Woman's Hour - Women up for Ivor Novellos, Chronic UTIs, How do women listen?

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Tonight sees the 70th Ivor Novello awards taking place at Grosvenor House in London.  They are coveted in the UK music industry because they specifically celebrate songwriting. Singer-songwriter Lola Young leads the nominations this year including one for 'best song musically and lyrically' for her breakthrough hit Messy, which spent a month at number one in the UK earlier this year.  Does this spell good news for women in the music industry? Anita Rani is joined by Linda Coogan-Byrne to discuss. If you've ever had the bad luck of getting a UTI - or Urinary Tract Infection - you'll know how painful they can be. It's a bacterial infection which can affect the bladder, urethra or kidneys and give a burning or stinging sensation when you urinate. Yesterday, in a powerful parliamentary session, the Labour MP Allison Gardner spoke through tears as she described her experiences of chronic UTIs. The MP for Stoke on Trent is now hoping to launch a cross-party parliamentary group to look at chronic UTIs - Allison joins Anita, as does the GP Ellie Cannon. A major new exhibition opens this week at The Imperial War Museum in London. Called Unsilenced: Sexual Violence in Conflict, it looks at the atrocities inflicted during war and conflict from the First World War until the present day. Helen Upcraft is the exhibition’s lead curator and Sara Bowcutt is the Managing Director of Women for Women International, one of the NGOs working in the field of sexual violence in conflict, who’ve also contributed to this exhibition. They join Anita in the studio.Women and listening... how do women listen? How good a listener are you? Two books out this month focus on listening, from listening to sounds to listening more deeply to other people. Anita speaks to writers Alice Vincent, and Emily Kasriel.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Good morning and welcome to the programme. Do you have a memory of a time you listened to something really amazing? We're discussing sounds and the art of deep listening today. So this morning, I'd like us all to sit together for just a second, just pause whatever you're doing for a couple of seconds right now if you can, and tell me what you hear. Or tell me about a sound that brings you joy. It could be a

cat purring, the sound of a cuckoo, of a heartbeat, your baby's heartbeat in your womb, the sound of your own blood whooshing, rain on a tent, your lover gently snoring next to you. You get the idea. Get in touch, whatever it might be. The text number is 84844. You can email the program via our website. You can WhatsApp me on 03 700 100 444 and if you'd like to follow us on social media it's at BBC Woman's Hour. Also on the programme today, chronic UTIs, urinary tract infections. Alison Gardner, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent, made an emotional speech in Westminster Hall about her own condition that was so debilitating she considered having her bladder removed.

She's calling for better recognition and treatment for chronic UTIs. So feel free to share your experiences with us this morning. And a major new exhibition has opened at the Imperial War Museum called Unsilenced, Sexual Violence in Conflict. It looks at the atrocities inflicted on women during war and conflict from the First World War until the present day. We'll be hearing more. That text number, once again, if you'd like to get in touch with anything you'd like to share with us this morning, is 84844. But first, tonight sees the 70th Ivor Novello Awards taking place at Grosvenor

House in London. The Ivor Novello Awards are coveted in the UK music industry because they specifically celebrate songwriting. Pop singer and songwriter Lola Young leads the nominations this year with three including Best Song Musically and Lyrically for her breakthrough hit Messy which spent a month at number one in the UK earlier this year. She was also in the Rising Star lineup which was women only for the very first time. To discuss them and other contenders at number one in the UK earlier this year. She was also in the Rising Star lineup, which was women only for the very first time. To discuss them and other contenders, I'm joined

by music publicist and journalist and author of Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Culture Change, Linda Coogan-Byrne. Welcome to Woman's Hour, Linda. I think we should start by explaining what the novellos are all about. What makes the Ivers so special? Because I think we should start by explaining what the novellos are all about. What makes the Ivers so special? Because I think we understand other music awards, but maybe not these ones. I think what makes these awards so unique is that they're judged by your peers, they're judged by fellow songwriters and music industry peers. So it's not just about chart success or who's getting streamed the most. It's pure recognition and that carries a lot of weight for the artists involved. So it's not the same as kind of

the Brits or any other award ceremony. And it's great. It's about the lyrics, it's about the songs, it's about the value, the substance of the music as opposed to the popularity. So I think it's great. It is great but I suppose it depends on what the makeup of the music industry is really as to who your peers are and if it's historically all been male, that may have posed a problem. Yeah, but you know what we're seeing is momentum is building. When I was last on the show, it was last year or early this year, which Shaka Khan was a guest as well.

I was very starstruck. We just broken records in 2024 where we've seen women overtake men for the first time in history for the first six months of 2024 where they were played more on radio. And that year, that same year, we've seen Ray clear up in the Brit Awards, six awards. And then this year we're seeing Charli XCX clear up at the Brit Awards. And then Lola is nominated for three today and Orla Garland, a shout out to my Irish, Irish, you know, nomination there. And she's totally independent. So we're seeing this massive increase in awareness and we're seeing this massive,

you know, understanding that women have a lot to contribute to music and it's showing, it's showing in the charts, showing in streams and showing in festival lineups, finally. And yeah, so I think a lot of the campaign that myself and the team in Why Not Tour and other organisations have been doing over the last number of years are finally leveraging some sort of consistent change. So it's wonderful. And yes, it was predominantly, historically it was a lot of white men in rooms making the calls, but that's shifting now. So it's fantastic. Like three of my friends today at the awards are all on the Senate, they're all women.

