Woman's Hour - Women and music in 2023, Nicole Jacobs, Women in farming

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Female artists dominated the 2023 music scene. New figures from the British Phonographic Institute reveal that Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Raye, Dua Lipa, Ellie Goulding and many more - spent a record-breaking 31 weeks in the number one spot in the UK Singles Chart. But that’s not all... they had seven of the top 10 singles and even took the top vinyl album spot. Why was 2023 so good for female artists? And will it continue? We ask global music business lecturer and podcaster, Karlyn King, and music journalist Jo Kendall.Domestic Abuse Commissioner Nicole Jacobs says new Government plans to get rid of shorter jail sentences in England and Wales put women at risk. The new sentencing bill currently making its way through Parliament aims to give what are known as suspended sentences where people may have instead been given jail terms of 12 months or less. Estimates from the Office for National Statistics show around 2.4 million people - 1.7 million of those being women - suffered from domestic abuse in the year to March 2022.We're a few days into the new year - and maybe you're trying to start some new healthy habits, or even hygiene habits. And for some that's desperately needed - a new survey from the bathroom suppliers Showers to You shows that out of 2,200 UK residents, almost one in ten only wash their towels twice a year. 5% of men have admitted to washing towels once a year - compared to 1% of women. Professor Sally Bloomfield from the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene explains what we should be doing to protect ourselves and others.Is farming getting easier for women? New research out today suggests that women working in agriculture are finding life worse now than they did 10 years ago. This comes as more women are showing an interest in pursuing farming as a career – with some agricultural colleges enrolling record numbers of girls onto their courses. Claire McDonnell speaks to Emily Norton, a female farmer and agricultural commentator, as well as Bridgette Baker, a young farmer who recently graduated, to find out their experiences in farming.Women’s Health magazine is an iconic brand in the UK and read globally by millions of people monthly. Women’s Health Editor-in-Chief Claire Sanderson has just made history as the first woman globally to also be appointed Editor-in-Chief of Men's Health. Claire joins Woman’s Hour to discuss what it means to be a woman editing a men’s magazine, whether there is a crossover with what women and men are reading and, in an age where we’re worried about body image, are these magazines useful?Presenter: Clare McDonnell Producer: Kirsty Starkey Studio Manager: Duncan Hannant

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, this is Claire Macdonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Is 2024 set to be the year when women dominate the music industry? Today, Last Dinner Party, an all-female band who met at uni, have been crowned Radio 1 Sound of 2024. This hot on the heels of the news that in 2023, female acts spent a record-breaking 31 weeks at number one, and seven out of the top 10 biggest UK singles last year were by women. But is this really a sign of meaningful progress for women in the industry, or is it just already established acts consolidating their position at the top? What is it really like if you're a woman trying to make your way in music? We'll talk about

that next. Swapping out jail terms of 12 months or less for suspended sentences is all about easing the strain on overcrowded prisons. However, will it put more women in danger? Nicole Jacobs is the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. She thinks it will put victims of domestic violence at greater risk. She'll be joining us live. Has working in farming become easier for women over the past decade? Well, no, according to a report out today from Farmers Weekly, which suggests many aspects of working life are actually worse for women now than they were 10 years ago. We're going to be hearing from two women who both ended up in

farming, but against the expectation of their families, and both families were farmers. We'll also talk to Claire Sanderson, who has just made history as the first woman globally to be appointed editor-in-chief of Men's Health. And here's the hot topic of the day. How often do you wash your towels? Well, one in 10 Britons only wash their towels twice a year. Yes, twice a year. That figure is even worse when only men are taken into consideration. So tell me, are you a regular washer?

Is it the smell, the visual appearance that drives you to the washing machine? We'll be talking to a professor who will give us the lowdown on why not washing your towels regularly could be bad for your health. Here is how you get in touch. You can text the programme with all your towel tails 84844. Texts are going to be charged at your standard message rate. On social media, we are at BBC Woman's Hour. You can email us through the website as well,

or you can send us a WhatsApp message or voice note using the number 03700 100 444. Look forward to hearing from you this morning. Now, the BBC Sound of 2024 was revealed this morning to be the last dinner party, which continues a female domination of the music scene right now. Women ruled the 2023 music charts, a record-breaking 31 weeks at number one. That's according to the British phonographic industry. That is the most weeks spent at number one. That's according to the British phonographic industry. That is the most weeks spent at number one by women since the countdown launched back in 1952.

Seven out of the top 10 biggest UK singles in 2023 were by women. Female artists accounted for almost 50% of all songs that reached the top 10 and they've also been boosted by the vinyl market as well with Taylor Swift's 1989 Taylor's version the best selling vinyl album of last year so why was 2023 so good for female artists and as I said earlier those markers are sign of meaningful progress for women in the industry with me is a global music business lecturer and podcaster Carolyn King, and music journalist and Prog Magazine associate editor Jo Kendall. To answer that question and many others, welcome both of you. Hi, hello. Good morning. Great to have you. Great to have you both on the programme.

