Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Women in Afghanistan, Pockets and women’s clothing, Russia’s Mother Heroine Award

Episode Date: August 20, 2022

It has been a year since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. The country is in economic crisis, there are droughts and the lives of women and girls have been impacted hugely. We hear from the first female deputy speaker for the Afghanistan Parliament Fawzia Koofi, the former Women’s Minister Hasina Safi and Samira Sayed Rahman, from the International Rescue Committee. They will discuss access to education for girls and what role the international community should play.We had Beatlemania in the sixties and then and fans of Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, K-Pop’s BTS and Beyonce. But what is a fangirl? We discuss a subculture of women that have often been ridiculed and marred as hysterical, obsessive, juvenile and embarrassing and ask whether fangirls have been misunderstood? We hear from playwright and songwriter, Yve Blake who has created the award-winning musical ‘FANGIRLS’ that’s currently touring at Sydney Opera House and Hannah Ewens, a music writer at Rolling Stone, a former fan girl and author of ‘Fan girls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture’.New research shows increasing numbers of young women in the UK are suffering injuries and other health problems because of the growing popularity of anal sex among straight couples. Increased rates of faecal incontinence and anal sphincter injury have been reported in women who have anal intercourse according to a report recently published in the British Medical Journal. We hear from one of the authors of the report - Lesley Hunt who is a Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - and also from Claudia Estcourt from the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV.If you're a mother in Russia and have ten children, you'll now be rewarded by the President. That's because Vladimir Putin is bringing back the “Mother Heroine” award which Joseph Stalin introduced in 1944 to encourage large families after tens of millions Soviet citizens died in the Second World War. This time around, women will get a one-off payment of one million roubles - that's £13,500 - after their tenth child is one years old, as long as the other nine children are still alive. Mothers will also get gold medals with the Russian flag on and the country’s coat of arms. Dr Jenny Mathers is a Senior Lecturer of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, and an expert on Russian politics and security.We have a performance of ‘I do this all the time’ from the artist Self EsteemAnd pockets - do you get overjoyed when you realise your dress has pockets, and do you get angry when you realise those new pair of jeans have fake ones? Data tells us that the majority of women want pockets on our clothes but don’t always get them. Comedian Tiff Stevenson tells us about her love for pockets. Fashion historian Amber Butchart delves into the fascinating history of women’s pockets - from tie round the waist bags to the Suffragette suit, she explains how pockets have evolved over time influenced by surrounding, politics and cultures.Presenter: Jessica Creighton Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed

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.

Hello and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. Today on the programme, we discuss life in Afghanistan, a year since the Taliban took control. We hear about fangirls. Who are they? And why are they so often ridiculed? And how pockets in women's clothing became a symbol of the new women in the suffrage movement. These kind of sewn-in pockets that we're seeing

become something that you see in caricatures about suffrage campaigners at this time. This trope called the new woman, who was this educated, emancipated woman at the end of the 19th century, who loved cycling, she loved reading, she maybe smoked. We also hear about new research showing increasing numbers of young women in the UK are suffering injuries because of the growing popularity of anal sex among straight couples. And in Russia, we hear why Putin has announced the Mother Heroine Award to encourage women to have more children and why it's an unrealistic dream. One of the reasons why Russia's population has been shrinking is that the last big demographic

dip was in the 1990s. And so you have now women who are of childbearing age who were born in the 1990s. This means there are fewer of them because there was such a contraction in the 1990s. We're trying to get more and more babies out of fewer and fewer women, and it's just not going to work. So lots coming on the programme. But first, the 15th of August marked a year since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, and the lives of women and girls have changed dramatically in the last 12 months. Most secondary school age girls have been banned from school and women are unable to go to work or travel without a man present. A new report from Save the Children found 26% of girls are showing signs of depression compared with 16% of boys. So after one year of Taliban rule, what now?

Emma spoke to a panel of three women. Samira Saeed Rahman is a communication and advocacy coordinator for the charity International Rescue Committee and is based in Kabul. Fauzia Koufi was the deputy speaker for the Afghanistan parliament and was part of the Afghan delegation in talks with the Taliban until they ended last year. She's now based in London. And Hasina Safi, who served as Afghanistan's minister for women until August last year, she fled Afghanistan and is now a refugee in this country with her family living in a hotel. Emma asked Fauzia how she feels about one year of Taliban rule. It is a day of mourning for everybody almost in Afghanistan

and those who are not in Afghanistan. And it's especially the morning day for women of Afghanistan, because since last August, they have basically lost everything. And the Taliban have become even more tougher, more cruel on their approach and separation of women of Afghanistan. If I look back from last August, the measures that they have taken, it has become extreme day by day. In fact, in the last 12 months since they have taken over, they have issued 28 decrees and verdicts to eliminate women's rights. So it means every month there is two decree or verdict, every month. Can you believe if they could invest that time and energy on economy of the country, on security of the country, probably things would have been better.

