Woman's Hour - Women on nature, Prisons Minister Alex Chalk, We Are Lady Parts, How infertility diagnoses impact relationships.

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

New research shows that girls face unique and escalating risks as they turn 18. The transition from girlhood to adulthood could be an opportunity to get things right, but with little to no specialist support for young women as a group, it becomes a missed opportunity to prevent young women’s needs becoming more complex and entrenched. Anita is joined by Prisons and Probation Minister, Alex Chalk, Jessica Southgate, CEO of Agenda and by 21 year old, Dani, who, despite a chaotic childhood and being left with no support from 16, turned her life around.A new anthology has just been published called Women on Nature. It includes women from the 14th century to the present day, fiction writers, poets, biographers, gardeners, farmers, theologians, artists and many more. Anita talks to the editor, writer Katharine Norbury, about her selection and why she thinks her anthology provides a fresh vision of the natural world and an alternative to conventional nature writing.A TV comedy series featuring funny and bold Muslim women – a rarity you might say on our screens. Well ‘We Are Lady Parts’ is that rarity: a new six part comedy series for Channel 4 which began last night. It follows the highs and lows of the female punk band Lady Parts. We speak to Anjana Vasan and series writer Nida Manzoor.On Woman's Hour, we are always keen to hear your stories. One listener, Clementine Baig was diagnosed with Primary Ovarian Insufficiency last year, and got in touch to share her experiences with infertility. She's joined by the Podcaster Noni Martins, whose husband was diagnosed with Male Factor Infertility in 2019, to explore how an infertility diagnosis can impact families, relationships and self-image.Presented by Anita Rani Producer: Frankie Tobi

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, we've made it to another Friday. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Now, you can't fail to have noticed nearly 24 years after she died, Diana is once again headline news. Prince William has said the BBC Panorama interview fuelled her fear and paranoia and drove his parents apart.

Well, what do you think? Going on national TV to talk about your broken marriage would no doubt have an impact on your relationship with your ex. But how much was she manipulated and how much did she want an outlet to talk? Lots of people making their opinions heard and talking for a woman who can't speak for herself. What's your take on all of it?

You can text Woman's Hour on 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. Check with your network provider for extra costs. And on social media, it's at BBC Woman's Hour. Or you can email us, of course, through our website. While the theme for the show seems to be women who get spoken for, everyone has an opinion on and don't often get their voices heard. Unless, of course, it's on this programme program lots to get through in the next hour we're discussing what more can be done

to help young women in the criminal justice system as they transition from youth to adult services when they turn 18 then we are lady parts it could be the woman's hour cry did you see it last night on channel 4 i can highly recommend it if you didn. A brilliant new series about an all-female Muslim punk band. Such a good sentence to say. If you've not heard about it, stay with us. I'll be speaking with the writer Nidham Manzoor and one of the lead actresses, Anjana Vassan. Then Women and Nature, a new anthology of women writing about nature is out. I'd love to hear how your relationship with nature has changed over the last year. Do text me 84844 or you can go to our email,

which you can find via our website. But first, really strong criticism from the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex overnight about how the BBC handled its interview with their mother in 1995 and how it handled the initial investigation into how Martin Bashir got the interview. Prince William said failures by the BBC fuelled Princess Diana's paranoia and made his parents' relationship worse. Prince Harry talking about the ripple effect of a

culture of exploitation and unethical practices. While Rosa Monckton was one of Diana's best friends, I spoke to her last November when questions were being asked about how the interview with Diana was secured. I asked what she thought when she saw the interview on Panorama. It made me very sad and it also brought me back to the night I watched the original Panorama interview 25 years ago. And what did you think about it the first time you saw it? The first time I saw it, I thought, what a terrible mistake my friend had made. And I was really quite horrified and also astounded that I didn't know anything about it because I had seen her a lot that month and she told me nothing. And then she rang me the next day and said, I'm really sorry, Rosa, I didn't tell you that I'd done this because

I knew you wouldn't have approved. And she was absolutely right. And I told her why I didn't approve. One of the things being that it was not fair on her sons, which she agreed with immediately and regretted immediately. And I said it just was not a very edifying thing to have done, to have exposed herself in that way. But she was absolutely determined that for her, that it was the right thing to do. And, you know, like so many of us, she was much better at giving advice than taking it. Did she tell you why she decided to do it? Because she felt trapped, because she felt nobody understood.

And I think, as many people who saw the documentary last night think, it was also a cry for help you know it was a sort of get me out of here and then I asked how did she feel about everyone talking about it 25 years later and still picking over it I think that people are picking over it because of the new information that's come to light. And I think the most interesting thing for me was seeing Charles Spencer's contemporaneous notes of the meeting he had with Mr. Bashir and then with his sister as well. I mean, what you have to remember is that, you know, these were meticulous notes.

You know, his background, he was a journalist and he's an historian. And, you know, thank God for that, because it does put that whole program into a context which makes it much easier to understand why she did it. So in a way, I, in one way, huge anger and upset, but actually relief because it explained to me for the very first time why she did it. Why do you think she did it? Because she'd been almost coerced into it by all these things that Mr. Bashir was insinuating. Well, the BBC says it's written to both princes to apologise as well as to Prince Charles and to Earl Spencer, Diana's brother. And Martin Bashir has said, I apologise then and I do so again now over the fact that I asked for bank statements to be mocked up.

