Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Women's Finances and Feminist Fairytales

Episode Date: July 4, 2026

Annabel Rook dedicated her life to supporting vulnerable women, yet her own life was violently taken by her partner. Annabel co-founded MamaSuze, a creative grassroots arts organisation in North London to enhance the lives of women who have survived violence. Her co-founder, Catherine Milne and Annabel's sister Sophie join Chloe Tilley to discuss Annabel's impact and what people can learn from their loss.Money is broken for women, according to the founders of Female Invest - a subscription-based financial education app founded in Denmark. In their new book, It’s a Rich Man’s World, they explore the life events and systemic obstacles that women face in building and holding on to wealth. Krupa Padhy talks to co-founder Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen about the possible solutions.As part of Radio 4's Once Upon a Time season we're looking at fairytales through a feminist lens. Award-winning author Kirsty Logan joins us down the line from Glasgow and the mythologist and psychologist Dr Sharon Blackie joins us from Cumbria. They tell Nuala McGovern why they believe women need fairy tales now more than ever and, crucially, why we should keep re-writing them for ourselves.In the week that Baroness Amos released her long-awaited National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation into maternity service failings in England, we hear reaction from the Labour MP and Government Maternity Advisor Michelle Welsh.When the award-winning poet Helen Mort became a stepmother, she went in search of literary role models, but was sadly disappointed by portrayals from the fairytale ‘wicked queen’ to the put-upon parent of the modern blended family. She talks to Anita Rani about creating her new collection, Stepmother, to re-write the role.Presenter: Krupa Padhy Producer: Kirsty McQuire

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Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's O'Dbolo.com. He's widely recognized as one of the greatest footballers in history. He's won the prestigious Ballandor Award five times. He's the all-time leading goal scorer in professional football. And according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he's the first active footballer in history to achieve billionaire status. Guess who we're talking about yet?

That's right. Good Bad Billionaire is exploring the life and fortune of football icon, Cristiano Ronaldo. That's a good bad billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello, this is Krupa Party and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Coming up, the government's own maternity advisor Michelle Welsh reacts to the Government Commission Review of Maternity Services in England, led by Baroness Amos. Also, is money broken for women? The female founders of a financial

Education Act made for women think so, and one of them tells us why. And fairy tales viewed through a feminist lens, how they've shapeshifted through time and why we should keep rewriting them for ourselves. But first to the case of Annabel Rook. She dedicated her life to supporting vulnerable women, including survivors of gender-based violence. Yet her own life was violently taken by her partner. In June last year at their home, Clifton George attacked her, stabbing her multiple times as she tried to end their relationship of more than 10 years. He then caused an explosion in the family home. He was recently found guilty of murder and will serve a minimum of 23 years.

Annabel co-founded Mama Suze, a creative grassroots arts organisation in North London that aims to enhance the lives of women who have survived trauma and violence. Her co-founder, Catherine Milne, joined Chloe in the Women's Hour studio, along with Annabelle's sister, Sophie Rook. Catherine began by describing Annabelle. She was an exuberant, purposeful, dynamic person who was a natural communicator. She could have been a presenter, an actor, a director, but she decided to dedicate her life to supporting marginalised people. And, yeah, we're just incredibly proud of who she was and that her legacy and her incredible life isn't eclipsed by what happened to her.

Sophie Annabel was your older sister Was she a good older sister? She was the best Of course She was two years older than me There were three of us I'm in the middle And we have a little brother as well

Who's two years younger than me And she was You know She was there my entire life From the moment I was born She was the person that I looked up to And followed And she

In fact I didn't speak for quite a long time When I was younger It took me a while To start speaking because Annabel would speak for me. And, you know, throughout my life, she still would speak for me. And it was the only, you know, the only person that I could trust, you know, that could do that and would do that in an authentic, loving, caring way.

Yeah. Catherine, how aware were you of the difficulties in Annabelle's relationship? We were aware, weren't we, Sophie? I don't think we ever really felt they were a great match. And in the last year, things had escalated. But I think what we weren't aware of is that violence is not only physical. I suppose for me I kept sort of wanting to know whether he had been physically violent towards her, which he hadn't actually, apart from one incident.

As far as what she told us over the years, and we did often both of us check in with her about sort of whether she actually felt safe and whether she ever thought that he would do anything violent. And she always said to us that no, and he would never do anything like that. and it was more that they had difficulties communicating and it felt very hard. And she also spoke a lot to the fact that he'd had quite a difficult upbringing himself. And she wanted to support him and help him to work through those difficulties so that they could have a better relationship and for them and their children.

They lived together. She owned the house. And as you mentioned there, she was the mother of two children. But Catherine, she was trying to. to leave the relationship. She tried a few times over the years. And in the article you wrote, and I'll just read this quote back to you, I'm sure you remember it well, I must be very firm about not blaming myself. I know it's not my fault. And yet, of course, I could have done more. What do you mean? I think I feel now with the benefit of hindsight that I should have trusted

my instincts more rather than letting myself be placated by her, because I think she had a lot going on. She was worried about her children. She was running the company. She was trying to mitigate a lot of the difficult things about living with Clifton. And I think that looking back, yes, I really wish that I had listened to my own instincts about their situation more and acted on them and spoken more to Sophie, to Annabelle's parents. But I allowed myself to believe that she would be okay and that because she was such a powerful, dynamic person that she had, that she had it, that she could hold it together and it's going to be all right. And I think what we've learned through this is that it doesn't matter how incredible you are as a person, how powerful, how dynamic,

how successful, how privileged, you're still vulnerable if you're a woman, unfortunately, in 2026. And that is a shocker, but it's true. Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of sort of if only we'd know if only we'd known. And then sometimes I sort of feel that even if we had known and we did know small things, but it was sort of like a patchwork that after the fact and obviously going through the trial, we got even more information that we hadn't known about.

