Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Tracy-Ann Oberman, the SEND system, Sarah Owen MP

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

Tracy-Ann Oberman has reprised her role as Eastenders’ Chrissie Watts. She talks to Nuala about stepping back into this character after almost two decades, and her recent adaptation of Shakespeare��s The Merchant of Venice. In it, Tracy-Ann plays a female version of the Jewish character, Shylock, and sets the action in 1930s London during the rise of Oswald Mosley, the antisemitic founder of the British Union of Fascists.We look back at Tuesday's special programme, live from the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House in London, looking at the support for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities – or SEND as it’s often known in England. Nuala heard from guest panellists including Kellie Bright, an actress in EastEnders but also a mum to a child with SEND, Katie, who is 17 and says she was completely failed by the SEND system, Marsha Martin, the founder and CEO of the charity Black SEN Mamas and the Minister for School Standards, Catherine McKinnell.Visual artist Bharti Kher’s new exhibition, Target Queen at the Southbank Centre, features supersized bindis reimagined from their microscopic form to the macro size worn by the goddess, transforming the brutalist building into a powerful feminine force. Bharti joins Anita to discuss the exhibition.The newly elected Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, Labour MP Sarah Owen, joins Anita Rani on the programme to discuss the remit of her new role and what she hopes to achieve.A new play, The Lightest Element, which has opened at Hampstead Theatre, explores the life and career of astronomer Cecila Payne-Gaposchkin, the first person to work out what stars are made of. Anita is joined by actor Maureen Beatie, who plays Cecilia, and the playwright Stella Feehilly.

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good afternoon, welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour with me, Anita Rani. Coming up on the programme, we hear from actor Tracey-Ann Oberman, who's back playing the infamous Chrissie Watts in EastEnders. And the new chair of the Women and Equality Select Committee, MP Sarah Owen, speaks to me about her new job. But first, let me remind you, or let me tell you,

if you didn't hear our special programme on mums bridging the gap in the SEND system, that's Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. It was recorded on Tuesday in the BBC's Radio Theatre this week. It was a really passionate conversation and throughout the programme we heard from guest panellists, including Kelly Bright, an actress in EastEnders, but also a mum to a child with SEND. Katie, who is 17 and says she was completely failed by the SEND system. Marsha Martin, the founder and CEO of the charity Black SEND Mamas, and

the Minister for School Standards, Catherine McKinnell. Nuala kicked the programme off by speaking to Kelly about her experience. My experience, like many other SEND mums, is not a good one. I feel like I'm letting my son down most of the time. I feel frustrated. I feel fearful. I'm full my son down most of the time. I feel frustrated. I feel fearful. I'm full of worry. I always question if I'm making the right decisions for him and his future.

I think there's a huge responsibility that you feel as a SEM parent. And mostly I sort of feel like there isn't a place for him, that somehow he sort of falls between the cracks of what is actually out there on offer and he is in a mainstream school at the moment he is he's year eight of a mainstream state school and what are the challenges then that he is going through on a on a day-to-day basis well my son is lucky enough to have an EHCP which was not easy to come by and let me just for people who are not familiar with that, that is an education health and care plan as it's called in England. It has different names in the different nations and that is a legal document that follows a formal assessment

and it means that legally your local authority must provide the provision agreed in your child's plan. That is it on paper. That's correct. It's a legal document, effectively, between the local authority and the school. And although he has this, really and truly every day is still a struggle for him because, unfortunately, or whichever way you look at it, the way education is set up is not set up for children with neurodiversity. It just isn't. And so it does affect his mental health he does you know it's a constant stream of tests and you know unfortunately he's that's never going to serve him and and I worry the worry for me is that I'm sort of putting him through this in a way I can't I can't sort of sit back and watch him struggle for the next four years but then what do I

do because actually I don't think he's suited to a special school either even if I did decide that we would try that I probably wouldn't get a place for how many years I don't know but the waiting lists are endless so what then I just

I would love to see an education system. I don't think you can talk about SEND without talking about education as a whole, really, truly. That's my sort of standpoint. And I think we have to look at making big, bold changes to the whole thing. If we're going to make education more inclusive, and we're going to make it work for everybody, and I want an education system that nurtures all children, then those changes need to happen. It's funny, I don't think you think about yourself as a parent, really, very much. All my energy goes into my children, all three of my boys. And I think I'm exhausted.

I mean, I think any send parent is exhausted and it's not really you know new neurodiverse children may bring their own challenges but actually it's the it's the fight that's exhausting it's the debt it's the absolute fight and actually we all probably have jobs and looking after our children just raising raising a family, trying to... We're on the treadmill of life, aren't we? We're running faster and faster just to stand still. And on top of that, you're trying to fight for your child. And, you know, I definitely feel like I have days where I think,

I can't do it anymore, I'm overwhelmed, I can't do anything anymore. Have you ever considered giving up work? Because it sounds like you have a full-time job already. I do have a full-time job. I mean, I don't think I've ever quite got to the point of thinking, that's it, I'm going to have to. But I wouldn't not. I think that's the thing.

My children come first. Of course they do. So ultimately, if that's what it came came to and that's the road I had to take then that's what I would do I wonder what it feels like when you are a child in the middle of it I want to welcome Katie who is a teenager thank you for joining us on Women's Hour some people may have heard your voice a number of weeks ago when you were telling us a little bit we're so back so glad you're back with us what did the SEND system do for you and your life? Well, honestly, it's completely ruined it.

I'm 17 now. I haven't been to school since I was 13. I'm autistic. It all kind of started when I was five. I was having meltdowns. I was referred to CAMHS. They didn't see me, so I carried on through primary school.

