Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Hunger strike, Anna Maxwell Martin, US Election and women, Joeli Brearley, Mary McCall Jr

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

British-Egyptian activist and Maths professor Laila Soueif has been on hunger strike for the past month to protest her son Alaa’s incarceration in Egypt. He is the country’s most high profile political prisoner. Laila and her daughter Sanaa – who has faced arrest and imprisonment herself – joined Anita Rani to talk about why they won’t stop fighting for Alaa’s release.The BAFTA-winning actress Anna Maxwell Martin stars as Delia in the new ITV series Until I Kill You. It tells the true story of Delia Balmer, who was the girlfriend of serial killer John Sweeney. Anna joined Nuala McGovern to talk about why she wanted to tell Delia’s story, as well as her personal experiences of grief and struggles with the special educational needs system.The United States goes to the polls next week and presidential candidates are campaigning furiously, with the two frontrunners being the Democratic nominee and current Vice President, Kamala Harris and the Republican nominee and former President, Donald Trump. As a programme, we’re taking a look at whether there’s such a thing as the ‘the woman’s vote'. How are different groups of women likely to vote and why? Nuala spoke to Kathy Frankovic, Consultant to YouGov America and former director of surveys for CBS News and Debbie Walsh, Director of the Centre for Women and American Politics at Rutgers University.Sacked from her job by voicemail the day after she informed her employer she was pregnant Joeli Brearley set up Pregnant Then Screwed to end pregnancy and maternity discrimination. The charity has helped to influence new flexible working and redundancy protection laws, providing advice to hundreds of thousands of women when they face discrimination and challenging employers and government in high profile cases. After ten years Joeli is stepping down as CEO. She joined Nuala in the Woman's Hour studio.Film historian Jennifer Smyth talked to Nuala about the life and legacy of the pioneering American screenwriter, Mary McCall Jr. The first woman president of the Screen Writers Guild in 1942, Mary was a key negotiator ensuring better rights and wages for all screenwriters in the film industry. But after years of standing up to male studio heads, she would be blacklisted and go from being one of the biggest earners in Hollywood to living on nickels and dimes.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells 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 and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour with me, Anita Rani. In the next hour, Motherland and Line of Duty actress Anna Maxwell-Martin on her new true crime drama Until I Kill You, in which she plays Delia Barmer, one of the girlfriends of John Sweeney, a serial killer who was convicted of killing two women, both his former girlfriends and attacking Delia.

I hope we've achieved a story which is not just about the victimisation of a female, as Delia likes to call herself, but what it looks like to be a victim when you're not cookie cutter, when you don't toe the party line, when you're not considered to be a conventional person or what we expect, how we expect victims should present themselves. Anna Maxwell-Martin coming up. Also, Jolie Brearley, who's stepping down as CEO of Pregnant Then Screwed. Ten years ago, her ambition with the charity was to end what she calls the motherhood penalty. Does she feel she's achieved that? We'll hear about a woman who shook up Hollywood in the 1930s.

The tenacious Mary McCall Jr. did her film franchise about Maisie, an independent young woman, give rise to James Bond. And with the US election next week, how are women there voting? Lots to get through, so grab a cup of whatever you fancy and settle in for the next hour. But first, what extremes would you go to to stand up for your children? For the last month, 68-year-old Leila Suaf has been on hunger strike. She's doing it for her son, Ale. He's a British-Egyptian writer and pro-democracy activist who's been in jail for most of the past decade.

Ale has become a symbol of the 60,000 political prisoners believed by human rights groups to be in Egyptian jails. He's completed his current five-year sentence for allegedly spreading false news when he shared a Facebook post about someone who died in prison in Egypt, but he still hasn't been released. Leila began her hunger strike the day after Ale was supposed to be freed. She joined me this week from Cairo, as well as her daughter Sana from London. I began by asking Leila, a month on from beginning her hunger strike

how she was doing both physically and psychologically. Physically, I'm still well. You know, when you go on hunger strike, there is five or six horrible days where you're hungry and feeling faint and stuff like that. And then the body sort of kicks in and acclimatises and starts burning extra fat. And that can last.

I mean, it depends on each body how long that can last. All I can say is that I'm still in that stage. I conserve energy, of course. Everyone around me, you know, keeps carrying things for me and putting things and giving me rides and so on. But I still feel normal. How long that will last? When the body

doesn't find that much fats, it starts burning muscle and then you're really in trouble. I expect that will happen eventually but at the moment I'm still all right. Which is good to hear. Going on hunger strike, Lela, is a sign of complete desperation. It's also quite dangerous. No one would ever recommend that they put their body through this. Why this decision? Well, first I think most mothers would do anything for

their children. Most mothers of prisoners would be willing would do anything for their children. Most mothers of prisoners would be willing to do this for their sons or daughters if they could be sure of having my visibility and my ability to garner support and to put pressure on whatever government is concerned. What are you hoping to achieve? I'm hoping to achieve Allah's release, and that's the ultimate hope. And if I can't achieve that, I can at least give both the Egyptian and the British government a very big headache. At least they will not be holding my son and, you know, living their life in tranquility. Sana, I'm going to bring you in here. You were there for the conversation when your mother

told Ale that this is the decision she was taking to go on hunger strike. What's your understanding of how he took it? And what's your reaction to what your mum is doing my mother told us before that this was her plan I told Ale in the visit before the date of the 29th of September came that this is what we expect and he was he was shocked and he was worried for her but then he told me I mean my mother is a very strong character, so he was like, she's going to do whatever she wants to do. So yeah, we're all scared for her. I mean, Ale is more scared for her. I am too, but I kind of understand her.

