Woman's Hour - Young women and environmental activism. Nadine Shah on her new album Kitchen Sink

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

Young people are one of the key driving forces behind climate activism and fighting for the future of the planet. But what’s it like being on the front line? And how do young people want to change the way we think about environmental issues? Three of the women from this year’s Power List – Mya-Rose Craig, Holly Gillibrand and Mikaela Loach – talk about their thoughts and experiences. They’re also joined by another woman on the Power List, Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howe. She discusses the importance of challenging people in power to think about the way today’s decisions will affect future generations. Plus Jessica talks to Nadine Shah about her new album Kitchen Sink explores themes of fertility, tradition and identity all told through the stories of women at different stages of their lives. She discusses sexual and societal pressures on women and the importance of individual choice. Presenter Jessica Creighton Producer Beverley Purcell

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast with me, Jessica Crichton, on Thursday the 19th of November. Good morning, welcome to the programme. And what a programme we have coming up. Singer-songwriter Nadine Shah joins us to discuss her new album, Kitchen Sink. It explores themes of fertility, tradition and identity, all told through the

stories of women at different stages in their lives. And I'm really looking forward to having a chat with Nadine a bit later in the morning. But first, let's talk about the environment. Now, there's been lots of focus on Woman's Hour this week about our 2020 power list and the 30 brilliant women who feature on it, who are all trying to make a difference for our planet. Some of the women on the list are young, very young, actually, in some cases. And that's because young people are one of the key driving forces behind fighting for action on the climate crisis. But what is it like being on the front line? And how do the younger generations want to change the way we, who perhaps aren't as young, think about environmental issues.

Well, let's talk to three of those young women on our power list. They are Maya Rose Craig, Michaela Loach and Holly Gillibrand. Good morning, ladies, and welcome to the programme. Good morning. Great to have you with us. Also joining us is Sophie Howe, who I think is one of the most intriguing jobs I think I've ever known. Sophie, you are the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, where basically you hold the government to account on behalf of people who haven't been born yet. Incredible. Good morning. Good morning. I'll come to you a bit later in the morning, Sophie, but first I just want to speak to Maya Rose, Michaela, Holly. I'm really interested to know how you became environmental activists. So just tell me a bit about how you got involved. Maya Rose first.

Yeah, I always find this a really difficult question to answer just because, in my opinion, as a young person, I've always been really flooded with news that the planet's going to end essentially like I've always known about climate change and stuff like that and I think I've from a very young age wanted to do something about it so since I was 11 or 12 I've actively been doing things to help with the environmental movement and I think for me it's always felt incredibly important that I at least tried to help with all of these issues that we're dealing with at the moment but it's always been a really massive part of my life as someone who cares about the environment and cares about nature. Wow so you started from a very young

age what about yourself Michaela? I think like Maya I find this question sometimes quite difficult because it's not it's not like there was one point at which everything changed um but for me I think when I was younger especially I was more engaged with issues around like racial justice and especially as migrant justice and that was kind of the lens with which I entered into the climate movement was it was realizing that um the climate crisis is going to be the greatest um force of forced displacement that the world will ever see and it also intersects and connects with institutional racism and that's when I was like oh wait a minute the climate crisis and through a lens of climate justice which like sees it as a social justice issue we can we can actually help

all these other issues and I think for me that's how I got involved really. And what about yourself Holly? I think for me it was less of a moment more more of a process, because I've always loved nature. I've always wanted to go outside. I've always loved seeing wildlife. And then I reached a point, I think when I was 13, that I started to open my eyes to all the issues it was facing. And then I suddenly thought, I can't just not do something because nature, what I've always loved, is threatened with all of these different problems, these issues. And I couldn't just stand back and not do anything. So, yeah, it was 13, I think, when I decided I was going to do something.

And I think it was after I went to a Chris Packham event and he was talking about all these things. And, yeah, it just snowballed from there. Wow. So 13. You're 15 now, Holly, so you're still at school. Just tell me a bit about what it's like balancing your schoolwork with your activism work and also having a public profile. Well, if someone has figured out how to balance activism of schoolwork, could they please let me know?

It's very difficult because on one hand, I mean, I like school sometimes. I love learning about, you know, science and maths and English. But at the same time, it sometimes feels like it's all a bit pointless because, you know, you go onto the news and all of these awful things are happening. And then you think, why am I wasting my time of schoolwork when I should be doing activism? So it is very difficult. And then, of course, you've got to think about, you know, staying ground and spending time with family, with friends and just trying to have a bit of normality in your life. So I don't think there's really. Yeah, I'm not quite sure if I've managed it yet, but, you know, it's very difficult. But it's just something as an activist you have to deal with.