But obviously it's clear that women of Afghanistan are the Taliban's natural resistance against the Taliban and Taliban regard them rebuild here. But when you think of the 15th of August last year, what comes to mind for you? Because you were trying to get out. I think since last year, it has been, at least in my life, it was a black year. It was a year that all of us, I echo what my sister, Ms. Kofi, said. We struggled to build our nests, and it was very inconsiderately ruined. And whether it was social, economical, cultural, and political for women, I think not only for the women of Afghanistan, it's a big loss for the women movement around the world because no matter if we are segregated geographically and we are the same group all women belong to the same so it has been a disastrous year because in 24 hours there is not even a minute that i remember all those sisters who are back in Afghanistan at risk, a widow who needs to go to a doctor with three, four children,

and there is no male company to take the child to the doctor. A family who has lost their brother or father as a result of 40 years of war, to go and get their day-to-day needs, but they need a mahram. Culturally, we never had to wear a forced naqab, which is not a part of Afghan women culture, which means that all the women are imprisoned in their own house. Politically, I think there has been no very clear and coordinated position for the women in Afghanistan internationally, as well as with the de facto structure, which I have

no expectation from, which we have really provenly seen since last year, 15 August last year, day after day, every day there is a new law, there is a new directive isolating the women from the very high civil service positions to the very low positions of public as a social activist, as a human rights activist, in as a women's rights activist. It has been a disastrous year, not only in the history of Afghanistan, but I think mutually in the international money, which everyone has contributed as a part of the respect for the human community or humanity. Samira, as I mentioned, works for the Charity International Rescue Committee, is based in Kabul. How is it today? I mentioned it's been declared a national holiday by the Taliban. It's quite quiet on the streets. We haven't heard much. We were expecting some celebratory fire, but nothing of the sort has happened thus far. It's a rainy day in Kabul, about the amount of rules and constraints on women and girls lives that have been building over the last 12 months.

I mean, what can you say as a woman living there about how it's changed? I mean, for women in Afghanistan, they're facing quite a bit of challenge when it comes to navigating the new administrative environment. Women are fearful of engaging with de facto authorities. There are instances of harassment and dismissal and lack of services reported. You know, these rights violating policies that have been introduced are having a very detrimental effect on the status of women here. And particularly from, you know, a humanitarian perspective, women are essential when it comes to humanitarian service delivery. And we are facing challenges when it comes to issues of mahram, when it comes to issues of going through checkpoints, when it comes to our staff delivering that aid. Yes. And of course, as you say, people struggling to, women struggling to

keep up with what the rules are, how not to break them. There were reports over the weekend, I don't know if you saw any of these protests or heard anything about this, but women going out to protest, not in huge numbers, but trying to say, well, exactly to Hasina's point, we're here, we're educated and we want to carry on being so and we want to be able to work. And like the protesters, I think it's not fair to say that women are entirely out of the public space, or women are not working. Women are involved in every sector across the country. While those positions and those roles have diminished over the course of the last year,

women are an integral part of various sectors, whether that is the private sector, you have female businesses that continue to various sectors whether that is the private sector they're continuing you have female businesses that continue to operate whether that is the health sector you have female doctors and nurses whether that is humanitarian assistance um but not but but not in if i may sorry but not in the secondary schools because that is the key difference as as girls not in the secondary school then you know the blockage of girls from attending high school is very concerning because that leads to another generation of young Afghan women and girls who will not be educated and cannot contribute to public life in the ways that they could have without access to education. Fazia let me come back to you and I am very aware of

how emotional this is and also because I said there'll be so many that you'll be thinking of today, of your friends' children, I'm sure, who perhaps were at university age or maybe trying to finish secondary school. What are their lives like at the moment? Well, I think Afghanistan looked like an open prison for the women, literally, and for the girls. I'm in contact on daily base with a lot of families, my voters, constituents, women protesters, young girls in our school that we support in Kabul and other provinces. It's the mental health that is a big issue and nobody talks about it. Because if a generation is deprived of their, you know, opportunities for their future, not only education, but also work, access to resources, the liberties and freedom to breathe as a human being. That feeling is, of course, shocking. Like when you walk in the streets of Kabul, because I have been living under Taliban rule first time, I know how it feels when somebody constantly stop you on the

checkpost and ask you, you know, where is your mahram? It's that feeling is not, of course, a bearable thing. And we're talking there about your male accompaniment. You're talking about who has to be with you. Yeah, well, one of the Taliban's verdict is that a woman traveling outside the country for over 75 kilometers must be accompanied by a male companion, blood relative. But that does not even apply to far distances.

