Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: School uniforms in porn, The Farmer's Wife, 'Empty nesters'

Episode Date: October 3, 2026

A group of school children have set up a petition calling on the government to ban the use of school uniforms in porn. They say they want to abolish the sexualisation of children through the inappropriate use of school uniform. Kylie Pentelow is joined by two of the campaigners Aylin and Mae, both 15. Kylie also hears from Professor Clare McGlynn, Professor of Law at Durham University and author of Exposed: The problem of Extreme Porn.Helen Rebanks believes the unsung heroes of rural life are often the wives whose behind-the-scenes efforts keep both the family and the business afloat. Descended from generations of Cumbrian farmers, she still lives in the Lake District. Her bestselling 2023 book, The Farmer's Wife, has inspired a play by the same name, running at the Theatre By The Lake in Keswick until 10 October. Helen joins Anita Rani along with playwright Hannah Khalil to discuss the often-overlooked role of farmers wives.A social media-driven resurgence in the popularity of sunbeds is said to be fuelling a rise in cases of skin cancer, particularly among young people, according to some experts. Melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, is now one of the most common cancers in people aged 15 to 34, according to Cancer Research UK. Meanwhile research by the Teenage Cancer Trust found around 48% of 18 to 34-year-olds in the UK use sunbeds – the highest proportion of any age group. Observer journalist Marine Saint has been looking into this, along with Rosie Vare from the Teenage Cancer Trust.The Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College in Cambridge is marking 40 years since its inception in 1986, with a new exhibition inspired by its very first artwork and two new acquisitions. Joining Kylie to discuss putting women in the frame are Harriet Loffler, Director of the Women’s Art Collection, the artist Professor Dame Sonia Boyce and the art historian and author of The Story of Art Without Men, Katy Hessel.Many parents will have just experienced the departure of their children from the family home as they head for university, turning once-bustling households into so-called 'empty nests'. It can leave those left behind feeling unsettled and cut adrift. Denise Turner, Professor of Social Work at the University of Hertfordshire, is researching the impact this life transition has on parents. They are joined by parenting author and journalist Lorraine Candy to discuss her findings.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Dianne McGregor

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret, of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Seward.

Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello, this is Newellamoghren, and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. In a moment, the schoolgirls campaigning to have school uniforms banned in porn. Could the social media-driven resurgence in the popularity of sunbeds be fuelling a rise in cases of skin cancer amongst young. people we'll be finding out. And we hear from farmer Helen Rebanks. Her 2023 book, The Farmer's

Wife, challenged the notion that farming is glamorous and idyllic. Well, it's now been turned into a play about three generations of farming women. And have you waved off a child to university in the last few weeks? How did it feel? We'll be discussing the impact of being a so-called empty nester on your well-being. But first, a group of schoolchildren have set up a petition calling on the government to ban the use of school uniform in porn. They want to abolish the sexualisation of children through the inappropriate use of school uniform. Two of the campaigners are 15-year-olds Aileen and May

who are at school in Oxfordshire. Kylie spoke to both of them and asked them why the issue of school uniform being used in porn mattered to them. May spoke first. Well, personally, it's always been a part of my life since I was around 12. I was watching a TV show with my mum and to turn on the main guy,

the woman dressed up as a Catholic sexy schoolgirl. And I thought to myself, I'm going to have to go out tomorrow in a school uniform similar to that and think, this is what attracts people, this is what makes people sexy. But I'm a child. I shouldn't have to feel like that. I think I was actually the opposite. I remember hearing about this campaign. The first thought I had was, why is this a thing?

As a child, I feel like we shouldn't have to worry about something that is meant to simulate us being used to sexualize minors. I think it's sick. I remember so vividly coming home and talking to my parents. And they were shocked. They were stunned by the fact that we need to have this campaign. And I think that's why if we can publicize it and make it known that this is an issue, then people like me will realize that we need to. take action. And we're talking about the issue of school uniform being used in porn. What do you mean by porn? Well, any like media like films, videos, books, photographs, etc. Which is used for

sexual purposes. Yeah. And how has this all made you feel about wearing your school uniform? I think it makes me feel repulsed, a uniform that is meant to make us feel united. It's meant to show a community and I think it's just been tainted by the sexualization that this media pushes and forces onto us. I think that it makes something that's meant to feel safe, feel so, so unwelcoming and I just think it's sickening. That's why we want to make this change and that's why if we can get as many people to sign the petition, I think we can get closer to making a safer environment. Yeah, I mean, I don't even wear my school uniform outside of school. It's the short period of when I walk to school and when I walk home and then it's off.

It's immediately off because this just amplifies all my feelings about it that I've had previously. I think the connotations surrounding that of a school uniform, it's totally changed. I think we've normalized it so much. It's ingrained within our society. The uniform is inherently sexual when it's not. it's inherently what children wear. Have you been able to make any adaptations to your uniforms? I'm thinking that maybe are you allowed to wear trousers instead of skirts, for example?

Yeah, we are allowed to wear trousers. And one of our members of the club has stopped wearing skirts altogether because she feels uncomfortable in it now. And she loved wearing skirts. I think that's what makes. it's so vile hearing about it. Like to protect ourselves, we have to change ourselves when, if anything, we should stop the people who are sexualising us to begin with.

We shouldn't be the ones who have to change. So as well as starting your petition, you've also written to the Prime Minister Andy Burnham. So what do you want to see happen? Well, the minimum thing that we want is to stop the normalisation, because when you stop the normalisation, you stop the sexualisation. but our biggest hopes and dream is to obviously get it banned from all pornographic media and even further than that is to get it changed the advertisement of the costume

because we know we can't take the costume away because that would like infringe on some rights but we just need to change the advertising from sexy schoolgirls to just uniform We're aware that this ban isn't going to immediately make the world a safer place, but I think it's a start. I've heard some people argue that it's wishful thinking, but we have done research and we've looked into the logistics. We've had contact with the Ministry of Justice who have kind of helped us learn about how the law system works. We've also had contact with the campaign group CISC.

