Woman's Hour - Women DJs in lockdown

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

With nightlife on pause during lockdown how have DJs been adapting? DJ Flight has been at the forefront of drum and bass for over two decades. Signed to Goldie’s label Metalheadz, she’s played all over the world and is founder of EQ50, a project aimed at improving gender equality in drum and bass. Ngaio Anyia is a singer and DJ from Bristol who runs Booty Bass, a collective who offer DJ lessons for women. Jenni talks to them about livestreams and how their work has changed with COVID-19. With clubs closed, is it time to make the industry more gender balanced… and will it actually happen?Students all over the country are protesting about how their work will be graded for GCSEs and A-Levels after exams were cancelled because of Covid. It’s even worse for home-educated young people. They’ll be getting no grades at all for all their efforts because grades are allocated by schools.Belarus had elections on Sunday. The man who’s been President for 26 years (since 1994), President Alexander Lukashenko, got in again. A woman called Svetlana Tikhanovskaya challenged him in the election. She’s a stay-at-home mum and she told a crowd recently that she’d much prefer to be frying cutlets than run for President. She’s now left Belarus for safety reasons, saying she doesn’t agree with the election result. During her election campaigning two women have been by her side. One of them is Veronika Tsepkalo who’s also left Belarus. BBC Moscow Correspondent, Sarah Rainsford joins Jenni to discuss.We’ve been talking to women about their scars and skin, how they feel about them and how the reactions of others has shaped their lives. Today, Aimee who lives with psoriasis. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Alison Sauer Interviewed Guest: Jo Merrett Interviewed Guest: Veronika Tsepkalo Interviewed Guest: Sarah Rainsford Reporter: Ena Miller Interviewed Guest: DJ Flight Interviewed Guest: Ngaio Anyia

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 Thursday's Woman's Hour on the 13th of August. Good morning. In today's programme, as protests against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus continue, what's been the result of campaigning against him for the candidate who challenged him, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya? In the next in our series about scars and the way we learn to live with them, Amy, who suffers severely from psoriasis. And how do you DJ during a lockdown? Might live streaming music whilst nightlife is on pause, give women more opportunities to shine.

Exam grades in chaos, teachers in despair, appeals set for meltdown. So read one newspaper headline this morning on the day young people across the country anxiously awaited the results of their A-levels. Of course, the results are not based on success or failure in exams taken this summer, but on teacher assessments which have been altered by an off-qual algorithm, or maybe on the mocks taken earlier this year. But what about those young people who will have no results because they don't go to school? They're home-educated and have no teachers to make an assessment of the quality of their work. Alison Sauer is from the Centre for Personalised Learning. Jo Merritt is a researcher with the Centre for Social Mobility at Exeter University.

Jo, what prompted the research into home-educated pupils earlier this year? So I was working with my professor, Anna Mountford-Zindars, and initially it was going to be a broader study about home education because there actually isn't a lot of research into home education. We don't know a great deal about it from a research point of view. And then when COVID hit, it seemed to be a really good example to see how differently home educators would adapt to the changes because they're obviously used to a very different experience of education. So that was interesting in itself. And then one of the outcomes of the research was obviously the tremendous detrimental impact of the exam cancellations on home educators, because they often don't have a mock exam or teacher-marked work,

so there's no predicted grade and so that's left a lot of parents now talking about exam poverty and I think what do you mean by exam poverty well I think a lot of people don't realize when you home educate um obviously that's your choice to do that and for many it's a positive choice. But it does mean you pay for your own GCSEs. So a lot of parents have to pay hundreds of pounds per GCSE or per subject. And parents at the moment have faced not getting refunds from their exam centres because you organise sitting your own exam. So they've faced not getting a refund or partial refund from the exam centres. Then they've had to pay to change to a different exam centre where there's one available for their subject.

