Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Hilary Mantel’s writings on endometriosis, women in politics, nursing, family whatsapp, the orgasm gap

Episode Date: October 1, 2022

Record numbers of nurses are quitting the NHS in England, according to new data analysis by the Nuffield Trust for the BBC. More than 40,000 have left the health service in the past year. Another report published this week from NHS Providers said the squeeze on pay amid rising inflation is forcing nurses and other staff to stop contributions to their pension, skip meals and take on second jobs. Anita Rani speaks to Molly Case, a clinical specialist nurse, working in the community in South London.We talk about family WhatsApp group chats. They can be a source of great joy or great annoyance. We speak to author Nina Stibbe and Journalist Nell Frizzell who has been looking into this.Regarded as one of the greatest English-language novelists of this century, Dame Hilary Mantel was perhaps less well known for her brilliant writing on chronic illness. Throughout her life the author suffered from a severe form of endometriosis. Emma speaks to writer Sarah Perry, author of the Essex Serpent, who has had her own experience of chronic illness and Eleanor Thom, author of Private Parts, how to really live with endometriosis.Giorgia Meloni's election as the Prime Minister of Italy is just the latest victory for a woman on the right of the political spectrum. The vast majority of European women who have had true executive power come from the right, starting with Margaret Thatcher. Emma speaks to Professor Matthew Goodwin and the academic Costanza Hermanin to discuss why the Left have had fewer female leaders. 'Ladies shall we have some fun?' We speak to sex and relationship expert Oloni, who built an online community by speaking openly about sex and relationships. We discuss her new book 'The Big O'.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Surya Elango Editor: Emma Pearce

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani. Welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. Your place to hear our carefully curated bits from over the week. Coming up, we ask why record numbers of nurses are quitting the NHS in England. How the late Hilary Mantel's writing about chronic pain and illness inspired so many. Plus, family WhatsApp groups. Are you an active member or have you secretly muted the group? Love them or hate them, we dive into women's experiences of the family group chat. Then, women in politics. Why we're seeing a rise of women on the right, and finally, ladies, shall we have some fun?

We hear from sex and relationship experts alone on bridging the orgasm gap. What a mix. But first, record numbers of nurses are quitting the NHS in England, according to new data analysis by the Nuffield Trust for the BBC. More than 40,000 have left the health service in the past year, in the year to June, one in nine of the workforce. Another report published this week from NHS providers said the squeeze on pay amid rising inflation is forcing nurses and other staff out of the health service or into making desperate decisions, including stopping contributions to their pension, skipping meals and taking on second jobs. While on Friday, Miriam Deacon, Director of Policy and Strategy at NHS Providers, spoke to

Justin Webb. NHS staff are facing some really difficult choices. So, for example, we've heard of a nurse skipping meals on shifts so that they can pay for school uniforms back at home. We hear stories about staff being worried about whether they can cover the cost of their commute, whether they can cover the cost of petrol if they're a mobile worker. And Trust tell us that the cost of living crisis is having a real chilling effect, both on recruitment into the service and also on retention. So although it's anecdotal at the moment, they do tell us it's having a cooling effect on new joiners. And they're particularly worried about retaining those staff who are on modest and lower incomes in the service so people who can move to hospitality and retail and get better terms i mean it's partly about money it's

absolutely no question about that but it but it's also more widely isn't it the kind of the the way in which you're asked to work now as a nurse in many situations in england absolutely and i think it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways. And at the moment, we're operating with vacancies of over 130,000 across the NHS. And I think your piece this morning showed that one in 10 nursing roles are vacant. So for every post that's vacant, obviously puts more pressure on those teams who are working in the service, making their working conditions more difficult. So we really need to work with government to get a political

commitment and a financial commitment so the NHS can plan much further ahead for the workforce numbers that it needs so that we can train, recruit, retain the right numbers of doctors and nurses to meet the rising demand that we're seeing. On Friday, I spoke to Molly Case, a clinical specialist nurse working in the community in South London and I started by asking her if she was surprised at the large number of nurses leaving the profession. I'm not surprised I've been working within the NHS for nearly a decade now and whilst it's certainly at a record level it's been going this way for a very long time for different reasons in particular under the government that we've been under for almost a decade.

I'm not surprised. I think there's different factors at play now, but I'm very sad about it. Oh, I'm in an NHS place, so excuse the fire alarm. So the fire alarm's going off. There we go. Why are you not surprised? What's happening? What are you seeing around you? So I now work in the community and that was a deliberate move after experiencing, kind of working through COVID in an intensive care and an acute trust.

I've worked through terrible short-staffedness, which only ever impacts on the patient care. The nurses and midwives only ever go into this profession to help people to make people feel better to do the best job that they can do for people and if we're not able to do that I can understand why people are leaving obviously the cost of living crisis at the moment is affecting everybody whether that's nurses or people in other professions but certainly the strain and the kind of the toll on nurses working in a profession where you have to give such empathy to other people when your kind of your reserves are very low yourself it

takes a toll. Well Molly unsurprisingly lots of our listeners are already starting to get in touch and we I would just want to read a couple of these out to you see whether what you think someone said I was a midwife but recently retired after 47 years of service. She says, I have two nieces currently working as nurses. Both are thinking of leaving. One, because she saw a cleaning job at McDonald's that paid more money than she's getting at present. And it's much less stressful. She says, I'm appalled that a service I was proud of has come to this.