Thank you so much to everybody who's helped us along the way. I think it's helped us become more aware of what is and what you're not. isn't possible. Also, yesterday, our MP, Calla Miller, also helped us learn about what it is and how we would actually put this into place. So I think it's important that we make this effort, because in the end, all of these small changes will lead to a bigger outcome where slowly we can make it so that children feel safer within our world. You've met so many people throughout this campaign, haven't you? You've been to Parliament as well to talk about it at an event where you met MP Kirsty Blackman. I was interested here that you didn't wear your school. You didn't, you

uniform to that event, what made you make that choice? Well, with the rise of AI, especially, we thought if we went to go to Parliament in our school uniform and someone caught up on that and looked at us in our uniform in a picture, they could use AI to change it and make it sexual, which would defeat the whole purpose of this whole campaign. And that's what people would focus on instead of the thing that we're actually trying to do, which is get this band. I remember discussing it within our meeting and I think it was just so shocking to see that everybody kind of unanimously agreed

that we felt unsafe wearing our uniform to this event and I just think that shows so much and shows why this is important. You're both hugely eloquent young women. You've been discussing this at your little feminist book club in school, I understand. May, can you explain what goes on there? Well, I actually think I'm not the best to talk to because Aylans actually been here longer than I have. I'm just, I first came here like a year ago. As a newbie experience, we don't actually read books.

We just talk about issues because we actually don't have enough money for books for like 20 people, I'm going to be honest. Yeah, as someone who's been there slightly longer than May has, I'm truly thankful to the Little Feminist Book Club. It's always been a safe environment, a safe community. where we can share our opinions and we can make a stand. We look over poems, we look over feminist media. Actually, one of the reasons I joined the Little Feminist Book Club is that many people have the common misconception that we only fight for women's rights.

That is not true. We fight for everybody's rights. We fight for equality. And I think that's another important thing about our campaign. It's not just young girls or women who face the consequences. It's children. It's people. people. I think that's what we want to make known that we're fighting for the safety of everybody.

And LFB, it's, I've learnt so much joining this club. I've learned that I can share my opinions. I have a voice and I will be heard. To both of you just finally, do you think the government at the moment is doing enough to protect young people from the harm and the risks of porn? Well, with the Online Safety Act and everything that they're passing out, they are seeming to try and help, which is great. We find that amazing. I mean, the developments in just a short time is really good for us, but we think we just need this little bit more to stop it entirely, because do you want to talk about the grey area? Yes. Currently in the law, there is a grey area that people can bypass. The Crime and Policing Act introduced the law that you cannot

explicitly show an under 16-year-old or a minor. We have two key. arguments for this. One, 16 to 18 year olds are still children. They should be protected just as much as we should be. But also, if anything, it's a way to bypass this law because school uniform isn't covered. And I think our main argument is that this, it doesn't go far enough. I think to protect everybody, we need to outline, we need to get rid of this gray area because I could wear a uniform and just say, oh, I'm being a 17 year old. No, you are being a child. You're trying to imitate that. of a minor and that is wrong. That was 15-year-olds, May and Aileen,

and I would very much like to join their book club. Kylie also spoke to Claire McGlynn, Professor of Law at Durham University and also the author of Exposed The Problem of Extreme Porn. She was asked what she thought of their campaign to ban school uniforms in porn. Oh, I mean, all power to them.

It's remarkable to hear them talk about both this is how it's affected them and other girls, but their determination to, raise this issue and challenge us adults, frankly, for just having kind of normalised it and not really discussed this. I think it's fabulous what they're doing. Aileen touched on the grey area of legislation there. Can you clarify what was meant? So what this is, is in April, Parliament adopted new legislation that will mean when it comes into force that you can't show a pornographic image of someone who looks or is

pretending to be under 16. So what they're highlighting is the fact that if you've got, if you like, an 18-year-old actor who's pretending, say, to be 17 in their school uniform in porn, that's not going to be covered by this new law. And what these girls are saying is, you know, the 17-year-old in school uniform should also not be being depicted in mainstream porn. And so, you know, they've got a really important point there. When we think of the sexy school uniform imagery,

you might think of Britney Spears, those images of ties, undone, short skirts. And at a point in the 90s in early 2000s, it seemed to be everywhere, you know, school discos at clubs where women dress to school girls. And probably it never occurred to a lot of people that this was sexualising girls. How has that culture changed?

I think it's just shifted rather than change. Because, yeah, you're absolutely right. Brittany Spears and, you're absolutely right. and many of us are all still very familiar with that sort of, those sorts of images. But what's happened now is it's not that that's gone away. It's not that we've decided it's wrong to sexualise young girls. It's shifted and arguably it's become even more mainstream

because, you know, if the likes of social media, some of the social media platforms, there's lots of, you know, content creators who are pretending to be young, basically. And we've got this genre in pornography about teenagers. And we know that in the last 10, 15 years since Brittany Spears, I mean, millions are watching mainstream pornography.

So we might not be talking about it as much, but, you know, it's still part of our culture, I think, unfortunately. How likely do you think that it is that a ban would take place? At the moment, I think, you know, there's lots of legislation about pornography that the girls were mentioning that was adopted in April. That legislation still isn't enforced yet and has not been implemented. So I think what we're probably going to see is the moves to try and get that implemented first

and then perhaps we can turn to some of the issues the girls raise. That's not the answer they're looking for, but I suspect that's what's going to happen. Professor Claire McGlynn talking to Kylie there. And the Minister for Victims tackling violence against women and girls and international justice, Alex Davis-Jones said, Pornography must never normalise or glorify the sexual abuse of children. That's why we are changing the law, so possessing or sharing porn. which depicts an adult pretending to be a child under 16 will be an imprisonable offence.

