Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, Author Marni Appleton, Medieval medicine, Women and prison

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

One manifesto pledge of the incoming Labour government was to provide over 3000 new nurseries in empty school classrooms in England. The first 300 of these will open by September and offer an average of 20 places each. Nuala McGovern speaks to Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, about this announcement and also about the current state of provision and funding for children with special education needs.Darkly funny, unsettling, and razor-sharp, I Hope You’re Happy by Marni Appleton is a haunting collection of short stories exploring modern womanhood through the lens of horror and satire. From viral photos to eerie performances in dead-end jobs, these stories capture the weirdness of millennial life... where power struggles, fleeting connections, and social media anxieties collide with the surreal. Marni joined Nuala to discuss the themes and her inspiration.A new exhibition called Curious Cures at Cambridge University Library explores medicine in the medieval era. Dozens of unique medical manuscripts, recipes, cures and guides to healthy living from the 14th and 15th centuries are on display. To discuss women’s role in medieval medicine, Nuala was joined by the exhibition’s curator and medieval manuscripts specialist, Dr James Freeman.The Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood believes “prison isn’t working” for women and wants to reduce the number of female prisoners. Nuala speaks to Scarlett Roberts, a former prisoner and is now a Churchill Fellow and to former prisoner Jules Rowan, who co-hosts the Life After Prison podcast. They are joined by former prisoner officer and former Head of Security and Operations at HMP Wormwood Scrubs Vanessa Frake-Harris, and by prison Intelligence Analyst, author of Five by Five, Claire Wilson and Lucy Russell, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the charity Women in Prison. The Neonatal Care Act starts tomorrow. It allows employed parents to take up to 12 weeks of additional leave on top of their maternity or paternity leave if their newborn baby stays in hospital for more than seven days. We hear from Catriona Ogilvy, founder of premature baby charity The Smallest Things, who has been fighting for this law change for 10 years.Echo vom Eierstock is Switzerland’s first feminist yodelling choir. Elena Kaiser is their founder and joined Nuala to discuss where her love of yodelling came from, and why she is challenging the make-up of traditional yodelling choirs and songs.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Emma Pearce

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Nuala McGovern and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to a selection of standard moments from the week. Coming up today, Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of State for Education on her announcement of 300 new school-based nurseries. But just how far will they go to plugging the gap in parts of the country called child

care deserts? Also, stargazing, hairs, wombs and applesauce. Just some of the wellness treatments employed by medieval women and other curious cures from an exhibition that is on at Cambridge University. We'll hear more about that. We have the author Marnie Appleton on her new book of short stories. I Hope You're Happy is the title. And it's about navigating millennial womanhood.

It's riveting and thought provoking. Plus the woman who has campaigned for over a decade for parents of babies in neonatal care to get extended parental leave. The Neonatal Care Act comes into effect tomorrow and we will hear from that woman who has been at the heart of it. Plus yodelling with Switzerland's first feminist yodelling choir. Lots to discuss so let us get started. You may remember it was a manifesto pledge of the incoming Labour government to provide over 3,000 new nurseries in empty school classrooms across England.

Well, the first 300 of these will open by this September and offer an average of 20 places each. The government say these places for children aged nine months to four years will help parents get back to work and put more cash in their pockets. But critics argue that more funding needs to be invested in the staff to cover these places and that it won't be enough to meet demand. I spoke to Brigid Philipson, Secretary of State for

Education and asked her who will benefit from these places. So the places that we're creating will be over 4,000 places by September, rising to 6,000. So we're investing £37 million in 300 new or expanded school-based nurseries. That will make a really big difference to parents, but critically it will make a really big difference to children because we know that you make the single biggest difference to children's life chances when they're young and that's why I've been clear as Secretary of State that early years is my number one priority and this is a promise I made to parents and a promise I'm keeping. So you mentioned the places there but people might remember last year you did

talk about 100,000 so that is a long way to go from 4,000 or 6,000 that number that you mentioned there as well. When do you expect to be able to hit that target? We're still going to get there, that's by the end of the Parliament, that's over the course of the Parliament, but today is the first step, an important first step because from September parents will be able to access expanded childcare entitlements which is incredibly important. We've put 8 billion pounds into that this year. That's a record sum. We you know we do face big challenges as a country, as a government, where it comes to the public finances but we have prioritized education and

earlier spend in particular but given that we're investing that money we need to make sure we've got the places available and critically the plans I'm setting out today will see more places created in the North and in the Midlands where we see some of the biggest challenges in childcare deserts. Childcare deserts indeed that often comes up when we speak to our listeners but they also talk about how do you get the staff that you need to work within these nurseries even if they are expanded? Absolutely, I mean early years is a fantastic place to work. We're putting

more support in place in terms of training for staff because it's so important that they're well supported, that they get what they need and we're working with the sector to deliver the extra staff that we need for the expanded entitlement in September. But the plans that we've set out today, the schools that have taken part in this, those who've bid to create new places, had to set out a recruitment plan and how they will deliver the staff alongside that. So I'm confident that the schools we're announcing today will be able to deliver the places that are promised.