In shorter distance also, they keep asking. So I have friends who travel in Kabul and their cars are always stopped and somebody asked them, that feeling that you feel that you're nobody, that you must be accompanied by somebody to be protected. Of course, only women who undergo that pain understand the pressure. When it comes to women's presence in public life, I don't agree with Samira Jan, who says that women are not completely, you know, out of the public life. We're talking about the government's job. We're not talking about private sector or UN or non-governmental organizations or NGOs. When it comes to government, it's only health, education, and passport department that women can work.

So women can work as nurses, doctors in the passport department because passport and ID, national ID, because these are two very, you know, kind of expertise that it's very professional, that most of the Taliban people don't know how to do how to handle that. So women can work there. Initially, can you believe it, Ima, women were not even included in the humanitarian aid distribution, like when the humanitarian aid distribution program started. So after a lot of lobbying by us and by other women groups with the UN, with international organizations that they have literally started to bring women. For instance, with the Ministry of Finance, recently they have sent a letter saying that all the female staff should actually send one of their male members of the family to work for them or to work on their behalf because this is an important job. Women should not come. And in fact, somebody from the Ministry of Finance was telling me this is a story that only those who undergo understand the pain. She was telling me that, you know, once in a month, they go to the Ministry of Finance to sign the

attendance sheet. And in that day, they ask all the male staffers to stay home. And they bring all the chairs, so literally the office equipment to the main yard of the Ministry of Finance, so that women should go and only use the, you know, the yard, they are not allowed to enter the offices. I mean, as women, you can understand what does that discrimination mean when they are not allowing you to enter the Ministry of Finance. And just before we get to trying to negotiate with the Taliban, which I know you've got some experience of, what is going to happen to those women or what is happening to those women who break the rules. For instance, there's a report today about girls going to secret schools,

that some are operating clandestine operations. What are the punishments at the moment? Are we seeing those happen? We do also have like three, four schools in Kabul and provinces. So there has not been any evidence where like, you know, the Taliban can enter a school building. They have schools, close some education institutions in Kabul. But we haven't experienced any evidence where they can come. Of course, those women who actually protest, we have seen that they are arrested, tortured, put in solitary confinement places, and sometimes they beat them, they whip them in the streets, but they haven't entered any school building to take off the girls. So it's not to the girls as it stands. It's been to women who protest. What is your understanding as to why there have been so many edicts against women? Well, Taliban have tried to build a narrative that they have changed, that they have become Taliban 2.0. And as the world, the people of Afghanistan seem to believe them. Now, I think all of us are

trapped into our narrative that we created for Taliban. They were not genuine. I think when it comes to women's education in particular, there is a division. Taliban are not united in that, which is a good thing. We can leverage that division. But I think what they do is absolutely in contradiction to what they said during negotiation to us

when I was negotiating with them and to the international community. And it's against the principles of Islam, the same religion that, you know, in the name of that religion, they deprive women from, and girls from being, you know, free. If you look at other Muslim countries,

there is no Muslim country in the world that actually implements same measure. So the question is, what kind of religion Taliban represent? And why is the Muslim world silent in the space of that separation against women of color? And that comes to Hasina's point. Hasina Safi, to bring you back in now, you were talking about the international response. I know for you, the last two decades of

investment, the Western influence as well, but also it's an interesting question that Fauzi raises about the Muslim world and interference or intervention from those leaders or lack thereof. What do you want to see now, Hasina, from those leaders outside of Afghanistan when dealing with the Taliban? Coordination, coordination, coordination, planning, monitoring. That's what I want to see. From the international community, which definitely includes Muslims, which is, oh, I see more specifically. I think they need to be very, very historically setting

and analyzing the situation of the realities on the ground, which we have been tremendously advocating for in the month of June and July last year, that this is not Afghanistan of 20 decades back. Afghanistan has changed. Women have changed. Food has changed. Men have changed. There is education.

They want to stand on their own feet. So from the international community, I think there has been enough of bureaucracy and diplomacy. as Afghan daughters to really seek and analyze the situation of how can they live if the situation is so suppressing for the children and for the women of Afghanistan. I think they really need to be considerate, thinking about those who are at risk in Afghanistan, those who are waiting in the third countries and on the whole for the future of Afghanistan, besides the humanitarian urgent aid, what are the development initiatives which needs to get into practice for education, for health, for economy, and more specifically if there is no vision at a legitimate level which is a policy level which is a document level they can never help so do you have sorry if i can hasina because

i was very struck when we first spoke on this program not long after you you fled to this country you still had hope you had hope of one day returning to Afghanistan. You had hope that the international community could do what you're talking about, coordinate. Do you still have that hope? Definitely I have. The world is moving based on hope. I always have hope.

