Woman's Hour - Working in retail; Sparking a love of nature; Women’s innovation in tech; Women and underpaid state pensions, Evil women

Episode Date: December 5, 2020

Non-essential shops reopened in England this week after the second Lockdown - thousands of jobs now hang in the balance. We hear from Joanne Cairns, deputy head of research at USDAW and Catherine Shuttleworth, retail analyst.The Woman’s Hour Power List recognises the work of 30 inspiring women who are making a positive contribution to the environment and the sustainability of our planet. Beccy Speight, CEO of the RSPB which is the UK’s largest conservation charity and Miranda Lowe, Curator at the Natural History Museum in London talk about their work to spark our interest in the environment and nature.Two of this year’s TechWomen100 Award winners June Angelides MBE and Rav Bumbra on how to encourage more women and girls to work in the tech industries.Many women have been underpaid state pension. Steve Webb, partner at Lane, Clark and Peacock and Jasmine Birtles financial expert and director of MoneyMagpie explain.What makes an evil woman. We hear from Professor of History at Birkbeck and Rhetoric Professor at Gresham College talks about her interest in evil women.Festive Drinks. Sandra Lawrence from The Cocktail Lovers magazine talks about classic cocktails.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Paula McFarlane Editor: Dianne McGregor

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, good afternoon and a warm welcome on what is probably a chilly afternoon to the best of the Woman's Hour week. What can you expect this week? Well, we'll hear from two women from the Woman's Hour Power List, Becky Spate of the RSPB and Miranda Lowe of the Natural History Museum. They'll talk about what it takes to spark a lifelong love of nature. You can hear, too, from two of the Tech Women 100 award winners this year.

And might you be one of the women who has been underpaid her state pension? You could be a married woman, a divorcee or a widow. It might be you. Find out more this afternoon. And evil women. Ever since Eve first plucked that apple from the tree of knowledge, I think we have been obsessed with the nature of evil women. And every generation, of course, kind of reinvents evil for itself. And it reflects really our own fears, our own anxieties, our own fantasies as much as the actual women themselves.

That is Professor of History at Birkbeck, Joanna Burke. More from her a little bit later. Oh, and we talked too about festive drinks. That's a bit later. It has been a dismal week for the world of retail. Although non-essential shops did reopen in England on Wednesday, around the same time we heard about thousands of potential job losses in the Arcadia Group. The jobs there hanging in the balance at Topshop and Burton and Dorothy Perkins and Wallace

and then of course Debenhams as well. It really is grim. The retail workforce, it bears repeating, is 60% female. So this week on the programme, I talked to Joanne Cairns, the Deputy Head of Research at Usdor, the Shop Workers Union, and we talked too to retail analyst Catherine Shuttleworth. Here she is on whether there was anything at all positive to say about the high street. I've been studying retail since i was 18 i went to university i did a degree in retailing in 1985 and i've never felt quite so gloomy about the future of retail you know the news about debnams is just devastating isn't it you know 12 000 people working for debnams about another 13 000 working for arcadia all those jobs in the

balance and and to give some context that's the same size as the fishing industry in the UK so at the moment there's lots of debate about fishing Brexit it's really important just two retailers are as big as that whole industry and that gives you some idea of how critical the things that are happening on the high street are at the moment um so I don't want to feel gloomy. I want to find a kind of positive gas of light. But it's very, very difficult to see how we're going to reinvent our high streets in such a way where, you know, commerce as a whole still plays a big part of it. At a time when, for a lot of people today, you know, their careers are in effect in this sector over.

And for women in particular, that's devastating news. Joanne Cairns, your members in Osdor, how are they feeling this morning? Well, it's been an absolutely terrible week for retail workers with the announcements about Arcadia and Debenhams. And there's never a good time for announcements like this, but coming right before Christmas and after such a very, very tough year in retail, it's particularly devastating. So we think we're looking at about 200,000 job losses in the retail sector this year, which is just unprecedented, really. What about your members who have been involved in the most recent lockdown,

people who work in non-essential shops? How were they paid and what were they paid during the last month or so? Within some of our agreements in unionised workplaces, we've been able to negotiate full pay for members who have been affected by the lockdown. But of course, lots of workplaces are not unionised and they'll be on 80% of their pay. And we're talking about people who are already very low paid to begin with. So we're bringing them down to, in many cases, 20% below the minimum wage. And of course, any of your members, well, you can tell me, were you involved with Debenhams? Have you got members in there? We do have members in Debenhams, yeah.

I think, as Catherine said, it's another example really of women bearing the brunt of the crisis, because it is a predominantly female workforce. And in Arcadia, for example, I think the latest figures that they produced on their gender breakdown showed that 82% of people working for them are women. Many of them will be young women. You know, these are low-paid workers who are already in a really difficult situation and now they're facing even worse. What about the suggestion that some shops

will be open 24 hours a day, Joanne, in the run-up to Christmas? Might that be something that your members could cling to as a way of earning some extra money? Well, I mean, we think that the announcement about extending opening hours is really, it's insignificant in comparison to the huge crisis that's facing the high street. What we are asking employers to do is to make sure that if they are going to operate longer hours,

that they ensure those hours are staffed by volunteers, because a lot of our members are already under an awful lot of pressure this time of year in the run-up to Christmas and already quite overstretched so we would ask them to make sure that they're staffed either by volunteers or by recruitment and so people who do want those extra hours will be able to get them but we don't want anybody to be put under pressure to do that. Catherine Shuttleworth is that an answer 24-hour opening? It's a sticking plaster in the short term I mean you know for example Primark have announced they're going to open 11 stores 24 hours a day but the reality is not very many people want to go shopping

at three o'clock in the morning it's not very safe it's not easy to get in and out of stores and most of us are asleep at that time aren't we you know the supermarkets used to be open 24 hours a day and they stopped doing it because people weren't shopping those hours and i know we're in unprecedented times but you know i read an article yesterday by robert genrick who's made this decision uh he would appear all by himself from the way he wrote yesterday saying i have worked out there's lots of red tape around retail and i am going to lift the hours well it's going to need something a lot bigger than 24-hour trading in December and January.

