Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Women's Football World Cup, the word Wife, Chelsea Pensioner Helen Andrews

Episode Date: June 8, 2019

We look ahead to the Women’s Football World Cup in France with former England, Chelsea and West Ham player Claire Rafferty, BBC Women’s Sports reporter Jo Currie and Gemma Clarke author of Soccer Women: the Icons, Rebels, Starts and Trailblazers Who Transformed the Beautiful Game.The author Elif Shafak tells us about her latest novel 10 minutes 38 seconds In This Strange World.The Violinist Nicola Bennedetti talks about her new album a collaboration with the jazz legend Wynton Marsalis.The writer and journalist Francesca Segal tells us about her identical twin daughters born prematurely at 30 weeks and how her expectations of motherhood were shattered by their early arrival.As part of coaching week talk to Louisa Arnold and Kim Johnson about Project 500, a scheme to inspire and support women to become sports coaches.We hear about a new play Wife which explores the meaning of the word wife over 90 years with the director Indhu Rubasingham and Dr Rebecca Jennings lecturer in modern gender history at UCL.As we mark D Day this week we hear from Chelsea Pensioner Helen Andrews one of thousands of women who volunteered for the British Army at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.Presented by Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Eleanor Garland

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Good afternoon. In today's programme, a new novel by the Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak tells the story of a young woman abused as a child and forced into prostitution. We discuss why the subject she writes about would put her at risk if she returned to Turkey. The violinist Nicola Benedetti and what draws young people to her music. A lot of the time the most moving, intimate, sweet, sad song is the thing that they become transfixed by that. And I've never had an experience of playing some classical music for young people that they're not engaged. In the week where D-Day was commemorated on both sides of the channel, Private Helen Andrews, now a Chelsea pensioner, looks back on her life at Bletchley Park.

In Coaching Week, the aims of Project 500, encouraging and helping women coach in a range of sports. A play called Wife, inspired by Ibsen's The Doll's House, traces the meaning of the word through one and a half centuries. And Francesca Siegel's memoir The Mothership relates the support women give to each other in a special care baby unit. We sat side by side, half naked, expressing milk for our babies and expressing ourselves to one another. And they were funny and raucous and outrageous under these incredibly difficult circumstances. And we carried one another through.

The FIFA Women's Football World Cup began in France yesterday. The opening match was, of course, between France and South Korea and Scotland will play England tomorrow. Jane spoke to the former England, Chelsea and West Ham player Claire Rafferty, Gemma Clarke, the author of Soccer Women, and to the BBC's women's sports reporter, Jo Currie. She explained the history of the FIFA Women's World Cup. The first official Women's World Cup was actually in 1991,

although there were a few test events and other events before that which were seen as World Cups. But the first one was officially 1991, although that was actually referred to as the M&M's Cup. I won't go into the history of it, but let's just say FIFA didn't always treat the Women's World Cup as it should have done. And since then, we've had World Cups every four years and every year or every event it's got bigger and bigger and bigger and this event is going to be the biggest women's sport event not just in terms of football World Cups but women's sport event ever this planet has ever seen. In terms of what sponsorship, potential viewers, the lot? In terms of everything you can go back four years ago to the world cup in canada

and claire played in this world cup you know all of those matches were played on artificial pitches which would never happen in a men's world cup this time around they're all going to be on grass we've got var it's the fact that the likes of nike have released special kits just for the women's teams ticket sales have gone through the roof back in in April, almost three quarters of a million tickets had been sold. The prize money has been doubled from four years ago, from 15 million to 30 million this time around. The media coverage is going to be bigger than ever before. Just the number of British press that are flying out for the opening game

is so much bigger than it was for any other women's tournament that I've certainly covered. And on top of all of that, the football is going to be better than ever. Most of these teams now are professional, the players are better, and there are more contenders than ever before. Right. Claire, you played in 2015. This is in Canada. We've already heard about the pitches. Were they really dodgy to play on? Was it tough?

At the time, in the build-up, we were aware that that was going to be a situation. We did fight it and i know a lot of nations you know um had a had a few pushbacks for me personally having had three um acl ruptures playing on artificial turf is not ideal yeah and so yeah anterior cruciate ligament which is in the knee which kind of stops you falling over basically um so yeah playing on them pitches was actually a huge risk for myself and for every single one of them women who played in that World Cup

because of the dangers on the body. But yeah, I mean, we've seen in the four years since that tournament an incredible increase in exposure, in investment. And I'm so excited to watch England on Sunday. Yeah, let's talk about that. England are one of the favourites.

They just lost, actually, in their most recent warm-up game to New Zealand, didn't they? Was that really unexpected or maybe a bit of a wake-up call? What do you think? There's been a lot of rotation in the squad, but if I remember correctly, actually, we lost to Canada, I think, in our last friendly before the World Cup. On paper, people couldn't um and ah about it, but ultimately it's about the games before the World Cup. On paper, people couldn't um and ah about it,

but ultimately it's about the games in the World Cup and that first game is a massive one against Scotland and I think will be the toughest of the group. Let's bring in Gemma, because Gemma, you are someone who's written a bit about the social history of women's football and we can talk in a rather blasé way about wonderful sponsorship and fantastic pitches and packed out crowds.