I kind of, I'm also fed up of this, like the sentence was unjust to begin with, but he served it in full. And so I'm, you know, I'm confused between being scared for her, but also I feel proud, and I feel like she's giving us a way to fight back this injustice. The question is, Leila, how long do you expect to go on for?

I expect to go on until either Allah is released or I collapse. And I can't guess when I'll collapse, because, as I said, it differs from body to body. I hope I have a bit longer than most people because I was very, I was quite overweight when I started this. So I hope I have a bit longer. But I really do not mean to stop until Allah is released. He's already been in prison for five years, and before that he was only released for six months under probation. He had to spend every night in a police jail. And before that, he was doing another five years and just said, I can't go on. It cannot go on. Senna, you and Leila have just been to see Ale in the past few days. How was he?

He's mostly consumed with my mother, which is in a way better because he's like distracted from thinking about himself. But I know I am worried for him. His letters have now become very short, just small paragraphs about the cats outside his cell. He's not sharing much and he's not reading as much. So that's all it means that, you know, he's barely holding up. And there's been a lot of high profile support for Ali's release, including from people like Dame Judi Dench, Riz Ahmed, Olivia Colman, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Do you feel, Sana, the British government is fully engaged on Ali's behalf? Is it in their power to secure his release? It's absolutely in their power. Egypt is not an enemy country.

Egypt is an ally country. And the Foreign Secretary, David Lamy, when he was Shadow Foreign Secretary, he relayed to the Tories very specific steps that they could take to release my brother. Now that he's in power, he has the power to do those steps. I find the solidarity heartwarming and this is what empowers us

and this is what gives us hope. But to be fair, everyone except for the government is doing their best. The media is doing their best. MPs are doing their best, cross-party, but the government is not doing much.

I'm still hopeful with the Labour government, especially because David Lani was vocal about this case when he was in opposition. So I will hold him to his word. We contacted the UK Foreign Office for comments and they say our priority remains securing consular access to Mr El Fattah and his release so he can be reunited with his family. We continue to raise his case at the highest levels of the Egyptian government. And the foreign secretary has raised Mr. El Fattah's case with Egyptian foreign minister every time they have met. Leila, you're allowed to visit your son once a month,

I think. Are you able to spend any meaningful time with him? Can you hug him? 20 minutes and the visit is behind glass, so I can't hug him. We talk through a mouthpiece. He was born in 1981. That was also when the dictator, Hosni Mubarak, came to power in Egypt. And you and your husband, Ahmed, who was a lawyer, he would be jailed for his human rights work. You've been activists since the 70s. What kind of future were you hoping for your family? The kind of future I hoped for differed from time to time. And the height of our hopes

was during 2011, when we really thought that we would be able to turn Egypt into a democratic country where we could do good work, make education better, health services better, things like that. Our revolution was defeated and we are living in the aftermath of that defeat. So now, I don't know what I hope for.

I hope that they can have a reasonable family life, probably outside Egypt. It looks like we can't really have a reasonable family life in Egypt, which is sad. But again, they're educated enough to make a future for themselves anywhere. They've been British citizens for a while. They know England well. They can settle there. So it should work for them. As for me, I'm too old to bother, I just want them to be safe. Sana, I want to talk about your life as well, because you transformed from a typical teenager

into a passionate activist. And this happened when you were 16 years old. In fact, tell me what happened on January the 25th. I participated in the revolution, but it was kind of by coincidence. I was supposed to meet my mother. My mother teaches in Cairo University. She teaches mathematics. I was meeting her to get some cash because I wanted to go to a party, something like that. And I had been aware of the politics, but i wasn't really looking to change it i didn't have much hope 16 year old yeah more interested in parties than politics exactly uh but but there

was like this very big case of a boy who was tortured to death when he was playing uh by the police when he was an internet in an internet cafe and he was like playing video games and they raided the internet cafe and the news of this and photos of the boy were very spread out in my school and so I was a bit angry already about police brutality in Egypt. So I participated and that changed kind of the course of my life. I, yeah, I mean, I bought into hope that this country could change. I felt all of a sudden a different feeling towards society as a woman, as a, I've never been that, you know, empowered. And I never imagined that I could be in the streets, talk to all kinds of people, all classes.

And you've been in some frightening situations yourself. With the defeat, Alay got arrested and I started campaigning for his release and I also got arrested and I was imprisoned for campaigning for my brother's release. And for the past eight to ten years, I've been just trying to get out of this, go back to my old life. I'm also a filmmaker, but it's not really giving us the chance while they have one of us.

They have my brother. How do you reconcile that, Leila? You're prepared to put your life on the line, but what about when your children do the same? Of course, during 2011, I was worried about all of them. There were all these street fights where police shot people, and they were in the forefront, so I was truly worried. But you can't hold people, you can't hold your children back once they are grown up and once they are fighting for something they believe in. You can't hold them back.

