Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Michaela Coel, Rafia Zakaria & Japanese ‘Womeneconomics’

Episode Date: September 11, 2021

We hear from the Screenwriter, director, producer and actor Michaela Coel about her first book ‘Misfits: A Personal Manifesto’. The book draws on topics covered in her MacTaggart lecture in which she spoke about dealing with trauma and the ways in which young creatives are exploited by the television industry.Sarah Gilbert the scientist who led the team that developed the Oxford Vaccine tells us why she doesn’t think we all need booster covid jabs this winter and tells us about being named the 49th winner of the “Bold Woman” award which honours inspirational women with a track record of success.The Pakistani author Rafia Zakaria discusses her new book, Against White Feminism. She explains why she sees the issue of race as the biggest obstacle to true solidarity among women. We discuss Japan’s Womenomics. A concept designed to get more women working and in positions of power. Women in Japan are less likely to be hired as full-time employees and on average earn almost 44 percent less than men. We hear from Cynthia Usui who coaches unemployed housewives in Japan and helps place them within the hospitality industry and Kathy Matsui who coined the term Womenomics in 1999 while working at investment bank Goldman Sachs.And the comedian Sophie Willan who won a BAFTA for best comedy writing, for the pilot episode of her BBC 2 comedy Alma’s Not Normal. She's now got a 6 part series starting on Monday night. Drawn from her own experiences, she plays the central character Alma who grew up in an out of the care system in Bolton. Presenter: Chloe Tilley Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Beverley Purcell

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 and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. In a moment, we'll hear from the writer and actor Michaela Cole on the difficulties of being a writer and not being able to afford chips or caniston. Two books on feminism have been published this week. We hear why Pakistani author Rafia Zakaria thinks feminism does not include women

of colour. And Womenomics, how Japan is trying to get more women in the workforce and up the career ladder while allowing women to be stay-at-home mums when their children are young. Maybe it's not necessary to do two things at the same time. Maybe we need to redefine work-life balance for both men and women, because your children are not going to be with you for the rest of your life. It's a very limited time that they're with you. Dame Sarah Gilbert, the lead scientist behind the Oxford AstraZeneca Covid jab, joins us after telling the Daily Telegraph that we don't need a mass booster programme in this country as immunity from two doses of the vaccine is lasting well. Plus, Sophie Willan on her BAFTA win for the best comedy writing that led to her running around a farm in a red sequined dress swearing with joy. Well, her comedy writing for the pilot episode of Alma's Not Normal has been commissioned as a series for BBC Two starting next week.

One of the absolute TV hits during lockdown was the BAFTA-winning I May Destroy You on the BBC, created by and starring Michaela Cole, whom audiences may have already known from her Channel 4 sitcom Chewing Gum. Now she's written her first book, Misfits, A Personal Manifesto, which is Michaela's call for honesty, empathy, inclusion and champions those who don't fit in. The book draws on topics covered in a lecture she gave to TV industry bigwigs in 2018, where she spoke about dealing with trauma

and the ways in which young creatives are exploited by the television industry. Michaela took Emma back to a time when, despite working in TV for a while, there came a moment when she couldn't afford to buy chips or caniston when she had thrush. When you write, sometimes the cash doesn't flow like other people's jobs,

so you don't get weekly or monthly pay. Sometimes you're not paid for six months. And so, yeah, I ended up in Zurich, unable to afford caniston when I had thrush and fries. And I also remember looking at a tomato and I think the tomato was like, what currency did they use? There's a euro, I don't even remember. But it was like two of whatever those things were. And I did the math and it was something like three quid for a tomato. And I was just like, I had to cut that trip short because I literally just couldn't

afford to stay there. Which is just again, though, you know, apart from the fact I'm concerned we've lost you to the Americans because you're now saying tomato. I'll forgive you, though. Oh my word. Tomatoes, save me, save me. I will not be lost to America. I'm dragging you back. I'm dragging you back. But there's a stark reality there. And you were saying this to a group of TV executives because the book comes from a McTaggart lecture. Most people will not know that put it, to improve the industry and therefore the stories that are being told. How important was it for you to talk about money in that way? You know, really important. And actually the more creatives that I speak to, it further affirms my decision to talk about things like that. I still meet writers, young British writers who are living at home in a very tiny bedroom and they're expected to have very huge ideas and they simply aren't quite being

paid enough. And so they take on four different writing projects to try and make ends meet but it's really hard and I think we often don't consider the financial constraints that creatives are going through whilst we ask them to have all these free-flowing huge confident ideas whilst they live in really tight conditions it's Virginia Woolf that talks about a room of one's own, isn't it? And if the room is like a cupboard, it's going to be hard. And you describe a group of, certainly some of these writers, as misfits. You put them together, you put yourself in that category, you define it on the back of the book as a misfit is one who looks at life differently. Many, however, are made into misfits because life looks at them differently. Beautifully put, we'd expect nothing less. But as you put it, this industry, the world, is cashing in on those misfits. Are you concerned

