Woman's Hour - Women in Iran, George Eliot on stage, Professor Kate Pickett

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

On Saturday Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed after Israel and the US launched a "massive" and ongoing attack against Iran's leadership and military. US President Donald Trump urged Iranian forces to lay down their arms, and for Iran's people to rise up against its government. Iran has responded by firing ballistic missiles and drones at US assets and allies across the region. Whilst huge questions still remain about what will happen next in this conflict, on Woman's Hour today we ask what this moment might mean for women in Iran. Nuala McGovern is joined by BBC Persian reporter Ghoncheh Habibiazad and international human rights lawyer Azadeh Zabeti, Co-President of the Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers.Mary Ann Evans is better known by her pseudonym George Eliot. She's the author of many important novels including Middlemarch, Silas Marner, and Mill on the Floss, which brings the issue of women’s education to the fore. A new play, Bird Grove, the name of George Eliot's home, has just opened at the Hampstead Theatre in London. When we meet Mary Ann she has not yet started writing fiction, but beginning to have her mind opened to progressive new ideas. Nuala finds out more with the play's director, Anna Ledwich, and actor Elizabeth Dulau who plays Mary Ann Evans. According to the NGO International Justice Mission, child sexual abuse that takes place on social media and other online platforms is one of the fastest‑growing yet least‑detected types of child abuse globally. Offenders pay to direct the real‑time sexual exploitation of children via any internet‑connected, camera‑enabled device. Most identified victims are in the Philippines and the UK is among the top three countries consuming this material, with the United States at number one. Nuala is joined by Molly Hudson from the International Justice Mission, and Sharon Pursey, co‑founder of SafeToNet, a British online safety technology company.Kate Pickett is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York. Her new book is The Good Society and How We Make It and in it she looks at ideas she believes will build a better society and says we “can’t afford to nibble” when it comes to solving some of the big issues we are facing. Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Andrea Kidd

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. For years, I've sounded like a broken record. I do not want kids. I do not ever want to have kids. I don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. I'm in my 40s now. The door is almost closed. And suddenly, I'm not so sure. The story has always been, no.

I'm just wondering to what degree it's just a story. Definitely just a story. From CBC's personally, this is Creation Myth, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Nula McGovern and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. And while you're here, I wanted to let you know that the Woman's Hour Guide to Life is back. You might have listened to some of the episodes from the first series, including ambition without burnout, or turning aging into your superpower. Well, we've got six new episodes for you over the coming weeks that will give you practical tips on issues like self-promotion

without feeling awkward, caring for aging parents, navigating infertility with family and friends, and also how to love your face, whatever your age. I'm really excited about this series of The Woman's Hour Guide to Life, so I really hope you'll join us. You will find the episodes in the Woman's Hour podcast feed on Sundays. It's only on BBC Sounds. But now, back to today's Women's Hour. Hello and welcome. Female activists in Iran have been at the forefront of the fight to shape a new direction for their country.

But how are they feeling now after the US and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday? Two Iranian women with us in just a moment. Also today, Professor Kate Pickett has a new book, The Good Society. She believes a more caring society is within our grasp. We're going to hear her big ideas. on what she thinks needs to happen. We'll also this hour talk about a very tough issue. One, my guests say, has been difficult to get governments to take action on.

It is a hidden form of child sexual abuse that takes place online. My guests, however, do see a solution we'll discuss. And a play, Birdgrove, about Marianne Evans, also known as George Elliott. We will hear about the early life of a pioneering and extraordinary author. You can contact us about anything you hear in today's program. The number to text is 84844.

On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us through our website. For a WhatsApp message or voice note, that number, 0300-100-444-4. But of course, as you will have heard across the BBC this morning and over the weekend, on Saturday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Hamini was killed after Israel and the US launched a massive

an ongoing attack against Iran's leadership and military. US President Donald Trump urged Iranian forces to lay down their arms and for Iran's people to rise up against its government. Iran has responded by firing ballistic missiles and drones at US assets and allies across the region. There are huge questions that remain about what will happen next in this conflict. Here on Women's Hour this morning, we want to ask what this moment might mean for the women in Iran.

I'm joined by Gonche Habibia, Zad, a reporter, BBC Persian, and the International Human Rights Lawyer, as it is a betty, co-president of the Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers. Good morning to both of you. Thank you for joining us. Gonsche, let me begin with you. There is, I understand, an internet blackout in Iran at the moment. How much can you tell us about what's been happening in the country?

It must be quite difficult to get information on the ground. It's extremely difficult to see, like, a clear picture of what's going on inside, where some are. able to connect through methods such as satellite internet service Starlink, but at the same time it's very difficult to contact people at the moment. I've been talking to a few people through text messages, but their internet is very much unstable. And two women that I've been talking to, they are against establishment. They said that following the death of supreme leaders, some have been cheerful, some are anxious, obviously, as they have said, about the attacks, but some are really happy about that thing that has happened. But at the

the same time, they don't know what's going to happen next and how it's going to go on from now after the Supreme Leader. Yes, of course. And of course, it depends where people were politically. We have seen women celebrating, but other women publicly mourning their leader's demise. Yes, that's the picture of mornings that we have been seeing in different places and has been promoted by Iranian outlets as well. That's like the main source of information for us right now because of the internet outage. We have to monitor what's going on on Iranian media, how to portraying everything. But at the same time, we have also verified videos showing young men and women on the streets in Iran celebrate.

