Woman's Hour - Women in Sudan, Game of Thrones, Nurse Molly Case, Top Girls

Episode Date: April 20, 2019

The photo of a young Sudanese woman chanting on top of a car went viral and became an iconic image in the protests against Omar al-Bashir’s rule. What role have women played in the protests? And what is the current status of women in the country? CNN correspondent Nima Elbagir in Khartoum and Associate Fellow, Chatham House and former British ambassador to Sudan Rosalind Marsden discuss.The nurse and spoken word artist Molly Case on her book How to Treat People – A Nurse at Work. How can we live an environmentally friendly life? Dr Tara Shine and Madeleine Murray, who run Change by Degrees, a sustainability consultancy that offers advice to business and communities, and environmental journalist, Lucy Siegle offer for some tips on the ways we can live better, greener lives.Top Girls, the iconic feminist play by Caryl Churchill is currently on stage at the National Theatre in London. Lucy Black, Liv Hill and Katherine Kingsley, three actors from the cast discuss why the play made such an impact when it was first performed in 1982 and why it is still relevant today. It's the final season of Game of Thrones - three fans Danielle Ward, Georgia Humphrey and Ruth Websdale tell us why the series appeals to female viewers.The Shatila Refugee camp in the south of Beirut was originally built in 1949 to house Palestinian refugees. Following the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011 tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon many of them also taking refuge in the Shatila Camp. The publisher and author Meike Ziervogel talks about the work she is doing with 100 Syrian refugee women who have set up The Shatila Studio, a bespoke needlework business that is attracting orders from outside the camp. BLACKPINK made history by becoming the first female K-Pop band to perform at the festival, Coachella. With a world tour set for this year and their single ‘Kill This Love’ climbing the charts in the UK and the US, it looks like they might be poised to break the western pop music market. We discuss the role of women in K-Pop, both as performers and as fans. And what’s behind the ‘girl crush’ concept? K-Pop dance instructor Tammy Jane Mejia, music journalist Biju Belinky and Dr Haekyung Um from the University of Liverpool discuss.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Dianne McGregor

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Good afternoon, happy Easter and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. This week, trying to live a more environmentally friendly life isn't entirely straightforward. We'll have what we hope is some good advice for you on the programme this afternoon. And we'll also look at women's role in the fight for change in the Sudan. They led this demonstration, but

they're still there. Again, this is a really conservative culture, so I can't understate what it means to be at the demo site at two in the morning and have young, unmarried women manning the barricades. It's really amazing. Also on the programme today, some enthusiastic fans of Game of Thrones attempt to sell me the show. I cosplayed Ygritte, Jon Snow's girlfriend, and she's been dead in the show for quite a few seasons now, so she's less popular. And now I do Yara Greyjoy instead because she's still alive, hopefully. To be fair, you can never be entirely certain how long people are going to last on Game of Thrones. But that was the view of one of the participants on Woman's Hour this week, who really, as you can tell from that clip, a fully paid up fan of Game of Thrones, which came back this week to much media furore, as I'm sure you're only too well aware. So more on that in this edition of Weekend Woman's Hour. But we start with 2013 and the height of the scandal around failures by Mid Staffordshire NHS Hospital Trust and the ensuing Francis report.

A young nurse at the Royal College of Nursing Congress read out a poem that she'd written. It was called Nursing the Nation. We've washed and shrouded people that we've never known. Pinned flowers to the sheets and told them they're still not alone. Shown families to the faith roomyn nhw'n unig. Wedi dangos teuluoedd i'r ffrindiau a gweld iddyn nhw ddynnu'r ddwydau. Yna wedi dod yn ôl i'w gwaith, wedi ysgrifennu, wedi gwneud ysgrifennu. Yn ddynion, ymwslimion, ymdrinion a'r dynion, ymdrinion a'r christianwyr, a phobl ar y stryd, rydym wedi gofalu amdano nhw i gyd, ac rydym yn hoffi'r hyn rydyn ni'n ei wneud.

Nid ydym am meddwl, rydym am dangos i chi, felly clywedwch atyn ni, clywedwch atyn ni, go iawn. Rydych yn dweud nad ydym yn gwneud cymaint. love what we do. We don't want to meddle, we just want to show you. So listen to us, hear us goddamn roar. You say we're not doing enough, then we promise we'll do more. Molly Case got a standing ovation. We should say she is still nursing, now at St George's in Tooting in South London, and she's still writing. Her new book is called How to Treat People. Let's go back then to what prompted her to write the poem. It was a very strange time to be entering the profession. The Francis Report had just come out highlighting the horrific things that had been happening, negligence, poor care, nurses,

not having enough time to properly look after their patients. And it was inexcusable. But entering the profession, being one and a half years in, I had only ever seen my colleagues being nothing but kind, loving, full of humour, and just wanting to help people, that I felt fiercely protective of my colleagues. And it was really a knee-jerk reaction for me to write poetry. I'd done it for a very long time. And I decided to pen this poem. I recorded it, I uploaded it somewhere and it was picked out and I was invited to speak at Congress. I didn't quite realise what Congress was arriving in front of 5,000 people in an arena and I knew as I was performing it that something in

the room was happening. We all assume that there's a crisis in nursing now from what we read constantly in the papers. How is it from your perspective now? I think the title NHS crisis is used so much in the media and so often patients come in to hospital and we look after them and they say, gosh, where is the the crisis where is the crisis the nhs seems to be thriving i haven't i couldn't have had better gold standard care that's not to say that it's not underfunded under-resourced understaffed absolutely 100 it is i have to say that i am looking at a very london-centric nhs because that's all where i've i've worked and so i can't speak for everywhere across the country. Certainly it is underfunded, it's under-resourced and the most important thing is

nurses aren't being funded to become nurses. The nursing bursary has been taken away. That is the crisis, that is an absolute travesty that nurses can no longer enter the profession. Now you studied creative writing and English literature at university and then decided to become a nurse. Why? When I was writing at university the first time I took on a job as a care support worker and I looked after people with Alzheimer's for about two years in a little council-run care home on the top of a wet hill in the southwest and it was the most formative experience for me. I'd never had any formal training in care or looking after people and I

knew from that moment it was an absolute selfish selflessness. What a job, what an incredible thing to feel this good every day making people feel better when they're feeling vulnerable, when they're not sure where something is or who they are anymore when they look in the mirror. What an incredible thing to be able to say to someone, it's OK, I'm here for you, let's talk about this. I knew that I wanted to make a career out of it. So when I have been able to combine poetry, writing and nursing, I just feel like the luckiest person in the world.