And the Senate now is a diverse group of people and it's fantastic. We will talk about who has the power and who is actually getting paid in a moment, but let's get into some of the nominations. What's been most exciting this year in terms of women's achievements? Let's talk about the all-female rising star for the first time, for instance. Yeah, completely entirely made up of female singers, which again sends a strong message

that the industry is starting to support women. And when it's on an independent level as well, it's just wonderful. I mean, personally, I'm excited to see Lola. She's out there for a very long time. People have this idea that overnight success happens, and that's not true. She's been around for years, though, as Orla and look at Ray, you know, housed by her record label for for a very long time.

And then when she was released from it, she smashed records, smashed industry. And what we're seeing now is these all in the rising star category, all women. So the industry is starting to take a chance, a shot, a potluck shot for women that are starting out in their careers. So you mentioned, you've mentioned Charlie XCX, you mentioned Ola Cartland and Lola Young, all three of them have been around for a while really working very hard to get to this point. So can we discuss Messy, this song that has just done phenomenally well by Lola Young?

It seems to be on social media a lot. Is that helpful for songs these days? I think it is and I think what's more important also in relation to Lola is that she's a normal young woman. She's not overly sexualised, she's not being put in a box, she's not saying do this, you know, she's not, she's actually allowed to be herself. She's very empowering. She's like a friend. Very empowering. Totally. And it's so, I mean look at who can't relate to that song and it's a song that she wrote with her best friend. So we're not seeing these massive industry vehicles that have been

consistent throughout the last number of decades where the same singer-songwriters are put writing songs for women. I mean a man can't write about women's experience so when we're getting this new generation, this new league of singer songwriters that are female and that are being given these tremendous industry recognition awards, I think that's a massive shift and I think that needs to be absolutely celebrated. And how unusual is it for four out of five women in the best song musically and lyrically because historically it's a lot harder for women isn't it because record companies favor men. Of course they do, I mean it's even in the last year report we do a report every year on Why Not Her and in it again

there was a lot of success with women shifting towards getting more radio play but we also had a piece in the report on songwriters and what we're seeing is collaborations and dance music is up is really on the rise across radio but if we look at the finer details the collaborations that had female singers leading them zero had female songwriters so you know there's still a lot of work to be done but I'm all about picking the positive out of the negative and what we're seeing like now across the Brits, across different award ceremonies and today at the Ivers is that women are starting to be given that opportunity. And I think that should be celebrated.

I think that that should be what's really, you know, projected today, that there is change happening and there's a huge celebration behind it. I just wonder what the atmosphere, what the atmosphere will be like with all those incredible women in the room. Absolutely. It's going to be wonderful. You wonderful. I've a lot of friends going today, they were all messaging last night and back and forth and everyone is just so excited because we're seeing a lot of years of campaigning and hard work finally on show across the industry and again the thing with the Ivers is it's very industry connected, it's not as media, it doesn't go as outwardly across

media, it's more kind of songwriters, producers and, you know, that's, it's really condensed to that. So it's fantastic. People behind the scenes need to be celebrated as well. Yeah, absolutely. Are women musicians well supported within the music industry? I mean, not particularly, no, which is why again these things must be celebrated because it's a shift to change. I mean, go over to Ireland and nothing has changed in the last number of years. They're not played on the radio. Jazzy is the only consistent female Irish artist played on Irish radio the last six years.

So, you know, the UK are starting to shift and it shows. Ireland isn't. Go over to the States, you know, across country. You've seen how people reacted to Beyonce moving over to country and, you know, there's a lot of things that need to be changed and there's a lot of shift that needs to happen. But again, I think it's important to focus on what's happening and what's changing and we are seeing a good bit of change. So hopefully this isn't just a milestone but it's a momentum and it's a movement. And one thing we have is successful young women who are not afraid to say what they think and

expose what they see as the flaws and the failings of their industry. And she won last year but Ray flagged when she won that songwriters are not being paid fairly. Let's have a reminder of what she actually said. Record labels need to pay for the songs that they're profiting off, full stop. It's a symbol of that. It should be so obvious. You know, it's like a songwriter, it's like a publisher writes a book

and then gives it to a company to put the book in stores and then they don't get paid. Like that's what's happening. And it's wrong. There are artists like me and like so many others. People also don't understand songwriters and the fact that collaborative writing is essential. I can sit down on the piano and write a song on the piano

sure and get something personal and beautiful and sometimes I do that but that's not what songwriting is about. It's about collaboration, working with musicians and together you create a sound. That's what songwriting is. And songwriters just need to be recognised, but because then they're faceless, people don't care.

So there's no accountability or there's no pressure of accountability, which is why I'm trying to be as annoying as possible and try and do my little part to get the message across that it's wrong, what's happening is really wrong. And she's really using her platform to highlight something. Can you explain just how powerful that speech was last year? Why it was important to say it in that particular room at the Ivan Avellos? But also I don't think everybody really understands the system and how songwriters, because you think, of course the person who wrote the song is going to get something out of it, but it doesn't work like that, does it?

Not at all. It was such a great moment because, and I was right up at the stage, we were right beside the table that I was at, we were right beside Ray when she did that speech, and she brought up her grandfather at one time and he was a songwriter years back, and she didn't say what music he wrote or what particular songs it was but she was saying how he wrote some hits but he was never given the you know there was no accountability on him after writing the songs and the record label at the time took took his music and I think you know she has that added bit of you know rage and fire in her and it shows and I love that she uses her voice and Lana Del Rey was up as well at that awards and she mentioned how you know grassroots

venues and how she started out in the UK and how she was given opportunities here in the UK as opposed to you know where she was in the US. So it was very interesting to see and to hear female artists not being afraid to speak up and Rey called out the industry that day as well she said I don't care if I'm upsetting record record labels, you all need to start paying. Like, writers don't get per diems, they don't get their transportation covered, they don't get their meals covered, they don't get even the standard functional.

