Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: O'Hooley and Tidow's song Gentleman Jack, Women's centres, Job sharing

Episode Date: July 6, 2019

O’Hooley and Tidow the English Folk duo from Yorkshire talk to us about their track Gentleman Jack and perform Beryl.We discuss how some women’s centre are being used to facilitate community payback, and how this is affecting vulnerable women with Dr Kate Paradine the CEO of Women in Prison, Nicola Harding who has a PHD in Community Punishment and is a Criminology researcher at Lancaster University and from Sharna Kennedy from the Women’s Centre Tomorrow’s Women Wirral.The Scottish American composer Thea Musgrave tells us about still working at 91, her career in music and how she copes with some hearing loss. We look at job sharing with two women Maggy Pigott and Judith Killick who job shared for 23 years and received a joint CBE. We discuss how 50 years on from the Stonewall riots whether the visability of lesbians has changed with Angela Mason former Stonewall Director 1992-2000, Kate Davies the novelist, Angela Wild the lesbian feminist activist from Get the L Out and from Phyll Opoku-Gyimah.Julie Heldman the former American tennis player who won 22 tournaments tells us about her time on the tennis circuit and the role of her mother Gladys in her pursuing her tennis career.Presented by Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Jane Thurlow

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. Good afternoon. It's 50 years since the Stonewall Rebellion and the formation of Pride a year later. How much a part of things were lesbians then and how about now? The composer, Thea Musgrave, is 91 and today sees the world premiere of her trumpet concerto at the Cheltenham Music Festival. And with Wimbledon in full flow, Julie Heldman won number five in the world rankings and how her mother's love of the game meant she had no choice but to play. When I was about six, she started what became the world's largest tennis magazine.

She just could not have us around. So we were sent away to the first ever tennis camp in Michigan, where we played tennis every day, all day long for 10 weeks, every summer for seven years. As part of a new series on flexible working, the two women who shared a high-powered job in the civil service. How did they manage it? And tomorrow sees the final episode on BBC One of Gentleman Jack. The folk duo from Yorkshire, Ahuli and Tito, explain how their song, written long before the series started,

came to primetime TV. We were doing a gig in Hebden Bridge, and in the interval, Sally Wainwright came up to Heidi and she said hi I'm Sally can I use your song for my new drama and Heidi thought about it for about a millisecond. Maybe a second. Now women's centres have existed in some parts of the country for a number of years with the intention of supporting vulnerable women and trying to keep them out of the prison system. The aim was said to be empowerment,

offering help with substance misuse, housing and mental health problems. But some are also responsible for supervising what used to be known as community service and is now called community payback. But it's led to a question. Should a centre designed to offer support also be involved in punishment for whatever crime a woman may have committed? Dr. K.H. Paradine is the Chief Executive of Women in Prison.

Nicola Harding is a researcher in criminology at Lancaster University, specialising in community punishment. Shana Kennedy is a communications officer for Tomorrow's Women in the Wirral. Who are the women who come to her centre? There are a huge diversity and variety of women that we engage with to support, empower, uplift, upskill. We have women from 18 to in their 80s, women coming for a variety of different issues, for support, for just kind of general

confidence building. We currently have almost 7,500 women registered with us at the centre. But how does community payback work within your centre? Yeah, so we currently have a contract with the probation service. So we recognise that the punishments and sentences are of the court. They are given to women by the court. And what we do is we facilitate a safe space for these women to come and complete their community hours and to come and receive that support.

And then we kind of provide a holistic approach with them to then, you know, support them with their underlying issues and their personal needs and things like that. Nicola, what concerns do you have about this community payback taking place within such a centre? I think the thing that we need to remember first and foremost is that all punishment causes harm and that produces trauma. Or is, oh hang on a minute, is deserved if somebody's committed a crime?

I think that some of the crimes that women are punished for are crimes that we need to be questioning. Is it punishment that is needed? Should we be looking at support before we get to the point of punishment? I would definitely push the notion that we need to think about not just alternatives to imprisonment but alternatives to punishment especially when the kind of law breaking and criminalization comes from issues around poverty domestic abuse mental health issues so I would say that actually punishment should be a last step and that sometimes it's occurring at a point that is too early on.

We need to be able to have women access this support prior to punishment, prior to sentencing to punishment. Nicola, what response did you find among women when you were doing your research using women's centres where community payback was happening for some women and not for others? Within my research, what I found is that there was a conflicting kind of dual identity that the women had to manage within women's centres where punishment was being imposed because the women were having to maintain relationships within the centre but also understand how disclosure of things like domestic abuse would increase their risk profile and potentially increase the supervision and surveillance around them