It was a stupid thing to do and was an action I deeply regret, but I absolutely stand by the evidence I gave a quarter of a century ago and again more recently. I also reiterate that the bank statements had no bearing whatsoever on the personal choice by Princess Diana to take part in the interview. If you would like to give us your two pennies worth, then 84844 is the number to text or you can email us or you can go to our social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. Now, new research from Agenda, the Alliance for Women and Girls at Risk and the Alliance for Youth

Justice shows that girls face unique and escalating risks as they turn 18 in the criminal justice system. The transition from girlhood to adulthood could be an opportunity to get things right. But with little to no specialist support for young women as a group, it becomes a missed opportunity to prevent young women's needs becoming more complex and entrenched. Well, to discuss this further, I'm joined by Prisons and Probation Minister Alex Chalk and by Jessica Southgate, CEO of Agenda, and Dani, a young woman who's been part of the criminal justice system her entire teenage life. Good morning to you all. Jess, let me come to you first. Let's understand this. Who are the young women and the girls that you're concerned about? Who are the ones that are falling through the gaps? Good morning, Anita.

Young women in the criminal justice system are a particularly overlooked group. They're a minority on account of both their age and their gender. And as a result, they're often overlooked in research and policy and funding, as well as with services. So the young women that we're talking about have often experienced significant histories of violence, trauma and disadvantage. They're much more likely than boys in the criminal justice system at the same age to have experienced exploitation, abuse from a family member, someone they trusted, abuse in their intimate partner relationships they're also much more likely to have been in statutory care also have been young parents and they're three times as likely as boys of the same age to have a common mental health problem and so because of these difficulties in their life

and often underpinned by real challenges in their home lives as they've grown up grown up that can lead to them coming into contact with the criminal justice system. Then when they turn 18, having this real drop off in support to be able to address all of the range of different issues that they face. And what does that do to them? What are the gaps that they're falling through? So what often happens is that despite the fact that you know there is no massive difference that happens we all know that you don't just immediately become an adult when you turn 18 but we have this arbitrary divide that is propped up by various bits of legislation and policy between 17 and 18 and of course reaching

adulthood can be a very scary and an exciting time. But it's characterised by a lot of change, a lot of different things happening at the same time. And so young women are moving between both youth and adult justice systems, which in themselves are characterised by very different types of support and intervention, with much more focus in the adult justice system on responsibility and expectations on young women. And at the same time, they're also transitioning in other services like safeguarding, mental health and accommodation. And that can mean that support either drops away overnight sometimes or changes significantly because of the different thresholds when they reach 18. And young women describe this to us as feeling

like a cliff edge in support. And for those girls who've already faced significant levels of instability in their lives, this can be a really difficult and therefore very risky time. So to give you an example of what that looks like in practice, we know that the risks facing girls who experience sexual exploitation don't end when they reach 18, but they may no longer be able to get support from adult social services. So one study, for example, found that only 3% of children in need age 17 were transferred over to adult social services. Oh, we seem to have lost the line with Jess there. Well, we'll try and get Jess back up to speak to us. But earlier, I spoke to Dani, who's now 21, who experienced a chaotic childhood.

She was raised by a dad who had addiction problems. By 13, she'd attracted the attention of the police and social services, the child and adolescent mental health services. And at one point, she had at least 15 adults in meetings discussing her case. Just the sort of young, vulnerable woman that Jess was talking to us about there. There were child protection orders, court orders. But at 16, she stopped offending and decided to live independently. I spoke with Dani about her experience a little bit earlier.

Yes. So I sort of had a couple of years from 16 to 18. I was OK. I were getting things together you know things were looking positive the future was looking positive but then having turned 18 I started college I went to go do my GCSEs because however I did leave the home at 16 to try do them at school I didn do very well. I was living in a homeless hostel at the time. And, yeah, there were a lot of extenuating circumstances which led me to not be able to achieve. But I did go back.

I went back to college at 18. In the first month of college, my mum passed away and my dad went to prison. So that was quite difficult for me to deal with whilst I was trying to... I was living independently still. I had been for a couple of years. I was trying to get an education

and it was really important to me that I did get an education. So that would have had a huge knock-on effect for you. You've already had, you know, this incredibly vulnerable, chaotic life up until this point. You're trying to get your life back on track. And then 18 when you're deemed an adult everything's taken away from you and then you your dad's taken away and your mum at the same time yeah so that did have an impact on me because I felt like I've tried so hard to get to where I am and no matter what I do my the factors on my life that I can't control will always have an effect on it

so um yeah not long not long after this happened I tried gaining access to um the CMHT the adult mental health services because I turned 18 I wasn't able to get the CAMHS anymore um this this didn't work I wasn't able to get a worker. I was assessed. They said I didn't need their help. I said that I said everything that had happened. I said that I'd had mental health services since I was since I was 14 till 16 but 13 till 16 even but yeah it was difficult. I didn't get a worker. I didn't get any support from them. They said that I didn't need them, which really disappointed me.

Led me to hold sort of a grudge against services as a whole because how come at a younger age I had so many involved with me? Now all of a sudden I'm just completely on my own with no help. And how did you feel about that? Disappointed, again, a word that I've used a lot already. Did you feel exposed though? Even though you said you'd had a difficult relationship with the services when you were younger, you had the services, right?