You mentioned there, Holly, spending time with friends what is that like is it a worry for you having to try to fit in because I presume most of your school friends aren't into the environment as much as you are? It depends because most of my friends are quite aware of what is going on and they do care about it but I think there's a gap between caring about it and actually doing something about it so one of my friends she's been striking with me since I started and she really cares about it and she's doing a lot of stuff to do with the environment but then I've some of my other friends yeah they care about the environment and they know what's going on but they're just not doing something. And I think that is a major problem with young people who do know what's going on, but just aren't taking that next step. You mentioned striking. Just tell people about what you've been doing,

because you actually leave school every Friday, don't you? I'm sure your parents are very happy about it. They do support me. So yeah, I've been striking from school every single Friday since January 2019 so yeah this Friday must be week 93 something like that I'm losing count but um yes I leave school every Friday for an hour um and I've also been doing various other things I'm a young ambassador for Scotland the Big Picture so I've become very interested in rewilding and I support Heal Rewilding as well which is a new organization that's just started in England trying to buy land and rewild it and yeah I've just kept building on stuff so I look at different issues and yeah I just do what I think what interests me as well as what I think I need to do. Wow you are juggling an awful lot

Holly. Maya Rose I'd like to know about the traditional perception, I guess, of environmental activism and how people tend to perceive it in a very transitional period, in my opinion, for the environmental movement at the moment. So I think historically, or I say historically, even like three or four years ago, there was definitely this image that a lot of people came to mind for a lot of people, where it was sort of almost very 60s, like very white, liberal, middle class, tree-hugging hippie sort of thing. And I think that's how a lot of people genuinely felt about the environmental movement, which has historically been very exclusionary just because even though a lot of other communities, other groups of people really care about the environment and they also, you know, they care about the state of nature, I think it feels like a kind of space

where they wouldn't necessarily be welcome or then not the type of person I suppose who should be part of a movement like that and what's been really interesting is I think that this new um upswell of youth movement in terms of environmental activism hasn't really carried that same baggage in that um this Friday's for futures movement the youth strikes just in general the young people that care about nature aren't the traditional types to an extent and you still have a lot of things where um a lot of people that are doing environmentalism is still very white they're still very middle class but i think that that image that the movement has carried around

for decades that's been dragging it down is starting to be shed and it's starting to feel much younger and much more relevant. And I'm very excited, actually, to see how this new youth movement is going to go forward and try and engage with lots of different groups of people. Now, Michaela, I'm sure you can relate to that and the movement becoming more diverse. That's a main aim, I guess, of the activism that you do and taking an intersectional approach. Tell me why you feel climate activism, I suppose, should be incorporated alongside other areas of activism, activism like social justice, racial justice. Yeah, I think when we talk about the movement and wanting to diversify it more i think we need to like recognize that it's not like um black and brown communities haven't been involved in the movement up until now um all of us owe the the fact that we even still have a viable planet to indigenous communities who've protected the natural world for so long and who still protect

the natural world against the fossil fuel industry and so many other things that are trying to destroy it. Yeah, my work surrounds the fact that we can't separate the climate crisis and the climate crisis as an issue from social justice issues because it is interconnected. So climate justice is a principle that sees that how the climate crisis impacts people is dependent upon systems of oppression. So it's dependent upon how the social categorizations that an individual holds oppresses them. And therefore, they are more likely to experience the negative effects of the climate crisis if they are already oppressed in some other way. And therefore, if these connections and intersections already exist, we can't address the climate crisis without also addressing these systems of oppression,

because otherwise we're just going to end up with people still being oppressed, but maybe without the threat of the climate crisis. And that's not a world that we should want. We should want to create a world for all people and not just a better world for a small group of people. So how big of an issue is this at the moment, Michaela? How much is climate change just looked as a single issue? Well, I think I've experienced, at least in the climate movement, I've heard people say that talking about racism, for example,

is diluting the movement and it takes the message away from what we want people to focus on, which is emissions. But we can't just focus on these things, because when we just focus on the climate crisis and don't take like an intersectional lens so send a lens that sees that systems of oppression exist in the world and that they are connected and they're connected to all the kind of crisis issues that we see when we don't take this lens we open a space for oppression so with oppression either we're upholding it or we're like disrupting it and if in our climate work we just focus on emissions

without seeing how maybe our climate solutions we just focus on emissions without seeing how maybe our climate solutions are going to compromise indigenous rights or the rights of different communities in the global south like examples of this can be seen when there's people try and um offset emissions by planting monoculture of trees but that can happen in communities in on indigenous land where they evict indigenous people from their land and compromise their rights in order to offset um emissions in the traditional global north. And that's why in our solutions, we have to think, how will this impact people? And how will this be interrelated to the oppressions that already exist in the world?