I had intermittent bits of struggle and then got to year six of primary school and the teacher was so focused on sitting sats and getting sat improvement scores that the pressure was just piled onto us as students so much and I started to really struggle I did get some accommodations agreed with the head teacher but my teacher ignored them because they weren't legally binding so I dropped out for quite a while. I didn't sit my SATs. I did get a referral to CAMHS but that takes quite a while. Mine was only six months which is remarkably quick but still not a good time frame and by that point I'd started in a big mainstream secondary school. I did about three months of year seven and then crashed out completely, had a full ar hyn o bryd, fe ddechreuais yn ysgol ddysgu sylfaenol mawr. Fe wnes i am 3 mis o'r 7 mlynedd,

ac wedyn fe wnes i ffwrdd yn hollol, o ganolbwyntio ar y crisis iechyd meddwl. Doeddwn i ddim yn gallu gwysio, doeddwn i ddim yn gallu codi, doeddwn i ddim yn gallu bwyso, doeddwn i wedi cael fy diagniad o ddysgu bwyso, ac roedd yn anodd iawn i'r rhieni hefyd, oherwydd roedd ganddyn nhw swyddi,

roedd ganddyn nhw'n mynd i edrych arnynt, eu plentyn ddim yn gallu gweithredu. because they had jobs, they had to come and look after their barely functioning child. After that, I was issued with an EHCP, and CAMHS was supporting my parents, and I tried to go back to that school, but my mental health still wasn't good, and mainstream secondary schools are just so overwhelming and loud and busy and not built for autistic people. So we looked at specialist schools, but because I was already in secondary school, they were all full. It's so hard to get places for those. And tried some alternative schools, but they didn't work out. So I eventually got an EHCP

that specified education other than at school so I'm training to be a horse riding instructor now but fighting every step is so hard and I was diagnosed with PTSD last year from my time in year six of primary school which is why I can't go to school at all and I started speaking to my county council because they were failing quite a lot and speaking to some of the committees and trying to get my voice and voices of other young people heard because we're quite ignored all the adults who are running these systems like to just try and blame the parents and ignore the young people but when there's a young person stood right in front of them telling them that this is what happened they really can't ignore it which is what you're doing today yes well done

Katie and if there was one thing Katie that you'd like changed what would it be to be believed and not be fought on every single step I would like my voice to be believed I would like my voice to be believed. I would like my parents' voices to be believed. I should be sitting my A-levels right now, but I'm not. That is not good enough because I know I am smart and I would like to learn. And it just impacts every aspect of your life. I can see nodding beside you is Marcia Martin, who's the founder and CEO of a charitable organisation called Black Send Mamas.

Marcia, what's your experience been? So firstly, I just like to make it known I'm autistic. I have three autistic daughters. I'm a former behavioural therapist, so I worked with individuals who are neurodivergent. I'm also a neurodiversity awareness consultant and I founded Black Send Mamas. And we support primarily black mothers of neurodivergent disabled children in sourcing adequate mental health support. And then we also provide special needs advocacy services, legal advice, so on and so forth. So as we already know, the

send system currently in the UK is a little bit of a shambles. The local authorities are overstretched, underfunded. They are inadequately trained, the schools also, in how to support SEND students and their families. And, you know, that obviously means that the provision that's available is often inefficient, lacking, and that affects all families across the UK. I think from my position as a black mother of neurodivergent children and someone that supports over 3,000 black SEND families, and I've done research using the mums as participants,

our deal is a little bit different in that we know that whatever affects the majority which is a terrible sense system it kind of impacts the marginalized minorities a little bit more significantly so living as a minority within a minority that's black and disabled it means that the challenges that we face same as the rest of the country are difficult but also they're a little bit more confounded because we're looking at racial biases as well as discrimination uh disability discrimination and that is meaning that access to things like educational support ehcp support our interventions come late our diagnoses come late the quality and timeliness of the information that we're given, because you're never really given information, is also affected. And then that kind of trickles down to our outcomes as far as educational attainment. Also, our social and mental and

emotional health is also affected in a more acute capacity because we have so many different intersectional barriers kind of crossed and serving as a hindrance to us getting the support that we need. Listening to all of what we've been discussing so far is the Minister for School Standards, Catherine McKinnell. Welcome again to Women's Hour. Thank you. What have you heard this morning from these mums that will stay with you? As a new government, this is a wonderful opportunity.

Whilst this is quite a difficult discussion, this is a really important opportunity to really hear you, to hear your voices, to really listen. Because we have said very clearly, we want to put education back at the heart of national life.

And we think that children with special educational needs and disabilities should be at the heart of our education system. And I think by doing that, we get education right for everybody in our system and we get the best for every child, no matter what their needs. In a Westminster debate last week, one Labour MP, Richard Bergen, said it's not a crisis, it's now an emergency. You've been listening. What will you now prioritise specifically? OK, so, I mean, I have to just say that we recognise that this is not only a very difficult system to navigate. It is also, the former Education Secretary described it as lose, lose, lose.