You had 15 case workers from various different places working with you and then all of a sudden at 18 nothing yeah see that was the thing that I just found so strange whenever I needed things there was always someone I could call whether the issue got resolved or not was a different thing but then all of a sudden there's just there's no one there there's nothing there and I was I just really I didn't really understand it so I just took it upon myself to move on and try do things by myself and luckily enough I managed to get through everything but there's a lot of people who would have been in my position who wouldn't be so lucky I am very blessed and I am very grateful that somehow I did manage to

change my life and achieve without the input of others like you say you did manage to work it out because you are lucky and you're remarkable, as I've said, you managed to cope and you got your GCSEs and your A-levels. Yeah. But not everybody, like you say, is as lucky as you. No. What's your concern for other young women who, like you, have had all the support of services and then at 18 they're left completely on their own fending for themselves i mean there's a massive concern this is people's lives and this is people who didn't have a good start in life which i don't feel like no one really looks at as being a factor that can just affect things so much. So these people, with a lack of parental guidance like me,

without a good start in life, they're not able to go on and achieve, they're not able to become decent functioning adults because they do not have that support that they need. These services are in place to support people. The youth justice service, the mental health services, the social services, they're all there to support people. They're all there to supposed to help people change their lives. So why all of a sudden when they turn 18 does this disappear?

I don't feel like, you know, a day makes a difference in age. You're a good news story, but how different could your life have been? It could have been very different. I do always feel like i've been against all the odds in achieving what i have i do still struggle to this day with sort of the chaos that was my past um and like i said not not everyone is is is gonna be like me there's like when people turn 18 and they'll lose their access to their mental health services or when people who are involved in youth justice service turn 18

and they're all of a sudden getting transitioned over to probation the adult services and things change so much and all of a sudden because i stopped defending at 16 so i never got the experience of adult probation but I know people who did who were involved in my life when I was younger and all of a sudden it's gone from this sort of I wouldn't say lenient the youth justice service isn't lenient but over to an adult over to an adult service where as soon as they start missing the odd appointment they're getting breached and it's setting them up to fail. They can end up in prison for missing three appointments, if not less. That is not helpful. There's no transition period between the two. It's just all of a sudden you're 18 and it goes from one to the other.

How is that going to help people? Well, Jess from Agenda, hopefully you're back on the line now. Jess, Dani has come through a difficult time in a very positive way. She's doing a law degree now, amazingly, and is a youth worker supporting teenage women who are experiencing similar problems that she did at Getaway Girls in Leeds. But just how typical is she? What are the consequences of this lack of integrated support? And what she talks about, you you know setting young women up to fail just what happens to young 18 year old vulnerable women like danny who aren't as lucky as danny

yeah i thank danny so much for sharing her story with us because it really shows how challenging her early life has been and the long-term ramifications of that as she said now she's still dealing with that chaos in her past and it's a testament to her strength and her resilience that she fought so hard to get the support that she needed as well as uh the the really good quality support that gender and youth specialist services like getaway girls can deliver in the community to be able to address those underlying issues and also work with young women over a long period of time because as danny said these things don't go away overnight so

in terms of what happens when girls reach 18 if they don't have that support if it's not an ongoing relationship with somebody that they trust often critically in a women-only environment particularly for girls and women who've experienced male violence being in a women-only environment, particularly for girls and women who've experienced male violence, being in a women-only environment is really important to them. And if they don't get that, it can mean that the trauma that they've experienced in their early lives can then fester and lead to other problems. So it can lead to mental health problems.

They might turn to drugs and alcohol to cope. Young women often self-harm, there are higher rates of self-harm and self-inflected death amongst young women in custody, which really shows the levels of distress amongst this group if they don't get the right support that they need. So I spoke to Dani for a while longer than what you heard, and one of the things she said to me is because she, you know, she was on the wrong side of the law when she was young, she was vulnerable, she was only a young teenager. But she said, you know, in the eyes of the law, I was a criminal. Why is it so important to get this right at this age? What are the benefits

for young women and broader society? Well, as you say, it is a really critical time to get things right, because we know that reoffending rates amongst young adult women are lower than young adult men and also amongst adult women's prison population. And if we really want to divert women away from the criminal justice system, we need to do that at the earliest possible stage. And that's a time, as you can see, Dani went through all that, but she's now thriving. She's doing really well. She's studying. She's going to do brilliantly in her life. We need to be able to make sure that all young women have those opportunities so that they're able to turn their lives around at that really critical point,

get the help that they need and be able to go on to live really full and happy lives. And so that they're not then in a position where they might then be offending more and drawn further into the criminal justice system as adults, which we know has a significant detrimental impact on women, their communities and their children. I'm going to bring the Prisons and Probation Minister, Alex Chalk, into this morning. Minister, do you recognise the gaps that Jessica and Danny are underlying here? Well, let me begin by saying that I was very, very struck by what Danny said. And it is absolutely remarkable that somebody who's had a difficult start has turned it around, got her GCSEs and is now doing a law degree.

I think that's just an inspiring story. And I pay tribute to her. Can I also make the point that, as Jessica was saying, diversion is the key here, because what we want to do is to avoid young people, including young women, getting into the criminal justice system in the first place. And one of the really dramatic and remarkable things that's happened over the last 10 years is that the number of those young people that has come in has dropped by 90%. So that's 90% fewer girls under 18s getting a criminal justice disposal. And what that means in concrete terms is that the cohort who find themselves in, for example, youth custody. So a young offender institute is now across England and Wales. It's 19. So it's still obviously a number, a very complex number, lots of complex needs.

But it is really being driven down because we feel very, very strongly that avoiding girls coming into the criminal justice system in the first place is critical to allowing them to lead a great and fulfilled life. Absolutely. So how are you going to do that? Well, as I said, first of all, we've driven down the number by 90 percent. That's that's the first and most important thing. But what we also want to do as part of that is to ensure that the courts, if they have someone in front of them, and by the way, I've defended a lot of young girls. I defended a girl who was in possession of a MAC-10 firearm that had been used in Peckham. I've defended in Syria's GBH and so on. You need to be able to say to the, on behalf of that defendant, to the judge, please, judge, don't send her inside.