Now, picture a farmer, and you might imagine a man on a tractor. But Helen Rebanks believes the unsung heroes of rural life are the women, whose behind-the-scenes efforts keep both the farming family and the business afloat. Descended from generations of Cumbrian farmers, Rebanks lives and farms in the Lake District. Her best-selling 23 book, The Farmer's Wife, described as a vinegar-sharp memoir, challenge the notion that farming is glamorous and idyllic. And that book has now inspired a play by the same name, running at the theatre by the lake in Kessik,

a market town in the Lake District until the 10th of October. Well, I spoke to playwrights Hannah Kaleel and Helen Rebanks, and I started by asking Helen what prompted her to write the farmer's wife. I felt that women that do the doing a family life and the caring and the cooking and they're looking after everybody and the support in the farmer were completely envisficed. in the modern world on social media and on TV. There was a lot of representations around of women on tractors

and doing all the milking. And I think that's brilliant. And I have a daughter that wants to be a farmer. She wants to do all the doing outside as well. But I grew up on a farm with my mum and grandma doing a lot of that caring work and cooking. And I didn't imagine I was going to become a farmer's wife. I did art college. I went to do all sorts of different things.

So what happened? Fell in love with a farmer. And yeah, here we are. It's not a job, is it? It's a life. It's a lifestyle. Very much so, a way of life. And, yeah, cooking with the seasons, growing food, understanding where our food comes from.

It's super, super important to me and helping other people understand that and celebrating the great British produce that we've got from our farms. I'm going to read out a message we've had in from a listener. It says, I'm Joe, a hill sheep farmer, on the Isle of Sky. From the outside, it can look like a very romantic life. It's rewarding but can also be very difficult.

You're tied to home for much of the year and out in every weather. It can feel quite lonely. When I first read Helen's book, I felt very seen. She has wonderfully highlighted the role of women on farmers, sometimes in the background, but very much the backbone. Yeah, it's that thing of women feeling seen and heard and that caring matters. All the little things we do for you. other matter and I'm I'm proud to be a farmer's wife super proud of what the role I play growing up

through this 80s and 90s my messaging from everything was girl boss go out to work be independent be something else and I kind of railed against that because I saw the value in what a life on the land looks like and I missed it when I was away from it didn't realize I did at the time I was sort of following a path throughout college and things but it didn't sit right, being away from the land and home and things that matter to me. Well, your sort of creative flair has kind of, well, it came out in the book, for starters, and now it's been taken to the stage. So tell me how this collaboration came about. I was approached by Liz Stevenson, who's the artistic director of Theatre by the Lake in Keseek.

And she gave me Helen's book, which I read with absolute relish, because even though I'm not from Cumbria, I'm half-Palestinian, half-Irish, and I come from farming on both sides. So two formidable grandmothers who farmed very different landscapes, obviously, than Cumbria. And I recognise the resilience and the labour in the book. And also what's so wonderful about Helen's book is it's not just relatable to people who work in farming. I think most women feel like their work at home is invisible. And so many people relate to it. I absolutely related to it.

And I got very excited when I read it and proposed to Liz and Helen that maybe what I could do was use the memoir as a sort of springboard. And we went and spoke to loads of women in farming in Cumbria. And I took their stories and wove them into a story of one family, three women one day on the farm. We can hear a clip from the play now in which two of the characters tussle over how to manage the farm. Two of the cast there, played by Christine Entwistle and Aaron Devlin. Helen, the character span three generations and kind of talk about the changes for women in farming.

So tell us more about that and the significance of it being set around the kitchen table. Oh, it's incredible. When you walk into the theatre, you're invited right into the heart of a farmhouse kitchen. I've been in a few of those. Everything happens around that table. Yeah. Yeah, we celebrate the birthdays. We do the kids' homework, we do the farm paperwork.

And there's a remarkable scene in the play that Hannah's written where Christine, the middle character, she's sort of drowned in paperwork, as most of us farmers are currently. Does it fall from the scene? It actually does, yes. There's a line in the memoir about feeling like you are slowly drowning in this life. And I magpied that from the memoir, and all three characters say it at some point.

Farmers are just so up against it, with all the challenges. We're expected to produce amazing quality British food and cope with all the regulations, the highest welfare standards ever. And yet, try and fight for, you know, any last penny that we can get. We're the only country now that is not subsidised

for farming and food production. We're paid for some environmental works, but we've just seen with the SFI window closing very rapidly last week, it was like trying to get Oasis tickets. You know, that window opened for a short space of time when people are outworking on the land and with their livestock. There is just no time at all to access any funding. We missed out on trying to get more to support the hedgerows

and the rivers and the wetlands that we're creating on our farm. The paperwork is heavy, but also the diversification is heavy on a lot of farmers. We're expected to run two or three jobs alongside doing already really challenging work. We've got a statement from DEFRA, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and a spokesperson said, we're starting a new conversation with farmers. One of the Prime Minister's first visits was meeting farmers hit by brutal drought and dry weather, announcing a £65 million package to help them through these challenging conditions. We're also providing grants to help the sector access cutting-edge technology,

boosting productivity and creating a profitable future for the industry. How has life for women on farms changed as you've seen it? What was your mother's life like yours and compared to what you think your daughters might be? Women have always been at the heart of a farming life. And my grandma was very busy doing a more indoor role. And that's represented in the play. But then through my mum's time, there was challenges and women had to work more outside because there just wasn't the financial resources for workers anymore.