I have a strong hope. We are all wearing black, but we are wearing blue and green on the top. Why? Because it's a world of challenges, but it's a world of hope. We will struggle. We will not sit back because each minute that we have invested in the last 20 years is for our coming generations. We are going to build it. There will be challenges, as you see in the last three days, what the situation is on the women protesters. But we are going to fight it and we are going to defeat it. There is always hope because we have the dedication and the commitment. A powerful conversation there. Emma was speaking to Hasina Safi, Fauzi Akufi and Samira Saeed Rahman.

Now we had Beatlemania in the 60s. And nowadays you have the One Directioners and Beyonce's Beehive, who all have thousands upon thousands of fangirls. Over the next few weeks, we'll be deep diving into this subculture of women who've often been ridiculed, labelled as hysterical, obsessive, juvenile, even embarrassing. But have fangirls been misunderstood? Hannah Ewins writes for Rolling Stone and is author of the book Fangirls, Scenes from Modern Music Culture. And Eve Blake is a playwright and songwriter who has written a musical called Fangirls

that's touring at Sydney Opera House at the moment. She told me what a fangirl actually is. If you look in the dictionary, it's going to say a woman who is a fan of something. And in some dictionaries, it'll even say who is like overly enthusiastic about something, which I think is inherently gendered, right? But I'm really interested in the word fangirl as like a verb

because to me, to fangirl is to be able to express enthusiasm about something and to love something without apology and I think that like a lot of people really look down on fangirling because they see it as inherently cringe but to quote like my favorite meme of the year I think you know to be cringe is to be free. Hannah why do you think fangirls get such a bad rap? Yeah I think it's because like the people who have historically held the keys to things like journalism and documentation and music criticism have been overwhelmingly middle and upper class men so we've always seen that fangirls have been stereotyped as what you see in photographs of fangirls right so like fangirls in a big group screaming and

crying with their hands reached out and kind of like grasping at artists and I think that this is obviously really 2d idea but we've never really had fangirls be like spoken to before and we haven't really looked into like who they are and and what they what they do and why they do the things that they do so we yeah we haven't had this like real understanding of who they are and and what they what they do and why they do the things that they do so we yeah we haven't had this like real understanding of who they are and that's why we they've had this really bad rep talk about your experience in hannah because you were a former fangirl i find it interesting that you say former fangirl so what were you going through emotionally how did it make you feel when you were fangirling yeah so i used to be firstly I was a fangirl of Courtney

Love so I was you know that was a point of my life growing up as a little girl and being like just super angry and I don't think I had anywhere to like channel the rage so I kind of really modeled myself on Courtney Love what she looked like how she sounded learned everything about her and that was a very sort of private version of fangirling and then fast forward like a couple of years and I got really into um like scene culture and when my space was a was a big thing and I was very very into the emo band My Chemical Romance and that was a sort of different experience because that was when I was discovering mental health the first time and yeah I was kind of getting online and speaking to a lot of other

girls who were also really into this band and had a we had this real sense of like camaraderie and we kind of went to gigs together and things like that so it was much more of a the friendship side of fangirling so I feel like I've sort of seen two different the two different sides of it like a more private side and a personal side yeah and that sort of like group activity side of being a fangirl yeah there's lots of facets to this we've had a few messages coming from out from our listeners and someone said I'm currently writing my dissertation on how female fans are treated by the media and she says she actually runs a company which is all about encouraging people to be more themselves that is a a huge part of it. Would you agree with

that, Eve? And did you incorporate that into the musical that you wrote about fangirls? Oh my gosh, 100%. Because like, Hannah, hearing you describe the community that you found being a fan, I'm so jealous. Because really, the reason I'm writing about fangirls is I was so obsessed with things as a teenager. But I guess I was so private about it myself, because I had reason I'm writing about fangirls is I was so obsessed with things as a teenager but I guess I was so private about it myself because I had I guess some internalized misogyny and I thought it'd be really uncool if I was like out about the things I liked and what's so interesting now is like the musical has come out it's a hundred percent a love letter to fangirls encased in like this musical comedy box I call it like a Trojan horse like it appears to be this musical making fun of young women

only to smuggle them into your heart. But what's amazing is now the show actually has this whole community of supporters and I get to see these teenagers, you know, teenage girls and people beyond the binary in our foyers all gathering with like their handmade signs and they've met on Twitter

and now they have these friendships. And I'm so quietly jealous of that community because I never really was able to find that as a teenager. And that's why I'm so enamored of fangirls and can't stop researching them. Is there a difference between fangirl and fanboy then? Oh, what a question. I mean, that's a huge question,

but the first word that comes to mind is judgment. I think part of what inspired my research was, yeah, finding that um and Hannah you've spoken to this but but finding that you know I became interested in 2015 looking at coverage of One Direction fans and I was reading like mainstream news articles that were describing them as hysterical crazy over the top psycho desperate and then I was watching as like sports fans were being described as loyal, passionate and devoted. And I thought this is really, really interesting because to me, like I thought, wow, this is a real microcosm of how we hand young men and women completely different words to describe themselves.