Because when I've spoken to people that are involved they have quoted the minimum wage which is required, an increase in national insurance for example. They're really big obstacles to them retaining as well as actually recruiting the staff that is needed and it sounds to me like you're putting the onus on the schools to reach those solutions. Well we will of course work with schools, with nurseries, with childminders to make sure they've got the support they need, especially around training and development, but we are putting a big level of investment into this area, eight billion pounds it'll

be this year, but alongside that a real focus on making sure that we've got support in place for children from more disadvantaged backgrounds, so the biggest ever boost to the early years pupil premium and alongside that an expansion grant of 75 million pounds to ahead of September to ensure that earlier settings are in the best possible place that they need to be to deliver on those expanded entitlements in September and it will make such a big difference to parents, to children, to their life chances. I visited one of the nurseries that's being announced today in Peterborough earlier this week and I met with Hannah who was dropping off her little boy Niall. She told me

what a difference it had made, how her speech had really come on leaps and bounds, how he was so much more confident and that nursery I'm visiting is now going to be able to massively expand the places that are available for local families in September and that will make a really big difference. And for Hannah I'm sure it does but you are confident that these nurseries will be able to recruit and retain the staff that they need. Yes, I am. And we're working with the sector to deliver that. But we do. But alongside that, I would just add,

I do recognise the need for wider reform, particularly where it comes to issues around training, qualifications and the standing of the sector. Early years is where you make the biggest difference at children's life chances but I recognise that we've still got too big a gap between early years provision and some of the primary provision and how we bridge that. Well speaking of provision you'll probably know on Woman's Hour we've talked about SEND provision many times that's special educational needs and disabilities and on Monday we spoke to the actor Anna Maxwell Martin who very much advocates on this issue.

And she believes that school exclusion is never the answer. She talked about attendance is not a condition, is that you need to actually look underneath why, the reasons why it's happening. It's quite something when you look at some of the figures of how exclusion and also suspensions has risen, particularly if we compare it with the pre-pandemic level. What do you want to say to Anna who has a child with special educational needs and very much feels the schools are not as inclusive as they should be? So I have followed closely the coverage that you've had on this topic. It is an important topic for me for the government and it is a priority and we'll be setting out more later

this year. A key principle of that will be around mainstream inclusion to Anna's point around ensuring that all schools are better able to support children with a wide range of needs. But alongside that, I've set out extra capital investment this year to create more specialist provision within mainstream schools. So what people will often call send units or resource provision where children with more complex needs who require additional support are able to go to for example their local primary school to be able to be with their friends, their neighbours, but get the support they need into an education terms. I've seen some fantastic examples across the

country of where that's working really well but we need to do a lot more of that. We need to do it in a much more strategic way but we also need to ensure that there are specialist places for children who need them. The system isn't working at the moment. Do you understand though the frustration that parents have that attendance is considered one of the core priorities by the Department of Education when it comes to what they're trying to achieve because they're saying in fact it's looking the wrong way at the issue. Attendance is important and I make no bones about that. I do recognise that for

some children that can be more difficult. I know that many children experience challenges around mental health, that there can be other challenges for children with SEND. It's why schools should be taking a support-first approach, so working with families to understand what the problems and challenges are. But you know the impact on not being in school on a regular basis can be lifelong and the evidence that we've published as a department is that you're less likely to get good GCSEs at the end of your time at school and also you're actually less likely over the course of your life to earn as much.

So these have long-standing, you know, long-standing kind of outcomes. What I would add is that we have a responsibility as government, of course, to make sure that we are doing more to support children to be in school. Councils and others and the NHS who provide some of those critical services also need to be able to do more. But as parents, wherever we can, we should be making sure that our children are in school because it is so important. And when they aren't in school, it sadly does have an impact on other children's learning within the class because what teachers tell me is that they then sometimes have to cover all

ground because children haven't been there for the lessons that they've been teaching. I mean, I think what the parents and some of the pupils, perhaps even the teachers, would say at this point is that the reason they're not in school is because that school isn't able to provide because it doesn't have the funding required to be able to teach the children in the way that they need to be taught, to be able to give them more individual attention in whatever way it might be. This is complex. I do agree that there can be a range of reasons. Some children have other long-standing needs that mean that being at school can be more difficult and that's

why it is important that we address mental health provision around the reform that we will bring on SEND. But what we often see unfortunately is quite persistent levels of absence where we don't have some of those factors that are at play and where we are saying to schools we expect them to do more to support children, to make sure that they are regularly in school because we see quite big variations even between schools that serve similar communities with similar cohorts of young people and we're working with schools where those differences have opened up so that they can learn from schools that are doing things well and we're

putting in place the support that they need to do that to really improve on attendance rates but I completely understand that there can be acute pressures facing families and we're working hard as a government to resolve some of those wider pressures, whether it's around temporary accommodation and homelessness, child poverty, access to mental health support, that's all incredibly important too. The other word I keep hearing from people I discuss SEND with is that they want radical reform. When are you going to publish your white paper to reform the SEND system? We'll be setting out more detail later this year about the direction that we intend to take on reform.