But the reality is we can shop 24 hours a day anyway, can't we, online on our mobile phones? That's what I was going to get to, obviously. I mean, putting all sentiment aside, and obviously we do feel for people losing their jobs. It's awful, particularly right now. But the high street is changing because we, the consumer, has changed. It's no good me weeping and wailing about the high street and then going home and

spending money online. Absolutely. And we get very nostalgic about brands. And in our last 24 hours, people said that these are big brands. But, you know, we can shop online. It's really easy. If you like, the pandemic has pushed us into shopping online even better. And it's funny when we talk about non-essential retail. I mean, really, apart from food, nothing's become essential, has it? Because we've been able to shop online very successfully in every single age group. We've got used to it. And so there's kind of no turning back to go back to a high street that we had 20 years ago. We've got to accept it's going to be different and it's going to look different.

I think the challenge really is how do we work together to make a sustainable high street for the future? And think about local retail as well, because if there is a sort of array of sunshine amongst this gloom, what I would say is that working from home has made us stay closer to our local high streets and small high streets. And some retailers are really thriving in that environment.

And let's hope we can see more entrepreneurs setting up retail businesses. Joanne, what do you do in the short term to help your members, your members at Debenhams and indeed who work for Arcadia? So we'll be doing everything that we possibly can to support those members. We'll be making contact with the administrators and trying to get some updates on what's being done to save jobs. And obviously any members who need advice, we would encourage them to get in contact with us.

And, you know, we really do hope that buyers are found for some or part of those businesses. But do you acknowledge that the retail reality, the 21st century reality, which is that for all of us who might well feel sentiment towards the likes of Debenhams, we weren't going in and spending money there? Well, I think there's certainly been huge challenges facing retail and a lot of that has been exacerbated, obviously, during the coronavirus crisis because of lockdown and

also because of reduced footfall in general um even when shops are open because people just are not going out shopping as much but really you know i think government's got a choice to make um and as a society we've got a choice to make do we want to see our high streets go to the wall or do we want to make them, you know, thrive and survive after this crisis is over? And really, there needs to be a proper recovery strategy for retail. We shouldn't be writing these jobs off. Of course, the sector is changing, and we need to adapt to those changes. But at the same time, you know, there's a lot that needs to be done to create more of a level playing field between online and high street retail as well. Do you feel there is a gender bias here, genuinely, perhaps at the

heart of government, that yes, fishing gets all sorts of attention for a multitude of reasons we all know very well, connected to Brexit, for example, but there isn't the same interest in or enthusiasm for retail, Joanne. Well, this is something that we've been raising for a long time, that there needs to be a proper industrial strategy for retail. And, you know, whenever the government talks about industrial strategy, it is always about making things and building things. And retail, as a sector that employs three million people,

it is often overlooked. And, you know, a lot of that probably is rooted in some assumptions that people make about retail jobs being a stopgap, being something, you know, that people do for some extra cash, particularly mums. And actually, the reality is that retail jobs put food on the tables for millions of families, and they're absolutely essential to the economy. Are you concerned about the notion that shoppers are being, in some cases, told that just 15 minutes inside a store is the only safe length of time? What do you think about that, Joanne, and what does that say about your members?

Well, I mean, this isn't something that we're aware of any shops actually implementing as a policy. I know the advice is that if you're in contact for 15 minutes, that's the length of time that the contact tracing people work to. But actually the most important thing for people to do when they're shopping is to maintain a two metre distance from others. And that's what we ask shoppers to do for however long you're in the shop. And of course, to make sure that you wear a face covering.

And, you know, that's where we need to be focusing our efforts to make Christmas shopping trips safe. Of course, people are going to want to browse, especially at this time of year when the shops reopen. But I do think people will be probably planning their shopping trips a bit more carefully than normal. And, you know, trying to shop as efficiently and sensibly as they can. And we would encourage people to do that. That is Joanne Cairns who is from the shop workers union Osdor and you also got the view of the retail analyst Catherine Shuttleworth. Susan emailed to say as an older woman I've always preferred browsing in actual shops to the online shopping you can hold clothes up against you you can try things on or you used to be able shopping. You can hold clothes up against you, you can try things on, or you used to be able to,

and you can get a friend to go with you for advice and a coffee as well. I hate having to return clothes I've ordered online. So much packaging and waste, and I think that's bad news for the environment, says Susan. I like Debenhams. I thought they offered a lot of choice. From Jenny, I'm an ex-top shop head of buying,

and I'm saddened by the news but not actually remotely surprised. What upsets me the most is the lack of accountability and responsibility. Those that will pay the price are of course the employees. It's sickening and a sad comment on the society we live in. And from Arlene, I have been forced to shop online for a number of years because there's nothing left in the high street of interest to me. I used to really love going out on a Saturday and browsing through the likes of C&A and Littlewoods and British Home Stores and Woolies,

as well as the myriad independent shops. They've all gone now, and anything I want now needs to be sourced online. Yeah, I think many people, many of our listeners, have quite an emotional relationship with the high street and getting out to shop, and I understand that. The online stuff, whilst convenient, and we all do it, it's not quite the same, is it?