Jo, let's start with you. What is it? Why are we seeing this breakthrough right now for women actually getting over the line and getting to the top of those charts in so many more ways than they have done before? I feel that there's a proven appetite for it and it has been built for quite a while. Of course, Madonna is our historic kind of pioneer here. But definitely Taylor has put the work, people like Taylor and Lana, Olivia Rodrigo is the newest person in this giant list, have been putting this work in. There's definitely a market and appeal for women's voices chipping away, maybe at the patriarchy somehow. But the fandom has also very much gone for this. And they're also supporting these artists who have worked very very hard over years and years i mean i mean looking at taylor she has had the most incredible ride

um artistically but also she's been through the mill professionally and this is the reason why i think khan will probably go into the vinyl side of it her re-recording her albums and them getting pushed in to the charts again and taking all those spaces. But aside from that, this music is just brilliant. The voices are diverse and it's representative of the pop listeners today. Colin, it is indicative, isn't it, of the industry getting behind women because that is what the people want to buy. And we just played a flavour there, but do you think that's why

we're hearing such a diversity of sound as well there's serious investment going on here absolutely I mean there is young girls on YouTube right now who've spent ten thousand pounds on Taylor Swift vinyl and all the different iterations that she's released I mean in terms from a business point of view it's absolutely gold and also within her vinyl she puts pre-sales for her shows so it's extremely clever and yeah people want that token as a token of participation it makes them feel closer to the artist and in many ways we we do feel closer to the artist thanks to social media however there's still that internet barrier between us but having a physical record for example makes it really creates this ideology of closeness to the artist and the artistic intention

yes that is huge at the moment I'm going to get in because I know you've done some interesting research on that so I just want to put this back to you Jo as you mentioned we've got these mega artists Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo. We've also got, you know, artists coming through like SZA, Ray, Libby Anka, Black Pantheress. So what does that tell us about the music scene for women and who is now able to break through? People in a way that they couldn't before? Yeah, definitely. And you're seeing independent labels sort of blowing the doors open too. So a really interesting thing is postmodernism, which means that anyone can be making any music at any time

and you're getting these incredible males. And you're getting, because of women opening the doors for other women and helping women, you're getting unexpected and surprising artists coming through that wouldn't normally get any sunlight. And there's got a lot of really interesting black creators female black creators coming through as well in all sorts of genres that aside from what they might be stereotypically aligned with and um there's again there's definitely an appetite for that and it inspires new creators so women with guitars uh maybe rock

has got a little bit more work to do maybe prog which is the world i maybe rock has got a little bit more work to do. Maybe prog, which is the world I come from, has got a little bit more work to do. But just even a couple of years ago, and I think we're seeing the fruits of it now, that Fender Guitars did a study and they found that the highest number of people acquiring their electric guitars to make music at home were women. And the Last Dinner Party, being a case in point, they've just won this BBC Sound of poll today. They're proper composers and they're proper players as well. That's got to be great for a lot of young women watching that to maybe emulate some point down the line. Definitely, because we've got so many incredible artists

in their bedrooms or starting to make bands. Bands seem to be coming back. We're not really seeing that so much in the charts at the moment. There's a lot of solo artists and a lot of features, but they're still breaking through. But bands seem to be coming back. Wet Leg, I think, might be instrumental in pushing this through recently. They were the band, the Brits winners the band uh still a band as you're

and i think that that they're the bands the female bands now are building on wet leg and having that kind of attitude essence quirkiness personality it's very relatable yeah it certainly is and they're going their own way being very idiosyncratic before i talk to carlin about a vinyl specifically joe i want to ask you because we are a month out from Brit nominations. And of course, there were no women in Artist of the Year last year. The Brits' solution to that is to widen the category. But still, we saw Glastonbury, no female headliners. From a purely commercial point of view, I mean, what is your thinking about why these women still aren't getting booked if all the charts show that that's what people want to listen to

and that's what people want to buy? I mean, to be honest, I don't have any answers for that. And I don't think it's just general misogyny, but I do think there's a sort of reliance, a laziness on the heritage artists that are male. And they feel that the audiences want that too and i think that now we're seeing what sales are like for and also streaming streaming figures for people i think this is going to change the landscape um there's a uh there's a person out

there unfortunately i've forgotten her name she's absolutely brilliant every year she takes the um concert posters and festival posters and she deletes all the male names on there and she keeps the women on there. And it's a real stark reminder of how few people get books. And that is always that's another little nudge in the ribs to people to go, come on, let's level up. But also with merit. Absolutely. But, you know, these if you want to make money, it would seem in the festival circuit in 2024 book women carlin you've done some really fascinating research historical research on vinyl um going back to the 40s through to the 60s on how it was marketed to men and marketed to women because women have already always been

interested in vinyl haven't they yes absolutely um but what we found is that the marketing and advertising has typically obscured women and sometimes actually mocked them in terms of their interests. So the high fidelity press of the 1940s and 50s, for example, would show what we would now call memes, cartoons of, you know, a woman pulling her husband into like a hat shop while the man is trying to pull her into a vinyl shop and so it was this narrative that you know women don't appreciate records they don't even appreciate music which we know is not the case um so that historical cultural context has been embedded and it's made the the vinyl record space quite inaccessible at times for women yes that's what i found yeah but i think that the research i was looking at was for Cosmo Vanity Fair and House Beautiful there was vinyl mail order for women wasn't there that's right so it's always

