Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Consent, 80 years of Woman's Hour, The Lost Children of Tuam

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

To mark our 80th anniversary, Woman's Hour commissioned a survey of 2,000 women across the UK to explore how women feel about using their voice in different areas of their lives. One of the questions we asked was: How many times, if any, have you felt unable to say no in a sexual encounter? Anita Rani is joined by Faustine Petron of the Make It Mandatory campaign; Ellie Softley, of the charity Everyone's Invited; and psychotherapist Dr Paula Hall of Pivotal Recovery.To mark 80 years on air, we delve into the Woman's Hour archive, with voices including suffragette Mary Richardson from 1957, Margaret Thatcher talking about childcare in 1990 and Rose McGowan talking in 2018 on reigniting the #metoo movement.Monica Dolan is starring in a new film, The Lost Children of Tuam. In it, she plays Catherine Corless, whose relentless pursuit of the truth helped to expose the story of hundreds of babies from an Irish mother and baby home being disposed of in a disused sewage tank. Monica joins Nuala McGovern, along with journalist Alison O’Reilly, to discuss this powerful tale of community activism.Extreme heat affects pregnancies, newborns and maternity services around the world, according to new research. Anita speaks to Julia Gillard, Chair of Wellcome and former Prime Minister of Australia and Dr Amy Mizen, Co-Principal Investigator for the MAGENTA project, funded by Wellcome.The Party is an ITV drama based on the acclaimed novel by Elizabeth Day and adapted by award-winning writer and actor Sarah Solemani. Elizabeth and Sarah join Kylie Pentelow to discuss this story of class, power, betrayal and secrets.And to celebrate 80 years of Woman's Hour we asked the poet Hollie McNish to write us a birthday poem.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Kirsty McQuire

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret, of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Seward.

Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to the programme coming up. In the week of our 80th birthday, a poll of 2,000 women to find out how they feel about using their voice in public and in private. We discuss the party, not ours, but the new team. TV drama led by women behind the scenes. And we share a new poem to mark eight decades of women talking to women on this very program.

But we begin with the issue of consent. To mark our 80th anniversary, we commissioned a survey of 2,000 women across the UK to get a sense of how women feel about using their voice in different parts of their life, from the most public to the most private spaces. And one of the questions we asked was, How many times, if any, have you felt unable to say no in a sexual encounter? More than one in three of all women surveyed said this had happened to them and over a quarter of all the women surveyed said it had happened more than once.

The numbers are even higher for younger women. 44% of women aged 18 to 29 and 45% of women who are between 30 and 45 said they felt unable to say no in a sexual encounter. at least once. In light of that data, on Thursday's program, we talked about consent in all its complexity. I was joined in the studio by a group of women who have really driven change and knowledge in this area, helping other women and men find their voices, and some of whom have had their own journeys in speaking out. Forstein Petron founded the Make It Mandatory Campaign five years ago, fighting to get the government to extend relationship and sex education to all 16 to 18-year-olds

after realizing the difference it would have made to her own teenage years. Ellie Softly, a founding member of Everyone's Invited, a charity dedicated to exposing and eradicating rape culture, she created their education program and has discussed consent with young people in schools across the UK. And Dr Paula Hall, the founder of Pivotal Recovery and a psychotherapist for over 30 years who specialises in porn addiction. She's seen firsthand the impact that the digital world has had on multiple generations. I began by asking Ellie, who works in relationships and sex education, what she made of those figures. All of us, everyone's invited, and I'm sure across the sector, and I'm sure for a lot of women as well,

don't find those numbers surprising in the slightest. We live in a world in which the most common demographic to report, rape as 14-year-old girls. And when we go into schools and we talk to young people about consent, there is still this confusion over what it looks like, what it means, how it feels. And so with our everyone's invited program, what we're really trying to do is empower young people to have those conversations and to ground those experiences in their reality. because a lot of the time young people, they view rape and sexual violence

is something that happens by a stranger down a dark alleyway, which, you know, it does happen. But for the majority of women, you know, six and seven women, they know the person that has hurt them. And I think we have to be honest about that and then give them the tools to be able to communicate, not just physically but verbally, about how they want to engage sexually.

I like this, I don't like this, this feels good, this doesn't feel good. And it's no surprise, really, when we talk to young women that they don't feel like they can speak up because society's telling them to be quiet a lot of the time. And in pornography, they are also silent a lot of the time. Paula, you've been working as a sex therapist for over 30 years. What's your reaction to those? And do you think our experiences of understanding consent have changed?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, like Kelly, completely agree that unfortunately it's not surprising to see that change. It's something that was sort of here all the time and hearing also from men's experience of not knowing how to ask, not knowing what to say. But yes, reflecting on over 30 years of working as a sex therapist, it's really interesting thinking of how consent has changed. So, for example, 70 years ago, long, long time ago, Consent was saying, I do at the altar. That was it. That was consent.

And sex was very much something that was men's prerogative and was women's duty. And then, of course, we hit the 60s, 70s, 80s. Things really changed. Revolutionary book by Nancy Friday called My Secret Garden. And actually started talking about women having desires. Women had fantasies. And this was all seen as something very, you know, very, very kind of revolutionary at the time. But since then, the internet has really changed. the way in which we understand consent.