Do many people actually realise how difficult it was for women to get this far in terms of playing football? I think women do because we understand that it's been difficult for us to do pretty much anything. Football is really a reflection of what's going on in a particular place and political landscape. And for women, women's football has really been a struggle to play, to have any kind of agency and to be taken seriously as athletes. That can be seen throughout history. I think every moment that women's football has had, there's been a kind of backlash afterwards or a kind of attempt to keep women back and to dampen enthusiasm for the sport.

What happened then back in the 1920s? In the 1920s, there was a team called the Dick Kerr's Ladies who played several exhibition games, ostensibly to raise money for the war effort during the First World War. They were working in a munitions factory while the men were at war. They became so popular, they were getting crowds of around 50,000 and upwards. And the football association, the men's football association, were panicked by seeing women doing so well and began enlisting doctors to say that women shouldn't play football. They banned all women from playing football on association grounds and that lasted for about 50 years. And yet to be

banned from association grounds effectively meant well the proper pitches were totally closed to them there was no hope of women playing in any kind of formal setting. Absolutely yeah it was a very concerted effort to keep women's football at amateur status and ensure that there weren't crowds watching them play. But it also meant, didn't it, that when I grew up, for example, in the 70s, 60s and 70s, girls didn't play football. They didn't play in the schools. They didn't play in the parks. Well, they did, actually. There was actually an unofficial World Cup in 1971 and an England team participated in that. So they were playing at amateur level and they were playing on parks, but you just didn't see it the way you see it now where there is something to aspire to. And there are women's teams finally that play regularly and play in a league. Gemma, you write in your book about some of the icons of women's football. Who would you point to, names that we may not know? Tiffany Milbrett is someone who

was a fantastic player for the USA. She only was recently, last year, inducted into the Hall of Fame here, even though she was the top scorer in 1999. Elsewhere around the world, there's a player in Pakistan called Hajra Khan, who's done incredible things for women's football in Pakistan. You say yourself in your book that when you started off reporting on women's football, you would, and you now acknowledge it was a mistake, you would compare female players to male and say, well, X is a bit like Wayne Rooney or Beckham or whoever it might be. And you don't, well, you don't have to do that anymore, do you? No. And I think that was a sign of the times. And I grew up in that world too, where I longed to play football and I didn't see anyone,

any women's teams. And my whole frame of reference was the men's game. And I think that is changing, as Jo said. I think that that is really opening up and and there's a whole generation of female players who now like Claire are becoming icons and the England team now are just inspiring young girls around the country. Let's talk to Jo in Nice ahead of that game then on Sunday. Jo wouldn't it be something if a home nation were to win the Women's World Cup? It would do a huge amount for the women's game. We saw how excited the country got last summer when the men's team got all the way to the semifinals.

The women got to the semifinals in 2015. They fell just short in a very painful semifinal that I won't make Claire relive. Well, I was about to ask her, but carry on. But if England's women or Scotland's women can win the World Cup this time around it would bring in so much more sponsorship, the participation

figures would go through the roof and I actually asked Baroness Sue Campbell who's the director of the FA a month or so ago, I said if England actually win this World Cup are you ready for what comes next and she said we think so, We've got a plan in place. So they think they've got the bits of the puzzle there, but obviously you need the team to do the business.

Yeah, well, I was going to say, this is giving me goosebumps. Maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. Claire, what would you say about that? Yeah, I've got a massive goosebumps. I mean, it's just so nice to kind of see, you know, the hard work that all the women have done over the years, you know, the introduction of essential contracts from Hope Powell and then the journey from the 2011 World years, you know, the introduction of essential contracts from Hope Powell, and then the journey from the 2011 World Cup when it got to the quarterfinal,

and then 2015 getting to the semifinal. We know what you call it. And now, I mean, the natural progression now, you know, the pressure is on for England to reach finals, and I really do think they have the quality and the depth of talent to do that. Claire Rafferty, Joe Curry and Gemma Clark. The latest novel by the acclaimed Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak is called

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. It tells the story of Leila who's been working as a prostitute in Istanbul. She's been murdered and dumped in a rubbish bin. In those 10 minutes and 38 seconds after her death, her mind continues to look back on her life. What inspired the idea of a woman reflecting on her life after her death? I became very interested in these remarkable studies that show after the moment of death, after the heart has stopped beating, the brain continues to work for another few more minutes. And in several cases, particularly doctors in Canada in an intensive care unit, they have observed persistent brain activity for about 10 minutes in the dead. 10 minutes and 38 seconds. 10 minutes and 38 seconds.