by that at the same time as perhaps not giving them a fair deal sometimes? Absolutely. And I'm also overjoyed that misfits and people from marginalised communities are receiving more opportunities to make work. I'm aware that some time ago, those opportunities didn't exist. But whilst those opportunities are being made available, I am concerned about people being exploited in the process and the longevity of people's success, of people's security not being looked out for. Well, I think it was at the time, somebody said in a review of the lecture, there were audible gasps in the room. I wonder, just before we get to a little bit more of what you were talking about in that lecture and that you've expanded on

in your writing for television, but also in this book, were you feeling confident going into that room to try and tell some home truths? Yeah, I think I was confident and terribly nervous at the same time. I wasn't nervous about whether what I was going to say was right or wrong. I was just nervous because the situation, everything was very heightened. You know, there's a very big stage. There are all these people who are professionals and I'm supposed to speak to them. That is terrifying. But never was my terror about whether I should say what I'm going to say or not. said, what had happened to you, you described certainly in part what had happened to you when you were writing and you went out for a drink with friends, your drink was spiked. And as many people who know, who've seen I May Destroy You, will know that you were attacked, you were sexually abused, and you didn't have much memory from that. But you said it first in this speech. how did it feel saying it? As I say in the speech, I had been vocal about it to

my workplace. So it wasn't the first time I had ever said it. Of course, it's the first time I've ever said it into a microphone. And it felt very freeing to dare to share that information because I know that other people have had similar experiences and I knew that sharing it would allow people to identify with me and that their story was reflected on stage. I knew that would happen and it was freeing. Yeah, it felt empowering. I didn't question whether I should say it. I know that you've said that your attackers were never found. I know that you obviously went to the police. You've talked greatly how important therapy was for you and also how freeing it was to talk about your story. But we see in the news that rape prosecutions are at a low, the government's having to take action in that area. And of course,

as you talk about, we've had a pandemic, which has also changed demand on services. How did you feel like you could get closure without your attackers, never mind being charged, but being found? My therapist said to me from the very beginning in my first session with her, which took place two days after I was assaulted, she said, my closure cannot be in relation to the case, to whatever happens with this person. My closure has to be irrelevant of whether they find them or not. So I was told that very early on and I took that on. And that's what I would say to anybody who is listening, that it can't be about that because it's a mess. The judiciary system when it comes to sexual assault and rape is a mess. And if our closure hinged on

finding the perpetrators of these crimes and prosecuting them, then many of us would be broken for the rest of our lives. So we have to find a way to find strength and to work our way through trauma irrelevant of that. I think that's very, very good advice, although it's obviously not an ideal situation. It's not an ideal situation. But for me, I'm always thinking about the victim and the survivor. The law is something separate. The law is a mess. And I would love to be a part of whatever movement can help fix that. But what I know how to do is stay with the victim and the survivor. And for me, everything is about their closure

and their evolution. I'm sure you will have seen this as well, of course, but in March, the website Everyone's Invited sparked a kind of Me Too movement in schools in the UK with girls, young women going online and talking about, as they put it, a rape culture in schools and what a lot of people had kind of just thought that they had understood perhaps at school, but had got even worse with the internet and with social media. How did you respond to that? Yeah, I actually remember listening about that on Women's Hour. I think it was brilliant because it raised so much discussion. And what I remember finding very interesting were the people who felt their sons couldn't possibly, how not my

son? It isn't my son. It isn't my son. And I don't know how we wrestle with that, how we wrestle with the fact that the person you raised and your loved one and your dear, sweet boy might not be educated about how to engage with women and sometimes with other boys. You know, we might need to stop seeing our children with these rose-tinted glasses and instead look at our sons as the future men of society who could cause great harm or great joy to society. And let's try and figure out how to make them joy givers. I've got to ask you this as well, because there is a trope about difficult women, right? When a woman in particular says something or starts questioning something, it's often received in a very different way to a man. There's that kind of

dominance penalty, it's called, versus, you know, a guy says something and it's received so differently to when a woman says something in the workplace. And I have to bring up the fact that you did turn down a million dollars, correct me if I'm wrong, from Netflix, I believe, for I May Destroy You, you know, because you weren't allowed, as I understand, to own any of the copyright and you would just kept asking questions and it didn't seem right to you. How did you feel or how were you made to feel about yourself during that? And do you think you were judged differently or at times harsher because you were a woman?

I must say, I don't remember feeling like people found me difficult. I remember feeling like people found me disturbed. So it was almost like she's a crazy woman. You know, that's the other one, isn't it? She's either difficult or she's crazy to the point where I began to think I was crazy or unnecessarily paranoid. And I think at that stage, it's hard to really say to people, trust your gut and follow your instinct because it's not a very useful sentence all the time but that is what I did in that situation and I'm very glad I did because in the end I wasn't a crazy woman that was acting wild and disturbed and unhinged, I was right to observe the industry and observe that there was a lack of transparency because there was an exploitation occurring. And if I didn't press on, despite being

seen as crazy and paranoid and unhinged, I wouldn't have got to that truth. And I wouldn't have ended up saying no to being exploited. I would not have then had the space to say yes to employers who were not exploiting me, who were willing to collaborate with me and listen to me and treat me as an equal. I had to say no to the former to make space for the latter. But still, I mean, saying no to a million bucks, that's a cool situation. Yeah, it's a cool situation. And I think it's even cooler if you realize that you don't need a million dollars. I was living at that time, I was in a house share

with lovely Ash, that's my housemate, and I had enough food to eat, I did not need a million dollars, which means I can make the decision whether I take that or not. What is behind that million dollars? That, you know, when you can say no to a million dollars because you realise you do have enough, even though it's not lots, then that's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I'm hoping by that point, you could afford the canister. By then I could definitely afford the canister and I could afford my bills. Sometimes my housemate has to bail me out every now and again because the cash flow can be very slow when you work in telly. I do have to ask about the decision not only to broach period sex in your wonderful masterpiece, but the fact that there was a clot, a blood clot on the bed.