Now, how to treat people is divided in two sections, A, B, C, D, E. What's the significance of those letters? Sure. It stands for Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability, Exposure. And it's a way of examining a person from head to toe, inside out, to see what might be causing their problem. But for me, it was far more expansive than just this systematic review of a person's bodily systems. It was a chance to look at the person, how they came to present themselves to us in this way at this moment in time. Why are they here with us like this? The expression of themselves in front of us, their soul, their spirituality, art, literature.

It was a moment for us to look at this person lying in the hospital bed and understand them. You do write about some of your patients and there is a very touching description of Eric struggling for breath and then dying alone. How hard is that part of the job? Looking after people when they're dying, it's a real spectrum of emotions. When you're looking after somebody in their last days, sometimes it can be a happy time when you're able to provide somebody with a good death and a death where they have had everything, all their needs met. They've been able to have dignity and they've made the choice to have their care withdrawn and simply to be made comfortable. And you know that the family with them that can feel great, you only get one chance to get that right. And my mum always says me and my sister

are the bookends. She my sister's a midwife bringing people in and often I'm at the other end, you only get one chance to make that a good death. But as you said when you mentioned Eric, those moments that are traumatic and you feel shame. You feel shame for that person. There's Mary in the book as well who came in thinking she'd had a heart attack. Now you do specialise in cardiology. What happened to her? So Mary came in to us. She was an elderly lady who felt that she was experiencing

chest pain at home we later learned that she was very recently bereaved she'd been married for years and years and years. 60 years I think. Yeah that's right exactly and it presented us all the signs and symptoms of a heart attack but when we took her into the catheter lab it actually was not that it was something called takotsubo cardiomyopathy which I was quite impressed that I can run that off the tongue so easily which is not a heart attack and actually it's her heart it's colloquially known as broken heart syndrome it's a reaction to stress such as a bereavement a trauma or fright it's rare but one can fully recover from it and Mary did and Mary went on to find the next chapter of her life with her

children her grandchildren and go home and live with the memories of her husband but um it was an incredible example for me of that romanticism in a way of the heart expressing itself not just medically but you know for herself spiritually as well. Now one of the really difficult things you had to confront was your father having heart surgery being treated on your ward how did you cope with that? I think dad was very smart to pick the exact speciality that I worked in that was very very clever I think of. At the time I rallied, I think, it was only in the later weeks that I began to ruminate on what had happened to us as a family and to Dad. At the time when he was rushed in,

I was far too aware of every single aspect of what was going to happen to Dad. I'd just been privy to watching cardiothoracic bypass surgery. I was very aware of the clunking machinery of the look of a chest being opened retracted the heart being stopped that the exact concoctions that the surgeons used to stop the heart and deflate the lungs and for me I wasn't able to separate that from my father lying there having that done then again I felt incredibly privileged to be part of that. When dad left the hospital, with the help of my family, nurse him back to health.

He'd looked after me for the last however long. It was now my chance to repay that. And I think there's something incredibly special in that. And he's well, isn't he? He's very well. He's very well. Very silly, but very well. So what would you say are the most important skills a nurse need? I think being able to listen to somebody is hugely important. I think we do so much talking now, whether it be on social media or in our real lives. And I think nursing is so much about listening and also so much about non-verbal communication, touch. It took me a long time to realise the importance of touch. And I'd had this wonderful introduction working in the care home where it was so important to be tactile, to reassure people through a handhold or a hand on the forehead or when somebody's dying, letting somebody know that you're there, even if they can't see you really anymore, at least they can feel you.

I think the importance of touch, listening to somebody and making sure you make space for them. It might be your every day at work, but it's probably the most important day of their lives. Fantastic young woman. That's the nurse, Molly Case, and a lot of love for Molly from the audience this week, not surprisingly. Tessa on Twitter said, a real ambassador for nursing. We need more Mollys. And from Anna, what a fantastic advocate for the nursing profession. So grounded. Her absolute love for what she does comes across so strongly. And it's very powerful.

Now, the 30-year rule of the Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir came to an end last week. He was replaced by a military council, promising a two-year transition period and then elections. But the protests on the streets have continued, though. Protesters want the new military rulers to transfer power to a civilian administration. And women are still prominent on the streets, and this is highly significant, of course. Images of one 22-year-old, Ala Sala, went viral. And this, don't forget, is a country where women can be arrested and flogged just because of what they're wearing. I talked to Rosalind Marsden, who was the British ambassador to Sudan

between 2007 and 2010. She's now a fellow of Chatham House, an independent policy institute. We also heard from Nima El-Bajir, who is Sudanese and a correspondent for CNN. She was in the capital Khartoum when I talked to her on Tuesday. We were at the demonstration site till about three in the morning and the numbers are still pretty significant. No doubt today they'll be boosted by the fact that the country's new military rulers, I should say the country's latest military rulers, have been given two weeks by the African Union to arrange for a civilian transition to power, which is the key, key demand here. And what about the role of women out on the streets? Are they still out there? Absolutely.