You just have to let your children go and, you know, help them, support them, try and protect them if you can, take a bullet for them if you can, but you cannot tell them, stop doing this. It's useless, it doesn't work, and it just puts an extra burden on them. Thank you to Leila Suef and Sana Saif there. We did contact the Egyptian authorities for comment, but they have not responded. They have previously insisted there are no political prisoners in the country and also deny any human rights abuses. of killing two women, both his former girlfriends. He attacked Delia with an axe and at one point she was tied up and held hostage by him for four days. In 2017, Delia wrote a book detailing her horrific experiences. It's called Living with a Serial Killer. Now ITV have created a drama based on the book called Until I Kill You, which tells Delia's story. Nuala was joined by The Motherland and Line of Duty actress Anna Maxwell-Martin,

who plays Delia, and she started by asking her about Delia. So Delia is somebody who is quite anti-establishment. She loves travelling. She loves dancing. She loves life, but loves dancing. She loves life. But she isn't somebody... I get really uncomfortable talking about Delia because I feel like it should be Delia talking about herself rather than somebody talking for her.

But she definitely isn't somebody who feels she needs to tread the party line. She is very much her own person, very strident of opinion. So I guess in a nutshell, that's who Delia is. Yeah, you've met her, right? I met her on set. I didn't meet her before we started shooting, but she visited set a couple of times.

I hadn't heard about her before until I watched the show, which is gripping is one word I could use. Really compelling. Just just pulled me in. I think she's an unusual person in some ways. I think of her own own volition. She's an unusual person. Yes. She doesn't shy away from that. And I think what we're trying to do, I mean, this story is adapted from Delia's book. So Delia wrote a book about her experience at the hands of John Sweeney and then what she suffered on her journey through the criminal justice system at the hands of the police.

So the book was the starting point. And then Nick, who wrote the script, still has a very good relationship with Delia. They're friends, they know each other very well. And so he used the book as a starting point and then, I guess, decided in his dramatisation of that which direction to go in and what to focus on. And I think very much, and I hope we've achieved a story which is not just about the victimisation of a female,

as Delia likes to call herself, but what it looks like to be a victim when you're not cookie cutter, when you don't toe the party line, when you're not considered to be a conventional person or what we expect, how we expect victims should present themselves, what that looks like for that person. And so I hope we've told that story. What impact did it have then playing the

role of Delia on you as an actor? It's something I get very nervous about talking about impact as an actor. Why is that? Because what Delia went through was incredibly impactful. Delia suffered from PTSD following the attack and then being forced to testify against him in a public arena. And so it feels very marginalising to talk about impact as an actor. It's not my story, it's Delia's story. However, in the past I have brushed off those things, like, la-la-la, I don't want to talk about it, I'm just a good, fun girl on set. But actually the reality is that when you play scenes

where you are portraying somebody who has PTSD, is a traumatised person,'s fearful um and you're filming scenes with violence you are creating bad chemicals in your body because you're really there you're you're in it you're trying to be as um authentic as possible so you are creating you know cortisol adrenaline lots of stuff that you shouldn't maybe be creating for 12 hours a day so there is definitely a wind down I feel it more acutely when I do a play when you have to become overwrought in a play you can and so you're repeating that maybe also sort of late at night when you're not definitely not supposed to be creating those chemicals at nine o'clock at night you know so I think over time you start to think oh I feel a bit disheveled now

but that's as far as I would go in terms of impact it's uh really such a story some of it difficult to watch um but important to tell her story um and I know you say you're not speaking for Delia but it was something I hadn't heard about before and just the way it recreates the time and the place is compelling and at times horrifying. But I want to move on to a couple of other aspects in your life as well. Of course you've a lot of work that is going on. You've had a busy year. Yes. You're on our screens alongside David Mitchell in Ludwig.

Yes. Huge success. I know. It's done really well. We're pleased. So you've got comedy drama detective series there, but you also had Line of Duty at the other end. You had the hated DCS Patricia Carmichael

Oh come on I think well I'll leave it up to my listeners whether they think that's fair or not She sleeps in a coffin doesn't she Any particular character you're drawn to? I loved her

Oh God I'd play Pat again in a heartbeat Love Pat I loved filming. Oh God. I'd play Pat again in a heartbeat. Love Pat. I loved filming Motherland. I've loved, I really enjoy all my work now. I just did a play in the summer with James Corden at the Old Vic and that was challenging and very rewarding. I feel lucky that I've been able to do a sort of breadth of stuff from comedy to your gritty dramas it has been a particularly busy year for you uh do you know why that is uh gosh that's an interesting question do you know after my um my husband died three years ago yeah i'm really sorry i know you have two young

yes thank you and things were really difficult in every aspect of our lives and one of those was that there's lots of stuff that comes with grief and one of them is financial terror and then there are real practicalities around your children and their mental health and supporting them which is your priority so going to work and doing my job is inordinately difficult it meant there were suddenly 99% of jobs I couldn't do and I wasn't really being offered them either I don't know whether I don't know what vibe I was giving off but looking back I was probably in a state of shock and fear and a sort of heightened state for a long time actually until very recently and I really had to think what can I do that means I'm separate from my children for as short time as possible

that first year was grueling I could hardly leave my children and so I started doing a lot of um panel shows presenting I just thought I've got to keep this ship on the road and people were and I loved it I really loved it you know I've trod this road before of grief and sudden traumatic death. I've done it before. And so in a way, I could pick myself up and do it again. It was horrible to have to see my children walk that road. But I'm pretty gritty I'm pretty strong and I think I'm quite deft I hope and navigating life and I thought I've just got to keep the motor chugging on and it did it kind of then I got a job that led to another job that led to a job and and the momentum just built and now I've had a really busy year and I feel super grateful. And of course, the kids are like, can you be off work now?