been a thing so women could sign up to these vinyl record clubs and receive a record a month um a sort of curational service um but yeah they've been obscured from the historical narrative around vinyl but that's completely changing now. More women than ever run their own record stores and are really being heard in this space. Do you find it, I mean, maybe record stores, and it's definitely changing as Jo was pointing out, that women are buying more, and you yourself have been pointing out,

young women on social media are spending an awful lot of money just to own um those vinyl recordings of taylor swift vinyl stores sort of the gyms of 2024 where women feel a lot more empowered to be in there and more comfortable in there yes i really hope so and i love that analogy it's like a gym where they go to work hard. And yes, absolutely, because the more modern record store has had to diversify. So gone is the kind of snobbery that has been typically in place. And now we've got much more diversification in terms of what they sell. And there's also the kind of added element of it often being like coffee shops, too,

which dilutes the power dynamic between the staff and the consumer and the customer um and much of the record stores that I examined pointed that out that the most important thing is that the customer pays their wages so if they're not going to be made to feel welcome in the store really they shouldn't be in business just final word that then to you Jo that's that's really interesting what Carlin was saying there do you think there needs to be a kind of a turnaround of the mindset on every aspect of the music industry whether you're running a record store or whether you're looking to put somebody on in your club or develop a new artist there needs to be a different mindset

and i guess the only way that that really happens is when you get more women involved in making those decisions yeah absolutely and in fact going back to record shops, when I was younger, I was absolutely desperate to work in a record shop and I couldn't get through the door for several reasons. But I ended up working at three secondhand ones, which I loved. That was my musical education. But they were weird record stores, weird quirky secondhand places. And, you know, just by having someone like me visible there,

I think we need the visibility of women in these places and we need, you know, things to be for everyone, independence a lot of taking it into your own hands and and uh breaking molds going on which is also um happening because of the internet brilliant to talk to both of you uh thank you so much it's going to be a very interesting year for women in music on whatever level you heard the voice there of joe kendall who is a music journalist and prog Magazine associate editor. And we also heard from lecturer and podcaster Carlyn King. If you are in the industry or trying to break in or have a view, do text me 84844. Many of you have been already on towels. We're going to be talking about towels and how regularly you should wash them.

There's a rather shocking survey out today to say the average is twice a year in some cases, and it goes down if you're a man. Heather Morning in Halberton in Mid Devon says, my hand towels get changed twice a week, at least. Tea towels, dishcloths every day, bath towels every week. They are washed in hot water with no softener. It spoils absorbency. Towels get covered with skin cells. They need regular washing. Some of mine are 40 years old and going strong. Good on you, Heather. And Alexandra says, good morning and a happy new year. Oh my goodness. Once or twice a year to wash towels. Once a week for us, says Alexandra. How often do you watch your towels?

We'll be talking about it later. 84844. Do get in touch with your stories. Many of you will get to as many texts as we can. Now, my next guest says new government plans to get rid of shorter jail sentences in England and Wales will put women at risk. Nicole Jacobs is the domestic abuse Abuse Commissioner and that's an independent watchdog advocating for victims of domestic abuse. The new sentencing bill currently making its way through Parliament aims to give what are known as suspended sentences where people may have those instead of being given jail terms of 12 months or less. Now we previously discussed how these reforms could benefit female prisoners

who are often serving short sentences for crimes such as shoplifting or drug-related addiction offences. Estimates from the Home Office for National Statistics show around 2.4 million people, 1.7 million of those being women, suffered from domestic abuse in the year to March 2022. I'm delighted to say Nicole joins me in the studio. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you. Can you lay out then for us why you think this plan will put women at risk? Well, I'm glad you gave that context about the previous coverage about this. And I do agree. I think for female

offenders, for example, and shorter sentences and many other examples could be wholly appropriate. But what this bill is doing is it's saying for all short sentences, there will be this presumption. And what that does is it then brings into focus many, many victims of domestic abuse whose perpetrators are now subject to a shorter or a presumption against a short sentence. And to put that into a little bit further context, we know that only one in five victims of domestic abuse will ever report to the police. 4% of them will receive a conviction for all of that effort. This is a small but significant number of people. And my problem with this is very much the hurdles that the government is not addressing yet. Okay, I just wanted to just put this to you because an exemption has already been added to this bill after concern was raised by various advocacy groups like yourself. And that exemption would apply to cases where individuals could be shown to pose a significant risk of causing psychological or physical harm to someone.

Why doesn't that go far enough? That's the caveat they put in. That's right. Well, they've put in that caveat and one other, which is about a breach of suspended sentence orders or community orders. So the problem with both of those is that a breach of an order, the orders they've specified, again, that's only applicable to that very small 4% that might have ever received a conviction in the past, not the thousands of perpetrators of domestic abuse who have restraining orders, orders of protection. What about those breaches? So that's a concern and needs to be addressed.

The second is about how a judge or a magistrate is assessing that risk. So the government is putting a huge amount of faith into the understanding that will be presented at court. And in actuality, the way judges and magistrates understand about risk is what probation presents to them in the form of a pre-sentence report. We know from the National Audit Office that those pre-sentence reports are decreasing. The capacity of probation to be able to put this information in front of the judge and magistrate to make sure that this exemption doesn't apply, it's totally unrealistic at this point.