And I think as something we'll almost certainly talk about more later in the programme, there is a difference between consent and having a voice. And I think that's the challenge really now is that even if you do say yes, do you know what you're saying yes too? And I think that's very different from how it was perhaps in the grandparents' day when they were saying yes at the altar. 844. We've had a message straight in from Rosa, who's 82.

And she says, in the 60s, we did not even know that no. was an option. Forstein, the numbers are even higher for younger women. Forty-four percent of women aged 18 to 29, 45 percent of women between 30 and 45 said they couldn't say no. What are young women saying to you about consent? So I think for us at Make It Mandatory, we're seeing that consent is not only an education issue, whilst education does have a role to play, it is also an attitude issue. There are people who do know what consent is, but they choose. to ignore or woman or girls' voice when she expresses that. So there is a lot of cultural work yet to be done,

I think, alongside education in changing misogynistic and patriarchal attitudes. But I think that as Paula mentioned, the internet, the rise of AI, and all of these different platforms, I get young girls, girls as young as 14, 15, reaching out to me saying, my brother's been watching Andrew Tate, and Andrew Tate has many times, you know, all these influences have said that being in a relationship is almost consent in and of itself.

And then these are the kind of attitudes that boys in these girls' class have and it makes it really, really hard to go from there. And we will get to how you counteract those. But before we do, I'd like to talk a bit about your own experience of finding your voice in this area and as a campaigner.

So my journey to where I am today has been, yeah, quite a tumultuous one. I think, so I met this boy in my college when I was 16 years old, it was my first ever relationship. So I had no kind of benchmark. I had nothing to compare it to. And the relationship started off quite normally, I'd say. I think this is a really important point to make

because so many people ask survivors things like, why on earth did you get with him if he was so awful? No woman or girl would actively choose to get with someone horrible. All abusive men seem lovely at first. So I met this boy at my college, and I was in a relationship with him and I think a few months down the line it started to get now

what I recognise as controlling but at the time being so young and not having had any education on this at school I genuinely perceived this as loving and caring behaviour rather than something that was sort of abusive and it's only when the police later became involved a few years down the line

that I realised actually everything that's happened to me is a form of domestic abuse and my ex-partner was actually sent to prison whilst I was still a teenager and I think that experience of being out of that relationship and having the space to process what happened to me and unpack it made me realise that I was at such a vulnerable age and I had no education from this at school and that made me kind of delve into make it mandatory and and it all started with a petition at university it all started with a petition university. So it was a very difficult time I needed to because whilst I was going through the court case against my ex-partner, I was also applying to read undergraduate degree at Cambridge.

So stressful in and of itself, but this was really, really hard time. You know, I look back now, I was just saying this the other day to my mom and I was like, how did I do that? When I was reading about you, I thought the same thing. I just, I can't, I'm like, was that me? I just can't believe how much I was going through and that I've come out the other side. So I kind of, research online what provision exists for education. I didn't know anything about it. I was like, let me get clued up on education and what exists out there. And I saw that relationships and sex education is only compulsory in primary school all the way up to year 11, so 16. Once you turn 16 and you do sixth form or college, there's no mandatory education on these topics whatsoever.

And that loophole in the law and me kind of connecting that to my experience being 16, not having access to this, made me think I have to do something about this so someone else doesn't go through it. At what point in the relationship did you realize that you were being controlled? I think, to be completely honest with you, I think I only properly realized that once the police got involved. I just, I couldn't see it. I think it's very easy to be kind of blurred,

especially if you're in a manipulative or coercive situation and they'll be telling you, for example, in my situation, I would go to work and he would physically show up to my workplace to ensure that I was actually at work. and he would say things like it's caring, it's loving, it's because I just want to make sure that you're okay, you know, how it is for women and girls nowadays, the world isn't safe,

he would kind of flip it back onto me. So I think it took me a very long time to come to terms of that. How did you eventually manage to leave? So what happened was it was lockdown. Lockdown was announced, and I know for most people, lockdown being announced was horrible, a horrible experience, very isolating experience.

For me, it was, once in a lifetime opportunity to break up with him. When that lockdown was announced, something twigged, and I thought I actually have to get out of this because it was getting worse. It went from coercive and controlling to violent, and that's when I thought, if I want a chance at another life,

I really have to split up with him. So the lockdown came, and that's when I took those steps to kind of exit the relationship. And what difference do you think that a relationship and sex education could have made for you? I think fundamentally it would have given me a language.

I'm 25. I didn't know what coercive control was at that time. I didn't even know it was a thing. If I had had lessons on this in school, a safe space with a teacher, talking about the subtle signs of abuse and how coercive control starts, I think I could have left that relationship

before it turned violent and before I stayed in it for four years. Ellie, you are out in schools delivering sex and relationship education. How do you build that kind of awareness that can help people spot unhealthy relationships? And then where does consent fit into that? So we work across primary schools and secondary schools. And we have quite a different approach to both of those different settings. As I said previously, for us, it's really about giving young people autonomy in a conversation.

And that really goes down to empowering them with the language. You know, I have these memories of when I go into schools and I talk to young people about cyber flashing or about, you know, upskirting. And you see this realization on these 13, 14 year old girls' faces that, oh my God, what happened to me has a name. It has a name. And you see them holding each other's hands in an assembly. And that's what we want to do. We want to give them the opportunity to label what's happened to them. but more than that, we want to genuinely be preventative.