And that, you know, it sort of makes you recognise and think about that people in this situation, which is predominantly women, are in a position where they sort of feed people different information. If you're in a coercive, controlled relationship, then you're very careful about protecting yourself, your children, potentially if you have children, but also your partner. And I think that she didn't tell us certain stuff

because she knew that we wouldn't have it and we would probably do more and try and get her out of the relationship. So did you both feel in some ways you were almost having to tread a fine line between raising concerns but not going in too strong that she may. say, well, I'm not going to talk to you about it anymore. Yes. That's right. We both had experiences of that.

I mean, there was a point in the relationship where I felt very angry, sort of angry with her, in fact, for not sort of moving out of the relationship and not finishing it, not understanding now how difficult that is, obviously, and how dangerous that is, actually. If you're at the point that you're going to leave and your partner knows that you're going to leave, it's the most dangerous time in a controlling relationship. So I think maybe on some instincts, although I don't think she thought and predicted that anything like this would ever happen,

I think she probably instinctively knew that it was dangerous and she couldn't move too quickly with anything. Yeah. It's very upsetting to think about all the moments now where, you know, I feel like I could have done more. But I know that Annabel wouldn't want us to spend the rest of our lives feeling terrible about it. I mean, none of us could have predicted this. Yeah.

And more that, you know, what she would want us to do and what we want to do is, you know, affect positive change because of the way that she's been lost rather than just having to grieve the loss. And that's how we can help, you know, call people out and start to sort of prevent these things, which in the first place might not seem like obvious. Well, I wanted to ask you about that because I know that you both sat through the trial and he had previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter and arson, but denied murder, so that's why I went to trial. Was that when you really learnt the extent of the emotional abuse

and the controlling behaviour at the trial? The sense of what Annabel was living with on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, I mean, I think she did, because she was a very brave, courageous person, she did sugarcoat quite a lot of it, and she was sort of cope her. that, you know, she would often tell us things that we were familiar stories, weren't they, from the trial? But there was a slightly more, well, obviously in hindsight, but also hearing it in the kind of cold light of day.

It was even more shocking. So things, what was he doing? If people are listening to this, maybe concerned about a relative or a friend, what were the things that he was doing to Annabelle? Now you look at it. Silent treatment was a real method. I think and also, and this is, you know, it sort of fits the profile, I think, for a lot of people that, you know, behave in this way and are controlling in their relationships.

It's also the, quite a thin-skinned personality so that he, you know, hypersensitive to being, you know, disrespect or what he would, or criticised. Treading on eggshells, she described. Lots of, you know, and all of us, I think, in some ways trod on eggshells around him, you know, and we're very careful about, not to upset him. And we knew that if we upset him, he would then take it out on Annabelle. So it was sort of like in some ways,

we all were part of this control. And we were all sort of letting things happen on normalising it because to keep the, you know, what we thought was just keeping the peace and keeping things, you know, sort of as not escalated situations. Yeah. You don't realize it. You're enabling it by doing that. Yeah.

Yeah, that's what we've learned. Catherine, you and Annabel co-founded Mama Suze, supporting vulnerable women throughout workshops. Did she ever see herself as someone who could be at risk? Could she see the parallels between her work in supporting women and her own personal relationship? I think there was definitely a shared, there's a sense of shared humanity in any women's organisation.

And I think you definitely get that sense at Mama Sues, but she was very much the leader of our community. And I think, I don't know, I don't think she saw herself as a vulnerable woman. No, no, I don't. But I do also know that she, I mean, there's been this great equalizer thing that's happened since losing her,

that now we're all kind of, there's this parity in the group where we have now a deep understanding of each other and the trauma that, in fact, pretty much all of the women in the group have been through in some, shape or form, whether it's through trafficking, FGM, domestic violence, forced displacement. So, yeah, I mean, it has been this, obviously, this really ironic thing that it's all been

turned on its head, but it's also been incredibly a source of great comfort, I think, and you've been coming to the group as well, haven't you? Yeah, it's been amazing. It's an extraordinarily comforting and all inspiring to be around other women who, from all over the world who've all been through their own examples of trauma but we all come together every week. I think also just to speak a little bit to the fact that, you know, was Annabler aware of, you know, what was going on in her own life. And I think she did see it and she did say it a couple of times that the irony wasn't lost on her that she was in a psychologically abusive relationship.

but I do think in some ways she thought, felt that she was, she could do it on her own, she could manage it on her own, and she was working, she had a process, she was planning to leave, and it took several years as it often does, I think, in these situations. But she had a plan, she was trying to protect her children as much as possible, and I think that's why it took longer, and she wanted it to. And I think she also thought that she was, you know, she's always been a leader, hasn't she's the big sister she's the direct community leader

she was you know she always you know she felt she was always she didn't ask for help maybe when she needed to and I think that's another message to people out there that I'd like people to you know don't be afraid to ask for help and support yeah it's a strength not a weakness I want to talk to you about the sentencing if I may

he was sentenced to a minimum of 23 years in prison now under current law most domestic murders have a 15 year sentencing starting point because they take place in a home with a weapon which is most likely at the scene. But murders that take place where a weapon is taken to the scene with intent, the starting point is 25 years. Now the government has announced, announced yesterday, it's going to close this 10-year gap. So domestic murders are dealt with like other murders regardless of where they happen. Obviously, it's not retrospective, but I'm assuming you would welcome that.