Why don't they get paid for their job? Because they're not given the support, they're not given the respect that they should have and that they absolutely, absolutely should get. And that's why artists like Rae and Camille and all these wonderful female British artists are speaking up. And I think it's really important because if it doesn't, if it's not spoken about, if it's not brought up, there's no change that happens, you know. So yeah, it was quite a powerful moment. The whole room, you couldn't hear any, you couldn't hear a pin drop at the room at the time.

Is that something that we're seeing that's very different now with this current crop of brilliant young female singer-songwriters who are successful, that they're using their platform and their power to call out things in the industry, whereas maybe before, historically, people have felt too afraid to? Absolutely, and again we're seeing virality and we're seeing the likes of TikTok, which, you know, some people are against it, some people aren't. But the positive of these social media trends and these platforms is that artists are now given a direct, direct interaction with their fan base and they know that people believe in them. They know that people are listening to them. They know the weight and the clout that they carry. So women are starting to get that empowerment through that

vessel, you know, that conduit. So I think that's a very powerful shift that's happened that just simply wasn't there before. Linda Coogan-Bern, thank you very much for joining me to talk about the Ivor Novellos which are taking place tonight and best of luck to all the women up for the awards. 84844, we're talking about sound and deep listening later and I've asked you what some of your favourite sounds are. Jean says, the blackbird singing in my garden always lifts my spirits. Jackie my favourite noise is the sound of a tent zip unzipping and what makes me smile and incredibly happy is my daughter laughing. She's 15 and recently been diagnosed with a rare type of leukemia. I'm so sorry for the second

time in her very short life her laughter is the best sound in the world. 84844 is the text number. Keep your thoughts and opinions coming in and if you'd like to email us please go to our website. Now, if you've ever had the bad luck of getting a UTI or Urinary Tract Infection you'll know how painful they can be. It's a bacteria infection which can affect the bladder, urethra or kidneys and give a burning or stinging sensation when you urinate. Yesterday, in a powerful parliamentary session, the Labour MP Alison Gardner spoke through tears as she described her experiences of chronic UTIs. The MP for Stoke-on-Trent is now hoping to launch a

cross-party parliamentary group to look at chronic UTIs and I'm pleased to say Alison joins me now as does GP Ellie Cannon who has a special interest in women's health and if you would like to get your questions in it's 84844. A couple of you already been in touch with your experiences I'll read those out in a moment but first Alison I'm going to come to you. Tell me more about your experience with chronic UTIs. Hello, I didn't really experience chronic UTIs until I think it was sort of my just turning about 50.

And I started to experience, I actually didn't even know what the problem was at first, you know, and then I did the usual cranberry juice thing and leaving it and hoping it would go away and managing it that way. But eventually, they just get worse and worse and worse and, you know, going to the doctors to try and get some antibiotics. Unfortunately, I'm allergic to the two main types. And it just started that journey then of just constant recurrent UTIs and it just got worse and worse over

time. I wasn't on HRT then and my particular situation is menopause related. And it just got like I used to lie on the sofa in tears. In my case, I would put bags of peas on me to try, you know, and really freeze and quite painful. And one of the really outstanding things that I learned from yesterday from some of the campaigners who came in, that some of them, the pain was so bad they'd pour scalding water on themselves and were left with burns on their thighs because that pain was better than the pain from the UTI. And if that gives you an idea of how bad it is, I think that's the answer. For me, it was getting so debilitating with every month. You start doing the rounds of trying to get diagnosed, trying to get

the antibiotics, trying to explain to them that yes, and we know that it's come up negative on the dipstick, but I know I have a UTI, please trust me. I fortunately had a particularly good GP who did listen and understand and got referred. And I just went down the whole journey that so many of us done with failed cystatin installations because I was never UTI free enough to have those. I was put on methamphetamine hypoerate which really started turning things around and just clearing my mind a little bit more so that I could start trying to think about it. But it it was getting so bad that I was thinking, well, I can't carry on like this. I don't know what to do. I'm not going to do I start thinking about taking my bladder out? You know, what can you do that?

You know, and I knew about the problems with catheters. So, you know, and stuff. So would that solve it? It might just make my situation worse. And then I just found a specialist who I do still say, Dr. Capture-Earne Anderson, still saved my life. And I promised myself I won't cry. say Dr. Capture and your Anderson still saved my life and I promised myself I wouldn't cry. Well you got very emotional when speaking about it in Westminster Hall, didn't you? I did and it was a wonderful coming together when politics works best because party lines just dropped away. You know, people stood around me, you know, the chair just gave me time, another member stood up and intervened for long enough to allow me to gather my thoughts and to stand up again. I didn't realise it would hit me that hard, but when it's an illness that really, really almost feels like it's destroying your life, and it is, you know, people give up work, people lose their relationships, people sadly take their own lives, people have had their bladders taken out. And I suddenly

realised, I've been talking about this for ages, but I don't think until yesterday people truly, truly understand the level of pain and debilitation that chronic UTIs have. I think they just thought, oh, you had a lot of UTIs, you know, and sometimes they go a bit bad and you end up in hospital, but hey, but they don't realise how bad it is. And it can happen from with children, it can happen with, you know, all through the age and it gets worse and worse as you get older as well. And we're going to bring our GP,. Ellian in a moment to talk about this in a bit more detail and I can see that lots of your messages are coming