And right now, we're being reactive. And so that's where our primary school program comes in. And what we're doing is we're working with students in year five, who are about nine and ten years old. And we're introducing consent through emotional literacy. So we're teaching them, how does something make me feel? And what does that mean? How do you do that with someone so young?

What do you say to them? Yeah. So it's actually interesting because they know, they understand. So like if you go into a room of 10 year olds and you say, does everybody know what consent is? They all go, yeah, it means giving permission to do something? And you say, do you understand what happiness feels like? And they'll explain, yeah, it feels, I have it in my chest and my stomach and I feel like I want to jump.

And so they understand these emotions and they can read each other's emotions. So we're helping them label them. then we're helping them regulate emotions that might be negative for them. So if you experience anger or frustration, how does that make you feel? And how can we respond in a way that is healthy? So we teach them breathing exercises, counting around their fingers. And then we talk about consent. And we do this through a multitude of different ways,

but one of them is through an ice cream game, where we ask the whole class, like, would anybody like some ice cream? And the crowd goes wild. everybody's like me, me, me. And then you say, well, what if the ice cream was baked bean flavour? And they all go, oh, no. And you say, okay, so you were happy with ice cream.

But when I gave you more details about what was going to happen, you weren't so sure about that. It's what, to your point, Paula, you know, knowing what you're even consenting to. Can we bring porn into the conversation as well? And how does that impact the expectation of sex and the understanding of consent? Some research I was involved in a couple of years ago with Ladd Bible showed that 80% of Gen Z were getting sex education from pornography.

80%. That's a huge percentage. It's a huge amount. And of course what porn is teaching is not just sex, but actually a sexual script. It's actually teaching that men know what they want, know what to do, no conversation is happening. There's no consent on porn. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not happening off screen beforehand. but there's no consent shown. But men are in charge, they know what they want.

Women will go along with that script, sometimes seemingly quite reluctantly, but in the end we'll enjoy it. And I think, again, this is where it's really important to differentiate between consent and women having a voice because simply saying yes at the beginning of a sexual encounter, which may have happened with pornography, doesn't mean that the way in which that encounter

evolves, you're still saying yes to. And I think what is really being lost with modern pornography is, well, one, the shock factor, and that's frankly all about the attention economy and the digitalisation of pornography. So that's partly to do with that, but it's also that women have lost their voice in saying what they enjoy. And I think also the expectations, if that is what sex is, if that's the script, and that's what's meant to happen, then that's what I'm expected to want and expected to do. And finally, Faustine, you're driving real change, but consent feels like a conversation that we've only just started.

So what advice or message do you have for survivors? I think abuse thrives in shame. I think spaces that feel shameful just help to silence us further. I have really found my voice with my story, and I really hope that that will not be in vain. It will be of use to other women who might relate to things I've said today about being checked up on and might make them think that actually this is not caring,

but it might be a sign of something deeper and something more worrying. I would encourage them to speak to a loved one, speak to anyone that they feel comfortable to, and fundamentally remember that, you know, shame does have to switch sides. It's nothing you've done wrong, and it's everything to do with the person who is being abusive towards you. Thanks to my guests, Faustine Petron, Ellie Softly and Dr Paula Hall.

And we'll be digging into more of the findings of our commissioned poll in future programmes, where we'll be discussing issues such as women, prioritising themselves and putting the needs of others before their own, so a lot more to come. The poll was conducted by the Research Company Opinium and there's a link to the full results on Thursday's episode page. And if you've been affected by anything you've heard in the program today, you can find links for support on the BBC's Action Line website. And we have a statement from the Department for Education. A spokesperson said, at a time when many young people are

navigating harmful content and damaging influences online, it has never been more important to help them build positive relationships based on kindness, respect and consent. That is why this government is making relationships and sex education mandatory for all further education students under 18, ensuring every young person has access to this vital learning and supported by a new expert advisory group that will help teachers tackle the most sensitive topics with confidence. The Education Secretary has taken this further with a new whole-setting approach to tackling misogyny head-on, giving schools and colleges the practical tools, training and support they need to challenge harmful attitudes early.

Next. To mark our 80th year, we've been delving into our extensive archive. Here are a few standout moments of women who's spoken out on Woman's Hour. From 1969, a woman talking about her breast cancer treatment. A woman called Candida talking about coming out as a lesbian in the mid-1980s. Margaret Thatcher talking about childcare in 1990. Tracy Emmin's reflections on her abortion from 20. 2011 and Rose McGowan talking in 2018 about reigniting the Me Too movement.

But we begin in 1957 when suffragette Mary Richardson recalled the day at the Epsom Derby when Emily Davidson famously threw herself under the King's Horse in 1913. Emily rolled over twice. People rushed onto the course and molessed her. One of the first to arrive tore open her jacket. There was a purple, white and green. emblem of our militant movement. Then a man standing near me struck me. I dropped my bag and papers to force my way through the excited crowd to the entrance. I was just in time to cross the road in front of the horses of the king's carriage.