At the same time, I have to say that we have also seen a text message by the intelligence units of the IRGC, Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, asking people not to go out and warning them not to go out onto the streets to protest. And the message has said that these street rights, what they have described, are planned by the enemy and any movement by Iranians is going to like lead to consequences. And this is what we are getting right down. That text was mass sent to everyone inside the country from what I've heard. And of course, to put it in context as well,

around a country of over 90 million people that we're talking about. Let me bring you in here Azaday. Thank you for joining us. Your response to the news of the death of Iran's supreme leader? Good morning, Nula. I think it's important for your listeners to remember that for some 47 years now, the Iranian people, 50% of whom are women, have been subjected to the most brutal and savage regime where gender apartheid and misogyny is institutionalized by the regime. And so during the course of the tenure of this regime, every aspect of a woman's life has been dictated to her by a 12-man guardian count. that has been led by the supreme leader.

And he was the face of the theocracy for some 36 and a half years now. His image was one that permeated across Iranian society. Women's lives, anything from employment rights, inheritance, family rights, criminal law, political participation, everything was dictated to them by the system of Elayettefagi, which is the supreme rule of the clergy, this system is now in its final legs, it's coming to an end, and it's an extraordinary opportunity for women

to continue what they have been doing, which is to lead the resistance movement and to bring about the change that they have fought for and have given so much blood for. You know, members of my own family have been imprisoned and mercilessly taught by the monarchical regime that preceded this one. And other family members have been imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the theocratic regime.

And I think this is a turning point for Iran and her people, but it's important, Nula, to recall that it's the Iranian people who must determine their future. and it's solely the responsibility of Iranians who are, you know, the legitimate sovereigns of the country. And it's important for them to determine, to self-determine their future. And only recently the National Council of Resistance of Iran announced a formation of a provisional government that would return sovereignty to the people. The NCRI is a coalition, a government in exile that's actually led by a woman, Mrs. Mariam Rajavi, who has a 10-point plan for Iran's future. And now is the time to talk about what Iran's future can look like and what Iranian people want to see.

And that, of course, as I mentioned, coming back to 90 million people, this huge country that is there. We will have seen, as I was mentioning with Goncée as well, many women that were mourning the death off Ayatollah. Alihamini. So it is definitely, most definitely, not a monolith. But you put forward some of the ideas that you are thinking about. I'm curious, do you think it would be feasible for a woman to actually lead Iran after the history, recent history that it has had? I think it's absolutely possible. And I think it is just the most incredible feeling for myself as of woman to see a woman leading a resistance unit, but not just one in exile, an organization that actually has resistance units inside Iran, and only a few days ago on the 24th of February,

MEC resistance movement, sorry, MECA resistance unit carried out a coordinated operation against the residents of the Supreme Leader, and a lot of those resistance units are actually made up of women. And I think for the international community, it was only really in the 2022 uprising that people saw Iranian women on the global stage leading and being at the forefront of this movement for change. But we Iranians have always been fully aware of the role of women. I mean, how can they not be when they're the primary victims of this regime and have been over two successive dictatorships? And you mentioned 2022 there. I do want to mention the death of Masa Amini.

There was the protests by the Women Life Freedom Movement. Massa Amini was the 22 year old who died in police custody in 2022 after being arrested for allegedly violating rules requiring women to wear the headscarf. And as a day is mentioning there, we will very much remember women that were taking their headscarves off,

clampdowns that were then on those women and the protests that took place. But Gonsche, let me come back to you? I mean, what do you think might the consequences be from the death of the Ayatollah? Well, we are yet to see what's going to happen next. But I wanted to say during the recent protests, we have seen that some people have chanted for the exiled opposition for Reza Pahlavi, who is the son of exiled Shahat for Iran and before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

And he has been seen as an opposition figure that has emerged in the recent year. and he has got support based in Iran from what we are gathering as well. It's obviously very difficult to know how much of support he has inside the country because we can't have any pools or as BBC journalists we cannot, with BBC Persian journalists, we cannot go inside the country because we are banned from reporting there. But we have to see how it's going to emerge for women specifically because they have been at the forefront of the protests, especially 22 protests. and the recent student protests

of Vizos weeks ago in universities we were hearing the chance of women life freedom again there in some prominent universities in Tehran. Coming back to you as a day

you mentioned the Shah of Iran you talked about your family Reza Pavlovi, just to put it in context for people, is the son of the exile Shah, the monarchy which was abolished. That is somebody that you do not want to see come to power, but of course it may be

that somebody takes the reins in the country that you don't approve of. It could be somebody within the Ayatollah's following, for example. It could be a close successor. In that area, it could be Reza Pavlovia. It could be a number of other people. I mean, what is your plan on how you want to shape this conversation or have influence? Nula, what I would say on that point is I think Iranians have been categorically and unequivocally clear. They absolutely do not want to see any reform of the current system. They want to see its abolition in its entirety. And therefore, any talk of a moderate Mueller has been folly and it continues to be so. With respect to the son of Iran's former dictator, what I would say is that he has

an army of bots online and he does have a very sophisticated and orchestrated propaganda campaign. But no amount of that will change the destiny of the Iranian people. Iranian people will not be regressing to the past, and they want no relic of that past. He is an individual who has put forward a platform that has himself as the head of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, and that to me is the blueprint for authoritarian rule. and also people in the streets of Iran have been chanting no to the oppressors, whether they be the Shah or the current ruler,

making their feelings unequivocally clear. We will not be going back, but we will be going forward. And of course, we're not getting a full picture from Iran yet due to the internet blackout as well. With Reza Pavlovi, I do not have him here to respond to the allegations that you put forward as a day. But I do want to also point, of course, to BBC News. We have a live page.