I think there is a line to tread here in that there is a recognition, I believe, from parents, from school leaders I've spoken to that the system that we have at the moment isn't working. The system that arose out of the reforms that took place over a decade ago in 2014. We're not going to be able to overturn 10 years in a very short space of time. And what I also hear from parents is that any reform that happens, they want to be a part of that. And we will make sure that parents, that those with an interest in this area, that their voices are heard and understood as a part of that. But it's important that we get it right.

There's always a balance in these areas to strike between the time something takes, but critically that actually it's the right reform. Yes, but there are children of course caught up in it at the moment and every year it is so important and that is part of the impatience if we want to call it that, or frustration with a non-specific time scale on these issues. You talk about balancing as well and I do want to talk about this because we spoke about

earlier this week 10,000 extra school places for children with SEND in England which the government announced but on the same day a Guardian investigation revealed councils will overspend on SEND services by nearly 2 billion over the next year which then pushes their accumulated deficits if you look back to at least 5.2 billion by the end of March 2026. How are you going to balance those books? That's the challenge that we've inherited as a new government but whilst I recognise the pressures that councils are under my focus is on better life chances and a better education for children with SEND. That absolutely has to be the starting point. And I do recognise that the challenge

that you pose around what needs to happen now versus what needs to happen into the future. Longer term reform does take time. We will set that out this year. But we are taking action in the here and now to make sure children with SEND are getting more support, some more support around speech and language in our primary schools, which is a really important area. The investment that we're putting in that you just talked about to create more places for children with SEND, particularly specialist places within mainstream.

The progress that we're making around mental health support alongside that too. These are actions that we're getting on with right now. The Education Secretary, Brigid Philipson, and I do look forward to welcoming her to the Woman's Hour Studio to answer your questions on Send, Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Short Stories have a wonderful way of drawing us in quickly and immersing us completely into a different world. I Hope You're Happy is by Marnie Appleton.

And it is a sharp, darkly funny short story collection pulling us into the world of millennial women navigating friendships, breakups, dead end jobs, and even the occasional ghost. Marnie joined me this week to talk about her fascination with horror and with humor. I began by asking her why she wanted to write short stories. I think there's something about the short story that demands a specific kind of attention.

So I feel reading short stories myself, I'll often return to them and I feel like they can really dig into issues. And I also wanted to approach this kind of topic of coming of age as a young woman in the 21st century from lots of different angles and the short story form Writing this collection enabled me to kind of tackle different issues and different ways into the same topic Are you in many of those characters? I'm not I wouldn't say I'm in many of those characters? I wouldn't say I'm in many of those characters, but what happens in the stories has definitely been informed by things that have happened in my life or things that I've seen. Your powers of observation are quite something.

I will say that. Are you going to read a little for us? Yes. So this is the story, the first one that I delved into. Shut your mouth and read a little and then we'll talk about it. Three minutes past midnight, Tuesday night, a hazy shape static against the darkness. Ponytail puffer jacket handbag, a girl like a blast of light. The CCTV footage slows as the girl leaves the fried chicken shop. A box of food clutched to her chest with one hand, phone in the other.

She taps on the screen as she walks down the road and slips out of shot. A moment of lunar emptiness, a bright crackle, before the door swings open and she steps out into the street again. The clip loops on repeat. I scour the screen looking for something, a tiny detail, an overlooked speck of evidence, eyes glinting from the bushes. There must be something we are not seeing." And I feel we can see that scene as we read it. But let's talk about that particular short story. The protagonist becomes an armchair detective of sorts in the case of a missing girl and you know that

is something that has become part of the narrative of so many crime stories that we cover including here on Women's Hour. I'm wondering what propelled you to write that? Well I was seeing in the news that when these kind of cases came up social media enabled people to become these armchair detectives because they could share information and that sort of thing. And I suppose social media helped to whip people up into this kind of frenzy. But what interested me about it was that people were almost projecting their own narrative onto the case. So people were looking for a specific outcome, which was usually, it seemed to be that

people were almost like excited for it to be, you know, violence or kidnapping or something terrible. Because often in the case of a woman at the heart of it. Yeah, exactly. I think it's specifically a woman thing and it's always with women that these cases take on this life of their own. And I was just interested in how we see women in all different areas where women are represented in the media, but in this case where it feels like it's motivated by concern, this kind of like, where is this woman? But actually, the woman becomes like an object, a vessel almost through which we're channeling this kind of true crime fantasy.

And very much a modern phenomenon in the way it is now. I know true crime has been popular for decades, but I suppose it's up so close and personal on our phone screens, for example. So that is one part of the short story that I can see the reflection of real life in it but the other is about a phenomenon that happens after a photo of a supermodel eating a hot dog goes viral then that leads to an online explosion of photos of women eating in public. I was like that could definitely happen. So much so that women begin covering their mouths so not to be exposed in that way. Quite a concept. Talk me through the impetus for that. I was thinking about food online, I think particularly on Instagram, with people taking photos of their food and how food takes on this sort of like moral

dimension. And at the same time I was thinking about women's bodies and how food takes on this sort of like moral dimension. And at the same time, I was thinking about women's bodies and how they're policed and how it feels to be, I guess for me, how it feels to be eating in public, that I almost feel like I'm being judged on what I'm eating, how I'm eating, where I'm eating. And then they all just kind of coalesced into this narrative. And I was also thinking a lot about how trends swing. So like you could go from the one way of eating in public is like this empowering thing, the supermodel

does it and it's like, that's, you know, that's cool. And eating a highly calorific item. Exactly. But then it swings around to being like, actually now it's gone too far and women immediately want to cover their mouths and the effects of that mean that, you know, they're kind of hiding a part of themselves and limiting their power of speech. And even though this is coming from your imagination, with many of them I thought, this could actually happen. And then some I was like, does this actually happen? Chastity cages? I looked up for the first time. That's all I'm going to say on that one. I'll have to read the book.

