Woman's Hour - Women and Gaming;

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

The stereotypical view of a gamer is a socially-isolated teenager who could be doing something better with their time. Liz Vickers is a 74 year old gamer from Manby, Lincolnshire, and so is her good friend, Bridget Odlin, aged 75, from Louth, Lincolnshire. They’ve been playing together, and separately, for almost more than 20 years. Lotta Haegg, an avid gamer herself, speaks to them. A new government report in Ireland shows that 6666 women accessed abortions there in 2019. This is the first annual report to be published since medical abortion became legal in Ireland up to twelve weeks of pregnancy. This followed the result of the May 2018 referendum on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. What do the figures tell us about abortion care in Ireland now? Jenni speaks to Ellen Coyne, a journalist at the Irish Independent newspaper and Dr Trish Horgan, a GP in Cork City and member of START - Southern Taskgroup on Abortion and Reproductive Topics.The novelist Amanda Craig joins Jenni to discuss her ninth novel - 'The Golden Rule'; inspired by both Patricia Highsmith’s classic, 'Strangers on a Train', and the fairy-tale, 'Beauty and the Beast'.Leading women in theatre have sent an open letter to Oliver Dowden, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport. They are asking the task force, responsible for cultural renewal following the coronavirus pandemic, to develop their plans using a “gender lens” to ensure gender equality is considered and ensured. Maureen Beattie OBE, president of equity and Jennifer Tuckett, director of university women in the arts and literary director of Sphinx Theatre, discuss their concerns that gender inequality will increase in straitened, risk-averse conditions.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Ellen Coyne Interviewed Guest: Dr Trish Horgan Interviewed Guest: Liz Vickers Interviewed Guest: Bridget Odlin Reporter: Lotta Haeg Interviewed Guest: Amanda Craig Interviewed Guest: Maureen Beattie Interviewed Guest: Jennifer Tuckett

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 1st of July. Good morning. Leading women in the theatre have written to the Secretary of State asking that the Cultural Renewal Taskforce pays attention to gender equality. Why are they worried it won't? A new novel, The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig. Two women meet on a train and agree to murder each other's husbands. And the third in our series of women and gaming. Friends in their mid-70s who've been playing for more than 20 years. Now it's just over two years since Ireland voted in favour of the legalisation of abortion

in the referendum on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. The law was passed on 20 December 2018, and in January last year, the provision of abortion services began. It's now legal to have a medical abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. It's also legal in cases of fatal foetal abnormality or where there's a risk to the health or the life of the woman. A government report was published yesterday which details the number of terminations which were carried out in 2019. The total is 6,666. Well, I'm joined by Dr. Jis Horgan, who's a GP and member of START, the Southern Task Group on Abortion and Reproductive Topics, and by Ellen Coyne, who's a journalist at the Irish Independent.

Ellen, there were concerns that legislation would open the floodgates. What can be read into this figure of 6,666? Unfortunately, what can be read into the figure seems to depend on whether you're coming from a pro-choice or anti-abortion perspective. In the referendum in 2018, the government was saying that legalising abortion could help reduce crisis pregnancies, but those who were anti-abortion were saying that it would increase it. We know that there were over 6,000 legal terminations in Ireland in 2019. The only figures that we have to compare with that are the number of women who travelled to the UK for a legal termination in 2018, which was 2,879. But the problem with that figure is that is just women

who gave an Irish address when they were at the abortion clinic. As you can appreciate, when you're travelling from a country where abortion is illegal, there might be many reasons why you might not give your real address. We also know that by 2018, a lot of Irish women were choosing to buy illegal abortion pills on the Internet because it was cheaper than travelling. Women on Web, an international charity which provides these abortion pills to countries where abortion is restricted, claimed that there were about five Irish women a day ordering these pills. So that would have been 1,825 terminations a year. That would bring you up to a figure of about 5,000. But we still don't know how many Irish women might have travelled to other European countries to access a termination.