all developments from across the region as well as Iran and possible successors, discussions on that also taking place. But, you know, I am curious as a day for your thoughts because when you were on last time, there was rumblings of that something might happen. And I've heard this from other Iranians as well, that they really didn't want the US to take a stand or interfere in Iranian politics

that it was for the Iranians themselves to affect change. How are you feeling that? on where we are? I think my feelings are very much with the victims of the Iranian regime and the families of the victims and those who have been subjected to unimaginable pain and suffering. My feelings are also with the people of Syria, with the people of Lebanon, the Yemen. You know, this is a regime that tentacles have been all over the Middle East in terms of warmongering

and the export of fundamentalism across the region. But it's also a country that has subjected the Iranian people, 92 million of whom are living in a police state and one where every action of theirs is dictated to by them. So this is really an opportunity for hope, and irrespective of how those circumstances have come about. Now the self-determination and the decision and Iran's future is absolutely for the Iranian people and by the Iranian people. And they are very clear on what they do want,

and that is a free, a democratic, a secular republic, we want a pluralistic society, and one that's based very much on human rights principles and sovereignty of the people based on, universal suffrage. One third of Iran's population are ethnic and linguistic minorities. They absolutely must have a role in Iran's future. It must be one where the families of the victims finally receive justice and accountability over two successive dictatorships, you know, so there can only be transitional justice and people coming to terms with the trauma, the generational and

transgenerational trauma that we have been subjected to. That can only come about when the families receive the justice that they very much seek. And we want a society where there's a separation of religion and state and freedom of conscience. And all of those are put forward in the 10-point plan of Mrs Rajavi, who leads the Iranian opposition movement, the NCRI. Asaday, Izabeti, co-president of the Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers, thank you so much. also my colleague, Kandjeeh Abibia Zad, reporter of BBC Persian,

thanks also to you for giving us some time on a very busy day. Again, BBCNews.com. We have a live page and all the developments in a very fast-moving story, which is, of course,

not just about Iran or the US or Israel, but Western powers and also the Middle East region. Now, I want to turn to something completely different. Marianne Evans is better known by her pseudonym George Elliott. She's

the author of many important novels you may know, including Middlemarch, Silas Marner, Milan the Floss, and brings the issue of women's education to the fore. There's a new play, Birdgrove, the name of George Elliott's home that is just opened at the Hampstead Theatre in London. I was lucky enough to go see it on Saturday night.

Mary Ann Evans in it has not yet started writing fiction, but is beginning to have her mind open to progressive new ideas. Here's Mary Ann in conversation with Maria, her friend and teacher who's voicing concern about her new thinking ideas. I would like to ask you the same question I did on Boxing Day.

And I will no doubt answer it in the same manner. Nothing has changed since then. But it is something that I cannot get out of my head, that these are not your own thoughts, but that they have been planted there. By the braves, no doubt. But you do me a great disservice by suggesting I do not form my own thoughts and that I am so indelibly shaped by those of others, I thought you knew me better.

And so did I. But these thoughts are so out of character. So yes, I cannot but think that you have been unduly influenced. Well, yes, I suppose I have been. Influenced by every encounter, by every debate, by every single line of every single book I have ever read. Elizabeth Dulao. As Mary Ann Evans and Sarah Woodward as Maria. Welcome to you, Elizabeth. Thank you for having us. We're delighted to have you.

Also with you is the place director, Anna Ledwitch. Good morning, Anna. Good morning. Now, I really enjoyed it, I have to say. And it's also such a lot of humour throughout the play as well, which perhaps I wasn't expecting on the way in. But let us begin in 1841.

So this is 18 years, I understand, and before Mary Ann's first novel was published under the alias George Elliott, Adam Bede. So we're meeting her in Bird Grove. Anna, tell us a little bit about the setting and why it's so important for the play to be called that name. That's a wonderful question. Bird Grove was the name of the house that was bought by Marianne Evans' father. Fascinating story because he himself probably is an example of a self-made man. He was an estate manager, but managed to accrue such a reputation,

and I guess personal wealth, small W, that he was able to purchase this house on the edges of Coventry. As we learn, I mean, part of it is a declaration of where he's arrived in society, but also it is an opportunity to probably maximise the opportunity for his daughter, Mary Ann, to find a good husband and a good home. And so what's, I think, marvellous about the name of the play being Bird Grove and that all of the action takes place within this house and this house becomes something of a fulcrum in which, without overworking the metaphor, wings are starting to unfurl

and a certain person wants to begin to fly, so yes. I loved watching it. We can talk about the set a little bit as well. But how familiar, Elizabeth, were you with Mary? Mary Ann's story or George Elliott's story as it becomes. You know, I had never studied her in school. A lot of my friends had, but I don't know. My class seemed to not, we didn't cover George Elliott.

So I've come to it completely fresh. And fresh is an interesting word, actually, because I felt watching it that there are so many themes that are actually so contemporary, particularly about a woman finding her voice, for example. Absolutely. Well, this is the magic of Eleanor. Alexei's writing, Alexi K Campbell, our wonderful playwright. Yes, we're looking at Mary Ann Evans. We're using her as this vehicle to explore themes that are very present in society today, really.