And I guess that's what made me want to research fangirls, because I think the way that we talk to fangirls is a story about the way that we talk to young women um hannah as well there's a there's a bigger element of this a wider context because some of these so-called fangirls are coming together grouping together to be you know considerable change in terms of political and societal views well i think fangirls firstly like they're kind of organizing around the internet a lot now and like social media so I think that you're thinking of like teenage girls who are to be honest like quite engaged politically and they're like interested in things like identity politics so it makes sense that they're kind of coming together and using fandom maybe as like one part of what they're talking about but it's

actually like using that as a lens to like see the world and basically just like organize in that way and I know you know we're trying to change the perception of what a fangirl is but is there sometimes a slightly stalker-like element to this a dark side to fandom yeah it's interesting because um when I wrote the book I went to America and I went to Japan to see if fangirls were different in other countries. And I actually was speaking to some Japanese fangirls who were really into One Direction. And Harry Styles was coming into the country and they knew that. And so like I wanted to hang out with them and see like what they were doing. And they were like saying that they were going to meet Harry Styles at the airport and so they actually used social media and sort of like checking in with different fans and to see like where he was at different points and so they sort of all coordinated so that the Harry Styles fangirls

in Japan could actually get to the airport and for the exact right moment at the right terminal and all of that kind of stuff to actually see him come through. But yeah, there is an element of like stalker type activity to fandom. But I think people ask me all the time, like, did I find crazy fans when I was doing my research? And honestly, there was only one girl who I thought that fandom had taken over her life to an extent that it was actually detrimental to her life. But otherwise, everyone was like having a positive impact on their life. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. It really framed the idea of fangirls in a different way. That was me speaking to Hannah Ewins and Eve Blake. Now, just a word of warning. Our next discussion will be talking about sex in a very candid way.

So if you have children or anyone that you don't want to hear this, you can listen at any time and catch up later on BBC Sounds. New research suggests increasing numbers of young women in the UK are at risk of injury because of the growing popularity of anal sex among straight couples. Increased rates of fecal incontinence and sphincter injury have been reported by women who have anal intercourse, according to a report recently published in the British Medical Journal. Emma spoke to Claudia Escort, who is Professor of Sexual Health at Glasgow Caledonian University and a member of the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV, and Lesley Hunt, a consultant colorectal surgeon at Sheffield Teaching Hospital's

NHS Foundation Trust and one of the authors of the report. Lesley explained the physical impact of having anal sex. In our surgical practice we see people coming to clinic with various injuries. A very common one is fissure which is a tear of the anal lining. Now that's not a particularly serious condition but sometimes it can be very persistent. It's often very painful and requires surgery. So it's a severe nuisance problem for people. But more importantly, there are two rings of muscle around the anus and anal sex can damage the inner ring of muscle, the internal sphincter.

Now, that muscle is very important because that is the muscle that keeps your anus closed and if that is damaged it can lead to faecal incontinence of a sort of slow low level sort of leakage type where people are soiling onto their underwear and we see this sometimes in younger men who have had anal sex. Is that repairable? No the internal sphincter, the inner ring of muscle is a very thin layer. So it's not sort of amenable to surgical repair. And furthermore, the type of injury is quite diffuse. So it can be sort of torn here and there. So you can't fix it surgically.

There are things that we can do that can improve the situation for women, you know, sort of make this more manageable, but there's certainly no easy fix for it. And you're putting this report together, apart from, I imagine, to raise awareness, you're talking about it here on the radio today as well, of course, but for what? Why do you want to put this out there? Are you trying to change behaviours?

My co-author, Tabitha Garner, she did a lot of work collecting the research that's there, and then we collated it and presented it in this editorial. And we want to get this conversation out there into the mainstream because there's a big taboo about anal sex and potentially as clinicians, we're not asking the right questions of patients. We're maybe not recognising it when people come to clinic that this is the cause of their problems and we are aware that we don't know enough about it so it may be that there's a lot of girls and women they're having anal sex and having no particular problem with it but equally there could be a lot of women out there who have problems and because of the taboo they're either

not presenting to healthcare or even when they get through to healthcare, we're not asking the right questions and identifying what the cause of their problem is. Briefly, there is a difference with the female anatomy that means that women are at greater risk of injury during anal sex. Yeah, absolutely. So we've got these two cylinders of muscle, one inside the other, and that comprises the anal sphincter complex and that complex in men is roughly twice as long as it is in women which means if it gets torn a woman is more likely to have symptoms of incontinence simply because she didn't have as much muscle there in the first place so that's that's the difference because of course i talked about straight women doing this more we also i should just say it's not only going to be penises for anal sex. There will be women in same-sex relationships or even in straight relationships

using sex toys or other implements. Is that the same risk? Yeah, potentially. I mean, I think the size of whatever you put up there will dictate how much damage or not is done. Well, at 10.33 on the 18th of August, I'll remember that response, let me tell you. Claudia, we're talking about this as a trend, but are you seeing this as an increase in women reporting that they're having anal sex with partners? I mean, a lot of women and men don't talk about this.