So I have added the 38 seconds. So as a writer, for me, it was a fascinating question. You know, what does a dead person remember in that limited amount of time? What remains behind from a whole life? As you said, my protagonist has been killed. We know at the very beginning, the first page, that she is dead. And yet, as she remembers her past, minute by minute, we travel into the story of not her personal journey only, but also the story of her country, also maybe the story of the Middle East, but always told through the eyes of outcasts. Now, she had been abused as a child and became a prostitute. But why does much of the action in the book center on her friends, exhuming her from something called the cemetery of the companionless? Right. There's a passage in the book that says, we're all born into families. Those are our blood families. And if our blood families are loving, caring, tender people, we should count our blessings. But we should also understand

not everyone is born into such families. And in a way, the book is saying to those people, if you don't come from a loving, warm, affectionate blood family, do not worry, because as you keep living, you're going to create, you're going to have another family, and that's going to be your water family. And the water family is composed of your friends. And sometimes it's possible for your friends to occupy a bigger space in your heart. That said, there is a place, there's an actual place in Istanbul called the Cemetery of the Companions.

And I have been to this place. I've done a lot of research about this place. It is a completely forgotten, forsaken graveyard. Nobody visits that place. And unlike any other cemetery, there are no names there, no surnames, only numbers. It is a place where actual people are turned into numbers. And when you research, the people, because we always read about a refugee boat capsizing, sinking. Where are all those bodies taken? They're taken to the cemetery of the Companionless. So it's a very strange, sad place where an Afghan refugee or a Syrian refugee might be buried next to a Turkish sex worker. And I wanted to take just one of those numbers and give it a name and give

it a story, an individuality. And also, I wanted to say these people were not companionless. They had friends. Now, Lola is murdered very specifically in 1990. What is the significance of that year? It was important for me to focus on 1990 because this was a year when the legislators in Turkey tried to pass a horrible law that suggested rapists should not get a heavy sentence. They should get a very light sentence if their victims are prostitutes, if their victims were sex workers. So the argument of the legislators was that the prostitute would never be affected by rape. And that shows the mentality that we're dealing with. The good thing was at the time there was a strong women's movement

and women were able to come together and raise their voices against this horrific mentality. And so the politicians had to take a step back. For me, that was symbolic because since then, I fear we have been going backwards. You began writing this book soon after the death of your grandmother. And I know you didn't feel able to go back for her funeral. Why not? Well, this was a woman who raised me. My grandmother raised me until I was 10 years old, and I was always very close to her.

So I found it very difficult not to be able to go. But to be honest, Turkey has become a very difficult environment for primarily journalists, and I have a lot of respect for journalists who are trying to do their job properly. But also it has become very difficult for writers, academics, poets, anyone who deals with words, either the spoken word or the written word. We do know that because of something you say in an interview,

a line in your book, a tweet or a retweet, you can get into trouble very easily. In one night, you can be sued, prosecuted, called a traitor by pro-government papers and almost lynched on social media. So you don't feel comfortable. And I did not. Now, I understand that Turkish prosecutors are investigating writers who describe sexual abuse in their work. Why is that so offensive, considered to be so offensive? Yeah, this is new. And to me, the tragedy is, in Turkey, particularly over the last years, we have seen an alarming escalation in cases of gender-based

violence, and also sexual harassment, and also child abuse. So these are the realities of my motherland. And also, this is a country in which one third of marriages involve child brides. This is a country in which just a couple of months ago, again, the legislators wanted to pass a law that this time suggested rapists should get a lower sentence. Rapists of underage girls, should they agree to marry their victims as if they're doing their victims a favor. So while this is happening, instead of dealing seriously with the problems, we have a serious issue of sexual harassment and child abuse and gender abuse. What they're doing is prosecuting authors who deal with such subjects in their literature. Now, the March mayoral election was overturned by the Turkish president, Erdogan. What impact has that had?

I think it was very undemocratic, very unlawful and unacceptable that they have cancelled the elections in Istanbul just because they didn't like the outcome. That is the reality. As you know, in the last local elections, all the major cities were won by the opposition. And this is quite remarkable because Turkey is a country in which almost all the media is dominated by one narrative. Most of the social media is again controlled by one narrative. And the opposition is not given an equal chance to express their views. And in fact, one of the opposition leaders is in jail. But despite the circumstances, half of the society continues to vote against the government. We have lost our democratic institutions one by one. People don't understand in Turkey sometimes that the ballot box

in itself is not enough to have a democracy. You need rule of law, separation of powers, independent media, academia, women's rights, and the ballot box. Together with all these components, a democracy can survive. So we've lost the institutions. The only thing we had left was the ballot box, and now they're cancelling the elections. I was talking to Elif Shafak. When the violinist Nicola Benedetti made it to number 18

on the Woman's Hour Music Power List in 2018, she was described as being a fabulous spokesperson who's devoted so much time and energy to supporting music education for all. In the past 12 months, she's worked with more than 2,000 students and 500 teachers. She's also launched her own online series of educational videos and received a CBE. Her latest collaboration is with the jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. How did that come about? I've been a fan of his music forever and a day and actually attended a performance of a symphonic work that he wrote for full symphony orchestra and jazz band. So there's like, I don't know, 100 plus musicians on stage. It's called the Swing Symphony. And I attended that with several people I work with and other musicians.