And so there's that split, isn't there, of like that tension of having to be inside and outside and never feeling like you're doing enough properly. And now women are farmers in their own right and absolutely should be, but always have been. I think that's what I'm quite surprised at when I see social media. I think, well, there's some incredible shepherdesses around in the lakes and they are formidable characters. Hannah, what did you want people to take away from this when you're writing it?

I really wanted them to think about the possibilities of community and how we can help each other. But also I think a greater respect for where food comes from. Absolutely. The thing that struck me about all the women I met was their creativity, their brilliant minds and ability to think about difficult things in really interesting creative ways and an incredible resilience. We've had another message and I'm going to read this, see what you think. I was brought up on a farm in the 60s and 70s.

My mum cooked three hot meals a day, helped with lambing and carving, reared chickens and did all the child rearing. there were three of us. She was always exhausted and our lives were tough. We had work clothes rather than play clothes to change into after school. We learnt a lot but there was nothing romantic or fun about our lives and that's from Helen. Yeah, absolutely. It's a challenge in life and then to have to go and work outside of the farm as well to bring extra money in to supplement it. It's too much. So what does the future of farming look like for women?

That's a big question, Anita. What about for your daughter? What do you hope? Well, she wants to be a farmer. Definitely wants to be a farmer. And I think she's living her best life right now at nearly 19 year old, gathering fels with her dogs, working with different shepherds out on the open fells and working on big farms. I think there's so many opportunities and possibilities and we need super capable young people in farming. And like you say, we need to connect the dots.

But I think people often talk about the kind of rural urban divide. But we live side by side. We absolutely do. And I think also the other thing that I would really. really love people to take away from the play is the idea that we're not powerless when it comes to this. And those of us who live in cities do have a responsibility to understand where our food comes from and to buy food responsibly, buy British meat, know where it's come from and educate yourself. Whoever is doing the shopping and the cooking, thinking about that household

budget, they have huge power in their pockets to change things. Author Helen Rebanks and playwright Hannah Khalil there. And the farmer's one. is on at the theatre by the lake until the 10th of October. Now, tanning, or more specifically, sunbeds have been back in a big way over the summer. Look at social media and there'll be posts about tan maxing and influencers extolling the virtues of using sunbeds. But according to some experts, this resurgence could be fueling a rise in cases of skin cancer, particularly amongst young people. Cases of melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, have risen by 73% over the past. 20 years across England, Wales and Scotland. And it's now one of the most common cancers in those

aged between 15 to 34. That's according to data from Cancer Research UK. A study by Teenage Cancer Trust found almost half of 18 to 34-year-olds in the UK use sunbeds. That's the highest proportion of any age group. I spoke to Rosie Vair from the charity Teenage Cancer Trust and the observer journalist Marine Saint who explained why she began looking into this. It really began with my own algorithm, I saw a real wave of content around tan maxing, sunbed use. And it seemed to me important to investigate what were the figures behind this. And I found there were almost 23 million TikTok videos with the tag of sunbeds. And then about 700,000 Instagram posts tagged with tanning in sunbed. So it really seems that this was something which had entered back into

sort of cultural discourse and was trending online. And then you obviously went off and did some more digging and more research. What did the experts you spoke to say about the link between, as I started talking about, the rise in sunbed use and the rise in melanoma cases? So sunbed use is well known to be attributed to skin cancer and causes skin cancer. So the experts I spoke to were really concerned with the way in which it was being readily discussed on social media and that people were coming into their clinics with skin cancer cases and they had said that they were using sunbeds because of promotion online, because of conversations online, the fact that sunbeds were trending as a new beauty trend,

essentially. And what are they seeing? What are people saying about sunbeds that are promoting them? So online people are saying that sunbeds have health benefits essentially, which contrasts all of the kind of medical research, which we accept online, which we would hope that people would understand the risks that come with using sunbeds. So they were seeing people saying that sunbed use helped them feel confident in their own skin, especially with young women, help them feel like they were glowing, achieving this bronze look, and that sunbeds were the quickest and cheapest way of doing that. I'm going to bring in a statement here from the Department of Health and Social Care.

A spokesperson said there is no safe level of sunbed use. They increased the risk of skin cancer, particularly among younger people. addressing this is a key part of our national cancer plan. That's why we consulted on strengthening regulation, including mandatory ID checks to stop children accessing them illegally, clearly displayed health warnings and banning misleading health claims. We've also got a statement from the Sunbed Association, which is a trade body, and they said viral social media posts and sensationalists online influencers

and internet trends have absolutely no connection with the professional regulated tanning sector. Regulated high street salons do not endorse, promote or participate in reckless. Digital fads are extreme sunburn challenges. Rosie, let me bring you in here. The Teenage Cancer Trust, you've carried out your own research into sunbeds. Why? What prompted this? We looked into this a bit last year and the reason why we first started looking at it is that we as a charity fund frontline staff in the NHS.

We fund nurses and youth workers working directly with young people between the ages of 13 and 24 with cancer. And through various different conversations, anecdotally, we were hearing their concerns about a rise in the numbers of young people they were seeing who had either expressed using sunbeds or had expressed knowing that other people of their age were using sunbirds. For us, this was pretty shocking to hear and we wanted to look into and understand some of the kind of stats around it and the reasonings as well, like Maureen said. So it did two sets of surveys last year. So we did one in the summer, which looked at

kind of overall general sunbed use across different age groups. And between the ages of 18 and 34, 48% of people admitted to using sunbirds. And that was by far the biggest proportion. It drops drastically in the 35 to 55 age group to 18%. And the reasoning with the summer use of sunbeds was around achieving what they call a base tan. So the idea that you're preparing your skin before you go on holiday to protect against any further burning or sun damage.

There is no evidence that base tans are something that protect your skin and there's no safe way of tanning under any UV light whether that's in a sunbed or outside as well. So that was really interesting around the summer trend and then we did a winter survey as well to try and understand those are the two peak areas. The winter sunbed use, as Marines kind of touched on as well, the reasoning was slightly different.