Now, to the Women's Hour Power List 2020, which this year is honouring women who are making a positive contribution to the environment and to the sustainability of our planet. There's plenty more about who's on the list and our judging panel over on the Women's Hour website, bbc.co.uk forward slash Women's Hour. On Wednesday, the programme heard from two women who work towards sparking our lifetime interest in nature and the environment. They were Becky Spate, the CEO of the RSPB,

which is the country's largest conservation charity, and Miranda Lowe, who's a curator at the Natural History Museum in London. Our presenter this week was Krupa Pardi, and here she is asking Miranda how she started working in the museum sector. It began in childhood, actually. My parents came over from the Caribbean and they themselves are very interested in nature. So for me growing up it wasn't unusual to go on family trips to visit museums, parks and gardens and we were always at Kew Gardens because my mum

loves plants and growing plants and flowers and my my dad actually, in the garden at home, he would grow the vegetables. But also what was very inspirational for me and had a mark on in terms of my engagement with nature was that our family holidays consistently for about 10 to 12 years were visiting the Isle of Wight. And that was really magical for me because I thought, well, we were going somewhere really far. And then I was also interested in photography, photographing nature. So they bought me my first camera and we'd visit the New Forest

and look at the ponies and the horses there. So there was always that engagement there. And I'm a very curious person to learn about things and to appreciate how wonderful things are because I also have an interest in art as well so looking from that perspective so it was all around inspiring for me and very encouraging so that's where it all kind of started for me. Such a vivid picture thank you for that. Becky let's bring you on in here tell us about your own journey to working in nature. So not dissimilar actually I grew up in Dorset and my mum was particularly interested

in the natural world kind of knew all the common names for wildflowers and and birds and you know and so I learned a lot from being with her on kind of walks and things like that and then my dad was into the outdoors so all of our holidays were camping holidays and lots of fishing. We had, I can remember a fantastic holiday we had down on Portland Bill, just down at the right at the bottom of Dorset, where, you know, we just seemed to kind of swim or fish every day. And just being out in that amazing environment and getting to kind of see everything that was going on was really, really exciting. And I think that's what kind of piqued my interest. And I just, it's interesting, I kind of assumed that everyone had that kind of childhood. And I can remember sitting and talking to adult friends much later in adulthood and talking about, you know, having a

tank with kind of, you know, pet newts in it and things that always escaped and, and then kind of looking at me slightly open mouthed and realise, you know, that you, I just feel now that I was so fortunate to have this childhood that really kind of just feel now that I was so fortunate to have this childhood that really kind of connected me with that world and got me really interested in it and that I was allowed just to have a very free childhood as well. And I think that's something that a lot of kids miss out on today, actually. It was a fantastic childhood and really sparked that interest. Miranda, when I knew that I was speaking to you, I asked my little ones who had pre-lockdown, had made their first

trip to the National History Museum, they're four and six, and I asked them, what do you remember about that visit? Because when you're that age, you know, the memory can be quickly adapted to something else. And they didn't talk about the dinosaur, which was quite surprising. They talked about the moon display. When you're putting together these displays, these exhibitions, what runs through your mind when it comes to how am I going to keep that individual engaged when they leave those doors again? Well, we go through a very long process before we display anything. So it's a lot of consultation with the staff curators and scientists. And we also seek to bring external voices into the museum in terms of, you know,

their perspective of how they look at our specimens, or any kind of objects that we are due to display. So and that's really important to then get the engagement from our external visitors, people visiting, because if you have that community engagement alongside a specialist, you know, that diversity of voices before you put on an exhibition, then you're going to get that diversity of audience coming to visit because, let's face it, people want to see representations of themselves, things that they're interested in. And also, it's not just about the museum educating people. You know, we are all within the museum part of society

in this global world. So we need to seek those voices externally to what they're passionate about. What do they understand? You know, it's a conversation about it. Let's face it, in this current climate that we're in, we've all had calls to call upon nature. Nature has been, you know, our sole something for us that we've re-engaged with again.

Yes, and it's about keeping that engagement up. Becky, can you just explain the breadth of what the RSPB does? And I imagine it's much more than bird spotting, isn't it? It is, although birds are absolutely central to our whole history and our expertise so we do a lot of work in science we have a fantastic team of scientists who are constantly kind of building the evidence for you know what's going on in the natural world and what we can do about it and then we also we work in the UK so we have about 200 nature reserves across the UK so we're directly kind of caring for nature on the land. We work a lot as well to try and influence government policy because that's so vital to kind of setting up the natural world to succeed and be restored going forward and we

work globally as well so you may have seen just a few weeks ago there was a new marine protection area declared around Tristan da Cunha which is a UK overseas territory in the South Atlantic. Fantastic area. Really, really important marine life. And we worked for over 20 years to try and kind of build up the momentum and the funding to get that marine protection area declared, working with the local community. So we work around the world as well. And birds are very much our lens. It's the way into the natural world. And I think that's the case for a lot of people. But of course, you know, what's happening to birds

and the kind of declines we're seeing and the threats we're seeing to their survival absolutely apply to the whole natural world as well. So you have to think about both. And how can kids get started on this? Because I know that you have a very wide age membership, don't you? We do. So about a quarter of our membership, actually.