And I think she described it very well because it's not delivering for families, but nor is it delivering outcomes for children. And that's, you know, as a Minister for School Standards, we want to see high and rising standards for every child, and that includes children with special educational needs. So the very specific changes we have made immediately, the first thing we did was change the role of the schools minister to include special educational needs as part of the remit because we see it as absolutely core to what we do in our schools and how we deliver education arising standards for every

child. We want to see inclusion as part of the way schools are measured. So Ofsted, we have already made the first step of changing the headline grades and Ofsted are looking at a report card system so that every parent, every child and every school has a clear sense of how they are doing on a whole range of factors and that for us will hopefully and obviously it's for Ofsted to determine those inspections but the report card system will include some element of inclusion as part of its measure so schools will be striving to achieve inclusion and that's what I think most parents want to know particularly if their children are in primary school now as they move into secondary that becomes you know just as

important even more important but fundamentally we also want to focus on the early years and I think one of the messages I've taken very clearly from today is that earlier you intervene the earlier you identify needs the better you can meet them and mitigate anything that might develop later on. So we want to, we're rolling out actually next month, a training tool for those people that work in early years so that they can spot the signs of a special educational need or disability and they are better trained and better supported. And fundamentally as well, we want to see more staff in our schools

that's why we are pledging to put six and a half thousand more teachers in our schools because we recognize that if schools are going to achieve that inclusivity that we really want to see they need the the support staff they need the teachers to be trained they need a cohort of school staff that can really meet that need as well. So there's a number of issues there, funding not the least of them. I do want to read a little of Paul Whiteman, General Secretary of the School Leaders Union, the NHT, said schools work extremely hard to support pupils with special educational needs,

but they're operating within the constraints of a system in crisis, hamstrung by shortages of funding, capacity and specialist staff. Now, I know you have just outlined what you plan to do but how long will these reforms take because for too long as i've been hearing mums have felt they've been fobbed off there is a new school year which has just begun and the question is how do you prevent another generation of children missing their chance at a suitable education, like we heard from Katie. How long? Yeah, so this is a priority for us.

We are moving as fast as we can. You will see we have made a whole range of announcements. We've been in government for just over two months. But we've known this is coming. We've made a range of announcements to get moving straight away because this is a priority for us. But I can't pretend that this is going to be fixed quickly. It is going to take time.

I want to turn to you, Katie, on what you've heard. Funding is an issue, but the system has no empathy for what children and families are going through. The education system likes to put children in little boxes, and if you don't fit in that box, you get pushed out. And I don't see that government doing enough to tackle that particular issue. Bridget Philipson recently tweeted that all children belong at school. I don't. I have PTSD.

If I go into a school right now, I will have a meltdown. I cannot go to school. I just want children and young people to be treated like individuals. One of the things we do want to reform, and we're going to be legislating for it, is a change to the admission system. And that's fundamental as part of what we want to achieve. We want to reform the curriculum. We want to reform the way schools cooperate together with

their local authorities regardless of the nature of the school and I know that's been raised but everyone has a responsibility for the children in their area and have a duty to work together to make sure that every child gets the best start in life and every child gets that chance at their education which we want to see. We have had such a huge reaction to this program and we would very much like to continue the conversation so if you would like to share your experiences then please get in touch you can email us via our website or get in touch with us on our social media it's at bbc woman's hour and if you would like to listen back to the full program you can find it on bbc sounds It's the episode from Tuesday,

the 10th of September. Now, the British Indian visual artist Bharti Kher is known internationally for her signature use of the bindi. That's the dot worn by some women in the middle of their forehead. Her latest work, Target Queen, can be seen at London South Bank Centre's Hayward Gallery. And Bharti joined me on the programme on Friday Friday and she started by telling me where this latest work came from. So Target Queen was envisioned in 2012. I did a project in China at the Rockbund Art Museum and the bindi is a sign that I've been using for many years of my work. It really is about potential and possibility. The tiny dot that South Asian women place between their eyes is a symbol of the third eye. And this is the gateway to your consciousness. And I always thought that the idea itself was so beautiful. I mean, in the work is grand, it looks it's it's big, but actually,

the message is very simple. It look within and suddenly this small dot that's been transformed like you said into this macro huge version is the bindi for the goddess she is now supersized and what i liked about the potential was now that the the building this brutalist building now has a consciousness to itself so it's a kind of portal and a door for you to enter. I mean, also, I mean, for me, it's also quite a joyful work because of the colour. And these are the colours of India, aren't they? Anyone who's been to India or who's been lucky enough to be in India will know that the sun is strong and the colours are wonderful. And you've feminised that building.

Yeah, I mean, the South Bank's a really interesting place. I mean, it was built in the 60s. People always sort of go on how it was quite brutalist and quite ugly. I actually find it quite fascinating. I think it's mad. It's like a jumble of geometry and towers stacked on top of each other. And it's quite a male building. I mean, there was five architects, five male architects and a whole plethora of other people who were consulted.

I mean, Henry Moore was one of them. Apparently, even Houdini was one of the consultants who was like, what kind of space do you want? So the building was built from the inside out. But at the same time, the outside of the building is, it's brutalist, it's masculine. I felt like we needed some sort of feminine energy in the building, but also something that was circular because all the angles are very tight around the building.

They're very angular, it's very geometric. And I've been working with the circle, which is the most simple form it is the primordial form of life it's the it's the it's the structure of your cells and it just needed something you i responded to the building and people looking at it will respond to the work uh because it can't you it makes you smile um it's your first time on woman's hour so i feel that we need to get to know you about the uh you mentioned india there and people who have the joy and the privilege of going there. You're born and brought up in London. And at 22, you flipped a coin to decide where you were going to go. You were going to either go east or west, New York or India. How did you end up in Delhi?

Well, I flipped the coin. It was heads and I went to Delhi. And I actually wanted to, I'd never been, I hadn't been to India since I was four years old. And my mother was a single parent and she brought us up in the suburbs. And we'd never been to India because, I mean, if you know, I mean, if you imagine in the 70s, tickets were expensive to go to Delhi then. And I wanted to meet my grandmother, who I hadn't seen. And I wanted to connect with just family. It was like a calling. I just felt something very strong that I needed to go. And I went. Three decades later, you're firmly entrenched in the Indian cultural landscape, you and your husband. When I got there, I didn't intend to stay there. And within a month of being in Delhi, I met Sord um sabord gupta

sabord gupta my husband and we bumped into each other looking for studios i was looking for a studio he was like a bollywood film we were talking about bollywood romances earlier this is you had yours in delhi in delhi and uh yeah three decades later i'm still there india was really i mean it's been my everything in many ways, my learning. I mean, I always say that England is my anchor, but India is my spiritual home. But you'd qualified from art college in the early 90s. Yeah. The whole YBA thing was happening in London.