through but I just need to explain to everybody, Alison, how incredible you are because this is the reason you became an MP to bring this to the forefront isn't it? This is the sole purpose of you choosing to go into politics. As well as representing my home constituency, which obviously I am passionate about. But it was. I moved jobs to work at NICE because I thought, well, maybe if I work within NICE, I can maybe try and influence it. Me being naive, I'm a bit of a bull in a china shop at things, you know, and I'll do things. But I also meant I could work from home because I could not do my lecturing job anymore, which I loved. You know, because I just could not be guaranteed that I could

get up in the morning and I could at least do a job from my bed. And then I worked at Nice, which was fabulous. But I, you learn how things work from the inside and things are a little bit more difficult than you think and things can work slowly and there's processes to go to. So I said, well, because thank God I managed, got my situation under control, it's managed. And I want to give people hope. You know, it's manageable if you get the right sort of help. I thought, right, here's my chance, I'll go back into politics because I used to be a councillor and this was, I always say this is 50% my aim of being an MP, 50% is my constituency, 50% was to fight for the 1.7 million women and the

people globally to get chronic UTIs recognised and for people to understand how bad they are. No wonder you were emotional when you were making that speech. I'm gonna bring in Ellie here, our GP. Ellie, I think we should start by understanding what UTIs are and how they occur. Let's just talk about UTIs and we'll get onto what it means to have a chronic UTI.

Yeah, so UTIs are any infection within the whole urinary tract. So generally speaking we're talking about bladder infections when we're talking about UTIs, so that's what people will know the word cystitis, that's a bladder infection, but it can also mean infections up into the kidneys as well. And basically in women, unfortunately, the way sort of anatomy works for women, the urethra, which is the pipe that comes out of the bladder, is very close to the vagina, which is very close to the rectum. And it's also very short. So that allows bacteria to take hold within the urinary tract very quickly and very easily,

which is not a problem that men have because of their anatomy, which is why it's a much more common thing for women. More common for women, but men do get them? They do, they do, but not as commonly. And there's various types. I mean, Alison mentioned a couple there because for Alison, it was hormonal. Can you explain the different ways in which women might get UTIs? Yeah, so I mean, as I say, they are some things that are quite common within women, but there are definitely more times in one's life, and when you're more susceptible. So little girls are susceptible to them, especially around the time of potty training or when they're going to school for the first time themselves

and going to the toilet by themselves for the first time. It's common around pregnancy and common around menopause, as Alison has mentioned, because actually the female hormones, particularly the estrogen, is not only responsible for our gynaecological health, it's also responsible for the health of our bladder and our urethra. And estrogen can be very helpful for women who suffer with bladder issues around the menopause.

So what makes them chronic? What makes them chronic is when people have recurrent actual bacterial infections, so more than once a year, and you're having them all the time. And also when people are actually having infections or having the symptoms of infections, when actually, as Alison alluded to, the tests that we're doing come up as negative. But that woman, that individual is still having those symptoms. And those symptoms become very, very significant and frank, as Alison has described. So pain that stops people going to work, that stops people wanting to be intimate with their

partner, that stops you even being able to sit on the sofa as we've heard because you're so uncomfortable and you're sort of going to the freezer to get frozen peas. So a really sort of something that's starting to affect your life, affect your quality of life and what you're trying to do on a day-to-day basis. How are they treated? basis. How were they treated? Well, a simple UTI, so the sort of thing that any of us may have. You can have antibiotics, you can even have a course just for three days. You don't even need to go to a GP now if you're having uncomplicated UTI. You can get a prescription from the pharmacist in the UK as part of the NHS Pharmacy First system. But once a woman is starting to have chronic UTIs, then we are looking at very different treatments. So we're looking at maybe

regular antibiotics, something you might take every day, preventative medications, Alison mentioned something called Hipurex, which is something that women may take every day. Investigations are very important. I really think from beforehand, but also from having listened to Alison and having this discussion, one of the issues here is that we're calling chronic UTIs chronic UTIs. And I think it's invalidating the issue almost. I think there's an issue there around language because it's so different from those simple one-off urinary infections that any woman can get. This is a chronic condition, it's a pain condition and it's maybe something that we need to start talking about in a completely different way so it gets actually the recognition that it deserves.

I'm going to read out a message from Serena who says, I've suffered with this life-altering illness for 28 years, I'm 49, it cost me my marriage, my very successful career and impacted my life in so many other ways. I've had to self-fund private treatment for the last seven years. Research, medication specifically for this condition and education at all levels of the medical profession are desperately needed. Alison, you said in your session that this is another example of how women's medical conditions continue to be misunderstood, under-researched and underfunded. You called it medical misogyny. What did you mean by that?

You see it in so many conditions that predominantly affect women and understanding of women's pain, they are dismissed. You will get women who have chronic illnesses such as in my case chronic UTIs, you might have endometriosis, I have a very, very special friend who is just recovering from an operation on that one. I have people with another friend with ME and fibromyalgia and these are often dismissed and women will even end up being diagnosed with anxiety or depression and put on medication for those because they're just not treated seriously. But also really within the medical

research arena as well that conditions that are predominantly for, you know, that conditions that are predominantly female conditions don't attract the same level always of research and funding and focus that they should. And the classic example is if you look at the amount of spending on Viagra compared to other type of illnesses that might affect women. I use that analogy as well. You would never say to a man, well, you just have to give up sex. You get an erectile dysfunction drug. To a woman, you just say, well, there's nothing we can do. You're going to have to give up sex and all of that takes. But I do want to also bring the conversation about, and I said more research is needed, but this could actually be prevented from

happening in the first place if we treat these, you know, the early stages of UTIs in a bit more of a pragmatic way, and there might be a little bit of debate about this now. When you look for treatment for men, they are given seven days recommended doses for seven days for men for an uncomplicated UTI. And the theory is because they might have an enlarged prostate and that will restrict urine flow and that can encourage further UTIs. But with women who have different physiological issues, that... who have different physiological issues. Alison's screen is frozen, we'll try and get her back up. Ellie, what should people do?