So while those on the pro-choice side are saying that this figure is expected, those on the anti-abortion side are trying to spin it as a 40% increase in terminations. And unfortunately, at the moment, we just don't have robust enough data to know if it has actually been an increase or a decrease in overall terminations.

Trish, how does this figure, the 6,666, compare with the number of abortions that happen in other countries? Good morning, Jenny. Well, if you look, for example, at Portugal, which also implemented a new service quite recently, the rate of abortion care provision there per thousand women within the relevant age group, that is within the 15 to 44-year-old age group, was not, excuse me, 9 per 1,000 women. And the number that we see in the report here published just yesterday reflects a rate of roughly 6.6 per 1,000 women within the relevant age group. And actually, that's not really outside the realms of what we were seeing in terms of the rate reflected in the indirect evidence that we were getting in terms of women providing Irish addresses at abortion clinics in the UK

and in the Netherlands from 2001 to 2017. Those numbers certainly had decreased over time but as Ellen pointed out, the number of women accessing abortion care in terms of pills online increased dramatically over the time. I think what's important in terms of this figure is to look at the number of women who accessed care in early pregnancy. And to look at there were 6,500 women accessed abortion care safely within family medicine in Ireland in 2019.

And that's a new type of service in Ireland and it's incredible that that service was implemented so quickly and so efficiently for the women of Ireland. Ellen, what about Northern Ireland? How many women may have come across the border for a termination? Yes, this is a very interesting figure. So according to the government report there were 67 women just 67 women in all of 2019 who gave a northern Irish address when they crossed the border to access an abortion and you compare that with UK government figures which says that

in the same year over a thousand women from northern Ireland travel to England and Wales. Now that may be because as your listeners are aware, the UK government now covers the cost of travel and the abortion procedure for women in the north. But also there's a very controversial aspect to the Irish law called a three day mandatory waiting period, which has been criticised by a lot of leading obstetricians as maybe being a little bit misogynistic because it suggests that women haven't made up their own mind and need to be forced to wait three days before asking for an abortion and accessing one. And that means that obviously, if you're travelling from Belfast to Dublin, you're going to have to take three days off work or else make the trip two or three times and book accommodation for two or three nights before travelling back,

which kind of makes the legalisation of abortion in the Republic of Ireland not very useful to women in the north who still didn't have access to the procedure at the start of 2019. Trish, what impact are you finding in your practice this three-day wait rule is having? Well, I suppose the three-day wait, it's distressing to women to have to wait because the vast majority of women have already made up their mind. They've already discussed their decision with a significant person in their lives and they rarely want to wait to access care. I suppose the difficulty is compounded by the fact

that there is a very strict 12-week gestational window within which we can operate within the legislation. And beyond that 12-week gestational limit, we are operating within the realms of criminal law. And there's a potential 14-year custodial sentence for anyone who is assisting a woman to procure an abortion outside of the terms of the legislation. And so my experience as a GP is that whilst most women are aware of the 12-week cut-off limit and are coming very early in their pregnancies, we're seeing women coming at four, five and six weeks. And for the vast majority of women, accessing care in that regard is not an issue. There are

women for whom there are personal, medical, family, logistical reasons why there may be a delay in their presentation. and those women are disproportionately disadvantaged then because of the three-day wait and we have seen circumstances provided in Ireland have seen circumstances where a woman has presented just within the 12-week gestational limit but unfortunately given the three-day wait and she would not be able to access care legally in Ireland once the three-day wait has expired. The figures do show that the majority of terminations have happened before 12 weeks. I think 6,542 out of 6,666.

What happens if a woman is more than 12 weeks pregnant but does have a reason like fatal foetal abnormality or risk to her life or health? Well, fatal foetal abnormality comes into the realm of obstetrician care and the obstetricians in Ireland have been working through that pathway and so there is a legislative pathway for women to access care in that regard.