It was this that saved me. The crowd tried to pursue me, but it was held at bay, and as I was a swift runner I managed to reach the down station, where I kindly porto locked me into the laboratory, persuaded the angry crowds that I had just left on the, the train for Waterloo. The meantime, Emily was carried from the course of Downs Cottage Hospital, where, as is common knowledge, a mob tried to force their way to lynch her. She never regained consciousness. She died at dawn a couple of days later. If you met me in the street or at a party,

you'd never guess that half my bust is national health. Tucked into the left cup of my bra, I wear a shapely plastic bosom. It's so comfortable that I forget I'm well. and so much like the real thing that it's even slightly pneumatic. It's five years now, since I stood in my doctor's surgery, stripped to the waist. When he'd examined me, he told me that I must go to the hospital. So I went out into the street. What now? Phone my husband, buy a bottle of scotch, make my will. Somehow I must find courage, and I had none.

Twenty years ago, I couldn't have come out of the closet to save my life. whereas now virtually everyone I know knows about me I haven't got any problem of course of child custody and I do think that the reason that lesbian women find it difficult to come out of the closet is for purely practical reasons if they have children it's awful I mean if their marriage breaks up the husband can almost invariably get custody on the grounds that his wife is a lesbian

and therefore not fit to look after her own child. I am not trying to persuade anyone to do anything against their own better judgment because let me say this at the outset. It's difficult to go out to work as well as running a family unless you have your husband absolutely with you and less between you with the money you're earning, you can pay for competent help

or unless you have grandma, auntie, around the corner. First of all, no woman wants to have an abortion. You have a choice. You have a few weeks and you have a choice. And if you're pregnant with someone who doesn't love you, then you know, and say, and that person says you're not having this baby, I don't want to be associated with you for the rest of my life.

How do you feel about that? I was blacklisted, you see. I was very much scorned within the industry because he set it up so people that were his victims were not believed. He did a lot of pre-work just in case. the allegations ever came out that he could paint the accuser is crazy or unstable or just somebody not to listen to ever under any circumstances. And everybody, you know, most people in Hollywood, it was a very open secret.

But everybody just thought, ha, ha, ha, that's just the way it is. And I just thought, no, it's actually not the way it is. Rose McGowan talking about her treatment by Harvey Weinstein, bringing that time capsule to a close. What a selection of amazing women that Women's Hour has had the privilege to bring you over the last 80 years. Women who found and used their voice, which is the theme for this anniversary year.

And in case you missed it, you can hear the rest of our special birthday program in front of a live audience at Glasgow Women's Library on Wednesday this week on BBC Sounds. Now, back in 2024, Woman's Hour travelled to Ireland to the town of Tume in County Galway. Nula went to make a special program

about the Tune Baby scandal and she met extraordinary women in the process. One of those women was an amateur historian whose relentless pursuit of the truth helped expose the shocking story of hundreds of babies from a mother and baby home being disposed of in a disused sewage tank. It hit headlines worldwide in 2014.

That woman's name is Catherine Corlis. She is now widely recognised as one of modern Ireland's most celebrated and tireless human rights campaigners. Here's Catherine speaking to Nula in 2024 and reflecting on the scale of the scandal. I was absolutely horrified. It really hit me, but as well as being horrified,

I think it gave me the strength to keep going because it was quite obvious to me that this was purposely done to cover up, and it was because they were illegitimate, and there was no care. They were just treated as... I wouldn't even say treated like animals, because, I mean, you treat your animals better.

We have a little graveyard out there of all the dogs and cats we have over the years and I know exactly where everyone is buried. I buried them myself with care and dignity and said a few words to them because that's what they meant to me. But then to put down all these beautiful babies and toddlers, just wrap them up, put them down in a sewage facility and forget all about them. It was too horrific for me to ever. I had to be a voice for them and there was no question about it.

I had to keep going and I had to find justice for them. Now Catherine's story has been made into a film called The Lost Children of Tume co-produced by Liam Neeson. And playing Catherine is the BAFTA and Olivier Award-winning actor Monica Dolan. When she came into the Woman's Al studio on Monday, Nula began by asking her about her Irish roots. My dad's from, was from Swords in Dublin.

He's no longer with us. And my mum's from County, Wexford, from Enniscorthy. Neither of those accents. They're very different accents from each other, but they're also completely unhelpful with the Tume accent, which is over in the west of Ireland. So I got a lot of help with that, luckily, from Catherine,

who was really approachable and extremely helpful throughout the whole process and actually recorded all my lines for me in the end. Did she? She's a wonderful, wonderful lady. How'd you heard the story of the tune babies previously? I had. I'd heard it when the story broke in 2014 on the news, on the BBC, and obviously was really horrified by it.

and then sort of didn't hear any more about it until I got the script. But I know that lots of work was going on in between, obviously. Yeah, it is a beautiful film. I was looking enough to see it the other day. And what really moved me, because we have been in Catherine's home previously, those small details that really bring that story to life. You met with Catherine, also her husband, Aidan, at their home, as did we. and their home is such a central part of this film,

that kitchen table in particular. What was that like to enter that world? When we were at her home, I think I thought initially, oh, I'm going to go there and we're going to be pouring over documents and we're going to be looking at maps. And we did a bit of that, but actually she showed me the model that she made of St Mary's mother and baby home. She made that herself because there was so few photographs.