No, absolutely. So I'm speaking as a clinician, so a consultant in sexual health and HIV who sees women in clinic. And certainly within our services, we are used to asking people in a very matter of fact, non-judgmental way about the type of sex they have and who they have it with. So for us, it's very much bread and butter. And we were delighted to see Leslie and Tabitha's article, because really it's about getting this out into the open. Anal sex is a fact of life for many people. And what's important is that they're having sex that they enjoy and that when they have sex, they do it consensually and that they do it

in a way that's safer. So clinically within the sexual health clinics, we would routinely do checkups for women with very simple and non-particularly invasive tests to look for STIs in whichever orifices they use for sex. And that would include tests for gonorrhoea and chlamydia, which can be there without any symptoms. And I think following on from Leslie's point, certainly these very robust national surveys tell us that sexual behaviour is changing. And we will get more information next year

because there's another wave of the survey happening. But certainly from feet on the ground, we've been asking women for years, and it does feel as if the numbers are definitely borne out. A lot more are reporting anal sex. I recognise the differences in reporting and what people have felt comfortable saying, but there will also be those who wonder

if there's the influence of online porn, also potentially women trying to avoid being pregnant. That's also been raised in connection to this issue before. What do you make of those? I think we, as many, are very concerned about the influences on young people, not just women, by what's shown in the media and what may be portrayed as normal. And people can feel a pressure to engage in types of sex or indeed engage in sex at all when they're not feeling ready for it. And the widely available

pornography online we know is a huge issue. It's very difficult to establish causality. We can say that there's been a huge rise in the types of images that people see. And we also see a rise in reported anal sex. I think everyone can make their own conclusions as to whether one causes the other, but we can't prove it. I think what's terribly important is the word consensual. And I don't think anybody would argue with the fact that women should have the autonomy and the agency to say what they want and say what they don't want. So I think that's tremendously important. And I'm not sure that pornography, particularly violent pornography, is helping that. Leslie, to come back to you, if women do

want to have anal sex, what is the safest way to do so? Oh, that's the question I was hoping you wouldn't ask me really so I think potentially introducing anything into the anus has got a risk of causing damage there right you can I come in on that go on I was going to say make sure that you want to have anal sex talk about it with the person you're having sex with beforehand so you know what to expect you know when you can say stop. Please use a water-based lubricant. Condoms, brilliant idea. You won't get pregnant through your rectum, but you could acquire an STI.

And if you're using condoms and you're having vaginal sex as well, please use a different condom for anal sex and stop if it's uncomfortable. If you experience symptoms after sex, please contact your local sexual health clinic. And we have excellent relationships with the colorectal surgeons and other services if referral is needed for the sorts of problems that Leslie and her team are so expert in dealing with. Do you think the guidelines, Claudia, are clear enough, the NHS guidelines on this? Let's say you were to think about looking this up. I know you've just given some advice from your position. They need a bit of a revamp, don't they? I think they

need to acknowledge that this is increasingly a part of someone's sexual sex life, normal for them or sexual repertoire. And I think it's just important that the information's out there. Never has there been a time in medicine where withholding information leads to more modest behaviours. We have to help people be informed so they can make choices and that they do what they want to do as safely as possible. What an important conversation. I have to say, I learned a lot from that. That was Claudia Escort and Leslie Hunt talking to Emma. Now, if you're a mother in Russia and have 10 children, you'll now be rewarded by the president. That's because Vladimir Putin is bringing back an award, which Joseph Starling first introduced in 1944,

to encourage large families after tens of millions of Soviet citizens died in the Second World War. That was called the Mother Heroin Awards, and more than 400,000 women received it before it was scrapped after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This time around, women will get a one-off payment of 1 million rubles, that's about £13,500, after their 10th child is one year old, as long as the other nine children are still alive. Mothers will also get gold medals with the Russian flag on

and the country's coat of arms. Dr Jenny Mathis is a senior lecturer of international politics at Aberystwyth University and an expert on Russian politics and security. She told us the reason for this being brought back. On the one hand, you can see the logic behind an effort to encourage women to have children in Russia because after COVID, which already hit the birth rate quite hard, you know, the war in Ukraine, which has obviously killed tens of thousands of mainly young men. And of course, tens of thousands of Russians have left the country in protest against the war. So, you know, there are reasons to be concerned about

the birth rate. But it's absolutely typical, actually, of the Putin regime to look to the past to try and find solutions to the problems of the present and the future. There is no real kind of forward looking vision in this leadership. It's very much about, well, let's see what Stalin did. You know, let's see what happened 50, 60, 100 years ago. Let's do that. And I really don't think this is going to be terribly effective for today's woman in Russia. I was going to say, do we know about the average size of a family in Russia? Yeah, we know that Russian women on average only have 1.6 children throughout the whole of their lives. So this is less than the replacement rate, which is 2.2 children.