We've got a membership of over a million people and about a quarter of those are young people. And if you talk to a lot of people who are now maybe in their 60s, they remember the Young Ornithologists Club, which was the kind of youth movement of the RSPB maybe kind of 40 years ago, 40, 50 years ago. So it remains really important to us and I think

I think birds are just a really accessible way into the natural world if you think about what so many people appreciated you know during during lockdown this year it was just having the time and the space to notice the natural world and it still is we can't underestimate and yeah and birds are often the thing that you see and it was certainly the case for me I know here in Nottingham you know just seeing the birds in my garden really kind of helped me through. Becky Spate of the RSPB and Miranda Lowe from the Natural History Museum talking to Krupa Paddy on Women's Hour this week. I talked to two of the year's Tech Women 100 award winners. Best friends June Angelides MBE, who's an investor, speaker and a mentor who founded Mums in Tech. She won the Editor's Choice Award and her mate Rav Bumbra,

who won the Champion Award for recruiting women to work in tech and mentoring schoolgirls as well. She started her own business, Structured People, in 2015. It also has a social arm, the Kajigo app, that encourages girls to get into STEM. If you look at the future of work, 80% of all jobs will require STEM skills. So it's really important we start demystifying what STEM means to girls in schools. And I think there's that misconception of tech is for boys. Tech has an image problem. And the other thing is the tech industry. And it's more wider than that now. Technology is being used across all businesses.

It's a foundation. And I think when you come out of COVID, you would have realised that tech is now a disruptor and an innovator. We're seeing so many companies being formed this year and it's really exciting to see what's going to be happening next year and how it's all evolving. I suppose, cynically, I might suggest that most of those companies have been formed by men, many of them with brilliant contacts

and loads of family money. Would that be fair, Rav? I don't think so. I think if you go out there and talk amongst the female tech communities, you'll see a lot of women who are hustling side jobs, you know, just thinking about opening up a business, a small business and thinking about scaling it up. We're hearing a lot more of that come out now. Very interesting companies. People are actually looking at things like, you know, bringing the social element into it, too. You know, how can we start to use tech to solve world problems, things like poverty, climate change, homelessness. So you're really

starting to bring your passion into the tech world now as well. June, tell us first of all, how you started Mums in Tech. What inspired you? Was it after your, you've got three children, haven't you? I have. I actually started it on my second maternity leave. So I was two months in. And what was your job before you went on maternity leave? I was on the venture debt team at Silicon Valley Bank. So you were already in the business? I was, but strangely enough, you know, we're doing the finance things and I didn't know the ins and outs of coding. I actually didn't know what coding languages were. And I wanted to challenge myself on my time off.

I wanted to learn a bit more about the types of businesses we were investing in. And I thought, well, why don't I learn to code? And I tried to find resources to learn and did a couple of online courses, but very quickly realized that I wanted to learn with other people. And I challenged myself. I said, I'm going to set something up for mothers. It is worth saying for anyone who's outside this world, and I'm one of those people, that you can do online coding courses. Absolutely. There's resources like Codecademy. Are they free or do you pay for those? They're free. They're free. But I had loads of questions and it was really tricky.

There were points where I got stuck and I wanted to have an experience with a teacher. And there weren't any courses I could go to with a baby. And I just realized that we hadn't been factored in. No one had thought that perhaps we might want to learn something. And to be honest, I could have learned anything. And I was very conscious. I wanted to go back into the workplace with more confidence than I had my first mat leave. So I set up a pilot where we would go into tech companies and convert their meeting rooms

into a classroom in a creche. And incredibly had the engineering teams at companies like Marks & Spencer offer up their teams to teach us over eight weeks. You make that sound so simple. You can't just get on the phone to Marks & Spencer. It was over Twitter. I sent a tweet. I said, can I come in? I turned up with my two kids.

I had no choice. I had a tweet. I said, can I come in? I turned up with my two kids. I had no choice, had no child care. And for me, that was actually a great litmus test in seeing how welcoming they were going to be. And they were incredibly welcoming. And we, yeah, we would turn up every week with 15 moms and 15 babies with nannies, you know, to look after the kids and learn something new each week. Just really demystifying tech, like what Rav was saying, making it less intimidating, learning with other amazing women, learning with teachers who are doing this job day to day. Okay, and over the course of the years that Mums in Tech ran, and I know it's not a thing anymore, unfortunately, although I know you still mentor,

how many women did you help and what did they go on to do? Yeah, we taught over 250 women over three years, worked with 12 corporates, How many women did you help and what did they gone on to work in tech companies where perhaps they may not have applied before, but felt that actually they've learned enough. They can prove that they can learn anything. It's that confidence to say, look, I've got what it takes. I've got the baseline and I can learn on the job. But putting yourself out there. Rav, you, I know, specialize now in recruitment, don't you? Yes.

Well, I used to do recruitment. It's still part of the business, but I focus more on diversity now. So going into organisations to talk to them about their diversity agenda and why it really matters for business. OK. And when you first go into a business, how welcoming are they in terms of, well, admitting their own presumably relative lack of diversity? How do those conversations go? It's a difficult one because I think people are scared of quotas, that they've got this male-dominated team, are people going to start to lose their jobs because they've been set these quotas to bring women into the organisation?

So it's really making them aware of what diversity would mean to their business, how it can drive innovation, how it can be great for productivity and increase performance. But it's not just at entry level, you're looking at all the way through the organisation. For instance, if you have your board and it represents 30% of female sitting on the board, it increases your productivity and performance by 40%. So once they understand how diversity can be good for their business and drive competitiveness, I think they understand why they need to set a diversity agenda. And it has to start from the top. It has to start from the senior executive team.