Well, I think we have to make sure that we are not invalidating this issue, as Alison has said. We have to make sure that people are seeing their doctors, it's not just being brushed away as a simple UTI and that can sometimes happen and sometimes also the way we access health care now as I've said with going to the pharmacy and this type of thing it can sort of be trivialized. Also as well I think one of the issues there is about whether or not you know how we talk about bladder problems. It's still quite a

stigmatized area compared to sort of other things. We're starting to talk much more about women's health problems and bleeding and pain, but actually perhaps bladder issues are sort of, you know, one of the last remaining taboos that we're just not talking about enough and you know and that sort of goes quite far reaching even beyond even to things like the access that we have to public toilets you know which have much reduced in the last 10 or 20 years which massively impact women. So there's a lot of issues there around how we talk about this as a problem and that sort of how that adds to the shame of the issue. Alison, I know we've got you back very quickly. What happens next? What are you hoping to achieve?

I'm sorry, I didn't realize I dropped off, I was still talking. Technology failed but we've got you back. Well, the next step is to start an all-party parliamentary group. And also, I'll finish Alison's sentence for us. She's calling for the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, NICE, to recognise chronic UTIs and a spokesperson for NICE said it had updated its guidance on prescriptions for recurrent UTIs in December. They said we regularly review and update our guidelines, particularly if there are any significant changes to the evidence base. And I'm sure we will be talking about this at a later date

and we'll get Alison back to tell us how far she gets with it. That was the Labour MP Alison Gardner and GP Ellie Cannon. I'm going to read a couple more of your messages that are coming through. 84844 by the way is the text number. Val says regarding menopause related chronic UTI, I was told by a male nurse practitioner at my local surgery to take better care of your personal hygiene. My husband had to scrape his jaw off the floor. I've suffered from chronic UTIs for 13 years. I'm on long-term high dose of antibiotics

and so far attempts to come off them have failed. I suspect that my problems started with the three-day courses of antibiotics which barely have enough time to touch the infection. I'm sorry, I'm still thinking about the male nurse who told you to look after your hygiene. Shocking. 84844 and if you'd like to send us an email it is via our website. Now, a major new exhibition opens this week at the Imperial War Museum in London called Unsilenced Sexual Violence in Conflict. It looks at the atrocities inflicted during war and conflict from the First World War until the present day. It

explores the culture that's led to these crimes and gives testimony to the women who've experienced sexual violence and their quest for recognition and justice. Helen Upcraft is the exhibition's lead curator and Sarah Bowcutt is the managing director of Women for Women International, one of the NGOs working in the field of sexual violence in conflict who've contributed to this exhibition. Sarah and Helen, welcome. Helen, I'm going to come to you first. Why did you feel it was important to bring about this exhibition and highlight sexual violence in conflict. Hi, yes. So we at IWM have been thinking about having an exhibition looking at the use of sexual violence in conflict for the last six or seven years. It

really began during our redevelopment of our Second World War and Holocaust galleries. My colleagues who were working on those projects came across a number of stories of the use of sexual violence in conflict and we have a number of objects in our collection from victims and survivors kind of detailing their experiences and whilst many of those stories have made it into those galleries, it became really clear to us that we needed a dedicated exhibition to really explore the use of sexual violence in conflict, to understand the underlying societal structures, gender norms and representations, to explain what we mean by this term sexual violence and conflict. I think a lot of people assume that it's just rape and that it's

just rape of women without really understanding that it can be used in quite specific ways to achieve quite specific things. But it was also really important for us to explore stories of hope and positivity and survival, to allow victims and survivors to have the space to tell their own stories and to show how they are working towards change in the future. One of the themes you're focusing on is power. What forms does it take and how are you showing that? So we are looking at a number of themes in our first room, power and accountability being one of them.

We have a uniform that's on display. I think for a lot of people during times of war and conflict, they assume that it's somebody who's wearing a uniform that is in a position of power. We look at the behaviors that people expect to see from people who wear uniform. I think again, for a lot of people, they may, you know, wearing a uniform means that you're a protector, you're there to kind of serve. But for other people, it can also incite fear and terror and they are coming to kind of, you know, change your way of life. So we really wanted to kind of get people to understand these kind of different power dynamics that can exist in times of war and conflict.

Sarah, what do we mean by sexual violence? What sorts of things are being reported to you? So I think as Helen just said,'s not just rape obviously that is the that's the big one that people understand but it can be it can be other forms so things like sexual slavery that we are absolutely seeing we've definitely seen that in recent conflicts, forced pregnancy, there are other things I think that that are being highlighted. I think the fact that it's not just women as well is a really interesting one. I think the other thing that's maybe not talked about as much

is intimate partner violence. So you talk about the structures and the societies that allow things like violence against women, but what we know from Women of Women International's work is that when conflict takes hold existing issues that affect women that mean that women are more vulnerable to violence really increase and so sexual violence at home and from intimate partners people that you know also increases. We'll talk about some of this specific exhibits that you have on display for people to come and look at and think about but Sarah the UN reports that more than 600