Did you not want to, you know? No, there wasn't a place for me there. What do you mean by that? I wasn't ready. I didn't have a language. I didn't know what I really wanted to talk about or say in my work. And also my work wasn't resolutely British. I mean, I'm a British Indian. I'm not English, but I'm British. But and I felt that England wasn't ready for that dialogue yet. It wasn't ready for the other. There'd been a show at the Hayward Gallery in 84, something called The Other Story. It was a radical and revolutionary exhibition at the time, but

it was way ahead of its time in many ways. And I just got the sense I needed to go away. There was going to be a long gestation period of the YBAs and I wasn't part of it. Interesting. Yeah, the foresight. And we need to talk about some of your other work as well as it's on Woman's Hour because you've got an exhibition on at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Alchemies. Yeah. What will people see? And they should see it. Alchemies, it's a show that I'm really proud of, actually.

And it's a two-year project working with the creators Claire Lily and Sarah and we were I was I really wanted to bring together like 20 years of work really and I've been looking at the female body or the the way that the body manifests itself through sculpture or two-dimensional work or the Bindi works and I really wanted to just bring them all together so there is a ginormous plinth and there's about 18 works of all the women's sculptures that I've been making and casting casting friends of yours people you know casting the body and the body's memory and when I cast my friends or people that I know, I'm able to catch something of them. Like I think that material is very powerful.

And when you cast the body, you catch a part of a memory or something about the person that is unspoken. It's unspoken. Why women? Because I'm a woman and it's what I know and it's I think that we are women are really amazing I mean they're interesting they're amazing they have so many stories they play so many roles they have so many roles to play in their lives but also our bodies are transformational at every given hour we We're cyclical. Our bodies are determined by the stars, the moons, the planets, things move. Plus, we are the greatest creators. We give birth and we have

children. And that is an extraordinary experience. And it really is the universe and the cosmos and nature all coming together to create life. I mean, it is. Women are amazing. It's out there. Yeah. I was wondering whether you would have had the same level of success had you stayed in the UK and not gone to India? Yeah, the million dollar question. You know, I get asked a lot. I get asked like if I'd gone to New York instead of Delhi, what would happen? I mean, certainly if I hadn't gone to India, the language that I use in my work, obviously the bindis would never have come hadn't gone to India, the language that I use in my work,

obviously, the bindis would never have come into my work, the kind of materials that I pick up, the saris, the bangle pieces, the casting. I also learned how to make sculpture in India. I certainly didn't learn at college because, for my own reasons, and for not anybody else's reasons, I was rather intimidated by the sculpture studios that you know because it was kind of kind of a it was a more of a sort of masculine space and that's got nothing to do with anybody else except me but I did go to India and I started to develop a team who I could work with who could work with me in the studio and we taught ourselves how to make sculpture. And you can see Bharti Kher's work at the Hayward Gallery in London,

also at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield. Now a new play, The Lightest Element, has opened at Hampstead Theatre. It explores the life and career of astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the first person to work out what stars are made of, even though she struggled to get the acclaim she deserved. The play follows Cecilia as she's about to be appointed Chair of Astronomy at Harvard. Actor Maureen Beattie, who plays Cecilia, and playwright Stella Fragili both joined me, and I started by asking Stella why she wanted to tell this story. Well, I just thought she was this amazing British astrophysicist

that nobody had ever heard of. And I think it was, first of all, it was a story of vindication that she had discovered what stars are made of. It was so important she overturned the thinking about what stars were made of, because people thought they were made up of the same elements as the Earth or the Earth's crust. So if you heated up the Earth to the temperature of the stars, that it would shine like a star.

So it was just that it was such a revolutionary discovery and we hadn't heard of her. Maureen, why did you want to play her? Did you know about her beforehand? I had absolutely no idea that she existed, along with so many of these women in so many different fields. And it always comes as a shock and a surprise. She's just amazing. You know, she's not somebody who's just, oh, she was an astronomer and that's it. She's incredibly, she spoke nine languages, including Latin and ancient Greek. She was taught to conduct and taught, she played violin and piano.

She was taught to conduct by Gustav Holtz, of course, the composer of The Planets, which is rather nice. And so she was at St. Paul's. At St. Paul's School and then Cambridge University. Indeed. And he wanted her to be a conductor. She was a great knitter.

So she has a lot of my heart for knitting skills. So we've got lots of knitting around the set. And she liked a body. She liked a vodka. She smoked hugely. Everywhere she went, there was a trail of ash. She had three kids with this very dynamic Russian husband, hence the second name.

So she's this fascinating, completely rounded... I mean, what a character to get your teeth into. Where did her interest in stars and astrology come from then? She had all these other options. Yeah, yeah. But yes, when she was at Cambridge University, she was studying botany. That was her main subject.

But then she heard a lecture by Arthur Eddington who was talking about how he'd proved Einstein's theory of relativity correct by going to look at the solar eclipse on the island of Prince Seep in 1919. So it made Arthur Eddington's name and it made Einstein a star, this confirmation. And her world completely changed. She was like, I have to be an astronomer. So she pursued those studies. And then when she was at Cambridge, she realized that, well, first of all, they didn't give degrees to women at Cambridge until 1948.