Don't send her into custody. These are the alternative disposals, which is why we've invested and we're announcing today 46 million pounds that is being rolled out to charities such as the Nelson Trust, which do incredible work dealing with alcohol misuse issues, drugs issues, mental health. So that judge can say, do you know what? I'm not going to send that person into custody. I'm going to send them to a community order which addresses a lot of the needs that they have. So it's about diversion, it's about treatment, and it's about continuity of care. And where is that money going?

Who will be given it to ensure that this happens? Sure, well, let me just give one example, only because I know them extremely well. They operate in Gloucestershire and elsewhere, the Nelson Trust. So they run a number of centres and those centres have on-site support. So if that young person has, for example, a mental health context, as it seemed that Danny did, that support would be available. What about if they have a debt issue or what if, as in her case, there is a member of her family that might have a criminal justice context as well? That support is available. But let me give you one other example. What we're also going to be piloting, starting in Wales,

is a residential women's centre. So the judge might say, look, I have real concerns about this individual because there is a pattern of aggression or serious violence, for example, but I really don't want to blight her life chances by sending her to custody. What about this residential women's centre where they have to remain on site, but there is that immediate care as well? So we want to provide this menu of options to the court that addresses individual offending, recognises that sometimes there is protection

that is required for the public because there is a small minority that commit crimes that have to be addressed, but to ensure that they have that continuity of support so they can live, as Danny is doing, a great and fulfilled life. That's what we're all about. But at the same time, you're spending £150 million on 500 new cells. Well, you're talking about the women's estate. That's right. Yeah, no, no, you're absolutely right, say that. Let me say this. We are absolutely determined for that small minority of women who are in the custodial system that the estate is what we call trauma informed. So just stripping out the jargon, one that responds to the particular experience of women in custody, because let me be clear, it is not the same for women as it is for men.

It's not because in 2019, 62% of sentences given to women were for six months or less. Yeah, yeah. So as I say, the issues of sentences are for the independent judiciary, but we have to ensure that if they are sent into custody,

that it's appropriate. So for example, we want to have different blocks, which are smaller, so smaller numbers of women, more association space, wider corridors, but also really important things like this. The opportunity for overnight visits for children and members of their family to come into the estate to try to keep those bonds going.

And finally, this, that if an individual is progressing through their sentence from closed to open conditions to prepare them for life on the outside, we want to create those spaces in the estate so they don't have to be uprooted, which we know can be so traumatic. So this is about investing... So maybe you don't need to invest in the 500 new cells then. Maybe that 150 million could be better spent elsewhere because, Minister,

the figures around this are stark. Nearly two thirds of girls and young women aged 16 to 21 in custody are estimated to have been in statutory care. Between three quarters and 90% of girls under 18

in contact with the youth justice system may have experienced abuse from a family member or someone they trusted and 63 percent of girls and young women under supervision in the community have experienced rape or domestic abuse in their own intimate partner relationships yeah so surely that rather than spending the money, the research has shown that the money will be better spent addressing these issues rather than on more prison cells. The simple point is we've got to do both. So we have to make sure that there is support in the community. We put that in, as I say, £46 million being announced today. I just want to make another point as well, that I was the minister that took through, or one of the ministers that took through

the domestic abuse bill through Parliament. And as part of that, we wanted to make sure that there is a huge increase in the support for people who are at risk of domestic abuse. The reason why I mentioned that is because sometimes there can be a vulnerability from that individual and a connection then between future offending. So we've absolutely put a huge amount of resource into it. And I just really want to reiterate this point. We have dramatically reduced the number of women coming into the estate. It's that 19 girls and 19 people under the age of 18 at the moment, the number of adult females in the estate is down by, I think, over 25% in the last 10 years. So that is really important. And we are determined to provide those alternatives to custody.

But for that minority that are in prison, because sometimes there are occasions when the court has no alternative but to do so, if it wants to do justice to society, we've got to make sure that it is trauma-informed and truly provides a great opportunity for them to be rehabilitated and ready for life on the outside. Jess, changes in probation are being put into place next month. Money is being funneled into this. Is this enough? Is it going to help these young women? Well, the minister's right to signal there's significant drive down

in the youth custodial population, and that is really welcome. But we need to continue moving in that direction. And we think that that £150 million that you referred to, invested in the prison population, is not the right place to put that if we really want to be able to ensure that courts have the confidence that they can divert girls and young women into alternative gender-specific provision that is able to address all of the different experiences that they have had as young women in q including the types of violence and abuse that you referred to, we need to ensure that there's significantly more amounts of money going into community provision. And that includes some of the smaller specialist providers, including those that can work with young women specifically and black and minoritized young women who are disproportionately

represented in the criminal justice system, a number of whom will have been frozen out of this most recent probation contract arrangement because of their size and because they don't have the ability to apply for those big contracts through those very bureaucratic commissioning processes. Alex, I've got you to respond to that. Well, look, absolutely right that we want to ensure that the money that we're spending, which is a significant sum, goes to all parts of the stakeholder network. Absolutely right, which is why we're ensuring that money is going to support those catering for those minority ethnic backgrounds. But I do just want to make this point. It is not either or. You've got to do both. And we are determined to do both. It is no good to say just because we

want fewer women in custody, that therefore we shouldn't invest in the women's custodial estate. What we know is that if they end up in custody, it is doubly important that their experience there is humane, it's decent, and it's constructive. We want women to be able to continue, for example, to have relations with their family members. That's why we've rolled out technology to ensure that video calls are much more available, so-called purple visits, in-cell telephony. And I make no apologies for investing into it. We don't want women to go into custody unless it's absolutely necessary. But where it happens, we want it to be a decent experience. And I can give you this absolute assurance. We are determined to give the courts every alternative to provide that community-based support,

which is lasting and ongoing, so that we can have more young women like Danny who go on to make a success of their lives, even if they've had a difficult start of it. Okay, well, Jessica Southgate, CEO of Agenda and Prisons and Probations Minister, Alex Chalk, thank you very much for joining me to talk about this this morning.