You have got a great sense of humour and you use that. And I think, you know, enough people will know that if they've read and watched your work. But I think we just need to hear why there had to be a clot on the bed during the period of sex scene. Why did there have to be a clot? Because sometimes there is a clot. And do you know what I mean? Sometimes there is a clot. And if I can show that, why would I then resist showing that? Oh, because it might make people feel weird. But it can happen. That's what can happen to so many of us. What's your optimism level like at the same time, I'm thinking of conversations that I've had with very young people

and realising how switched on, intelligent, way ahead of me, some of these very young women are. And yeah, some of them really do have a full face of contour, but also have thoughts that are so complex, thoughts that I never had at 13, 12 years old. So it's nuanced. It's like on one hand, we may look at the new generation and feel a sense of

terror and dread because we didn't look like that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm sure that the generation above me looked at me and said the same thing. And perhaps every generation looks to the next one and gasps in horror and says, oh, God, everything's ruined. You've broken the great cause. But I think we just maybe don't understand it. If anyone wants to be a part of your Misfit crew, what do they have to do? How do they define themselves? I don't think it's a crew that you join. I think you have a look at the world around you and realise that you're probably already in. Michaela Cole and her book is called Misfits, A Personal Manifesto. We had lots of messages from you on this story.

We had an email here, an anonymous email, which says, I've just heard Michaela talk about her therapist saying that closure couldn't rest on the perpetrators being found. I would second that as despite my attacker being caught, found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison, that didn't provide closure. I had to find my own way to overcome the terrors that I experienced that night. Thank you for that message. And Rosa has got in touch to say, I'm 77. I don't watch the television. So knew little of Michaela Cole. I was so impressed, particularly her willingness to put autonomy and freedom above money, something I've done all of my life. So I don't have a lot of the latter, but enough to order her book, which I will give to my

granddaughter after I've read it. Now, should all adults have a Covid booster or not? Well, the government certainly thinks so, with the Health Secretary Sajid Javid saying he was confident a booster programme would start later this month. It's something the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is grappling with, and we're turning to scientists to give us the answers. On Friday, the face of Dame Sarah Gilbert,

the scientist who led the team that developed the Oxford vaccine, was splashed across the front of the Daily Telegraph, saying there shouldn't be a mass booster programme, but she backs advice to give boosters to vulnerable people. Dame Sarah Gilbert spoke to me on Friday and I asked her whether people should have a booster if they're offered one. It's a very complicated situation and newspaper headlines try to get the whole situation encapsulated in a few words, which are going to excite people's interest. And that's not actually a good way to be putting across the message here. We need to think about the different people in the population. It's really clear that people with compromised immune systems benefit from having a third dose of the vaccine. That doesn't mean that that is going to apply to everybody.

And we also need to be thinking about when boosters will be given, because if we give them to everybody very early, then we may face a situation of seeing that the effect of that booster dose has declined before we actually see more cases coming in the winter season, which is when we would expect to see cases of a coronavirus like this. So it's not something that you can put across really in a newspaper headline. It's a lot more complicated than that. What I'd like to think about, though, is where we're using vaccine doses in the world. And the problem is that we simply don't have enough of them. If we had enough doses to vaccinate everybody in the world with two doses, we wouldn't be having to have the discussions about should we use them in one

country or another. And that's also very complicated because we have to think about which vaccines are available, where they are, what the expiry date for them is for those particular batches that we have now, whether it's feasible to transport them. And again, it's not a simple decision between use them here or use them there. If we had more vaccines that were being manufactured in many parts of the world, we wouldn't have the shortage of supply and we wouldn't be facing these decisions. Of course, one of the issues as well that people are talking about is whether 12 to 15 year olds should be vaccinated. What are your views on that?

Again, it's not a simple decision to make because it's not black and white. It's not true. Unfortunately, it's not true that the vaccine will not completely prevent infection or even transmission now that we have the Delta variant circulating. And so that makes it a much more complex picture. And all of that has to be taken into account. And again, not a simple yes, no answer. People often raise the issue of long COVID. I mean, I don't know whether you're even able to get into this, but people say one of the reasons children should be vaccinated is because of long COVID. I mean, what are the dangers of that? What are your views on that?