So it was the leaning into those wellness trends we see a lot of online as well. The idea that using a sunbed can boost your vitamin D levels or gives you confidence or lets you get a tan during winter when we're seeing less of the sun anyway or is a mood booster. The vitamin D element is, again, there's no scientific evidence of that. Marine, when you spoke to young people, I'm sure lots of people will be thinking the same thing that I thought when I read your article, which is how have we gone from the messaging that was so clear, you know, those of a group in the 80s, 90s and the 70s. You know, some beds were sort of no go, really. I thought the messaging had got through.

So what were the young people telling you about why they decided to start using them? Yes, absolutely. It's really a cyclical trend, 80s, 2000s, now again for the social media generation. And the young people I spoke to were saying it was those arguments again which you raised. It's the base tan. It's the wellness side of it. It's feeling confident in their skin. They see sunbeds as a way to heal their acne,

to feel like they're glowing. And it is essentially, it's a beauty trend for them, and it's something which lasts longer than bottled tan or a spray tan, and which is also promoted online as something which is fun, social, and ultimately trending. So it's aesthetic, basically. They just want to look sun-kissed and glowing. What are the risks associated with using sunbeds, Rosie?

So some beds were classified as carcinogenic, so they can cause cancer that's been proven. And that was in 2009. So we're now 17 years later. And as you just said, when I was growing up, you couldn't move in a newsagent without seeing headlines around how dangerous sunbeds were. The growing trends online, and we have a real concern around the huge amount of misleading information and the lack of regulation and checking of this information as well, but also the lack of information of the risks of sunbeds. and the risk is that they can cause cancer. And there's a pretty stark stat that illustrates that very well, which is that first use of a sunbed before the age of 35

increases your risk of skin cancer by 59%. The Sunbed Association, which is a trade body for the industry, say the overwhelming majority of sunburn happens in natural outdoors sunshine, not within a compliant professional tanning salon. What would you say to that? I would say that there is ways you can protect your skin in a sunbed, if you're going to use sunbeds, we would not recommend this to anyone. But going out in the sun, you also need to protect your skin.

So that's using an SPF of minimum 50. Covering up during the peak hours, so between 11am and 3pm, when the sun is at its hottest, wearing sunglasses, wearing hats, protecting yourself from protecting your skin and understanding what the risks are as well, but also knowing what it is that you need to do. And understanding the risks of sunbeds, I think, is one of the main things for us, and we actively avoid against any use.

What did experts tell you, Marine, about what they wanted to see? I mean, what changes did they want to help protect young, people, particularly from the dangers. Definitely having firmer public health messaging and understanding that this wave of online content is very much different to the public health line, which is that sunbeds are dangerous for you and can cause skin cancer. Also firming down regulations on licensing for sunbed shops, because we don't actually know the scale of this industry. As whilst there is an industry body, there are countless of other salons. As they aren't required to operate with a license, we don't know

where they're operating. They also want to have firmer ID checks so the underage users, under 18s, aren't using sunbeds. And it's also thinking about the economic impact of sunbed shops too, because they have a great economic impact on high streets, especially in parts of the UK where we see high use of sunbeds, the north-west, the northeast, parts of Scotland. And it's important to toe the line between what are the economic impacts on the NHS for skin cancer cases, but also for these small businesses which rely on their salons being open. Yeah, and often they're run by women as well. Rosie, some people are calling for them to be banned.

Yeah. What do you think? I think that's the decision that only the government can make. Our stance is very much that we would actively advise against any use. The young people that we support, but people generally as well, they have been proven to cause cancer and they sit in the same category of carcinogen as tobacco and asbestos. So it's a very stark warning. We've understood this.

We've known this for a very long time now, as well. well. Our recommendation to young people is always do not use sunbeds. When you're going out in the sun, protects your skin. And if you have any concerns about your body in any way, you know your body better than anyone else does. Go and see a GP if you're worried and get it checked out. Rosie Vair from the Teenage Cancer Trust and the Observer Journalist, Marine Saint. Now, we are celebrating our 80th anniversary on Wednesday in a special program live from the Glasgow Women's Library in Scotland. The theme for the birthday year is use your your voice and Nula and guests will delve into the archives to reflect on eight decades of women telling their stories and sharing their lives.

We'll also reveal the results of an exclusive poll that investigates women's ability to speak up for themselves and we'll hear from performance poet Holly McNish who's written a specially commissioned poem. And remember, you can enjoy Women's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10 a.m. during the week, all you need to do is subscribe to the daily podcast. It's free via BBC Sounds. like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret, of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else.

And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, catching my teacher. Listen, on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC. podcast. Now, where do you think you'll find the largest publicly accessible collection of women's art in Europe? London, Paris, Berlin? No, it's actually Cambridge. The women's art collection is displayed at Murray Edwards College, a women's college at the University of Cambridge. The collection includes 600 works by more than 300 women artists, including Tracy Emin, Barbara

Hepworth and Lubbana Hemede. It's marking its 40th. anniversary this year and a new exhibition inspired by its very first artwork and two new acquisitions which also honour its origin story. To tell us more about 40 years of putting women in the frame, Kylie spoke to Harriet Loughler, director of the women's art collection, the artist Professor Dame Sonia Boyce and the art historian and author of the story of art without men, Katie Hessel. Harriet first. We curate two exhibitions a year that are very much born out of the collection. and we sort of very much are governed by the idea of constellations, not stars, this sense of not necessarily want to spotlight kind of a single artist,

that actually it's about providing a platform for as many artists as our space will kind of accommodate. The collection dates back to a work created by Mary Kelly in 1986. Then it was in the 90s that the collection expanded. So whose names are on that wish list of who was wanted in the collection? Well, there was Maggie Hambling, Paula Rago, Sonia Boyce, Gillian Ayers. I mean, it's a list of 46 artists. But as you say, it very much started with Mary Kelly being in residence at Newhall, as the college was known then, and making a really extraordinary body of work called Extas, which is the starting point of our current exhibition,

what remains that really connects her work to contemporary practitioners, to really engage with these ideas of what does remain, this idea of history, what gets carried forward. And of course, that's sort of. so important to the college, this sense of this 40th anniversary that we've, you know, been working in this way for so long. It's about really trying to convey that. And Mary Kelly is obviously one of the most significant artists working. She was born in 1941 and has been kind of foundational to kind of feminist work, minimalist work. And so it's kind of a wonderful moment to really engage her and to talk to her about what that was like. And she speaks so powerful.