This play is not just a biographical look at George Elliott. We're exploring many themes that will affect people today. Yeah. I was even, it's very interesting. We were just talking about Iran and people are talking about women's voice. out there and kind of how they've been expressing themselves. This was about education for women, intellectual restrictions that were put upon women. It's kind of central to the story.

And there is a striking scene where Marianne and a friend Kara, I should mention a little bit more about Kara, about the value of women's voices in contemporary society. And it talks about, you know, if you've only one sort of person telling the story, then the world will end up looking like that one sort of person. What about that as a director trying to link it all together about the contemporary and that in the past? Well, I mean, that line in particular always, there's an interesting ripple that runs through the audience whenever it plays because I think there is still that conversation going on about who occupies a space in which to tell stories and that that is a shifting space where there needs to be often the prioritising.

The voice has always been predominantly the male voice for many, many centuries and millennia. And I think it continues to be an interesting dialogue that we have about who has the right to tell stories, how much space those stories can take up. And that expands beyond just gender. I think it occupies also that space, including just our different backgrounds and different worlds that we want to have out there and interacted with. And so I think it never gets old that idea. And Mary Ann or George Elliott needs to grab the pen. Tell us about the Braves, Elizabeth.

Well, the Braves had a huge influence on Marianne. She, well, we talk about a little bit in the play about how she was deep into sort of an evangelical period of her life. And she was really, yeah, she was deeply, deeply passionate evangelical for a good period there. But then she met the Braves and she started reading around other subjects such as geology. And they had this wonderful influence on her where they made her question the world around her, opened her up to so many other sort of, so many other influences. And it really sort of broadened her scope and broadened her dreams for what potentially she could be capable of. And you see that with Carr in particular, you see her encouraging.

encouraging a young Marianne to want more for herself. There is also a question about how do you honour your own voice, particularly when it clashes against the person you love most. In this particular case, her father, there's this beautiful relationship between Marianne's father and Marianne. He wanted her to have an education, but only so far. Yes, yeah. And that's, that's one of the,

hits on one of the major themes of the play, of this idea of how do we live along, side people that we disagree with fundamentally. And again, that's such a prescient, a theme. And the wonderful Irwin Till, he does such a good job of balancing that desire to want to encourage his daughter to get an education, but then also his own, he's restricted in so many ways. He can only sort of let her take that so far because his fear comes into play about how.

what that will do to her, how people will perceive her. And himself too. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So it's complicated. It's not just a, it's not this simplistic story of him just going, yes, of course, be whoever you want to be. To be respectable woman, you need to be married with children and even to survive financially. Exactly.

Exactly. Which is also part of the backdrop. But coming back to Kara, who is Carla Bray, one of the couple, It's Charles. Yes, exactly. It plays her. It's Charles and Cara Bray in the play. And even Cara admits that she's very progressive.

She spends a lot of time smiling and nodding when her husband is speaking in public, affirming him, laughing in the right places, as she says, performing her role. And, you know, that came to me with so many conversations we've had on Women's Hour about being a people-pleaser or being nice or, you know, trying to break out of those roles and that it can be difficult. It's such a wonderful scene that because there's such a deep truth to that. And I think even if you consider yourself as a woman progressive or that you are in fact activating your own journey in your own life, this idea that we actually play roles, that we adopt masks and that we can often do that in relationship to people and the men in our life, it's quite a confronting thought because when you dig into it, you think, is that about keeping the status quo? and do we all participate in that some way?

So that's 1842 we're talking about, but still I think those conversations continue nowadays. They definitely do. Let's talk about the amount of humour that is in the play as well. I suppose Anna, I'll turn to you with that one, how you wanted to show it on stage, how important was it? I thought from the get-go, like even from the first few moments,

the audience is hungry for it in a way. Absolutely. Humour is such a wonderful way of creating a communication line, I think, between a story and an audience. It relaxes you. It actually creates a quality of listening, which I think opens you up to perhaps the bigger ideas that are going to be introduced as the play goes on. So there's something very conscious in Alexi's writing about enabling all of us to feel, oh, it's okay, this isn't actually going to be a history lesson. These human beings, they're all quite flawed. They've all got very, very clear agendas which bring them in opposition to each.

that creates great comedy, it creates great drama. And so there's something very satisfying about being able to have that is part of the experience of watching the whole play. Yeah, and of course I always have an eye and ear on some of the gender aspects of a play like this, obviously. And I was struck by the colours that were on stage. Oh, I love that you're struck by the colours. So struck, and I'm going to try and describe it.

You'll describe it so much better than I will. But like the pinks, the moves, the quite feminine, and traditionally feminine colours that were there on the men and the women. I mean, the design process is always such a very, it's a wonderful way in which to dig under the skin of a play before you even have actors in the room. And certainly, the wonderful designer Sarah Beaton and I, we had colour palettes.

I think the Farrow and Ball website actually was referenced a number of times in terms of their range of colours. Because, yes, whilst there was a real, desire for it not to feel too overtly, too overtly feminine in the sense of it feeling that this has become like a strange womb that she... No, it wasn't. It was like different gradations. Exactly, exactly.