And then they have to pay an admin fee to re-sit the exam. So one parent quoted having to pay £1,000 to go and sit for her child to re-sit her maths exam maths exam for example and so lots of parents budget in advance for their GCSEs especially if you've got more than one subject or more than one child so the fact that they've not got refunds had to pay out for the resits has really had a massive financial impact. Alison, what kind of support have you been able to offer parents and children in these unusual times? Well to be honest Jenny I mean home education in and of itself has had to change massively because home educators go out normally and meet up normally and it's

kind of been the other way around the home educators have been providing support forced to at home because being closed so support point of view any support it is merely this um this thing of the alison i'm really sorry we've got a real problem with the line. We're losing 50% of what you're saying. Let's see if we can fix that. And I'll go back to Jo and we'll try and come back to you. Jo, what sort of concerns have parents and children expressed to you about the effect this is now going to have on them and their future yeah um i can actually just comment on what allison was about to say um because a lot of the in the results for the um study a lot of the parents actually reported setting up support groups for the families that were schooling at home during the school closures because they were sharing a lot of knowledge and resources about how you can do your education at home during the school closures so I can I can concur with what Alison said there are a lot of home educators reported supporting the schooled

families at home but with regards to the impact lots of parents are concerned about the next stage in their education. So one example from one parent was that they said their child had been given a conditional place at their next step of education. They'd had interviews before the COVID pandemic had happened. They were assured that their child based on her grades from the previous year, which was very close to getting in and they were certain she would meet the criteria for this year. When she's gone back to them without a grade, they've said that unfortunately the provider didn't feel like it was fair to give her child a place over a schooled student who'd met the criteria and had a grade. And that seems to be, again, something that's come up in the parent responses that felt that the college providers were, or alternative providers, were almost saving places for the school children with a grade. And because their children didn't have one, it left them at a massive disadvantage.

And that's obviously having a knock-on effect because once the child gets a bit older, and a lot of the parents were told their children could afford a year out because they were home educated. And I think that's probably not true because the funding, the 16 to 19 funding could be in jeopardy for a lot of parents because their children are obviously going to be a year, possibly two years older, which means the 16 to 19 funding, if the child's already 18, is going to be lost. Alison, I think we've got you back now, fingers crossed for the line. What are you proposing to do to try and help these children who have no grades? Well, it's a little bit difficult because way back in April, both the Centre for Personalised Education, my charity, and Education Otherwise, who's the charity that support home educators exclusively, tried to meet with the DfE.

The DfE refused to meet with us. Later on, my colleague EO met with Ofqual, made a lot of constructive proposals to find solutions. For example, socially distancedanced exams online exams like the ou every single solution was rejected out of hand um we've just the home educating cohort has just been completely dismissed from any support currently they are saying well just take the exams in november but as things stand i can't i can't see you know we've already got the year's delay because the children will not have their qualifications at the right time there's massive discrimination there's very little we can do um except possibly consider a judicial review about this because of the

horrific discrimination here well alison sower and joeritt, thank you very much. We did ask the Department for Education for their view. And they said, unfortunately, not all external candidates will be as flexible as possible in their admissions at this unprecedented time. Ofqual is working with the sector to consider how universities and further education colleges can make decisions about private candidates who do not receive a grade, such as reviewing other evidence of the applicant's achievements. If this is something that has happened to you, if you've been home educating, do let us know what situation you are in. You can send us an email or, of course, you can send us a tweet. And Alison and Joe, thank you both very much indeed. Now, as you may have heard in the news, there have been demonstrations in Belarus in protest at the result of Sunday's elections, which saw President Alexander Lukashenko re-elected. More than 6,000 people are said to have been arrested, and leaders of the opposition have been jailed or driven out of the country. Among them is Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who challenged the president in the election

and has left for Lithuania after an apparent threat to her children. She was an unlikely opposition leader, saying she preferred to stay home, look after her children and fry cutlets rather than run for president. During the campaign, she was supported by two other women. One of them is Veronika Tsipkalo. We'll hear from her in a moment. But Sarah Rainsford first is the BBC's Moscow correspondent. And Sarah who've gone into the country without accreditation, a huge number of them have ended up detained, some of them beaten and all of them deported and banned from entering the country ever again. Why did Svetlana stand? Well, as you said, she never really saw herself as a presidential candidate. She's very much a

reluctant, almost an accidental candidate. She's very much a reluctant, almost an accidental candidate. And the reason that she makes quite clear that she began this race for president was because of her husband. Now, Sergei Tikhanovsky is a very popular video blogger. He'd gone around the country for months making very critical videos about Alexander Lukashenko, talking to people about their problems, about poverty, their criticism of their president. He, in fact, called Alexander Lukashenko a cockroach. That became his pet word, if you like, for the leader. And when he tried to run for president, he ended up getting arrested. So Svetlana Tikhanovskaya stepped in. Although she's a complete political novice, this was certainly nothing she had planned to do.