And someone else here has said, and this is from Milita who's emailed in to say, no one is mentioning the real reason why nurses are leaving. There is no work-life balance when working 12-hour shifts. Whoever introduced this is to blame. An aging workforce, an elderly trainee can't sustain this lifestyle when you're so tired yourself, all you want to do is sleep. It's that simple. I think that certainly the 12-hour

shift thing different shifts work differently for different people it depends on on on the life that you've got in your kind of family balance and things like that but certainly the work-life balance in general if people are being absolutely work their rotas are not being kind of fair to them then and there's no joy coming from from work and they're not able not being kind of fair to them and there's no joy coming from work and they're not able to experience kind of any rest in their own lives, then of course it's going to be detrimental to their own health. I think that this has been going on for a little while and I think that the pandemic and working through COVID has been a real catalyst for people. I think a huge thing for nurses, yes, absolutely, we want to be paid more.

Of course we do. But most of my colleagues simply want to feel valued and respected in their role. We do the most incredible job. We are absolutely, most of us love our jobs when we're able to do the job that we signed up to do. But we don't feel valued. It's one of the reasons that we signed up to do but we don't feel valued um it's one of the reasons that i have moved in the last year um and i'm a big believer in feeling that you can't chip away at the monolithic kind of being that is the government and all these things that

don't feel fair and you have to chip away at your own little world which is why i moved yeah you mentioned there you've moved because you only moved to community nursing a year ago out of a hospital environment. And that's because of what you had to go through, which we can only begin to imagine, those of us who don't work within the NHS, what you had to go through with COVID. I think for me, there was a lot of reasons why I moved into the community. I'm very passionate about helping people to die well and die with dignity and die what we're kind of calling a good death and obviously experiencing people dying through COVID in the intensive care which was sometimes a very necessary way to die I was really passionate about kind of experiencing another way to die and helping families to to not be frightened of death and dying but certainly my

experience of working in hospitals one of the most terrifying things is walking onto a shift and there not being enough staff and you're either moved to another place within the hospital that you have no speciality in or you're left to work and plug the gaps on a ward where you're looking after patients that require organ support they they require the fundamentals of care and you cannot provide it. There is nothing more frightening. So Molly, I've got to ask them, why are you staying? I love my job. I love being a nurse. It's part of my identity. I'm not necessarily a religious person, but I believe that my calling very much is to make people feel a little bit better. And in making people feel a little bit better, it makes me feel better. It's very simple for me. Like I said, I'm a big believer in,

I'm very kind of passionate about impacting change. But sometimes for your own mental health and your own well-being, that change has to come in little small chips away. So I thought for myself, I would follow what I love to do, which is demystifying death. That was clinical specialist nurse Molly Case speaking to me about why nurses are quitting the NHS in England and about why she decided to stay. Now, let's turn to those family group WhatsApp chats. Perhaps yours is a bit political. They can be a source of great joy and a source of great annoyance. Are you the type of person who responds to every post in order to be the social glue of the family? Or have you muted the group because you just couldn't stand it anymore? Love them or hate them, many of us have them, and some of them with some very odd names indeed.

We spoke to author Nina Stibbe and journalist Nell Frizzell, who's been looking into this, and Emma started by asking Nell about the creative use of names for WhatsApp groups. It seems like now most modern families essentially function as a dog appreciation society with a sort of Christmas AGM. If you go by the names, it's all, we love Milo, fluffykins, like fans, all of that kind of stuff. So it's also a name. So you've got names of pets, your postcode, which is an interesting sort of giveaway for whoever joins next. Embarrassing encounters with waiters come up quite a lot in the naming of these things surname puns you know which mine is called Frizzell's are us but that with a surname like

Frizzell you've got plenty of room for a joke name or terms of sarcastic endearment my favorite is just technogram which I don't know about you it sounds like a sort of club night I might have gone to in 2008. But yeah, I think sort of family WhatsApp groups, they are sometimes the digital equivalent of having your cousin's boyfriend turn up and just post 14 pictures of their new bike through your letterbox while shouting about their promotion. They can be a little much. How are you feeling about them, Nina? Because it's safe to say there's some strong views coming in. Well, I've come to quite like our family one that's my siblings and my parents. But I feel quite comfortable dropping off occasionally. I don't feel pressure. But I don't feel pressure to join in and post, but I feel pressure to

equally respond and like everybody's. And my mum and me do this. We say, oh, fantastic, and heart ties to almost everything. And if we don't, you start feeling terribly guilty the other thing I do is I don't know if you do this now I sometimes post to whatsapp whatsapp from my photograph so I'm not actually on the app and I post something and then you inadvertently bump into or you come behind somebody who's posted something tragic. So I'll never forget the funny raccoon opening a bin that somebody posted, it might have been me, when little Richard had died. And the whole family were mourning little Richard and it happened in the first lockdown,

so it was very acutely sad. And I put this raccoon on and I didn't sort of notice. I couldn't even explain. I couldn't say I didn't know about it. It looked as if I'd just done it as some kind of weird statement. Yeah, I would agree that a family WhatsApp group is sometimes like being a daytime TV presenter. You're expected to shift from kind of Aunt Marge's rather graphic description of a goiter to someone's kitchen renovation, to a baby photo that's just been found in a lift, to a sort of logistics question about does anyone know a good plumber?