That's what's been really extraordinary to see. It's not just that women played such an amazing role. They managed to subvert what is an extraordinarily conservative cultural attitude towards women, which on some levels works for women, because it meant that even though, don't get me wrong, a lot of women were beaten, a lot of women were abused, tortured and threatened with rape by the National Intelligence Services, by the organs of the state. It is still in this country very difficult to comprehend seeing women being publicly abused, being hit in the streets. Even the worst of the worst have found that somehow to be

this kind of difficult thing to overcome, even within their own psyches. And these young women used that to their credit and to their benefit and stood up in a way that're almost being mythologized. You can hear it in the poetry and the songs that are being sung about them at the demonstration sites. They led this demonstration, but they're still there. Again, this is a really conservative culture, so I can't understate what it means to be at the demo site at 2 in the morning and have young, unmarried women manning the barricades it's really amazing we we mustn't forget um the name that has come very much to

the fore that's ala salah who is the woman of 22 uh dressed in in in white robes who i think she was on the roof of a car wasn't't she? And her image just went everywhere. Yes, the image, I think, captured the world, but also captured people's imaginations here because it mirrors a lot of the iconography of the Nubian queens, the Kandakes, that have been used again and again to describe these women, with the beautiful moon gold earrings,

the white dog, which was used by the women's movement here in the 60s when women first pushed for full voting rights. And Sudan was the first country in the Arab League to give women full voting rights. So it gives you a sense of how far back they have been forced by the former regime, by the Islamist movement. So it harkened back to that, even for the older generation of women here, to see this woman dressed in the white robes of the women's movement in the 60s, wearing the gold earrings and looking essentially like a Nubian queen. But when you see these women in the street, that's what they're being called. They're being called the Gandakas, the pharaonic

Nubian queens. And it's harkening back to this kind of matrilineal mythology of the pharaohs here in Sudan. I mean, I'm 40, so this is not my generation. But even for me, it's beautiful to see. Rosalind, this is evocative stuff, isn't it? So what do you think about what you've heard from Nima there? It is absolutely extraordinary, the scale of female participation in these protests, which was absolutely unprecedented. Sudanese women have become now very aware of their power and their role as agents of change, and they feel very much empowered. And, of course, the emergence of women and also young people

as a new powerful social and political force on the streets, you know, this has really changed the whole political landscape. It's also been part of a wider social revolution during the last four months of protests. So, you know, whatever happens now, nothing's ever going to go back to how it was before. Well, take us back to your time as ambassador to Sudan. This is in, well, between the years 2007 and 2010. And you used to have quite regular meetings, didn't you, with groups of women? Yes, I did. I discovered initially when I arrived in Khartoum as ambassador that many of my

meetings in the ministries and with politicians and with officials were largely with men. So I made a conscious decision to set up a sort of women's forum. So every few weeks I had a meeting in the residence with women from all sorts of political parties to discuss the issues that were of concern to them. And they included women from the ruling National Congress Party, as well as all the opposition parties. And what struck me was that one of the issues of most concern to all of them was the arbitrary application of Sudan's very repressive public order law, which enables the so-called public order police,

who are a kind of morality police, to go around harassing women, for example, for the clothes they're wearing. If they're wearing trousers, they're liable to be detained and even lashed and fined. Which makes what Nima says all the more impressive, the fact that, as she said, young, unmarried women are out on the streets of Khartoum at two in the morning. Just a bit, just about unthinkable, presumably.

It is just about unthinkable. And I think women's rights in Sudan have deteriorated significantly during the 30 years of Bashir's regime. The regime manipulated its religion to undermine women's position and to exclude women in particular from the public space. So for many years, women have fought against this kind of oppression. And this is one of the reasons why they must have come out in the streets in such large numbers. Based, Nimma, on what you've seen and heard, are you fearful or genuinely optimistic? I'm incredibly optimistic, I would say. But of course, you know, there are so many steps between now and actually solidifying a democratic transition. So we are going to have to wait and see. But spending time with these kids, perhaps I'm a little bit

revolution drunk, or whatever you call it, but they are very clear about what needs to happen, and hopefully they will be able to achieve it. And Roslyn mentioned effectively the morality police. Are they anywhere to be seen? It's very confusing because the Transitional Council has said that any laws that in any way repress personal freedoms have been suspended. But then they separately released a statement saying, and we are looking into the Public Order Act, which is what the morality police derive their power from. So you can see all of those kind of slightly teetering. I did a couple of live broadcasts from the street, not really knowing, should my headscarf be up? Should it be down? A few brave souls have had their headscarves down. They have, in some ways,

gotten into the soul of us. It will probably take a little while for people to make their own personal choices about whether they are or are not going to cover their heads, which of course is as it should be because there's no clear delineation whether it's legal or not. But even just the very fact that women are out in the numbers that they're out at night singing, dancing publicly shows that their grip is already beginning to loosen. The voice of Nima El-Bajir, a Sudanese and a correspondent for CNN, and you also heard from Rosalind Marsden, who was the British ambassador to that country between 2007 and 2010. After the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees fled to the Lebanon, and many ended up in the Shatila camp in Beirut, originally built back in the 40s for displaced Palestinians.