about engaging with the female fellows at that time and making this work that's about women's experience, but crucially in that work, ecstas, like there isn't a single woman depicted. So there is no body. It's about sort of a narrative. It's about clothing. It's about so much more than just a kind of single, objectified kind of body. You mentioned Sonia Boyce, who was on that wish list. And Sonia is sitting next to you right now. You were an emerging artist, Sonia, when the collection was being conceived. You were part of the influential black arts movement in the 1980s. You became the first woman of colour to represent the UK at the Venice Biennale in 2022.

Now, you were on that original list, but you didn't get your invitation, did you? Yeah, I didn't know that I'd been invited because I think this was in the 90s. There was a letter that was sent to me. but during that period I was moving house quite often. And so I never received the invitation. And I have to admit, and I feel quite bad about this, that I've only recently found out about this women's art collection. I didn't know about it.

And of course, once I realized that there was a collection and kind of seeing the work going to visit the college, it is extraordinary. But yeah, the first invitation I didn't actually receive. And I still don't know where it is. I don't know what the address was. We have a copy of it in the display case. You're very honest.

Somewhere in the postal system. But it's a great letter because it sort of says the president at the time, Valerie Powell, is writing and it says, I'm writing to you as a prominent women artist in 92. And, you know, in the archive there are lots of letters from the women artists saying, I don't identify as a prominent woman artist. It speaks volumes about the position of women in 92, but then, of course, at this moment of reflection now.

So, Sonia, how does it feel now to be part of this collection? Oh, it's lovely to be part of. this collection. I think it's really extraordinary. I mean, just to go into that space where there are so many works on display and to know that my work sit amongst some of the greats is quite an honour. It's also just a, it's a lovely place to go and study. You know, we came and visited earlier this year and I just kind of thought, oh, I could, I could do this, I could live here. There's a kind of belief, basically, in the potential of learning there that I just, thought was really wonderful. And I'm, you know, quite happy to be identified as a woman artists that's

in that collection. I think that that's really very key for me. Katie, as a art historian, you've written books, as we said, on recentering women artists in the last 500 years of art. You are also a visiting fellow at the college, so you're very familiar with the collection. What do you make of it? I think it's extraordinary. When you think about the statistics of certain museums in the UK, even now today, sometimes actually these places, are necessary because what they do is they highlight the absence of women in certain collections. So, for example, the National Gallery in London, a wonderful place, but just 1% of its collection is dedicated to women artists. The Royal Academy, again, fantastic. It has only had two major

exhibitions by women artists in its main galleries, even though it's been open since 1768. So actually, sometimes we have to spotlight the women, not to censor or denounce or any, remove any other narrative, but just purely sometimes centre the women so people understand what we're missing, but also kind of give them that platform at a time, especially when no one else was giving that platform. I mean, again, you know, only now are museums, I think, really actually changing. That's thanks to people at the top who are very much kind of interested in making sure that different narratives are discussed. And actually what we're witnessing right now, and thanks to places like the women's art collection, which has been catalyzing and catapulting

this change for decades, is actually seeing a richer, more expansive and brilliant and including Art History, which is only going to make more people more interested and feel like it's for them. Sonia said that she liked being included in the collection, and I'm imagining you don't mind the term women artists then. I am a woman artist. And you describe yourself in that way. Yeah, because, you know, from the beginnings of when I was kind of at art school, I really strongly identified with what was the emerging feminist art practice at the time because I thought it was really vital. It's not a title that I know that all women artists want to take up and they shouldn't have to as well. But yeah, it's a kind of conundrum really, isn't it?

Whether one's seen under that particular umbrella or not. And it doesn't necessarily tell you about the practice of that artist. No. What do you think about that term, Katie? Well, I think it's really interesting. My head is going to the abstract expressionists and, you know, formidable artists like Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler who, you know, said, I don't want to be associated with the term sort of women artist or Joan Mitchell or something. And that is because they lived in an extremely

patriarchal kind of, you know, society where actually to be a woman artist, quote unquote, was a sort of a negative thing. It wasn't a good thing. They wanted to move away from it. But actually, I think the world that we're living in now is to be a woman artist is actually a kind of marker of power. It's a marker of sisterhood. It's saying, yes, let's think about this absence of women throughout history and actually let's claim our stake our claim and actually assert ourselves as this. And actually, I think the more people we have that, the more sort of positivity were given towards it. And I think that's what it's about.

It's about uplifting others. Maybe connected to that, Harriet, but I want to talk about the fact that artists originally in this collection were invited to donate their work. Do you pay them now? How does it work? So it's a really important question that we think about a lot with the collection. And of course,

we're always asking ourselves the question of what conditions need to exist for women to be able to make work. And I think that is something that we, think about a lot across our program and the work that we do. I think that there is something very important and significant about the donations that took place. I see it as an act of collective generosity, but I think we still do consider donations. And when that occurs, for me, it's about a reciprocity. So if an artist or an estate gives a work, it's about this relationship and how can that also be something, a kind of shared endeavour. So it's never a transaction.