And if you're like I have family abroad, you might wake up to 45 messages of a fairly chaotic, emotional roller coaster because you've missed their entire daytime. What if you don't like the version of your family member on WhatsApp versus how they are in real life? Just because of their style now and the way that they come across. I think a lot of us have got an uncle, let's say, who turns into a kind of fairly poor observational comedian and particularly loving voice notes. You might get a sort of eight minute. Oh, voice notes is a whole other debate.

An eight minute bit of stand up as they drive to the dump with some fencing panels in the backseat, which actually I have to say I love. I love a voice note. It really conjures the person. And there's less room for the awful, we're probably going to get onto this, sort of misunderstandings that are caused by tone and text alone. You only know it's a joke if you can really hear someone's voice. It is. It's much better. And because also, Nina, I know that it's also a pressure

for some of the older members of the WhatsApp group, especially if they're the parent of people on there, to respond, try and be equal with every photo or response. And I know you've got a take on that. Yeah, well, I mean, my mum employs this giraffe with heart eyes. I don't know where she got that giraffe from, but she'll do that to everything. Except my things. But also, my mum's probably listening to this, so sorry, mum. But she will phone me to discuss what's on the WhatsApp group. Oh, dear.

That's a lot of extra work in the middle of everything. It does add to my load. So there'll be a whole thing about gardening. I'll put some seedlings on and then somebody will put a pumpkin on and then somebody else will put their baby in a wheelbarrow and then and then my mum will say but we can't go to the the allotment and then everyone will go yes you can this was during Covid yes you can yes you can and then she'll ring me and say I know can, but I didn't like to say we were going in case anyone could read it. And it's just I get double because also I have this thing now. I don't know if you have this. So I've got sort of 10 siblings and offsprings and parents, this sort of big group of family.

And I have then probably 10 little assorted family groups with a few of them in so in my with my husband and two grown-up children who are students I've got whatsapp groups with with my husband and son my husband and daughter my son and daughter and maybe even one other and sometimes you can do the wrong thread. Yes, and then there are splinter groups about other groups, and that's a whole other thing. Now, do you think it's actually working? Do you think it's making us closer?

Well, no, is the short answer. I think there is, they were, in a lot of cases, set up, as Nina was saying during lockdown when we missed the kind of flesh blood hair smell of our relatives and you don't get that over whatsapp what you do get is a possibly overloaded view of the inside of their house and what they're eating for dinner which actually is better than nothing you know I like Nina was saying I thinking about this. The reason I was interested in names is because I'm writing a book about half siblings. And I've got this unbelievably complicated family where there's within one generation, 30 year age gap and about six different parents. And if it weren't for WhatsApp,

we probably wouldn't have any form of connection at all. And I do like that, that it can weave people across different time zones, different nationalities, different parentage, different interests, all of that. But it's absolutely no equivalent of just sitting in a room and drinking the same tea and looking at their sofa cushions in real life. And maybe even having a boring conversation about their pet while the pet is licking themselves in your eye line. What a nice thought. Nell Frisell, thank you very much. Nina Stibbe, I'm not going to form a WhatsApp group with you two after this,

but I felt we briefly had a moment of what it could have been like with some of our exchanges. Thank you to both of you. There's a message here saying, had a WhatsApp group with my four siblings. We are in three different countries. During COVID, tensions rose due to one sibling not adhering to the regulations. There was a confrontation via the WhatsApp group. I told the sibling how I felt about their rule breaking, left the group, unfriended sibling on Facebook, and I've not

spoken to them since. Another one, our family WhatsApp is called Herd Immunity. Thanks for that, Jess. That'll take you back to some thoughts there. We have a family WhatsApp group called Family Skiers, subtitled Where Are You? Never bothered to change it. The question's still relevant. Teenage children, says Tish. Our family chat is called What Do They Want Now? And I assure you, we love each other very much. And it's just a lighthearted joke, I think, says Sam in Bristol. A few getting in touch to talk about the extra work that this can now take and some feeling that perhaps goes on women a bit more. Another one here. I'm on two family WhatsApp groups. My in-laws are in South Africa and my family here

in the UK, and I love them both for sharing fun practicalities and simply keeping in touch. But anonymous one says I'm part of several family WhatsApp groups and I have left and rejoined one for my nuclear family. My verdict is that it's ambiguous. One of my sisters has serious anorexia. The group has somewhat turned into a forum for her to post photos of food and worry messages. As someone who's themselves recovering from serious anxiety, I find this aspect of the family WhatsApp group gruelling and at best triggering at worst. Another one here, my family WhatsApp group is rather infuriatingly mostly used for reporting wordle results each day. As a non-wordler, I just don't care. And so it carries on. Thank you for giving me a window

into some of those conversations. The journalist Nell Frizzell and the author Nina Stibbe speaking to Emma about their family WhatsApp groups. Now, on Monday, we talked about living with endometriosis following the news of Dame Hilary Mantel's death at the age of 70. Regarded as one of the greatest English-language novelists of this century, Dame Hilary Mantel is perhaps less well-known for her brilliant writing on chronic illness. In 2003, she wrote about her experience with endometriosis in an acclaimed novel, Giving Up the Ghost. She also wrote a remarkable hospital diary, Ink in the

Blood, after falling gravely ill just after winning the Man Booker Prize for Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to Wolf Hall, the Tudor trilogy that sent her career stratospheric. Throughout her life, the author suffered from a severe form of endometriosis, a condition where tissues similar to the lining of the womb grows in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes, that took many years to diagnose. Aged 27, Hillary's disease was eventually named, but it was named, she wrote, on the operating table, and to make me viable, I had to lose part of my bladder and my bowel, my womb and my ovaries. I woke up to a strange future, childlessness,

a premature menopause, and a marriage already tottering that would soon fall apart. She later became a patron and a supporter of the Endometriosis She Trust. Well, Emma spoke to writer Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent, who has had her own experience of chronic illness, and Eleanor Tom, author of Private Parts, How to Really Live with Endometriosis. And she started by asking Eleanor about the relationship she had with Hilary, which was born of a kinship through their illness. We met when I was 30 and I was very, very sick and I wrote to her and just said, I don't know what to do now.