She had no way to pursue her postgraduate studies. So she went to America, to Harvard. That's where there were women working at the Harvard Observatory. She was only 25 when she went to America. Well, she was 23 when she went to America. But yeah, she was 25 when she presented her thesis. And this was the thesis stating that stars were actually made out of hydrogen and helium. So what reaction did she get to that?

So she presented this thesis where she'd come to her discoveries using this incredible theory in atomic physics she'd learned at Cambridge. And her external assessor thought her thesis was brilliant because she was estimating the temperatures of the stars but said listen you're completely wrong and she watered down her findings because she knew that to stay in astronomy she would have to do that. Now she was crafty enough to keep the data in but had a line underneath and I paraphrase this is probably wrong. And what did that say? Why was that smart? It was smart because she kept the data so that posterity would know that she had it there. But she put the line in,

which meant that her external assessor, who was a very famous astronomer, who was one of the proponents of the stars are made of the same elements as the Earth, that it would appease him. So four years later, he came to the same conclusions as Cecilia, published a paper. Was this Henry Norris Russell?

That's right. Henry Norris Russell. Tell us about Henry Norris Russell then. Henry Norris Russell was a hugely preeminent astronomer of the time. But I think, and I don't know whether you would agree with this Stella, but from the research we've done as a company, he was somebody who, he would ride on the back of other people's incredible work. He was a great one

for sort of gathering a lot of information from different places and presenting it and being the kind of mouthpiece so he was almost like in a way a kind of poster boy I think that's the Well he took the credit. Well he this is the thing, So he presented his paper.

He actually does acknowledge her in a really tiny footnote. But I think the fact that he publicly never said that he told her she was wrong meant that he was the one who got the credit. So I think over the decades, people thought that, well, maybe she glimpsed the promised land, but he was the one that got there. And so it's only actually really in recent years that people actually have understood that she made this incredible discovery. It was in 1956. She was the first female chair of astronomy at Harvard. What an achievement and remains the only woman to hold that role.

So how significant was it for her to get that role? Well, it's just that, you know, women achieving high office, I suppose. I mean, the highest office would have been director of the observatory, which she couldn't possibly have done because she was a woman. But I think it was, I mean, she was 56. So the men that were getting those positions were in their 40s. So she was quite exhausted by that time. But yes, she was cracking the glass ceiling for sure.

What was it like, Maureen? You know, astronomy was a man's world at the time. We've just discussed that. The attitudes towards women were that they were inferior. How do you play Cecilia, who was such a headstrong person with all that in the backdrop? I think what my attitude is that she is bloodied but unbowed. Her whole life from an early age,

from as soon as she started to be a learner, a student, whatever she was learning was just barrier after barrier. And I think she just went, right, bring it on. I am going to leap these fences. Actor Maureen Beattie and playwright Stella Fahili there and the play The Lightest Element is now on at Hampstead Theatre. Still to come on the programme we hear from actor Tracey-Ann

Oberman about her return to the square of course I'm talking about EastEnders and remember that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10am during the week all you need to do is subscribe to the Daily Podcast it's free via BBC Sounds Now a new woman has taken over a key role in Parliament

to look out for the issues that matter to you and act in your interest. Labour MP Sarah Owen was elected this week to be the chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, a group of MPs who hold the government to account on the issues that matter most to women and minorities. Some of the things that might be in her in-tray include health inequalities, particularly after a report out this week claimed that the NHS is in serious trouble.

Well, Sarah joined me in the studio the day after getting the gig and started off by explaining what a select committee actually does. It's quite a strange job. It's a unique one and it is a real privilege to be able to do it. It is not one of usually the most seen items of Parliament. Usually people see PMQs and it's very adversarial. And I would say that is the opposite of what a select committee is. It is made up of cross party membership. So you'll have Conservatives, Lib Dems, Labour all sat together. And our job is to scrutinise not just what government's doing, but you can look at the private sector as well, and outside stakeholders. But it's to make sure that we come together and have cross party recommendations put to government or put to

the private sector as well. So what are the big issues that you will want the committee to focus on under your leadership? Well, I think definitely health inequalities. We've seen that gap widen. We heard about that report. And anybody who works in the NHS or uses the NHS, that report's findings won't come as any great surprise. And we're looking at tackling health inequalities. We need to look at the issues, not just treating acute issues of health, but looking at prevention and tackling problems before they occur.

I think we really need to look at community cohesion as well. What we've seen in the last few weeks and over the summer shows that there is a real crossroads that we are at. And there is an extreme ideology which often is not separate from misogyny as well and we need to look at why it is that this has happened and how we can prevent it in the future. I represent Luton, an incredibly diverse town and I'm incredibly proud to represent it. It's had its history of the far right and I was really proud that we didn't see any of those riots and that is because there's a lot of work that has been gone on there with faith groups with inter inter faith groups and intercultural work that's happened there and actually not just looking at what went wrong over the summer but

looking at where we can prevent it and learn lessons about where it's working and the last one's really personal for me um it's personal and political and that's miscarriage bereavement leave i think theo clark did some really tremendous work on birth trauma. And actually, we've got a way to go in terms of talking about miscarriage and miscarriage bereavement in particular. I worked on a private member's bill to try and see to get miscarriage bereavement leave into law. And just before we broke for the election, I was sat on the Public Accounts Committee and the NHS had just revealed that they were offering miscarriage bereavement leave to all of their staff. And that is one of the biggest employers of women in the public sector. I think we should get into some of those, break some of the issues that you've mentioned that are down.