You see that the number of women accessing care under Section 9 of the legislation, for example, where there'd be a risk to the health or a risk to the life of the woman, and that's been used much less frequently. I think there's only perhaps 21 women who have access to care under that section of the legislation and to me that suggests, and certainly as a provider on the ground, I find that the pathway in terms of accessing abortion care in that mechanism is not clear to providers. So that is something that certainly needs to be worked upon because providers are meeting women

who are perhaps over 12 weeks gestation there is not a situation there's a fatal fetal abnormality perhaps there isn't a risk to her life but perhaps she has a mental illness and there is a significant risk to her health and my personal experience and the experience of GP providers within the start group is that for the most part those women end up travelling to the UK and to the Netherlands because of the fact that they do not wish to delay their care any further by embarking on a pathway that's not clear for them. Emma, there was concern that it might be difficult to obtain an abortion in some areas, that it wouldn't be available across Ireland.

How much has that proved to be the case? It has proved to be quite difficult. So initially, the government came up against a lot of resistance from anti-abortion GPs who were saying that they wanted to conscientiously object to providing abortion care, which is fine, but they also wanted to object to referring a woman on to another GP, which would provide the service.

And I think we saw that initially in some parts of the country, maybe in a very small town where there might be one GP, a lot of anti-abortion activists were kind of putting pressure on GPs, misusing the National Crisis Pregnancy phone line to find the names of doctors who were providing abortion services. And as you know, so the early abortion care is kind of local GP led up to 12 weeks. Beyond that, it's in maternity hospitals. There was a few maternity hospitals where anti-abortion obstetricians were kind of saying they didn't want to provide abortion services. The former health minister was saying that entire hospitals absolutely could not opt out of providing a legal health service. But the government ran into trouble in some very small maternity hospitals, maybe along the west coast of Ireland, where there might be only three obstetricians.

If all three of those obstetricians conscientiously object to abortion, then abortion services effectively aren't available at that hospital. And that has been an ongoing issue where there seems to have been no progress either way. And I guess the government would kind of be conscious of getting into a row over that because, as we know, the principle of conscientious objection is a well-known, well-established medical protection for practitioners, which applies to a lot of services beyond abortion. So that's a very, very difficult one.

Ellen, there was an announcement that the government would look into setting up exclusion zones at hospitals to protect women from any harassment that might come. What's happened in that case? Yeah. So from January last year, as soon as abortion became available, a lot of Catholic protest groups were gathering outside maternity hospitals with small white coffins and rosary beads, which is extremely distressing, especially when you consider not everybody who's coming out of maternity hospital has good news. So the government immediately promised that it would bring in exclusion zones, but nothing has happened over the last year. And Leo Varadkar, the former Taoiseach, who is now the Deputy Prime Minister or Tóniste, had kind of indicated that there might be a problem with exclusion zone legislation infringing

on people's constitutional right to protest. So that is quite a difficult one. We've only just had a new government formed this week, five months after our general election. And next year, they're going to be required by law to review the Abortion Act. And something that will certainly come up is the failed promise to enact these exclusion zone laws, not just to protect women accessing termination services, but doctors

as well, who are facing a lot of pressure in certain parts of the country. So that could be quite a difficult one if there is a problem there with people's right to protest. And Trisha, just one final point. The last government promised better sex education and free contraception with the intention of trying to reduce unplanned pregnancy. What's happened to that proposal? That's a very good question, Jenny, and we've been

very disappointed that this has not come to fruition as yet. And we'd be very much we absolutely feel that this needs to be addressed urgently on the new programme for government. Providers are on the ground, are meeting with women who would like to opt for long-acting reversible contraception. And for whom, unfortunately, the upfront charge of that in terms of buying the device and inserting it is simply financially prohibitive. And we know that those longer-acting forms of contraception are much more reliable for women

much more convenient for women and it's very distressing when you're dealing with a woman who's had termination of pregnancy and unfortunately her choice with regard to contraception has been limited by her financial means and by her circumstances and So we'll certainly, within the START group, be pressing the new government to come forward and to provide universal contraception for women. Well, Dr Trish Horgan and Ellen Coyne, thank you both very much indeed for joining us this morning

and I'm sure we'll be in touch with you again to see how things progress. Thank you both. And now the next episode in our short series about women in gaming. It's generally assumed that the typical gamer is a teenager who spends far too much time alone in front of a screen in their bedroom.