So I think that's part of it. Work momentum is really important in our profession. It's a really hard profession to keep going at. It's been difficult for a lot of people. Strikes, post-COVID. Yeah, really difficult. You know, I'm struck by, you said this is not the first time that you experienced grief that came after a traumatic event. Yeah.

I know you sadly lost your father, Ivan, very young. And somebody told me about grief before that sometimes that second time you feel it, you're like, oh God, I remember this. You know, and that there's almost a muscle memory that's there in what you have to do yeah yes exactly but also when you have children yes that's a completely different framework yeah when it happened to of indulgent, but I was. I was very isolated because no one had been through what I'd been through. I didn't know those people. Yes.

And then when it happened with Rog, I saw it more as we've all got to keep it together for the kids. Your former husband, Roger Michel. I also think there's something about being a woman in your 40s and by then, if you're lucky enough, you will have succeeded in having the best friends and best people around you. You'll have stopped making mistakes in that area of your life and I really did.

I had exceptional friends, an exceptional support network. That's not to say, Nuala, that I didn't feel isolated and I don't still feel isolated because I do. I deal with a very specific set of circumstances around my children and myself and I do sometimes feel like that. And of course, again, I don't know anybody who's been through what my children have been through. I now work with lots of children in crisis, so I know of other things. But obviously, there's always specificity to your story. So my focus was just on them. And I didn't really start to grieve for Roger until probably six months ago.

Yeah, it's still a very short space of time. Yeah, it's only three years. It's only three ago. Yeah. It's still a very short space of time. Yeah, it's only three years. It's only three years. Yeah. Yeah. Just on your way in, you alluded to the fact you have something else

going back to the work. Oh. Beyond the go, but you probably can't mention it yet. Is it a secret? You never can say, can you, until you've signed on the dotted line.

Oh, all right. I'm really curious what it's going to be. I know your many fans will be wanting to know what it is. It's very funny and very silly, and it's a brilliantly written script. No, I thought I was going to have a very protracted and long Advent, where I'd just be stuffing chocolate Advent calendars into my mouth. Not going to happen.

Lying around, that's not going to happen. So, mind you, if you wait till after christmas you get to advent calendars half price don't you you do so maybe i'll snuffle up a few of those and then just sit there over new year just um open opening the doors anna maxwell martin talking to nula there her true crime drama until i kill you is on itv1 and itVX tomorrow at 9pm and continues until the 6th of November. And the accompanying documentary, Until I Kill You, The Real Story, is on ITV1 on the 7th of November at 9pm. Still to come on the programme, Jennifer Smythe on Mary McCall Jr.,

the screenwriter who shook up Hollywood in the 1930s. And remember that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10am during the week, just subscribe to The Daily Podcast. It's free via BBC Sounds. So next week is election day in the United States, where voters will pick between Republican and former President Donald Trump and Vice President and Democrat candidate Kamala Harris. Gender has played a big role in this election, with some characterising Trump v Harris as the men v women election.

So how has gender defined this election? Nuala spoke to Cathy Frankovic, consultant to YouGov America and former director of surveys at CBS News, and Debbie Walsh, director of the Centre for Women and American Politics at Rutgers University. She began by asking Debbie if there's always been a political gender gap. We've seen this gender gap since 1980. It's buried in its size.

And this year, some of the most recent polling we're seeing from YouGov is showing about a 10-point gender gap, which is not the largest gap we've ever seen. And I just want to be clear, when we talk about the gender gap, we're talking about the difference in the way men and women vote. So we're comparing the support one candidate has between men and women. So some of the most recent polling I'm seeing is with Harris coming in at 55% among women, 45% among men. But what's important to remember also, combined with this difference in the way men and women vote, is the fact that women outvote men. In the last number of presidential cycles, we have seen about 10 million more women voting than men. So the potential there could be significant in the outcome of an election.

And also to remember that women are not monolithic. There is tremendous variation among women by demographics. So coming to you, Cathy, what do you think is under that gender gap? What is dividing the men and women? Well, if we go back to 1980, because that's really when it started appearing in national polling data, that was the election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, which Ronald Reagan won. And women were far more likely to think of him as someone who might get the United States into a war. And that seemed to be moving women away from voting for him. This election is a little different. I mean,

previously, early on, it didn't have anything to do with women's rights or didn't seem to have anything to do with women's rights. And now, of course, with the issue of abortion on the table and the role of women, that seems to be affecting people. But this has been a long journey. And what we see now is women are actually shifting parties. They are more likely to call themselves Democrats than Republicans. The men's side, it is a little bit different. There is much more evenness in people thinking themselves Democrats or Republicans. So a party shift has taken place, as well as the voting shift.