And that there is a softness in it, but that almost you don't quite notice it. Because part of one of the wonderful stage directions in Lexi's plays that it could be the house of a dream. And so this sense of reality and the slight slippery nature in which the rooms all shift and wharf and how people move between them is actually very intentional in that all of is perhaps existing in a sense of a memory of Mary Ann's as she's about to step into her wonderful bright future. So part of the colour scheme of that could be,

is it informed by her own memories of that place, that time, that very formative, yes, few years? Yes, that home that you've had when you've had, I suppose, a transformation within your life. Elizabeth, what would you like people to take away from the play? You do such a wonderful job, I have to say, as well. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I suppose I would love for people to feel inspired. You know, the three core themes that I was most fascinated about this play when I first read it is the exploration of what is unconditional love?

That you can say whatever you want and remain loved. To truly unconditionally love a person. What does that mean? What is it to have. What is faith? What is real faith? And then this aspect of how do we live alongside each other? And I think I would love for people to come away questioning those values in their own life and feeling inspired to live according to their own truth actually about what they think those elements are to them. And also how much to bend and how much to compromise. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Which comes up.

It's wonderful. Berg Grove, now on at the Hampstead Theatre in London, running until the 21st of March. I want to thank Elizabeth Dulao and Anna Ledwich. Thank you both for coming in. For years, I've sounded like a broken record. I do not want kids. I do not ever want to have kids.

I don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. I'm in my 40s now. The door is almost closed. And suddenly, I'm not so sure. The story has always been. I'm just wondering to what degree it's just a story.

Definitely just a story. From CBC's personally, this is creation myth. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Thank you. Now, how did you sleep last night? Well, I'm asking you that question because I want to let you know that the next episode of the Woman's Hour Guide to Life came out yesterday

and it's all about taking the stress out of sleep. When our hands are full, sleep can sometimes be the first thing that slips and for many of us it can become another source of pressure rather than proper rest that we are craving. So in the episode I look at how to take the guilt and frustration out of it. Here is the sleep physiologist Stephanie Romischefsky on why better morning routines can lead to a better night's sleep. A good night's sleep, it starts in the morning

because we have to build up something called your homestatic sleep drive And the only way to do that is by spending more time awake, which is ironic because we're all panicking about spending too much time awake. And the only way to do it nice and sort of predictably is to get up around the same time every day. Now, this sounds quite freaky to a lot of people to start with, but that is only because of how imbalance and just so all over the place their current schedule is. And they believe a lot of people will say, well, I don't feel great when I wake up at the same time, you know, because often, and it's early during the week and then they want to sleep in at the weekends. But it's actually the inconsistency in that sort of rhythm that is causing the problems. It's causing them to feel groggy and uncomfortable. So getting up at the same time every day or as much as you can or just to be as consistent as you possibly could be, you and your family, you would start to notice that you would predictably feel more sleepy around the same time each night because that's how that drive is built up.

So if you'd like to hear more, all about sleep, you'll find you'll find. find it on the Woman's Hour Guide to Life. Just go to the Woman's Hour feed on BBC Sounds, click on the banner, and there it is. Now, I want to turn instead to a different topic again. Regulating the internet and keeping young people safe on social media sites is one of the defining challenges of our time. Today, you might have seen a charity is drawing attention

to a particularly hidden form of child sexual abuse that takes place on social media and other online platforms. platforms. I do want to let you know some of the details you will hear are distressing. So according to the NGO, International Justice Mission, IJM, it is one of the fastest growing yet least detected types of child abuse globally. Offenders pay to direct the real-time sexual exploitation of children. This is via any internet-connected camera-enabled device and often with very little risk of being caught. Most identified victims are in the Philippines and the UK is among the top three countries consuming this material,

the US is number one. Joining me in studio is Molly Hudson from the International Justice Mission. Good morning, Molly. Good morning, thank you for having us. And so glad to have you. And Sharon Percy, co-founder of SafetyNet, a British online safety technology company.

Good morning, Sharon. Good morning. Molly, I've outlined a little there, but this takes a lot of explanation, I feel, to help people understand what it is that you found. Yeah, so what international justice mission has found. is that the UK is one of the top consumers of live stream child abuse. And what we mean by that is a man, and this is horrible to hear.

So I just, you know, apologize to listeners. This is not going to be easy, but it is important that we understand what is happening. Because when we understand it, we can help stop it. So you have a man sitting in somewhere like the UK who is using just an everyday device like your phone and an everyday platform like WhatsApp. And he is talking to somebody, say, in the Philippines and saying, there's a child there with them and he's asking them to abuse them

live sexually for his pleasure and there is nothing that is stopping that from happening at the moment and you mentioned one online platform there I don't have response from that particular company but I know this can be across various social media platforms we're not isolating any one particular platform

to speak about this and I think this is part of the issue right I mentioned the Philippines there because I've heard you describe it before as like a ground zero when it comes to these issues. Why is that? And what numbers

are we talking about? So IGM did a study with Nottingham Rights Lab, which found that almost half a million children were being abused to produce new child sexual abuse materials, including live streamed abuse in just 22 alone. That's one in every hundred children, which is

deeply distressing and disturbing reality. And what we saw is that what's happening with these children is that they are being abused in some of the most sickening ways that you can imagine. So that's everything from siblings being made to do things with siblings to act with animals. And it's just the sort of thing that you just think should never be happening in this world today, but yet it is. And that is why we're absolutely committed to trying to stop this abuse before it starts. And like you said, this is happening across all different types of platforms. It's not one outlet. But But there are now new tools that could be used that can help detect and disrupt live stream child sexual abuse that you can put on a device in the operating system that can actually determine that this is a child who's a prepubescent who's being sexually abused.