And we all agreed it was a unique experience and feeling within a concert hall to have music that is so complex and substantive, but is so uplifting and euphoric. It's something that very few composers are kind of capturing that type of uplift within a kind of classical format. So it made such a massive impact on me. And I then set about chasing him down to write a violin concerto, which took about two years. But we eventually got him to agree in writing to write the piece because he's a very, very busy person. You sound quite a persistent person. It took you that long. Yes, exactly. No, we were determined. I knew he wanted to do it. It was just a case of

him trying to kind of find the time. I mean, it's just so colourful and so exciting and very popular with audiences, which is great for a new work. It's often not the case. Well, you said it. Okay, you've set that up brilliantly. Let's hear a short clip. This is Hutanani. Thank you. No, you were right. That is exhilarating. You spent so much time pursuing him. Was it worth it? Oh, it's been a life-changing experience. Has it? OK. Absolutely. Yeah, 100%.

Why life-changing? Because that sounds very dramatic. Well, because it was a huge project. It took up enormous amounts of time. And to have a piece written for you i've that's happened to me three times in the past with james mcmillan john taffiner and now winton and um it's that close proximity to someone that is creating something in a way that is very different to what we do day in, day out as musicians that are trying to interpret the work of somebody else

and often people who are no longer alive and from very different times and places. It's a significant experience. So it's not easier, but is it better? It's not better and it's not easier. It's just very, very different. And also this was so far outside of my comfort zone and outside of my experience. There was so much in how I was required to play, to make sound, to make colours on the instruments, to express myself, that was unusual and a challenge. And, yeah, I feel like I am a different musician

because of the experience of playing this concerto. You are absolutely passionate about education and about talking to quite young children, actually, about classical music. Have you got a kind of gateway drug piece that you play them to lure in even the most reluctant people? No, I certainly don't have one. And I think what I try to pass on is the extent of the the classical repertoire it's so vast and so varied and some young people I mean people always tell me you must play something fast and exciting for them and well I would have said that yeah I mean people really do think that but I've I've done

I've experienced being in front of groups of children hundreds of times now. And actually, a lot of the time, the most moving, intimate, sweet, sad song is the thing that they become transfixed by that. And I've never had an experience of playing some classical music for young people that they're not engaged. I've literally never had that experience in my life. So I just try to let them understand how vast the repertoire is and give them a taste of that variety so that they can then choose and kind of curate for themselves what excites them. And these would not necessarily be children who would routinely be exposed to any form of What excites them? may never play an instrument. I'm also working with large groups of kids that do it as a hobby, maybe don't have the ideal circumstance

in terms of either amount or style of teaching. But equally to teach masterclasses at the Royal College or Royal Academy, you know, I try to keep it as broad as possible. And now with my charity that is not set up yet, but we're nearly there, I will be trying to target all of those different groups at once

because one of the things I'm most passionate about is creating a better synergy and lineage between those that are doing music as a hobby and their exposure to an instrument is on a more kind of amateur level. They should be connected to the professional world. So we're not living in all of these very separate categories. But how would it benefit them if they were?

Those who have dedicated their life to playing have such power and energy purely with their quality. If you have spent thousands of hours doing something, it has its own power through the quality of your playing. in order to have an enriched experience as you're going through your formative years, the best people often to share that kind of excitement and love and that potency of the music are those really serious about their instrument. But equally, I'm tying my connections to those that have dedicated themselves to music education. So people who have perfected their teaching techniques for decades. Nicola Benedetti was talking to Jane. Still to come in today's programme, Private Helen Andrews, now a Chelsea pensioner, looks back on her time at Bletchley Park.

A new play at the Kiln Theatre in North London is called Wife and traces the meaning of the word from the late 19th through to the mid-21st century. And in Coaching Week, Project 500, helping women become coaches for a range of sporting hopefuls. Francesca Siegel is an award-winning novelist and she's now a mother, with a memoir of the unexpected things that happened when she gave birth to twin daughters 10 weeks before their due date. The girls were in intensive care receiving the best possible medical support but it's the women she meets in the milking shed where the women go to express breast milk for their babies who hold each other up. The book is called Mothership. What was her initial reaction to the news she was expecting twins?