And we want to hear from all of you, 84844 on anything you hear on the programme today. We're talking about your reaction to the big news headline. If you've picked up a paper today, if you've turned on your radio, if you listen to the news, it is the Diana story everywhere.

And lots of you are getting in touch via Twitter to tell us what you think and texting us. Someone has a message to say, the public must share responsibility for the Diana saga. The endless appetite for gossip about families, not only the royal family, was part of the food chain, which was fed by the paparazzi and indeed the BBC. Someone else has said,

no one has mentioned Prince Charles' interview a year before where he admitted adultery. Wasn't Diana really wanting to put her side to a nation that she knew had been betrayed? And an email here from someone saying, whilst it was unprofessional, regrettable and stupid to have produced those faux bank statements, it is incredulous to suggest that the BBC was responsible

for the breakdown of the Charles and Diana marriage and for the death of Princess Diana, as is being suggested by Prince William. It must have been excruciatingly painful to their sons to witness this breakdown of their parents' marriage in public, but there was already evidence that there was something rotten

in the state of Denmark and that Diana had long been desperate to be heard in the hitherto tone-deaf palace firm. The Panorama interview was her opportunity to do so via her own free will. There is no evidence that she was coerced or deceived in doing this interview.

And that's from S. Lawrence 8484444 if you want to drop us an email you can do so by going to our website or contact us at bbc woman's hour on social media keep your thoughts coming in on that or anything else you hear in the program now for a bit of tv a tv comedy series featuring funny and bold muslim women a rarity you might say on our screens well we are lady parts is addressing that it's uh right in its face it's a new six-part comedy series for channel four which began last night it follows the highs and lows of the female punk band lady parts as seen through the eyes of microbiology student amina hussein who's on the lookout for love and romance as is and is recruited as the unlikely lead guitarist uh it in new punk it features new punk songs and stars Anjana Vassan

as Amina and the series is written by Nida Manzuru and they're both here to talk to me about it We Are Lady Parts is broadcast on channel 4 at 10 o'clock on Thursday nights and here's a clip this is Amina joining up with the rest of the band for the first time. Lyrics and chords all there. Let's do Voldemort under my headscarf. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Did you say Voldemort under my headscarf? Yeah. You got a problem with my lyrics? Your lyrics? No. No, not at all. I get it. It's just I'm not sure people will get it. What do you mean? I don't know. Some people might find it offensive. Okay, so maybe instead of Voldemort under my headscarf, you could do I love to wear my headscarf.

You know, less more yay I don't know yeah maybe I love to wear my headscarf the lyrics we've got to calm down she's dead I've got a huge smile on my face

and that's because I pretty much binge watched it well I am joined by the writer Nidha Mansoor and Anjana Vasan who stars as Amina Nidha it's a great seriesjana Vasan, who stars as Amina. Nidha, it's a great series. Congratulations. Full of joy. It's in your face.

To me, it was like a it was a lock stock meets Lady Bird. Why did you want to write it? Oh, my God. Thank you so much. That means so much to me. You know, it came from a place of frustration when I was working as a new writer and I was always being asked to write you know narratives about Muslim women as being oppressed or victims lacking agency and and I really wanted to actually push against that and write about the women that I know and the women that I love and that's really where the idea of the show was born. I wanted to bring in my passion for music. And I wanted to write a show that celebrates Muslim women for, you know, all the different ways that they can be. There is no one size fits all. And that's really what the

show, I hope, is doing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just a brilliant TV series, full stop. It just happens to have a lot of Muslim women in it and you're watching it and you're like, yeah, of course, this is on TV, but you just don't see representation of Muslim women like that, do you? So how did you get it across the line? What was the reaction you got when you pitched it? You know, I did a lot of work beforehand building a really sort of dense pitch document, sort of explaining the show, character breakdowns. And it really helped me, that document, to find the right people to make the show with. So Sirianne Fletcher-Jones at Working Title just immediately went for it because I think she could see my passion and my kind of the place where it was coming from,

the kind of authentic place that it was coming from and the women that I was so desperate to see on the screen. And, you know, it was great. Channel 4 were really excited about it because I think they responded not only to the sort of new point of view, but also the comedy. And that's what I was really excited about, to show Muslim women as funny, as joyful.

Yeah, and having a good time and naughty more importantly um why do you think it's not being shown before now why have we had such a one-sided stereotypical myopic view of muslim women on screen that's a question i've thought about a lot and i've i really can't really don't know. It's been something that I've felt so frustrated about, but I feel so lucky to be creating art now where it feels like, you know, the doors are opening up and we're getting new stories from sort of marginalized voices and I feel like it's such an exciting time to create art and I just really hope that this isn't just a kind of a one-time fad thing that this is you know lasting change and there are more voices can come through and really add richness to the landscape. Yeah I know definitely well I mean I'm already waiting for the second series. How much of it is based on your own life? Are you a bit of a punk? You know, I'm very much more like Amina's character.