Debbie's correct. The polling now is sort of interesting to people because of the fact that a majority of women are voting one way and a majority of men are voting the other way. Most of this action, however, is happening not among men and women Democrats or men and women Republicans. They're, you know, 90 plus percent of them are voting for their party's nominee, but it's happening among those who don't commit to a party who call themselves political independents. There's a rather sizable difference

between men and women in how they vote, and that's causing a lot of the gender differences we're seeing overall in the country. And of course, there are questions about exactly how that might play out. There are seven swing states in particular where people, which could go Democrat or Republican, and people trying to figure out

how the independents in those particular states will vote. But are there really, Debbie, I'll start with you, that many women who are independent, who haven't decided on their vote yet? Well, this mystery of undecided voters, and Cathy can speak to this far better than I can, but we do know that women have in the past been likely to be more of those sort of late deciders.

I'm not sure that is the case, but I think that it's important to remember that among these women, the kinds of issues that are driving their vote is still the economy. It is also abortion has risen in its saliency to women voters. And that issue is playing a powerful role in what will motivate and energize people to actually show up and vote. I mean, I think that's also an important part. Some of these low information voters also don't show up and vote.

Low information? People who are not paying as much attention to the election, who may in fact be some of these undecideds, they're also not really as likely to show up and vote on Election Day unless there's some issue that's highly motivating them. Interesting. Your thoughts on that, Kathy? This is also an election. And let me say something about some of the subgroups of women which are worth looking at. There are differences between married and single people, be they male or female. It's the single people who are more supportive of Kamala Harris. In the case of women, it's almost two to one. I think that we've always seen a marriage difference. People who are married tend to be more Republican than people who are not

married. And not married would include divorced people as well as single people. And people with children tend to be more Republican than people who do not have children in the household, children who are under the age of 18. We also know that women tend to say they're more religious than men to go to church services or synagogue services more often. And those people who are extremely religious, at least among white Americans, tend to favor the Republicans. So there's a lot of stuff going on underneath that big gender difference that we see and that we're talking about. Although I have seen with younger potential voters, that religious shift, some are saying, has split of men being more religious than women just in that younger demographic

and also a political divide where they're seeing it more stark in younger voters as well when it comes to that gender. I'd be curious for your thoughts on that. I would be very careful in making generalisations about that until we get to election day, in part because younger adults are the hardest to reach when it comes to public opinion polls. So those that do participate may be different from overall. There is one strong theme, though, when it comes to men and women. And I suppose this really goes over the past few decades as things have changed, Debbie. And that is education and a difference that you can see there because women are becoming more educated than men in certain circles. differences that we've been seeing is sort of this question about the white women's vote, right? White women went majority for Trump last both times. But one of the differences that we see is within education. So women with a college degree, with a college education, are more likely to support the Democratic candidate now. And it's women without a college degree that are part of that Trump base. And so this is some of these women had been, as Kathy

has pointed out in the past, they have been Republican voters, but they find Trump maybe a bridge too far. They might well have voted for him in 16. He was the Republican and they're Republicans and the party is the clearest predictor of a vote. But then we have seen a shift among those women. We saw it in 2018 with a kind of mobilization of women where women sort of felt, really saw that elections have consequences in their lives. And then the Dobbs decision really drives that home.

Which is about abortion legislation and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The reversal of the Roe decision. And so we're seeing women who might have been Republican voters in the past shifting. And that is the vote that I think everyone is watching to see what will they do? What will those college educated white women do? They've been dubbed suburban women, but they're not just in the suburbs. What will they do come election day? And will this this sort of shift that we've been seeing and their political activation continue in this election cycle? Do you see it when it comes to female candidates? You talk about the consequences of elections on parties getting women to stand, for example, for Congress or the Senate, as well as, of course, this presidential election. After the 2016 election, we saw record numbers of women

running. We saw the largest incoming class of women in the U.S. House. 36 new women were elected. And then in addition, we had the incumbents who won reelection. Of those 36 new women, 35 of them were Democrats. This was overwhelmingly on the Democratic side. There was a little bit of a bounce back for the Republicans in the following cycle. But what we have seen this cycle is a slight drop in the number of women running for Congress. But it has all been on the Republican side. The Democratic women are again a slight increase, but the Republican women are down. So we have an overall negative on women candidates for Congress this cycle. Cathy, let me throw one to you. Do you think voters, when they go into the ballot box, and of course, not a generalisation, but just your thoughts on this,

whether the voter cares that the person on the ballot is a man or a woman? I think it's a very open question. Yes, you will find women wanting a woman to be running, wanting a woman to be elected, certainly more so than men. But there is still some concern among the public, and we've asked this, whether they think America is ready for a woman president. Answers people give seem to be motivated in part by who's running, is it a Republican or a Democrat? And it's mostly a Democrat, twice for president now. And also seems to be hopeful for whatever party leaning you have. So I think there's concern. There is concern among a lot of women that America is not ready to elect a woman president, that while there may be all these people who have been elected