million women and girls in 2022 lived in conflict affected countries. 600 million, it's a huge figure, a 50% increase since 2017. Do we know how many of these women are experiencing sexual violence? It's really difficult to put a number on it. I think one of the things to say is that for every time an instance of sexual violence is reported or recorded or verified, there are others that are not. We've seen that throughout history. That has been something that we've seen a lot in the women that we work with that sometimes it's just not reported. But some examples at the moment, we're really seeing sexual violence increase, which is an awful thing to have to be telling people. But in places like the Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo,

huge rise in violence this year. And what we have seen is nearly 700% increase in sexual violence being reported in just two months at the beginning of the year, from February to March. In places like South Sudan, similarly, our colleagues in South Sudan are telling us that along with the uptick in violence there, they're seeing a significant rise in women accessing services that support them from violence. So because there is a rise in sexual violence or also corresponding with women having the ability to maybe talk about it in a way they haven't done

historically? I think there's both. I definitely think there's both. There is definitely an increase in conflict and violence and we're seeing alongside that an increase in reports of sexual violence. But we also know that there are new and different ways in modern conflicts for women to be able to come forward. We've definitely seen that in Ukraine where there's real-time reporting, there's real-time support for women who were survivors of sexual violence and I think that's probably the first time we've actually seen that in a conflict where it's real-time reporting. Helen, some of your exhibits show propaganda drawings from Germany sent to the allied countries including those of semi-clad wives who claim they're having affairs as their husbands are off fighting.

Cigarette cases made by prisoners of war with naked women engraved on them. Tell me why you wanted to include those, what do they tell us? So these are some of the objects are on display in our very first room. We have a mass display of propaganda posters and some of the black propaganda images that you mentioned as well and what we really wanted to do there was showcase how images that we see in propaganda can make their way down into the everyday objects that we see in everyday life. These representations of both men and women, they're not harmless. They do kind of percolate down into society. The objects that you mentioned, the cigarette cases made by prisoners of war and some of the artworks that they created show you that these ideas can make their way into everyday life. They've been

created by these soldiers. This is not state-sanctioned propaganda. But the black propaganda in particular is a really interesting example of how, in our case, how Germany created propaganda using sexually explicit representations of women to sow dissent amongst the allied forces. So we have a number on display that range from American, French and British in terms of who they were aimed at. And all of them use this very harmful gender stereotype that, you know, whilst you as a soldier are fighting in the trenches, fighting for your country, your women or your girlfriends, your wives at home are sleeping with your supposed allies. And just the fact that women are being used to kind of cause dissent is it's just a really unflattering portrayal.

But doesn't that in itself tell us how men view women? Yes. That they know that that is what's going to get under their skin. Yes. It's one of the reasons I think that sexual violence and rape is used as a tactic of war because they know what it does to communities and not just to women. Obviously it's women that suffered a significant proportion of that, but what it does is really breaks down communities, it breaks down family institutions as well. So it's a tactic that people know the impact of. Yeah.

I also want to bring up the photographs and documents relating to state-sanctioned mass sexual violence. Tell us about the Comfort Women. Tell us more. Yeah, so in our second room in the exhibition we explore a number of ways in which sexual violence can be used in conflict on a mass scale. We look at how it can incite fear and terror, it can be state sanctioned or just as Sarah's mentioned it can be used as a kind of a form of genocide, as a form of ethnic cleansing, you know, a way to kind of destroy families and communities. The example of these so-called comfort women during the Second World War was an incredibly

powerful one for us. We have a number of photographs in our collection. We have a comfort station sign that was taken from a comfort station in Burma during the Second World War. One side of that sign reads closed, the other one says that these women are having a temporary rest. The photographs that we have in, the other one says that these women are having a temporary rest. The photographs that we have in our collection really depict how young these women and young girls were when they were taken. So essentially during the Second World War, the Japanese army and government created the comfort stations to reduce the spread of venereal diseases amongst their soldiers. Young women and girls from across Southeast Asia were forced, tricked or sold into sexual

slavery. They were forced to repeatedly sleep with men, some up to 40 times a day. Some contracted horrific sexually transmitted diseases. Many others died and for those who survived the war and survived their treatment in the stations had real challenges then returning to their home countries afterwards. What surprised me, shocked me so many times when I present this program I read facts and dates and I always sort of have to set off paying attention. Sarah, the first international arrest warrants for the use of rape during war were only issued during the war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia in 1993 and it wasn't until 1998 that the International Criminal Court recognized sexual violence

in conflict as a crime against humanity. It's really recent. People are really surprised at that as well and it's I, I've done this work for a long time, and I still can't believe that it's that recent. So where are we now? What power, what protection do women and children have? And then, as we've talked about the figures, it's on the increase, more women are coming forward. I mean, you know, this is the thing,

it is enshrined in law. Yeah. It's that these laws are not being followed and I think one of the things that we want people to know at Women for Women International and also I think through this exhibition is that there is hope in this. There are ways to prevent this. This is not inevitable. This is not an inevitable side of war. It doesn't have to be. There are definitely ways that we can provide protection and support for women and a lot of like getting to the root causes of this I think. One of the things that we have done at Women of Women is we speak to women a lot. We did a huge consultation last year called

Asking to Action across 14 conflict-affected countries, six and a half thousand women, and they themselves, survivors of sexual violence, have told us the things that can be done to prevent sexual violence in conflict. Such as? So it's things like education and awareness raising in the public around women's rights. What is sexual violence in conflict? How does it manifest and how do you avoid it? But it's also things like investing in safe spaces for women, shelters for women, but also things like economic empowerment for women.