We're going to start with health and maternity in particular, because one issue we've talked about a lot on this programme is maternity care. Maternal deaths have increased since the pandemic. What will your committee do about this? I think we need to look at the evidence. This was a problem before Covid and we know it's a particular problem for different communities. So it's a problem across the board for women and for families. But also, if you are black woman, black pregnant woman, you are four times more likely to die in childbirth than your white counterparts. And there are similar raises in mortality rates for black Asian minority ethnic women as well. And we need to look at the reasons why that is, because there isn't a biological reason. So there must be a service level reason. The last four to five years there's been a focus on continuity of care but there hasn't been

a delivery of continuity of care and that's because the vacancy rates have been incredibly high and also because there were barriers due to Covid. So we need to see where we are with that and how much we can progress and where we can see progress in particular if it has to be prioritised to certain groups. You mentioned a couple of the stats there also your baby's twice as likely to die if you're in the bottom 20% of society than if you're in the top 20% so how are you going to ensure that the work that you do includes everyone regardless of their race and background? I think you mentioned community cohesion so it's obviously important for you so how will you ensure that it's looked at across the board in the NHS? I think in the past we have been

guilty of listening to those with the loudest voices and possibly the biggest lobbying power and actually I would really like to hear from the grassroots and that's something that I would like to see the committee do but I have been concerned that we do tend to hear from the same people in these committees. And actually, I want to hear what people are experiencing at a grassroots. How will you do that? I will ask for the clerks to ensure that we are getting a wide range of people and evidence submitted, not just putting up calls for evidence on the website, but making sure that we go out in the heartlands and go outside of London, in particular, to making sure that we go out into the heartlands and go outside of London,

in particular, to make sure that we get a broad spectrum of evidence so that our committee can actually take a real focus on what people need and not just what we are hearing time and time again. I spoke to the campaigner Gina Martin earlier this morning. She campaigned successfully to make upskirting illegal. She spoke to me about the traumatic experience of carrying the burden of pushing for change when she was the one who actually experienced the trauma. What are you going to do to support people like Gina, campaigners who are on the front line, who actually we talked to time and time again on this programme? I think it's about being able to have, and this is the job of a committee chair,

because there will be people of different opinions within that committee, political opinions, but also values as well. And it's about making sure that we can disagree well. I think we have not been good at doing that. I think that the advent of social media has meant that people either disagree with each other or they agree with each other and there are opposite ends and that they can never meet and actually the job of a good committee chair is to ensure that people are safely heard that they are respected in their opinions and that there is an understanding built because you need to be able to bring that

coalition together to see progress it may may not satisfy absolutely everybody. I understood that when I took this role, but it is one that you have to work together and have that respect. But there will always be a burden. I, after two of my miscarriages, I continued campaigning for miscarriage bereavement leave. I got pregnant again and I lost that baby. I had to stop and take a step out of campaigning about it because it was too

painful. It was too raw at that time. And now I'm back and I'm campaigning again. But it is understanding that there is a burden on people, particularly on the upskirting. And we saw, I think it was some of the male MPs try and block some of the upskirting legislation. Well, she said she went to the police and they said they couldn't do anything about it. So what she said to me is, you know, that the institutions that are set up to protect us just aren't able to do the job. She's absolutely right, unfortunately.

And I think a lot of what we've seen is this focus on the individuals and the individual groups and the culture wars. And in a culture war, nobody wins. And actually, it's looking at the institutions and how they can best protect us. And it's not just institutions, it's organisations, it's business, it's absolutely everything.

And we've got a proud history in the UK. A lot of these institutions are decades old. They weren't built or set up with us in mind. And so even with well-meaning people working within them, small policy changes aren't always going to cut it. We need to see that that um that change much further much more systematically and institutionally as well another big topic is women's safety um over actually i noticed you didn't mention that sarah this morning uh can

our listeners trust that your focus is is going to be on this huge issue absolutely it is a huge issue i mean we've seen um I have raised this time and time again and I was actually shouted down in the chamber for raising the issue of women's safety particularly when it came to recorded rape cases 70,000 recorded rape cases last year only 2.6 percent were actually prosecuted and when it comes to women's safety this isn't just a case of what they're experiencing in the street a case of what they're experiencing in the street, it's also what they're experiencing in the justice system. And I really welcomed the move to be able to fast track rape cases and sexual assault cases in the courts because people

are waiting up to two years, three years for justice. And we know that justice delayed is justice denied. And there's a level of underreporting. And if people think that it's not going to be taken seriously, like in the upskirting case by the police or the criminal justice system, then even fewer people are going to come forward. And if you're being shouteding and you are not convicting criminals of rape. I was told by Lee Anderson that I was encouraging men to commit that crime in the chamber. How are any of our listeners meant to have faith in the system? Also, he's not here to give his view on it. No, he's not. But you can check it out in Hansard. It was pretty shocking.

But I was not shocked because that was the behaviour and that was very much the environment of the last government. I think we have seen a real change. You just have to look at the difference of representation in government. One of the proudest moments was when I couldn't find a seat when we first came back. And I looked at our government benches and I was like, wow, that reflects what our country looks like. And so I hope that we are going to see a much more reflective policymaking and also discourse that is much more respectful and understanding of what

people's real life experiences. Talking of division in Parliament, the rights of women and transgender people are often in the spotlight and will form a large part of your remit. This is a contentious topic with strong feelings on all sides. And so some of our listeners in particular would like to know, what is a woman to you? I think it's really sad that we're still at this stage of the debate, to be honest, and that we have boiled down people's fears or concerns on both sides of the argument to body parts, because basically we are so much more than what our bodies are. And what a woman to me is, is somebody that's going to be paid less than their male counterpart, is somebody that's going to be less safe walking down the street, is going to be somebody that faces more barriers in the

workplace and in education and in the health sector. These are the issues that are really facing women. and I think when it comes to the trans debate we need to be able to have that in a kind respectful way absolutely understanding and giving space to people's fears but also being able to understand that there are a group of people here that have been victimized that find life incredibly difficult whether it comes to education whether it comes to education, whether it comes to work. And that actually this idea of pitting people against each other and having such polarised views means that we haven't seen any progress and nobody is better off for it.