through probation or unpaid work, community payback. The examples of some of the harm in my research is that women were maintaining domestic abuse relationships as a means to satisfy their community punishment orders. This was for reasons of understanding that if they had a major life change, such as leaving a domestic abuse relationship, that could lead to them being homeless. That would increase their risk. It would complicate their ability to complete their order but other issues such as lack of child care within women's centres that are forcing that women come in and do these unpaid hours most of the women were primary carers single mothers who don't have any family support around them to have those children in order for them to fulfill the orders therefore they were staying within these domestically abused relationships let me put some of your points to to kate uh nicola kate how much does this dual purpose of the centres concern you well i would say that the main issue here is about the role of women's

centres which is not punishment which is to provide support and to help women to tackle but it's happening in a number of centres it's happening apparently in a small number of centres not in centres that we're running but the reasons for this is not about the women's centres it's about the system of funding and contracts that were mentioned by shana when she first spoke and women's centres have been asked to sign up to become possibly too close to a system of punishment. What's important here is that everyone has their role in the system. Probation officers are there to supervise people under the sentence of the court and women's centres are there to provide the support to help women to tackle the root causes of what's brought them there in the first place. And it's really

important that there is a separation and probation officers know that as well as anybody because if there's a separation, then women can build trust, which they've often lost in state systems. Shona, what evidence is there in your experience of women suffering the kind of stigma that Nicola is concerned about? Yeah, I mean, kind of listening to the points kind of raised there we we really don't find that in practice this this is an issue I mean honestly we we are

there ultimately as the women's centre to support as I said with those underlying issues so whether you're coming in through the criminal justice system or not we will treat you the same and we integrate and I think this we're talking about stigma we don't attach a stigma to these women that are coming in. Yes, they are. They have been sent, you know, through criminal justice. And, you know, as you said yourself, Jenny, in regards to the proportion, you know, if somebody's committed a crime at the moment, this is how they are treated. This is the, you know, the kind of the punishment that's given.

We're tearing them away from prison. We are there to support them and we integrate them. There is no stigma attached within our centre. So in practice, there's not this dual identity whatsoever that we find. We treat them all the same in that way. Kate, there's been a lot of discussion recently about ending prison sentences of less than six months. What impact would that have on women's centres if it happens? Well, the first thing to say is this absolutely has to happen and it's very good that the government has accepted the real damage that's

being done by the revolving door of prison repeated short sentences and just making people's problems worse even a few weeks in prison is enough to use lose your job your home and your children now if the government move to do what they say which is to end this practice then what we need to do today is to start planning for community support services that can help people to tackle the root causes of offending because the problem has been our obsession with punishment whether it's punishing people for not paying their council tax and tv license through prison or women and men not being able to get their children to school who haven't been able to access support.

These are the sort of ways in which we're punishing people who have problems. Kate, I know you're trying to get the government to use the proceeds of the sale of Holloway Prison, which has happened recently, for women's services. How hopeful are you of getting that funding well we think it makes sense and so do an awful lot of mps that we met last week at our mass lobby of parliament where women's centres and women using them came to parliament and mps were saying they needed services like this in their communities and they needed them to be

properly funded the reality is as nicola's rightly out, that there is a major crisis in funding for the existing women's centres that are left. And there has been a disaster of reform, so-called, in terms of the privatisation of the probation service. million that has come to the Treasury from the sale of HMP Holloway and lay a monument to what that prison stands for in terms of the rights of women, which would be women's centres across the country. I was talking to Kate Paradine, Nicola Harding and Shana Kennedy. In an email, Emma said I was sentenced to 60 days at the Anna Wim Women's Centre in Birmingham, in addition to a suspended custodial sentence. This was a transformative place for so many women, for so many women in many situations and from very diverse situations, a one-stop shop at its very best.

Thea Musgrave was the first female composer to be commissioned by the Cheltenham Music Festival, and that was in 1956, 63 years ago. She's now 91, and her trumpet concerto is to have its premiere today, again at Cheltenham. It will be performed by Alison Balsam and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mirga Grazini-Tila. How did the concerto come about? Exactly a year ago, I first met Alison Balsam. I was staying with friends and she arrived and said, would I like to write a trumpet concerto? For her?

So I thought, hmm, that sounds very interesting. And then it got even more interesting because as we started to discuss what it might be, I asked her about her work and so on and so on. I hadn't heard her live. So, of course, once she left, I rushed to remark she made got me thinking. And the remark was, I really like to sing with the trumpet. Now, the trumpet for me had not been an instrument that I thought about singing. It was more, you know, making statements and being fast and brilliant. But singing, that was a new idea. And I thought that was wonderful. The next extraordinary thing that happened was I couldn't start work right away because I had to finish an anthem, which was done at St. Paul's Cathedral later that autumn. So I was in Edinburgh Festival, a piece was being done. And when I was in Edinburgh, I have a great friend there who is a wonderful painter, Victoria Crowe. And she said, I have an exhibition on. And then I did something I've never done before and was really crazy when you think about it.

But the exhibition was her paintings of trees. And I saw one particular painting. And I don't know where this remark came from but I said to my husband that painting is my trumpet concerto. What do you mean by that? Exactly. I'm not... You don't know.