The author, Micah C. Vogel, is currently working with 100 Syrian refugee women who've set up a studio in the camp, the Shatila studio, not surprisingly. This is a needlework business, attracting orders from outside the camp, the Shatila studio, not surprisingly. This is a needlework business attracting orders from outside the camp. I originally went there in October to work full time for a local NGO called Basma and Zaytuna, The Smile and the Olive. I then came across, at that point was called the Women's Workshop, that Basma and Zaytuna had set up six years ago with NGO funding to train a thousand Syrian and Palestinian refugee women in embroidery art. And they had started generating a bit of income by selling products,

but the NGO money was running out and the workshop was supposed to close down at the end of 2018. So that would have meant 100 women would have lost their main source of income. I then went to Shatila and I sat with the woman and what I discovered there was just an amazing, beautiful needle art, really. Well, we need to go back a little bit because when I hear an expression like Shatila camp, I picture a dusty plain and loads and loads of tents and nothing else. But in fact, this is not what we're talking about, is it? Can you just describe it to us? Yes, so it's in the middle of Beirut, set up in 1948 for 3,000 Palestinian refugees. It's not a tent camp, it's housing, but it was set up for 3,000 refugees.

And because of the Syrian crisis, it now houses, let's say, between 20,000 to 40,000 people. So you can imagine what that looks like. It can't grow outward. It's one square kilometre. And therefore, in very precarious ways, has gone upwards. Electric wires, water pipes all run, you know, wildly out. In the winter, we just had a really tough winter. There are lots of rain. Between 40 and 60 people get electrocuted because walls get live. Puddles are even live. Hygiene conditions are atrocious. And the authorities, I'm sure the authorities in Beirut have got plenty to consider

because, in fact, I'm sure you've seen that film, Capernaum, which was out recently, which is also about an astonishing film. Yeah, brilliant film. A really good film. But to put it mildly, it's a challenging place. Do the authorities pay any attention to what's going on inside this camp? No, it's a self-regulated one. The authorities do not enter that camp.

It's regulated by a Palestinian faction, the various factions. And do the Syrians and the Palestinians get on? Well, yes and no. Again, like in any other situation, the Palestinians are there and they've been there for three generations. You know, they can't go anywhere else. And you then have an influx of, you know, thousands of thousands of new people. And of course, you know, I mean, there's lots of tension between them and none of these people want to be there. I mean, the story I hear over and over again from the 105 women I'm working with is saying, and then we arrived in Shatila, and I just wanted to go back. I just thought, I mean,

I was thinking, anything is better than this. I go back to war. I go back to bombs. And they are largely women on their own heading households. Yes, 100 embroidery women, me and my team. So I'm the only outsider. The five women I work with, they're all, the core team is Syrian refugee women and we give work to Syrian and Palestinian refugee women. Most of them are single women, often the only source of income, earning the only source of income for an extended family. And the men, they're either, you know, some of them have died during the war.

A lot of them, as one woman puts it, you know, men crack under war, while women just keep on going. So men sometimes just get up and leave. You know, some might have tried to make it to Europe or whatever, never heard of again. And then the women are divorcing their men now because it's one less person to look after well yeah it's a brutal set of circumstances to put it mildly so who are we

to judge anybody men or women in these situations but the intricacy of their their craft is phenomenal and I know we're going to put a picture on our twitter feed of the the quality of the needlework but this is a denim jacket you've actually got here, which I think was made in the studio. Yeah, I call it needle art because what these women do really is it's not like poor Syrian refugees can also embroider a bit. Yes, they are preserving something very precious, which is dying out, which is the Palestinian cross stitch. But they also use other embroidery techniques. And with these embroidery techniques, they are telling stories, and they are telling stories, their own stories.

So the jeans jacket here that I have is about a young couple that fell in love in Shatila, Adam and Shaza, and here they're sitting overlooking the rooftop, and he's telling her a poem of how her hair looks like the sun. And this is what they've embroidered, And she then eventually is actually electrocuted. But these women are telling the stories. And what grabbed me was that in some ways, because of the war, because of what they've experienced, they actually managed to reinvigorate an old traditional art form, the embroidery art, and telling stories of resilience, of strength, of hope. Micah Ziegvogel, and if you're interested in that, and the work is absolutely beautiful,

Micah posed for a photograph for us wearing a denim jacket with one of their designs on the back, and you can see that on the Woman's Hour Twitter feed. Last week, a bit of music history was made by Blackpink. Here they are. I don't know what to do without you Yeah I don't know what to do without you Yeah

I don't know what to do with that That's Blackpink and I Don't Know What To Do. They became the first K-pop girl group to perform at the music festival Coachella. They've also got a world tour set for this year and another of their songs, Kill This Love, is in the charts in the UK and in the States. So it does look as though this is an important moment for women in K-pop, the pop music of South Korea. You're about to find out a lot more about it.

I've been talking to K-pop dance instructor Tammy Jane Mejia, to the music journalist Bijou Belinki and Dr. Haekyung Um from the University of Liverpool. K-pop entered Tammy Jane's life about a decade ago. My family's actually from the Philippines, so I actually watch a lot of Filipino entertainment shows. And there's one in particular singer that was Korean who started off in the Philippines, and then she then made the news saying that she was now in a new Korean girl group and then from there it was YouTube and then that was it it just took over my life now I know K-pop has been popular with lots of people in Britain for quite some time

but this does appear to be a breakthrough why is it happening now I'm not really sure why now maybe it's just the right I mean the last time we kind of heard of K-pop or Korean music was when Psy appeared. Was he the gang man? Gangnam Style. Yeah. Yeah, that was him. I wasn't keen. But that was a novelty song, surely.