She called it, though, a mission she couldn't refuse. And once she'd started, and once she saw the huge sort of groundswell of support for her, she said she just couldn't stop. Now, two women supported her, Maria Kolesnikova and Veronika Tsepkalo. We'll hear from Veronika in a moment. Who are they? What's their background? Well, this is the fascinating thing about this election race, because although Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is a complete novice, she was then supported by the campaign teams of two other candidates for president. Now, these were two men, one of whom, Victor Babariko, was seen as a very strong contender, politically speaking, to Alexander Lukashenko. But he also was arrested shortly before registering or trying to register for the race.

He was accused of money laundering. He's now in prison. Another contender, again, seen as a serious contender, a former U.S. ambassador. He ended up not getting registered and fleeing the country, he said, for his safety. That's Valery Tsipkalo. So the campaign manager of the first candidate and the wife of the second candidate then joined forces with Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, and the three women became this very powerful symbol, traveling the country, holding these campaign rallies.

Three women, often dressed in white, holding up a fist or a heart shape, which is what one of them would make to the crowds. And they really captured a kind of, I don't know, I guess the frustration and the pent up desire for change of many people in the country. And I think also worth bearing in mind this in the context of a comment by Alexander Lukashenko, the president, who had said back in June that the constitution in Belarus was not suitable for a woman president because it gave the president too much power. And he said the society in Belarus wasn't ready to vote for a woman. And I think, you know, something of those crowds was people coming out and saying, actually, yes, we are. Well, Sarah, thank you for the moment.

I spoke, as I said to Veronica earlier, and I asked her why she has left Belarus. Well, actually, my family left Belarus several weeks ago because my husband, he was one of the candidates, and he was running for the presidential position. But in our country, if you have alternative opinion, you are not allowed to speak up. Therefore, he was at danger that he was going to put to the jail. At the same time, the authorities started the process of taking away my kids. Well, actually, the first information which I received was from the school where my kids study. I received several phone calls that the authorities put the pressure on the teachers and asked them to write a letter

saying, stating that I'm a bad mother and the next step would be taking away my kids, putting them to the orphanage. So that's why my family, my husband took the kids and they left Belarus several weeks ago. They went to Russia. I stayed in Belarus and I was campaigning with two beautiful ladies, with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and with Maria Kolesnikova. We represented three different candidates. Two of them are already in the prison.

So I stayed in Belarus for three more weeks. And then I decided to vote in the Russian Federation, in the embassy of the Russian Federation, because I really missed my kids. I did not see my kids for several weeks. So I came to Moscow. I took my kids. We went to the embassy. I voted. And that evening I returned back to Belarus. How surprising, Veronika, is it that your children should have been used against you, that they threatened them to frighten you? Well, actually, it sounds scary, but in our country they use all methods to put the pressure on you. This is the reason why Svetlana took her kids outside of Belarus as well,

because Svetlana, she took her kids to one of European Union country a week or two weeks before I did it. But in our country, yes, this is horrible things. And they use all possible and impossible methods to put pressure on you. And we had the history back in 2010. One of the presidential candidates, he was put in the prison together with his wife and the authorities, Lukashenko regime, took away their son and they couldn't get him back for six or even more months.

So it's not like the first situation in Belarus. So I understand as a citizen of Belarus, if they're collecting information on me, if they're collecting information on my kids, this is very serious. And the next step will be just, they will be trying to take away my kids. That's why I decided to isolate my kids, bring them outside of Belarus. How, during the election campaigning, did the country respond to women standing against Lukashenko? It was awesome. It was absolutely beautiful because we traveled, I mean, our trio, Svetlana, Maria and myself, we traveled all around Belarus. We visited so many cities because we traveled, I mean, our trio, Svetlana, Maria and myself, we traveled all around Belarus.