And then a last hurdle, even if we address those two, is that you would then be having to manage these perpetrators in the community. So community sentences rather than the custodial sentence. And again, we know from the Inspectorate of Probation that probation is not at a capacity right now to adequately address and supervise perpetrators of domestic abuse in the community. Even just in the last year, 2023, the Inspectorate report said probation was not assessing domestic abuse risk sufficiently. And 45% of the time, not able to offer perpetrators the kind of interventions that they needed to address their offending behaviour. So lots of hurdles here. So it's an investment issue, which is at play here as well.

And I guess the Ministry of Justice, it's a balancing act, isn't it? It's about funding and how far it will go. The figures from the Ministry of Justice say from the end of December, they show prisons are just 1700 spaces away from full capacity. The government estimates the prison population will increase to 94,400 by March next year. This is what they're dealing with, another major issue of prison overcrowding. So it has to be balanced out somewhere in the system. Why not here? Well, I would say number one, they've known about this overcrowding for and I don't think domestic abuse victims should have to suffer from a lack of poor planning, frankly. And also, you know, the context of domestic abuse in these shorter sentences. I think what we have to understand is that because these are shorter sentences doesn't mean that these crimes are of less significance to the victim.

You know, usually someone who ends up in court based on a domestic abuse related crime risk. And for victims of domestic abuse, who've really hung in there through this criminal justice process, which is arduous and has many, many challenges for them, we need the court to take those sentencing decisions as seriously as they possibly can, and really understand that some of the justice for the victim is holding that perpetrator to account. And also making sure that there's some respite, perhaps even in the form of a short sentence to allow for the victim to think about what they do next. I'm not one of these commissioners who says, you know, let's lock everyone up and throw away the key criminal justice response, you know, at all, you know, for all people. But we do have to have a system that works for the people who have entered into it and have asked the system for this kind of justice, have given

witness statements, have been willing to cooperate and work with the police and CPS about these things. Victims of domestic abuse really need that kind of justice and that respect in the system. And would it not be better then, if it is 12 months or less, for that perpetrator, the person who's found guilty, instead of going into an overcrowded prison and not getting the right help, the right rehabilitative

help that they need to actually be in the community, be supervised and get the proper help. Because you're not really dealing with a problem if you lock somebody up and don't address it. I know, you know, politically, I think we're looking towards the election so much, but we have these bills, you know, this sentencing bill, we have a victim and prisoners bill, we have a criminal justice bill, there's current work of the government right now that really impacts victims of domestic abuse. So in a way, you're exactly right, having this kind of discussion, serious discussion about the implementation of the ambition of the sentencing bill is important, and government must do that.

And we're in the mid-process of this bill, and we need to have government really step up, show up, and be determined to make sure that when they say they're protecting victims of domestic abuse within these provisions, how are they doing it? Where is the funding? How are they working with probation and others to make sure that this happens for victims? You still hope those changes can be made? Oh, absolutely. It's why I'm here today. We have these bills in process now.

There's a lot of work going on within government that we have to keep up with, you know, while people wait and I know are thinking about elections and changes in government and about potential changes. But we have work in government that's happening right now, which is really impacting victims. I wanted to get your views on research into Clare's law. This is the new law where you could do a background check on a potential partner who may have had a history of abuse. Now, even the former Justice Minister Robert Buckland has said there should be an urgent independent review of this disclosure scheme, saying the whole point of it is to increase public confidence, because this is down to recent reporting highlighting that more than half of requests for background checks on potential domestic abusers were rejected during a six month period from October 2021 to March 2022.

Why is that happening, do you think? Well, the NPCC, the National Police Chiefs Council, who brought together these figures, say when they're asked, well, potentially this is because there's not information to disclose. But that flies in the face of many other sources of information. So you have really prominent solicitors who were covered in some of that reporting talking about clients they've worked with who've been told, well, you don't need this information because you've separated. Really not recognizing the fact that in domestic abuse, there could be reconciliation. There's always this back and forth.

The nature of domestic abuse is leaving, potentially returning. You have academics in this area talking about victims waiting months and months for these disclosures when really our 43 forces have quite a lot of variation in terms of the resource they're putting into these, you know, the process of these disclosures. So Robert Buckland is absolutely right to be concerned. I'm concerned. Of course, this is one tool we have, this isn't going to solve everything for everyone. But I have myself and know the family that is covered in a recent article in The Independent about this issue. And it really matters to people to understand what the previous history of offending could be that is unknown to the current victim. That will have a huge impact for people, for the victim to understand that,

then the people around the victim in thinking about how much risk this person presents. And of course, perpetrators are not honest about their background. They will not speak about it, or if they do, they'll minimize, they'll deny, they'll blame others for whatever people have heard about them. And so this is really, really important to get this right. It's something that the government has put in place and has put some effort into. But the problem is with this, and I guess, you know, a link back to the sentencing bill, this is all in the implementation, we can have really great ideas, things that are important to do, but we have to implement them correctly

for this to work for victims and survivors. Thank you so much for coming into the Women's Hour studio. We really appreciate you giving us your time. That's Nicole Jacobs, Domestic Abuse Commissioner, which is an independent watchdog advocating for victims of domestic abuse. As ever, do get in touch. If you'd like to give us your experience,

84844 is the text. Lots of you getting in touch on all manner of subjects already this morning. This text on music. I run a music venue in East London. Since starting, I've developed a collection of records. The problem with the industry right now is that too much money is being poured into the massive artists. But the big venues and the big venues as well. Not enough support for grassroots music venues,

meaning the artists of tomorrow aren't getting a look in. The government needs to introduce a levy on all stadium shows to support new music. And of course, women caught up in that as well. If you have a view, do get in touch. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service,

The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now. Me this morning here on Woman's Hour. This is a subject that has completely taken off on our social media platforms. We are just a few days into the new year and maybe you're trying to start some new healthy habits or even new healthy hygiene habits. And for some, that is desperately needed.