Well, we need to go back to the data that is there on long Covid in adults. And what we're seeing is that vaccination is roughly reducing by half the incidence of long Covid in adults. So, again, it's not all or nothing. And that has to be factored into any other decisions. the possibility of new variants that are even more challenging than the ones we have right now emerging because so many parts of the world are not even having a single vaccine right now? Yes, I mean, what we've seen is as the virus transmits between people, each time that happens, it has the opportunity to mutate and for new variants to be selected. And if a virus has characteristics that make it better able to survive than the original, then that's what we end up with. And that's bad news for us. So we really need to be controlling the spread of this virus worldwide. And when we have countries where only 2% of the population has been vaccinated, clearly we're not doing anything like enough to control the spread of the virus

in those countries. And it makes the whole world vulnerable. I mean, it's been said many times, no one is safe until we're all safe. We have to think about this as a global issue and not just as a local issue. I want to talk about your award that you got last night, because I think it's really important to recognise that. You were named as the 49th winner of the Bold Woman Award. I mean, you're a bold woman. Do you feel a bold woman this morning? Well, we have to think about what it means to be bold. And to me, what that means is to be confident, to go ahead and do something, to take action when we know that it's the right thing to do. And I've been working in vaccine development for about 25 years now.

And for the last 10 or so years, been working on the development of vaccines against viruses that can cause outbreaks. So I had the right experience to respond at the beginning of 2020. And I'm lucky to work with a really talented team in Oxford that were then able to tap into expertise around the UK and other countries in the world to get this vaccine development underway. So I think the bold aspect of that was saying, yes, we need to make this vaccine. We need to start now. We need to go as quickly as possible.

And we need to make sure that we don't have any barriers put in the way of the progress. When you reflect on your work from starting to work and develop a vaccine through to where we are now. I mean, you must feel immense pride. But do you remember the moment when you realised we've done this? The best part of it for me was actually when somebody else started to generate data on the use of our vaccine. And it came from Scotland. And I was present at a press conference where the

effectiveness data, so is the vaccine actually working to protect people in the general population who've been vaccinated? That information was provided to us. And it was really high effectiveness in adults over the age of 80 years. And they're a difficult population to protect with vaccines. And we were seeing really great results. So that was the best moment when we saw that what we'd made, what we tested, had been taken on by the NHS, used to vaccinate large numbers of very vulnerable people, and it was working. One of the things people often bring up is, how is it that scientists were able to create this vaccine so quickly? Just explain to us how you were able and your team were able to do that. Well, there are two reasons for that, really. One of them is the way we now make vaccines. And with the vaccine that we made and with the messenger RNA vaccines, which are in widespread

use, those are what we call platform technologies. You don't have to wait to find out what virus is causing a disease and then use the virus itself to start to develop a vaccine. You develop a technology that can be applied to develop vaccines against many different diseases. And we've been doing that in Oxford for many years. So we already knew how to manufacture the vaccines based on the adenovirus technology that we use. We know how to test them in the lab. We know what dose we want to use in clinical trials and we know what side effects we expect to see after vaccination. So a lot of the work had already been done before

we even heard of SARS-CoV-2 and that was one reason we were able to move very quickly. And the other reason was because this was obviously such an important thing to do and get a licensed vaccine as quickly as possible, we were able to overlap procedures that we would normally do one after another. And the main reason for that was that money was made available more quickly. So we did manufacturing work at risk. We were manufacturing a vaccine, AstraZeneca was manufacturing a vaccine before they knew that it was going to be effective. Now, that's not a safety risk, that's a financial risk. If the vaccine had not been effective, all that work and all that money they'd put into manufacturing the vaccine ready for

supply would have been wasted. But we had to do that because when we found out that the vaccine was effective and it was licensed, we needed to have large supply ready so that we could start to vaccinate people. And that's a very unusual approach to take, because if it had gone wrong, the company would have lost a lot of money. So for people who are listening who are vaccine hesitant or people listening knowing people who are like that, and they maybe have concerns over the speed with which it was developed or the possible long-term side effects that we don't yet know about, what would you say to them to convince them that actually it is the right thing to go and get a COVID vaccine? In terms of vaccine hesitancy, it's normal for people to worry. But I think if you understand why we were able to go so quickly,

you'll see that actually in these clinical trials, we tested the vaccine in tens of thousands of people, and that's far more than are normally included in vaccine trials. But so many of the vaccines that we're using now didn't have clinical trials tested in nearly so many people. It's so important for people to see women like you achieving greatness within the fields of science. Do you think enough is being done to attract young women

and young girls into your area? Well, actually, in my area, we are predominantly female in the team that I work in. And it's an area of crossover between science and medicine that does seem to be a good area for women. I'm more concerned about areas such as engineering, other areas of technology, where we don't see as many women coming into the profession and more needs to be done in those fields to get women, first of all, training in those subjects, being employed in those subjects and then remove any barriers to advancement that there may be.