to lower offices like Congress, like Senate, that glass ceiling that Hillary Clinton talked about is functionally could still be there for many voters. Kathy Frankovic, consultant to You Give America and former director of surveys at CBS News. And Debbie Walsh there from the Center for Women and American Politics at Rutgers University. And next week, Nuala will be in Washington presenting on Radio 4 as the results come in overnight and presenting Woman's Hour on Thursday, the 7th of November. Now, nearly 10 years ago, Jolie Brearley was sacked from her job by voicemail the day after she informed her employer she was pregnant. That experience led to her forming Pregnant Then Screwed, the organisation which campaigns to end pregnancy and maternity discrimination. Some of you may remember the March of the Mummies in 2022,

which saw thousands of families marching across the UK for better investment in childcare. Pregnant Then Screwed has provided advice to hundreds of thousands of women when they face discrimination and challenging employers and government in high-profile cases and helped introduce new flexible working and redundancy protection laws. Recently, Jolie announced that she's stepping down as CEO and she joined Nuala this week.

Nuala began by asking Jolie how she was feeling about this big decision. I mean, I'm feeling terrified and elated. It's all of the emotions all at once and obviously now full of cold because I've announced that I'm stepping down and it's all been quite intense over the last few days. But, you know, I'm excited for the future of Pregnant Then Screwed and I'm excited for my future too. Shall we reminisce for a moment? Take us back to that experience which led to the founding of Pregnant Then Screwed. So as you mentioned, just over a decade ago, I told my employer that I was pregnant. And the following day, she sacked me by voicemail. And she was the CEO of a children's charity.

I had no support. I had no access to legal aid. I had very little understanding of my legal rights. And it was honestly one of the most terrifying and lonely experiences of my entire life. And, you know, now if that happens to any other woman and we know that it happens to 54,000 women a year, then they can call Pregnant Then Screwed and they can access emotional support and they can access free legal advice from our brilliant volunteers. And we also know that people now have a better awareness of the many unnecessary and systemic barriers that women encounter when trying to have children in a career, what we call the motherhood penalty. So we're talking about a lack of flexible working, a completely antiquated parental leave system, unaffordable childcare, and the fact that so many women either get pushed out of their jobs or demoted for daring to procreate. As you talk about that as well, I suppose I should tell people that Pregnant Then Screwed will continue. It is just you

stepping down as CEO. Yes, absolutely. It will continue. We're recruiting a new CEO in the next couple of months. What do you think they should know about the job? What's the most challenging thing? Look, I mean, over the last 10 years, hand on heart, I can say we've done a really great job. The job itself is wonderful in so many ways. But if I was to say what I would have done differently I would have done more to protect my own mental health and myself I succumbed to what a great number of activists succumbed to which was the in the trying to achieve the goal that drove me which of course is women's equality I I struggled to have any downtime I was so passionate about it. I cared about it so much. And knowing that I had set up an organization that could make the experience less severe for another woman who was going through what I went through meant that I just trying to create a society in which people could care for their children and have great careers and yet I failed to do that for myself so there were times where I

was putting my kids to bed and I was sending emails or sending messages or they were telling me stories and I just wasn't there I wasn't present and you know I'm very lucky that I have a supportive family you cannot do this job without a supportive family. But what I would say to the next CEO is be boundaried, protect your mental health as much as you can, because I made myself very unwell at points and that's no good for the fight and it's no good for you. It is ironic, isn't it? You working for better working conditions for mothers

and seeing yourself being put through that in that fight as well. The best moment as you look back? Well, the best moment has got to be March of the Mummies, the protest we organised in 2022, standing on a red bus, looking out across Parliament Square to 10,000 parents, chanting and singing for better childcare and parental leave. Babes in arms, hopes, hopes sketched on their faces. I will genuinely remember that moment until the day I die.

I was mentioning to our listeners, you know, this morning that the fertility rate in England and Wales has dropped to the lowest rate on record. Women in England and Wales had an average of lowest rate on record. Women in England and Wales had an average of 1.44 children between 2022 and 2023. And the average age of a new mum being 30.9. I am asking listeners for their thoughts on that. I want your thoughts on that.

But I want to read you a comment that came in. I am 34 and I just had my first child. My workplace made me redundant the same week I gave birth and statutory maternity pay is so low, I'm returning to work at nine months and facing nursery fees of over £1,000 a month. So even with the funding and tax relief scheme,

we have survived on my savings, they're nearly gone, we just won't be able to afford a second child. What are your thoughts on some of those figures and that little story that I told you too? I mean, look? I mean look I honestly wonder why anybody would want to have a child at the moment in the UK. Everything is in flux, it's in chaos. Maternity services are a mess. We have a completely outdated parental leave system which pushes the joy but also the burden onto women and then pays them an absolutely measly amount to do the

most important job in the world. We have little access to flexible working, we have a completely unaffordable inaccessible child care system, housing costs are through the roof and we know that when you ask women why they're not having children they say it's because of either job security because of the cost or because they can't find somebody to love. Those first two things we can solve. And yet we've seen very little response from this government, very little action from this government. We do not value parenting or care in this country. And until we do, we will continue to see that birth rate go in decline. But let's talk about that then, because, you know, you're 10 years down the path

and you point to, for example, the march that raised awareness in that way. What would be the one point, if you were sitting opposite the government now instead of me, that you feel needs to be worked on immediately? We need six weeks paternity leave paid at 90% of salary. We did some research with the Centre for Progressive Policy and found that if you do that, you decrease the gender pay gap by 4%. So that is a game changer

in terms of giving women access to the workplace and improving women's equality. But also dads really want to spend time with their kids. Why on earth have we only got two weeks paternity leave? That's the first thing I'd do. The second thing I'd do is that we need a childcare system that works and it currently still isn't working, despite the fact that we helped secure £5.2 billion of investment.