I've been trying for it not to define me and it now is doing and I don't know what to do. And she said, well, why don't you come and have a cup of tea? And so we met and I realised I'd never talked to anybody about it who had it and there was this kinship straight away. We just knew each other in a way that I'd never felt to anybody about it who had it. And there was this kinship straight away. We just knew each other in a way that I'd never felt with anybody else. And she was so calm. And after such a lot of crises with illness and with the drama of surgeries and hormone treatments and everything,

the idea that somebody was calm about this disease was really reassuring. And we became good pals after that and she sort of made it feel like everything was possible even when it wasn't possible. And I thank her enormously for that. I think the gift that she gave in terms of giving it language was something that I hadn't seen before. Indeed, the book Giving Up the Ghost talks about it

with such visceral language that I just didn't, I'd never never known anybody else share their story of how it felt and I suddenly was like oh that's how I feel and I read it in a bookshop and I kind of fell against the bookcase and I was 26 then so it was years before I would meet her and she's an extraordinary woman. Well here is Dame Hilary in March 2020 talking to me about the effect that endometriosis had had on her life. You have to find a way of living with it and living around it. And I have been ill most of my life, I would say, certainly since I was 19.

And now I'm a burnt out case of this particular condition, but the cures have done their own damage. And I have been very fortunate because I could take to an occupation, that is writing, where you're your own boss and you set your own hours. And, OK, there are times when I go out and I become a public person. But most of the time, I can work around whatever it is that's besieging me that day. I made that choice. There were other lives I would have liked to live. I would have liked to travel more. Maybe I would have liked a more public role.

But you do what you can do. What is important with that condition is to believe that you can make a life. I mean, I don't have a family. I didn't have the chance of having children. But I've tried to make my life as full as possible. Just for people who don't know, that's because the procedure removed that. Yes, yes. I mean, I was 27 when my fertility was confiscated, as it were, as a way of combating the disease. So it was a case of waking up with no choice. And again, we all hate being up against something that's impossible, that there's an obstacle that you simply can't negotiate your way around.

So you have to dig underneath it in a way, come out on the other side into another world, not one you expected, but there it is. Make the best of it. Dame Hilary Mantel, very wise words indeed. And as someone who also has endometriosis and adenomyosis, I read her words when I was finally diagnosed after 20 years at the age of 31. And a message here talking about what you can do, how you've tried to traverse and live around, as Dame Hilary Mantel was saying there. Good morning. I contracted glandular fever at the age of 13.

That led to ME, autoimmune disease in my early 20s and an entire adult life of living with chronic fatigue. Every day is a huge struggle, but I had a good career as a professional singer, university singing lecturer, even touring as Russell Watson's special guest and performing at the London Palladium. I had a successful business on Etsy. I'm also an interfaith minister offering spiritual care, leading funerals and offering end of life support. There's such shame and stigma living with chronic

invisible illness, but I live with purpose and I have to organise my life around daily rest and sleep periods. The daily fatigue is physical and cognitive and there's never a day off. What can I do but decide not to be defined by it to try and keep living with hope and an open heart? That's what Reverend Cecilia, who's written in, says. Thank you for that. Emma, I've suffered with endometriosis since a young teen. I've powered through each painful episode

to become a head gardener of an estate in Oxford in a very masculine workforce. Each episode of searing pain makes me more determined to climb up the ladder and beat the grasp of extreme pain. It will not define my passions and horticulture teaches you about seasons. This disease definitely has seasons, yes it does, within our body. Thank you for highlighting the winds despite the symptoms and that's from, who's listening in Oxford. But I really wanted to also make sure that I read a message here from someone who's just got in touch on Twitter saying, I'm not achieving much with endometriosis or adenomyosis, not overcoming, just surviving. And more messages along those lines and the others as well about

what people are able to do, not just with endometriosis living with all sorts of conditions and trying to live. Eleanor no one around her even knew what it was for so long and then to be in that pain and find the strength to give it language almost makes it even more remarkable I can only imagine how you were feeling at the end of last week as someone who then developed a real bond with her after that first meeting? An enormous shock. A massive shock for me. Yeah, I will miss her enormously, but she had an incredibly powerful relationship for the last number of years and a real gift to have interviewed her for the last time,

not because of her death, but because she didn't want to talk about it again in an interview setting because it is't want to talk about it again in an interview setting because it is so draining to talk about it. She joked that at the end of the interview that she was passing on the baton, which I said I was very honoured, but neither was a run relay in any of our times recently.