But there is social media playing a huge role in a lot of these stories because being a millennial woman, for example, she has grown up in a time before I did, for example, with, I suppose, a reflection consistently there. Yeah, definitely. I think also social media has seeped into so many areas of our lives, so relationships are conducted online and, you know, the title, I Hope You're Happy, is something that can be taken two ways, have two very different meanings, and I think... I hope you're happy. Yeah... I hope you're happy. Yeah. I hope you're happy.

Well, I said this the other day and I think my mind automatically thinks sarcastic, but some people seem to think that it's like a genuine sort of, you know, a nice heartfelt comment. I hope you're happy. Yeah. So I don't know what that says about me. Well, I'm with you because I took it as sarcastic too. But with that, the importance of female friendships we've talked about often, but also you have

that dark side of friendships in a social media age that even if a relationship has ended, it's very hard to sever the bonds completely. Yeah I think that you know in times gone, there would be high school reunions or that sort of thing. So you would have these long gaps of where you've almost forgotten about these people and then you find them again and you reconnect. Whereas now, people that I've known my entire life, I constantly know what they're up to on social media.

And we have this weird thing where you might not actually be in contact. You might not feel like you can speak to that person, but you still observe their life. And you know, you know, you know, if they're pregnant, you know, if they've got a new job. And there's something nice about that, but also something quite creepy and insidious about this, like just watching each other all the time. Creepy and insidious are two good words to describe some of the experiences that your characters, the protagonists in the various stories have.

I'm wondering, do you feel there's been a suppression of joy for the young woman? Oh, what an interesting question. I think that in terms of feelings for young women in this day and age, I think social media makes those feelings feel almost like mandated, like you should feel happy within you know within the presentation that you give on social media or you should feel happy for certain you know know, benchmarks in your life, like you have a baby, you get married, you, you know, now as well, like you have a career. And I think actually with these things put in their boxes of how you should feel about them,

it means that if you feel outside of that, you can feel kind of alienated from womanhood, I suppose, if you feel like it's not, you're not fitting into it in quite the right way so I was thinking a lot about feelings I suppose when I was writing this like how it feels to be slightly outside of a narrative like an expectation I suppose that you think that's how things are gonna be and if they don't turn out the way you expect how does that feel? But also as we talk about somewhat dystopian view at times, also very, very funny. Yeah, the funny element I think was a surprise to me when I was writing. I definitely felt like it was very serious, but I'm glad that they became as funny as they did because I

think sometimes things are just so absurd that you have to laugh at them. Advice from Marnie Appleton there and her book, I Hope You're Happy is out now. What do you think is the most outlandish health fad that you've come across? I feel there are so many of them plastered across social media, promising vitality and longevity or perhaps a cure to whatever ails you. And although that might be the modern-day iteration of

wellness, it is nothing new. Women have wanted to understand their bodies and minds for centuries and are prepared to go to great lengths for their health. Even burning weasel testicles, for example. There is a new exhibition called Curious Cures which has opened a Cambridge University library and it explores the medical treatments available to women in the medieval era. On show there are dozens of unique manuscripts, recipes, cures and guides to healthy living from the 14th and 15th centuries. Well, I was joined this week by the exhibition's curator and medieval manuscript specialist, that is Dr. James Freeman, and I asked

him what he had learned about women's involvement in medicine at that time. There's a thread running through the exhibition of women not only as patients but also patrons, readers, practitioners, and in some rare instances authors too. What I hope visitors will see from the exhibition as well as the, as you said, the rather outlandish to modern eyes, the rather outlandish medical recipes, are medieval people thinking and learning and writing. They're trying to understand disease and its causes, they're attempting to treat a bewildering array of illnesses and ailments, and they're operating within international networks of knowledge and study. And women are a part of that. Now, one of the key pieces is Elizabeth of York's guide to healthy living,

Henry VIII's mother. What has she got to say for herself? So, this is a copy of a text that had been written a couple of centuries before Elizabeth's time in the mid-13th century. It had originally been composed for a female reader and patron, Beatrice of Savoy, by her physician Aldo Brandino of Siena. And rather than curing illness, it's concerned with the maintenance of one's health through control of external factors that medieval people described as the non-natural. So your humours, your four humours are your naturals and the non-naturals are things like food and drink, so balanced diet, sleep and wakefulness, you know, get a good night's rest, exercise and rest, control of your emotions, excretion and retention sometimes includes

things like bathing and sexual intercourse. So fairly modern, really. I mean. Exactly. It rings very true. A lot of it is, you know, common sense sort of advice, but this comes from the medical authorities of the time that were being read, or that medieval people of Aldo Brandino's time had inherited from the ancient world through translations and reorganisations in the Middle East, and which had come back into