Yeah, it's a brutal business. You're about making money and you'll make more money if you're more diverse end of. I mean, you've convinced me just in that. I mean, I'm not in business. But I mean, when you heard our earlier conversation about retail, in a way, what does that make you think, Rav, that conversation about? Because there are so many women involved in retail and you really feel for them right now.

But is there a part of you that just thinks, well, that's the past and we're the future? Or am I being, am I too harsh? Oh, do you know what? Jane, there's so many opportunities for women. Go on then, tell us. Honestly, when you look at the tech industry itself, it doesn't discriminate.

You can come from any background. Everyone's got transferable skills. So, you know, take a look at your CV and if you have a job description in front of you, just see what you can do. Highlight the pieces that you can do and then highlight the ones that you can't do, but maybe you can get some training in. And I will always say to women that, you know, if you want to apply for a job, go for it. Get to that interview stage and be open and have that discussion of these are the skills I have got, but I'm willing to learn. I'm willing to train. I'm willing to train,

I'm willing to invest in myself. But the retail industry has got so many transferable skills, definitely to move into the tech industry. Yeah, so you shouldn't write yourself off because you've been public facing, haven't you, if you have worked in retail? And I guess that is that. You're absolutely right. That is a skill set that you can take somewhere else.

June, was there ever a time in your life when you haven't gone for something because you you not felt qualified? Look, we've known each other since literally 10 to 10. But you do you do strike me as being a very outward going and positive person or is there self-doubt lurking? Oh, my God. All the time. I work with a coach and I have done since March. But, you know, prior to starting Mums in Tech, I was very, very shy and I wouldn't put myself forward for things. But I think it's really down to mindset. And I think I had this realization after I had my second child that, you know, as my mentor would say, cavalry is not coming to save us. That sounds a bit Boris Johnson-esque. You need to take ownership. And I think also ask for help. That sense of vulnerability.

And this is where I think mentors are super important. So I decided I was going to keep learning. And thankfully, the government actually announced that they've made the skills toolkit available. So all the retail workers, I'd encourage them to check that out, because actually, that's a good way of learning new and soft skills. I think that's something we don't talk about enough. You know, we go back to the confidence and learning how to present yourself, that personal branding, what Rab talked about,

transferable skills, really writing it down, all those things you're great at, we forget to write our little list down. It's so important. June Angelides and Rav Bumbra, two of this year's Tech Women 100 award winners. And I should say that our guest on Monday morning is Dame Stephanie Shirley, who is someone who I know both Rav and June hugely admire. She was one of the pioneering women in technology, one of the tech pioneers, full stop. So looking forward to talking to her on Monday's edition of the programme. Now, is it possible that you could be a woman who's been underpaid a state pension? The former pensions minister, Steve Webb,

first highlighted the issue back in May, and the Department of Work and Pensions has been investigating records and, in some cases, making payments. Married, divorced and widowed women could all have been affected. And the DWP could be looking, we're told, at a bill in excess of £100 million. Well, I talked to Steve Webb, who's now a partner at the company Lane, Clark & Peacock, and to Jasmine Bertels, a financial expert, and the director of Money Magpie, a money information site. First of all, here's Steve on who we're talking about

and how many of them there are. We're talking potentially tens of thousands of women, very difficult to be precise, but I think that's the sort of number. We're talking about women who come under the old state pension system, so that's women born before the 6th of April 1953, so aged about 67 or over. And basically, it all dates back to when the system was designed around the Second World War. And the assumption was many women would depend on their husbands in retirement. And so in theory, when you retire, and when your husband's

hit 65, you can get 60% of his basic state pension. So about £80 a week. And many people do. I'm not suggesting for a minute that the system doesn't work for most people, but we've found thousands of people who are not getting even that basic. I mean, it's not a king's ransom, not even getting that basic £80 a week or so. Sorry, I'm a bit lost here. Is it £80 a week on top of what they would get as an individual as part of their own state pension? Broadly, instead of. So what tended to happen was that many women of the generation we're talking about, and again, I'm generalising here, but many perhaps didn't have much paid work or paid the married woman's reduced stamp. So they didn't build up much pension in their own right. So they might retire at 60 in those days and get a pension of,

I don't know, £40, £50, whatever, that sort of figure. They could then, when the husband turns 65, go on to a pension of, let's say, £80 instead of what they were getting before. And since 2008, that process should have happened automatically by computer. The computer should have just done it. In too many cases, that never happened. Oh, I see. So if it didn't happen to you, you wouldn't necessarily have known it should have done. Absolutely, because the system is so complicated. If you're getting £62.43, how do you know if that's the right amount or not? And there are two situations that are quite important here. One is if your husband turns 65 after 2008 and there's lots of dates here it's really important yeah after march 2008 if your husband turns 65 after that date the computer should have just given you this money if it didn't you're entitled to it all the way back 10 years back dating

thousands of pounds and yeah so that's that's one group the second older group are those where the husband turns 65 before march 2008 and back in the day back in the day, you had to phone up. You had to phone up to ask for this uplift. And if you didn't, you didn't get it at the time. You can still phone now, but they won't backdate it more than a year. I see. So to what degree then is the DWP culpable? I should say we've got a statement here. We are aware of a number of cases where individuals have been underpaid state pension.