Yes, it was. It was taken over here in the West definitely as a novelty song. And I think just as more K-pop fans are sort of appearing, I think Korea and the industry over there are making it a bit more accessible to the more western side but bishu how would you define k-pop k-pop is pop music made in korea it is comprised of many different aspects i don't say you could necessarily just restrict it to the music. It's also the music videos. It's also the concerts. It's also the fan meets. It's also all

the content that is put out to the fans. So, you know, essentially Korean pop music, but there is so much to it. That is why people love it so much. Okay, let's bring in Dr. Hye Kyung Um, who's the academic here. What would you say about all this? I think it took a while for many general and the public to be aware of this. It's popularity in many ways. Another thing is that more younger generations

really use digital technology and YouTube is everywhere, especially for K-pop. YouTube is a very, very important kind of a medium and platform to disseminate and promote this music almost free of charge. It's almost a kind of free currency. So I think that will play a really important role. Another thing about K-pop is that those who became fans,

they seem to stay with the music. Can we just talk a little bit about women in K-pop is that those who became fans, they seem to stay with that music. Can we just talk a little bit about women in K-pop? Bijou, there's a concept, I gather, in most K-pop groups, and the concept of Blackpink is girl crush. What does that mean? Girl crush is hard to define because there's many you know sides to it but i would say that essentially it means a visual that pushes forward a more sort of independent a less cutesy less soft version of the group and the girls that are involved in the group so that translates to more powerful lyrics that translates to videos in which they are like you you know, with baseball bats and looking strong, looking powerful, looking great.

But girl crush as a sort of definition has been discussed for a very long time within fandom circles about what it actually means and what it actually means for the fans as well. Yeah, and cynically, I suppose some people might say, well, there are probably men still in charge of all this and making loads of money out of it. I mean, but isn't that the case for most entertainment industries? I think it's one of those things where, of course, there is a need for more women in

position of power in all of the entertainment industry. But it's unfair to say that necessarily K-pop should be like chastised for that. I wasn't chastising it. I think it's a point that we, I mean, we certainly would make it about the Spice Girls, for example, who were all about girl power, but there were plenty of men in charge. Okay, let's talk briefly about the dancing, Tammy Jane. Tell me about it.

What is it? So there's a huge culture around dance. A lot of K-pop groups, all of them really, their choreography is really a point of their visual and it makes sometimes the choreography makes the song and a lot of the fans copy the songs and there's a lot of youtube covers there's a lot of cover groups where fans get together they establish themselves as a group almost like a k-pop group and they put out videos you'll see in like leicester square or trafalgar square you'll see a lot of people that have come to our classes as well that have been dancing and they they're

dancing out there putting up videos there's a whole community there's a whole global community and there's global competitions for k-pop dance that i've also been involved in so it's a huge culture around everything and all of the fans that are in those kind of groups, you know, they copy the costumes and the styling, just everything. And you'll see them lip-singing as well. Yeah. Hye-kyung, what do you think the future of this is?

How much more successful can it become? Some years ago, everyone was saying that K-pop is not going to last another year or two. But then it has grown enormously. And it's not just music and dance. To some extent, almost for many fans, it's become a way of life in a number of different ways. Plus, I think the whole world is more becoming open

to non-English language popular music. It really can appeal to many different kinds of the audience across the globe. Tammy Jane, does it matter that most people can't understand the lyrics? No. No, well, that's a good point. No, no, not at all.

I mean, it's the same for if you're a South Korean listening to English music. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's just the same. It's just reversed. And I mean, I've been listening to K-pop for so long, I wouldn't necessarily say that I understand Korean 100%, but I love it and I listen to it every day.

I got the answer I deserve there. Does it matter? No. Broadcasters should ask questions like that less often, I think. My thanks to everybody who contributed to that. You heard from the K-pop dance instructor, Tammy Jane Mejia, from the music journalist Bijou Belinki, and Dr Hek-Young Um from the University of Liverpool.

Now, later in this edition of Weekend Woman's Hour, we'll get more on Game of Thrones, everything you need to know about why a lot of young women absolutely love that show. And of course, if you can't get to listen to Woman's Hour live during the week, two minutes past ten, Monday to Friday, there is the Woman's Hour podcast. Please do subscribe via BBC Sounds. There's always additional material every single day in the Woman's Hour podcast edition,

available via BBC Sounds. Carol Churchill's Top Girls was first performed in London in 1982. It's now on at the National Theatre in London for the first time. It opens with a fantasy scene where a group of famous female characters from the past are brought together for a dinner party by Marlene, an ambitious woman who's bought into the Thatcherite ideal and is running a women's employment agency. As the play progresses, we meet her sister Joyce, who stayed at their home in the country to raise a child, Angie. In the third scene of Top Girls,

which is set in the office of the employment agency on the day Marlene finds out she's got the job of managing director, she's confronted by a Mrs Kidd, the wife of Howard, who has been passed over for this important promotion. Howard's not in today. Isn't he? He's feeling poorly. I didn't know. I'm sorry to hear that.

The fact is he's in a state of shock about what's happened. What has happened? You should know if anyone. I'm referring to you being appointed managing director instead of Howard. He hasn't been at all well all weekend. He hasn't slept for three nights. I haven't slept. I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs Kidd. Has he thought of taking sleeping pills? It's very hard when someone has worked all these years. Business life is full of little setbacks. I'm sure Howard knows that.

He'll bounce back after a day or two. We all bounce back. If you could see him, you'd know what I'm talking about. What's it going to do to him, working for a woman? I think if it was a man, he'd get over it as something normal. I think he's going to have to get over it. You're going to have to be very careful how you handle him. He's very hurt. Well, naturally I will be tactful and pleasant to him. You don't start pushing someone around.

I'll consult him over any decisions affecting his department, but that's no different, Mrs Kidd, from any of my other colleagues. I think it is different because he's a man. Jenny spoke to Lucy Black, who plays Marlene's sister Joyce, Liv Hill, who plays Angie, and Catherine Kingsley, who's Marlene. Here's Catherine on her character. Marlene is a very complex character. She comes from quite a tough background. And I think her desire to escape her background is profound. I think she was very much into individualism, and she would do anything to escape her background and she didn't

want to end up in a situation that she felt her mother was in. Circumstances happened to Marlene at quite a young age and therefore she ran away to London and made something of herself and I think she's very proud of that. We've just heard that scene where a wife comes to the Top Girls agency, furious at a woman having overtaken her husband and heartbroken about it. How does that scene now feel like a period piece to you? Well, it's interesting that you've picked up on that, because when I was rehearsing that as a woman in 2019, I was very conscious of the fact that Marlene's very hard with her and very dismissive and tells her to go away in a slightly ruder manner without any sort of empathy or kind of feeling of regret about the way she's treated another woman. I think Carol and Lindsay Turner, our director, were very keen for me to play that part as if she doesn't care.