It's very, very hard to write about pain at that level. It takes a lot out of you. It takes something out of your system, I think, to share that much personal stuff. And she was a pioneer to share it that early on. No one talked about endometriosis in 2003, never mind wrote about it in a memoir. No, the memoir, I was going to say,

I mean, still people can't pronounce it, spell it or anything, which we've both had experiences of very recently i think with you especially in the medical system and i know you've also been suffering with with long covid which you won't mind me saying as well um many of our listeners have been in touch about that especially as it's disproportionately affecting women men are affected but we know more women we certainly seem to know at the moment more women are affected but you, it was kind of like a secret book. If you knew about it, you knew about it. It wasn't secret. People were reading it en masse. But what she's known for is something quite different, isn't it, Sarah?

Let me bring you in as an author, Sarah Perry. Good morning to you. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. I was reading what you wrote in light of the news of Dame Hilary Mantel's death this weekend, and you talked about yourself becoming ill with a different condition related to your immunity and then your immune system and your thyroid. And you said, I became ill, endured tormenting pain. Her writing on bodily suffering arrived for me like dispatches from a traveller who had entered a bad land long before me and had left a map

and a light, which is a very powerful way of putting it. Yeah, I read Giving Up the Ghost long before I'd ever become ill and responded to it in such a visceral way, I locked myself in the office toilets to cry. As Eleanor so powerfully points out, it's viscerally affecting in its ability to convey the complete degradation and shock of finding that your body could betray you in this appalling way I already knew that I I couldn't conceive um but didn't know why and her writing about having her

fertility confiscated as she said it's so powerful. And she writes about feeling that she's followed around everywhere by the ghosts of the footsteps of the children that she never had. And it really stayed with me. And I wrote her a love letter running to about four A4 sides, which she replied to. So we had, I know, it's the only love letter I've ever written. And so when I became ill, yes, she did. Yeah, about a year later. had um I know it's the only only love letter I've ever written um and so um and she replied when I became ill yes she did yeah about a year later and she's and this was after Wolf Hall

had been published and she said I'm very sorry it's so late um I've been busy I know you've just won the Booker Prize and um she was extraordinarily kind and then when I became ill, I felt very much like the master's apprentice and that she had left a pattern for how it was possible to convey to your readers and convey to the people that you love how tormenting the pain is, how it strips you back to what she described as the authentic self. It removes your manners. It removes your character. It removes your manners it removes your character it removes your sense of humor it strips you back to something um atavistic and essential um not an authentic

self that you really want to meet and and I feel that the writing on sickness and pain that I've done people have been generous enough to say has been a great consolation to them in their sickness and that's only because she showed us how to do it. And also you've had the experience, which she spoke about as well, when I had the chance and the privilege of interviewing her, about some of the cures having effects on you that are also very difficult. And she talked about how her body changed, how her face changed and how she had to deal with that, because not only was she not able to do with her body what she wanted, but she didn't look how she wanted. And we're not even talking about the, you know, the sort of basic vanities.

She was transformed, wasn't she, Sarah? Absolutely. And she wrote very lucidly about the fact that she'd been this sort of elfin, slender little elfin blonde with with sort of long fair hair and a lifetime of pain and a lifetime of medication does not leave you looking the way you did and and it's it's sort of tricky for anybody who identifies as anyway intellectual and a feminist to be permitted to vocalize that but we are received as our appearance at first you know face literally face value and I entered illness as a sort of tall stout glossy animal you know with sort of long shining hair and and you know looked really well and within four years um spinal surgery and steroids and

illness and pain had made me look completely different and and although I'm now very strong and a weightlifter and no longer in any pain you know I'll never look the same as I did I'm scarred um I have eyes that bulge and are damaged from thyroid disease I will have to be on medication for the rest of my life and you you realize that there are two selves there's the one that negotiated the world as a well person and was seen as a well person and there is the sick woman that people see and receive and it's quite um humbling to realize you can't even control how you're viewed yes and and i think what you can control though if you can and she talks and talked about this was what you do and how you

respond and what you can do with your life and I know Eleanor you know you used to work as a comedian literally as a stand-up and standing up can be quite hard uh in your in your life uh with with what you have been traversing yeah and I think uh it's really interesting what Sarah just said about the physical the way in which you look so very different from the cures. And if they're not cures as well, I think it's quite interesting that you go, well, I went through all of this. I still look different and I'm still not better because I wouldn't mind blowing up if it meant that I could get back up on stage again. But unfortunately, I'm blown up and still sitting down. I think it's that ability to sort of, it feels a bit like a

game of netball. You sort of have to keep pivoting around what you can and can't do. You dip from one foot to the other and you see whether or not you can do that for a little bit. And if that won't work, you go to another one, but it's exhausting. That alone is exhausting. But what she did was give me, when I first met her and talked to her, and I think it was the first conversation I'd ever had with anyone about endometriosis, I think I've been fiercely private about it, even with my family. So it was quite a kind of magic moment for me. But she gave me permission to feel sad about the fact that it changed how I looked at 30, and permission to say, you can sort of change your path a little bit if you want,

but also you can grieve for the fact that this path isn't working at the moment. And you don't have to say goodbye to it, but just recognise this is going on at the moment and you just have to be here, which is hard, but easier when someone actually understands that, what they're asking of you. It's easier when someone who goes through it says that to you than a doctor. And also, you know, owning that pain and being with it for the rest of your life.

I mean, she talked very openly about, as was just mentioned, you know, the ghosts of the footsteps of the children. She wasn't able to have her fertility being confiscated. And that is a big part of the condition you and I both have that she lived alongside for the whole of her life. And on a very personal note, if I would be permitted to share, I felt even stranger this weekend thinking about her and the voice that she had given to the illness that was so poorly understood and is still poorly understood by doctors. Because, you know, I've talked about this publicly, I've gone through fertility treatment. And I just felt that it was at a point where I could share again that after years of trying and a lot of loss along the way that I am pregnant. And it just felt very like I had been born at a slightly different time to her.