And that was Dame Sarah Gilbert speaking to me. Now, this week, two books on feminism have been published. On Wednesday, we spoke to the writer and campaigner Julie Bindle, who in her new book, Feminism for Women, The Real Route to Liberation, is against a type of feminism that she sees as most benefiting men. Why I decided to write this book was because droves of young women, maybe those from the universities where I had been invited and then disinvited, where I was going to speak about the low rape convictions, where I was going to speak

about femicide or child sexual abuse, were being told by men in their feminist societies or their LGBTQ societies that I was a swurf, meaning sex worker, exclusionary, radical feminist, and then the maddest made up word ever, whorephobic, as though I was against the women speaking about dismantling the global sex trade. And they said to me, look, you know, we want to hear these ideas. We don't know whether we'll agree with you or not. But what we know is we feel discomfort at the fact that we're being told that pole dancing for exercise is empowering, that anything bad for us becomes all of a sudden emancipating, such as prostitution, but also other things like harmful

sexual practices, being choked during sex, being told that pornography is something that they should take part in along with their male partners. And that is, I think, where feminism has gone. It's gone down a neoliberal route where men have pretty much set the agenda for too long. Women need to take it back as our own movement for us. Julie Bindle, and you can find the full interview of that on BBC Sounds. Now, on Thursday, Emma spoke to Rafia Zakaria, a Pakistani-American feminist who, in her new book, is arguing against a type of feminism that most benefits white women. Working on behalf of domestic violence victims as a lawyer and human rights activist for years, she sees the issue of race as the biggest obstacle to true solidarity among women. And she sees the issue of race as the biggest obstacle

to true solidarity among women. And she wants a moment of reckoning. Her book is called Against White Feminism. So why did she write the book? To be really blunt, I did it because I was quite tired of white women saying all the right things, pretending to be woke and even committed to quote-unquote intersectional feminism, where they recognize the importance of considering race and

gender. But when it comes to their actual lives or actually ceding any space for women of color, it's an absolute no can do. You know, for instance, if a group of, say, white and women of color are vying for to be the top person in an organization, and in the book, I say it's an actual organization of women, they face tremendous marginalization, personal attacks, and all sorts of harassment, honestly. So I was done with it. You know, I was done with this pretense that women of color have to engage in to be sort of accepted into a system that's been created by white women and for white women. And you yourself have a story that, if you like, brought you into becoming not an activist, maybe you're already that yourself, but your situation becoming a single mother and then going to have to live in a shelter and several shelters brought you face to face with, you know, what some of feminism is all about, the battles women face. That's exactly right. And what I found is that white blonde woman who's

chairman of the board at, say, some large international NGO, and who has no experience of ever fighting a kind of frontline battle, so to speak, against patriarchal structures, is considered an expert on feminism. But most of the women who I was with and I've worked with or represented in the shelter who have managed to accomplish just tremendous feats of survival are not. As a larger issue, I'm used to seeing white feminists. And by white feminism, I don't mean just a white woman. I was going to say, what do you mean by that? And also, I'm aware you're talking to us from America as well.

And I don't know if you think of this as globally or, but tell me what you mean by that. You know, a white feminist is a woman who may, you know, talk the talk, say she's committed to civil rights and to the recognition of minorities and the representation of minorities, but when it actually comes to it, actually comes to the uncomfortable and difficult part of ceding space to women of color or examining her own role, her own complicity in structures that dehumanize and exclude women of color, they just, they're not interested. So, you know, a concrete example, for instance, of that would be a white woman who's chair of the board, and in an abstract sense, confirms all of those positions of pro-minority, pro-representation, etc, etc. But when it comes to not competing against a woman of colour, who is also running for the board, it's absolutely, it's a self-perception that essentially prioritises an individualist careerism, rather than the larger feminist project of creating a meaningful sisterhood.

So hang on, so you're saying here, not all white women who are feminists are, for the purposes of your description, white feminists. I'm just thinking yesterday, Julie Bindle, who I mentioned at the beginning, a British writer and journalist and campaigner here, she brought up talking about, for instance, the global surrogacy issue and how it's women of colour who are impacted by that disproportionately. She also mentioned how a woman of colour had been treated at the hands of the police in this country. And somebody like Julie, I don't wish to put words in her mouth, has talked a lot about how class is actually the issue. And she feels that's actually one of the difficulties here and what's one of the major boundaries between women. I won't deny the importance of class, but unlike race, class is not an immutable characteristic. So you can escape class, but, you know, you can't escape being black or being brown. And, you know, as a brown Muslim woman, I don't wear it, that's a different perspective in

terms of like how relatable I am. And that's just unfair. I'll give you an example just from right now from the BBC. Just prior to this program, there was a story of a Kurdish woman in Syria that was being broadcast. And the story, I mean, it's great that those stories are being broadcasted. But the fact is, is that those are often the only stories that are broadcasted. So, you know, you're not going to have many stories of women who say are critiquing white feminism, right? I mean, you asked me about the risk I've taken with writing this book. The risk is, is that there are a lot of white feminists in power who would want to sideline the argument of this book, not by any kind of,

you know, I mean, nobody is racist anymore in the sort of grab your collar, you're lesser than me because I'm white and you're not. It doesn't happen that way anymore, right? It happens in, okay, well, this book came across my desk. You know, I'm just not going to review it. I'm just not going to interview her. Or if I do, I'm going to hector her about things she has no control over. And that's the reality that we face. And so, you know, say you and I are having this conversation, are we really sort of being upfront with the problem? And the fact that most white women in power hoard power. They are not willing to share it with women of color. Because you are here now and you do have the platform,

what are you proposing as a solution for making this better and also for that solidarity that you want between all women? Well, I mean, there's two crucial things that I talk about in Against White Feminism. One of them, we need a retelling of the feminist story, right? As we have it right now, feminism is the story of white and Western women. It starts off with their struggle for the vote. And it sort of centralizes characters who were racist and often eugenicist as, you know, the, say, quote, unquote, mothers of feminism. And the second issue is far harder, because what I'm saying is that unless white women let go of this very lean in, individualistic, ruthless,