Yeah, well I do know. Having thought about it it was absolutely an instinctive reaction. What I was responding to was a painting of a single tree with such energy moving out and stretching out and reaching out. And I think that's what I felt, the energy of it, but also the reaching out. And I suddenly thought, maybe this really could be the Trumpet Concerto, and I could

choose some other paintings that could go with it to make a kind of suite, because they were all of trees. And so that it would be like the journey through life when you reach out and you meet new people, you meet friends, you meet lovers, you meet ideas, you meet different things that you get interested in, different tacks you might take, all that kind of thing. And I thought that might be interesting. So what happens in the work, eventually, when I got to work on it, was that the trumpet starts out and begins to reach out to certain players. And this is what happens through the work. So it sounds a very inclusive piece.

It's something that everyone could get involved with. I hope so. Because although I've written works, musical works, which to do with paintings before, it's movement by movement and they don't link together. But this one, the movements all link together musically and also scenically. But what's interesting is that one of the paintings is, I forget the exact title, but it's a snowscape where the trees are covered with snow. But I decided that the music should begin before the painting, because paintings exist in

space, whereas music exists in time. So I begin that movement when it's green and the snow hasn't arrived. And the snow arrives through the movement. And as a listener, I will be able to detect this, will I? Yes. If I'm a good enough listener. They're dancing around and she's having a great time actually. Here she's having a dialogue with a clarinet

and the cello's a pizzicato and they're having a great time. And all of a sudden a big string cluster arrives and dampens things down. And then it sort of thins out and they can dance a little bit more. You see, at this point, I would love to be able to say to the listeners, and now we're going to hear a piece, but of course we can't. It hasn't happened yet. It hasn't happened yet.

So I want to know, how nervous are you about this? Or are you excited? I'm excited. We are desperate to play some of your music. We know we can't play the trumpet concerto. So if you were to pick something that we could play people, what would it be? Well, how about Turbulent Landscapes?

Because that is a piece that's based on pictures, based on pictures of Turner. And so when I used to come to London a lot, I always went to the Tate Gallery to see the Turner paintings. I think they're absolutely fabulous. How fantastic to be as... Well, I mean, clearly you are genuinely excited, exhilarated about the prospect that awaits you this weekend. Absolutely.

I hate, in a way, to go on about your age, but you are 91. I'm afraid so. And there will be people listening who think, well, I haven't got half the energy of that woman, and I'm 36. So is there a secret here, or is it that you're simply doing what you love?

Yeah, the secret is this. Have Scots parents. OK. Well, I'm afraid it's too late for me there. I mean, it isn't as simple as that. It's the fact that you are doing something you are brilliant at and you love it. I'm doing something. I haven't retired because I love doing what I'm doing.

So why retire? So wish me luck. I do wish you luck. Can I ask you a little bit about your hearing? I know it's not as perfect as it used to be, but I've read that little bit about your hearing? I know it's not as perfect as it used to be, but I've read that you retreat into your imagination and your hearing there is still perfect. Yeah, I mean, I compose much more at my desk than at a keyboard

because, first of all, my ears are sort of in tune, but if I listen to the keyboard, it's not always well in tune. So hearing in the abstract. Then I have to rely on my husband to tell me if the orchestra is actually doing what they're supposed to do. Because I don't always hear that clearly anymore. I had very good hearing till I was in my late 70s. And then the inevitable happens. What you lose is your upper partials.

What does that mean? That means that the high consonants like k, t, d, all those consonants are at a very high pitch. And that's what you lose. It's not that you need to hear people speak louder. You need to hear people speak more clearly like that, rather than like that, where you lose the consonants. When I speak like that, the consonants have gone, as opposed to speaking like that. I will try.

I'm terribly conscious now about this. Was there ever a time when you thought that hearing loss might mean that you have to stop working? Well, I'm not going to face that right now. I still can manage up to a point and I hear enough, you know, on the synthesizer. I hear in my imagination first and then I have to make sure that what I've written on paper is what I have heard in my imagination. Thea Musgrave and Cheltenham Music Festival runs from the 5th of July until the 14th of July. Flexible working is becoming more common.

It might be part-time, flexible hours or job share. And in the coming weeks, we'll be looking at how the different ideas work in practice. Job sharing has been around for decades, but the business magazine Forbes this week called it the latest workplace revolution, although the most recent surveys say only 0.4% of the workforce actually does it. Maggie Piggott and Judith Killick did it for 23 years. They're both lawyers and began their job share as section leader in the Criminal Appeals Office. They were promoted together and ended their career as chief executives of the Judicial Studies Board and together were awarded the CBE. Why did Maggie decide she wanted to job share? I always wanted

to work flexibly and it was one of the reasons actually I gave up the bar and went into the civil service because I thought I want a family friendly employer and I thought the civil service would be the best place to go and so it proved they were absolutely wonderful because I knew if I ever had children I wanted to work part-time my mother had worked full-time all her life and then when the opportunity when it was suggested to us by a male boss that we job shared together with Judith who was also working part-time it just seemed a really good idea to try. Why did it suit you Judith? For the same reasons as Maggie actually I'd always wanted to have a family but I was also I was a solicitor I wanted a career and I joined the civil service

for very similar reasons. My mother, curiously, had never worked until we were grown up, but I wanted to balance children and family. We had very similar motivation, actually, and I think that was important. How did you do it, day by day? Well, we started working three days, we were paid for three days each, and I worked Monday to Wednesday, and we had an overlap on Wednesday, and paid for three days each. And I worked Monday to Wednesday and we had an overlap on Wednesday and Judith worked Wednesday to Friday. We started that in our first job, didn't we? And then we kept it throughout the whole 23 years because it seemed to work for us.