And not that it's going to be OK for lots of women with conditions that affect fertility, especially endometriosis, which I know about and I know you know about. But it felt very odd sort of knowing that perhaps things were slightly different because of just when I was born and her news of her death this weekend, Eleanor. Yeah. Well, congratulations. It's very exciting. That's very kind. But it was sobering as well. I suppose that's what I'm trying to say. I think she, it was a time when no one knew what it was. And I think when she had the surgery, they didn't really know what they were dealing with. And I think she didn't know what she was dealing with. And it was all pretty horrendous. And I hope that things like her talking about it in a book in 2003 means that people that would never have known about it know about it and go oh I wonder if that's and then it goes on I think

awareness has got enormously better since um since they they did the surgery for her and the surgery since I think the problem is is that the treatments haven't changed and um we are still being given huge quantities of hormones you know massive massive hormones that change our bodies forever even if you're only on them for six months and the surgery lists are very long and it's it's not really improved in terms of of outcomes apart from the fact that doctors don't necessarily just do a hysterectomy straight away. And that's, you know, having had some of the same surgery, having had a laparoscopy, that's a shift. I mean, even though it's not better, it is a shift, I suppose, in itself. And she managed still as well, I mean, to Sarah's point and some of the points coming in.

Yes, you get stripped back by illness, but she also managed to have a huge warmth and a huge sense of humour with it as well, didn't she? Eleanor, you know, I knew that. Yeah, really funny and so kind, like ever so kind. When I first met her, I sent her an email the night before saying, oh, goodness, I'm gluten free. I don't know, shall I bring my own biscuits? I was like panicking at like half past nine at night

going, I don't want to be the person that makes a fuss about this. And she's just like, oh, that that's fine I'll see you tomorrow and I got there and there was a plate of two kinds of gluten free biscuits like even my closest friends don't do that as much as they love me and um she said I said are you having some as well she said oh no I tried gluten free for a bit everything tastes like cardboard there for you yeah I agree with her on that I've tried that there wasn't enough there wasn't enough gain to lose out on some of the biscuits. I know that there will be excellent gluten-free biscuits before there are many, many messages. There are now. That's improved. See, with time, some things do get a bit better. The authors Eleanor Tom and Sarah Perry speaking to Emma about the late Hilary Mantel's writing on endometriosis.

Still to come on the programme, how do we bridge the orgasm gap with sex expert Aloni? And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at 10am during the week. All you need to do is subscribe to the Woman's Hour podcast on BBC Sounds. And guess what? It's free. But before we talk pleasure, let's talk politics. You'll recall earlier in the week that we reported on Gior Georgia Maloney's victory in the Italian general election last weekend. But it's worth noting that the vast majority of European women who have had executive power, meaning they have been elected party or government leaders, come from the right. Many believing it began with Margaret Thatcher. We spoke to the academic Constanza Amanin

from the European University Institute in Florence. Her research has looked at why the left has been less successful in getting women into positions of power and Professor Matthew Goodwin from the University of Kent, who's written a number of books including National Populism, The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. Emma started by asking Matthew whether the language being used

around the power change in Italy is accurate, as the term far-right and fascism are being used interchangeably by many commentators. Well, I think the term far-right is quite unhelpful, actually, because it tends to capture everything from fascist parties all the way through to ultra-conservative parties. Among academics like myself, there is a consensus that we need to really distinguish between parties that oppose democracy, that oppose liberalism, and parties that want to work within democracy, that accept many of the principles of a liberal society. And Giorgia Maloney, I think it's fair to call her a national populist.

She wants to prioritize the culture, the nation of the Italian people against what she argues are distant, corrupt, self-serving elites. But she's not calling for the overthrow of democracy. She's not calling for the overthrow of democratic norms. So, you know, that debate will be ongoing. Yes. And I think it's useful to highlight it because of how things are being described at the moment. And we're talking about women on the right. Constanze, good morning. Your research looking at why women on the left don't seem to be able to quite get ahead. Of course, there have been women leaders on the left, but not in quite the same way as women on the right.

What have you found? Well, hello, good morning. What I've found is that, you know, there are more women on the centre-right conservative, traditional conservative spectrum of politics, but also on the national populist right or extreme right wing. And that's a matter of fact, if you think at Meloni, but also Alice Weidel for Germany and Le Pen. These are different sorts of women, obviously, if we think about Margaret Thatcher, or Angela Merkel, Theresa May, and the traditional conservatives. But there are common characteristics. And what I find is that they conform. They conform to models. And therefore, I think their road to politics and to leadership is easier.