careeristic type of attitude towards their own achievement, they're never going to experience this to end. And that in itself is a tragedy. I think there's a lot of truth in there, but also a lot of things for people to talk about and react to. And of course, not least the fact, I'm only just thinking of this because our very first story this morning was about a top police officer in this country. But it's also interlinked with the fate of the Home Secretary in this country, one of the most powerful women, who's, I believe, the first woman of colour to hold that post. So there are, of course, also women of colour in very senior, powerful positions who've followed that exact model that you talk about, breaking the glass ceiling and getting there. They're in those positions because they have sort of signed on

to maintain a system that institutionalises structural inequality between races. So, I mean, I would say Preeti Patel is a brown white feminist because she is so invested in upholding structures. And that was Rafia Zakaria speaking to Emma. Her book is called Against White Feminism. Last week the Japanese Prime Minister announced he was standing down. Yoshihide Suga's popularity is at an all-time low as the country grapples with its worst Covid wave. And many in the country are really unhappy that the Olympics and Paralympics, despite their success, still went ahead in Japan.

The Prime Minister took over from Shinzo Abe, who introduced a policy called Womenomics, a five-year plan. It was designed to get more women working and he vowed to make women shine. He set a goal for women to hold 30% of leadership positions in the country by 2020. But this deadline quietly came and went without even getting close to its target. Women in Japan are less likely to be hired as full-time employees and on average earn almost 44% less than men. Many leave their jobs after having children. Cynthia Yasui wrote the Japanese book, Eight

Things Full-Time Housewives Should Do Before Entering the Workforce. She coaches unemployed housewives in Japan and helps place them within the hospitality industry. Cathy Matsui coined the term womenomics in 1999 whilst at the investment bank Goldman Sachs. She told Emma what the term womenomics means. It was basically a concept where back in 1999 when I first broached the topic as a research analyst, I was struck by on the one, an economy that was suffering from deflation, excess fiscal debt, terrible demographic headwinds. And on the other hand, I had an environment personally where I was surrounded by young mothers like myself who wanted to get back into the workforce full time, as I had after

giving birth to my first child, but for a whole host of reasons, found it very, very challenging to do so. So I thought to myself as an analyst, well, what is the situation in Japan for working women versus women in other countries? And they discovered that the female labor participation rate in Japan was the lowest in the G7. And I thought, well, that's a waste because staring me in the face are talented women, very qualified, very experienced, but again, many obstacles they faced to get back into the workplace. So it's this combination of women and economics. If we can deploy half the population more effectively, then wouldn't that boost economic growth?

And at the time, I believe my simulation came up with, if you could converge female participation to that of men in Japan, you could lift GDP about 10%. Today, I've redone the calculation. And if you also add to that, an assumption where women work not as many hours as men, but closer to that OECD average ratio of the two, that you could boost GDP in this country by 15%, which is not small in Japan's context.

You obviously won the academic argument, you won the political argument, the way that it had been adopted and we're having this conversation, but why do you think it still hasn't worked? Well, I think it's worked to some degree because, for example, until the beginning of COVID, Japan's female labour dissipation rate, which I just pointed out was extremely low, had actually shot up to over 70%, actually exceeding the ratios both of the European Union as well as the United States of America, where I come from. And so it did succeed partially in terms of getting more women into the workforce in Japan. However, many of those women ended up working part-time roles as opposed to full-time ones. So the path to leadership or management roles was still very challenged. But I think we have to give the country some credit for at least

getting the numbers up. But again, we still have a long, long way to go, particularly when it comes to women in decision-making positions. Cynthia, you've been in this exact position, haven't you? You were at home, raising your children, not working, and then got back in to the workplace. I was a stay-at-home mom for 17 years. And let me correct you, I don't just coach women. So I'm actually the country manager of a new brand of hotels, the Loft Hotel Management. So I'm actually in management. Yes, no, no, sorry. Well, I was hoping you'd tell us about that as well. And that's an important point to make because when you came back in,

it was not a management level at all, was it? No, no, it was not. I started out organizing children's birthday parties. And I did organize one of Cathy's children's birthday parties. No! Yes, it's a small role. It's a small role. So I started out as a part-timer. I was earning 1,300 yen an hour, and that was in 2011. And we are now in 2021,

and I'm the country manager. Within 10 years, I've managed to build a career. I'm often referred to as the Cinderella story of housewives. So, you know, as Kathy had said, we need to give Japan some credit that, you know, we have the labor participation has gone up. The reason my story happened, and by the way, I'm not the only one. There's a lot of Cinderella's out here in Japan. You know, the reason it happened is because we have the graying demographics. So there is a very acute labor shortage. So, you know, I started out with an entry level position and I was in an industry that was booming. So I obviously had a tailwind with me. And that's why I managed to rise to management position in 10 years.