So obviously the population is shrinking on that measure. And so, you know, the idea that they're going to jump from having fewer than two children on average to having 10 because they have the prospect of a shiny medal and a one off payment at the end of that 10th child turning one. It's pretty extraordinary and it really sort of ignores all the other realities of life in Russia at the moment and reasons why women are not having large families. I wonder, because we spoke, I think, last time about the mothers of Russia, the particular group, which are more powerful than perhaps people realise in terms of holding Putin's feet a little bit to the fire when it comes to what's happening to their children, in particular to their sons. Yeah, it's a complicated, actually, relationship that's developed between the regime and mothers in Russia. Because, you know, when we last spoke, which was right after the invasion began in February,

there were indications that the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers could be a powerful sort of actor. But since then, it's become a lot more complicated. And we've seen, you know, quite a lot of mothers of soldiers, even soldiers who died in the war, actually coming out in favor of the war and praising their encourage their young sons, their grown sons rather, to join the military and to go and fight in Ukraine. Because, of course, another criticism when this was announced, I believe yesterday, this return to this policy of old was this is an indication of how Putin views women, of how Putin views mothers, and a criticism that this is another sign of just viewing women as those who can provide cannon fodder for his militaristic dreams and ambitions. Yeah, well, the government in Russia at the moment is very heavily male dominated at the top. You know, the Security Council only has one woman

and she's sort of there because she serves another role. So people who make the decisions about war and peace in Russia are definitely men. There's very little room in decision making circles for women. And it's a very patriarchal society. It's a very traditional conservative society. And in fact,

Putin is very proud of that fact. And this is one of the things that he thinks is a selling point for Russia, especially towards the global south, is that he's willing to stand up for traditional social family values, like heterosexual marriage, only like anti LGBT kind of legislation, like taking away the criminalization of domestic violence, which has happened in Russia about five years ago. So no longer is it a criminal offence to beat your wife. So, you know, there's a whole package of measures, legislative, but also sort of rhetoric coming from the regime, which really tells women where their place is. And that's not, you know, side by side, equal with men making professional decisions. And the reality of this award, though, when it did come about before, if we look at the history

of it, does also give you a very interesting insight into how things have changed in a relatively short space of time, of how women and these choices, if we can term them that, it wasn't always a choice, of course, with any freedom, have altered and how they can be or cannot be impacted by the state. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when Stalin introduced this in 1944, the world was in a different place. The Soviet Union was an all out war. And, you know, attitudes towards women were definitely not as advanced as they are now, even in Russia. And so women were much more willing and able to have large families and sort of heeded this call.

Now, you know, one of the reasons why Russia's population has been shrinking is that the last big demographic dip was in the 1990s. And so you have now women who are of childbearing age who were born in the 1990s. This means there are fewer of them because there was such a contraction in the 1990s. We're trying to get more and more babies out of fewer and fewer women. And it's just not going to work. Jenny, just a word. I know it's not your specialism, China per se, but are you struck by also hearing that news from China that the country's health authorities are clamping down on abortions termed not medically necessary in a bid to tackle its plunging birth rate. Yes, I mean, this is classic, actually, for societies which feel that they're getting things are getting out of control. It's first control women and control their childbearing, control their sexuality, control their ability to earn money and spend it. And it's absolutely classic. And you can see it right around the

world. You can see it in my native country, the United States, around the issues around abortion there too. So it's, you know, it's something unfortunately that we tend to see in times of crisis and in times when governments in particular feel that they're losing their grip. That was Dr. Jenny Mathis there speaking. And we've had some responses from you. Ange has emailed in to say, this is nothing new. In the 1930s, Hitler gave three levels of mother's crosses to mothers who had several children.

Bronze was for three and under, silver was for six and under and gold more than seven. My great grandma who lived in Czechoslovakia as it was then was awarded the silver cross for her having five children. I only found out about this medal when I went through my mum's effects and discovered she had left the cross to me. Thank you to Ange for getting in touch. Remember all the ways that you can contact Woman's Hour via WhatsApp,

via text, on social media, and you can email as well. Now, are you happy when you realise your dress has pockets? Do you get angry when you realise those new pair of jeans are fake ones? Well, data shows that the majority of women want pockets on their clothes, but don't always get them. And now an American woman's TikTok campaign has gone viral. Its name? Give us pockets, obviously. After a female construction worker complained that her trouser pockets were more shallow than the men's and didn't hold her tools. On Wednesday, Emma was joined by comedian Tiff Stevenson, who is very much pro-pocket.