We corrected our records and reimbursed those affected as soon as errors were identified. We're checking for further cases and if any are found, awards will also be reviewed and any arrears paid. From that statement, Steve, it sounds as though they're on the case and they're doing their best. It's a start and they're only doing it because we've chivvied them because frankly they've known for years that individuals weren't on the right amount and basically what happened was i i came across individual cases being underpaid i tabled a freedom of information request got some figures i estimated as i say tens of thousands underpaid pressed them and eventually they've agreed that

there are enough people that they're going to trawl their own records but they haven't paid out to a single person who they have found all the people they've paid out to so far are women who've phoned up. They haven't even started yet paying out proactively. We've talked about married women who might be in this situation. What about women whose partners have died or who are divorced? There are two big things to look out for there. Basically, when you are widowed, they should look at your basic pension and increase it to take account of your late husband's contributions. And you can also inherit some of his other bits of his state pension. So a crucial question to ask yourself is when you were widowed, did your state pension get reviewed? Did it go up?

If it didn't, that's well worth digging around. And we've had a small number of cases of women getting six figure 100 000 plus refunds what because it didn't happen yeah so going back going back yeah go on sorry i was just going back decades you know literally someone who was with her 20 years ago they just never did the reassessment uh and now they're owed a fortune now you know i'm not suggesting this is massive scale but it clearly is worth checking so that's wid widows. For divorced women, if you're divorced and then retire, in theory at retirement, they look at your ex-husband's record, take account of it, everything should be fine. But what I think is missing is women who divorce post-retirement. So you're drawing a pension, you then divorce, you have to phone up, you have to tell them you're divorced and then they'll reassess your pension. And I think many divorced women post-retirement don't do that.

Okay. I'm going to ask what I hope is not a stupid question. Is this a cross-UK thing? Could it have happened to anybody regardless of whereabouts in the UK they're living? Absolutely. Right. Okay. So this isn't something that's devolved in any way. This is a central issue. That's right. Yes. It's essentially the same system across the UK. Okay. So what should anybody who's listening now who thinks, oh, hang on a sec, this might be me, what should they do, Steve? We've created a website calculator on the LCP website, and a third of a million people

have already used it. And the purpose of that is to avoid people wasting their time. I've gathered all the way through this. You may not have caught all of it. Sure. Get your figures out, go to the website and check. And then if it is you, you can phone the pension service, ask for this to be looked at. They've got a backlog of thousands they're going through, but they are processing cases. They are paying money out.

I reckon they've paid tens of millions already. But, you know, so check it on the website and or phone them up. Can you do it for your mother or your sister or your auntie? You can do it for somebody else, can you? I do often hear from, you know, sons and daughters, grandchildren and others. Sometimes you have to obviously have authority to speak on the phone, but it's always worth helping people because not everybody's going to check our website and that kind of thing. So, you know, family members, I mean, mean frankly if we are allowed to get together at christmas i know it's not the most gripping topic the boxing day to be honest with you we're always groping around for

things to talk about on boxing day afternoon steve well there you go yes um okay um jasmine i suppose all this illustrates that as steve said right at the beginning there that the state pension system is not fit for a 21st century world, is it? It's just not designed in the right way. It's not. But, you know, to be fair, it's costing the nation a huge amount. It costs £100 billion a year at the moment to fund. So what the government has been doing for the last couple of decades really has been to move the burden from the state to individuals and to companies. And this is why we've had auto-enrolment.

That came in a couple of decades ago, where companies have to give access to a pension to their employees, to most of their employees. And this is really the future, I think, not just in this country, but across the West, that we're moving the burden of pensions and of retirement savings from the state to the private sector. What about the impact of coronavirus on pensions, we talk about corporate pensions, private pensions. If people were not able to work as much as they would have done, that may have affected their pensions. Some people were able to and their pensions

weren't affected. And you could also argue that because the stock market has done quite well over this year, certainly towards the end of the year, that's actually done well for pension funds, because the majority of pension funds are invested in the stock market. Right. But what about people who, I mean, the reality now, look at what's happening in retail, for example, is that unfortunately, a fair few women's jobs, if I can call them that way, will be going. We all have to face that. How on earth, if you are, for example, really financially up against it,

possibly juggling a couple of zero hours contract jobs, for example. First of all, what about your national insurance? Are you paying enough to get a state pension with work like that? You may not be. It's a very good point. With women, one thing to be aware of, certainly, and this is a different aspect, but women in the past have not had very many years of national insurance payments because they've taken time off to have children or look after a relative. But now you can apply for credits. Now, if you are unemployed, then that is harder. But one thing I do recommend is that people go on to turntous.org to use the benefits calculator,

because you can certainly have all sorts paid. And it's quite possible that there are benefits and there are national insurance payments that could be being made on your behalf and you're not aware of it. So if you are unemployed, do make sure that you are clear on all the benefits that you could be having and the national insurance that could be being paid for you. Jasmine Birtles, financial expert and the former Liberal Democrat MP and pensions minister, Steve Webb, who now works at Lane, Clark & Peacock. And if you think you could be one of those women or you know somebody who might be, all the links you need are on Monday's programme page on the Woman's Hour website. I really hope you get your money back if you are one of those women who is entitled to extra money from your state pension.