A new survey from the bathroom suppliers, Showers2You, shows that out of 2,200 UK residents, almost one in 10 only wash their towels once a year. 5% of men have admitted to washing towels that infrequently compared to 1% of women. Let's talk this through with Professor Sally Bloomfield from the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene. Welcome, Professor. Hello. It's great to have you here.

We've seen this survey. From a health standpoint, though, why is it important that we wash our towels regularly? What's in there? Well, the towels are coming into contact with our body all the time, so we can carry Staphylococcus aureus on our skin. It can cause skin infections. Traces of poo from our bowel could have E. coli in them and can cause urinary tract infections. Yeasts on our skin can cause thrush or whatever. Fungi on our feet can cause athlean's foot. So yes, they can carry all sorts of harmful organisms and move them from one person to another in our homes. Goodness me, you've got straight to it there.

How long can these viruses, and we thank you for that, how long can these viruses live on a towel then? Oh, it's very variable. So we have something called an infectious dose, which is the number of organisms that is required to infect you. And it's different from different organisms as they sit on our towels the organisms start dying off but still many of these organisms staff um fungi can survive well long enough in infectious doses for long periods of time don't ask me what period but long periods of time so it's really important so if anybody wanted to use the excuse, oh, well, I don't wash on that regularly because they eventually die off.

Some of them don't. No, they will decrease in numbers. And the trouble is if they do build up to very high numbers, you put them in the washing machine, particularly if you do it with other people's clothes. And the wash cycle just can't cope with reducing them back to a what I would call a safe level so you're just compounding the problem I'm not being hysterical here it is one of the things that should be part of our daily routine like you know washing our hands after we go to the toilet washing our hands before we handle raw food and clearing up after we've been preparing for raw chicken. It should be embedded as just part of our daily and weekly routine. And it's, you know, people who say, oh, I haven't done it for years. I haven't washed my towel for years, never got sick.

Well, it's like saying I haven't had a car accident for years, so I'm going to stop wearing a seat belt. It'll happen eventually, or it may have happened and you didn't even know that you'd given an infection to somebody else. So it's not a very good excuse. Well, here's one. One texter. I rarely wash the towels. Not dead yet. But also drying them inside in winter is a nightmare. So frequency increases in the summer. I blame the weather, which is a convenient scapegoat. But let's get into the details of how regularly and at what temperature. Well, I think it's about having a routine. So

once a week, you know, get up on a Sunday morning and bung them in the washing machine, because if you don't have a routine, you'll put it off and you won't do it. Temperature is important. We've moved to these new powders and products that can get your clothes clean at lower temperatures. Great. But what we've discovered is that clean doesn't necessarily mean to a safe level. And so when it comes to things that are in contact with your body, then you really should be washing either at 60 degrees or at 40 degrees with a bleach based powder product. So either a tablet or a powder. And if you look on the back of the pack, it says activated oxygen bleach. And it's very good that that's there because it ups the level of action of the laundry to produce this safe level. And so it really, I think, is quite important. Would you advocate not sharing towels as well? Have your own towels? Absolutely. That's the worst possible thing. Well, because

they're at their maximum viability, aren't they? So it's very important that everybody in the house has their own towel, their own bath towel and their own face cloth if they have one and their own toothbrush because that's a really great way to share. You're looking awfully scared. No. Your reaction, absolutely. And I'm thinking, oh, my goodness, I've been doing it wrong for years. I do have teenagers and their towels are kept very separate,

but you're saying don't share towels, not even with your significant other. No, well, it's difficult. We could get into intimacy here. You are quite intimate, hopefully, with your significant other, so it's slightly different. You've probably shared everything you've got with him, including your worldly goods. But yes, I mean even even with your significant other

i i carry staphylococcus aureus on my skin i have done for years and if i get a cut i have to be very careful because it's not harmful normally but if i know now that my husband carries it as well and i have to be very careful he had a nasty he had a wound on his skin and I could see that it was getting infected. And I had to say to the doctors, look, he needs a course of antibiotics and they took a swab and indeed it was. So it is important, but it's about being sensible. We all want to get hysterical about hygiene.

Yes. About routine. Just a couple of texts here. I'm a retired microbiologist. I live on my own, but all my towels and tea towels, just bear with me a second because I can't see that. It's on the screen in front of me. Basically, this person saying I wash them once a week, guest towels as well. Presumably, Professor, you're in agreement with that?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. OK. So to anybody listening to this who's thinking, you know, no, I'm not going to change my ways. I'm going to stay with my irregular towel washing. What would you say? Well, COVID has shown us that we just can't live in that sort of way because we live in very crowded worlds these days where we're all interacting each other in very closed spaces. And when something does happen, as with COVID, we were totally unprepared for it. And we ended up with a pandemic. We really have to take hygiene seriously.