I was sort of folk obsessed, Paul Simon obsessive. My older sister actually was the punk in the family. She was into all kinds of like raucous music. She is very much an inspiration. So I did get to draw a lot from my life, which was very cathartic. But I also was wanting to celebrate the sort of artists and creatives and Muslim and non-Muslim people of colour that I was seeing around me who were expressing the fullness of their identities. And that also was exciting for me to bring to the screen.

I'm going to bring in the lead guitarist of the band, Amina, played by the brilliant Anjana Vasan. I mean, you also, Anjana, first of all, what a gift of a character to play. How much did you enjoy playing her? I know. Hi, Anita, first of all, and I'm so glad you liked the show. Yeah, it was a gift of a part.

I never knew a character of a brown nerd who was, like me, an obsessive over country and Western music, that part would exist so just to get to play it and then the fact that the show is so funny um I think if we saw one of these characters on a tv show it would feel refreshing but in this show there are so many and I think that was what really impressed me about um you know Nida's creation and like you said I mean it's almost like Anjana I know you are a country singer folk singer it's like the role was written for you um I know I there was a lot of reasons why I felt like I had to say yes I mean even as a person I felt like a real connection to

to Amina um you know she she can she's got this low level anxiety at all times. And there's definitely like an older, younger version of myself that I really connected to, and felt like, oh, I have to play this part, because I definitely brought a lot of myself to the part, I felt a strong connection with Amina. Oh, yeah. And it's just joyful to watch. Like, it's so brilliant. As I keep saying, I've said it about a million times. Nida, how important was it for you? Because you do have a whole range of characters. You've got nerdy hijabis.

You've got really straight, kind of quite religious young women. You've got the real rebellious ones. You've got girls in full niqab, in hijab, no headscarf. How important was it? You've got parents who are, you know, embarrassing as all parents are, but, you know, don't, mothers. The mother who is amazing, Amina's mother, is just a brilliant character who I've not seen on British television like that.

Was it important for you to represent the many, many, many different faces of Muslim women? That's such an interesting question. What I realised and what I was trying to connect to was trying to represent the women I know and I've seen around me um and I definitely wanted to show a myriad of different ways of being um but I still think you know I'm still capturing a very small glimpse of what that can be there's's so many diverse, different kinds of women out there. But I was really excited to show Muslim women who could disagree with each other,

but none of them is having a crisis of faith. It's just the truth of how we are as human beings. And Anjana, what was it like being on set, surrounded by that army of brilliant talent and reading Nidha's words out? Yeah, everyone was just very excited to be on set. I felt like every day was just, there was just so much joy and so much love.

I love being part of a show that had women at the forefront and it was about sisterhood fundamentally. I think when we see Amina's journey in the beginning, you think that this is about, you know, I mean, she is on the pursuit of love. But I think the real love affair is is is a love of like friendship and sisterhood. And I think that's so refreshing. And I think that sort of translated to the energy on set. It was I think we're all still very obsessed over each other. And I think it's a friendship that's going to last for a long time.

It's an experience that I will never forget filming this show. And we filmed it in the middle of a pandemic and we filmed it safely. And I think that's just kind of amazing that we managed to do it. Well, well done to both of you. It's refreshing.

It's empowering. It's funny. It's just a really great watch. Anjana and Nidha, thank you very much. Series two, come on Channel 4, get it commissioned. It is on Channel 4 on Thursday nights. I can highly recommend it. Now, wonderfully, we have more time on our hands here at Woman's Hour.

And we think it's important to hear from you, your stories and the issues most important to you. What are the burning issues issues however trivial or serious you'd like to hear on your favorite radio show text us on 84844 anytime you like or you can head to our website and send us an email we'd love to hear from you or do contact us via social media at bbc woman's hour whatever's easy well today we're talking about infertility and how it can impact our relationships families and self-image. Listener Clementine Baig was diagnosed with primary ovarian insufficiency last year and got in touch with the programme to tell us about her experiences. And we're also joined by podcaster Noni Martins,

whose husband was diagnosed with male factor infertility in 2019. Morning to both of you. Welcome to the programme. Let's come to you first clementine tell us about your diagnosis and what happened sure thing so just um in short at the age of 33 whilst trying for a baby um i was diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency so it's also known as premature menopause and i think the important thing to know about infertility is it always comes with something so my journey was about five months in length I spoke to five specialists and I got a very concrete you know it's likely that it could be zero to one percent the chances of you having a baby naturally by a professor so I'm kind of grateful that it didn't take years and years. And I really

feel for women that kind of are on those journeys because it's incredibly difficult. But something that came out of it for me was I actually feel more confident than ever, which is not something that I expected. It actually has given me the confidence to launch a business to help other women in the fertility space called Mabel. So we give care to women who are trying to conceive and women that are in the postpartum stages of motherhood as well. And why did you want to set that up? Because I am really fortunate that I have a huge medical family. So whilst you're navigating something like infertility, which is so layered, if you are a woman of colour, there may be cultural pressures. There may be cultural pressures without being a woman of colour, but I think that's something that Nancy will address.

Having somebody to give you a steer, give you some advice, give you kind of concrete information and even practical next steps to go to your follow-up appointment with was a true blessing and that came from my family. So that's what we're creating with Mabel. We're giving you the opportunity to speak to a UK registered nurse or midwife who can give you practical tips, who can listen to you talk about the emotions of struggling to conceive and we're just really excited to empower more women by providing this service. I'm going to bring Nonny in here. Nonny, your husband was diagnosed with male factor infertility in 2019.