And then with the acquisition, we fundraise on a case-by-case basis. So for the Sonia Boys, we were very fortunate to receive funding from the Art Fund and the VNA Arts Council purchase grant. So, you know, we have to identify gaps which of which there are many. And we are very fortunate to be working with Christine Levitt and his female artist Museum in Mugin on a new fund at this year's Freeze London, which will be for a women artist, for whom it will be the first time they're work will enter a UK public collection. So it's sort of regardless of age. It's very much about that kind of critical moment. So yeah, we're always seeking opportunities to do more in terms of acquiring work and supporting women artists directly. I do want to get your response to that,

both Sonia and Katie, the importance of women being paid for their work. To start with Katie. I mean, look, the art market is almost like a microcosm for the way we place value on judges and society. On average, women artists work goes for 10% of a male artist. Frieda Carla was the highest earning women artist, 52.6 million. That's just over 10% of Leonardo's Salvador Mundi, which went for 450 million. Similarly, with Marlene Dumas, she's the highest earning woman artist who's living and Jeff Coons is the highest earning male artist. Again, her work just went for 14% of his work. And so it is more important than ever. And I think it speaks volumes for actually, again, wider society and for paying women. And we should do that.

What do you think so? I mean, similarly, you know, the question about the pay gap, And one thinks about how that conversation has been taken up in recent years, but in more structural ways in the field of employment. But within the arts, it's a very almost nebulous discussion in terms of how do you place value. What does that value look like in monetary terms? And, you know, in terms of thinking about the women's art collection, we did have this conversation about the fact that I couldn't afford to donate the work because I have ongoing costs as an artist.

And I do think that the economics of it still require much more consideration than, than as it warrants a lot of discussion now, I think. Professor Dame Sonia Boyce, Harriet Loughler and Katie Hessel there, and the women's art collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, is open daily all year round and the exhibition What Remains runs there until February. Now, is your household a little bit quieter? now. In recent weeks, many parents have watched their children leave home for university work

or new adventures turning once bustling households into so-called empty nests. As familiar noise and routines fade along with the sense of purpose that comes from daily care, those left behind can feel unsettled and cut a drift. Yet despite affecting lots of parents, this milestone has attracted very little academic research and is rarely acknowledged as a major life transition. Kylie spoke to Denise Turner, Professor of Social Work at the University of Hertfordshire, who's seeking to change that through her work and to parenting author and journalist Lorraine Candy,

who's written about the challenges of the empty nest. She began by asking Denise why she thinks there's so little research into this life transition. My guess is that traditionally it's been thought of as something that affects women and so perhaps hasn't been seen as a significant life course transition. just in the same way that perhaps the menopause wasn't at one time. So that's my guess. Just explain to us before we start discussing what you found.

What is the difference between an empty nest and emptiness syndrome? Okay, so the empty nest, and not everybody likes this terminology, but it's what we have. The emptiness describes the time, as you said, when children might leave home, leaving the house, quiet parents facing different life trajectories. Emptiness Syndrome was popularised in the 1970s and is associated much more with things like depression, anxiety and more serious mental health issues. But I think that there's a bit of a convergence between the two.

So tell me about your research pilot then and why you wanted to look at the impact that this time of life can have. I wanted to look at it initially because I'm an academic. It's something that appears to, as we've said, be completely under-researched. or unresearched in the UK. And also because I'm at that sort of time of life myself, I've got lots of friends who are at that time of life. So I was starting to have a look at what there was out there in order to kind of think about helping people with this phase of life.

And what I found, as you said, was that there wasn't really anything in the UK at all, most of the researchers in China. So I did what is a fairly small bit of pilot research, looking at 53 people, men and women, who'd experienced the empty nest and seeing what had happened to them, what they'd made of it.

And what we found was that, unsurprisingly, really, it is a significant life-courced transition. Lorraine called it a hard stop. So it can feel like falling off a cliff for people. Well, let's bring in, Lorraine. You've got four children. Three have now gone to university. What was it like?

Initially, when your first children, child left. It was horrific. I think anyone listening who has come back from dropping off what still felt like a baby hundreds of miles away and walked into that bedroom, it's a very lonely time. And there's a lot of cliches, well, fill your time with hobbies, go and meet new people. And it's not like that. It's a huge identity shift at a time of life when you are going through quite an identity shift anyway. You lose a sort of sense of belonging. You feel quite lonely. You wonder what your purpose is. You can have your job and your partners and I think it's significantly harder actually if you're on your own or you're widowed, but it doesn't take away

from the fact you're dealing with who am I now and you've had 15 to 20 years of noise and activity and constant stuff going on and this house poured full of love and suddenly it's quiet and there's one teacup out in the morning instead of all the cups for all the kids. It's incredibly sad and I think we underestimate it and how it affects men and women in society today. There could be a lot more support and I'm not surprised there's never been any research into it. But the latest figure show that there's around 8 to 10% of population that would be facing empty nest. That's 5 to 6.8 million people. So it could have an effect on your health at this stage of life. Loneliness has a catastrophic effect on people's health.

So we should be taking it a little bit more seriously. And you've now gone through this three times recently with your third child. Did it get easier? It doesn't get easier at all because every time is, as I say, a complete shift in the household and your routine and how you work and how you interact with that, you know, I still have a 15-year-old left at home. It's a whole change of her childhood. Every time someone leaves, a sibling is left with a very different childhood ahead of them.