When we talk about moderate conservatives, we very frequently have very feminine figures who normally enter politics with the family name of their husbands or mothers and who dress very much like women, have a tone of voice that is very, let's say, friendly and not aggressive. And they frequently have conform also to the double bind, meaning that they are really, really experts. They have degrees or have been working in domains that are scientific and not so usual for women. Whereas if you look at the far right or at the national populist, you have women who tend to conform to male leadership models. So they dress like men. They're very aggressive in their tone of voice. They have personal histories that they tend not to put forward in their, let's say, political propaganda. And therefore, both these groups of women

are not perceived as threatening the social order we know, whereas women on the left bring with them usually a reform agenda on gender balance, which I think make them be feared by their party colleagues and therefore be fought more actively than women on the right. What do you make of that, Matthew? Yeah, I mean, I think that's certainly an interesting observation. I think as well, when you look at figures like Marine Le Pen, when you look at Georgia Maloney, when you look at these very prominent, powerful women in populist politics, the other thing. Why are men disproportionately drawn to populist movements? Now, fast forward to today. Look at Marine Le Pen's electorate in France. She's actually now quite successful among young French women, typically between the age of 18 and 35,

often work in the hospitality sector, hotels, restaurants, usually haven't gone to university. And what we're seeing, I think, is an evolution of populist electorates, a change in who's voting for them. And this is going to raise some really interesting questions going forward, Emma. I mean, if you listen to Georgia Maloney, what's she talking about? She's talking about family. She's opposed to what she calls gender identity theory. She's saying that we're all being turned into consumers by big corporations. We're no longer citizens. We're no longer mothers. We're no longer wives, etc., etc. This is a different language compared to populism of the 90s and the 2000s. And it may be that actually we're seeing this movement enter a new phase in its evolution. Yeah, and the way that women connect with it as voters is changing. But also, Constanza, the trend has been, we've also seen other reports talk about women going more towards the left,

just overall. So yes, populism and who it appeals to may be changing. But if we're told the female supporters, we were looking at this only yesterday with the polls about Labour here in this country, and women are looking at the moment like they will be more likely to vote for Labour. So it's something doesn't quite add up. You've got women going towards the left overall, but they're not having the female leaders in that space necessarily. Yes, well, that's true and untrue because uh for women in in italy

voted mainly for meloni uh the the highest percentage of um of uh women voted for meloni than for other parties now as a matter of fact when women started voting they tended to vote for conservative parties, promoting a traditional model of family. It's at the end of the 70s, the 80s, that these changed and women started voting for a more progressive agenda. And these may well be changing again. For sure, they cannot find role models. But and the fact that Meloni is a woman may have worked for her to attract the women's electorate.

Let me say a couple of things. She ensured that she wouldn't scare these electorates, stating clearly that she didn't want to abolish abortion law. And she made this, she said that a couple of weeks before the election. And it was definitely an important statement. And also she, in a sense, de-radicalized her appearance, tone of voice, and also her political proposals in the months preceding the election. So she seemed less threatening, in a sense, to the, let's say, normal socioeconomic order. She reassured the markets, she reassured the foreign policy observers.

And thus, it was easier, I think, for women to vote for her too. To come to that conclusion. Constanze Hermann, thank you very much to you. Just finally to you, Professor Matthew Goodwin, I was looking at your writing this morning, and you've written on your sub stack, on your blog, about trustonomics and some of the response that you've you've seen to that so far what what can we learn because it's quite unusual to have a new prime minister without that initial bounce of popularity yeah that is striking uh emma we've seen no bounce in the polls yet for our new prime minister that's unusual most prime ministers enjoy

a honeymoon period but the ratings for this trust are as flat as a pancake, if anything, since the mini budget last Friday. And we've only had a handful of polls to take them with a pinch of salt, but actually the Conservative vote share has fallen. And the Labour Party lead has now increased to 14 points, which means if that were to hold a general election, we would almost certainly be looking at a Labour majority. But the key point here to leave your listeners perhaps pondering is the massive disconnection between what Conservative voters in 2019 want from the economy and what they're being offered by this new government. Many of those voters do not want a low-tax, small-state, London-centric economy that is helping financial services.

Many of them voted for Brexit because they want the very opposite. They want the rebalancing of the economy. They want more done for Northern England. They want more done for people who are not high earners. And they're happy to pay a little bit of tax if it means they get a better national healthcare service and better public services. Professor Matthew Goodwin from the University of Kent and the academic Constanza Hermanin from the European University Institute in Florence speaking to Emma about the rise of women on the right of politics. And finally, last but not least, the sex expert Aloni. She's built an online community by speaking openly about sex and relationships. An Evening Standard headline

asked why Ohlone is the sex guru Gen Z can't get enough of. Ohlone's new book The Big O was out earlier this week and goes into detail about how we can close what she calls the orgasm gap. Emma started by asking Ohlone about growing up in a religious household. My mum and dad are Christian, so I was always in church every Sunday. And, you know, I loved it. I think I was able to meet other people. It was a community. It was great to meet other kids and stuff and, you know, learn about your faith. But there were obviously aspects which I kind of, you know, raised my eyebrow to.

And raising that eyebrow, though, has become your job. Yeah. And into that. Tell me how you went from that sort of background in that community to being a sex expert. Absolutely. So I've always enjoyed talking about relationships and dating. I think even being a Nigerian woman, my culture loves, you know, relationships. I mean, what culture doesn't love love and relationships but we also we're very known for marriages extravagant and weddings and such so I think naturally I always

enjoy talking about relationships and dating but of course with relationships and dating come sex and I always had my great community of friends who I love to talk about all my dating conundrums with but I noticed that they always wanted me to you know um shy away from talking about sex I was the potty mouth one and I wanted to you know have that conversation but they kind of they were shy and they thought it just wasn't really ladylike but I think it is ladylike to talk about sex I think we should all be able to have a conversation about sex and how to have great sex. A big part of it is that you put things out on social media. Yes.