And she made it so that she could have a vision of it herself, but also, you know, be able to show it and describe it to the survivors and say, this is where your mother would have been interviewed, this is where you would have been born. I was also rewatching because there was some documentary footage that is within the film as well. A passionate speech by then Thyshock, Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who was citing Ireland's historical,

and these are his words, morbid relationship to respectability. How difficult was it to steep yourself in that sad history in preparation for the role? I think that when I read the article, Dan Barry's article... Which is from the New York Times. From the New York Times and that's, you know, Liam Neeson got the rights to that and that's what the film's based on. I was very struck, I mean, my heritage is British Irish and I was very struck to sort of read an American.

view and he, I mean, he has Irish heritage too, but from the outside, the historical context of seeing that the state at the time was really, really fragile and that hadn't struck me before. And so so much of the responsibility, government departments even, were handed over to the church, which was obviously extremely strong and powerful. And one of the things as well was that because it was a new republic, it wanted to seem squeaky clean and as if it was working. And one of the ways to do that was to hide away women who'd become pregnant. Yes, I mean, it was just some of the stories of priests visiting a family when they found out that one of the young women or girls might be pregnant. and then they're being taken away to the mother and baby home

so that the rest of the village or the rest of the area I guess the thought was that they wouldn't contaminate the other girls which is a really horrible. That morbid relationship with respectability. Exactly and gossip. Yeah, and their autonomy of course taken away as well and sometimes not able to return. Monica, I was mentioning Catherine Corliss there

but there is of course another woman who helped bring this story to the world's attention and that is the also extraordinary journalist Alison O'Reilly of the Irish Examiner. Great to have you back with us, Alison. Thank you for joining us. We see you, thank you. I found it, I suppose after meeting Catherine, and also as we immersed ourselves in that story,

watching it incredibly powerful, but I want to know how you felt after seeing the film. Oh, I was so worried about the film because it usually takes decades for a film to be made. after a big story like this but I found that you know the director and the writers they were just fantastic they met with survivors they had a lot to take

in and a lot of individual characters and opinions and sensitivities to take in so it was a huge big emotional area that they had to work with and so I was a little bit nervous sitting down to watch and I went to the world premiere in Galway

I was so blown away and I I just sat there for ages and cried and cried. And I mean, there must have been a standing ovation for about 10 minutes. You know, Monica, you did an absolutely brilliant job. I know Catherine Coral since 2014. You became Catherine. And it was extraordinary to see that on screen.

Let me come back, Alison, to present day. The film, I think, ends maybe, is it 2021, perhaps? I'm trying to remember you at the end just when they have the, yeah, and the memorial service that takes place. But we are now in 2026, in 2025, a mass exhumation off the site was started. This will be a slow process, obviously. But what is the state of play at the moment? Well, to date, they have recovered 109 babies.

So we're looking for 796 possibly more. And the whole centre of the now. Now Dublin Road Housing Estate is in place of where the mother and baby home wants that we're speaking about in this film. And that's why there's no pictures. And Catherine made that structure. But within the centre of that is a playground, a car park. And then the green area that we would all know of with the statue of our ladies.

So we always believe that was the burial site. But Catherine and campaigners like Anna Corrigan had campaigned for all those years to try and have the whole centre dug up. So that's exactly what's happening. it's 5,000 square metres and they've started in sections so they're doing hand excavation and machine excavation

and so far before coming to the final place that they're going to dig up which is where the septic tanks are they have uncovered 109 babies so there's a burial site under a concreted car park that you and I would have driven over

Nula and it's actually gone into the back of some of the gardens of the Dublin Road housing estate in there they have recovered babies in coffins, some up to three babies in coffins, and that's where they're concentrating at the moment. Now, there were old maps that mentioned a burial site there, but there was no surface markings at all. So that's where the heavy concentration is at the moment. And with each tiny infant found, Dr. Neve McCullough, who's the consultant forensic archaeologist

there, she is taking the babies out, removing the lid, examining everything on ground, and photographing everything. And from there, the babies then go to a new mortuary in Hedford and a forensic lab headed up by Alicia Winburn there and Dr. Orrin O'N O'Reilly. And that's where they clean and prepare the bones. And there's dental forensics there as a whole international, extraordinary team looking after these babies. So that's ongoing.

It's supposed to last two years. It's going to be extended. I understand. Do you feel, Alison, that you're any closer to justice on this story? I believe now, having been so pessimistic for 12 years, that this was never going to happen. But these babies are being recovered,

and I think it's very important to say that, you know, there was a time when all of these women had these things done to them, their babies taken from them because they were unmarried mothers, you know, separated for the community, separated from their families and their children. And now today, it's women. women who are seeking the truth like Catherine Corliss and a Corrigan who set up the June Baby's family group to help with the children and their families to try and do identification

there. But also we have Dr. Neve McCullough, the senior forensic consultant there on the ground, taking the babies from the ground with her team. And then they're carefully transported to this mortuary to another woman, Alicia Winburn, who's overseeing the mortuary there. So it's like women are saying, no, we're going to give you back your truth. And it's like this extraordinary circle has been completed by women. Yes, indeed. I do also want to say that the institution at Chum was owned by Galway County Council and run by a religious order that was the Bon Secours Sisters.

The order has previously acknowledged that children and infants were, and I quote, buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way, unquote, and apologised. It has contributed to £2.14 million pounds. towards the cost of the excavation. Galway County Council also apologised for, and I quote, failing mothers and children, unquote, after the inquiry report in 2021. The government says it passed the Institutional Burial Act in 2022

to authorise the excavation, recovery, identification, if possible, and dignified re-barial of the children's remains and says an appointed director is committed to ensuring that the families, local community, other stakeholders and the public are kept up to date on progress at the site. We will continue to keep. keep you up to date too.