What did that do for your relationship? What was the reaction to that? On the day we went to the clinic, I was quite nervous. I couldn't breathe before we got there. And we were waiting to go in. And when we went in, before we went in, actually, I said to him, it doesn't matter what happens. I still love you. And we will still be a family. And I wanted him to know that because I wasn't sure how he was going to take it. But when we got the word, the news, a part of him wasn't

really surprised because he was a dialysis patient for about 10 years at that time and he was more sort of solution based but I was quite worried that he was going to internalize it on top of all the dialysis and his kidneys failing I just thought this is another blow for him and I was quite concerned about how he would take it but um luckily he's he's been quite fine and we were quite solution based and we found out we needed IVF. So we just sort of went head on with what we needed to do because we know that we want to have a family and that didn't change anything for us. Clementine mentioned specific cultural differences. What do you think she meant there? I'm always a bit conscious about saying this,

but I think as a woman of colour and being African as well, I do think that the cultural implications of infertility are quite heightened for us, because especially as a black woman, like, you know, motherhood is a big part of our identity. You were raised to kind of be a mother, even from quite young. And so it was true for me as well. And so when you get to this point where you're trying to have a child and it's not working

it can mess with your head a little bit because that's that's what you've been literally raised to do and then that's not happening you sort of think well who am I beyond that and you have to start to have those conversations with yourself why do you feel nervous about talking about him you said about but you started by saying I'm always nervous when I have to talk about, you know, kind of... All women feel the same way, you know, and that sort of thing. But I do think it is heightened. And even just in conversations I've had with other people, and I've lived both in Zimbabwe and the UK,

I've seen how women are treated who are not having children. And it's a lot worse than people here. So, yeah, that's why I say that. But, yeah, I think that it's quite lot worse than people here so yeah that's why I say that but um yeah I think I think that it's quite a hard thing to swallow when you're not fulfilling what you think or what you've been taught is your purpose and and you know uh adding to your your husband's legacy it's a huge part about that especially as a woman of colour, about bringing your family, you know, good fortune by bringing children and continuing your husband's legacy. There's a big, big, big focus on that.

Clementine, can you relate to that? I'm mixed race myself. I can't relate to that directly, but I certainly have brilliant and beautiful friends that um have that layer of pressure um so with um what we're trying to create with Mabel is we want to have as many um nurses and midwives from as many backgrounds as many native languages spoken as possible because I think when you enter into a conversation of someone that looks like your friend your auntie your cool cousin there's things that are unsaid that you can just get to the point. Of course.

So, yeah. You have, you said that you feel more, you feel so empowered now. You've set up this amazing charity, Mabel. But of course, when you're talking about infertility, you might have found out about your own, yourself, you aren't able to have children for whatever reason. Yeah. But then you have to talk to other members of your family have that conversation with your mother say how did that

go down so it's it's not straightforward um and there's a lot of competing parts so like i say infertility always comes with something else so for me i had to kind of put baby making here and i had to focus on my long term health. And so my family are medical and they're incredibly supportive in that aspect. But if I could give anybody some advice, it would be go easy on yourself and go easy on those around you because nobody knows what to say. It's normally a shock, you know, so just go easy on those around you. And what about you Nonny? You know you do come from a culture where you know the expectation is you become a mother

how was the conversation with your own family? Yeah I think I found it quite hard telling my mother we've had three rounds of IVF and she's always known about all three I'm not sure I'll tell her the next time because having I had to deal with the negative pregnancy test but then also having to now call my mother and say it hasn't worked and that was just the hardest thing I think I've ever done why yeah say that again why was that because she's her joy is

also weighted on on that on the idea that I might become pregnant she's waiting for it she wants to be a grandmother she wants to tell everybody she's she's going to be a grandmother and it's just she also wants it in the same way that I want it and so that blow as it was hard for me it was also hard for her and because she's of a different generation as well it's quite hard to explain to her so she understands it that it just didn't work I don't any answers. I don't know what to tell you. It just did not work. And that's just final. So I had to do a lot of sort of counselling her

in the moment where I didn't feel I had the capacity to do that. And so that's why I said I might not tell her the next time because it's such a weight to carry, to tell your loved ones that it didn't work. So what advice would you have for others going through a similar experience? The first thing I will say is to seek help quite soon. I was in denial for two and a half years and we were trying, although we were not going to get pregnant naturally because of the male factor infertility.

So I only found that out by the three year mark of us trying. So the first thing I would say is after a year of trying naturally and it's not worked definitely speak to your GP and find out what's going on because it could be something or there could be nothing but it's better to know much like Clementine I felt quite empowered when we knew what we had to do and I felt quite confident about what we were doing because we knew that and we weren't guessing or you know doing sort of things blind so that's the first thing I'd say but also I think decide how much you want to share with your family you don't feel obligated to share everything but if it helps you uh to cope with the journey then by all means share but I think trying to balance looking after yourself

in the process especially if you're doing IVF and even if you're not to be honest just balancing looking after yourself and the people around you is quite key. Clementine, what advice would you give anyone? I think a real turning point came to me where I had to think, is it motherhood that I'm pursuing or becoming pregnant? And I felt really good after making a decision that we're going to adopt. And we're really, really excited about that. Continue to have an honest and open dialogue with yourself. Some days, maybe you're just not feeling that.