The whole system needs scrapping and starting again. It's a mess. Is that one of your bigger regrets, that that hasn't been resolved more in the past 10 years? Yeah, it is, although we have seen commitment from the new government to do an investigation into parental leave. So we're hoping that with the right pressure

that they will do the right thing and improve paternity leave. And we have seen a commitment that they will do more on the childcare system. We just haven't seen what that means in reality. The employment bill, it will be a radical step in the right direction, but only if the detail is there. Otherwise, it could end up being all fur coat and no knickers. So right now, what we need as organisations is putting pressure on the government to get that detail just right and things will change for the better.

What do you feel has changed? What is it right now that feels different? What feels different from what we have done is that you can now get the support that you so desperately need. I couldn't get that when it happened to me. I was completely alone. And I do think there's more awareness. We're talking more about childcare.

It is now top of the government's agenda. When I started talking about this five years ago, they would look at me like I had two chocolate fingers stuck up my nose. You know, it was like I was of no interest at all to anybody. So these issues are on the agenda when they weren't previously. And that's a massive sea change.

But it's taken 10 years to get there. It's going to take, you know, another 10, 20 years to actually see the changes that we need what about changing language in the area for example we've heard discussions about terms like pregnant people um has that impacted your work how do you feel about it yeah look i mean if any any woman that runs a women's organisation tells you this isn't a problem, then they're lying. It's a real challenge within women's organisations. Whether you use sex-based language or whether you use gender identity language,

in other areas, when you're talking about policy or decisions, there is room for disagreement. But there isn't on this. Disagreement is framed as you being a bigot. And yet in every women's organisation, there is room for disagreement, but there isn't on this. Disagreement is framed as you being a bigot. And yet in every women's organisation, there is this disagreement. And so what tends to happen is women are too scared to talk about it and leaders are too scared to talk about it because they know the online abuse is going to be absolutely extreme. And they know that internally there are going to be huge, huge challenges. You're going to open a Pandora's box. And so many tend to repress it and try and not talk about it.

But that can cause a rot within a small organisation. So it is a really big challenge for women and girls organisations right now. And what is the challenge, the time it takes to discuss the approach that you're going to take? No, the challenge is that there are very different opinions within every organisation, but there isn't room for disagreement within those organisations. Do you feel that impacted your work? I'm just thinking of the amount of time you have with the amount of tasks, as you've outlined, that you've been trying to achieve? It has absolutely impacted our work and it has impacted every charity working in the women and girls sector. Has it played into you stepping down?

No, no, it hasn't. It is a big challenge and I have struggled with it a lot over the past few years, but no, my decision is separate from that. Jolie Brearley talking to Nuala there. Now in the 1930s a chain-smoking Irish-American writer arrived in Hollywood and shook up the entire film industry creating a legacy that still has an impact today but you've probably never heard of her. She's called Mary McCall Jr. She was the first woman president of the Screenwriters Guild and before that secured the first ever contracts for writers as talking pictures took over from

silent movies. Mary was a power player until she was blacklisted in the 1950s and her career irreversibly damaged. Nuala was joined by Jennifer Smythe, the film historian and professor of history at Warwick University. She's just written a biography. It's called Mary McCall Jr., The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter. Nuala began by asking Jennifer how she came across this tenacious Mary McCall Jr. It was a long time ago. I think it was over 20 years ago. I was doing some work in the Warner Brothers archives in Los Angeles. And I was doing work on gangster pictures back in the 1930s then. And I saw that a woman had written a gangster script. And it was a shock because usually you just saw a line of men's names. But it was Mary McCall Jr. And it was one of the first times I'd

ever seen a junior after a woman's name. And I curious but life got in the way and eventually I came back to her and did a lot of digging and found out everybody in Hollywood knew who she was at the time but she just disappeared from the history books. So she disappeared first we'll get into why she disappeared or how she disappeared but I love the junior. I know. So tell us, there was many women called junior back in the day? There were back in the 19th century. It was almost a tradition around sort of middle class or fairly wealthy women who insisted that their side of the family get a voice. And she had quite a remarkable mother who was called Maisie. Her family was very wealthy.

They were more than middle class Irish Americans. They were very different from the stereotype very often that we get of Irish Americans at that time. And she married into an enormously wealthy family. Her father-in-law was the president of New York Life. He was advising Theodore Roosevelt when he was in the White House. And she was really insistent when she had her little girl that she was going to be something. And so it worked. But let's talk about Mary McCall Jr. So she came from this wealthy upbringing.