So my committee will be made up of people that have different views and particularly on this topic. And it will be my job to make sure that we find a way through, which again, as I said, means that I probably won't satisfy one group or the other, but we need to see progress. And that progress starts with respect, understanding, and people being given a safe space to air their views. There's been much debate about how to balance the rights of different groups within society. Much of this has focused on access to women-only spaces such as toilets, domestic abuse, refugees and prisons.

The Conservatives have said they want to rewrite the Equality Act so that protections are based on a person's biological sex. Labour have said this isn't necessary, but acknowledge more guidance is needed. Where would you draw the line on single-sex spaces? I think the Equality Act already protects single sex spaces. So I don't think that there is necessarily a need to open that up again, because that will not help, I think, this debate at all

and the protection of women in vulnerable situations. When we look at domestic abuse refuges, for example, they can refuse entry on anybody, to anybody, whether it's a woman who was born a woman or otherwise, if they are deemed to be a threat to anybody else within that safe space. So I think there needs to be clarity on it, and refuges and safe spaces need to be given clarity on this and the backing of the government to say if somebody regardless of who they are and their gender is not safe within

there or is going to be a threat to anybody else in there then they can say no i guess the reason some people care so much is it's impacting their lives single-spec spaces you know so so like just let's boil it down so if a trans woman has been in an abusive relationship where do they go and how do you ensure that women are also protected and that's absolutely where we want to go with the committee and make sure that we see that clarity and have people have those those conversations in a respectful way because we haven't had that. The idea that most of this debate has been done without trans women, no conversation about trans men at all either, and that whenever anybody raises their concerns about safe spaces for women, they're also labelled as something else. Actually, we need, this is very basic, but we need to be able to have this

conversation in a much more adult way. And I really do believe that select committees are the best place to have that. MP Sarah Owen there, who is also the new chair of the Women and Equality Select Committee. And if you would like to listen back to the interview with campaigner Gina Martin, it's also on BBC Sounds. It's the episode from Thursday, the 12th of September. Now, cue drums. After almost two decades away from EastEnders, Chrissie Watts is back. Her character, played by Tracey-Anne Oberman, left Albert Square in 2005 when she was imprisoned for the murder of her husband,

Dirty Den. Tracey is known for a lot more than EastEnders, though. Her work on screen includes Friday Night Dinner and It's a Sin. And on stage, one of the characters she's played is a female version of Shakespeare's Jewish character Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, 1936. She joined Nuala live in the studio and began by explaining who Chrissie Watts was and is. So its biggest villain was Dirty Den in EastEnders, I would say. And his second wife, Chrissie Watts, came back in about 2004. And Chrissie basically murdered him, buried him under the Queen Vic. And then finally, after a very turbulent 18 months, ended up in prison where her stepdaughter and best friend, Sharon Watts, caught her with the police leaving Stansted Airport with her young lover, Jake Moon. I actually watched, there was also somebody, we have a lot of fans out there,

had also taken all your greatest lines and, you know, put them all together, which I quite enjoyed as well, including that airport and a particular funeral scene. Oh my gosh. I mean, I have to say I was only in the show for 18 months, but I got some really high octane stories

and my favourite one was being pushed into Den's open grave by Barbara Windsor. I heard at one point because I love watching the characters in EastEnders

what they're wearing how they wear their hair the make-up all that. Some of it is just so spot on. You built the character of Chrissie Watts

back in the day. Unlimited budget is this what I heard? To create the wardrobe? Exactly. I felt like my very own pretty woman moment. I got the part, normally with these EastEnders characters, you get them after weeks and months and sometimes

years of developing them. From the time I auditioned to the time I was on camera, I had nine days. And I was whisked into Selfridges back in the day on probably the old BBC budget with an unlimited seemingly unlimited budget to build up a character wardrobe for the next two years it was incredible so yeah I very much felt this woman had lived in Europe for all her life and I love fashion and I did have a real hand in it I was quite proud to say that I managed to get a Dion van Vustenberg

wrap dress, I think even Vogue picked up on it. So, listen, I won Best Dressed Soap Star 2005. I never need a BAFTA. Were you allowed to do it this time? Oh, this time. This is the most glamorous prisoner you will ever see. I mean, Chrissy loved her fashion and she loved her look. She's been in prison for 20 years. I took my inspiration from Orange is the New Black. This woman is on point.

Gosh, I love that programme as well. Your father, I read, loved EastEnders, but he never saw you in it. He has already passed away. But it must be so wonderful to be part of something that I suppose was part of your family's viewing habits, etc., when you were growing up. Well, I think we're probably of a similar age. I mean, you know, there were no reality shows. There were only four channels. So EastEnders, you know, was a particularly huge show. It was the water cooler moment.