We visited so many cities because we had a lot of meetings around Belarus. We visited large, medium, small cities. And I wish, I mean, if you follow up the news from Belarus, you definitely saw how many people came to our meetings. And people were very excited because we understand that people are ready for change. People don't want Lukashenko anymore because he has been in power for the last 26 years. And people of Belarus are very tired, very, very tired of his attitude towards Belarusian people because you know like we uh he humiliates us he humiliates women he insult women uh he calls us different names publicly openly for example as a last as a last example he called us pigs I mean he called women as pigs and he said like we're

giving the birth to the piglets the constitution belarus constitution is not for women so we are used to this insult but we don't want this insult and humiliation any longer but in general the people of belarus are the were very very supportive uh they were really giving us a lot of energy and they gave us the energy to move forward because it's really it was quite quite a challenging and scary times for us for our security why did your attempt to win the election and the support that you seem to have had why did it fail well actually we didn't fail. I think Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, she won the election because the first Belarus because I'm sure that she got not less than 80% of the entire votes. And Lukashenko became illegitimate president. We also ran several initiatives, online initiatives,

just to make sure, to calculate how many people voted, to see the voting results. And in our platform, the platform calls The Voice, more than 1,200,000 people registered. And according to the data from this platform, 80% of the people, they voted for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. So basically, we think we did win. We think Svetlana is the only legitimate president and Lukashenko lost in this presidential campaign. However, you know, they officially announced the results and Lukashenko announced that he gained 80% of the voters, which is completely not true and international community should not accept these results. How is Svetlana now? Svetlana, she is in Lithuania now.

She had to leave the country because she spent three hours with people. We don't know who were these people, but I guess these are people from KGB or any other agency. I'm not sure because nobody knows this information. But she spent three hours with them. They had a conversation. Nobody knows what the conversation was about. But knowing that her husband is in the prison, they hold him as a hostage.

They probably, this is my assumption, they probably showed her the pictures of her husband, maybe some videos. And also they were threatening her with her kids. This is my belief because if you look at her video, next day she published the video on the Facebook, in the social media. You see how threatened she was. You see the tears in her eyes. And her voice is shaking.

And she is talking that she had to leave Belarus because she changed her mind. So I could tell that because I know I've been next to Svetlana for several weeks. I know her, that she's a very strong woman. And I know, I'm sure that they put a lot of pressure on her. And they threatened her with her husband and the kids. And this was the reason why she had to leave. But I know that she's a very strong woman. She loves her family. She loves her husband. But at the same time, you understand these people are very professional. They put a lot of negative pressure on you. They make you

change your mind. It's really scary taking into consideration that we live in the 21st century in the European country. So she, I don't know, she's doing okay, but so far I did not have any contact with her. I called her, I sent her several messages, but I guess she's still under huge stress. That's why she's not responding. It will take some time for her to recover. Veronica Tepkalo and Sarah Rainsford,

if I can come back to you just briefly, where does this all go now? Well, it's a good question. I mean, the protests have continued for a fourth night. They're slightly smaller than they had been on three previous nights, but they've still faced this massive crackdown, this massive, brutal response, really, by riot police and security forces. Thousands of people are in detention. There's big crowds outside police custody centres, people looking for the missing now across the country. But this is something on a scale and a scope that's never been seen in Belarus before.

And I think whatever happens, clearly Alexander Lukashenko, who's ruled for 26 years and believes that he was supported, clearly that myth, if you like, has now been broken. Things can never be the same again in the country, whatever happens. Sarah Rainsford, thank you very much for being with us this morning. Still to come in today's programme, the lockdown DJ.

How do you play your music and perform when nightlife is no more? Might live streaming create an opportunity to make the industry more gender balanced? And the serial, the fourth episode of Bird in the Hand. Now, in recent weeks, we've been discussing scars on the body and the way we learn to live with them. Amy is from Kent. She's 34. She works in retail, is an artist and works for organisations supporting people with disfigurements and skin problems. She also has psoriasis. At 14, she started getting the most common form of the condition

behind her knees and on her elbows. Then she began to develop guttati psoriasis all over her body and on her face. Anna Miller went to meet her at home. When I knocked on the door today, you open the door, big smile smile and you've got your makeup on and I thought it's a good day. Yeah definitely it's been a few weeks now since I've had a flare up and my skin's looking really great at the moment so I still have patches on other bits of

my body but no yeah today all clear and looking fresh and yeah happy. Are you able to describe to me or even show me let's call it a flare-up day? Strangely I've taken lots of photos of my skin during a major flare-up and I have had those photos even printed which sounds a bit crazy but I think it's just to remind myself of what my skin can be. Have you got any that I can have a look at? So this was considered a really severe flare-up for me. The psoriasis, well, it started on patches on my forehead. First, it was just this whole kind of small spot-sized dry patches.