How dare she come in, this other lady, and tell her that she doesn't deserve the job? Quite rightly. You know, why shouldn't she be a managing director above a male colleague? But equally, the thing that sort of pings out to me most about those office scenes and the way that the women interact with the other women

are the way they speak to each other. And there does seem to be quite a callous, uncaring nature behind it. And I think from a 2019 point of view, it does seem really quite harsh. Now, Lucy, the final scene is between you as Marlene's sister and Marlene and Angie, the daughter. How would you describe the relationship between the two of them, Marlene and Joyce? Well, we've talked about, you know, our background,

and I think it is apparent in the writing that we were very close as children and we didn't come from a very easy household and we probably were a little team together. But as we've gone into our teenage years, we've become different people. You know, Marlene's a go-getter. I didn't do too well at school.

I married young. I stayed local. I've not moved from the village that we grew up in. So I think maybe in essence they're not that different, I stayed local. I've not moved from the village that we grew up in. So I think maybe in essence they're not that different, but life has made them become very different, if that makes sense. Now Liv, as the daughter Angie, it is your first stage role, and it's a considerable role. How would you describe Angie?

When I first read it, the thing that struck a chord that struck me deeply is that she has a deep rooted sense of fear of rejection basically. It's pretty obvious and I think most of us probably do, whether we know it or not. But for her it's exaggerated and also she has a desperate

need for validation from her aunt and love from her aunt because love from her aunt because I think she knows that she doesn't fit into this world and she's trying to find her place and she's always felt a sense of being not an outcast but, you know, not fitting in. You also played Ruby in the television drama Three Girls without any formal training.

Yeah. How difficult was that it was my first job so I think it was just really exciting to do it and I was just like oh my god I got my first role I started when I was 15 I went to this place called the Nottingham Actors Studio which is now called Talent First in Nottingham and they were like night classes and I went there for about six months and then brilliant brilliant training and for free as well and I went there for about six months. And then brilliant, brilliant training, and for free as well. And then from there, agents were invited to a showcase that we all did, and that was when I was 16, and then later that summer,

I got to audition for Three Girls. I mean, that job was just the most brilliant job I could have ever had as my first job. Now, Catherine, the first scene, the famous dinner party, hosted by Marlene with women from history it's an iconic scene what does it communicate would you say about the lives of top women? I suppose the choices that they've made whether they are choices that they want to make or are forced to make the sacrifices the way that they endure their lives, whatever the life that is thrown at them. It's quite amazing to sit around that dinner table and

listen to these stories. And the fact that Marlene has invited these women that aren't necessarily the most obvious of choices, but a lot of people won't have heard of these women. We've got Pope Joan, who was a female pope in the 9th century, Isabella Bird, the Victorian traveller, Lady Nijo from Japan, and a patient Griselda, and Gret, who was painted by Bruegel, who's an imaginary lady.

And it's an exquisite scene to be a part of. The play, obviously, was written in the Thatcher era. To what extent, Lucy, would you say the politics just feel dated? I think sadly the politics don't feel dated in the sense that Thatcher divided the country and we are living in a completely divided time now. The stuff that Joyce talks about with Marlene, there's a sense of, well, you lot are all right down in London, you know, you lot that get to go to America and have fancy cars. But the prospects for where Joyce is in Suffolk, there are no job prospects. It's very difficult. I just feel that's the case now. I feel that, not to get into Brexit, but a lot of the country feel forgotten.

And so I think, in a way, it's very resonant now. The view of Lucy Black, and you also heard from Catherine Kingsley and Liv Hall and Top Girls, is at the National Theatre until 20th July. Now, many people, I'm sure, will have seen Sir David Attenborough's Climate Change, The Facts, on BBC One on Thursday night. If you did miss it, of course, there'm sure, will have seen Sir David Attenborough's Climate Change, The Facts on BBC One on Thursday night. If you did miss it, of course, there's always the iPlayer. There is one big quote from that show, I think, where Sir David said,

We stand at a unique point in our planet's history. Every one of us has the power to make changes now. We're running out of time, but there's still hope. But actually trying to live an environmentally friendly life isn't without challenges. I've been talking to Dr Tara Shine and to Madeleine Murray, who run an organisation called Change by Degrees, an Irish sustainability consultancy providing education, advice and inspiration to organisations to help them to operate more sustainably,

and to the environmental journalist and one-show reporter Lucy Siegel. Here's Lucy. I work with lots of people on plastic and how to reduce the flow of plastic into their lives, and I often don't say, would you like to tackle the global plastic pandemic, to which most people would say, not really because it's too big. I say, would you like control over your kitchen bin? Which goes down a storm, because actually, deep down, most of us don't want to be outwitted by our bin. I definitely don't.

I can honestly, and I totally understand why people, by the way, are drawn in with that argument. All right, Madeleine, let me into your home then. How does it work now, and how does the way it works now contrast with the way things might have happened say six years ago so yeah we have made some fundamental changes in our house um and it can be the simple things like um the kind of shopping you know the average food shop that i do now looks radically different to the food shop i did even last year what's the difference um well there's far less

plastic waste and our recycling bins just to go back back to Lucy's point, are now respectable. I'd happily let you rifle through them. And what have you avoided? My personal pet peeve is multi-packs and mini-packs. I buy in bulk now. I buy the biggest yogurt I can buy. I buy big cereal boxes. I buy big cereal boxes. I buy big shampoo bottles. We can decant stuff into lunch

boxes and we can, you know, refill our pasta and our rice. Lucy, let's nail this down. Carbon footprint and ecological footprint. What's the difference? Well, they're both rather more complicated than you might think. That's the truth. I would think. So carbon footprint basically takes the amount of carbon emissions that have been made to make a product. So everything that's made, every product and every service really comes with a carbon footprint. If you're talking about a cup or a computer, this is all the carbon that's embodied in that product. So it's the energy that was used to make it, where fossil fuels have been extracted or different materials have been extracted. There's a carbon burden.