Absolutely. We were so pleased to hear this. I mean, it's a shame it wasn't a month ago but it is incredible that these mothers have fought for this change in the law and they've succeeded and that David Lammy's on board with it It's the message that you know domestic homicide Is as serious if not more so than any any you know Very violent crime or homicide and you know

It seems extraordinary that it's been that way for so long And it's taken that long for people to recognise that I want to just ask you what you would like people listening to this to take away from this and indeed remember about Annabelle. I want people just to give the message to people to look after each other, take care of each other. Don't be afraid to sort of speak out. I think, you know, we've got to acknowledge sort of the little things that can lead up to much more violent, much more awful situations. and not tolerate sort of little small microaggressions and feelings of entitlement and in relationships.

Yeah, I agree with you, Sophie. I think you've hit the nail on the head. And I think Annabelle's capacity for joy is what we will always remember and try and carry on with our community and with our friendships and with her children. And that's the most important thing. Catherine Milne and Sophie Rook, remembering their friend and sister, Annabel Rook.

And if you've been impacted by any of the issues raised in their conversation, there are links to support on the BBC Action Line website. Now, during listener week, your suggestions have sparked fascinating conversations on everything from why women's haircuts costs more than men to leaving a legacy when you're single. Now we want to hear from you. Is there something you've always wondered about, a question you've never found the answer to? Or perhaps there's an everyday habit that gets right on your nerves. Whether your idea is funny, thought-provoking, quirky, moving or just personal, we'd love to hear it. Send us your suggestions and you can hear them discussed. Text Women's Hour on 84844.

On social media, you'll find us at BBC Women's Hour or email us through our website. Next, money is broken for women, according to the founders of Female Invest, a subscription-based financial education app founded in Denmark with the aim of closing the financial gender gap. Through conversations with their members, they realise that women's financial lives and futures are shaped by the structures and systems around them, not just by saving and investing. So, in their new book, It's a Rich Man's World, they explore the life events and obstacles women face in building and holding on to finances, from marriage to menopause, and what can be done to fix them so that women can thrive financially.

On Thursday's program, I was joined by one of the co-authors of the book, Anna Sophie Hartvixen, And I asked her to set out exactly how money is broken for women. At every single state of a woman's life, money just works differently for her. It starts already when we are little children, where girls on average get less pocket money than boys and more household chores. And then it just continues at every single state of our lives up until we die, from how relationships work to how our health impacts our finances and so on. So that's what we mean with money being broken.

for women. And in terms of those structural barriers that are stopping women from thriving, give us a sense of some of those? They come in many shape and forms. Some of them are around the labor market where women are still paid less and promoted less despite delivering the same piece of work. It comes in relationships where women still take on the majority of unpaid labor, which negatively impacts their earning power. But it also comes when women seek financial advice, for example, where research shows that they get different advice from men, they're more likely to be advised to save and take less risk, for example. And then we also see it in just the structures and the stereotypes in society where women are more likely to be portrayed as

spenders. I think we've all heard the girl math trend or tread wives, for example, with women not managing their own money. And that's actually more harmful than most people realize. Well, let's go step by step, because your book is built around these. eight major areas that shape a woman's financial future. Let's start with relationships. Now, you say the most important financial decisions a woman will ever make is her choice of partner, but we don't think about it that way. Explain that to us. So your choice of partner is the biggest financial decision you will ever make. It impacts everything from your earning power, your career, to your health, to your happiness and so on.

What we see happening in heterosexual relationships is that women, on average, take on much more unpaid labor, and that harms basically every single area of their life. And now it's not necessarily a bad thing that some couples choose to have a relationship where the woman spends more time at home or raises the kids. But it is a problem when couples don't discuss how to financially compensate that. And now that could be by topping up the woman's pension, it could be by making sure that she has her own savings as well. Because what we often see happening is that when heterosexual couples have this more traditional dynamic, that the woman ends up having no money of her own. And when then a lot of relationships or marriages end up in divorce, women are far worse off financially with no savings and no career they can get back to

because they sacrificed that to support their husband's career. So that's why we say that who you marry or who you're in a relationship with is the biggest financial decision you will ever make. And all couples should talk about this. Some listeners might feel that's a bit tricky. When you're trying to get to know someone and even if your relationship has been ongoing for a number of years, talking about money, it can be a bit of a romance killer, can't it?

I don't think so? for me, the ultimate romance is making sure that both parties in a relationship are safe. It is making sure that both parties in a relationship are only there because they want to and not because one party is financially trapped in the relationship, which is sadly often the case in heterosexual marriages especially. So I think it's all about breaking these stereotypes of money being this big, bad issue and then just learning how to talk about it. And in our new book, it's a rich man's world.

We give couples a guide for how to have these conversations and also what to look out for. And you talk about pre-nups in there. You talk about stay-at-home moms getting a wage from their partner. Why do you call married men potentially the real gold diggers here in your book? So for decades, women have been portrayed as gold diggers. When we think about gold diggers, we think about it. young women who want older men because of their money.

But when we look at the data, the people who truly benefit from relationships financially are men in heterosexual relationships. Men in heterosexual relationships are way better off financially. They are more happy. They are healthier. They live longer. Married men are the happiest subgroup in the population, whereas married women are the unhappiest subgroup in the population.