How important was that Wednesday when you were together? Very important. I think that is a very key very, very key point to have that time to not only tell each other what had been going on, but also to work on some of the areas that you couldn't really divide off. So areas connected with our staff, with the strategy for the role that we were in at the time, there were always things that we needed to have time to discuss. So it was really important that the organisation gave us that. Seven promotions? No, not seven promotions, seven jobs.

Seven jobs? Seven different jobs. How many times were you promoted then? Once. One officially. We had one promotion together which was the promotion into the senior civil service which was really important and after that we moved into a number of different jobs. So how did that work, getting a promotion together? How did you make the application? which was really important. And after that, we moved into a number of different jobs.

So how did that work, getting a promotion together? How did you make the application? Well, I think we were the first people ever to do it. And I remember receiving a phone call from our HR department saying, how do you think we should interview you? And I had to make it up on the spot. And I said, well, I think that you should interview each of us individually because you need to know whether we're up to the job, whether we meet the standard you're looking for. But then I think you should see us together because you need to see the chemistry between us to judge whether you think it's going to be OK.

And that's what they did. And it became the model for Job Share in China thereafter. What's the most important ingredient to actually making a success of it? I think having a partner that you can trust completely yes because without trust I don't think any job share would work. I had to feel confident that if I went off on a Wednesday that I could just hand over to Judith not worry go home think about the kids or in later life my mum or other interests that I was involved with. And just know that whatever Judith does, I'm happy to live with. And even if I'm not 100% happy, I'm happy enough. And I don't think that any job share would, if you wanted to try and unpick anything or go back on anything the other person had done. So I think that's probably the key. How do you make sure you're not dumping work

on other people and they're going to say, hmm, those job sharers, they don't do their share? In fact, we used to find the reverse was true. I mean, the civil service is full of bright and ambitious people and we found that many of the people who came to work for us did so because they wanted the opportunity to step up a bit and to do things at the next level. And they knew, they recognised that because we would not always be there, they would have more chance to do that.

And I think people found it empowering rather than the reverse. But I know, Maggie, that you've trained middle managers to help them get over hostility to the idea. What makes for hostility about the general idea of job sharing? I think that it's fear of the unknown, actually. Unless you've seen a job share work, you can think of all the reasons why it wouldn't work. Unavailability, what if I want Judith and she's not there? How will I know what you're doing and fulfilling your objectives? There's a whole raft of issues that you can feel, oh, I don't know how this is going to work. Once you see it in action and see that it actually can work seamlessly, then that fear of the unknown goes.

And after we'd started job sharing, thereafter, people accepted it as normal. And we ended up with three senior civil service pairs in our department because other people came and it was regarded as totally normal in the civil service. And I think that's because the fear had been dispelled. It actually works and you have increased productivity and that's been shown by research. And once people see that, that it's a win-win for both employers and employees, then there's no reason to fear it. Interestingly, two full-time men were appointed to replace you when you retired. To what extent does that suggest that a job share means you do twice as much work as you're actually paid for. Well, you touch on the question really of productivity. I think that we understand, we know now, that job shares are more productive.

I don't think we were doing twice as much work, but I certainly think that our jobs expanded as we did them because there were two minds on it. You get two heads for the price of one. But doesn't it make you cross to think that two full-time blokes are doing what the two of you manage perfectly well part-time? It happened twice in our go in the senior civil service that we were replaced by two full-timers.

No, because I'm deeply grateful, actually, to have had the opportunity to job share and to do such wonderful jobs and have a fulfilling career, which it wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't job shared. With part-time work, the opportunities for promotion are less, but with job sharing, you can have those mainstream, high-profile jobs, and that was a great privilege. You're right to the extent we did see it as our responsibility to make it work.

We didn't feel that the people around us should find life more difficult because we were job sharing. So we did feel that the people around us should find life more difficult because we were job sharing. So we did feel we had to put in that extra effort. And we also attached a lot of importance to publicising it. And at the time, networking with people who were interested in job sharing. And it goes wider, obviously, to flexible working, as you touched on at the beginning of this piece, and caring responsibilities, because it's all quite wrapped up together you were both made cbes did you go together yes we did yes one after the other it was quite funny when you know you went first because you're you're okay and we were given our tvs by prince charles and then when i came along he said i've

had one of you from this department. Why have we got another one? Because actually the CBE was for the administration of justice. I said, well, we're partly here because of our job sharing and what we've done for job sharing. He said, oh, right. I was talking to Maggie Pickett and Judith Killick, and we'd like to hear your experiences of flexible part-time working and job shares.