And sometimes, though not always, the transport burden of shipping it or flying it wherever it needs to go is also included in the carbon footprint, but not always. So tracking my life today for example get up boil kettle oh huge no you know by 10 o'clock or 9 a.m most of us have have racked up yeah then i get carbon footprint i get the tube to work yeah and then i buy a coffee yeah it all counts it all counts but if you're looking at the wider ecological footprint of that you're also factoring land use resource use you're factoring in all the

impacts of all the materials including water use which is very very important because we are on a planet with declining available water sources so then it gets really complicated and you're sort of factoring in everything. So it's not just the climate. So we tend, obviously we know, you know, people talk in terms of a climate emergency at the moment. So we're all fixated on climate change. Well, I'm fixated on climate change and that's important, but there are all other ecological parameters that we have to bear in mind. Let's nail down from all three of you the things you should never buy or do again. Tara, can I start with you? Don't buy anything disposable.

It doesn't matter if it's compostable or biodegradable. Anything that's designed to be used for a couple of minutes and thrown away, you don't need it. Brief mention about children and the amount of gear, much of which is plastic, that is associated these days with 21st century child rearing. Tara, what would you say about that? Well, I have two kids. Madeline has four. So we're well placed to have a view on this. There is some kind of crazy pressure that's put on new parents to have to buy, you know, the bouncer and the stroller and the walker and the top of the range buggy. And so number one is try and buy less. Talk to parents who've gone before you. And if they say to you, really, you will not need that,

you know, believe them. They're probably right. Then pass things on. The hand-me-down, pass-thing-on culture is really, really important in the world of kids. And there are lots of things that can be passed down, whether it's toys or the equipment or the high chair, whatever it is, all of that can be passed on. And it's saving someone else money. Most of these things are in good nick when we need to pass them on. Well, Madeleine, four kids, disposable nappies? I never used cloth nappies. I always used just regular nappies. My youngest is now four. Would I change my mind if I went again?

Which I'm not going to do, by the way. I think four's enough. Of course, it's enough for the environment, that's for sure. Exactly. I'm inherently unsustainable in my large family. Wet wipes. Yeah, no, they're a big no-no. Absolute.

And you actually have to be really literal with people. You talk about wet wipes to people and then you go, that also means facial wipes. And then they go, oh. Yeah, you have to be really specific about what they use them for. This is really odd. Yeah, totally. And don't pull out a wet wipe to clean your runners. They are essentially bits of plastic, which is what people don't seem to understand.

And they are transforming our landscape. And I think something that's worth thinking about is a lot of these habits are new habits. We weren't doing this even when we were growing up. So I'm in my mid-40s. There were no wet wipes when I was growing up. There was a damp hanky. And we managed to find... And I don't think it's a step backwards to go back to

that it's going to save you money it's going to stop the sewers getting blocked up. And the products that are sold to us by companies who want to make money out of our conscience are the eco products eco-friendly green organic who can I trust here Lucy? By and large you can trust the people who've been doing it for a long time and have actually put money into research and development. So if you take cleaning products, for example, there are brands who've been doing this for a long, long time. And then the supermarkets come in, take the logos and some of the formulations, but they haven't really invested in research and development and the product is not as authentic. So I really, really do try and stick to those kind of tried

and tested brands who've been in this arena for a long time and are continuing to push things forward. Lucy Siegel, also in that discussion, Dr Tara Shine and Madeleine Murray from Change by Degrees. Jo says it's pretty simple when it comes to choice. Exercise that very non-consumerist approach, which is to not buy. Obviously, we have to buy certain things, but our society is creaking under the reckless insanity of consumption, says Joe. Thank you, says another listener, for a user-friendly and important discussion about how we can help

with protecting the environment. Kathy says, it's with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to wet wipes. Their ease of using and disinfecting but it's clearly one thing I can do and says Kathy I think it's a must do. From Ginny a small contribution to reducing plastics is surely not to bag loose fruit and veg in supermarkets. Just weigh it on the scales, print out the barcode, and stick the label to the veg. Ginny, thank you. We had a lot of reaction to that, inevitably,

but it's clear that all of us have got to do something. And however trivial it might seem, it'd probably be good for every single household in the land to change its ways in, well, in as many different methods as we can possibly do. Now, to the final season of Game of Thrones. You cannot have missed all the kerfuffle around this this week. It's a TV show based on a series of novels

by a heavily bearded gentleman called George R.R. Martin. His books were called A Song of Ice and Fire. This is series eight and it's now available on Now TV and Sky Atlantic. I talked to Danielle Ward, comedian and television writer, Georgia Humphrey, who cosplays and works at Game of Thrones conventions and Ruthie Webstale, who's

a fan from Luton. I asked Danielle, what am I missing here? Game of Thrones is like House of Cards, only with more naked people and some dragons. It's a great political drama. Because I was adamant I wasn't going to like Game of Thrones when it first started, because I don't like fantasy. And my husband said, you'll really enjoy it.