Europe for the most part through further Latin translations. So some of them might seem that they're very appropriate to use today but there are some other interesting cures. For example could you tell us about the cure as they saw it for infertility that you found in one of the manuscripts? Yes well it's described as a true medicine and often proven and the reader is advised to gather three or four weasel testicles, half a handful of young mouse ear, which is a kind of plant, and burn them in an earthenware pot, and then grind the ashes up with the juice of that plant, and then make soft pills in the manner of

a hazelnut kernel, which should then be placed so deeply in the woman's private parts that they touch the uterus, I'm quoting here, and there they are left for three days during which she should abstain from sex entirely. After those three days she should have intercourse with a man and she should conceive without delay. Now this sounds completely mad, but the theory behind it probably is some sort of sympathetic medicine. This idea that an animal part might have curative properties for a corresponding part in the human body. Indeed, we see other cures for infertility that use the womb of a hare, for instance. And you have to put yourself in the shoes of medieval people. They lived in a world that was divinely created and divinely organized. Its plants, its animals,

even its rocks and minerals are all here for our benefit and edification. So it's completely logical to their mind that this might work. There were women practicing medicine in medieval England, as I understand reading about the exhibition. But the move for medicine to be studied in university then disempowered women. How so? What essentially happens is that the medicine becomes incorporated within the universities established as a learner discipline and thereby written medicine, knowledge transmitted through writing in manuscripts, is seen as authoritative and thus the transmission of medical knowledge orally is inferior. Women's access to universities obviously is non-existent. These are male only environments.

The transmission of medical knowledge in Latin texts further narrows their opportunity to access this information. And through the work of scholars like Monica Green, whose book details this history so wonderfully, women's opportunities to be authoritative and respected medical practitioners narrow. They are not banned from practicing medicine per se, and certainly we see in later manuscripts many references to in later manuscripts many references to women caring for one another, practicing medicine as midwives, and indeed many of the simplest remedies use common or garden plants, they use preparatory equipment that you would find around the home for grinding, chopping, boiling, cooking equipment basically. So the barriers to access in those contexts are low. So the reasonable inference is that men and women are attempting some of these remedies in their own homes.

Obviously, all we have are the manuscripts. So the oral history we have to reach at sort of second or third hand. But some of the recipes are attributed to women, so it's fascinating. Dr James Freeman there and you can see Curious Cures, medicine in the medieval world at Cambridge University Library until early December. Still to come on the programme, Yodeling with Switzerland's first feminist yodeling choir. Also I want to remind you that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you cannot join us live at 10 a.m. during the week, just subscribe to the Daily Podcast for free via BBC Sounds. Yesterday, we broadcast a special program on women in prisons.

Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, believes prison isn't working for women. She also says it is her ultimate ambition to cut the number of female prisons. But what would that take? And what is life really like for women in prison? Well, in this extract from the programme, we look at relationships in prison. It is a unique institution that can lead to people behaving in ways that they might not in their lives outside. Add to that, prisoners are often incarcerated with hundreds of other people and are also expected to follow instructions from prison staff. And you can see then how relationships in prison might be fraught.

Well, I was joined by former prisoner and Churchill Fellow Scarlett Roberts, former prisoner and the host of the Life After Prison podcast, that's Jules Rowan. Also with us was Claire Wilson, author of Five by Five, she's a prison intelligence analyst in a Scottish prison, plus the former prison officer Vanessa Frayke Harris. I asked Vanessa how she would describe the relationship between guards and prisoners. From my own personal point of view, was always professional. You know when I... What does that mean though? Well you know the question I've been asked so many times since I retired was what you actually spoke to prisoners? Yes absolutely I did. I asked them about their

families, about their visits, about their day, what they were doing, if they would ask me, you know, and I think it's important that those relationships are built because prisoners, whether you like it or not, actually run a jail and you can't run a jail without the cooperation of prisoners. Okay, let's expand on that. Okay, so we had a wing when I was at Wilmwood Scrubs, we had 300 prisoners on it and to run that was six staff and a senior officer and that was day in day out. You know, if prisoners wanted to riot, they could quite easily riot. So you do rely on prisoners cooperation, but to get that cooperation, you've got to interact with prisoners and that's how you find intelligence and the ability to root out the bad eggs within the prison system because any big institution you are going to

have bad eggs in that. So but it seems to me Vanessa that you're coming at it that the prisoner is essentially a decent person, that there's just some bad eggs, bad apples within it. No, no, no. Well look, you know, my job wasn't to judge them. My job was to look after them, to keep them safe, to try and help them turn their lives around. My job wasn't to decide whether they were a bad person or a good person. They'd been judged. They'd been judged in a court. They'd been sentenced to whatever. And now it was my turn to ensure their safety and look after them and try and help them turn their lives around.