And again, when we look at the data, marriage, at least in the traditional sense, is in many ways just a transfer of wealth, freedom and independence from the woman to the man. And it doesn't have to be this way, but we need to be very conscious of how we talk about money. So that's why we say that married men are the real gold diggers, if there are any.

Some men might consider that to be unfair, that they are trying their best to ensure that things are equal and respectful when it comes to finances within a relationship. And trying is great, but when we look at the data on average, what happens still is that women sacrifice their career, they sacrifice their finances and therefore also their freedom, independence and ability to make big decisions about the future for themselves. And it's important to say that we don't think men are villains who just want to take from women. We just think that all of us have inherited these structures and these ways of thinking about relationships. that we don't even question them anymore. And with it's a rich man's world, we want women and men to question how we do relationships

and to make sure that the people we love the most are also safe financially. Let's fast forward to motherhood. We talk often about the motherhood penalty. You are from Denmark. And the region is widely celebrated for having generous policies when it comes to raising little children. What can we learn from Denmark? or what do you suggest when it comes to countering the motherhood penalty, as it is often called? So when we look at the motherhood penalty, that is one of the biggest contributors to the pay gap that we see as well.

We see that women who have had children also in Denmark where we have very progressive parental leave policies. We see that women with children make less money than women without children, whereas men with children make more money than men without children, which is very interesting. When we dive into all of the research and all of the data to find out why this is, it all comes back to the unpaid labor where women in at least every country I was able to find data on, women still do more unpaid labor. And it's not a sexy topic. It sounds boring and it's hard to imagine that cleaning or doing the dishes could wreck your financial future. But it just is the truth. And when people have children, the amount of unpaid labor and the mental load just grows so much. And that's why we see the big financial crash right there.

And so what is the answer? The answer is either splitting unpaid labor equally or financially compensating the person doing the most. Those are the two options. You might not be in a relationship. And we know that the number of women who are single is growing globally. What advice do you offer to them? You might be worried about not being able to make it without a partner's financial contribution.

We dedicated a full chapter to women being single in the book, and we did that because in society, a woman in her 30 is being single is often portrayed as the worst thing that could happen as someone who has failed to find a partner, fail to start a family, but we want to break that stereotype because it's not true. And when we look at single women from a financial perspective, they are doing very well.

In fact, some research suggests that single women are even doing better on average than married women. And we also see that even if single women choose to have children on their own, they still do well financially. And what matters when it comes to being single is whether or not you are single by choice. Because women who are not single by choice, so women who chose a suboptimal part, and sacrificed their career and then got divorced, those women are among the most vulnerable groups in the population financially. Anna Sophie Hartvigsen, co-author of a new book, It's a Rich Man's World. Still to come on the program, has it ever bothered you

that the character of the stepmother is usually the villain of the piece wherever she appears? After the poet Helen Mort became a stepmother herself, she set out to examine the portrayal of stepmothers from fairy tales and beyond and to write them in a different light. Helen shares a new stepmother poem for us later in the program. And remember that you can join Women's Hour any hour of the day. If you can't join us live at 10 a.m. during the week, just subscribe to the daily podcast for free via BBC Sounds.

He's widely recognised as one of the greatest footballers in history. He's won the prestigious Ballandour Award five times. He's the all-time leading goalscorer in professional football. And according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the first active footballer in history to achieve billionaire status. Guess who we're talking about yet? That's right. Good Bad Billionaire is exploring the life and fortune of football icon Cristiano Ronaldo. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service.

Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now, speaking of fairy tales and remodding them for ourselves, have you ever imagined a fairy tale ending for yourself? Something like the romance of a Taylor Swift song maybe, or perhaps conditioned by a child. a diet of Disney princesses. Well, as part of Radio Falls once upon a time week, we wanted

to take a fresh look at fairy tale through a feminist lens, specifically how they've been told and retold by women, ever since the early oral tradition to the present day. How can we continue to reshape fairy tales and even use them to help us in our

day-to-day lives? Newler was joined down the line from Glasgow by the award-winning author Kirstie Logan and from Cumbria by the mythologist and psychologist Dr Sharon Blackie. Neula began by asking what's missing from the common misconception that fairy tales are fluffy and infantile full of princesses waiting to be rescued by princes.

Well, that's not how they were at all originally. So if you go back in the oral tradition, a lot of these stories were told by working class women to each other and to their daughters. And they're not passive princesses. They're not insipid. So one of my favourite fairy tales, which is a very typical one, is a Danish story called Tata Hood. And a young girl comes out of her mother's womb, fully formed, riding a goat with a wooden spoon.

And as you do, and with a wooden spoon, she then single-handedly drives off a tribe of marauding trolls and their groupy witches and then saves her sister whose head has been swapped for the head of a calf by one of the witches. So these characters, these heroines are always more like. to save someone else than to be saved themselves. So it's just some process over the years, I think, of, you know, the way that movies have looked at fairy tales and just put a different spin on them. I'm going to throw the same question to you, Kirsty. What are we missing in fairy tales as perhaps the way they've been sold to us thus far?