And we sat down and watched the first series. No fantasy in it. First series is just politics and people killing each other and some naked ladies. And you get drawn into this world. Only naked ladies? I know there's lots of naked men as well but then you know that's just one element of it. There's very few naked people in the later series. It all focuses on politics. By the way there will be no spoilers in this conversation. You I think would describe yourself Danielle as a relatively circumspect fan. Game of

Thrones has its place in your cultural life. I love Game of Thrones. I consider myself a fan. I couldn't tell you what Mark Gatiss' character's called. I know he runs the bank. I'm that sort of fan. I know the big names, I know the big key players. I have my expectations for the finale.

But, you know, I don't... The nearest I get to cosplaying is spending time naked, and then I'm like many of the women in the first series of Game of Thrones. Georgia, I think you are more of a devotee in the nicest possible way. Outline the importance of the female characters and why we should in fact admire them. Well, I mean, I've had quite a complicated relationship with the show because of the representation of female characters because it is very good in certain respects you have these sort of amazing warrior women um going around killing people all that good stuff but for a long time the show did also have a lot of issues with um sexual violence which meant that i was

very critical of it for quite a few seasons um but do you think that's something that the show has kind of learned from because there was a lot of outcry particularly from female fans about just how awful it got in the middle. Well, I haven't read the books either. So I mean, are these shows a faithful adaptation of the novels, Georgia? To a certain degree, yes. It's difficult to say

because the show has at this point moved past where the books are at. Georgia R. Martin is yet to bring out the latest one. So we obviously don't know how faithful they are now. But that was actually the thing that was the cause of quite a lot of discontent for fans, was the fact that there was sexual violence being added to the show that didn't exist in the books,

where scenes where a sexual encounter was consensual in the book was made non-consensual in the show, which is an issue. Yeah, well, to put it mildly. And also this idea of, I think the phrase sex position was coined for some of this stuff where a relatively important part of the plot would be revealed in a brothel for absolutely no good reason. Any concern with that, Georgia? Yes, I mean, there's been a lot of discussion

about whether or not the nudity especially became sort of gratuitous. I know that Emilia Clarke had it written into her contract at one point that she could do no more. She is one of the actors, yeah. Yes, who plays Daenerys Targaryen. She had it written into her contract that she wasn't going to do any more nude scenes because it just got to a point

where it was a bit silly, I think. Yeah, as you say, all these plot points would be given, people invading, whatever, and there'd just be a naked woman for no real reason. Ruthie, was there ever a point when you lost faith with Game of Thrones because of its attitude to women? Well, I came to the show having read the books, so I guess I kind of knew what I was getting myself in for.

There were some points where I thought, is this really necessary? Especially with a lot of, as mentioned, the background brothel scenes. You did think, does this really need to be happening here? But at the same time, I think it's important to remember that this is need to be happening here but at the same time i think it's important to remember that this is supposed to be set in the dark ages where you know women did have far less rights and that does you know obviously have a lot of impact on the show and what is happening to women in it the fact that then the women characters though you've got some tremendously strong women and you do have a really nice variety what i like about it isn't just you

know the young desirable women who are doing good things you've had quite a lot of older women who have proven to be you know real masterminds in the game and that i think is very nice and it's been important to show that despite the awful things that have happened to a lot of the female characters they have in general had power to change their fate and to change where they're going. So when you dress up and do cosplay, who do you dress up as, Ruthie? I've been Melisandre a couple of times. She's one of the Red Priestesses. I had a lot of fun.

I'm always very keen to make characters who are magic users. I like ones who are a bit mysterious and who you're not sure exactly what they're up to. I've also cosplayed as one of the Dothraki handmaidens. The Dothraki are a kind of tribal people. They follow Daenerys Targaryen for quite a lot of the series. And I had a lot of fun dressing up as one of those. I got to meet Jason Momoa, who plays Khal Drogo,

while dressed up as a Dothraki handmaiden. So that was very cool for me. Life doesn't get any better than that. It's like me getting into Ikea before anybody else. It's absolutely fantastic. So, Georgia, I gather that some of your cosplay in the past has, well, you've had to make a few changes, haven't you? Because you were being somebody.

Yes. So when I first started Game of Thrones cosplay, I worked for Sky and for HBO briefly, doing sort of promotional events and I cosplayed Ygritte, Jon Snow's girlfriend. And she's been dead in the show for quite a few seasons now. So she's less popular. So now that I'm working for ThronesCon, I have to do something more relevant.

It's a convention that's Game of Thrones specific in Manchester. It's on the 18th of August. If anyone would like to buy tickets. And now I do Yara Greyjoy instead because she's still alive, hopefully. Yes, well, that's it. I have read the theory that at the end of this series

the arc will actually end with female supremacy. That is a theory, Danielle. Do you think it's likely to come true? I really hope so. The interesting thing, if you want to get into the mechanics of female portrayal in Game of Thrones, one of the things that you do have to hold on to is all of the best characters are women. All of the women are incredibly complex characters. And they are no less vicious than many of the men.

They're no less vicious. But some of them are also heroes and some of them are warriors and some of them are brilliant little tiny girls that can command armies. So the women are by far the more interesting characters and I would like to see a woman on the Iron Throne personally and no one else is going to like this. I would like to see Cersei Lannister because I think she's the best character. Danielle Ward, who wants a woman on the Iron Throne, Georgia Humphrey and Ruthie Webstale discussing their love for Game of Thrones.

Bank Holiday Monday's edition of Woman's Hour is about women and true crime. It's fair to say there have been countless TV documentaries lately about cases like the Yorkshire Ripper, so-called, the unsolved murder of Jill Dando, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. There are also some highly successful podcasts too, Teacher's Pet, My Favourite Murder. And not only are women usually the victims in crimes or cases like this, but they are also the main consumers. Are you comfortable about all that?

Why are so many women so interested in true crime? That's the subject of Women's Hour, two minutes past 10 on Bank Holiday Monday. Hope you can join me then. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions

I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con,

Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.