And they can just stop it from being transmitted. So you can't upload it. You can't download it. It just doesn't, you can't get it onto your device in the first place. And that's what we're really hoping will happen and the UK government could take a lead in doing. You're nodding there, Sharon. Yes, so we have specifically developed this AI. It's called Harm Block to be trained to recognize and discern child sexual exploitation material. And I think what's very exciting at the moment is we've reached this point of conversion on devices, operating systems and processing power, whereby we can put technology like Harm Block into the operating system.

It's very, very fast and it's very, very accurate. so it works in live stream. And the exciting bit is that it works across every application on the device, including the camera, and it sits behind the screen rendering layer. So everything has come out of the applications and it hasn't compromised the privacy in any way. But it would stop it from being rendered to the screen or broadcast via the camera. Can you explain that a little bit more to me in the sense that you say it doesn't, hinder or impact the privacy?

So it's very important that people's privacy remains intact. And I think interrupting applications or getting, interrupting getting into the applications is where, you know, that that problem can occur. And the beauty of this integration is that it doesn't compromise anything other than what's being rendered to the screen. So it is the image that it interacts with. Would that be fair?

It stops the rendering of the pixels onto the screen. Yes. So that the image does not become... It doesn't get realised, so to speak. But my understanding, and let me throw this back to you, Molly, is that not only is the reluctance perhaps to implement a device like this, and you can tell me specifically what you've heard, I mean, there was a reluctance even before all of that to even talk about it.

We've mentioned it's a tough topic. But you found that organisations, governments, policy makers don't want to engage with this. Why? Well, it's such a distressing issue, isn't it? It's very difficult to get the awareness of this issue. I mean, I'm grateful for you having us here today because that's actually a massive part of getting changed. And I've talked to government ministers who've said, you need to get the word out there that this is happening. Because as soon as people realize this is happening, most people don't want.

children to be abused in this way, especially because it's not just children in the Philippines who this impacts. It impacts children here in the UK. So, for example, men who live stream sexually with a child, they've already crossed a psychological barrier that makes it more likely that they will then go on to abuse a child in person in a place like the UK. And men who abuse children online are two and a half more times more likely to then abuse a child in person. So this is a massive global issue right now. It's affecting children all over the world, but it's hard to talk about. And so once we do talk about it, I think that's when we start to see change happening. That's like this week we're seeing Lord Nash putting forward an amendment in the House of Lords,

which would mean that tech companies would be, and device manufacturers and operating systems, would be required to use the kinds of technology that Sharon's described, this on-device detection, which would stop a lot of this abuse from being able to happen in the first place. And so I think we're starting to see progress. And, you know, Kirstama just a couple of weeks ago said that he wants the UK to be a leader, not a follower in online safety. And, you know, this is a prime opportunity to say we're not going to stand for this. So with that particular amendment, you've been speaking to policymakers,

do you expect that to pass? Well, we don't know yet because it hasn't happened. But it would be amazing if it does, if it doesn't. And I hope that the UK government will choose to take a lead on this anyway. And we've had positive conversations with people within. government, there is an openness to discussing this. And I think that right now we're seeing such a massive explosion in the scale of online abuse. We've talked about 500,000 children in the Philippines alone in one year, but it's not just the Philippines. And so, you know, 300 million children

are being abused online every year globally, according to childlike. Now, that is huge. We just can't turn a blind eye. We have to do something about this. I mean, can I give you one example of the kind of abuse I'm talking about? Let me just. Before you do that, Molly, I do want to read a statement from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. They have said that protecting young people online is at the heart of their new violence against women and girls' strategy. And obviously, this is boys and girls that you're talking about as well. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give you an example of one girl. So Joy, who is now in her 20s, she's an amazing woman who's like powerful advocate.

she's speaking to global governments about why live stream abuse has to stop. When she was eight years old, her mother, she's from the Philippines, her mom went to work abroad in order to send money back for the family. When she was passed around different relatives while her mum was away and she said she felt like a stray dog kind of being passed from place to place. She went to the home of one relative who told her, come into this room and take off your clothes and stand in front of this camera. She was then abused for men in places like the UK to watch

live. That abuse happened for seven years. And it wasn't just her. It was her brother as well. And when IJM and police worked to bring them to safety, several children were brought to safety, but that's too long. That abuse should not be happening for seven years. When there are tools now that are new that could be put in place, it would mean that it would be too difficult for many offenders to be able to engage in this abuse in the first place. And so that's what we're hoping will happen. And we hope that DEC and the Home Office and others will start to look at these tools and use them. And I suppose at the heart of this, Sharon, it's a sign of the times in a really terrible way in the sense that technology has gone ahead in leaps and bounds. This is, I suppose at

the crux of Eurelius that it's live streamed is how it's not able to be clamped down upon in the ways that perhaps it would have been with previous iterations of child sexual abuse. Correct. It's not, it's so fast. The accuracy is extremely good and the inference rate is phenomenal that it is considered to be real-time intervention because you cannot unsee

harm once it's happened so it's actually stopping the harm from happening in the first place. I wanted to just give some stats here. Americans are the number one global consumers of live streamed abuse. I mentioned the UK in the top three. Law enforcement estimates