And they grew. So eventually, each patch grew and kind of merged with each other, creating much larger patches of dry skin crossing my entire forehead. Both eyebrows were completely affected. Then it spread down the sides of my nose, around my mouth until, yeah, it was pretty much dotted all over my face, neck and body. And then you've got another one here. So this photo is me with my makeup done. Obviously, it couldn't cover my skin at all. There's no way I could put any foundation on. body. And then you've got another one here. So this photo is me with my makeup done. Obviously I couldn't cover my skin at all. There's no way I could put any foundation on. It would just look

dry and cakey and it wouldn't be good for the psoriasis anyway. It would just probably cause the flare up to get worse. So this is me on a good day wearing one of my wigs with my eye makeup fully done. And yeah, I felt glamorous this day. I was kind of at this point used to my psoriasis, but as you can see, it is covering my face still and my entire chest. So, yeah. Can you tell me what it feels like? It felt like a burn, I guess, is how I would describe it. So it wasn't so much itchy.

I constantly had this tingling, burning sensation on all of the patches of psoriasis that covered my face and, well, my entire body. And then it affects my scalp the most, actually, because scalp is probably the most common type of psoriasis you can get. So yeah, my scalp's really badly affected with psoriasis. And during my flare-up, I started to notice a lot of hair loss. at one point my hair was so fine it was a few strands really that I could just hold together what I ended up doing was buying wigs yeah I just started collecting wigs to make myself feel better and sometimes it would get bad enough that it would feel feel like an open wound although it wouldn't necessarily appear to be bleeding or obviously it would sometimes bleed but even the feeling of my

clothing touching my psoriasis would be completely unbearable and I love all my clothes and I love fashion just as most girls do I could only wear fleece lined leggings and big baggy jumpers that were fleece lined I couldn't wear bras or knickers anymore. So I had to wear kind of like cycling shorts so that the elastic didn't cut into my skin. Having a shower, I couldn't use soap or shower gel. And at night time, I had to make sure that I was really moisturised. Throughout the day, I was having to get used to moisturising like on the hour. Getting off to sleep was really difficult. But it was quite miserable because it meant things like waking up the next day to a bed that would be covered in oil or grease or from my skin or blood or things like that. So do you remember the first time it happened?

It was over the course of two weeks. So initially, when I first got the gutate psoriasis, I was misdiagnosed with chicken pox. I headed back to the doctors and and he just really brushed it off like it was nothing. And I remember thinking, but it's affecting my face and you're not going to do anything about it. And I left and went back to work that day in tears, thinking it was just going to rapidly spread and get worse, which it did. So over the next few weeks, it got worse and worse to the point of I ended up staying at my mum's because I couldn't cope with how I looked I'd stay at hers in the same room as her so she set me up a little bed in her room that's quite a big move isn't it going from an independent woman

working doing your own thing to sleeping in the same bed as your mum to help you cope yeah it's easy to definitely easy to look at people with psoriasis and or a skin condition and just think oh it is just a skin condition that they should be able to cope but actually when it's you and it affects you I remember my mum actually telling me a story about a friend of hers whose daughter had psoriasis and actually lost took her life because she couldn't cope looking in the mirror each day when she told me originally I remember thinking that's crazy why would you take your life over psoriasis but then when it happened to me I kept thinking I mean I've never considered taking my own life but I remember understanding her feelings and what I couldn't cope with the most was that initial