But Liz Vickers is 74 and lives in Manby in Lincolnshire. Her good friend, Bridget Odleyn, is 75 from Louth, also in Lincolnshire. They've been playing together and separately for more than 20 years. Lotta Haig is also an avid gamer and went to talk to them. Liz first. I don't do online anymore now, but I used to do.

And you'd be talking to people, whatever, and they'd go, where do you live? And you can tell it's a child um i live so and so how old are you oh i said you shouldn't ask ladies their age how old are you and i'd say at the time probably 67 68 what and you're still playing games and you say hey and they'd be talking to somebody else next to you, this lady and then there was one little

boy, I was stuck in the office, this office area, wherever it was and he said you stay there and I'll come and find you so he came with this person whoever he was and I'm stood behind hiding because there was other

people that are shooting you or trying to get you and he said right follow me right we'll go this way and we'll go that way and i'll take you out the area and he got me out of the area yeah it isn't if you want to do whatever it was do this and i'm saying all right so i kept in touch with him quite a while and i used to find it because you come up you know you know, oh, he's in that group, because you get so many people playing in groups online. And you used to have a man that called you Miss Lizzie. Miss Lizzie from America,

and he used to talk and chat about, you want to get this game? It's really good. You've got to know quite a lot of people, really. Before YouTube and all that, I used to look at games for the local video shop and i used to do all these games and i used to go in and talk to them about it i used to say i'm really stuck at such and such a place and they used to help me out and then they passed my

name on to other people oh you want to ring this? She's done that and she'll tell you. And my husband used to pick the phone up and he'd say, oh my God, it's for the Games Guru. And I used to add loads of people, ring me up to ask how to get out of this, that and the other place. Didn't I? You did. That's good.

Do you stay in touch with a lot of those people? Do you still chat? Yeah, we'd say what we've done in the game and whether we've liked that one or not or and now you've even got your husband hooked on well he got hooked because we took the game for me to play when we went to Lanzarote for six weeks we go away in the winter and uh he kept saying to me do this do that and i said look i'm playing my game if you want a game i'll set you up a save of your own and he did and he couldn't go keep off it and then he took over well i noticed him today when i arrived he sat down and started playing zelda yeah it was really lovely you know even about the people that meet each other online. You do stay in touch because you've got a common interest.

When did you start playing together? 1999, I believe. I played before that. You were playing before? Yeah. I was playing when the very first Mario came out, Super Mario World. I started playing on my son's and he wouldn't let me have a go. And I was obsessed by it.

So for that Christmas, my husband bought me one. I was never off it. I was lost then. I was a gamer. Then my son came up from London for Christmas and he brought his ps1 with him and he put it on in our little front room and I went can you move her can you make a jump and with that I told Bridget and I think Bridget got one before me didn't you in the end I didn I didn't. Was it before? I played on yours first, and if you remember, it had those purple save points.

Oh, the diamonds, yes. And you were in a bad place, and I saved over your save, so you have to do it all again. Oh, that's right, yeah. And I got one straight after that. Yeah, it was just us. I must have got mine. I thought, oh, no, I've got to have a go at that. I got mine first. That yeah it was just us I must have got mine I thought oh no I've got to have a go at that

I got mine first that was really good what was that? that was that was the very first Tomb Raider Tomb Raider the very first Tomb Raider

yeah clonk clonk in the snow yes you're very wooden we were so fascinated well I was just fascinated I'd never seen anything like it when I put it on now

and look at it, you think, crikey, it was so wooden. So what was it about Tomb Raider that you'd never seen before? Well, I just never... Characters moving like that. They could jump and they weren't linear because mostly it had been things like Crash Bandicoot and things that were just platform games.