What works for you? What doesn't? And what do you wish could be different? You can email us through the Woman's Hour website or, of course, you can tweet to at BBC Woman's Hour. It's Pride weekend in London and events are happening around the country throughout the summer. It's 50 years since the Stonewall Rebellion in New York, and the campaign group of the same name marks its 30th anniversary this year.

How visible were lesbians in the movement in those early days? And how about now? Some have suggested they're being sidelined in what's been referred to as lesbian erasure. Well, Angela Wilde is from the activist group Get the L Out. Kate Davies is the author of the coming-of-age novel In at the Deep End. Phil Opukugima is one of the founders of UK Black Pride. And Angela Mason was the director of Stonewall from 1992 to 2002. When did the campaigning begin for her? In the late 60s, beginning of the 70s. And I think lesbians have played a really big role in the struggle, the 50-year struggle for lesbian and gay rights and indeed transgendered rights.

And sometimes lesbians have organised separately and sometimes they've worked with men. But they've always been there. And I think we'll continue to be there. I don't think there's going to be erasure, as they say. And if you look at the issues that are coming up, the big thing I think that we've all got to fear is the rise of the far right. So this is not a time to be fighting each other. This is a time to be working together to defeat those who would attack and exploit all minorities. But would you say lesbians have had the credit they deserve for the work they did? I don't know. I don't know. The history of lesbian and gay movements is only just beginning to be written. If you're saying, is there a possibility that some men might write some women out of history, then I wouldn't be entirely surprised. So we have to assert the place and remember the place that we've had in the struggle.

Phil, I want to bring you in now because there is no doubt that if lesbians are at the bottom of the heap, and some people might say they still are, black lesbians have an even tougher time. What would you say about that? I think when we try and break it down about who's the most marginalized. There will always be people in particular categories, with particular different identities, who are marginalized. And yes, I can speak to being a black lesbian woman and often feel very much like I'm not part of the wider LGBT mainstream activities because actually when we're talking about challenging homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, racism often gets left out of that conversation,

or often gets left out of that fight. And you cannot divorce the two. I don't want to say that, you know, one out trumps the other. I don't think that's healthy and I think that that can be quite divisive. But actually, what I want people to recognize is that you can't be for LGBT rights and not be for black people's rights. You can't be for black people's rights and not be for disabled people's rights. But as a black lesbian, yes, I certainly often feel that things are quite challenging because we don't have the allyship all the time from those that we need it from. I want to bring in now Angela Wild,

who represents the lesbian activist group Get The L Out. Angela Mason, who I hope she won't mind me saying is in her 70s, she has put in a great deal of work for the cause. And she says, there is no worse time for this movement to fragment. But you say there's every reason to be fearful. Can you just tell us more? Yes, well, first of all, I want to say I completely agree with Angela with the point about being against the right. We are very firmly against the right ourselves. This idea that the LGBT is one happy, united family is a myth. It's always been a myth.

It's always been a group of, you know, different groups that are diverse, that experience diverse kind of oppression, that have diverse issues and diverse priorities. Sometimes these priorities are not working out together. Sometimes they are really conflictual. And what we see right now is happening around the question between the movement for trans rights and the movement for lesbian rights, that there is a really big conflict,

particularly when it comes around the question of who counts as a woman, so who counts as a lesbian. A few years ago, it was quite uncontested that the definition of a lesbian was a female who was sexually attracted to another female. Now, with the rise of the trans ideology, this is shifted because everybody has to be inclusive all the time to everyone, as something new definition is some more something like a person who identify as a woman who is sexually attracted to another person who identifies as a woman. Can I just interrupt and ask then, what you're saying is that gay women are being encouraged,

or perhaps more than encouraged, to find trans women attractive. Yes, that's what it is. With the fact that gender identity takes over biological sex, we're supposed to, and expected, and actually pressured in LGBT groups, in communities, and in Pride, indeed, to accept trans women as potential sexual partners. If we do not do that, there's consequences. Then you are accused of all sorts of things. That's right. But would there be equivalent pressure on a gay man

to find a trans man attractive? I've never heard of it. Kate Davis is also here, author of, actually it's being marketed, and this is significant, as a mainstream novel, in at the deep end, happens to be about a lesbian relationship. That wouldn't have happened 15 years ago, perhaps not even five years ago. No, absolutely not. And I do think that lesbians are becoming more and more visible

in popular culture. But does Angela Wilde not have a point? I think it's very important to understand that Get the L Out doesn't represent the views of most lesbians. A lot of lesbian publications such as Diva, Curve, Autostraddle and others issued a statement last year disagreeing with Get the L Out's premise. It's just absolutely not my experience that women are being forced to have sex with trans women. It's not the experience of anybody that I know. And I think it's quite an academic argument often,

these arguments rather than based on... What do you mean by an academic? I think, you know, theoretically things could happen, could happen, that aren't necessarily based in people's everyday experience. Angela Wilde, theoretical? Theoretical, no. I have recently published a research where I interviewed 80 lesbians and the cases are there, the stories are there.