Having done what you've done, though, and stayed at home and then come back in, I know you're very passionate about spreading the message that women can and should do that and perhaps have to be very pragmatic and realistic about what jobs they'll be able to get back into, but then quickly, hopefully, climb the ranks like you have. Do you ever think that in Japan it should be more how, let's say, I don't know, the UK has it at the moment which is that women work as well as raise their children and do both at the same time what's your view having done it the way that you did it I mean there are obviously more and more women in Japan

who are working and raising their children and I think that's a decision that every woman should be able to make on on their own I mean I made the decision because I obviously could not hack having a job and, you know, raising my child at the same time. Having a job and raising children at the same time was a way of life that was modeled right after the war. With additional years, we have longer lifespans. You know, I'm trying to broach the idea or suggest the idea that maybe it's not necessary to do two things at the same time. Maybe we need to redefine work-life balance for both men and women, because your children are not going to be with you for the rest of your life. It's a very limited time that they're with you. It's a fascinating moment, as we've just been discussing what the new norm might be for

people to actually talk about this, because the pandemic has changed a lot of people's lives, where they might literally be thinking about this right now at this moment. Do they go back to how it was, if that's the request from their workplace, if they have kids, perhaps? I suppose the question to your model, the thought that you're putting there, is in Japan, just to bring it back to your country, would men ever consider being the ones that stay at home? We still have very low take up rates of shared parental leave in this country. It's very, very low. But I think younger Japanese men actually want to be more active in raising their children. And that's why I think that the government should mandate it, make it a law that men should take off to raise their children. And that's why I think that the government should mandate it, make it a law that men should take off to raise their kids. So, you know, so like I said, work-life balance,

I don't define it on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. I mean, why not define it throughout your life? You know, why not devote a chunk of your life raising your kids and then go to work after that? That's exactly what I'm doing. Cathy, what do you make of that idea? Well, I think Cynthia's right in that if we look at the values that are held by the millennials, the Gen Zs, the Gen Xers, there's certainly a shift that is palpable in terms of their desires, their hopes, their expectations for work versus their private lives. And I think that is extraordinarily helpful for a country where it's been quite lopsided, i.e. the very defined gender role stereotypes where the men are the breadwinners and the women, you know, rule the roost at home. But now I think we're seeing a lot more change afoot.

And that has to be very, very powerful for work-life balance issues, for policies, for taxation, for infrastructure socially. And I think that's very positive. And I think another positive trend is the space that I'm operating in now. I just launched a venture capital fund three months ago with two partners, and we're focused on ESG investing, environment, social, and governance in financial speak. And why this is important is because diversity in womenomics, you know, at large really fits squarely into the S and the G buckets of ESG investing. And if you follow any of this globally, you know that ESG investing is absolutely exploding everywhere, including Japan. And what this means is that this is putting enormous pressure on companies to have policies in place, to set targets.

It's really impacting their recruiting abilities, et cetera. Japanese men, whilst at the same time, we're seeing these market forces at work driven by increased focus on environment, social and governance investing are two very powerful tailwinds that are going to move womenomics forward. And I also think it's not fair to put the finger of blame or point the finger of blame just at the government. Of course, there are many things that the government can do. There's also a ton of things that society, media, parents, school teachers, and organizations themselves have a role to play as well. I would add, and the women themselves, Kathy. Yeah, because I was going to say, just final word from you, Cynthia, what do you hear from women who are nervous about coming back? How do you actually get them in?

So in my new role as the country manager, we've opened one hotel and we're scheduled to open three more. So I've made it a point to actually hire single mothers and housewives who want to come back to work. And a lot of the women in Japan, I think, because in the past, you know, it's lifetime employment is the system in Japan. So a lot of the women are very hesitant to take on entry level jobs, because they think that if they take on, you know, say they are, say they become a waitress in a restaurant, they think that they will be a waitress in a restaurant for the rest of their lives. Now, what I say to these women is that, you know, think of your career as the Tokyo Metro, where there's so many lines crisscrossing each other. So your first job is not going to be your last, but your first job is going to lead to your next job. So I say, get on the train in front of you. And then, you know, you can change at any station you like.

Don't think of the destination. Just get on the train. And that was Cynthia Yusui and Kathy Matsui. Now in May this year, the comedian Sophie Willen won a BAFTA for Best Comedy Writing for the pilot episode of her BBC Two comedy, Alma's Not Normal. Now her reaction on social media really is worth watching. She runs around a farm in a red sequined dress, swearing with joy. Well, she's now got a six-part series on BBC Two, which begins on Monday night. Drawn from her own experiences, she plays the central character Alma, who grew up in and out of care in Bolton. We find her eternally optimistic, with no job or qualifications, trying

to get her life back on track and follow her dreams. Here she is with her friend Leanne, played by Jade Adams, chatting and eating kebabs on the street after a drunken night out. Now I'm going to sort everything out now on my own. I'm going to

get some acting work and I'm going to sort my family out and then I'm going to get a real job and I'm going to sort my family out and then I'm going to get a real job and, you know, I want to learn Spanish. I think I want to start tap dancing. Maybe. Just start with a job first, eh? Yeah. Doing what?

Well, what skills do you have? I can hold a three-litre bottle of cider under my left tip in your hands. I don't think that's a transferable skill, babe. You'd be surprised. We can speak to Sophie now. Is that true? Can you get the three litre of cider under your left breast?