Yeah, cartoons. This was an open world and you could run about everywhere and you could jump and you could climb. It was difficult and fascinating as well. There was much more gameplay in them, much more puzzles. Oh yeah, puzzles. I mean, the puzzles now are... Easy. Whereas before, we used to be stuck for hours trying to find our way out or find these things. I spent days in one particular area

because I couldn't find a way out. I couldn't do a puzzle. No. And I've been days in it. This was before you could go on the internet. We try not to use youtube no when you your first playthrough we try and do that without still to this day still to this day i don't go on youtube no if i can't do it i'll suffer for a long time yeah Yeah, me too. I've laid in bed at night and suddenly thought, oh my God, I think I know how to do it.

I've jumped out of bed and switched it on and... Yes! Why didn't we do that before? Why didn't I think of that before? But a lot of people still think that we're a bit mad. That you're a bit mad. Yeah, because we're... You're a bit eccentric. What on're a bit mad. Yeah, because we're eccentric.

What on earth do you play those things for? Because they're good, they're entertaining. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. You do different things. It uses your brain, if you've got one of them or... If you've got a brain. If you've got one.

Kids have a little bit of a brain to get out of some of the challenges don't you yeah how often do you get together to play whenever we can yeah there's no set time there's no set time it depends what game we've got if we've got a new one and we're both both into it which happened a lot earlier on. We've digressed now. We'll go to each other's houses and play. Yeah, Bridget's going, look, quick, quick, left, left, on the left, quick. Where, where? Have you, either of you played with kids or nieces or nephews or? Oh, absolutely. You have more than me, haven't you? Yeah me yeah i have i've got lots of grandchildren and i've played with how many how many grandchildren have you got uh 10 and one

great-grandchild and i've played with most of them and my own children they love it they they can't wait to get around to grandma's to play mind you as they've grown up they've gone on to fifa and things like that so i don't play fifa and that but we've got a little one now she's into zelda she's six and she can't wait to get around here we've got a special save for her just her game a lot of our friends look at us as if we're crackers. Yeah, and they say, get a life. Except Sue. I've got loads of lives. I'm a gamer. My friend Sue, she likes games, but she does The Sims

and things like that. But apart from that, Sue, there's nobody else that we, of our age, rather, I said, they just don't... What do you play them for? Because it's good. It relaxes me i can forget the outside world i think it's also good for your coordination

going to get all the buttons and everything no i love it i won't be without my games consoles british odlin and liz vickers and next week we'll be talking more about women in gaming everything from the history of games on your computer, video and phone to the role women play in the industry and we'd love to hear from you if you're a gamer, what games do you like? how do they make you feel? and how do you actually play?

now still to come in today's programme gender equality in the theatre. A group of women write to the Secretary of State asking that plans for cultural renewal pay close attention to women in the business as well as to men. And the serial, the third episode of Six Suspects.

Now earlier in the week you may have missed a discussion about four single mothers supported by Gingerbread who've launched legal proceedings against the government saying they're being failed by the child maintenance system. And NICE is reviewing NHS policy on puberty blockers. What medical concerns are there about their use? If you missed the live programme, all you need to do is catch up.

You download the BBC Sounds app and look for Woman's Hour. Now, in Amanda Craig's new novel, The Golden Rule, her ninth, she draws on two very well-known stories. In Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on the Train, two men agree to commit murder. One wants rid of his wife, the other his father. In Amanda's novel, it's two women in the throes of difficult divorces who want to do away with their husbands. The second inspiration is Beauty and the Beast. Here, Hannah, a single parent who lives in a run-down flat

and gets by doing cleaning jobs, meets elegant, well-off Ginny on a train to Cornwall where Hannah's mother is dying. It's Ginny's idea that they should kill each other's husbands. I hate him. My divorce is taking forever. I wish he were dead. So much simpler to be a widow. Hannah felt a violent lurch as if the train had suddenly switched tracks. Yes, I think every woman in our situation feels that. I'd kill mine if I thought I could get away with it, wouldn't you?