I was absolutely gobsmacked. I suppose everyone must say that, but I was particularly gobsmacked because my husband and I were slightly trepidatious about having children at all. We very much wanted them, but we were just scared and slightly babyish, and our agreement between ourselves is, well, we'll just have one. So then when I had this scan and the sonographer said there's two and they're identical, I laughed, really. Now, you did actually go into labour at 29 weeks, but they were actually delivered at 30 weeks. Now, that is very significant. Why? It's a taxonomic shift as

much as anything else, but we moved from one risk level to another really sort of under 30 weeks is extremely premature and 30 weeks and above I think is very premature and the outcomes are considered to be quite different in those two categories and so it was just a number but it was also something that I clung to for reassurance. What risks then did they face because they were awfully little they weighed what two pounds each? They were two pounds each yeah just a scrap over a kilo. They were unable to breathe for themselves, they were unable to eat, they were fed by nasogastric tube, they were unable to regulate their own body temperatures so they had to be kept in warmed incubators and very

premature babies face everything from retinopathy at prematurity, which is blindness, to sepsis, to necrotising enterocolitis, which is death of the bowel. And their immune systems are completely unprepared for the world. What was your first sight of them? Because you didn't see them immediately. I didn't meet my daughters the day they were born, actually. They were delivered around around 5pm and I had a whacking great dose of diamorphine for which I'm extremely grateful and I had to attempt expressing milk for them almost immediately after surgery expressing colostrum by hand which was an almighty failure because my body was as unprepared as the rest of me and then I fell asleep and I didn't wake up till four o'clock in the morning.

And it was then that I went down to the intensive care ward and I saw them for the first time. So what do you remember of your first sight of them? It was sort of otherworldly. The ward was dark because it was four o'clock in the morning and it's often dark to protect their eyes. And they were bathed in this sapphire light for jaundice. And they were tiny, tiny doll-sized humans, half-humans,

in eye masks to protect them from the light, with masks over their mouths to help them breathe. Their skin's too fragile for clothes, so they were naked, except for these tiny nappies. I felt I was intruding. They weren't ready. What was it like, though? I mean, you mentioned trying to express colostrum at the outset, but then you have to go on trying to express

milk 10 weeks before your body would have expected to do it. How did you manage that? The real heroes are the midwives who supported us and helped us do it. An incredible midwife came and very tenderly and also firmly showed me how to hand express, which is agonising, particularly at the beginning. And we were all just told this is one of the only things you can do, but only you can do it. And it was also empowering to be told that there was something, there was a way in which we could mother our babies, and that was to feed them, even if not directly. So we were all ushered into the milking shed, we called it, the expressing room. And however much of a torment the expressing

became, the regular sort of two-hourly expressing, that was where these incredible friendships formed and these women met and were able to support one another through this extraordinary unexpected start to motherhood. At what point was it possible for you to cuddle them which obviously they benefited from and feed them yourself? Those two things were very very different times we were able to hold them I think it was day three or day four an incredible nurse said would you like to hold them and we were not allowed to lift them ourselves they have rice paper skin and all these wires and cannulas and needles going into them and so a layman can't lift them you need an expert to to deliver them to you but we could lie back in a reclining chair and have them delivered to your naked chest so you were skin to skin. And that was just one of the most unbelievable healing experiences,

I think, for me and for the babies to be able to hold them. Why healing? I mean, obviously I've read your book and it seems to be the moment where they connect with you as you connect with them. It was a restoration of a sense of... We had been ripped so far asunder and they from one another also. And to put us back in contact at a time when they should have still been inside my body

just felt like a tiny setting right of this enormous wrong. Now, this title, The Mothership, I presume, even though the staff were absolutely amazing, well, most of them were there's always one isn't there not quite as wonderful as the others who are this group of women and what did they do for you the ones you met when you were milking yourselves they were the long-term mothers on the ward so people whose babies were there for more than just a day or two days although I should say that even a day is too long to have one's baby in intensive care when it's not

what you expect but there were a few of us a core crew of us who were there for weeks and weeks who became almost immediately like family in a way that I can imagine only sort of war and other circumstances can pull people together you know a soldier's battalion we sat side by side half naked expressing milk for our babies and and expressing ourselves to one another they are still treasured treasured friends without whom I can't imagine my life because we were just brought together in this extraordinary circumstance and they were funny and raucous and outrageous under these incredibly difficult circumstances, and we carried one another through. What was it like for the fathers during this time? Very difficult and very different.

Most people had two weeks paternity leave and had to go immediately back to work, so we're trying to live in two worlds at once, and I do not envy that, having to have one foot in the real world and another foot in this hospital life and also they didn't have the milking shed I would come out and I would say to Gabe you know ward rounds at 10 p.m in a 10 a.m in our room and this is the doctor we should try and talk to if we want this and he'd say how do you know that I'd say well they told me in the milking shed one of the other mothers told me or if the girls were having a procedure I'd say don't worry I'll ask someone later and he'd say but when do you see the see the doctor? I don't know. I don't need the doctors. I've just got the other mums. And how are A-let and B-let, which is what you called them initially, now Celeste and