I always think it's quite funny when, you know, a wedding dress shop says, a fairy tale wedding because those of us who are into fairy tales, for example, know that at Cinderella's wedding, her wicked, so-called wicked stepsisters' eyes get pecked out by birds. And at Snow White's wedding, the stepmother has to put on iron shoes, which are then heated, red hot, and she dances until she dies. So I always amuse myself by imagining people having these entertainments that the so-called fairy tale wedding. And I think, you know, I've always been a spooky kid, a little gothic kid, since the day I was born pretty much. And I think even as a child, I loved the darkness of a fairy tale. You know, even when we do our best to sanitise them and make them appropriate for children,

there's still such a darkness to them that we're maybe so used to that we're not seeing it anymore. Like I now have a four-year-old, so, you know, we've started reading fairy tales together. and some of the questions make me super aware of the darkness, like in Red Riding Hood. You know, it's hard to say original version, which I'm sure Sharon will get into as well. But the earlier versions, the wolf just eats Red Riding Hood. The end.

That's what happens. But even the version where, you know, she gets rescued, my kid was saying, why does the wolf want to eat her? Why? And then, you know, we read Hansel and Gretel recently. And I'm getting the question, why does the witch want to eat them? So even when we try and sanitise them, there's still such a darkness. It's really interesting, I'm sure, to see it through a child's eyes as well when you are so immersed in it.

I love the idea, Christy, of you emerging from the womb as a fully formed goth. But let me also turn back to you, Sharon. I want to mention the late great Angela Carter. So some of our listeners might know her as the author of a seminal short story collection, The Bloody Chamber and the novels, Wise Children and Nights at the Circus. I know she's been an inspiration to both of you. Why, just briefly, Sharon, for those that aren't familiar, why was her writing so radical?

Really because what she did is she took what is supposed to happen with fairy tales anyway. So in the oral tradition, they're supposed to shift with the times. They're supposed to change according to the changing times. and as women's lives have changed, they're supposed to change. And what happened when we started to write them down in books is they became kind of fossilized. You know, it's like that's the end of the story. And what Angela Carter did is she said,

okay, well, what if we brought this fairy tale into the world today and used the fairy tale form to reflect women's lives as they actually are? So it's not just about changing the ending or anything quite as simple as that. She looked at the whole kind of world of fairy tales and how women today might fit into it in a different kind of way. So your latest book is ripening, why women need fairy tales now. And I was fascinated about some of the questions that you ask within that book. You talk about, and let me just get this specific term,

to create our own inner imaginarium and that that can be helpful to help us think about our lives or redirect like the, opposite of fossilisation, I guess. Can you give us an example of that to the listeners? Yeah, so it's really based on the idea that fairy tale images stick with us for a very, very long time and keep on resonating. You know, so I never could let go of the red shoes, the Hans Christian Anderson story,

in that image of the red shoes where the shoes danced the girl to death, she lost control of them. So this either of an inner imaginarium is the idea that each of us has particular stories or particular images from stories that kind of haunt us and won't let us go, almost come to us with a kind of moral claim. And that if we work with these images, if we just hold them in our minds, if we think about what they might mean to us,

what they might reflect in our lives, they really can be incredibly illuminating. I think the one when I was thinking about it, Sharon, that came to me, was the princess and the frog. You know, when she's made, do something and particularly kiss this person slash animal, that she really doesn't want to and her father is forcing her to do that

and I think it was always like for me as a child like the most horrendous thing that could be imposed upon you so I was fascinated to read some of those stories that you talk about or questions that you ask and I believe also use within therapy practice. Kirsty, you wrote your undergraduate thesis on retold fairy tales

and you've written retellings of stories including sleeping beauty. Why have you been drawn back to that tale in particular? Good question. Yeah, I mean, obviously, Angela Carter, I read her at a very impressionable age. She had a big impact on me. Another writer who was hugely influential on me, who I don't think gets enough love in this regard is Emma Donoghue, her book Kissing the Witch.

And what drew me to doing my own retellings was actually her reworking of Snow White, because she brings not only a female and feminist sensibility, but also a queer and lesbian sensibility, which was revolutionary to me. As a queer woman, I thought, I want to do that. I want to do that. And at the end of her version of Snow White, when Snow White wakes up, which is not from a prince, it's actually from her glass coffin being jolted as it's being carried and the apple jerks out of her throat, she decides to go back to the castle to forge a relationship with her stepmother. Not necessarily a romantic relationship, but she, instead of following this path of division, she chooses solidarity. And to me, that's what I want to do when I re-reweigh.

work of fairy tale is to remove this sense of women being in competition with each other all the time, specifically in competition for midmen, whose attention is not that important and actually not let that divide us. Women can be in competition for many things if we choose to. I refuse to be in competition with other women over the attentions of men. So I was really inspired by that. And I think those ones in particular, it's exactly like what you were saying, it's about this lack of agency. And I wanted to try and address that. Coming back to you, Sharon, can you give us a tip

for those listening for a way to cultivate our inner imaginarium before I let you go? Well, one of the ways that certainly in my therapeutic practice I used to find very, very helpful was this idea

that we would rewrite our lives as a fairy tale. And it's one of those things that because every fairy tale heroine kind of, you know, sets off on a journey with catastrophes snapping at her heels, there's always a catastrophe

at the beginning of it. And yet she wins through to the positive ending of a story, normally with the help of a, you know, a few hungry mice, always by building community, always in relationship. There are stories that help us get out of the sense of ourselves as a victim. And to, it's almost like a problem-solving exercise. You know, how can I win through?