Hannah gave an ironic laugh. Yes, probably. Ginny sighed. It's such a relief to see it, isn't it? I've thought about it, Hannah said. The words almost burst out of her, over and over and over. It's almost the only thing I think about some days. All at once the train thundered into the first of the series of tunnels before Exeter. The air became brick and the noise

deafening. Their reflections shone dimly in the black glass, a parallel world of darkness and shadow. Ginny leant forward, her eyes bright and mouthed, why don't we then? Amanda, where did the idea that being a widow might be preferable to being a divorcee come from? Well, it came very much from life, I'm afraid. I should emphasise I'm in a very happy marriage myself, but a number of my close women friends, when they turned 50, discovered to their horror that they'd been being cheated on and their lives fell apart.

And I kept having these conversations in which they would burst into tears describing their sufferings and say, it would be so much easier to be a widow. And the third time I heard this, I thought, my God, I must write a novel about this. And from that to the strangers on a train idea but with women was a very short step and then thinking about trains the train journey that i know best is the paddington to penzance train because i have a home in in devon and it all just grew out of that but why cornwall and obviously throughout the novel deep concerns about unemployment and the influx of wealthy second homeowners because Devon is

where you live not Cornwall. Yes but I'm five miles from the Cornish border and in the very poorest bit of Devon, North Devon, which is not at all dissimilar although the two counties are different, obviously. I think it's because, as with the land, I'm very intrigued by why one of the poorest areas in Britain voted to leave the EU,

although they desperately needed the money from that. And one of the things that I keep writing about as a so-called state of the nation novelist is this growing gulf between rich and poor and country and city, which does concern me very much. So although this novel can be read, I hope, as an enjoyable thriller and a drama, there are very serious things underneath that I want to bring to people's consciousness. One of the novelists I'm often compared to very flatteringly is Dickens, who did the same kind of thing. The two women are from very different backgrounds and I think you've actually said that your aim is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. What exactly do you mean by that? Well what I mean is that I think most people move between the two

certainly as far as feeling afflicted, particularly in the present time. And I think it is one of the things that fiction, particularly contemporary fiction, can do, which is to give you comfort, but also to make you slightly uncomfortable about the status quo. You were very keen to mention that you are in a happy marriage so you are not one of these women who would quite like to murder her husband

but they do seem to be some elements of you in the novel Hannah has a degree and worked in advertising and has to fall back on being a cleaner when she becomes a single parent from where did you gain knowledge of what it's like to clean other people's houses? Oh, absolutely from real life. I did English at Cambridge. I got one of those nice-sounding graduate trainee jobs in an advertising agency purely by chance

because I'd been reading Dorothy L Sayers' Murder Must Advertise, thought it sounded fun, and encountered just the most horrific levels of Weinstein-type sexual predation and bullying, and as a result of which I left. And, you know, I then, I didn't exactly have a nervous breakdown, but I was really shattered by this experience. And I thought, what on earth can I do? I knew I wanted to write all my life.

I knew I wanted to write, but I wanted to keep my brain free. And so I did cleaning. You know, I'd done cleaning jobs as a student before. And, you know, it was a very mixed experience. You know, I put a lot of it into The Golden Rule, because I think one of the things that perhaps is missing from a lot of modern fiction is this experience of doing really hard, physical, boring, humiliating work. I think it's something that an awful lot of women experience in their life. It's also very common, of course, with arts graduates

because it's harder for us to get jobs. And I always thought it would be an interesting thing to use, but it wasn't until this novel the golden rule that i could see how to use it that there was a real question in my mind as i read this does amanda fear the sea because there's a child who has drowned in the sea and there's a horrific scene, oh my goodness, where Hannah and her daughter are captured in a cave as the tide comes in. And I got really scared reading that bit. Good, good.

It took me a long time to write that scene. Are you frightened of the sea? I both love and fear it. It's an elemental force. And I think that particularly the English seas with their huge tides, so unlike the Mediterranean that I grew up with, because I grew up in Italy, are wonderful and terrifying. And in a way, they're a kind of metaphor, I suppose, for passion. So coming to terms with that and learning to both love and respect and fear, what passion can bring, I suppose, is the sea.