feeling in the morning of like remembering that how I now looked and having to accept it all over again so I kind of would cope throughout the day but that's why I stayed at my mum's because I still went to work every day that didn't change I didn't have time off sick I couldn't have time off sick just for a skin condition but I couldn't face looking at myself so in the morning she was always ready bless her always at my side waiting for me to like wake up I just would burst into tears and she would kind of comfort me and tell me I was beautiful and remind me that she would get me all the help that she could get me you are aware of other people's reactions as well my how my feelings towards my psoriasis wasn't just how I felt how my

skin felt even though it was unbearable and so uncomfortable it was people how people responded to me like it was either negative and people looked at me like I was disgusting or even made comments like at work customers would say to me or can I not be served by you because I think you've probably got something contagious. What was your reaction to that? I work in retail so I'm selling like fashion I just found myself initially just saying yep that's fine I'll get someone else to serve you and just kind of walking away from that situation and taking myself out of it especially at the beginning when I was still quite upset about it but to be honest it didn't take me long to be able to say to people I'm just not contagious I'm absolutely fine so either you're served by me or you won't get served. Do you think you could have coped with the

situation better if it hadn't been on your face? Yeah 100% if it wasn't on my face I could have managed it and no one would have known everything else would have still been the same like the discomfort the treatments everything would have been the same but no one would have needed to know about it and it could have been my own like private health condition as soon as it affected my face everyone had to know about it everyone could see it couldn't do anything about it, couldn't cover it, couldn't stop it from progressing. So yeah, that was what was hardest for me. Without being too intimate, did you literally get it everywhere?

Yeah, and I actually still do. I'm not embarrassed to say it because I think a lot of people suffer in silence with that. The worst part of my psoriasis is down below because it hurts to urinate, it hurts to go to the toilet. Underwear has become a problem all the time. Things like sandwich towels and stuff are impossible to wear just because they rub my psoriasis. And it can also affect things with my partner as well. I have to kind of say to him, at the moment I'm going through a bad patch.

It's open wounds all the time. It's constant bleeding cracked skin I've been with you for the last hour and a little bit and you know the focus has been the face and obviously now we've been together a while um you know you feel more comfortable to talk to me hopefully but it's just the thing that actually I never even thought about it I don't know if I would actually talk to you about it or not because I guess it is very private. But I suppose actually talking about it is a good thing because I don't think anyone talks about that.

Even on social media, people that have psoriasis, you don't hear them talking about how it affects their genitalia. You talked about your mum being supportive. Who else was supportive? All of my friends and family were really supportive. I was single at the time so I didn't expect to meet anyone with gutase psoriasis I just thought yeah until it either clears up which I wasn't sure would happen the doctor said it may never clear up

but yeah I didn't expect to meet anyone during a flare-up until I met my partner yeah because when I first met him he had absolutely no questions about my skin at all he didn't didn't query it didn't look at me any different just approached me and said wow you're beautiful I think it was me that turned around and actually said are you joking have you seen my face he's looking at your face yeah I just said are you like actually looking at my face and he was just like there's nothing wrong with your face, is there? And I said, yeah, look. And I really pointed them out. I was like, look at all these marks on my skin. Can you not see them?

And he was like, yeah, I can see them, but it's just your face and you're beautiful. It was on our first date, we actually had people come over to our table in the restaurant and say, can I just say like, I remember one lady came over to me and she went, can I just say, you remember one lady came over to me and she went can I just say you look beautiful no matter what um and again I think that was another really nice experience like I mean the fact that she had to come over was a bit odd I did think I was going to say and I love that like you look beautiful and then it's that sentence at the end no matter what and you're like oh thanks yeah it was a bit of an odd one but I think I think it was she she was trying she was

trying to be kind yes she thought she was doing a good thing a lot of it is about what you choose to hear I'd let things drag me down too easily people started to contact me once I had my initial photo on social media and say you're really inspirational and things like that that was when I think I had to embrace it and I thought wow like I don't think I would ever have considered myself an inspiration to anyone I was just plodding along through life letting myself get down which is easily done we all do it but probably thinking back now over silly things like men and just realising that actually you are what can make your life incredible opportunities started opening up I'm this is going to sound really strange and I think people will think I'm a bit crazy for saying it but I sometimes miss miss my flare-ups like if I