People come to you with what they think. And you're trying to change what we even think sex means. Absolutely. I think we need to change what sex means to us because for so long it has been from the story and viewpoint from cis hetero men. I mean, if we think about erotica, who are the ones who are telling the stories? It's usually men. If you think about what people search online,

where are these stories and dialogues coming from? It is men. Women are never really in these stories or getting to paint the narrative or, you know, write the narrative. So I think it's really important that we understand that women are sexual beings and women have a right to share their story however they see fit, whether that's in a casual relationship

or within a relationship itself. But you also think the idea of penis in vagina, I'll put it like that, just being thought of as sex needs to change. And of course, you'd think like that if you were in a same-sex relationship, you would think differently. But you're trying to say

that more broadly. Absolutely. And that's what I talk about in The Big O. I think that, yes, penetrative sex is great to talk about. But I feel like sex in this day and age is too penis focused. There's so many ways we can enjoy sex. And I feel like when we just talk about penis and vagina, we're leaving out so many stories. We're leaving out, you know, women who identify as LGBTQ. We're leaving out stories that aren't just around penetrative sex. We're leaving out foreplay. We're leaving out, you know, just the different ways in which sex can take place. And again, I delve into this in the big O.

And I think it's really important that women pick it up and read it so they too can have better sex but some of what you're saying and I say this with great respect you will know it's been said for quite a long time by a lot of agony aunts before you about feminists who've been doing this for years and years and years and yet you're saying when you started this sort of conversation with friends your age and your teens and your 20s there was still a block there was still a problem there definitely was and i think it was because again for so long society has told us that sex is not for us sex is not it's just supposed to be something that um you know we do within um marriage or for procreation it's not something that we're supposed to enjoy so i think when girls are growing up even in the love island era even

with social media even with some of the programs that we've seen you don't think that message is I think it's changing bit by bit but it's not we still have so far to go we've got a very long way to go I mean we're getting there little by little I think even when I see certain conversations growing up for me was very different to how it is today which is what I love about Gen Z I'm a millennial so I think growing up as a millennial again I talk about it in the big which is older than Gen Z yeah I'm also a millennial yeah I think yes I think that when I was growing up as a millennial a lot of women were still shy or um were fearful to express their sexuality because they didn't want to be called certain names and they didn't want to be degraded but today that is slowly changing I think it's you know women are celebrating their sexuality more but again we have a very long way to go do your parents read your social media feed

sometimes not all the time what's the chat like around the table when you've been to church I you know do you know what when I asked my mum about it she just giggles sometimes she won't give me like she won't want to delve like don't get it twisted I will not sit down and talk about the orgasm gap with my mum you're not I'm not going to do that but we will have passing conversations here and there so if I need to break down to her why you know one of the most famous women in the world is like famous she will she'll be like oh really you know so I can have conversations with her here and there but again am I going to sit down and explain, you know, different forms of stimulation when it comes to pleasure? Absolutely not. And not with the male members of the family. Absolutely not even more. No, that might be where

the progress also needs to go, perhaps. Yeah, definitely. You have also asked and you kind of try and make fun of it. And so people come out themselves and talk to you on social media about women faking orgasm which is still a major issue isn't it yeah it is I mean I did a live show just the other day and I asked a bunch of women you know have you faked an orgasm and a lot of women raised their hands a lot of women have and again this is something I talk about in the big oh and I think it's something that we need to cut out because by faking your orgasm you're you're adding towards the orgasm gap and the disparity between men and women and you know just not being able to communicate properly is just not the greatest form

of sexual intimacy we need to communicate in every way possible but a lot of women are faking it for different reasons they're either just fed up and tired um they don't want to bruise his ego and to that i usually say listen your pleasure is more important than his egosis so you need to speak up if something isn't being done correctly you need to inform him and you need to communicate and maybe you need to do some you know have some solo sex as well maybe you it is that you don't know what it is you might enjoy and that when you do find out you can then teach your partner as well but again I break this down in the big oh in so many ways and when people are telling you that they're still doing it you say there's a number of reasons so they're tired yeah might not know what they want

and any other reasons that have struck you yeah I think it's usually because they think that there's something wrong with them. They feel like they're unable to orgasm. And sometimes that makes me sad if I'm being completely honest, because I know that a lot of women have not experienced an orgasm by themselves or during partnered sex. And that's because they might not even understand what pleasure looks like or the end point of pleasure, which is to orgasm. And that's because again a lot of people do not understand that when it comes to women and stimulation a lot of women um actually orgasm through clitoral stimulation 75 of us um you know reach orgasm

through clitoral stimulation and when it comes to penetration it's only 25 of us and for a lot of cis heterosexual um couples who are having sex, the bread and butter of intimacy for them is penetrative sex. So that kind of just shows you where things are going wrong, right? In the cold light of day, when you still talk about the fact that that's going on, that women fake, it's just odd, isn't it? Yeah. That's what it sounds, you know, when you actually think about it,

even though there are very good reasons for people to justify it to themselves. A lot of the time, a lack of confidence, as you say. The sex expert, Aloni, speaking to Emma on Thursday about the orgasm gap. Her new book, The Big O, is out now. That's it from me on Weekend Woman's Hour. Don't forget to listen to Woman's Hour from 10 a.m. on Monday. be speaking to the actor Erin Doherty on playing a young Princess Anne in The Crown and taking on the role of Abigail Williams in Arthur Miller's iconic play The Crucible, exploring the women of the Salem witch trials. Have a great rest of your weekend. I better take myself off mute

on all those WhatsApp groups. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.