Hopefully, you've got a great support network who can just listen to you and the last piece of advice would be get a fur baby we adopted a dog last year and we are so happy i can back you up on that 100 percent nonny clementine thank you so much for speaking to us on woman's hour and being so open and honest i'm sure your words will have resonated with lots of our listeners and will have helped quite a few people maybe going through the same thing as well. Thank you so much. If you want to share your story, maybe it is about infertility, maybe what Noni was saying about having to talk to her mother and deal with, you know, all of that as well. Her mother's expectations of becoming a grandmother, huge, and taking all that on board as well as

having to deal with the reality that you're not going to be able to have children it's a lot to take on if you want to share your story please do you can go to our website and drop us an email or if you'd like to talk to us about anything that's going on in your life that we feel that you feel women's hour should be talking about please let us know 84844 is the number to text now a new anthology has just been published called women on nature includes more than 100 women from the 14th century to the present day fiction writers poets biographers gardeners farmers theologians artists and many more and with me is the editor katherine norbury very good morning k, Catherine. Welcome to Women's Hour. I mean, it's a brick of a book.

It's beautiful. 500 pages. Tell me a bit about yourself and why you wanted to put this beautiful book together. Well, good morning, Anita, and thank you so much for inviting me. Well, why would I want to do a book like this? Women's voices have probably been very much a minority in writing

about nature. And when I first started to think about making this book, I looked at an anthology of modern nature writing put together by Henry Williamson in about 1936. There were no women in it. That's almost 100 years ago, and there were no women in it. Sadly, that doesn't shock me. No, you know, there may have been a few who put their name in under initials, but I don't think so. I suspect they were all men. But in giving shape to this, I think partly I wanted to just go back as far as I possibly could and try and find the first woman

writing about the natural world in any way. And the first woman that I could find writing at all was Julian of Norwich, who lived, we think, between about 1343 and 1416. And she wrote a book called The Revelation of Divine Love. And she had very much a creation-centred vision of the universe. And so she was then my start I'd then gone back 700 years and somehow had to fill the gaps in between um now my other great inspiration was a book called Grass Upon Us which was an anthology that my mother used to have by her bed uh she died

unfortunately last year at the start of the pandemic pandemic in her care home. I'm sorry about that. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. But as her memory, if you like, faltered, she became far more at ease with reading an anthology than reading a novel. Lots of women may, lots of people may prefer to use an anthology. Women who are working, women who have children and also those of us who, as time goes by, our memory is less. And so I wanted, in a way, to produce a book like that, that could sit on someone's bedside table or on their coffee table, that you could reach for and just flick through and maybe find one or two things

that could occupy you at that moment, rather than feeling you had to start at the beginning and get to the end. Well, it's been on my bedside table for last week and it's been a joy dipping in and out. You write in your introduction that you're troubled by the word nature. Explain what you mean by that. Well, I think especially at this time where we are so concerned with other things associated with nature, climate change, carbon storage, finding sustainable ways of living, we tend to somehow think that this is what nature might be or wildlife conservation. Most dictionaries define nature as everything in the world apart from us and the things that we have made. And that I find problematic because it's already us and them. And I think one of the things I hope to that will come out of reading this book is a sense of alignment,

a sense that we are part of and centred right here in the middle of planet Earth and the universe. And I say that because some of our male counterparts are planning on colonising Mars, for what I hear, and the moon. But to look at that which we have and centre ourselves within it rather than thinking we're human and everything else is something else. Yeah, Sophia Mosley's actually uh tweeted the program to say not much uh not so much a change this is about her relationship with how nature and what's changed over last year more of a massive reaffirmation how fragile it is and

how mother nature will be just fine thank you without us so you know people agreeing with you yes although even mother nature may have a little bit of trouble if you just lifted us from the planet because we've actually wiped out most of the alpha predators so uh you think you might find that the islands of britain and ireland were overrun in red deer in no time at all um because there are no wolves so yeah there's so much to talk about i mean there's tell us some about who are your favorite women that you've got in here just a couple no i can't possibly say favorite women but what i do love um are the uh relationships between different voices within the anthology so right at the beginning there's a writer naoko arbe um who wrote a book about uh a man called

cherry ingram who reintroduced blossoms to Japan when they were becoming extinct. I'll tell you which bit stood out for me just because we are fast running out of time and it's Hannah Hawkswell who actually is very interesting because she's a farmer on the Pennines and I just related to this.

So I think we should end with this. It has been lovely to talk to you, Catherine. I'm just going to end with this. It says, One's had a few winters over the years, bad winters, and there's something in my very bones that rebels when the bitterness comes, the snow and the cold and the bitterness. No, I hate it. That's the only expression for it. I know

there's a certain beauty, which is very nice, but it doesn't, it doesn't appeal to me because I detest it so. And as a Countryfile presenter, I could relate to that. It's out now. It's Women on Nature. It's a beautiful anthology of women writing about nature by Catherine Norbury. Catherine, thank you. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Sneakers? Trainers. Whatever you want to call them, they

are amongst the most iconic cultural objects of our time. But their evolution is a story rarely told until now. From BBC Radio 4, this is Sneakernomics. Across this podcast, we're going to be telling the crazy origin stories of the most well-known sports companies and their relentless quest to be the world's number one brand. Sneakernomics tells the story of fierce competition and rivalry, one that tore families and friendships apart and even divided

towns. We'll follow in the footsteps of mavericks, hustlers and dreamers and hear their tales of boom and bust, fame and infamy, hope and heartbreak. Above all, this is the story of the people behind the shoes. From BBC Radio 4, this is Sneakernomics. Subscribe at BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

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