The fact is that organisations such as Stonewall, who gets funding for protecting our rights, is completely not only ignoring this issue, is also working actively to call us all these names, transphobic, bigoted, because we refuse to have sex with people with penises. The research officially is not there from their part. We are doing it. And women are sharing their stories. And in fact, if you go to the internet and hashtag cotton ceiling right now, cotton ceiling is rape right now. Get the hell out right now, you will see women, you will also see the communication that we receive

by trans activists and men who identify as trans who actually tell us that, you know. There's no doubt that I think... Sorry, Angela, can I just interrupt briefly because I've got a statement from Stonewall, which I think is quite important. They say, we won't take part in discussions which seek to debate whether trans people exist

or which target trans people with hate. This group, and they mean your group, Angela Wild, has consistently targeted trans people, spreading transphobic materials around the country. Well, that's the statement. You say you haven't done that. No, of course not. What we're doing and what we're saying is lesbians have a right to sexual boundaries. That is absolutely, we are uncompromising on that. All people have a right.

Yes, we do. All people have a right to sexual boundaries. As women, this right is not respected. And as lesbians right now, this right is not respected in the LGBT. We are demonised when we say this. I've been removed from Swansea Pride event in May because I had a banner that said lesbians don't have a penis. This is a biological fact. Lesbians do not have a penis. It is also worth mentioning, Angela, and this is something that has changed over your period of time in this movement, that the number of born females questioning their biological sex and thinking about transitioning has really, really increased.

Now, what do you think that is about? I think that's partly a freedom for people to express. Why so many born females? Those views. I think it may also be, and this is something which we should think about and discuss, that there is still not enough space or role models of strong women. And that is still something that needs to happen. Quick line from you, Angela Wilde, on that one. Yes. Well, the increase is 5,000%, the latest figures show us.

So it's more than alarming. The government itself is investigating as to why this is happening. If you do take time to listen to women who change their mind and detransition, and also, I know you're going to say it's academic, but a study from the Netherlands suggests that these women who are desisting and detransitioning

overwhelmingly identify as lesbian as they detransition. What they say when you speak to them most of the time is when they got into LGBT spaces, there was no lesbian for them. They were immediately said, oh, you are attracted to women, you don't present as a woman,

you are gender non-conforming. Have you thought about transitioning? Lesbian erasure and lesbian invisibility is leading that. These women would become lesbian and do become lesbian when they come out of it. This is absolutely tragic. Kate Davis, what do you say to that? I was just reading an interview with Ruth Hunt

who I think is the outgoing CEO of Stonewall. Absolutely. And she was saying that she identifies as a butch lesbian and she has never experienced this pressure and she doesn't know of anybody that's experienced this pressure to transition. She's always identified as having she likes to have short hair,

that's her way of being a woman. With respect to Ruth Hunt, she isn't a 14-year-old girl in contemporary society, is she? No, but she is the leader of Stonewall and I'm sure has a lot more experience. But the young girl's questioning. Yeah, I think she says,

and it's very clear that we have to draw a distinction between gender presentation, whether you have short hair and like to wear suits, and gender identity. They're two very different things. Kate Davies, Angela Wilde, Angela Mason and Phil Opokugima were talking to Jane. In an email, Laura said, Lesbians aren't trendy and decorative like gay men. There isn't even one on the archers, nor has there ever been.

It's true that the feminist movement has been very dominated by white women and black women have been marginalised because of conscious and unconscious racism. The only acceptable lesbian has to be attractive so men can fancy them. Lesbians are very threatening to male status quo. Yes, Gentleman Jack is great. About the first time I've seen someone I can identify with

in mainstream TV. Now, Wimbledon is in full flow with one great star, Venus Williams, already knocked out by the next generation, Corrie Goff, who's only 15. Julie Heldman began playing when she was six in 1954, reached number five in the world rankings, but then gave up playing in 1966. She started again 18 months later, but quit for good in 1976 when she was 29. Her memoir is called Driven, A Daughter's Odyssey.