Neula there speaking to the journalist Alison O'Reilly and actor Monica Dolan earlier this week. The film The Lost Children of Tum is out now. Also, you can listen to the whole episode of Woman's Hour on the Tune Baby Scandal on BBC Sounds. Search for the 30th of September 2024. And as always, if you've been affected by what you've heard, then you can find links for support on the BBC's action line. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly. collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret,

of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, catching my teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. on website. Still to come, a brand new poem by the poet Holly McNish, honouring 80 years of women talking to women on this program. And remember, you can enjoy Woman'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. It's free via BBC Sounds. Now, extreme heat is affecting pregnancies, newborns and maternity services around the world, according to new research designed by census-wide, an international, market research consultancy with input from Welcome, the Global Charitable Foundation.

They say that in a survey of a thousand maternal healthcare professionals across the UK, Australia, India, Brazil and Zimbabwe, nearly three quarters said they'd seen an increase in heat-related complications affecting pregnant women over the past five years. Yet many health systems say they're not equipped to respond. Here in the UK, researchers behind the Magenta Project, funded by Welcome, are in very investigating how rising temperatures could impact mothers and babies. Yesterday I spoke to Julia Gillard, Chair of Welcome and former Prime Minister of Australia and to Dr Amy Misen, co-principal investigator for the Magenta Project.

I started by asking Julia to set out the key findings of the study. Well, great to be with you and this is a very important study because what it's showing us is that climate change, extreme heat, pregnancy, see this isn't an issue to think about in five or 10 or 15 years time. You know, health workers who are there working with pregnant women at births are saying that they can already see the impact of extreme heat on pregnant women. And it's experienced in lower birth weight babies, the earlier birth of babies, and that obviously puts the baby at risk. And it's also experienced in maternal complications. And these health workers are telling us it's real, it's now, they don't

have the training and support they need to deal with women who have got these extreme heat consequences in their pregnancy. And so we've issued a global call. We did that at the climate change talks in Fiji just this week, saying that national action plans, which are about adapting to climate change and readying health systems need to take into account specifically the needs of pregnant women and newborn babies. How do you know that it's the heat producing these results? Well, we funded a lot of scientific research. The survey that you've cited is one piece, but we have funded scientific research generally in this area and we are able to show that extreme heat does have biological consequences in terms of the stress on the mother's health,

heart rate, other forms of distress in the mother and in the baby. So those scientific findings are very, very clear now. And I think we've also got to be clear that extreme heat is not a sort of number on the thermometer, whether someone is in heat distress really depends on what you're acclimatised to and whether or not you've got the ability to mitigate the effect of that extreme heat. So what someone in the Australian outback thinks of as extreme heat is going to be a lot, lot hotter

than what someone in South Wales experiences as extreme heat. But we're also talking about circumstances in which people can't get relief from that heat because they have to work outside, have to travel long distances, maybe to get water or to get food, or they just don't have the benefits of cooling devices like air conditioning. Amy, I'm going to bring you in here to talk about what's happening closer to home.

So what is the Magenta Project looking at in the UK? Yeah, so in the Magenta Project, we are looking at how elevated and prolonged heat affects pregnancy in the UK. And why that's really important is because, as Julia's talked about, in countries like the UK, where historically we're not used to experiencing these extreme temperatures. We know very little about who is most at risk and the why. So to build a clearer picture of this, we in the Magenta study, are bringing together environmental and health data for more than a million pregnancies across Wales and London for the past 15 years.

And we've also collected biosat, we've taken biological samples for more than 200 mums in the Swansea area. So what that means is that we've taken bloods, sweats and heat samples from pregnant women before, during and after they're exposed to elevated heat. So our team was very busy over the summer. And what's really exciting is that we're using what we're learning in the lab about how a pregnant woman's body responds to this heat to inform our big data approaches, so across those million pregnancies. So we're working, bringing those two different disciplines together. Wow. What project to be working on? And you're comparing Wales and the mild coastal climate with London because that's expected to warm fastest in the UK, right?

Yes. Yes. So really drawing out the differences between rural and urban communities and also with those most deprived communities as well. And what are your findings so far? Yes. So these are emerging findings. Our final results will be published over the next six months. But what we're we're finding is echoing what is published elsewhere around the world. So we are seeing a detrimental effects. So we're seeing an association between being exposed to extreme heat during pregnancy and whether a baby is born preterm, so before 37 weeks and whether they're born with a low birth weight. And we're also emerging findings are showing that those in the most deprived communities are disproportionately exposed to extreme temperatures.

Yeah, can we just delve into that little bit more? I mean, you mentioned deprived communities but also the urban and rural areas. What are the differences? What are you saying? Yeah, so we're not surprising. We kind of expected to see these things, but we're seeing that those who live in the most urban areas are experiencing the extreme temperatures and over more sustained periods as well. So not surprising, but yeah.