What qualities of character do I need when I'm facing this time of collapse or this world in which nobody much seems to have our best interests at heart? So taking a fairy tale, writing yourself into it, using fairy tale imagery, all of those things really can help us reimagine our lives and a better ending to our stories. Dr Sharon Blackie and Kirsty Logan speaking to Nula earlier this week. Sharon's latest book, Ripening Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now and Kirsty's latest short story collection,

No, and other love stories are both out now. And you can catch up on Radio 4's Once Upon a Time series. five new fairy tales told by leading writers, including Catherine Rundle, spiriting Cinderella, away to Jazz Age New York on BBC Sounds. Also, if you'd like to know how Catherine Rundle maintains her sense of wonder in the world, our Women's Hour special on Women and Wonder is also available now on Sounds. On to a subject that we often discuss here on Women's Hour, the maternity system in England is not set up to deliver consistently safe,

high quality and compassionate care, and it needs urgent reform. That's the verdict of the long-awaited Government Commission National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation. Announcing her report earlier this week, Baroness Valerie Amos, said the system needs a complete overhaul. It is not fit for the now and it is not fit for the future. We need national standards to frame maternity and neonatal care, against which, we can then test how trusts are doing, how care is being delivered. And crucially, embedding, listening to women, the things that women and families have told us time and time again around the importance of having continuity of care, knowing who is going to look after you embedded in the system as well.

Baroness Amos's report includes eight recommendations for how the maternity and neonatal services, system can be redesigned to deliver fundamental change. On Tuesday's program, Nula spoke to Michelle Welsh, Labour MP, a maternity advisor to the government. Michelle had a harrowing birth experience of her own when she had her son, Billy, who was now six. She has since said that she was able to understand some of the shortcomings in the care she received, but that she will never be able to get her head around, why she was treated so badly with such contempt and disdain by staff being so awful to her and her unborn baby. Nula asked her how we can change that culture.

I think we break down that culture by having some accountability, but also we need the learning and the training to change what is acceptable. Some of this also may come about if we actually have a safer staffing structure. I talk to many midwives who say actually they need the time to care. But I go back to that. How can it be that it wasn't just a week, it wasn't a month? We're talking years and years of which a culture was allowed. to develop where people like me, ordinary people walked out of a hospital thinking,

what did I do so wrong to be treated so disrespectfully and so rudely? It was terrible and I read your story and I'm so sorry that you went through that as well as anyone else who has had an experience akin to some that we're speaking about this morning. But I wondered how do you quantify if you are able to turn that ship around with the culture? How do you quantify how awfully someone has been spoken? to. I think that comes down to how we manage it, not only with regards to families' voices and mothers' voices and how they are listened and what structures we place, not only on the maternity ward, but their ability to report back afterwards as to what their experience was.

So the women, but what would that form take? Like, is it, I don't know, where is it going? Is it a survey afterwards of your experience? I'm just thinking of something concrete, because I'm sure women go home, probably try and digest what's happened, maybe once. to try and forget about it, but how do we see where the problem actually is and managed to get in there in a more nimble and earlier way? So I think it's a step-by-step process. I think one of the recommendations that Brown S Amos has said is that every woman gets a debrief no matter what, what happened with regards to their birth. So that gives us an ample opportunity to capture it there. Sometimes, as many women know, it's not until they get home and they start reconsidering or

consider actually how they will be treated, in which case there has to be a direct pathway, whether that's for our regulatory authorities or whether that's something that can go through maternity commissioners team. That would have to be worked out. But I think there has to be not just one step, but two steps with regards to this. Because what we found is there are so-called places where women can report, but it's never actually actually materialised. Let me move on to the maternity and neonatal commissioner for a moment. We spoke about it at length with my previous guests. I mentioned some of the concerns that families have,

that it won't bring about the change that is desired by them. Why are you so convinced? I'm so convinced because I think maternity is crying out for a figurehead, an independent figurehead, not somebody that works within the system, was working within the system now, an independent figurehead that is prepared to take things on when things are going wrong.

That's what we need with statutory powers. I can understand why they're concerned. I absolutely can understand why they're concerned. They've been let down so many times, and they'll be worried and concerned about, well, who will this person be? What will their role be? So I feel passionate about it

because in my mind, I see it as a bigger picture at looking at a regulatory bodies and them sitting in a position where actually, if trusts are failing or regulatory bodies are not doing what they're doing, then this maternity commissioner can step in. They need strong, strong powers. And that's why I feel so passionate about it.

But I also understand families' fears. And that's why whatever this maternity commissioner looks like has to be done with families and those working on the front line as well. So we develop a role that is effective. Let me turn to also, you just mentioned regulatory bodies there. You have said I read that the Care Quality Commission, the CQC, the Nursing and Midriffrey Council, the NMC, and the General Medical Council, the GMC, are unfit for purpose.

Though this, I quote you, I quote you back at you, those three organisations need to go. We need to establish an umbrella organisation that allows for when things go wrong, midwives, doctors, obstetricians have to have a safe place to be able to say, this is what went wrong and why this happened. But does the government have any political will to follow you on that recommendation, personal recommendation? As I said, you know, this isn't a government policy.

This is my... I understand that. But you are the maternity advisor. Yeah, and absolutely. And I stand by that. Well, I actually stand by, and this is where it comes from. This is my standing point with regards to this. I have spoken to hundreds and hundreds of families

that have been seriously let down by a maternity service. Serious, serious failings. That has not only impacted them, it's impacted their own family, the whole family, their careers have ended, their marriages have ended. And this is all because of this uncomfortable truth. And that is, it was not a regulatory authority that brought about the Nottingham inquiry, nor the Telford inquiry. It was not NHS England.