It is a talent. It is a party trick. It can clear a room. It's not an ideal party trick, but it is one i do have i like the fact it's true oh tell us about alma because i watched the first episode and really fell in love with alma i i i wanted to kind of protect her i didn't feel sorry for her you don't feel pity towards her but but i did kind of feel that i wanted to help her i think she's very optimistic slash deluded, depending on how you interpret it, really. She's full of life, full of joy, has an idea of herself that, you know,

is beyond her actual current situation. I mean, there's a line in it where she says she's eating a pot noodle and she says, I feel I've been born in the wrong social bracket. I should have been a baroness or a Kardashian, which I relate to again I've had that same conversation with my aunt eating a pot noodle and just thought oh what we're doing here we should be I don't know where we should be in Miami or Hollywood so you know I do quite like

that silliness of Alma and she's got obviously a best mate she comes from an eccentric family of women, complicated women, and she kind of navigates that kind of complexities really, sometimes well and sometimes not so well. There was an amazing moment in the first episode where Alma gets expelled from school for turning up drunk wearing a bikini. And I need to know if this is truth or fiction. That was true.

What happened? Well, actually, I got the letter. I've still got the letter, actually, from my headmaster. He might be listening because he likes Radio 4, don't you, Mr Viggen, if you're there. We get on really well now. He sent me a letter from school just saying, Sophie arrives at school, regularly arrives at school in non-uniform

and then it says in brackets, a bikini on one occasion. So it's quite daft to read it, actually. I feel like he must have known when he was writing it. There's a sort of sense of humour in the writing. Tell me, you mentioned about the complicated relationship Alma has with her mother, who is a drug addict. She has mental health issues. Her grandmother, who's really quite eccentric

and really tries to look after Alma. I mean, this could have been a really dark, a bit miserable, depressing element of the story, but it's not. It kind of gives hope in a weird way. And I just wonder how important that was for you to portray that in that way. I think really important I think you know with care leavers and with people you know with addiction and mental health problems

they're always depicted in a very intense way you know it's always very harrowing and very dark and very sad the reality is these are just real normal people and actually they're full human beings you know and they have their good qualities and bad qualities I think for me I wanted to just present a very full human being that's very lovable as well you know Alma's mum is a very lovable person and I think that's really important to show I think people like Lynn get demonized a lot in society and I think I just wanted to show that actually there's more to her than the initial fear, you know.

And when you talk about demonisation, Alma also, I mean, she wants to be an actress, but she ends up escorting and getting into sex work. I mean, she's kind of, she's quite open. She's sort of happy about doing it. And once again, that is a decision some people make in life, which can often be demonised,

but you're not portraying it in that way. and again with with the escorting storyline i wanted to show a really nuanced perspective on that so leanne and alma get into an argument about escorting whether it's empowering whether it's not empowering and i wanted to just present both sides of that discussion without giving a final conclusion because I think everybody's got an opinion about sex workers and how they should work and whether it's feminist it's a feminist issue and it never is actually given to the sex worker to decide whether they find it a feminist issue so I wanted to present all sides of it really and I think often what happens with sex workers is you know they're pushed into being kind of defensively optimistic about it as well.

I'm like, you know, I'm empowered. I'm going to do a solo show about it or write a letter to The Guardian, you know. And actually, it's like any job, isn't it? It has its ups and its downs. You know, it can be empowering and disempowering. I want to talk about your your route into the industry and how challenging it was because you got your BAFTA for the pilot but it took quite a while to get this off the ground and I'm just wondering as a as a northern working class woman who was in care how hard is it I think I know the answer to break into comedy in the TV industry it's it's pretty tough yeah it's quite tough but I suppose the thing is I always knew I wanted to do it I was very lucky that I kind of got the bug for comedy really young.

You know, I wanted to write and perform. I used to sit on the step at my grandma's house and read Alan Bennett monologues and learn them as a child. You know, love Julie Walters, love Victoria Wood. So for me, it was always going to happen eventually. I just had to wait for the industry to catch up and be ready to have me. So what are those barriers? Is it the gatekeepers? Is it the commissioners? Is it the people? I think it's not very diverse from the gatekeepers perspective.

You know, I think ultimately it's all nice having all these different kind of tokenistic approaches to getting things on the screen but in reality I think you need the gatekeepers to be more diverse themselves so that they authentically go out and find work that they relate and connect to because comedy is so subjective so I think you want just a wider stroke of people behind the scenes you know not just you know I had my first script commission in 2014 from a northern woman coincidentally or not but we couldn't get it past her. When it went to London, it was BBC Comedy North, then it bobbed down to London. We couldn't get it past one eaten boy commissioner who just said,

female heroin addicts are very frightening to see on screen. It will not be funny. That was his feedback. And obviously we were just completely different kettle of fish. So he didn't know me from Adam. He didn't relate to me. So it just, it died in the water there. So I think, again, it's about having that diversity, isn't it? And that's the brilliant Sophie Willan.

And Alma's Not Normal is on BBC Two on Monday night at nine o'clock and then on the BBC iPlayer. Well, that's all from me for today. Have a lovely rest of the weekend and do make sure that you join Emma on Monday at two minutes past 10. 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.