Well, what was it like to play tennis in the 60s and 70s against people like Billie Jean King and Margaret Court? Tennis was so different than it is now. There's huge money, there's companies sponsoring people. Back then, there was more chance to see the world. There was no money to be made in the beginning until we started the Women's Pro Tour in 1970. My mother organized and engineered the event, and I was one of the original nine players. Once money came in, it became a different thing. It

wasn't a sort of la-di-da, let's travel around. It was let's do something important and make money at the same time. Now, both your parents, I think, were tennis players. How much was tennis your choice and how much was it their choice? It was absolutely not my choice at all. My mother started playing tennis when I was three months old, became completely addicted, loved it. And when I was about six, she started what became the world's largest tennis magazine,

totally atypical for the early 1950s. That consumed her entirely, and she just could not have us around, me and my older sister. So we were sent away to the first ever tennis camp in Michigan, where we played tennis every day, all day long for 10 weeks, every summer for seven years. How much did she actually push you? I mean, would you describe her as a pushy mother? You would think of a tennis mother as this tiger mom sitting on the sidelines cheering.

Not even close, not my mother. She was so into her own world. She was one of the most important people in the history of tennis. Mother, not so hot. In fact, when she knew that I'd won some of my early tournaments, she undermined me. It was, to some large extent, she was upset without being able to use the words that I was doing better than she did. She is absolutely central to this book. And you write about, you call it years of emotional abuse. Yes.

The emotional abuse can go in many different ways. But my mother could be characterized as a highly narcissistic personality. And often people like that choose a victim child. And I was that. So she would scream at me unmercifully. She would humiliate me. I was isolated away from others. I had ill health. I was neglected. It was very severe and very hidden from the world. Nobody in the tennis... I go back to say hi to my old tennis pals. They had no idea. It was all hidden. Now in the book, you do credit her with saving women's tennis.

Absolutely true. How would you say that happened? In 1968, there were no tennis tournaments with prize money at the higher levels. But the tennis world made a massive change, starting basically with the English and the Lawn Tennis Association and also with the All England Club where Wimbledon is played. But once the change was made that prize money would come in, the men who were running the game, and they were all men, stopped getting prize money. They didn't get prize money for women.

So the top women players had nowhere to go and nowhere to play. And it came to a culmination when the Los Angeles tournament run by Jack Kramer had prize money ratio of eight to one men to women. So some of the top players, Billie Jean King, Nancy Ritchie, Rosie Casals, went to my mother and said, help. So she put together a tournament and she went to this guy, Jack Kramer, and she said, is there going to be a problem running the tournament? Are you going to let us have the proper sanctions? Oh, I'm not that kind of guy. Night before the tournament, every player was called by the men who were running the association saying, you play, you're going to be locked out of

other tournaments. So my mother still brought everybody in and said to play, sign a contract with my mother for $1 for a week to get them out, them and me too, because I was one of the original nine, out of the auspices of the men's association, but they kept attacking us. They said, oh, you can't have a tournament because you can't have two tournaments the same week in the United States. Wrong. They said, you can't have a tournament because you can't have two tournaments the same week in the United States. Wrong. They said, you can't have a tournament. You can have a tournament, but you can't take prize money. Wrong.

These are all rules they were making up on the fly. So it was a risk, but it worked. It worked, and in part because we had big money that came from a cigarette company. Now, you stopped playing at 20, and then you started again at 22 and played for a few more years. Why this on and off? Something I did not know at the time, which was these were the first manifestations of mental illness, of bipolar disorder,

and I'd had a very difficult breakup with a boyfriend, and then I got to play for the Federation Cup, which is the World Team Championships. And I was playing, and Billy Jean was my teammate, and I was playing number two for the U.S. And I'd go out on the court and play my heart out. And the next day, and that night, I mean, I'd go in my room and be flooded with suicidal thoughts. And I thought, well, there's too much pressure in the tennis world. And there's a lot of pressure, pressure from the way I've been brought up but the reality was it took me until I was 50

to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. So I had some very difficult times and that was one of them. There were some others that were even much worse but I came back to tennis because it was also part of my life. It was part of my soul. It was what of them. There were some others that were even much worse. But I came back to tennis because it was also part of my life. It was part of my soul. It was what I knew. And so I decided that because I had been traveling around in Europe,

that I really loved traveling. So after I took a year off, I came back to travel. But I took a year off to hang out with a bunch of hippies. I got a job on Madison Avenue. I did just this and that. And then I realized, wait a minute, I could have my tennis rackets could pay for my travel. What do you make of women's tennis now? It is extraordinary in so many ways. Everybody is so strong, so fit, so powerful. They're bigger. We were littler people than they are now.

They are bigger and stronger, aren't they? And it's become, because of maybe the Me Too movement and because what's happened in women's sports, it's now something people do, they watch. I was talking to Julie Heldman. If you're a fan of Gentleman Jack, Sally Wainwright's Sunday night series about the Halifax industrialist Anne Lister, final episode is tomorrow, you'll be very familiar with the music that's played performed by Ohuli and Tido. That's Belinda Ohuli and Heidi Tido,

who've been working together as a folk duo for the past ten years. They wrote Gentleman Jack, the song, long before the television series came to the screen. So how, Heidi, did you come to write the song? It was a friend of ours, Viviana, that told us the story of Anne Lister about eight years ago. And it was during the time that there was a friend of ours, Viviana, that told us the story of Anne Lister about eight years ago. And it was during the time that there was a documentary hosted by Sue Perkins. And we had just gone round for lunch and said, you know, what are you up to?