But it's about being sensible. It's about having a routine, an acceptable routine that works with our lifestyle as well as works to protect us. And that's not about trying to get rid of germs in our home, which is what people were trying to do during COVID. I'm now disinfecting my home and deep cleaning it. It's about what we do at the moments that matter, like with our towels, with our chickens, with our hounds. Well, I'm looking at you in what looks like an incredibly clean

spick and span house, so I'd be happy to come and use it. I read that article and it said the toilet is the most important place to keep clean. Oh, no, it was the bathroom. But actually keeping it clean is what you do in your toilet,

what you do in your bathroom that's important. Because it's you with your actions that are spreading. Absolutely. It's been an education, Professor. Thank you so much for joining us. Sorry that it's fine we have to be practical and

we have to be honest professor sally bloomfield there from the international scientific forum on home hygiene keep your texts coming in 84844 plenty of you are on uh your towel etiquette in your home now let's move on Has working in farming become easier for women over the past decade? Well, apparently not. According to a new report out today, a survey of nearly 2,000 farmers carried out by Farmers Weekly suggests many aspects of working life actually worse for women now than they were 10 years ago. 60% of the women asked thought gender bias was holding them back from reaching their career goals and carrying out the type of work they wanted to do, as well as from having the influence on farms

to match their experience. Meanwhile, there are some indications that girls and young women are increasingly interested in pursuing a career in agriculture. Last month, Borders College in Scotland reported record numbers of girls enrolling onto farming courses. Delighted to say we can speak now to Emily Norton, a farmer and agricultural commentator, and also Bridget Baker, who is 23 years old and recently graduated from the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester.

Welcome, both of you. Good morning. Good morning. Hello. And you both have something in common. You come from farming families and have kind of quite similar experiences of getting into the industry. Emily, let's start with you. How long has farming been in your family? So my grandfather founded our farm back in 1947 and it's been through various changes and iterations since then. I'm currently farming with my parents on about 157 acres of land, which in farming terms is not very much. Wow, it sounds a lot to me. You didn't though,

it wasn't a natural given that you would go into farming, was it? No, not at all. I had a younger brother and as many farming families, farming daughters know in particular, if there is a brother on the scene, then you automatically have to fight a little bit harder for your space. But thankfully, it eventually transpired that my brother was not interested in farming at all. And so it was an easier pathway at that point but I think from my perspective my heart was always absolutely in farming and absolutely in agriculture and it was obvious from day one that I was going to come back I was the one as my father would say who was born in muddy boots. You went off and did law though didn't you because it was this isn't for me? Well not so much it wasn't for me so much as um it wasn't

for me at that particular time um and um i was it was suggested i did law because um i was good at arguing and didn't know what else i wanted to do so um and and yeah now it's an absolute perfect combination i i do a lot in the policy sphere and really understanding how um our government systems are incentivising or hindering farms so in in that way of kind of marrying skills with passions it's all come good absolutely it's all come together Brigitte you come from a farming family and again you had a similar experience to Emily didn't you yes so I'm a fifth generation farmer and I've got a sister but um yeah we started with my great great gran was the lady started our our farming family um yeah it's been male ever since uh

yeah it's um I think all the females from our family we've been pushed to office work and things like that and my dad always jokes that um he thought he had two girls and he's like I'm gonna retire early that's that's it now but um I did take an interest after rearing calves for DV as a skill and that's interesting it was the Duke of Edinburgh that actually got you interested rather than you know where you were growing up yes yeah definitely I think for safety I wasn't really on the farm much but yeah I started and then just sort of tried to prove myself prove to everyone that I was interested and uh yeah I've graduated uh uni and um yeah with young farmers there's definitely more girls it's like equal to girls and boys at of college age that are enrolled in college and

they're both very interested in it is very nice I think for the younger generation we definitely got a strong generation of female farmers coming through now why do you love it yeah yeah um I guess I I like I like the responsibility but um yeah I think well I started agricultural college at Hartbury College um because I was wanted to go into ag journalism and on the farmers weekly um they said they wanted you to have a course in agriculture rather than literature or else I would have done a level English so um I started that and I thought I can't do practical agriculture that's I just sort of that just ingrained in my mind, I suppose, from my other family around me, that I can't do the practical side.

So I'll do the writing side of journalism. But at college, they made you very practical. And I was like, this is good. I can do this. And now I'm sort of doing both currently. Oh, that's great to hear. And Emily, I mean, what we're hearing from Bridget there, it kind of is borne out by this survey, isn't it?

It's the assumptions of people around you, not your own desires that often lead you down a particular path in agriculture. I mean, talk us through some of the more sort of jaw dropping aspects of this. I mean, 60 percent of women thought gender bias was holding them back from reaching their career goals in agriculture. Is there an assumption, as we were just hearing from Bridget, about what you might do? You can do the admin, you can do the running of the farm but you shouldn't be getting your hands dirty yeah I called this out and I'm at the Oxford farming conference at the moment and there was a presentation this morning where again the presenter was using gendered language to describe who may inherit and pass on the farm so it's from father to son and from uncle to nephew.