haven't had one in a while because it reminded me that there are bigger things in life and that there are people that are worse off than you. Amy was talking to Enna Miller, and if you want information or support about scars and skin conditions, you can find them on the Women's Hour website. And of course, all the episodes in this series are there or they're on BBC Sound. Now DJs, disc jockeys are not just people who spin records to which people will dance. They're performers, many of whom create their own music, put on a show in a nightclub and are crucial to breaking new artists. But what do they do during lockdown when there is no nightlife? And how much

more difficult is it for women who've had to fight for their place in an industry that's long been dominated by men? Well, I'm joined by Nayo Anya and DJ Flight DJ Flight, that's a small example of the work that you do. Now, I know you founded something called EQ50, a project aiming to address gender balance in drum and bass, and that was in 2018. Why did you found it? Simply for the fact that women haven't been supported enough um or given big enough platforms within our sub-genre of dance music for many years um

i mean i'm grateful for the level that i've been able to reach but it's still very much a male dominated industry um yeah so a crew of us got together and just thought that we could use use our profiles and platforms to try and encourage more women to get involved what effect has lockdown had on the project um it actually hasn't had any negative effect we've just launched a big mentorship program uh it felt like the time was right. So we wanted to actually launch it last year, but we're all busy with commitments elsewhere. But yeah, just with people being furloughed from work in quarantine on lockdown, it felt like, and just watching the whole civil rights uprising, both here and in the US and globally, it felt like it was the right time to kind of push this.

Excuse me. People were focusing more on social issues. They had a bit more time to kind of take notice of what was going on. And how much interest has there been in young women wanting to get into drum and bass? We've had an amazing response actually we received maybe double the number of applications that we were hoping to and just the responses that we've seen from men and women across our social media channels via messages from our website emails etc it's been a really positive response and proves that something like this was definitely needed. I think the fact that we're working with five established drum and bass labels definitely helps as well because women can see that there will be official support for them

should they want to try and get involved, whether that's producing or promoting or DJing, whatever it is. Nayo, how have you been managing during lockdown? So I went down a bit of the live streaming um angle where i luckily before um lockdown happened well about about a year ago i got a good sort of a unit a djing unit which is uh what you would get industry standard in clubs but sort of a lot smaller and easier to to take around and so that did mean that I could do quite a lot of DJing at home uh which was incredibly lucky because I think

for a lot of people as soon as you know they weren't able to go into clubs they didn't have anything to play on so because I did have something that I could use then I decided to do uh streaming whole DJ sets over the Internet. And how do people know where to find you? Well, that's where it gets a little bit more complicated, I guess, because my major platform probably is Instagram in terms of social media and Facebook. But Instagram is probably where I have more of an engaged audience. And when it went online, playing over Instagram actually was the hardest thing because when you're playing other people's songs, obviously everything's copyrighted.

So as soon as a popular song is picked up by Instagram, it shuts down your live stream. And as soon as that happens after three or four times, it actually won't let you log back in. So there was quite a lot of difficulty around how to get around that. Some people started talking over the music, like with a microphone. But other people moved to Twitch, which actually started out as a way that people could watch others playing video games. So, again, some people switched over to that. But if you didn't already have an existing

audience there you're just kind of playing to no one um so it's been a bit of a juggling act fly down i know you played a live stream from a club what was that like in a club but no audience it actually felt amazing it was just really nice being back in that environment with people who I love and really get on with fellow DJs that I respect. The crew were all really cool. We kind of kept socially distanced. They cleaned down the equipment and had a little pause in between each set. Yeah, it was a great experience. I mean, personally, that's I've only done one live stream so far. I'm actually doing one later tonight that's just been been announced as well um yeah i i wasn't really in as much of a hurry as other people have been to do them during quarantine so far why not um i think because i

realized that the coronavirus impact is was going to last for quite a while. I can understand people wanting to keep their profiles at a certain level and keep busy. But I mean, I'm quite grateful. I've got a day job as well. I work as a radio producer. So I didn't have as much of a financial worry as other people. Naya, how has your income fared since lockdown? I mean it's kind of stayed the same I've also been keeping busy I do quite a lot of different things so in terms of the DJing that wasn't necessarily a big like I mean it was it was helpful obviously money is always helpful but it wasn't my main source of income but yeah going back into the world now I've also played in a couple of clubs socially distanced which has been really interesting I've done a few live streams organized