in the US that they have infiltrated only 0.0001% of actual cases. What do we need to know about that? Well, like Sharon was saying, the thing that's difficult here is that live streamed abuse is harder to detect than other forms of online child sexual abuse materials. So if you have an existing image or video,

the police will be looking for that. They will give it like a hash code and then they will be looking and taking that content down. Whereas live streamed abuse is happening in real time. So, you know, it's a video call, essentially. And those video calls are not being monitored because of various privacy laws, which means it's very difficult for police to actually become aware of where that abuse is happening. And so then the times that it is discovered is when things like financial trails are followed

and you realise that this is the rest suspicious financial transactions happening between, say, the UK and the Philippines, and those get flagged, or when law enforcement find that somebody has been downloading illegal content, like videos and images, and they see like a trend. of, you know, chat messages or whatever that are related to live streaming. But it has not been, they have not been downloaded. Obviously, this is more looking at how long somebody was on a call, so to speak.

Sharon, I mean, you mentioned privacy concerns there, but there must be arguments that people put forward about why they do not want to use this device that could block it. Well, we're just beginning this conversation. I think Lord Nash's amendment is going to be very interesting and this hasn't had the public, The awareness isn't there yet.

So I think what we want to do is to be able to reassure the public that it doesn't compromise privacy in any way because that's not a legitimate concern. Why wouldn't we do this? Child sexual exploitation material is illegal anyway. So I'm struggling to understand what the barrier to moving ahead with this is anyway. When the UK's Online Safety Act under that, the tech companies are required to proactively detect and block child sexual abuse material, I mean, does that help in these instances?

Absolutely, it does. And because this is the evolution of technology, this is a new way of looking at this. So platforms and services have over the last few years been the brunt. And of course, we should keep on with that. But this is now, you know, a new way, a new solution. And rather than, you know, the definition of madness continuing on with the same. And when you go and speak to people, Sharon, what do they say? That people won't want that on their phone? No, absolutely not. They love it.

They want it. Jess Phillips says, why wouldn't we? And so you feel you are getting buy-in? Yes. Ever the optimist. Yeah, yeah, because I think that you are coming with a message of how this can be. be resolved. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, right now what we're saying is that millions of children around the world are at risk of harm. They're already experiencing harm. Children in the UK are also

at risk, because this kind of technology would help to stop things like child's extortion as well and other forms of grooming in the UK and sort of harm groups that are being created. So this would just be technology that helps keep all children everywhere safer. It's safety by design. It's basically requiring that when you create a device, you think about the ways that your device could also be misused. And when you think about that, you create tools that can help stop that device from being misused. And this is actually just technology, to be honest, I think common sense. It just protects everyone. It protects children. It keeps everybody safer. I think though, as I was listening to you on other interviews as well as reading about you, Molly, I did think this is such a difficult job

you've taken on personally. Yeah. Do you know what? It just makes me so angry. I can't believe that this many children are being abused in this way and no one's doing anything about it. It's the injustice of that is horrific. And when I've met, I've met people like Joy. She's amazing. She's a really amazing young woman. She's now a social worker because she wants to help other children to recover from the kinds of abuse that she's been through. When I talk about this sort of stuff with you, I'm thinking about joy and I'm thinking about others who I've met.

And I'm thinking, what would they say in this situation? And they would want me to say, please do something to stop this. If there's something that can be done, please do it. Molly Hudson from International Justice Mission and Sharon Percy, co-founder of Safe to Net. And I do want to say if you've been affected by any of the issues we've discussed, we do want to remind you, you can go to BBC Action Line where you will find links to support. Thank you both. Now, my next guest believes she has solutions to build a better society.

Kate Pickett is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York and says, We can't afford to nibble when it comes to solving some of the big issues that we're facing as a society. One of those issues is care. It's one of the chapters in her book. Her new book is called The Good Society and How We Make It. So let's hear a little of what Kate thinks it will take. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I want to start with the quote you have by the British economist Susan Himmelwate. Society should be organized around the assumption that it is normal for people both to give and receive care. Is that not the case already? No, it's not the case. Very much not the case.

We have many care systems in this country and they're all broken. So the way we arrange care for children whose parents wish to work is difficult and problematic. The way we arrange care for children whose parents can't care for them is out of control. It's bankrupting local authorities and the outcomes for the. those children are not good. We struggle to provide appropriate care for children and adults with disabilities and if we think about care for the elderly, also a broken system. And our system is failing both those who need care and those who wish to provide care. So it's really not working for anybody. You do call for some big, I call them cultural systemic shifts. One would be a national

care service. Yes. What would that look like? Well, I'm not the first person to call for something like that. I mean, I think it's important to remember that we have had a series of big, important commissions, reports instigated by governments over the past 30 years that have come up with sensible solutions, including different designs for a national care service. And they've all been left on the shelf. And yet here we are again in a national care service. And yet here we are again in a cycle where the government is asking for another report, which won't actually report fully until 28. And meanwhile, all of these broken systems are failing to provide the care that people need. So we need to think about how we prioritise care. That means thinking about how we value care

and people's well-being. And that, of course, means how we fund it. And what kind of moral weight we give to those questions. So if we need to fund more care, then it's sensible to think about how we tax wealth to perhaps provide that. If we need to provide people with more time to be able to give to caring, then we need to be thinking about things like universal basic income. We need to be thinking about how people can give paid care and unpaid care, how we pay carers appropriately, so that it's a profession where those who provide care feel respected or well-trained, etc.

