is incredibly gendered and and it's often used to describe women not not necessarily when they're opting into it like oh you're being so cute or it was really cute when you did that and I think that can actually be quite undermining and a bit

demeaning but then there's a flip side to this right so I might send a pair of shoes that I'm thinking of buying to a friend and they might reply cute and what they mean is yeah buy them they're great and in that context I don't think the word means what it means when somebody who potentially is more powerful than you in a personal or a professional relationship uses the word so I think it's really about contact. To come back to you Isabel where we hear from V Vicky, it's got huge problems and it's highly gendered, the word cute. What do you say to that? I can't disagree. I mean, I think there's definitely that side to it. We have a real problem with cuteness, I think, especially in the Western world. I mean, when we talk about the kind of scholarly side of cuteness, we have scholars like Sayan Nye who talk about cuteness as the aestheticization of powerlessness.

It's the epitome of what is vulnerable and without agency. And, you know, this appears in lots of different ways. When we look at Hello Kitty, who is a Sanrio cartoon character who's turning 50 this year, we notice often that she doesn't have a mouth. And there's something quite disturbing when we realise that, that we've got this female animal character that can't speak for herself. Fascinating. Dr Isabel Gallimore and journalist Vicky Sprout there. Now, the 1st of February this week marks the start of spring, as well as St Bridget's Day in Ireland. One of the patron saints of Ireland and the only woman. Photographer Deirdre Brennan wanted to mark Bridget's anniversary by inviting women from all over Ireland with the same name

to come and pose for a photograph and tell her how they felt about sharing their name with this saint. Deirdre spoke to Emma alongside one of the Bridgets involved, Bridget McDonnell, a farmer from County Antrim in Northern Ireland. Deirdre began by telling Emma about the origins of the figure of Bridget. There's actually two Bridgets. There's also Bridget the Goddess. She was one of the most important pre-Christian goddesses in Ireland that was worshipped by the Druids. So a lot of the women would have an affinity either with St. Bridget or with the goddess Bridget.

So I suppose how the idea came about, a lot of my work is inspired by social and literary anniversaries, you know, coming up to the 1500th anniversary of the death of St. Bridget. Like all good ideas that came to me one morning while I was making a cup of tea, I thought I will do a portrait photography project on women named Bridget. So then I, you know, I set about finding or looking for Bridget. So it's not the most popular name anymore in Ireland. So I was delighted that I photographed her. I did actually find a lot of women and children.

So I photographed women and children named Bridget Ard's iterations from eight weeks of age to 106 years of age. Wow. And just before we speak to a subject here, St. Bridget, tell us about her. St. Bridget was, she was born in 450 in Faherd. She was an abbess who founded a monastic community in County Kildare in the 5th century. So the themes that are associated with Bridget, she's the patron saint of a lot of things, wisdom, inspiration, poetry, healing. She's also the patron saint of livestock and this little girl whose life was saved by having the vow from a calf put into her heart

and her name was Bridget. So it was such an extraordinary coincidence that's in Bridget as the patron saint of cattle and this little girl's life. Okay, let me bring in, I feel a bit rude on this particular day, not to talk to a Bridget. Good morning, Bridget MacDonald. Where's your name from? Is it something in the family? My great-grandmother was Bridget.

I had an aunt Bridget. I've actually named my own daughter Bridget. And so it's sort of come through, you know, so female Bridget, sort of in living memory, if you put it like that. And how do you feel about your name? What was it like growing up? Well, I grew up in sort of late 60s, early 70s. And obviously went through the troubles in Northern Ireland being called Bridget, which was often perceived as a tricolour around my head.

So if you went to company or something like that and people wanted to know what your name was, I was always immediately identified as a Catholic. So that was one aspect of being called Bridget. So you get some negative things there, but there was a lot of good things as well because you were the patron saint of Ireland and you could always claim to have saintly virtues and get a bit of a laugh. I'm definitely not the goddess. Definitely not the goddess. I have to claim to be the saint.

Yeah, the saint, not the goddess. I like that delineation. Has it got you out of some trouble saying's saintly quality. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I was the youngest of our family. And, you know, I know Deirdre touched there on the, you know, the sort of making of St. Bridget's Cross, is that the whole concept of, you know, Bridget being the patron saint of animals, you know, different animals, farm animals. So where I live and throughout enormous amounts of Ireland, I'm sure rural Ireland anyway, you know,

last night we'd got rushes in and made St Bridget's crosses, which then were put out in buyers and things to, you know, to sort of basically protect the herd or whatever was in that, you know, from harm. And the youngest member of the house should go out to collect the rushes and come back and knock the door.

And then regardless of what their name is, whoever's in the house says, come in Bridget. And in my case, I was the youngest and I was Bridget so it all fit in quite nicely. Yeah, and as a sheep farmer, that obviously speaks to your line of work. And also, we're the highest

hill farm in County Antrim so we've got plenty of rushes which are the means of making the crosses. So it all comes together. And just, I mean, this has nothing to do with your particular name, but I'm always fascinated when people give the same name that they have to their daughter or son.

Was that something that you had planned to do? No, it wasn't actually. I was sick when my daughter was christened and we had, my husband and I debated, you know, what names, what names, what names, and we hadn't come to any conclusion. And in the end, I think it was a sort of almost collective family decision. The baby went to the chapel to get christened. And when I turned up, everybody seemed to have decided that Bridget was a good name for her. So she would call Bridget then. I spoke to her this morning and I asked her,

when she was a child she didn't like being called Bridget, she'd have liked to have a more sort of modern Irish name I suppose and I asked her there just about half an hour ago, how do you feel now about being called Bridget and she said, I like it. She said I like it. She thought it was a clear sort of definite name, I like it. She said, I like it. She thought it was, you know, a clear sort of definite name. It said something.

Bridget MacDonald and photographer Deirdre Brennan there. That's all from me on Weekend Woman's Hour. I'll be back with you on Monday from 10, where I'll be joined by actor Ambika Maud to discuss her new role in the Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls' novel One Day. You don't want to miss it. Until then, enjoy the rest

of your weekend. The Post Office Horizon scandal has shocked Britain. Post Office IT scandal, which has had so much publicity, hasn't it, over the last... This is a scandal of historic proportions. I've been following the story for more than a decade, hearing about the suffering of sub-postmasters like Joe Hamilton and Alan Bates. It was just horrendous. The whole thing was horrendous. I was told you can't afford to take on post office. And about their extraordinary fight for justice. What was motivating you? Well, it was wrong what they did.

Listen to the true story firsthand from the people who lived it in The Great Post Office Trial from BBC Radio 4 with me, Nick Wallace. Subscribe on BBC Sounds. stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's 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.