It's a very traditional metaphor. As we've been discussing gaming and women and gaming over the past week, it's interesting, the character of Ginny's husband, Stan, is a creator of computer games. Why were you keen to bring that into the plot when Hannah just goes on and on about reading and how computer games simply cannot compare? Well, I think it's a really interesting contemporary debate and it's one that, as a mother with a son who's very into gaming, I had many, many times because like a lot of parents, I was worried that my son wasn't reading enough. that he is, kept kind of arguing back and saying some of the things that Stan said. So I got quite interested in gaming.

And I now do think that it is a genuine art form. It's still fairly much in its infancy. But if you are interested in plot and narrative, as I am, it's simply amazing. Because it's not linear, as your previous speaker said. Amanda Craig, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. And I will just repeat the title is The Golden Rule. Thank you very much. Now, a group of leading women in the theatre have sent an open letter to Oliver Dowden,

the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, asking that the task force responsible for cultural renewal following the pandemic will pay attention to the principle of gender equality. Two of the signatories are Maureen Beattie, President of the Actors' Union Equity, and Jennifer Tuckett, Director of University Women in the Arts

and Literary Director of Sphinx Theatre. Jennifer, why did you feel it was necessary to write to the Secretary of State? And how did you express your concerns in the letter? So the December group was set up last year to campaign for gender equality in theatre. And it's made up of leading women in theatre. So there's myself, there's Maureen. Other members include Winston Pinnock, who was the first black female playwright to be produced at the National Theatre. Polly Kemp, the founder of Era 5050, which is equal representations for actresses. Sue Parrish, the artistic director of Sphinx Theatre Company.

And as part of this, I completed last year a year-long research project on women in theatre with Sphinx Theatre, which I did at the University of Cambridge as part of my other role as an academic. And just before the pandemic hit, we held a major women in theatre forum, which we ran in partnership with Equity and the Writers Guild and Stage Directors UK, which I'm currently finishing the research report on. And the reason we wanted to write to Oliver Dowden as part of this work is when we saw the announcement about the Cultural Renewal Task Force, which has the responsibility for renewing and reopening the cultural sector after the pandemic, what really worried us was that that task force isn't gender balanced. It's only 33 percent female and 0 percent of the leadership roles are female.

And the reason we were concerned about that is a lot of research has shown that a gender equal team is much more likely to make decisions which work for all genders and maureen what about you why were you worried that gender equality wouldn't necessarily be considered um well because i'm a woman um and just it's my lived experience um this is just something that's been going on forever. You know, Sue Parrish that Jennifer mentioned earlier, who was very much at the core of this group that was put together to talk to the Arts Council England about their and feed into their 10-year strategy,

Let's Create. You know, she's been fighting for women's rights since she was out of nappies, just out of nappies. So this is, and as the president of, and I just wanted to say that equity is not just actors. Of course, we represent people in all aspects of the entertainment industry. We have stage managers, choreographers, directors,

dancers, singers, circus performers. I could go on. Just wanted to make that clear. For me, there just isn't the rigour to really tackle this. We had three meetings with Arts Council England and there was a lot of nodding and smiling, nodding and smiling. And when they finally came out with the written strategy, the published strategy, there was barely a mention of gender parity. We are more than,

we're certainly half of the population. We were mentioned in the preamble and we were mentioned in the wash up at the end, but the bulk of the document did not mention gender parity. So that was just so depressing and tiring. I mean, we're just exhausted, aren't we? Women, we're exhausted. But Maureen, what impact has the lockdown had on your members? Because surely both men and women have been hit equally terribly hard. Yes, indeed, that is true. But it remains true that women are more likely to be in part-time or freelance roles,

which makes them more vulnerable. They are far more likely still to be the people who are the carers, be it of children, elderly relatives. The terrible spike in domestic violence impacts on women definitely more than it does on men. And of course, the two professions that there are more women than men in are education and health, both of which have involved workers placing themselves at risk during the pandemic. So it impacts on the women in our industry as it impacts on the women across the world, really.