It was not a government. It was families having to stand up over and over again and relive what is the worst moment of their life again and again and again. That is a system that is not only failing, but is cruel, absolutely cruel. Where were our regulatory bodies when all this was happening? Because it was being reported. It was being reported. So what happened? So when I say there is an overall, it's because I actually, as you can tell, feel quite angry that actually babies have died in the hands of people that were reported years ago to a regulatory authority. That's the reality. and unless we face that uncomfortable truth, actually we don't fix maternity services.

We really do not fix maternity services. So if the GMC and the NMC CQC want to come back to me and tell me, this is how we're going to change and this is what we're going to do. And within that, we're going to ensure that the maternity commissioner has the real teeth, then absolutely I will sit around the table with them. But at this moment in time, when I know, I can probably tell, can tell you hundreds of stories, hundreds and hundreds of stories. And it is wrong. And I said, and it is cruel. It is really, really cruel. Women and babies deserve better than that,

a lot better than that. And that's my position. It's not always, you know, what other people think, but that is my own personal opinion and what I think about the regulatory authorities. And let me make this clear to you, I've been very clear to them face to face about what I think with regards to this as well. And I will say I do not have a response from the Care Quality Commission, the Nursing and Midwifery Council or the general medical council, but of course it's a story we will continue to cover here on Women's Hour. But it is interesting and, you know, we could talk probably at length another time about what form a reformed umbrella organisation might take. But I do want to run something else by you, Michelle, before I let you go. The truth for our

babies group comprised of bereaved and harmed families impacted. by negligent maternity care at University Hospital Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. And they criticised today's report, the Amos report, for being, I quote, surface level. They said this, quoting again, this process was never the in-depth investigation that we, the families, were promised.

Are you satisfied that this report is in-depth and adequate for change? I think the report is in depth, but I think we have to take it in, with the other reports as well. Like Theo says there's been a number of really in-depth reports. I think we're at a place where actually we have got cut. We know where those changes need to take place.

We know what we have to do, and we have to get on and do that. But that is not taking anything away from those families, because I know if they are feeling that, they are feeling that, and they should absolutely be heard with regards to that. You know, it's not for me to sit here and say that those Sussex families are wrong, whatsoever. But what I will say is, and this is where I feel, you know, confident, is that we do know what is going on and we do know what is happening and what is wrong. Now we have to fix it. There cannot be reports left on the shelf any longer. This is action. It's not recommendations.

This is action. And now we're doing everything I can to hold the government's account on that. Baroness Amos has said that she would not call for a public inquiry briefly, would you? I'm going to be a bit of a politician here and I apologise for that but I'm going to sit on the fence with regard to this and the reason that I want to sit on the fence is I always believe that when an inquiry comes out we should be respectful of that inquiry

I think we all need time even now to digest what Donna Rockenden has said as well we need to pull that information together and I need to have further conversations with families I am aware that there is a gap and if I relate this back to Nottingman and this is really important, 120 senior staff, 80 decided not to talk to that inquiry. I heard that.

These are people that have been in charge and make big, big decisions. So there is a gap. And until we address that gap and really say, have we, have we answered all the questions around accountability? Can we really make sure that going forward that women and babies have a voice in what is probably the most important service? If we kind of answer that, then we have to get around the table and say, do we need a public inquiry? So I think it's right to still it, but it's there, that it's on the table. But I do think we, as politicians and as people around the table, we need to have a very calm and considered approach to how do we fix maternity services and let's get on with it.

Michelle Welsh MP and Maternity Advisor to the government. And you can hear more analysis of the report from Nula's wider panel of guests, Theo Clark, former MP. a maternity campaigner, Dr Karen Joash, consultant in obstetrics and gynecology, and Laura Mularchy, legal leads for the advocacy charity birthrights. Just search for Tuesday's edition of Women's Hour over on BBC Sounds. And if you've been affected by any of the issues raised, there are links to support on the BBC Action Line website.

If you are pregnant and have concerns, please do speak to your GP. Now, we heard earlier in the programme about the enduring power of the fairy tale and why we should keep refreshing them to reflect women's lives today. Well, someone doing just that is the multi-award-winning poet and author Helen Maud. When she became a stepmother, Helen set out to find some literary role models, but was left somewhat disappointed by what she found, from the wicked queen to the put-upon parent of the blended family. Now, in her new collection, stepmother,

she explores the origins of those much maligned archetypes we find in fairy tale, films and even in our own friendship groups. On Friday, Helen joined Anita on stage at the Crossed Wires podcast festival in Sheffield, her hometown, to talk about confronting those home truths about stepmothers in culture. I literally sort of sat up late one night and put the word stepmother into a popular book sourcing website and was kind of expecting that there would be some kind of literary examination of the term or something. from like a really interesting memoir and instead the

search results really shocked me it was a load of kind of step monster body horror alien stuff and lots of self-help guides called things like you're not their mom and you never will be when to shut up and

then more concerningly within the top ten step mum stepson pornography and things like that that was there before I even got to a novel that concerned the role of the stepmother. So it was that classic thing, which is also a great opportunity as an artist

where you think, okay, I'm going to make the thing that I would like to see in the world. I'm going to delve into this topic and work out why the word stepmother is synonymous with wicked in our culture, why we all think about the wicked queen from Snow White and others. And what did you find? Where does that stereotype come from?

Well, I think it's almost so pervasive we don't question. It's a lot of film, a lot of fairy tales that concern wicked stepmothers over the years. And sometimes some of the stories that I found in fairy tales were more disturbing than you'd imagine. There were some quite terrible stepmother characters. But I guess there's been some research done about sort of splitting of roles. I think this actually goes back to what Anushka was saying about the Madonna other kind of paradox that we set up. dichotomy, where we have to somehow pit mothers against some other feminine, subversive influence.