Raffaella. How are they doing now? We have been incredibly, incredibly lucky and they are doing beautifully. They're three now and they spend a great deal of time pretending to be dinosaurs. And I am just grateful every day. I don't think I will ever lose my gratitude that they are here and that they're well. I was talking to Francesca Siegel, and lots of you sent emails and tweets in response to my conversation with her. Inga said, Listening to this gave me an insight into what my two sister-in-laws went through. Both had twins prematurely,

the older set born at 30 weeks and the younger set at 24 weeks and 6 days. They spent 176 days in hospital. The older set are now 12 and the younger set 5. They're thriving, entertaining and cheeky boys. They're our family's miracles. Wendy said, Listening to you today brought back

memories of 35 years ago and the support from the mother's house at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital. My son and I were there for 13 weeks and I couldn't have got through without the support of those women. And Hilary said, this reminded me of the time when I was producing too much milk for my second child. I was turned into a human milk cow, feeding all the babies in Prem Baby and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the local hospital, who needed supplementary feeding. On alternate days, a van collected the milk I had expressed, using a state-of-the-art, that's in 1968, electric pump provided by the hospital.

Now this week has been dubbed Coaching Week, an attempt to get more women to take up work as coaches for the next generation. At the moment, only 30% of sports coaches are female. Kim Johnson coaches rugby for Camberley Cocktails and Louisa Arnold is Co network officer for Project 500. Project 500 is a female coaching initiative and we set it up back in 2013 as a pilot idea to try and provide more support and address the imbalance in male to female coaches.

And the focus has been in the south-east of England in the seven counties and I'm kind of the regional kind of coordinator for it. But my county in Kent and then colleagues across the southeast. And as a coach, how important would you say that kind of project is? Oh, it's absolutely essential. I think women in sport need as much support as they can get. And it's just really good to have a social media platform that we can access really easily to connect with coaches not only in our own chosen field but also coaches in in others you know just just the fact that they're the same age or and the same gender it makes a big difference so what do you offer to

people it's all done online is it it has moved online in the last 18 months we've we realized that actually females need a real flexible approach to their support. And we decided that actually social media was a way that we could do that with limited funds in terms of a project. And we recruited a social media expert who was actually a coach as well. And we provide kind of support, advice and guidance. We signpost females to opportunities. We link them up with other coaches in their local area and just try and provide that kind of support that they might need to take their first steps or to help them on their journey. So Kim how did you get into coaching and why rugby? It was a complete accident I come

from a zero sporting background in my mid-20s I was working at a barmaid at my local rugby club. My bar manager absolutely loved rugby. She had the idea to start a team up. And quite naively at the time, I thought this is really easy. I was actually the captain of a female pool team at the time. So I just got the girls to leave the bar and come on to the rugby pitch. Most of them only lasted a week or two, but what I found was a passion. It was a whole new world that I'd never been exposed to.

From that, I started playing, and then I realised very quickly there was a little bit of a gap in between recruiting players, and part of that was the logistics of actually having coaches to bring the girls on. So again, quite by chance, I was invited to go on a coaching course as a female player. And that was about three decades ago. You see, she's a star in terms of what you're looking for, isn't she, Louisa? Somebody who got so committed to it but I know retention is a problem for women coaches how do you get women to stay on and do it because they probably have very busy lives as well doing other things they do indeed and I think part of what we've tried to do through project 500

as a region is to make sure that the support we provide isn't quite so or the pressure that's put on people isn't so onerous. So you can actually just get involved by taking on a little bit. Let's get more female coaches involved to share the burden rather than trying to make one person do everything. We found that a lot of our learning and support packages, particularly with webinars, have worked really well because we had a lady that said,

I've logged in, I'm just putting the kids to bed and I'll be back online in 10 minutes. So that gave us a real kind of insight into the support that female coaches need. And I think it's just something that we need to celebrate the female coaches. And that's what Project 500 is all about, is about celebrating the fantastic work that they do

in a positive way and trying to make sure that those barriers are reduced if we can. Kim, what skills make a really good coach? Skill wise you just need to be brave enough to start and I think if anybody's brave enough to start they're already on the step to success. You need to be open, you need to be open to the people that you're coaching and you also need to be very open to the people around you don't allow yourself to get isolated be willing to ask for help to keep upskilling yourself those skills can be given to you by your governing body project 500 is obviously

a great example of incorporating many different sports but just contact your governing body and there's plenty of support in the way of coaching awards and and coaching courses out there how does the women's team stand in the hierarchy at your club at my club midway if you get to play on the days that you want to play? Yes. Okay. So the Camberley Cocktails originated three decades ago. For various reasons, the original team actually folded five years ago. The past couple of years, I've been asked if I would help to revive that. It's only in the last 18 months I've had the time to do that. We're all volunteers. And I stress that because the amount of times i get

people assume that you are paid and the reason they assume that is because coaching is almost a full-time job that you do part-time but do the women get to play on the days they want to play yes i'm gonna say yes and it's a little bit candid, but that's progression. We're getting there. We'll get in there. You play netball, which presumably you don't have to fight for pitches. What do you love about coaching netball? Coaching netball, it gives me the opportunity to stay involved with the sport that I love because I can't play anymore because I'm injured so having that opportunity to see groups of girls play team sports develop skills throwing and catching skills the basic things that sometimes they come through the door and they can't do because they haven't had the exposure to it so for me it's about seeing young women come in and when they go and they leave and they go off to university but they