Will you speak though as if you had a certain amount of compassion or kindness with the prisoners? Look, I don't know whether, you know, sometimes it's there for the grace of God. You know, how many people have gone more than 30 miles an hour down the road and thankfully not hit anybody. But the minute you go 40 miles an hour and you kill somebody, you know, you can end up with a five-year sentence. Prisoners aren't bad people, they're people who have made bad choices. And I suppose that is a real distinction though, and I think there would be an argument, for example, if I threw it out to the public at large on that aspect. But were you ever concerned, Vanessa, that you might be perceived as weak? No, never. Prisoners, for me, got exactly what they were entitled to, nothing more.

And if a prisoner asked me a question, if I didn't know the answer, I'd go and find out. I never lied to a prisoner. That is not being weak, that's doing your job. In your experience, how common were sexual relationships and arguably abuse between prisoners and officers? relationships and arguably abuse between prisoners and officers? Certainly not as much as seems to go on today but there were instances. I mean when I was at Holloway we had a couple of male staff who were found to have sexual relationships with female prisoners which is an abuse of power, whichever way you look at it. And, you know, those people put prisoners at risk, they put other staff

at risk, and, you know, they should be rooted out. I can't give you figures, but certainly it seems to be more prevalent today. We did see one story in January that was a woman who was a former HMP Wandsworth prison officer who was filmed having sex with an inmate and was jailed for 15 months. What did you think when you saw that story? Well, my first thought was honestly how could she allow herself to be filmed like that. My second thought was was she coerced into that. My third thought once details had come out about her was how on earth did she ever get through the vetting process.

Across all people that are thrown together for such a long time, I'm sure some of the relationships are very intense, there can be consensual relationships as well. Scarlett, you wrote a piece for The Telegraph about your experience of a sexual relationship while in prison. Are you comfortable speaking to us about it? I am. I think relationship is a bit of an overstatement. Okay, fine. You can use whatever word you want. I think that anyone who understands who's ever set foot

in a prison, relationships are very transient. Prisons are sensory deprivation chambers. You can't, you appreciate it. There's nothing smells of anything, everything's bland. You're kept on the brink of hunger at all times. You're always just a little bit too cold. Everything disassociates you from your body. And there is in some way an understanding where I thought it's the only way to feel. How else can I feel anything? My desperation was, I can't feel anything here. I've lost

connection with who I am. So it is to connect. It was connection. That's very, yeah, very simply. It was a way to feel. It was adrenaline. It was thrilling. It was sexy. it was thrilling, it was sexy, it was curious, it was nothing I would ever have considered on the outside, and it was over very quickly. Are there rules, Vanessa, about sexual relationships in prisons, I mean, when it comes to something like,

Scarlett saying, I don't know, but you've done it now. I think it's fair to say anyone in prison has already broken the rules. So I'm not sure that something is a cheeky bonk, is that kind of frightening to us anymore. I suppose what I'm thinking is, where do you get the privacy or the time or the people, or do people just always find a way? I don't know. Well, I mean, I'm not probably not the one to answer that one, to be honest.

But look, when I first joined a prison service, I joined in 1986. When I sat my interview, one of the questions they asked me was, when you get to Holloway and you walk into a cell and you find two women in bed together, what are you going to do? And I said, I have no idea. I don't know what the rules are. And one of the people interviewing me said, well, it's not allowed. And when I got to Holloway, in those days, of course, we didn't have fabulous computers. Every prisoner had a hard copy record. And on any prisoner who was either identified

as a lesbian or gay or had had sexual relations with another prisoner, had a big F in red stamped on the front of their record to warn other staff about this person. Thankfully, things have now changed. In the female estate, it does happen because as Scarlett quite rightly said, you know, women look for comfort through emotion. Physical contact. Physical contact, you know, is important to women, you know, a hug, you know, a cuddle, it's important to us as carers. In the male estate, it's virtually unheard of because it's still seen in the male estate as taboo. Can I just add one thing? They do call it gay for the stay. Yeah.

There is a famous phrase. Now Claire is nodding along here who's been watching all sorts of behaviours from her surveillance TV. It's a natural thing. Definitely, definitely. Like as Vanessa said, women, it's open. But it is frowned upon. Like I'm not actually quite sure on the rules, but it's not encouraged. But women will walk around, they'll hold hands. And it is, like you say, they'll get released and they'll go back to their husbands or their long-term boyfriends because it is for that comfort and it's for that companionship that you're just craving something. It's just something that happens. And it's hard to keep on topic of it because some of the women they're not in relationships for long and then they'll maybe one day they'll be

seen with one woman and then maybe like a week later that will be done and they'll have moved on to somebody else and it causes a lot of relationship issues and a lot of management issues in the whole area. Among very traumatized women as we were discussing. Exactly and I think that's where the concern comes from. It comes from a trauma informed, is this woman consenting to this relationship or is she thinking, well I'm used to just being taken advantage of, so there's a fine line there. Lucy Russell, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the charity Women in Prison. Relationships between prisoners in women's prisons, are they allowed?