Jennifer, how have you found this country as it looks towards putting up the task force and trying to find a way of bringing everything back? How does this country compare to other task forces around the world? I think there's a very similar situation around the world. But I think where we're behind is that at the moment, we're not doing anything to address it. So if you look at in Singapore, the Emerging Stronger Task Force there has only two women out of its 17 members. There were no women included in Italy's 20 member technical science committee, which was advising the government. But Italy's now addressed that. And the US has only two in its 22 strong White House coronavirus task force. So I think it's a situation being repeated around the world. But I think what concerns us is that Oliver Dowden hasn't replied to our open letter yet.

And why we wrote the open letter was in the announcement about the cultural renewal task force in the UK. Oliver Dowden was quoted as saying, the task force is made up of some of the brightest and best from the cultural, sporting and tech worlds. Experts in their field, they'll be instrumental in identifying creative ways to get these sectors up and running again. So I think the question really is about why aren't women 50 percent of that task force? And I think that's about who we view as experts. You know, I think that's the other particularly concerning thing about the omission of a gender-balanced task force in the UK. Maureen, given that you haven't had a response yet to your letter,

we have had a comment from a spokesperson in the department who says we're completely committed to ensuring a diverse and inclusive cultural sector and have been speaking with women from a broad range of cultural organisations, as well as freelancers and self-employed workers to help understand the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the industry. So how hopeful are you that the task force will pay attention to your concerns? Not at all. I'm not remotely hopeful. We need to be at that table. The General Secretary of my union is a woman. Fantastic. Christine Payne.

We did everything we could to get her onto that task force. It's a shoo-in as far as I'm concerned and they weren't interested. She is part of a group which is advising the task force, but that's a periphery. That's on the periphery.

It's not in the mix and that's what we need. I was talking to Maureen Beattie and Jennifer Tuckett. Lots of response from you on the question of gaming. Sarah Kate said, I'm really not into gaming at all, but if these women like it, then good for them the cheek of people telling them to get a life also on Twitter Liz said oh my god listen to these women talk about gaming is the best thing ever gaming gets brushed aside is a waste of time but these ladies are proof it keeps you young on email Oliver said I just wanted to say I listened to the show this morning

and it was incredible listening to the older ladies talking about the gaming experience. Especially I liked the point that was made by one of them where one of their friends said, you must be crackers, get a life. Why are you playing all these games? To which she replied, I've got loads of lives. I'm a gamer.

And Zoe also in an email said I'm a 35 year old woman and gamer my sisters and I had game boys as kids and I used to watch my stepsister play Tomb Raider I was always too scared to play my stepmom still plays it and we have family sessions when I visit with the kids, so three generations of us. I've played various types since my teens, like Tomb Raider or Sims or Final Fantasy, but during lockdown was staying with my boyfriend who plays Call of Duty. I used to dislike the first-person shooting, it stressed me out. But now I've got my own profile and I'm hooked. I've often been told that I don't seem like a gamer. But really, what's a gamer meant to look

like? Great to hear about these women gamers. We are not unicorns. And then from Geronimo on Twitter about women in gaming. Roughly 15 minutes in if you catch it on Catch Up or BBC Sounds. The stereotypical view of a gamer is a socially isolated teenager who could be doing something better with their time. Jenny, I used to sneak into my son's bedroom

for a few quick games of Sonic the Hedgehog when there was nobody around. Now do join me tomorrow when I'll be talking to Professor Linda Scott. She's the author of The XX Economy. She'll explain how empowering women economically could resolve gender inequality and address many of humankind's most pressing problems and the domestic abuse bill 2020 i'll be talking to nicole jacobs the first domestic abuse commissioner for england and wales and she'll be explaining why she's supporting the centre for women's justice asking for an amendment to the bill to create a freestanding offence of non-fatal

strangulation or asphyxiation. That's tomorrow. Join me if you can. Three minutes past ten. Until then, bye bye. Hi, I'm Amol Rajan and I want to tell you about a new podcast from the BBC. It's called Rethink. The podcast is all about the enormous opportunity we have to change what the future looks like after the coronavirus pandemic. We've asked leading thinkers from around the world to give us their three minute audio essay on the kind of change they want to see, covering issues such as travel, healthcare, homelessness, democracy and humility. What kind of change can we expect? Will it be change for the better?

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