contact you and say they're still playing and they're still active there's no better feeling. I was talking to Louisa Arnold and Kim Johnson. A new play called Wife opened on Tuesday at the Kiln Theatre in North London. It's written by Samuel Adamson and it takes Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House as its inspiration. The play opens with an actress in 1959 performing the role of Nora

as the character leaves her husband around 1889. A 1950s housewife and her husband come to the dressing room. There's clearly desire between the two women as the husband fulminates about Nora's actions in a doll's house. The wife is not going to give in to temptation. She'll stay with her husband and do the done thing. Three more stories are told in 1988, 2019 and 2042, tracing the changes in the meaning of the word wife as time goes on. Well, Dr Rebecca Jennings

lectures in modern gender history at University College London. Indu Rubasingam is the artistic director at the Kiln and directed this play. Why was Ibsen such an inspiration? When the play was first ever done in 1880, I think it was first ever produced, it was so transgressive. People were outraged that a woman could leave her husband and children. It was an impossible idea, to the point where when it was first performed in this country, they rewrote the ending and made her come back. So that sort of reverberated through time.

It's a play that I think attracts a lot of us kind of going, we all want to know what happens when Nora slams that door and leaves that house. What have you made up in your head? What do you think happened to her? I think it depends which time. I mean, I think ultimately she was happier because, I mean, I'm not saying... I mean, the cost of being yourself is a high cost, but is that worth it?

You know, is it better that than the cost of repressing who you are? And I think that's the interesting thing that the play explores. Is it worth being yourself? And ultimately, I think it always is. How outraged, Rebecca, do you think a late 1950s husband would have been at the mere idea of watching A Doll's House and a woman saying, right, I'm leaving you and going.

Well, I think women leaving their husbands was still outrageous in the late 1950s. Divorce was not socially acceptable in that period. And also there were other pressures which caused women to stay in marriages, economic pressures, the desire to stay with children. It wasn't a common decision for women to make. Indu, it's Daisy's son who enters the next scene in 1988. He's openly and to some extent quite outrageously gay. So what by now has happened to the word wife? Well, I think, well, in his, in Ivan, in the son's context, it's like there isn't

a word for, there isn't a wife, there isn't a, to express your partnership in a gay relationship. So what he's talking about in 1988 is finding the equivalent of a wife, the word, a partnership, a marriage and legalising gay relationships. So in 1988, they're fighting for the right to be together, to have their world celebrated, recognised, and to be open and proud. So that's what he's fighting for in 1988. And, of course, facing terrible prejudice in the pub where he and his partner

are having a drink. His partner's having a drink and his partner's very much in the closet, very scared. It is at the height of AIDS and the paranoia around AIDS and how you could catch it. And that, you know, if you think about it, this was just a couple of years before Freddie Mercury died and a few years after Rock Hudson had died. So it's a very specific time period which he's fighting for. And what was going on then for women who were in lesbian relationships? How were things changing for them?

Well, I think that same desire for recognition of relationships was happening. But for women, the idea of marriage has always been much more loaded, I think, than for men. You know, women historically have been in a subservient role in marriage. And the women's movement, also the lesbian and gay political movement in the 70s, had really critiqued marriage and the nuclear family quite severely. So I think it's unlikely that many women in lesbian relationships in the 80s would have been looking for marriage as a form of social recognition. Tolerance, certainly. One of the big issues for lesbians in that period was about acceptance of lesbian mothers.

So that was certainly a big issue at that time as well. Andrew, the play follows through to 2019 and then 2049, way into the future. What's the play saying about marriage and the wife as time goes on through our period and then onwards? Well, I think it's saying several things. I think it's looking, it's sort of saying what you suppress, the action someone takes in 1950s and the act of suppressing what the ramifications are throughout that

and how that is rippled and felt throughout the generations and how that is passed on in some way. I think what the play is sort of saying is that there's the institution of marriage and there's relationships. And sometimes the institution of marriage complicates and makes us lose ourselves. And to find that true relationship is something different and fragile and beautiful. But the institution and society what society puts on us can convolute that and destroy that and now of course there is equal marriage Rebecca what's the most common feeling about marriage among the LGBT community now I think it varies by generation I think for

a lot of younger people marriage equality is really important as an indication of social acceptance. It gives people a sense of validity that they can turn around to anybody who makes homophobic comments and say, yes, but, you know, in older generations who still see marriage as an oppressive institution and one which will change our relationships and take away the radical potential of same-sex relationships. Indu, you've been at the Kiln since 2012. There have been awards, refurbishment, controversy about the name change. How are things actually settling down and how important is this play to you right now? I'm loving it at the moment. What's fantastic with the new building, it's like being a grown-up version of ourselves. We're seeing a whole new audience, we're seeing

a real diverse audience in terms of, and by that I mean age and as well as backgrounds, and I'm loving the excitement. And this play is funny, witty, sassy, but also very painful and bittersweet. And it's everything that I want the theatre to stand for. It's political, it's current, it's grey, it's nuanced. It's not telling you what to think. It's posing a lot of questions and it's very heartfelt. And what does the word wife mean in the future, would you say?