So it does need a great big, as you say, systematic transformation, but we do have those blueprints. We did reach out to a Department for Health and Social Care and their spokesperson said that the government inherited a social care system facing significant challenges. But we are turning it around, they say, through a funding boost of more than £4.6 billion, compared to 2025-26, among other measures. We're committed to building a national care service, they say, with Baroness Casey's independent, You mentioned the commission, forming part of the critical first steps to deliver this with the first recommendations for reform due to be published this year. Your take is that it's just not fast enough?

It's not fast enough. It probably won't be comprehensive enough. We do need to think about it being a joined-up system across all the kinds of care that are needed. So, yes, I think we do need a public conversation about the kind of care we want. probably we need government acting very, very quickly. We've seen these reports shelved time and time again. And if this government's report comes in in 2028, they'll be about a year away from a general election.

And probably nothing will happen with those recommendations again. So the National Care Services, one, you also propose a National Children's Service. And I was struck by you talk about the firm foundation of paid parental leave, trying to get to gender equity. at the very beginning of a child's life. You talk about 13 months of leave entitlement across both parents

with they use it or lose it so that both parents have to take it if there's two parents involved, yes. So that's the system they have in Finland. There are other systems across other Western Europe countries that do really well for children and parents. If you give parents' mothers and fathers, if the father's involved equal time,

to take and say you have to use it also you don't use it, then you're giving children a very different start in life. You're saying something important about dual parental involvement with families and with work. So I think that's important and research shows that that's very good for children's well-being. And if we do look across to other countries, they do have systems of childcare like that that are funded and are beneficial to their society. And the new Economics Foundation showed us that if you invest in children in early childhood, you get £7 back for every pound you spend.

So it is a worthwhile investment. If they have that good start in life. You also talk about Gilt's bonds issued by the UK to fund initiatives. But there would be criticism by some of that. For example, an accumulation of public debt, the potential to crowd out private investment, long-term costs of interest payments. Sure. there'll always be that kind of criticism, often from vested interests who do not want to see the status quo change.

And that's why I think we should be asking families what they want. At the moment, families really struggle to fund their own childcare, to the need requirement that they have. They struggle to balance work and life. If we ask them to join in in co-designing a childcare system, it would look very different. from the one we have today and that could give government a mandate for change. I want to jump into some of the other initiatives you mentioned. You mentioned it already alluded to it,

universal basic income or UBI, that is if everybody would get a certain amount of money, it's not means tested and you feel it could set people off on the right path or reduce some of the inequality or the stress on society

as you describe it. But, you know, that's a huge fiscal cost. Some people say it would reduce, has the potential to reduce, work incentives, for example? None of the evidence from the pilots and trials there have been of these kinds of basic income suggests that that is a problem, that people stop working, because people want a life that isn't basic. So they will always want to do other things. So you believe in the human need for

aspiration? Of course. But I also believe in our human right to stand on a secure financial floor, to be supported by our government when we cannot work, for example. And I think universal basic income is a conversation we should be having. And we have an AI revolution coming down, the line that is going to completely change the world of work and labour. So that's a conversation that we should probably be having now. And if I've understood correctly, it's that those perhaps whose jobs are eliminated by AI, for example, according to your argument, should have a, what would we call it, a cushion of universal basic income for a certain amount of time?

Well, I wouldn't say for a certain amount of time. I think this is something we should all be having. All the time, it's universal, it's unconditional, it's for life. I want to go to another term that is in your chapter on care as well. I don't believe, or maybe you want a reframing, maybe that's a fair way of putting it off the term a nanny state. The nanny state is always used in a negative sense. We don't want a nanny state. And for those not familiar with the term, it's of British origin,

it conveys a view that a government or its policies are overprotective or interfering unduly with personal choice. I think we should reframe it in a positive way. Why would we not want a state that looks after us? Why would we not want a state that helps us to realise our capabilities and helps us to manifest as much well-being as we can. Why wouldn't we want a healthier population, a more caring society? I suppose some...

A better educated society. Some people would say that they don't want to support other people to that extent and that they feel it should be up to the individual. That's why we should be having big public conversations about these things, bringing people together to surface their differences and their agreements. Do you think you can change the culture? not alone, but I would certainly like to help make it happen. Thank you so much for coming in.

That is Professor Kate Pickett. She's Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York. Her new book is The Good Society and How We Make It. Thank you so much for coming into us here on Women's Hour and sharing some of your ideas. I do want to let you know that tomorrow we are going to speak to two mothers whose daughters were killed at a school in the... United States. We talk about their bedrooms, what it means and why a film has been made

about it to speak about gun violence. I'll see you tomorrow. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft turns out to be flawed? In 1999, four apartment buildings were blown up in Russia, hundreds killed. But 25 years on, we still don't know for sure, who did. it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. Because these bombs, they're part of the origin story of one of the most powerful men in the world. Vladimir Putin. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss first time round? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen first on BBC

Sounds. For years, I've sounded like a broken record. I do not want kids. I do not ever want to have kids. I don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. I'm in my 40s now. The door is almost closed. And suddenly, I'm not so sure. The story has always been no.

I'm just wondering to what degree it's just a story. Definitely just a story. From CBC's personally, this is Creation Myth. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. You know.