Is there any rules against them? To my knowledge there's no definite policy that says it cannot, cannot happen. But it's definitely discouraged and kind of frowned upon in prisons. But in terms of relationships and abusive relationships, There's a real issue that we know that in the general public a huge amount of sexual assaults don't get reported. And so what we probably don't know is what kind of abusive relationships are happening in prisons, what negative situations there are, and we'll probably never get a full picture of that. Lucy Russell, Vanessa Frake-Harr Harris, Claire Wilson, Scarlett Roberts and

Jules Rowan there and you can listen to the full programme by going to BBC Sounds and selecting the Woman's Hour episode from Friday the 4th of April. From tomorrow parents whose newborn babies have to go into neonatal care will be entitled to additional pay and leave. The Neonatal Care Act allows employed parents to take up to 12 weeks of additional leave if their baby stays in hospital for more than seven consecutive days, that is on top of their maternity or paternity leave. Parents will be paid for this additional leave at the statutory rate if they earn more than £123 per week and have worked for their employer for more than 26 weeks.

Katriona Ogilvie is the founder of the premature baby charity The Smallest Things. She has been fighting for this change in law for over 10 years. Dashiani Navaniagam spoke to Katrina and asked her how it felt to see what she'd been campaigning for to finally take effect and also whether she feels that more still needs to be done. It has been a long campaign, more than 10 years now since we started the campaign for neonate or leave and pay. It's a brilliant feeling but it is also bittersweet. We know there has been hundreds and thousands of families who have been missing out over the years. This new legislation

was first announced by Theresa May. That's quite a few prime ministers ago, which tells you how many parents have missed out. But I do know from my own personal experience of having prematurely born children, just how much this will mean and what a difference it will make to those families who will be able to access those entitlements when they finally come through. Tell us a little bit about this new law. What exactly will it give parents in this situation?

So for parents who have a baby born prematurely or poorly and are admitted to neonatal intensive care, they will have access to up to 12 weeks additional leave and statutory pay and that really will be able to support them to be with their baby or babies in hospital. But really crucially it's understanding that that journey doesn't end for many families when they do bring their babies home from hospital. So it not only gives them more time when their baby's in hospital but it almost gives them back that time once their baby comes home from the hospital. And you said you were in this situation yourself and you were inspired to start your charity, The Smallest Things, because of your experience.

Tell us what happened to you. So in my first pregnancy, I was 29 weeks pregnant. I woke up one morning, my alarm clock went off and as I got out of bed my waters broke very suddenly, very unexpectedly and I found myself a couple of hours later having given birth to a very tiny, very poorly baby who had been whisked away immediately to intensive care. I got a little glimpse of him as he was being taken away and that really started our roller coaster journey through neonatal intensive care. My background is as a children's occupational therapist. I actually worked in neonatal intensive care before I had my own children and I sort of thought I

knew what it was like. But it's not until you're a parent and live through that experience of seeing a tiny fragile baby in an incubator hooked up to life support machines, changing your very first nappy through incubator hooked up to life support machines and changing your very first nappy through incubator portholes, alarms going off left right and centre and having to go home every day and really feeling like you're you're still trying to care for a baby that you can't be with. And you were in hospital just a few hours later after your son was born and that was when you were told that your maternity leave had started.

Did you know that? Were you aware of that? I was not aware of that at all and in fact before a family support worker came to make sure that I told my boss and spoken to the HR department, we'd been seen by the consultant who told us that our baby was poorly but he was doing well and that he would almost certainly be in hospital until his due date and I thought gosh no that's that's two months visiting him every day in hospital and then a couple of hours later a family support worker came and dropped the bombshell that my maternity leave had started and at that

moment I just felt robbed, robbed of not only my final trimester of being pregnant, robbed of being able to prepare and get ready to bring a new baby back to our family home, but just robbed of that time to be with him once we did finally get home. And then of course, when we finally did get home, our journey wasn't over. Samuel had lots of readmissions to hospital,

lots of follow-up appointments. But by the time we were back home from hospital, it was already time to start thinking about returning to work. And it just seemed so, so soon. So it's fantastic that there will be up to 60,000 parents now who will benefit from these new entitlements and won't have to sort of go through some of those difficult decisions that we have to make as a family.

And it's also a massive financial strain as well as the emotional strain. I mean, you know, at the time when you were going through this, this law obviously wasn't in effect. Mentally, how did you cope? It was really tough. So absolutely there's a cost both financially and emotionally. So the cost of having a baby in hospital is high. If you think about the parking charges, the travel charges, if you have other children, childcare costs, eating at the hospital. We'd also plan to save a bit more money before I went off on my maternity leave and you know like everything else that had been taken away, that time had also been taken away. But the emotional cost on mums and dads

going through that experience of neonatal intensive care is enormous. Yeah, parents say to us that it isn't during the time in the unit that it hits them, it's actually once they bring their baby home from hospital when they can really sort of process what they've been through. And how is Samuel now? Because I know you had another son, Jack, who was also born prematurely a while later. How are they both? They are both doing fantastically well. You can tell how long we've been campaigning for this new legislation

because they are both now in secondary school. Like a lot of children born prematurely, they do have a few additional needs. So for example, Sam has some coordination difficulties and as a charity the Smallest Things really recognizes that there is a lasting journey for parents who've been through that trauma, but also for the children as well as they grow older and we have a PremiWare award for schools as well to recognise the additional needs that some children who've been through that really premature and early start might have and how to support them in that lasting journey.