And to get into it was a really big thing. And, yeah, my dad was a very hardworking, worked in law. And he, you know, used to watch it religiously. It has a very wide demographic of watchers. So, yes, it was pretty amazing. And I come from an East End background, and so there was something sort of very nice about returning to the East End. And what I loved about Chrissie and playing her

was that there was something very old-school Hollywood about her. Was she a villain? Was she a victim? And soaps are so brilliant at writing very strong female characters. But you really love old school Hollywood, don't you? I do. I write a lot of radio plays. Yes, talk about that. I thought that was, do you know, the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford comes up often on this programme, I have found. But this is something that has fascinated you as well. Yeah, I've written a lot of radio plays for Radio Four, some of which we're developing for TV and film. But the very first one I did was way before it became a kind of feud,

was about the rivalry between Betty and Joan, Betty Davis and Joan Crawford, because these were two women. I'm always fascinated by Hollywood, old school Hollywood, where when you're young and very beautiful in those days, you had riches beyond and power beyond imagining in that studio system and when you got to 40 45 it was kind of over for you very very rapidly and um I've written a play about Anne Bancroft doing the um the graduate she was only two years older than Dustin Hoffman um playing Mrs. Robinson. I didn't know that. I think he was 32 and she was 35 or 36. She was portrayed as such the older lady.

And it sort of ruined her career because she played it so brilliantly that people just always saw her as this older woman. But I do know that you're also part of the Acting Your Age campaign led by Nicky Clark, who wrote to Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, calling for better representation of older women in the arts. And when I watch the video that has been put out, it's talking about women in the entertainment industry,

basically over 45, not being seen. Well, I was really shocked to learn the statistic that leading men, the acting age has now gone up to 48. To play opposite them, leading women, the age has gone down from 42 to 35 approximately. So no leading man will play opposite a woman on screen and you can't be what you can't see. And actually women are very much in control of the TV remote control. They're in charge of booking cinema tickets. They're in charge of booking cinema tickets, they're in charge of booking theatre. And it seems to be crazy that a huge swathe of our population of strong, dynamic,

sexy, important women, you know, our stories are not being told. And if they are, they're not being represented by people that look like us. So what message are we sending out to society, that if you can't see older women and how important they are still in society, you're never going to be able to appreciate or look forward to that age. It's like age is something to be feared. It's so interesting because often you do want to see yourself on screen. So I suppose that is a representation that is not there for many in the population. But what I suppose people are doing, and there are older women in EastEnders, most definitely,

And actually Soap's really good at that. Yes, that's true. But you, like many others, have taken the task into your own hands. I want to speak about The Merchant of Venice in 1936 because you helped adapt that with the director, Bridgette Lamour. It was very much my idea.

Yes, let's talk about it. So maybe we'll even go back. Lots of people may not be familiar with The Merchant of Venice, may not be familiar with the character Shylock. Yes. Talk me through how you see it and why you wanted to also update it in this way. Shakespeare wrote a play called The Merchant of Venice. It was 200 years plus after every Jew had been kicked out of England very violently.

So he'd never met a Jew. And he wrote a play about a Jewish moneylender in Venice in the ghetto who lends money to a very anti-Semitic aristocratic merchant. And the jokey deal that they make is that if the merchant defaults, Shylock will take a pound of flesh. And terrible things happen to Shylock and they end up in court where Antonio defaults on the payment and Shylock says, I have a legal document, I want that pound of flesh. And terrible things happen to Shylock and they end up in court where Antonio defaults on the payment and Shylock says, I have a legal document, I want that pound of flesh.

It's a deeply anti-Semitic play. It was Hitler's favourite play. But a lot of people in our industry, I remember Juliet Stevenson and others saying this play shouldn't be put on anymore. And I'm very much into, you have to reclaim history rather than just get rid of it. You can pull a statue down, don't smash it to pieces, but put it somewhere where you can textualize it. So it was very important to me to take The Merchant of Venice and I wanted to make it seen for exactly what it was. And I thought, what would happen if you took Shylock, this archetypal villainous male moneylender, which is, you know, it was Hitler's favourite play for a reason. There were theatre critics, indeed, that said it was used

as a propaganda tool in Nazi Germany. It was, and it's often been used. You can tell how society feels about its Jews and how they portray the merchant Venice. And I thought,

let's turn it into a woman. I'm going to base it on my great-grandmother and all these amazing female matriarchs that were these immigrants into the East End of London. I had Machine Gun Molly.

Machine Gun Molly. I think we should just take a second for how did she get that moniker? Machine Gun Molly was a widow in the East End. All the men had gone off to war and died and she was tough as nails. My great my my bubba, my great grandmother, Annie, who I based my Shylock on. Again, a strong, tough female matriarch living in the slums of the East End. I had another one called Sarah Portugal. who I based my Shylock on. Again, a strong, tough female matriarch living in the slums of the East End. I had another one called Sarah Portugal. She wore a slash of red lipstick and smoked a cigar or a clay pipe,

depending on what the payday was like. But they ran their businesses and their stalls in the marketplace with an iron fist because they had to survive. And the very things that immigrant women, when they come here, the very things that have made you survive were an anathema, particularly in the 20s and 30s.

They wanted their women to be decorative and quiet. So I thought, what happens if you take Shylock with this one daughter, Jessica? You've set her up against the aristocratic fans of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Mosley and Diana Mitford were great friends with Hitler. He taught them how to march onto the East End to show the Jewish entity that they weren't welcome. I was brought up with stories from my family, my great grandmother and my grandmother on the October the 4th, 1936, of standing on the front line against Oswald Mosley. And the Irish working class neighbours, the small Afro-Caribbean community, the English working class and ordinary heroes from all over the country joined them

to say to the fascists, if you come for the Jews, you come for us all. And they stood together. And it was a civil rights moment that seems to have been forgotten about. So that merged into the Merchant of Venice. And particularly with what's going on, I think, politically in the world today, has made a really potent bit of theatre that's coming back to the West End through popular demand. So I feel delighted. Tracy Anne Oberman speaking to Nuala there. That's all from me on Weekend Woman's Hour. Claire MacDonald will be with you on Monday at 10. Until then, have a great weekend. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time.

I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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.