But first, she spoke to the fashion historian Amber Bouchard, who explained the history of the pockets. So we start seeing evidence for the kind of pockets that we would recognise from the late 15th century onwards. And we especially see them in the 16th century because we find them in the wardrobe accounts of Elizabeth I, which is quite exciting. From after then through to the late 19th century, the type of pockets that women are most regularly using are detachable. So these are not pockets that we would recognise today but what they are is essentially these flat bags I suppose. You might have two of them, they're attached on a tape and you tie them around your waist. Now these are worn underneath an overskirt and you'd have slits in your overskirt so you can put your hands into your pockets. Now these pockets are really quite big they can be up to kind of 40 by 30 centimetres.

You can really carry around a lot in these pockets whatever is needed for day-to-day life whether that's kind of domestic things such as sewing kits, thimbles, handkerchiefs, whether it's like personal religious items like rosaries that you might want to keep close to you all the time. But also crucially, it allows a very unusual space of privacy for women at this time. So you might also find in someone's pockets letters, documents, things that maybe you don't necessarily want other people to see so these pockets are really quite substantial they're really quite exciting and they can also be quite beautiful they're quite often embroidered just lovely objects in their own right it's like an early iteration of of bum bags but sort of saddlebags

on either side it sounds very very good, like very useful. But now we don't have such good ones, do we? No, exactly, exactly. So this starts to die out towards the end of the 19th century as women's clothing becomes more kind of form fitted. But also crucially, what we see at this point, we've seen various calls for dress reform throughout the late 19th century, second half of the 19th century. And this is really tied into increasing calls for women's

political suffrage, but also calls for broader women's rights in general, like the right to property ownership, you know, quite basic women's rights we're talking about at the UK in this time. And we see a few, you know, sort of succession of Married Women's Property Act throughout the, from the 1870s to the 90s, which are gradually increasing women's ability to actually own their own things. It's not all given over immediately to the husband on marriage anymore. And with these calls for dress reform, you start to see pockets becoming a really big part of the conversation around the turn of the 20th century. And you start getting articles in places like the New York Times saying carry everything on you that you might need for day to day life.

And also they become symbolic of, you know, money. We still say out of pocket if someone doesn't have much money and symbolic of generally ownership. So these kind of sewn in pockets that we're seeing become something that you see in caricatures about suffrage campaigners at this time. This trope called the new woman, who was this educated, emancipated woman at the end of the 19th century, who loved cycling, she loved reading, she maybe smoked, things like this. And she's often depicted in caricatures with her hands in her pockets it becomes a crucial marker of this particular type of woman at this time well a particular type of woman at that time tiff stevenson are you a particular type of woman who likes your pockets i love my pockets and i think if they say eyes are the windows to the soul, pockets are probably the windows to the personality, I think.

Like at different points in my life, like when I was younger, when I was a girl, I was a real tomboy. And so I liked to have a yo-yo in my pocket and a piece of chalk. That was very important. I was going to say, what's in your pocket today? I've actually got an eyeliner i literally just took out before and uh a bottle opener because i got dungarees on so that's not typical though well i mean i think in my teenage years it was a travel card some chewing gum and some of that

horrific cherry lip gloss that looked like you'd smeared your lips with a greasy chip in case I wanted to kiss some boys but there is something about putting hands in pockets and a dress with pockets it's just like a godsend like it's I'm so excited when I find something that's really beautiful and has pockets and I don't tend to put as much stuff in pockets of a dress it might be a chapstick if it's jeans my phone's going in there we've got a lot of shout outs about jeans and the women's jeans in particular. If you're buying women's jeans, needing to have a greater depth. Back to your point, Amber, men wearing more form fitting clothes, especially in the summer with shorts and tight shorts. I think one of the reasons we have seen this kind of demise of pockets over the last few decades, especially, see it really clearly in women's wear, but also, like you say,

we see it in men's wear, is also to do with the rise of fast fashion. So this kind of, you know, this kind of system of fashion that has developed from the 90s really onwards, where profit is the absolute sort of driver of how clothes are designed and made. Often, of course, made by exploited workforces overseas. But to put pockets in a garment, you need more materials and you need more labour involved. Emma was talking to Amber Bouchard and Tiff Stevenson there, and we've had an email from Deborah who says, you can't be free without pockets.

Throughout the 1980s, Laura Ashley clothes,ley clothes skirts dresses all of that type of thing all had two decent pockets as head designer i put them there and persuaded the garment technologist we must keep them at all costs i knew that life without pockets is annoying and silly i have to say i have to agree if i don have pockets, I'm probably not going to buy it. That's all from me today. Thanks for listening. And do remember to join Emma at two minutes past 10 on Monday. See you soon. I'm Sarah Treleaven. And for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.