So I think it is worth really looking at it seriously from an emotional and a physical mental health. point of view. Denise, Lorraine brought up loneliness there. Is that something that you found that people discussed? Yes, we did. We found, particularly as Lorraine said, that people who were single parents and also people who may have had significant life events previously, so people that had been bereaved, would perhaps find the emptiness a kind of harder stop. Also, as Lorraine said, there are people who are facing other kind of issues around this time of life. So in the recent there was somebody whose wife had recently been diagnosed with dementia, so had become a carer to her at the same time that the children were leaving home. We know also that divorce is on

the rise in the over 55, so that can increase that feeling of loneliness, who am I now, identity, the things that Lorraine's talked about. It's not always a sense of loss, a sense of grief for everyone, I expect. There are people who maybe feel liberated. Some of it is liberating. I think it's important we take a moment to pause and see what we feel and what we might want to do next. You certainly have a lot more time and as I say it's a big identity shift. Who can I be now? What can I try now? I've got more time to do that. And also we're still caring for our children. You know, we're still loving our 20-somethings. They're still a very big part of our life. But it's a very physical living loss, as they call it. There is something that was there,

the hurly-burly was there and now it's gone. We're not. We're not. We're not. We're not talking about what you're going to do next and be liberated to do with them. We're talking about how do we feel that moment and how does it affect us from a kind of mental and possibly physical point of view. We've had so many comments on this. Somebody here says, when my youngest child turned 18, I cycle to work thinking, I've done my job. It's making me feel a bit emotional with a four-year-old. We raise children to let them go mostly like boomerangs, they will return.

And that's it, isn't it, Denise, they do, you know, and Lorraine, they do kind of come back. Yeah, I mean, I think the boomerang thing is certainly an issue, but that in some ways can complicate the leaving and complicate the mental health aspects of the leaving, because if you're going to grieve to some extent and then the children come back, it can be more difficult for that to be a sort of simplistic grieving process. And I just wanted to say about the liberation. I think a lot of what's talked about in terms of the liberation depends on money as well. You know, a lot of the kind of advice. in the media is you take that holiday that you've actually take that holiday that you've always wanted, go and see that film. And it tends to be very sort of middle class. So what we found in our research again was that economic situation had a big impact on the empty nest. What if your housing situation is dependent on your children being at home? What if you haven't got the money to do that travelling? So I think it's very complicated and I wouldn't want it to fall into a kind of binary of you're liberated or you're not liberated. I think it's an incredibly complicated

process depending on your circumstances, depending on what else has happened to you in life. And that's why it needs further research, really. Yeah. We've had a message here from a father who says, as a divorced full-time dad who's just taken his only daughter to uni, staring down the barrel of 30 years alone, I now have no place in the world. So sad. Thank you for sharing that with us. But that does reflect that, you know, you've spent so much of your life giving yourself to your child. Well, it's about purpose, isn't it? And what we sometimes lack in society across all of, however we live, is this kind of sense of community and belonging to something. And you have a purpose at home in your home, suddenly that purpose. And it really does feel like a hard stop.

That purpose is gone. If we had more society around us, more community stepping in and we knew that people were going to be going through that and it was more recognised, more talked about, it was more in the media. I mean, I think it's becoming more talked about. Culturally, it's in more things on telly and we're writing about it and women in menopause and perimenopause are writing about it and how it affects them. But having society around you gives you a bit of purpose as well. I mean, I took up volunteering and I work with a charity that helps kids after school. So that gave me a bit of a sense of purpose alongside my job as well. But I think it's very difficult. but I think it was very difficult for the women the generation before us. I left home really early and just left my parents in a very small rural town and I was gone. I mean, we didn't really think about how it was going to affect that generation.

Actually, your research found as well among older women talking about other older women and not perhaps being as helpful as they could be. Well, I'm okay. I'm fine. I'm sorted. Gen X have a very, very much, you know, we can do this. We're capable. And we don't want to look like we're not capable at this stage of life. So we won't talk about it. I think that's perhaps a little bit unhelpful.

So we should be talking about it more. We should certainly know it's coming and we should certainly know it's going to be really, really painful. Even if you're a really independent, capable, wonderful person who's got it all planned, it is still really painful to walk into that bedroom to not hear the laughter in the morning, you know, to not be there when they come home from school. I mean, I can see it's making you sad.

I know, and I've got years yet. So any tips then kind of for preparing or, you know, you know, when this is coming, when this is going to happen. From both of you, Lorraine, let's start with you. I think be a little bit led by your teenagers and your 20-somethings. You want to keep in touch with them, but you've kind of got to do it in the way that sort of suits them. I volunteered. I found another community. I started very cliché, doing a bit of open water swimming and stuff like that.

I found other people going through it who I could talk to about it and then shared my feelings, but sit in the moment with it and really feel it. At the other end of the parenting cycle, there is an enormous amount of of help now and support, thinking about having a baby and the identity changes and all the things that brings up. But then when you hit this end of the parenting cycle, there's nothing. And it's, and it is like falling off a cliff for some people. So what our research found, and the reason that the research is so important is because that links to policy, it links to legislation, it gets people to take this seriously. And, you know, hopefully that will start

to build discussion and community around this topic in a way that there isn't at the moment. Denise Turner and Lorraine Candy speaking to Kylie. That's it from me on Monday's programme. Nula will be speaking to Monica Dolan, who stars in a new film, The Lost Children of Tume, playing the woman who uncovered the scandal in Ireland, Catherine Corlis. She's joined by Alison O'Reilly, the journalist who broke the story in 2014. Don't forget to join her 10 a.m. on Monday. Do enjoy the rest of your weekend.

That's all for today's woman's hour. Join us again next time. Technology is changing our lives at a rapid pace. But how might it be impacting what we value? I'm Rosakins and in a new series, I'm exploring how tech is shifting our ideas of worth in friendship, culture, finance and work. I'll look back at technological revolutions of the past

as well as looking forward to a world centered around AI to test whether what really matters to us is changing. From BBC Radio 4, that's the value crisis. With me, Ros Atkins. Listen now on BBC Sounds. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia

with a dark secret of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. This is to be destroyed. This is World of Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.