Yeah, but again, it's the women who've had to do, the victims who are now having to come up with the solutions. Yeah, so we also really need investment in the solutions and we need big investment. And what we're seeing is a decrease in investment in those. You must be thrilled that the Imperial War Museum have decided to put on this exhibition. Perfect timing. Absolutely perfect timing. And you bring it up to present day. Yeah, absolutely. We use our kind of historic case studies to really draw parallels with present day conflicts. We talk a lot in our introductory films about the conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, DRC. We draw

some of those parallels out when we look at child evacuees during the Second World War. We bring that up to the present day conflict in Ukraine and the fact that 1.5 million children were displaced within the first kind of four weeks of that conflict. UNICEF said at the time that they felt that this would trigger a child safety crisis. So wherever possible we are kind of using historic case studies and stories to really draw parallels with the present. I will be coming to see it soon. Thank you both. Sarah Beilcourt and Helen Upcraft. An unsilenced sexual violence and conflict is free and it's on at the Imperial War Museum

until the 2nd of November. The museum advises that the exhibition is only suitable for those aged 16 or over. And if you've been affected by any of the issues raised, then do check out the BBC Action Line website. Now, how good a listener are you? No, how good are you really? And what do you get in return? Well, my next two guests have both written new books all about listening to sounds, listening more deeply to other people. I'm joined in the studio by Alice Vincent, author of Hark! How Women Listen and Emily Casriel, Deep Listening, Transform Your Relationships

with Family, Friends and Foes. Emma and Alice, welcome. I want to come to you first, Alice. When it comes to listening, why did you decide in your book to focus particularly on the sounds and noises around us over conversation? I think because I originally started with the book from the position of wanting to listen to music. I'd been a music journalist for 15 years and I'd become a woman in my early 30s who pretty much stopped listening to music. And then I started talking to women who listened in extraordinary ways. At the same time, I had a very, very small baby and my whole soundscape had transformed. And so when I spoke to those women who listened in extraordinary ways, I realized that we live and we exist in a world of noise and sonic experiences that we overlook.

And that the noises of women's lives in particular, often very domestic noise, often the noise of caregiving, is something that we don't talk about, we don't write about, we don't validate. But it is very much the stuff of our lives. How did your soundscape change? Well, I had a tiny, tiny baby who was making all sorts of new noises, and my physical response to those noises was very different as well. It was something that could wake me up in the middle of the night even before he started crying. It was something that could shoot adrenaline through my body. But also I was spending so much more

time at home so my my soundscape became a lot of the chug of the dishwasher or that announcement on the bus to stand next to your buggy. And for a long time, I thought that my life had become lesser somehow. And then I realized that actually, if you tune into the noises around you, the things that we often think are overlooked, the things that we dismiss, things like a regular rhyme class, it's actually very valid, very beautiful, very meaningful, and crucially the noise that millions of women are living amongst every single day that we don't recognize. You describe it as a book for women who feel unheard and a means of listening deeply in a world that has grown too loud. Yeah. What do you mean by that? I

think that when I started the book I found life incredibly overwhelming. It felt I couldn't even put a record on without, which is something that, as I said, didn't do very often. But if I decided to do it, it would be interrupted by a notification, my phone reading out a WhatsApp message. You know, you see people with headphones in all the time. It feels like we are bombarded by noise. Noise pollution is a very real matter. And yet I also feel like we don't interrogate the sounds that women hear. We don't interrogate all this noise that we're expected to listen to, that we're raised as little girls to listen to. We're

expected to be these good listeners, but no one's saying, what are we listening to? And I think that if we tune into what our lives sound like and we write them down and we research them and we validate them, all these extraordinary ambiguous noises that no one's thought to research before, we can start to realize what our lives actually mean and what they do. We've been taught to be good listeners, but also to stay very quiet. Exactly. Exactly. Not to be too loud, be loud, but not too loud.

Have opinions, but not too many opinions. Emma, you've written, Emily, sorry, Emily, you've written about deep listening and space is one of the things that needs to be created, you say, for deep listening to take place. Just kind of overlapping what Alice has just been saying, that what is deep listening? What do you mean by that? Well, so often we listen in a very transactional way. We listen only to preload our verbal gun with ammunition ready to fire, or even worse, to interrupt. And as somebody who used to be and still is sometimes a serial interrupter we're depriving the person not just their

chance to say but even to think or we listen in order to solve or we listen in order to to to make things better to cheer someone up especially as parents actually we don't want to stay with stuff that's difficult and deep listening really is transformational it It's the opposite. It's about having curiosity and tuning in, as Alice talks about. She's talking tuning into sounds. And here we're tuning into what the other person is saying, but also what they're not saying and their emotions. And that is so, so critical in order that we can have, as Martin Buber, the theologian said, more of an I-thou relationship rather than an I-it transactional relationship where we treat

the other person as an object. Do you want me to give you a little demonstration? Yes, can we demonstrate? How does deep listening work? Okay, let's have a go. Am I going to be put on the spot? Am I going to be exposed as someone who doesn't, who's got no deep listening? No deep. No, don't worry. In fact, it's me who's going to be. Well, see if I can do it, because it's me who's going to be doing the listening. Can people at home do this as well? Yeah. Okay. They can be listening to you and listening for what you're saying and what you're

not saying. So I'm going to ask you a question now, Anita, and I'll ask you what food reminds you of home? Oh, that's easy. Dahl, rice, cumin seeds, butter, onions. There you go. So I'm hearing that this wasn't hard at all, the dull rice cumin seeds immediately come to you and you know it in your very soul. Is that right? Absolutely. It is my soul food. And so it's something that you're proud of, you know it makes you feel good and there's just no question