by um bigger um people so they they've been able to pay so the fees have gone down um I think that's kind of to be expected um but also because I do run my own events I think especially in Bristol well I don't know especially in Bristol could be anywhere events, I think especially in Bristol, well, I don't know if it's especially in Bristol, it could be anywhere if I've only been in Bristol because of the virus, but there's definitely been a kind of everyone banding in together. So it's kind of given the opportunity

for more partnerships to open up that maybe wouldn't have had the opportunity to do this. So working with new types of promoters and new venues and being a bit more experimental, I guess, as well in the way that we've been doing live streams and taking a few more chances, which has been interesting. So, yeah, the fees have gone down and I think there's an expectation that it will sort of slowly go back up. But again, it depends if the industry itself gets enough support, which at the moment is not looking that positive. But Flight, how hopeful are you that you will achieve gender equality with the efforts that you've been making,

despite the current restrictions? I guess you have to stay optimistic at all times. It feels like there is movement now happening. I mean, with the labels we've got on board, they've all been really positive and happy to be involved. And after we announced, we did actually have quite a few producers hit us up directly offering their help. So, I mean, the plan always was to expand into different territories

with this mentorship and do others and just keep it rolling so that the mentees become mentors themselves in the future. I was talking to DJ Flight and Naio Anya. Lots of you were moved by what Amy had to say about her life with severe psoriasis. Emma Littrick sent a tweet. She said, brilliant to hear such an honest account of the constant debilitating effect of psoriasis. My sister suffered all her adult life with this condition. Its life-sapping consequences reduce the individual's capacity to live free of suffering. Thank you. Monica Markham added, as a young girl, I once witnessed a woman being unceremoniously rushed out of the hair salon

because she suffered from psoriasis and didn't disclose it before her appointment. It was horrendous and I promised myself never to come to that salon again. And Bronwyn Jones said, I empathise so much with Amy. Had psoriasis from 18 months, frequently hospitalised, all over. It's not just a skin condition. Tried everything, avoiding gluten now. It's almost completely disappeared miraculously before my eyes. We also heard from a lot of you about home schooling.

Rachel Barkley in an email said, thank you for highlighting this issue on your programme this morning. I've been home educating for 10 years. Our eldest two achieving A-levels studying from home. This year, our youngest two were A-levels studying from home. This year our youngest two were due to sit AS levels but due to Covid-19 these were cancelled. As our boys were studying independently we were unable to submit for a predicted grade so had to withdraw our entries. Greatly concerned about the future impact this would have on their A-levels. We felt forced into

purchasing distance learning courses in case this happened next year. With twin boys, this has resulted in an outlay of almost £3,000, an expense families could do without at short notice, particularly this year. In one sense, we were fortunate that it wasn't their final A-levels. For many, this has resulted in crushed hopes and aspirations. And another parent, Nicola, emailed us, I'm currently sitting outside my daughter's college, having received her disastrous results by email. Parents are not being allowed to provide any support

while the students talk to tutors about their options. I feel strongly that there's been no thought about those students who are not in the top percentage and would therefore receive the higher grades. My daughter is an average A-level student who was working so hard for the grades that she required for her chosen university. She had the chance to do better taken away from her and there's no explanation so far as to how her grades have been arrived at. Her predicted grades seem to have been ignored and for the moment she has no idea what to do next. All of my questions can't be answered online so at the moment I feel helpless and if my daughter retakes the exams, what does she do in the meantime? Currently, very frustrated.

This is people's lives. Well, thank you for all your contributions to today's podcast. Tomorrow, we have another of our how-to guides for some of life's big questions. We'll explore the best way to handle conflict and tension. It might be at home, with friends and family, at work or in public. What's the best way to get your point across without letting your emotions overwhelm you? Join me tomorrow, usual time, two minutes past ten.

Until then, bye-bye. Hello, it's me, Greg Jenner, the bloke from that funny history podcast, You're Dead to Me. Big news, we are back, once again combining the talents of comedians and expert historians as we explore stuff like ancient Egyptian pyramids, Genghis Khan,

and 19th century vampire literature. Search for You're Dead to Me on the BBC Sounds app. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

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