And she said, I've been interviewed about Anne Lister. And she said she was this really formidable woman from the 1800s. She was a real character. And she told us all about her diaries and the fact that she was in essence the first modern lesbian and our ears pricked up and then she said that behind her back the disapproving residents of Halifax used to call her Gentleman Jack and that's where we both got shivers and thought we've got to write a song about her and it just all went from there really. So Belinda, how did it come to be used for the serial?

It's always been a really popular song with our audiences and we made a silly video in a dressing room years ago. I think it was Salisbury Arts Centre and we were just messing about of Gentleman Jack, the song. And just so happens Sally Wainwright must have been doing a bit of research on Anne Lister and maybe put in Gentleman Jack. And our video popped up. So we were doing a gig in Hebden Bridge.

And in the interval where we sell our CDs, Sally Wainwright came up to Heidi and she said, hi, I'm Sally. Can I use your song for my new drama? And Heidi thought about it for about a millisecond. Maybe a second. And to see, oh, all right. Yeah, all right. Come on, then. So what impact has it had on you and your music?

I mean, it must have made you huge. It's been mind-blowing, to be honest. We can't take it all in. We're in a bit of a whirlwind at the moment. I mean, we've been doing this for 10 years and, you know, I've got quite a nice thing going already. But this is just like nothing we've ever experienced.

Gigs are selling out six months in advance. Our online shop has gone crazy. So we're spending most of our time packaging envelopes. So how, Belinda, did you come to perform together? Because you worked separately for a long time. Well, we were both on the Huddersfield music scene doing solo things, basically. We kind of got to know each other's music through that.

And it was through the music that we forged a friendship. And the first time that we sang together, we kind of knew something special was happening because our voices seemed to blend really well together. And then also we fell in love. So it was kind of falling in love, making music, wanting to be together, feeling very inspired by each other. And we are really a partnership for everything, really.

But Heidi, I mean, you both live in Huddersfield. You're now married. And Heidi, you're expecting a baby, I think, in about three months' time? Yeah, that's right. Three months for having a little boy. How easy is it to live and work together so closely? On the whole, we get on so well. We really, really do. We're best friends. and we have a really good laugh, first and foremost. And as Belinda said, we do inspire each other

and I think that really comes into the songwriting. And we spend a lot of time actually just trying to make each other laugh. And I think if you've got humour, you can kind of, you know, get through anything. Now, you share a passion for tattoos. There's a very interesting one, Heidi, on your arm. Yeah. It's a bird carrying a fox. What's the significance of that?

Well, I see it as a blue-tip rescuing a fox. And for me, it symbolises strength and vulnerability in that the small bird is powerful and is carrying the fox. And I think it really, really for me says something about the strength of women and you know and how close together strength and vulnerability are and you Belinda I suppose unsurprisingly have Anne Lister on your arm I have yes how did that come about well I think it was actually Heidi that was meant to have Anne Lister on her arm, but then she got pregnant. And then I said, well, can I have Anne Lister on my arm?

So a really great tattooist in Derby called Ben Stone designed it. And it's basically Anne Lister with Jack the Lass sort of emblazoned below her and then quite a lot of the code in her diaries. And it was very painful, Jenny. It was probably my most painful tattoo but i feel like it it gives me strength whenever i look at it i think what would ann lister do and it gives me a bit of you know was it extra painful because it's on the inside of your wrist is it is it more painful to have it there than on the outside of your arms? Yeah, I think it's quite a soft, sensitive part of the skin, basically.

But I don't regret it at all. Now, there's a new album in versions. They're going to do some events with Sally Wainwright. What are they going to consist of? Well, the gigs with Sally, they're Gentleman Jack-themed gigs where Sally's going to do a Q&A and Anne Chomer, the writer of the book that accompanies the series, is going to do some chatting as well.

And we're going to sing songs about extraordinary women. And there's another extraordinary woman that you wrote about some time ago. That's Beryl, another formidable Yorkshire woman. How did she inspire you? Well, we learned about her through Maxine Peake's fantastic play and when we came out of the theatre we were we were blown away by her story, her courage and how she was a champion cyclist that had been born into now really with health problems and no money. We had to write about her and also because we just very strongly felt that there weren't enough songs in the world about people called Beryl.

Beryl Heartbeats to the pedal Like the salmon has to leap Knots about the medals Her feet flat to the metal Push and push and push, repeat Oh, Hooli and Tito singing about Beryl and she, of course, was the cyclist Beryl Burton.

Now, on Monday, we'd like to hear from you on the subject of going up from primary to secondary school. If your child will do it next term or your family has just come to the end of a first year at secondary school, you may like to join Jane for a phone-in on Monday. Do send us your experience or your questions. You can send them through the Woman's Hour website or, of course, you can phone us on the day. That's Monday morning, two minutes past 10 for me for today. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Bye-bye.

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.