about it. And I'm also getting that you're laughing at me. No, I'm not laughing at you. I mean, I'm just, I'm just enjoying talking about Dal on Radio 4. That's why I'm having a moment where I'm like, yeah, I'm just telling the world that Dal is my favorite food. And that's bringing me joy, Emily. Yeah. Okay. So I'm also observing how you are listening to me and pausing before you answer. Is that is that part of it? Yeah, absolutely important because people often think that silence is the absence of words. But in fact, it can be the presence of everything. And by stopping even for a few seconds, and when I was training executives from Hollywood,

and they were saying, we don't do silence, we want to come in with a quick and witty retort. But in fact silence can be so rich and it allows you time to reflect more deeply and it allows the listener time to truly understand. It's a warm empathetic silence. And interestingly actually even in negotiations they used to think that silence was there to intimidate and when you ask two sides two parties in a negotiation the research evidence is that actually they come with more win-win situations where both sides benefit rather than zero sum if I win you lose. Do you think there's a difference between how women listen compared to how men listen? There are

small differences in terms of the research in that men often want to provide more solutions when they listen than women. And women also do more back channel responses by which they sort of go, mm-hmm, and they nod. And those are so important because they are co-creating the narrative. Because listening isn't really

at all like you're reading a book already written. It's about engaging with what's happening in the moment and the way you listen will change everything about the way the speaker will think and speak and even imagine. And therefore, as an executive coach, it's so wonderful when you see people in silence often, they go on these journeys and they come back transformed because you've been there to witness and hold them in there listening to them as they're doing their thinking. I'm going to bring you in Alice because you've written about silence. What can silence offer us when we want to listen?

Well I'm listening fascinated to what Emily's saying. There's so much overlap. But silence is a funny thing because I think we both fetishise it and we fear it. We all often, I'm sure if I say, oh, imagine going on holiday and it's just that peace and quiet, that silence, that removal from everything. I think especially as women, we uphold it as a kind of escape from a lot of the things that drain our energy that we have to look after. At the same time, I think there's a kind of silence that exists and a sort of isolation from not being heard, from not being able to talk about often the kind of the loneliness that accompanies everyday life. And that can be, you know, that can be transcended by what Emily's

saying. This listening with, the notion of listening with is something that does crop up in the book towards the end of it. And it's not my phraseology, it's one that belongs to a composer and musician named Aneya Lockwood. She's in her 80s, she was this radical feminist artist in the 60s, she set pianos on fire, she spent the last 50 years recording Rivers and in the 60s. She set pianos on fire. She spent the last 50 years recording rivers and in the process she's recorded the sound of the climate crisis. She's an incredible woman and she spent her whole life listening. And she said that it was only very recently in the past 10 years that she came across, she developed this concept of listening with

rather than listening to. And that for me, while I agree with Emily, that there isn't a huge amount of difference in how women listen and how men listen, but that sense of communing, that reciprocity of listening together, whether that's to our surroundings, to each other, but making that space and also to ourselves, being fair to ourselves to give us the space to listen to what's going on in silence or otherwise is crucial. I completely agree. I have a chapter in my book called Listen to Yourself First, especially when you're in a situation where you don't agree with a person speaking, unless you take the time to listen to yourself first, to really understand perhaps your hidden agenda, what's

really going on here, and even your shadows that come up, the parts of ourselves that are less acceptable, if we don't listen to ourselves first they rise up and can really be project them onto the person speaking. Oh give us some practical advice Emily then because if you know I feel that my friends, my female friends have been amazing they've really heard me and I mean we're on Woman's Hour, we're on a radio show so everyone's listening. We constantly talk about women not being heard, we've just had a whole item about UTIs and a woman having to become an MP just to get her voice heard about this debilitating illness she's had. How do we, if we're about to go into a conversation, I'm asking for a friend and you know that it's bringing up things within you and you want to kind of spout things

out, just take a moment to hear ourselves first. Absolutely, take that moment and accept that you don't already know because so often, and you write about this as well, how we don't really know what's going on in other people's lives and you write about it beautifully and we assume that we know what's going on and therefore we just do lip service listening, we don't do true deep listening. But if we can be present, if we can take a moment or two even to have a breath in and a breath out so we're fully there aware and then we can be aware when we're caught with internal distractions and of course we put our phone not just off but ideally out of sight so we

can be fully present to whatever is about to unfold. And that's what's so exciting that when you truly listen all sorts of wonderful things can happen. Oh, it's been such a fascinating conversation. Thank you both for coming in. Alice Vincent's book Hark! is out and also Emily Casseriel's Deep Listening, Transform Your Relationships with Family, Friends and Foe's is out there too. Thank you both so much.

I'm gonna end with a couple of your thoughts on your sounds that you enjoy. Ellie says, walking through my parents' village in rural France at night, we say it's so quiet so you can hear your cells divide. My favorite sound is the absence of sound. Join me tomorrow for more Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour.

Join us again next time. From BBC Radio 4 and the History podcast. We're not so funny people in our family. I'm Joe Dunthorn. Funny people. And this is Half Life. She finished her job, she dropped dead. My father finished his job, he was dead within a week.

I mean, that's all quite a weird kind of story, you know. And so we call it like the curse of this memoir. An eight-part podcast about how the past lives on inside us. I wonder how you feel after all of this. Even when we try to ignore it. All of the bombs will detonate sooner or later. Listen to Half-Life on BBC Sounds. All of the bombs will detonate sooner or later. Listen to Half-Life on BBC Sounds.