Let us know, by the way, if you do investigate and find out you are one of those women. We'd love to hear from you. You can email the programme whenever you like, about anything you like, via our website, bbc.co.uk forward slash womanshour. Now, evil women, from Eve to the likes of Mata Hari and Myra Hindley, they will all feature in a new lecture series on evil,

lectures given by Joanna Burke, Professor of History at Birkbeck. They start in the new year and you can find them online via the Gresham College website. Let's hear again from our presenter, Krupa Padi, this week. Here she is asking Joanna

about her interest in taking a closer look at evil. I think evil is really one of the most interesting things that we can look at. You know, ever since Eve first plucked that apple from the tree of knowledge, I think we have been obsessed with the nature of evil women. And every generation, of course, kind of reinvents evil for itself. And it reflects really our own fears, our own anxieties, our own fantasies, in fact, as much as the actual women themselves. One of the things that I think is a really big historical as well, of course, philosophical question

is the very basic one, well, what is evil? And many definitions, and it's highly, highly contested, define evil in terms of evil actions are what inflict losses to what's basic to a tolerable existence. But what really interested me when I started looking at this is that if you designate someone evil, that actually this is often a way of inflicting harm upon them. So in other words, I was really interested in evil women because this designation of that as an evil woman is used routinely throughout history to justify violence against women. I'm thinking here of the witch hunts. It's used to justify subordination of women, cannot speak in church, for example, cannot get the vote. It's used to deny female sexuality, deny female agency. So it's a really interesting concept, I think, with which we can use to reflect on the role of women in society. And so just by listening to what you've had to say there, it's not necessarily about evil being about brutality. It's often about women going against the conventional grain of

society. Yes, it is. And I think, you know, the difficulty, I only have six lectures to give. So I had to ignore, obviously, a universe of evils, including, of course, natural evils, such as pain, but also very human evils such as the role of women in the holocaust or genocide or wars for example but what I try to do is to think well get six categories of evil that kind of represent some of the broad ways that evil has been used in relation to femininity and as you say I, I'm absolutely right. In most of these cases, these are examples of women being designated evil as a way of denying them their own powers. So as you mentioned, I look at the original evil, that is Eve, of course, the feminine origins, if you like, of evil. I then go and look at the evil queen

in Snow White. So what does it tell us about witchcraft and fears of the powers of aging, post-menopausal women and the valorization, if you like, of youth. I then turn to monstrous evil. And here, this is an evil woman that very few people actually are aware of, Amelia Dyer. She's actually the most prolific mass murderer in British history. She killed around 400 babies. So is she insane? Is she an aggress in feminine form? Evil sexuality, you already mentioned. Mata Hari, of course, a really good example of female sexuality being seen as something that is evil, deceitful, rapacious, a black widow spider, evil nurses. And I end, of course, with radical evil. Myra Hindley, a really good example about

how do we understand women who rape and murder? So these are broad categories that I try to use as kind of meditations into the nature of evil. Here's a question for you. If women are labelled evil, what are men? That is a wonderful question, because the way the label evil is, adheres to the different genders is very, very different. I mean, you know, let's take Myra Hindley as an example here. You know, this is a great example of a really monstrous, radically evil woman, a woman who's designated as radically evil.

And yet if you actually look at the story of her life and of what she does, you know, the very different interpretations of her actions, her evil actions with those of Ian Bradley, for example. You know, and this idea that somehow the monstrous woman is more monstrous than the man, the murderous violence generally is actually coded male, you know, if Cain slaughtered Abel. But of course, when a woman does this, it has a totally different meaning to when a man acts like in these ways. And are there any benefits, therefore, to understanding evil? I mean, does it help us avoid evil if we understand it better or at least what it tends to suggest? I think there is. I think that because, as I mentioned at the beginning, each generation redefines, reinvents evil,

I think it enables us to tell different stories about ourselves, to investigate the nature of what it means to be human as well as what it means to be female. One of the difficult decisions I made when deciding these topics was, do I include fictional women, or do I only include real women? And I decided to do a mixture of both, precisely because the nature of an evil woman, thinking about an evil woman, enables us to think about what we fantasize, for example, or what we may want to imagine. It enables us to work through different aspects of

our nature, our goodness and our bad nature. An example of this is, I think, the evil queen in Snow White, because it's really interesting when you look at the way that story has been told and retold over long centuries, that it has a different meaning for different people at different periods. So, for example, the most common psychoanalytical way of interpreting Snow White and the evil queen is that it allows children who are reading the stories or having it read to them to kind of work through their hatred for their mother, deflected, of course, to a stepmother while protecting the good mother. But of course, if you actually put that story in its context, Snow White and the Evil Queen, is actually a story not intended for children, but actually intended for adult readers.

So actually what it is about, it's more about allowing mothers to fantasize about murdering their children. So in other words, looking at evil, trying to unpick these different aspects to it, allow us to reflect on our own societies and indeed society's past. And at least in fiction, the word evil tends to be used to describe older women, doesn't it? Explain that to us. Yeah, it does. There is this kind of idea that the woman as she ages loses the sense of her sense of true femininity. And again, the evil queen is a great example of this. The monstrous queen, you know, who sort of roams the land, acting on her monstrous desires to kill her stepdaughter, is seen as the postmenopausal, the ugly, the monstrous, the bad woman.