And I called him out on it because we hear it again and again and again, this bias, this perception that it's something that's passed between men and only the men can do the job. And it's ridiculous because so often we describe farming as a family business, which means immediately there's multi-generations and men and women working within the same organization however there are some major barriers to women participating equally within this and these largely come from child care duties and inadequate child care in rural spaces so within the kind of the I guess the natural roles that people fulfill the man goes off and does

livestock work and works around the weather and sacrifices time and energy and effort to do the farming job in the best possible way and the woman sacrifices herself in order to raise the family and it's this sort of stereotype of farming businesses that have perpetuated through multi-generations that have resulted in this gender these gender roles becoming the norm but increasingly it doesn't have to be that way. And it's all the time trying to find these alternative models, inspire people to think about things differently, not assume it has to be a family business,

it has to be a multi-generational business. Think that you can do it for a career for 40 years and then sell it, it doesn't matter. It's all these different models of success and vibrancy that we can bring to the industry if we begin to just challenge some of these stereotypes that have really perpetuated over the last 40 years. And digging down into this survey, complaints when people were asked, complaints ranged from

not being taken seriously by fellow male workers and company sales reps who, when confronted with a woman, would ask to speak to the person who is really running the farm non-existent parental leave policies and not being able to operate machinery which is designed by men for men uh just a quick word emily from you on that before i get you know the on the ground experience from bridget bridget might find the same as me i mean i've been told you know can you go and pick the small gate up please and you go to the small gate and it's still heavier than you can lift right because it's just been used to being picked up by men and it's all sort of designed around a kind of a mindset of it just being easy to do from a physical perspective and relying on physicality but there's some super interesting stuff happening in robotics in thinking about our farming systems

differently which kind of take that kind of physical strength element out of it and mean that we can actually think about designing our farming systems in a much more feminine and a much more sympathetic way and it's so much optimism and that really came across in the farmers weekly work as well there's a lot of optimism and people encouraging girls to come into the sector as well and because we need softer skills we need more sympathetic skills we need more ecological skills and really different ways of thinking about things. The skills and the thinking and the mindset that got us to where we are now as a country and as a countryside are not going to be what we need to sort of fix

and address all of the multiple challenges that we're facing in the rural space from climate change to rural depopulation and everything. You know, it really is this sort of wholesale shift that's going on that is opening up all of these opportunities for women. Bridget just answer that point on great points there made by Emily but but on the the first point about you know assumptions based on gender I mean do you get that a lot do you you know do you get a certain set of standards applied to you that aren't necessarily applied to men? I think it depends. I've done bits of work experience and it is kind of strange.

Sometimes they won't talk to you or take you seriously. But I think the encouragement part that Emily said, like you want to encourage a female to go into farming. You got to support them and I've been I did a tractor driver tractor driving work experience and they were really good I had a positive experience with that because they didn't just say right get in the tractor and go and prove yourself that you as a girl can do this they just they did like they were there to help me not like do it all for me but I always had help so I had that support that made me feel welcome I didn't feel any less or like unequal to them they didn't make me feel odd I was the only female in a male working environment I suppose there was no female working at that

point there but um I've been at other places where they just chucked me in the deep end and left me I'm like right you're really making me feel like I can't do this because I'm a female right now because you just feel helpless sometimes. And what do you say to Emily's point that, you know, in a predominantly, what has been a predominantly male-dominated environment, there can, you know, it can feel like a threat when women come in, but women have

a whole different skill set. They're not trying to match men, replace men. They're there to enhance. And as Emily was saying, it's a crucial moment for farming for the entire country, isn't it? Yes, definitely. I think males think that it is welcoming for females, which is good, but sometimes it isn't.

But I definitely feel like at home now that now that the if a sales rep like a feed sales rep comes dad just chucks him at me now but um which uh which is good but yeah they they are there it's not as bad personally but I'm not knocking it down I've heard some women who do like talk about women in farming saying everything's fine you just got to believe in yourself and it's like but i it's bad to sort of say that it's not happening because it is and you can't really knock down another woman's experience you certainly can't and listen you shone a light on it this morning and all the great strides that are being made by young women like you as well great to talk to you bridget thank you so much for joining us uh bridget baker there 23 years old and uh in farming well and truly and you heard the voice too of emily norton

farmer and agricultural commentator uh now on woman's hour let's talk about uh quite a seismic change in the publishing industry with 11 international editions women's health magazine is read by millions of people around the world every single month and its UK editor-in-chief Claire Sanderson has just made history as the first woman globally to be appointed editor-in-chief of Men's Health UK. So what does this mean to be a woman editing a men's magazine in this way? Is there a crossover with what women and men are reading in an age where we're worried about body image? Are these still useful delighted to say claire uh joins me now welcome to woman's hour thank you so much for having me it's great to have you um how did you feel when you initially asked uh to edit this magazine was it at all intimidating to take up

the role as a woman to edit a men's magazine like this? Well, to take on such a brilliant brand like Men's Health would be intimidating, regardless of my gender. I was extremely excited. It's almost my seven-year anniversary of editing Women's Health, and the day I was given that job was the best of my life and I've married and have two kids so I don't know what that says about the other amazing things that have happened to me but I was more excited about taking on women's health and then when I was given the opportunity to take on men's wealth as well I was equally as thrilled that Hearst, my publisher, has put his trust in me to lead such an iconic global brand and it's well well-loved and is doing extraordinarily well.