How do health professionals know that it's definitely the heat causing these complications? and not other factors? Yeah, great questions. So what we're able to do is as we are analysing our data, we do something called adjustment. And what that simply means is that we're able to take into account things that we impact the outcomes that we're looking at. So to be specific, as we look at associations between extreme heat

and whether a baby is born preterm or not, we're able to account for things like mum's age, her socioeconomic status, her underlying health conditions so that we can really test to see whether there is a real association between heat and these outcomes. Julia, should pregnancy be treated as a specific climate health issue? Yes, we think it should. I mean, we think when we're looking at climate and health, we have to take into account all of the things that we know are going to change

or have already changed because of climate change. So we know that the spread of infectious disease, is going to be different, that as the climate changes, infectious diseases will move into new areas where they historically haven't been, particularly parasite-borne diseases. We know that climate change has got implications for the food and nutrition system for the water supply and all of that has implications for human health. We know that extreme heat impacts people and that around the world, huge percentages of the workforce still work outside and are exposed to unmitigated extreme heat. But we have also identified

through this research that pregnant women and newborns are at particular risk. So yes, health plans need to take that into account. Yeah, Amy, how are these findings and what we could predict future heat waves could do for future pregnancies? How are they going to help? Yeah, so we'll be working really hard over the next six months to be communicating our findings to the public, because, of course, we want pregnant women to be informed and also empowered to look after themselves during these periods. But it's really important that the onus isn't just put on the individual. As Julia said, this is a system problem. So we are working with very closely with welcome and UK government and the NHS in order to be translating what we're finding

and that it can be used to advise policy and decision makers to actually adapt and be resilient to the climate change issues that we're facing. What an interesting and worthwhile project to be working on. I did wonder, Julie, if the Welsh connection was by coincidence or by design. I think this Welsh connection is. is a coincidence, but I'm always happy to be very pro-wales, and particularly Swansea is not far from where my father was born, so you'd expect me to be pretty pro-Swansey and Nathan Cumbraq where he actually comes from.

Julia Gillard and Dr Amy Mizzen talking to me on yesterday's programme. Next. How does it feel for a female writer to get inside the mind of her male characters? The Party is a new ITV series based on the 2017 novel by Elizabeth Day and has been adapted by award-winning actor and writer Sarah Soleimani. It stars Luke Evans as Martin Gilmore, a journalist who is shaped by his lifelong friendship with Ben, a wealthy politician. The story unfolds over the course of Ben's 40th birthday, where a shocking incident occurs. While the men drive the central plot of class,

obsession and codependency, the female characters serve as the moral anchors, truth tellers, and catalysts for the story's climax. Earlier this week, Elizabeth Day and Sarah Soleimani joined Kylie in the Woman's Hour studio and began by discussing Elizabeth's inspiration for writing the party. I think my inspiration was twofold. I was going through a tricky time in my personal life

when I started writing it in 2015 and I actually ditched a novel that I'd been writing which I was finding quite sort of depressing and worthy. And I said to myself, what do I want to write about? I want to write about something fun and glad. And one of my favourite genres is rich people behaving badly. So I started writing about a rich person's party. And then this voice of Martin Gilmore came to me as he was arriving at the party.

And he was an outsider and an observer. And then I thought, oh, why is he an outsider and an observer? And that led me into exploring the British class system. It was a vastly different political backdrop when I was writing it. But it was still a time when certain kinds of men with a certain type of education was still being elected prime minister. And so those things fed into the development of the book. What was it like writing from the male perspective?

It was really liberating. And it's a great question, actually, because when you're writing from a perspective that is not your gender, your imagination is given free reign. And of course, I want to make it convincing. But ultimately, that is really freeing, because as a woman, I'm constantly aware, as a writer that I want to do justice to the female experience in my characters.

And I strive to do that. And of course, that's only ever an aspiration because women are multifaceted and different and there's no big generalisation we can reach for. But with men, I suppose, I had less conditioning. And so it was actually really freeing and I enjoyed it. Did you kind of seek any help? Did you ask, I don't know, you know, friends or family members for help on what a man would do in a certain situation.

I didn't actually and I do think of men just as humans. So I think ultimately we're probably quite similar in all the most meaningful ways but I don't want to shot Women's Hour listeners

but I did write a sex scene and I wrote from the perspective of the man and I did have a... I was a bit worried about that because obviously that's something I haven't experienced and I had a very early male reader

and he said I don't know how you got that so accurate but you really did and I was like, tick! There's a skill. There have, of course, been criticisms in the past and, you know, jokes and memes about men writing women. So were you kind of conscious that you wanted to get it right? Definitely. And Martin Gilmore is a specific kind of man and he's extremely nuanced. And Martin I wrote in the first person in the book.

And I think Sarah's adaptations are such a brilliant job of this multi-layered nature of Martin. he's not a straightforward man. And so in a way, I wanted to honour his experience of life rather than thinking, is this a convincing man? It was more that direction. Well, let's bring Sarah in. It is a gripping watch. I've been lucky enough to see three so far.

And I'm very much excited to see the final two because it holds your attention because little bits of information drip through each episode. And I should say as well as writing the adaptation, you play Lucy Martin's pregnant wife. We can hear a clip now of Lucy and Martin arriving at their B&B, which has been booked for them before this extravagant party. Don't you think it's strange they didn't offer to put us up? I mean, it's not like they're short of rooms.

It's his birthday, you're the kid's godfather. Makes no sense. Do you think they're saving them for their more fancy friends? I think this is the eighth time you've asked me this. I think you should just let it go. So that's just before they head to the party. So Sarah, would you say that the female characters in the show like Lucy are underestimated by the powerful men?