But if you look at that story, in fact, what we see here is that really this is an attack on female agency. That is Joanna Burke, who is Professor of History at Birkbeck and Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College as well. And it's there online that you will find those lectures on the nature of evil in the new year. Now, I'm told that the classic 70s cocktail, and boy, was it a classic, the Snowball, is making a comeback. But is there a right way to serve it? Could you do it the wrong way

and just basically never be able to live it down locally? Well, I talked on Friday to Sandra Lawrence from the Cocktail Lovers magazine and she started actually by talking generally about cocktails and made me a fantastic non-alcoholic hot toddy. Here we go. We always think of Christmas as mulled wines and mulled wines, lovely though they are, they can be a bit cloying. But the history of mulling drinks goes back quite a long way to the first mention of a wassail goes back to Anglo-Saxon times. But it's become a popular thing from medieval times and up to the current day of mulling drinks and adding spices and serving them warm so what I've brought for you today is a non-alcoholic version but you can still make this fun and also it's a good thing that you can make up as you go just have gently heated but also you can take it out for socially

distanced walks to meet and just have something warming and gorgeous and spiced. OK, well, if you can pour me my... And it is non-alcoholic, this version. That would be great. Pour me my drink. And just very briefly, if you just tell us what's in this. So we've got hot apple juice, cloudy apple juice, and spices. So cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, star anise, orange slices. Oh, lovely. That's a nice touch.

They are things to eat cocktails, aren't they? They are, and the garnish is very much important, and also the aroma, because we actually taste with our eyes and smell everything that's all associated. So to have something beautiful to drink and to look at enhances the experience. So this is your hot mould that'd be great if that could be brought over that would be absolutely fantastic and a little mince pie to go with

it's got a gentle a gentle kick to it but it's lovely it's life enhancing the thing is this one's non-alcoholic but you can if you want to have a bit more punch you can have some spider um some cider in there or add a bit of brandy or rum right brandy brandy would be lovely we're going to investigate the snowball which apparently is back well everything retro is always back and i think that the fact that this is kitsch it's fun it's frivolous it's light it's frothy i think particularly at this time of year and particularly after the year that we've had, it's important that we have a bit of fun.

So, Snowball it is. It's also very low in ABV. What does that mean? It's practically a health drink? I would never say that. It's got a little bit of alcohol, so just to get you a little bit happy. But it's not too cloying or pungent, so... You can actually feel the thickness, hear the thickness of that slooping into the champagne flute.

You can easily make this just by adding the ingredients dry into your glass, but I wanted to make this a little bit special. Lovely. In a champagne flute. But also, if you do want some more booze in it, you can add a tot of brandy or top it up instead of lemonade top it up with champagne which makes it really fantastic

and Sandra you are I know you're very responsible about drinking absolutely and and the thing is most people do go a bit hard on the drinks on Christmas day but I'd say definitely pace yourself and enjoy it's got a cocktail cherry on top. I know. Cocktails are just, just the shimmer of a cocktail cherry brings back all the magic of the 70s, doesn't it? Absolutely, and that's what I'm saying.

It's about fun, but responsible fun. There is still a little bit of alcohol in there, but it's not as heavy as a martini or something like that. So the colour is joy. Yes, it is. You've got that lovely froth on it and you've got a cocktail cherry what could be better very little there are a few things but i can't think of them right now or at least i certainly couldn't say them so mulled fizz is

something else that i think you've been doing a lot of recently yeah well it takes all of the elements of the um christmas flavors that we like. So lots of spices. We've got some port in there, clementine juice, a lovely spice mix that you make up yourself. And then have this all ready in the fridge, ready to go. And then when your guests, if you're allowed guests over Christmas, once they come, just pour it in the glass

and top it up with champagne. And it's absolutely delicious. I've got to say, I suppose, thinking about it with my ultra responsible head on, and actually, we're so close to the end of this nightmare that we do need to be responsible. I guess the more you drink, the more likely you are to mingle in a way that wouldn't be sensible this Christmas. So keep an eye on it, everybody, I guess. Absolutely.

So yes, you might start your day with a Bucks Fizz or have something at lunch, but don't keep going at it all throughout the day. Just drink responsibly. Enjoy it. There's some wonderful cocktails out there that you can make yourself or you can buy in kits from a lot of bartenders that are selling their own cocktail kits. But have some fun and do some things at home. And the non-alcoholic cocktail you made for me, that was lovely. And I think we had a couple of texts, and I understand this from people who don't drink anymore because they don't want to drink.

There are non-alcoholic brilliant drinks out there that you can try. There are absolutely. More than ever, actually. Yeah, and you can do things yourself at home, but one of the ones that I really like is called Acorn, and they do something called Acorn Dry. Just use that with some soda. And even if you do drink alcohol and you like the taste of alcohol, this actually has lots of bitterness and complexity that you'll really enjoy.

That was the voice of Sandra Lawrence from the Cocktail Lovers magazine. And of course, like everybody in hospitality hospitality she is very much hoping that next year is better and by the way the snowball with a little bit of brandy in was absolutely delicious it's taken us seven or eight hours to record this weekend woman's hour we started just after the live radio program yesterday we finished at dawn on saturday morning um irene says my mum used to love an avocado at christmas and so a snowball became a regular for me and my mom and my sister i find it a bit sweet and so i've adapted the recipe to avocado dry ginger ale quantities to taste says irene and a good squeeze of fresh lime juice

it's delicious now me and my sister lynn observe the family tradition faithfully every year and a visit to each other's houses will always include a shopping bag containing the essential ingredients that's very sweet isn't it and izzy says try a snowball mixed with stout it's a cocktail called jake well it might well be but i won't be trying that um nevertheless izzy thank you um very much i think for telling us about it. There are, of course, the recipes on the website and that non-alcoholic hot toddy as well, which that was lovely, actually. That was actually really nice. So well worth having a go at. Thanks to Sandra and to everybody else who's taken part this week. And Woman's Hour is

back live two minutes past 10 on Monday morning. Apart from Dame Stephanie Shirley, we're also talking about things that have happened in women's toilets. That's Monday. 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 was 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.