And it's a privilege to be able to take it into the future. Have you had pushback? I mean, do you think it would be different the other way around if a man had come in to edit Women's Health, for example? It might be different. I haven't had any pushback. I think my credentials as a journalist and someone who has

worked in national media for 25 years, and I've won many, many awards while running Women's Health. So I think my credentials speak for themselves. And I haven't had any pushback. Did I expect some, maybe a little, but I've certainly not, I'm not aware of any. So I think that's a sign of progress in society. How much understanding do you have about where men's own view of their own bodies and health and well-being is at the moment? Because we often hear about men's anxieties about their bodies on all kinds of levels through, you know, sexual performance to image. And there is a school of thought that says magazines like Men's Health, even though on the inside they may address these issues, are on when you look at it on, you know, down the newsagents, you'll see a guy there with a six pack and it doesn't help.

How would you answer that? Those cupboards with the guys of the six packs are not as common as they used to be. If you were to look at men's health over the last 12 months, there's much more diversity on the covers these days. It's the same as women's health. We changed the aesthetic of the covers on women's health as well. So they're more broadly appealing to different age demographics and body types, etc. The covers are there to be aspirational and I hope they do that job. In terms of an understanding of where men's psyche is, we're constantly speaking to our audience

through social media and through research. And then we also, as a brand, speak to world-leading experts in all aspects of men's health, physical and mental health. So we always make sure that we are ahead of the curve and leaning on people who are very much at the forefront of their knowledge base. I mean, we have to put this in context. We've got the Rise of Reality series like Love Island, the use of cosmetic surgeries that they often often the focus is on women but do you think men are going through a similar pressure when it comes to how they present themselves because

obviously we're living in an age of social media and and they are under the same microscope um what are you going to do i mean with all your experience of of women's health. How is that going to come to play out in this new arena? We look at health very holistically from a very 360 perspective. And mental health is given parity of esteem to physical health and all the content across all platforms. So we ensure that we are given a broad offering

of health content so men can take that away and action it to become the healthiest version of themselves. Do I think there's more pressure on men to look a certain aesthetic? Yes, certainly the younger generation, like you said, women have felt that pressure for some time, but it is coming into the younger generations of younger men as well. And for that reason, we ensure that we have, we present a lot of mental health content to help them. I mean, you did launch some, as you say, award-winning and brilliant campaigns when you were editor-in-chief of Women's Health. You had It Starts With The Bra.

Tell us a little bit about that one. Oh, I'm really proud of It Starts With The Bra. So I'm, you can tell by my accent, I'm Welsh. I'm from the South Wales Valleys. I'm from proud of you starting the bra so I'm you can tell by my accent I'm Welsh I'm from the South Wales Valleys I'm from a working class area I'm the first person in my extended family to go to university and the area where I grew up is very deprived and I could see that the people were not engaging in wellness for many reasons financial mental health reasons there's a lot of um endemic illnesses in those areas so i wanted to do something to try and help people in the more women in the more deprived areas so we teamed up with under armour and we gifted women sports bras

because it's the foundation of any sports kit but we also created a lot of free content to help them start their wellness journeys and we worked with charities up and down the country's women's refuges etc and it made a big impact and i'm really proud of what we achieved with that campaign is is to there was a raising awareness of wellness for people from deprived areas and what about will you be bringing that to bear for men as well, doing research onto the kind of social needs that they have and how you might be able to support them? Absolutely. So obviously it's week three of my job and Christmas is in between,

so I need to get cracking. But the plan this year is to bring the purpose that I brought into women's health, into men's health, and do research and look at what the needs are and try and actually change in those communities. Great to have you on the programme. Happy New Year and good luck with your new position. Thank you so much. That is the new UK Editor-in-Chief of Men's Health, Claire Sanderson.

Thank you for all of your texts today. So many on towels. This Glynisis I use a a flannel to dry myself after a shower and only use my bath towel to pat dry afterwards

I use the flannel only once I leave it for a day it smells really nasty I then boil the flannel in a pan on the top of the stove for a couple of minutes

bath towels get washed once a fortnight hand towels once a week I live alone so I don't worry about the transfer of bugs. Using a flannel means that I'm not using my washing machine so much and I save electricity, water and money.

I'm on a small pension. I rub hard with the flannel so it acts as an exfoliant. My mother used to do it and I've adopted the practice in recent years. So much detail, but thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for listening to Woman's Hour. Join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour when we'll be discussing the challenges of being female in the metaverse, the art of negotiating in our everyday lives as well with our loved ones and debut author Vanessa Chan as well. That's Weekend Woman's Hour tomorrow.

That's all from today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. From BBC Radio 4, life can be unexpected. It was big. This was not a wind. This was not a storm. This was a tsunami. But when confronted with change, humans are remarkably resilient. I knew in that moment as I fell to the ground that I would recover more. I'm Dr Sian Williams, psychologist and presenter of Life Changing, the programme that speaks to people whose worlds have been flipped upside down and transformed in a moment. If I had to live my life again, would I ever want to go through what I went through? There's a very simple answer to that. I would

go through it again. Subscribe to Life Changing on BBC Sounds. 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.