Yeah, so the show looks at a conservative leadership race. And I was really interested in sort of the women behind the men. I think they often have as much influence and power as the men themselves. and I wanted to give them really complicated storylines. I wanted to make them rich and interesting and funny. And there was one scene that I wrote between the wives that was about seven minutes long. So in TV world, that's epic.

And when I wrote it, I thought there's no way that this is going to make it to screen. But the auditions, the audition tapes from Sally Scott, Lydia Leonard, Shanane Matthews, who are in the show, they were so fantastic that we ended up keeping the scene. And the only way I can describe it is sort of jekylls kind of circling their prey. It's in very primal animal look at female power and power plays. So I'm happy to say that that made it to the screen. Yeah, it's very manipulative.

You also had a very strong female team. You are both exec producers, a series directed by a woman. To both of you, Sarah first, is it good to have that? In what is, let's face it, still a male-dominated industry? Yeah, I mean, I get asked all the time, you know, how comes there are so few women directors. And I directed my first short film last year, Mashad about my grandma living as a secret Jew in Iran.

And when I directed myself, I realised actually, the question is not why are there so few, but how are there any, how are there any women making films, externalise the internal workings of your mind to ask for millions and millions of pounds, to close down roads and to hire 300 plus people, we aren't conditioned for that kind of confidence

with our creative capacity. And so to find Vivian, who was an incredible filmmaker, She had a young child. She lived in Berlin to come over to Wales to direct five hours. It was really one of the most incredible creative collaborations of my career. We both would share shot lists and clips from films that we like that were inspiration. And I think you can really see on the screen.

It's not just average TV entertainment. It's got a really magical cinematic quality to it. Totally agree with all of that. And why I say that that's important is because men have been in control of our systems of power for centuries, millennia. And they've also been in control of how we view and consume our art. And so actually having women at the helm is incredibly important. And it shouldn't be radical, but it still is, because it's counteracting the predominant male gaze. This is how women see things.

this is how women tell their stories and this is how women use their voice. Elizabeth Day and Sarah Soleimani speaking to Kylie there and the party starts on Sunday at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX. Now before we go, another chance to unwrap our birthday gift, a specially commissioned poem to mark 80 years of Woman's Hour broadcasting to you, our listeners across the generations. Holly McNish is the author of five collections of poetry.

She was the first poet to record at Abbey Road Studios in London and won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Here's Holly performing her poem for us live in front of an audience in Glasgow earlier this week. For 80 years in kitchens and in living rooms, in offices, then cars, then in headphones, we have listened as women talk to women. It might seem simple now. Difficult to imagine my grandma's jubilation, tune in that radio in the kitchen to listen, just to listen to this hour devoted entirely to women.

The first time, she listened like a whisper, unsure, as if spying on her own mind, secrets slowly spoken into public spaces, no entry sign finally ripped off. When did women talking to other women about issues that affect them become such a controversial concept in a world where we are half of every breath?

So many centuries of silencing, women's voices laughed from courtrooms, out of Parliament and boardrooms, scientific fallacies invented about our bodies and our brains, our uncontrolled emotions. Our voices deemed unsuitable for news and documentaries. Our inventions uncredited, conversations labelled gossip, labelled fickle,

campaigning, branded nagging. Our histories unnoted, unstudied, inkwills snatch from women's fingers, writing novels, plays and poems. Women, talking to other women, almost invisible in film and television. Scripts limited to secondary characters. How many words, how much language,

how many laws have been invented to turn women's discussions into insults, our stories into shadows. The lives of women packaged into parcels, taboo taped across our every day. Of course, the first presenter of Women's Hour was a man, perfect for the job, they said, a specialist in talking to women,

as if training were needed to hold a conversation with these creatures from another world. My mother hung the washing as she listened or else with coffee in a biscuit closed the kitchen door behind her for that hour of peace and quiet politics celebration.

Such relief hearing voices like her own echoing unashamedly on airwaves finally reflected in a world of being stereotype and sideline. I listened for the first time in my twenties, pregnant, terrified, excited, didn't think I needed it, this hour where women talk to women until I needed it. And now we listen in our millions, women and men listen. In living rooms with toddlers grip to hips still, we listen, running errands, walking dogs in our gardens, on the

bus, in cars, commuting back and forth from school runs and offices and parliament and boardrooms. We listen. And we'll listen. We will listen to this hour where women talk to women, We'll listen for another 80 years or more until every woman's story can be told. Nailed it. That was 80 years of Woman's Hour by Holly McNish. That's it from me. On Monday's program, Nigella Lawson, has been criticised by some for taking big bites of cake

in her new role as Judge on the Great British Bake Off. Why are some people shocked to see women actively enjoying food, even on a baking show? Body Confidence activist and author Alex Light will discuss Do join Nula at 10am on Monday. I'm off to take a big bite of cake. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. That's all for today's woman's hour.

Join us again next time. I'm Darrow Breed. And I'm Hannah Fry. And we're back with another series of curious cases, exploring a whole new set of scientific head scratches, including... Are identical twins, basically human clones? Why is yawning so contagious?

What is the mathematical magic behind tessellation? And why do we find tiny baby animals so cute? We are tackling all of these vitally important questions and more in a fresh batch of curious cases. Listen first on BBC Sounds. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students he's trying to silence.

leak to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.