Wife to me is a painful word, do you know what I mean? Because it's often, it's subservient. It's often used originally in gender. It was the woman and it's often used derogatory. So I hope we find a new word that is equal in both partners. I was talking to Indu Rubasingam and Dr Rebecca Jennings. The commemoration of the D-Day landings was on Thursday and whilst danger to life and limb is what faced the men who landed on the Normandy beaches, hard work was being done on the home front from where the operation

was being directed. Helen Andrews volunteered for the British Army at the age of 17. She was a private with the Royal Corps of Signals and was sent to Bletchley Park to work as a translator. Well, she's now a Chelsea Benchner and lives at the Royal Hospital Chelsea alongside some 300 other retired soldiers, including, of course, Colin Thackeray, who won this year's Britain's Got Talent. Jane went to Chelsea to speak to her. It took about probably a couple of weeks to learn Morse, and we had to get quite fast at it. We had to do 15 words a minute, which is quite fast.

I'll give you a message, shall I? Yes, please. What does that say? Is it something ridiculous or is it something serious? It was my password, bestbentwire. And you've never forgotten it? No, because I was so amused by it. Bestbentwire. We all had some sort of password and that was mine so that I knew if somebody did that that they wanted to speak to me. What was the atmosphere at Bletchley

Park like? Quiet except when the music was on because we all had to think hard the whole time it was very very hard work we we were the worst of it was the shift working so we did eight to two two to eight and then all night and then that off morning and afternoon we'd have off then we'd start again the next morning eight to two two to eight and all night we got used to the hours you got used to, but we were always a little bit tired. And did you know, did you fully understand what it was you were doing? Or was it all shrouded? It was very shrouded. We only, and we couldn't talk about it.

They forbade us to gossip or talk about anything except film stars. So we talked about films and music. We could do as much music as we had time to do. So we did a lot of dancing in our spare time. But because of that secrecy, were you able to form friendships? Yes, we did indeed. But because all the others were a little bit older than me, they've all gone. They've all died. I'm the only one left of our group. What at the time

did you think you were doing? We were told that we were going to try to shorten the war. And we thought this was a good thing because what else could you do but hope for the end of it. We were told that we were to intercept these messages that were coming from the Germans and Japanese too because there were some people who spoke Japanese and they came in Morse, we intercepted them and in that way we were able to locate the submarines and where the messages were coming from and interpret the messages so we had messengers on motorbikes waiting for the messages and then they'd streak off and take whatever we'd intercepted or found but we were we were told that we must never on any account talk about it,

what we were doing or where we lived or why we lived there. It was total secrecy. We had to sign the vow of secrecy right from the start. And we never talked about it, even amongst ourselves, because we never knew who was listening. And one girl did disappear. She obviously had said something and somebody heard her so she disappeared and that gave us a warning that we must be very very careful

and so for how long after the war did you keep completely quiet about all this till now till now i i've never i didn't talk about it to my husband or let alone my family, because we were told that if a spy listened to us and couldn't get at us, they'd get at our family. So my mum and dad would be in danger and who knows who else. And we had heard of the awful things that had happened to people who had been caught. You talk about your parents. What did they think you were doing? They didn't know. Did they not ask?

All the time I was in the ATS, there were things going on that I could talk about. We were drilling, doing drill inspections, parties, outings. So there was plenty to talk about But what about after the war? Weren't you frustrated that nobody knew about the part you played? No, because we took it for granted that everybody had done similar things

Any secret out was terrible so we didn't, we just didn't And how long were you married? Just short of 50 years You didn't ever tell him about Bletchley Park? No, no. We both knew that we'd been in the signals and had worked for signals, but we never spoke about what we did or where we were.

We didn't dare, no. It had been beaten into us, never talk about it, even with your closest relatives, because somebody might be listening before i go i just need to make it clear we need to get this absolutely right so i'd just like to hear your army rank and the name you were using at the time you served at bletchley park so i was only a private i was on the point of becoming a lance corporal and we were on parade a line of us and behind us came a beastly sergeant and she said to me she yelled at me get your hair cut because i had long fuzzy

hair you can see and i lost my temper i said oh f off i didn't say f either i said the word so i lost my stripe and that was was that. That was that, yeah. So I remained a private for the rest of my life, quite happily. The Chelsea pensioner, Helen Andrews, and a reminder that the Royal Hospital welcomes former service women as well as men. Now do join Jane on Monday when she'll be speaking to Aaron Dutty-Roy, who's published a new book of essays. From me for today, that's it.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was 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.