She had like, I suppose, the parents behind her that were ready to propel her in that way. But it was incredible. She became a Hollywood screenwriter. She became, as I mentioned, the first woman president of the Screenwriters Guild. And one of her biggest successes was the Maisie film series, which I started going down a rabbit hole looking at. Really kind of a feminist sort of spin on the films she was assigned to write. It was, you know, and it was out of the blue. They sort of gave it to her when she went to MGM,

which was a very wealthy studio and almost half of its screenwriters were women. So she was delighted to be there. But she basically took this property that had been written by a man and made it her own in fact she got a critics award for the best screenplay that totally disregarded its source material and you know it was made for Anne Southern who was a fabulous comedian and they got along like a house of fire and she was basically left alone to do her own writing, which was very different from what screenwriters basically had to suffer through at that time. Very often they'd have a dozen writers on a script,

and they wouldn't even know that they were the only writer. It was this about an independent woman in Brooklyn. She had a different lover or love interest at the beginning of each film in the franchise, and some say there might be a possible connection to James Bond. Yes, absolutely. Mary was a mentor for many young writers and that was one of the things when she was doing all of her work for the Guild. She wanted to make sure that every writer got the same rights, the protections on the job. It didn't matter how experienced you were. And Richard

Maybaum was a young writer and became involved with guild governance and helping other writers, and she helped his career along. And years later, when she was sort of down on her luck and the Maisie series had wound up, he helped her try and get a pilot on TV based on sort of the Maisie character, but of course, Anne Southern had moved on to other things. And Richard Maybaum, you know, had his own incredible career. He might have learned a trick or two from Maisie, because in James Bond, his, you know, scripts, he did the first few of them in the 1960s. James always has a new woman on his arm with each new film. And that's exactly what Maisie did, you know, but she was a working class girl, you know, and she

had a Brooklyn accent. She didn't have fancy clothes. She didn't have her hair beautifully done. You know, and she was always trying to escape bosses who were sexually harassing her, men who were whistling at her. And she basically wanted to live her life on her own terms, which is an incredible thing. And, you know, it was a franchise, basically, in the 40s. I couldn't believe it when I looked at how many movies there were, which I haven't seen, but I am going to try and catch one.

But let's talk about Mary, because she became quite high-flying, talked about Screen Actors Guild, and then she went on to present at the Oscars. But then things did go down. Talk us a little bit about, at that time, anti-communist witch hunts in the late 40s, early 50s that directly affected her. Yes, well, it's true that, you know, she worked with a lot of people in the guild who were on the left. A lot of writers were on both sides of the political spectrum.

And she was able to hold things together because she was a moderate. She was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. She did have lots of connections with new dealers. But she tried to maintain a kind of even political base so that she could get as much as she could for all writers. She wanted that kind of economic stability for everybody. And I think that's why she was able to bring so many producers to the table to get the contract signed. But then toward the end of the war, Roosevelt started losing ground. There were a lot of people from the right that were marshalling

against civil rights groups, women's groups were becoming more prominent, and they were trying to find somebody to blame. And it was easy, I think, for a lot of people on the right to pick Hollywood. It wasn't necessarily that they were communists. They certainly weren't trying to overthrow the government, but they got headlines. And those politicians were very targeted in the way they went after media people. And she was one of them, you know, they even said that she was at a communist meeting when she was actually presenting at the Academy Awards. So it didn't matter. They just created this fake news back then in order to smear people. And then sort of word got around that she was too much on the left, too visible, perhaps, and she started getting fewer assignments. And she didn't make a comeback after that time had

passed, unlike some of her male counterparts. What happened to her, to her wealth, to all that she had accrued at that point? Well, she had had a very sort of productive relationship with a lot of people in Hollywood, and she had built her image around being, you know, a great friend to lots of people across the business. But also she was a mother to three children, and then she got married again. But that was really what happened. She had a very sort of stable relationship with a guy who had a lot of connections in Hollywood. And then she met this younger man. He was very hot. He was very good in bed. And she just got fed up with a stale marriage. And right around the time when she was most visible and presenting for the Academy Awards and making all of these speeches, she ditched the old husband and married the young hot guy.

And it created backlash. And so I'm not really sure that it was as much about her politics, which were pretty moderate. But it was more about the image that she was willing to smash because she just felt like women could do anything that men can do. She was a real equal rights amendment feminist. And Hollywood really wasn't ready for her. America certainly wasn't ready for her at that time. A couple of small details I loved about her. She never wore a bra. She let her hair go grey. She was great friends with Bette Davis, been knocking back cocktails. You want to be part of that club. Absolutely,

yeah. And I mean, Dorothy Arzner, the only director who was really working in Hollywood, was a woman in the 1930s, was a close friend. They made a film that was created by nothing but women at Columbia in 1936, Craig's Wife. It's so interesting, though, and we just have about a minute, because I speak to a lot of people that are working in that industry and they talk about how difficult it is for women. Amazing, kind of these undiscovered women that were already there at the very beginning of the 1930s, etc. with Hollywood.

Yeah, it's true. I mean, about half of all writers in the 1920s were women. And Mary was able to keep that together and really help women's careers through the 1940s. And it just fell away. Jennifer Smythe there and her book is called Mary McCall Jr. The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter. That's all from me. Claire MacDonald will be back with Woman's Hour on Monday at 10am. She'll be hearing from the world's fastest woman, Julianne Alfred, two months on from winning gold at the Paris Olympics in the 100 metres.

Plus, Natalie Hewitt, the woman who spent months as a female film director in the Antarctic, surrounded by men. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.