There are also some arguments that the stepmother embodies all the kind of complicated feelings that we might have towards mothers in society but can't voice, and because there's this non-biological sort of connection, it's safe to make the stepmother evil in some way. But I think it's very deep-rooted and you see it in popular films like Julia Roberts' stepmom where the women get pitted against each other all the way back to the Brothers Grimm and their fairy tales. And you started this because you are a step-mom. And what's the, and you, you, it's poetry, but it's also prose and you've sort of interlaced your own experience throughout. And you start by saying you were going to ask your stepchildren to write about their experience and then realize that they might

not want to tell you how they feel about you. Yeah, I mean, it's very hard, isn't it? If you say to somebody, tell me what you think and then they know you're going to read it and I thought of all these different ways you could put it in a kind of time capsule or something like that. I am of course very interested in this book in the whole experience of blended families but I chose to focus on the experiences of people who had been or were or identified themselves as stepmothers in some way just because it was so underwritten in a way that perhaps having a stepmother or a stepparent isn't I don't think and so I did a lot of research with other women who related to being a stepmother

and they sent me postcards that fed into my experience the experiences I was charting in the book so it does draw on some personal experience but I wanted it to be much more of a kind of a fictional project that could stand for the experiences of lots of people and kind of hopefully make a new more nuanced archetype of what a stepmother could be seen as It certainly does that.

I think we should hear a taster. Would you read something for us? Sure. I'll read a poem called Slipper, which responds to the Cinderella story in some way. Slipper. What if the sisters weren't ugly and the stepmother only usually cruel?

What if they all walked home together after school sharing fuchsia bubble gum? What if ashes fested in the grate and nobody rose to light the fire in that low ceiling's house? of women? What if they each desired the other? And if the pumpkin remained vegetable, the mice carried on their secret lives, and midnight passed without incident, and moonlight was a long knife that pared the palace garden, where the prince walked, cradling a glass stiletto, bought only for

himself. What if his want was a high shelf he'd built and decorated, lined with wigs and stick on jewels. What if he stopped beside the ornamental pond with its monstrous coy and face held in the water tried the damn shoe on? That one really stayed with me. Very good. The metaphor of shoes runs throughout the book. It does. I like, well obviously shoes are quite important in fairy tale. We encounter them all the time and a gruesome one that doesn't make it into the Disney film is that Snow White's evil stepmother is in the original story forced to dance herself to death in shoes made of burning coals. So there were all these shoes in the fairy tale literature, but I decided to make them a central metaphor in the book because of this idea of walking in someone else's shoes to try and

understand their experience, the sense that instead of being split and sort of fragmented and structurally set in opposition to each other as women, that we might have a little bit more empathy for the complications of different sort of structural roles. Also, I love shoes, so it was nice to write about them. And you mentioned when your stepdaughter comes downstairs wearing your Doc Martins, that was a real moment. I thought, oh, what a moment of acceptance, wearing your dogs. Were you given the title, or did you give it to yourself? You know, often sometimes people presume, oh, if you're another woman in a child's life, then that's the role you have, but maybe it's not the role you want. Well, it's really interesting as well. I was thinking, you know, when do you become a

stepmother? What's the what's the threshold that you pass through? Is it something to do with the relationship or is it something to do with when the children feel comfortable having an argument with you or something else? I think it's this strange ambiguous thing and as

you've alluded to there like a lot of other labels that get given to us as women generally you don't have much choice in the matter it's seldom that you give the role to yourself. Having said that one of the great things about talking to lots of other women about their experiences was the absolute range of emotions and

range of positive, negative, ambivalent feelings that came out and this, you know, no two stepmother experiences were the same. And that's what's depressing about the prevailing narrative is that it kind of presents it as an archetype. And you started by saying that there's a, you googled stepmother and all this range came up. Anything for stepfathers? Well, no. Funny that. There is no wicked stepfather writ large. Of course, there are accounts of troubling, distressing, damaging, abusive relationships with stepfathers in books and in film and in other things.

But in terms of having that, you know, cartoonish representation that you could just Google and you'll get the image of the wicked queen or whatever. Surprise, surprise, that does not exist. It hasn't become a kind of emble. in the same way. Helen Moore, talking to Anita in Sheffield, and her collection, stepmother, is out now. Right, that is it from me. On Monday's program,

journalist-turned-novelist Charlotte Edwards, will join us to talk about her new book, Trouble Was, a story about family secrets set during the long, hot summer of 1976. Join Nebula at 10am on Monday, and do enjoy the rest of your weekend. That's all for today's Woman's Hour.

Do join us again next time. In Coyance in court. I'm Lucy Worsley, and in my brand new series, I'll be hearing about the women involved in some of history's most infamous legal battles. Women accused of murder, bigamy, and adultery. Through to the shocking offence of not knowing their place. With a team of all female detectives,

I'll explore the lives at the centre of some extraordinary courtroom dramas, asking, has the justice system truly changed? Lady on Trial with Lucy Worsley From BBC Radio 4 Listen now on BBC Sounds He's widely recognised as one of the greatest footballers in history He's won the prestigious Ballandour Award five times He's the all-time leading goal scorer in professional football

And according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index He's the first active footballer in history to achieve billionaire status Guess who we're talking about yet? That's right, good bad billionaire is exploring the life and fortune of football icon Cristiano Ronaldo. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.