And this law comes into effect on Sunday. What has this journey been like? Could you have envisaged this moment 10 years ago, over 10 years ago when you started? Oh that's a difficult question to ask because it feels like such a long journey but you know our hope was always to change the law and actually back 10 years ago we found that many people weren't speaking about their experiences and it really was the power of the parent voice. It was sharing just what it's like to have a baby in neonatal intensive care.

But I think we always had a sense that it would change, it had to change. And along the way, one of the big things that has supported the campaign was employers actually starting to do the right thing. The smallest things, we have an employer with heart charter which for years now have been asking employers to already support families by extending leave. The new entitlements coming in are statutory entitlements so we are still encouraging employers to go above and beyond that. And some babies will be very poorly and even after maternity leave with the extension has ended, parents will have to take time off to help and to go to doctor's appointments and hospital appointments.

Are employers, from what you're hearing, are they understanding of that when it comes to offering, I guess, more flexible working and additional time off? Absolutely. The really nice thing is that we are hearing more and more good news stories of employers being really supportive and understanding that this isn't just a one-off event, that when parents do come back to work they're likely to need additional time off or flexible working patterns. In our employer with heart charger, that's one of the recommendations that we make is that in terms of how employers can support staff back to work, how they can ensure that mums and dads have a successful return back to work, but also then that flexibility

if and when they need it, if their baby, for example, is re-admitted to hospital or requires follow-up appointments. And you said earlier, we know that 60,000 new parents will be helped by this law, but it won't cover everyone at the moment, will it? It won't cover everybody. We know that parents who are self-employed won't be able to access additional support during the time that their baby or babies are in hospital. It's something that we continue to campaign for,

to recognise those parents and families that will miss out on the legislation. You know, there are a lot of families that will miss out, and we do think more needs to be done to support them as well. Katriona Ogilvie speaking to Dasheane there. Now, let us move on to a bit of yodeling. Eléna Kaiser had a lifelong love of this vocal technique,

but she got tired of the obstacles in her way as a woman wanting to be part of a yodeling choir. So she set up Echo vom Eierstock, Switzerland's first feminist yodeling choir. Eléna joined me this week and I asked her what is so different about her choir compared to a traditional one. The difference is that we have decided to change texts in the songs to either rewrite them or write new ones or exchange some words with different words. How many are in your choir? About 50 women. Ranging ages? From I'd say mid 20s to 70. And you talk about changing the lyrics. Why was that necessary to change from traditional Swiss yodeling songs? Well the songs, they come out of a tradition of late 19th century, early 20th century, when living in the Alps was being romanticized hopelessly. And it's a man's world, obviously. And

everything that happens is because God made it happen. And women are portrayed as either, you know, old ladies that are waiting for somebody to visit or they're just temptresses or they're mean housewives that don't allow their husbands to go out at night. You do not ever hear about texts that deal with issues that are you do not ever hear about texts that deal with issues that are actually commonplace nowadays. So you are changing the lyrics. So what are some of the issues that your songs jump into, delve into? Well, we deal with issues. We write about menopause, for instance, the song you just heard, we texted it. I made it about menopause because we feel like we should sing about it. Well, tell me then because obviously I was listening to it, but I couldn't understand the lyrics. So what was I hearing? Well, we basically make it a joyful thing. Look forward to those years of change. The song is called Plus 1.5 Degrees and it starts out as an obviously climate change song,

but it's meant to be the climate change within a woman's body. So they're quite clever lyrics, I have to say, and we wrote them ourselves so we're proud of them. Yeah, of course. And who's doing the writing then? Obviously you, but you talk about these 50 women in the choir. Is it certain people are the songwriters? For now, we took traditional songs that have no copyright on them anymore, that are old enough. Yes, quite a few years old. To change with the copyright issue. And we've had Swiss authors write new texts for us, but within the last six months, a

year, a group has formed within the choir who's really talented. We found new talents who has been writing songs as well. So a couple of things. I know when you set it up, there was a backlash from some that just didn't want to see women yodeling. How did you deal with that? Not at all, actually. We just printed out those nasty emails and we gave it to everybody to read and laugh about it and we put it in the trash where it belongs. And do you feel the tide has changed since that time? No, not really. It's just people aren't vocal about it.

Because in Swiss culture, if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. That's kind of our thing. So I think most who don't like us after the first shock about a feminist yodel choir has subsided, they just choose to not say anything at all. Did you think it would be controversial? Yes, we knew it wasn't going to be appreciated in every corner of the country, but that's okay. You know, we knew it was going to create a stir in the yodelling scene. And that's fine.

The recreational yodeller, Elena Kaiser there. Thanks very much to her and to you for listening to Weekend Woman's Hour. On Monday, I'll be speaking to Hala Al-Karib. She is a Sudanese activist and a regional director for the Strategic Initiative for Women in the horn of Africa. Hala was also one of the BBC World Service's 100 Women in 2024. Hala will talk about the current situation for women and girls in her home country. Well that is it from me for now. I do hope you have a lovely weekend.