And Maya Rose, being that you are British Bangladeshi, and I know that you've been doing some work with a group that you founded called Black to Nature so diversifying the conversation and diversifying access to nature is important to you tell me about that. Yeah massively so I think it's been a really interesting journey for me in that when I started I run nature camps for children especially children from minority ethnic backgrounds that wouldn't necessarily have that opportunity to spend any time in green spaces around with nature otherwise. And I was 13 when I started that project. And it came from this desire to just, I suppose, share nature with other people because I'd grown up with it and it was a massive part of my own life. But then as I started looking into it more and doing more research,

I realised that there was a much wider issue going on where essentially the nature sector, the types of people going out into nature, the environmental movement, all were fairly, well, very exclusionary. And it really, I didn't understand. So I've been campaigning for about five years now to um essentially try and make sure that all of our different communities in the UK are being included when it comes to decisions about nature um and our environment um and to be honest it's

been really difficult just because um it was I it was a very dire issue when I started I think it was about 0.6 percent of the nature sector was from minority ethnic backgrounds which was really shocking it was the second worst in the UK um and not a massive amount of change within the sector has happened since then although it is starting to shift um but personally I think it's so important um not just to make sure that you have lots of different types of people but also for the sake of the mental and physical health of the people from these communities and the fact that in my opinion everyone deserves to have access to nature deserves to have that relationship with the environment and so I'm gonna you know

I suppose carry on fighting to try and make sure that this issue is pushed through and something is done about it. Brilliant. You started that when you were 13, you say. We're 15 minutes into this conversation and already I'm feeling inspired by you ladies. Now let's talk about social media because social media and young people, if you believe what you're told, you think it's all selfies and trolling and pouting. But for many young people on social media it has become a vital tool and Holly for you I know it has as well in in terms of your campaigning work trying to reach out to people because you are from a smallish town in Scotland so tell me about your relationship with social media and how it's helped you um well I think it's been crucial for getting me from where I was to

where I am now because with social media you can reach people who you wouldn't normally be able to connect with and it was that initial, it was when I went onto social media that I first began to see that young people could make a difference because at that point I thought that I can't wait till I grow up because then I can do something and I just hadn't been met with this idea of young people actually doing actually campaigning themselves and so yeah I went onto social media and I was just immediately gobsmacked by all of these amazing young people who are doing something and and then I realized that yes I could as well and so yeah I started the strikes I could as well and so yeah I started the strikes I started campaigning and I put my message out on there and social media has

yeah is that is the reason why the school strike movement and other movements like it have been able to spread so far because young people from all around the globe can connect when other what when in the past it would have you would have relied on newspapers and on word of mouth just to um reach out like this so yeah i think social media is yeah it's thought of as a blessing and a curse but i think for the environmental movement it's been absolutely crucial for allowing us to spread and reach out like we have been my rose you mentioned earlier about the outdated perception of environmental activism but I suppose social media has helped change that perception as well

more so than traditional media has. Absolutely and I think one of the really interesting things about social media is the fact that instead of in traditional media like the news on tv newspapers things like that you're able to have loads of different conversations going on all the time um which leads to much lots more people becoming engaged because it's not just i suppose a singular issue there's loads of different things like people are talking about i don't know the wildfires in america and australia people are talking about climate change people are even talking about the flooding that's going on where I live in Somerset. There's all of these things going on at the same time. And I think it feels much less exclusionary because you can just join in on a conversation.

And I suppose you're much less hyper aware of your own. I suppose you're in almost experience with the environmental movement. And I think that social media has done an amazing job of engaging people that otherwise just wouldn't be interested because of that, I suppose, really diverse spread of issues that you're able to talk about simultaneously. Now, Michaela, as Holly mentioned, social media can be a blessing and a curse. I've been on your

Instagram profile you have over 90,000 followers but with that increased profile often comes increased responsibility so does it feel like a lot of pressure sometimes yeah I think it definitely does I think also one thing about social media is that people almost feel like they have this access to you this right to access you um and like I don't only do activism and don't only do my social media and podcast but I also am a medical student full-time and I have to like balance all of those things I think I've had to like kind of reflect on my relationship with social media because it is is a gift and a curse it allows us to access so many people um but also we have to look after ourselves in that um and I think that working out what radical self-care means and what caring for ourself means as activists as individuals

um in this lens of social media where everyone can access you all the time and can judge every single part of your life is something that is that is quite tricky and that is something that I think all of us like are learning about and trying to work on something that is quite tricky and that is something that I think all of us are learning about and trying to work on. Social media is quite a new thing. Even my following grew very, very quickly, which I think shows that people want to hear different kind of outlooks on the environmental movement, which is great,

but also I think I have had to take some time to also reflect and look after myself. Good for you. Very important. Now let's bring in Sophie Howe, who, as I mentioned earlier, is the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. You hold authorities to account on behalf of people who aren't born yet. As far as I'm aware, it's the first job of its kind. So Sophie, just tell us about how this role came about.

Well, the Welsh government has had embedded in the legislation that established the Welsh Assembly or Senedd, as it's known now, right from the outset, a duty to sort of have due regard or to use sustainable development as a central organising principle. But I think that there was a frustration amongst particular ministers who, some of whom really passionate about sustainable development in the environment in particular, that, you know, actually this was, you know, this resulted in a kind of report that was presented to the Assembly once a year, nobody really took much notice of it. And it was regarded as something to be done by the Environment Department, when actually, what we know about protecting the environment is it's

absolutely critical what happens in the economy department. And the way in which the housing minister goes about building new homes and designing and planning communities and so on has a really significant impact. So we wanted to look at how could we think in a long term and sustainable way? And we were we were fortunate that the, you know, the principle of having some legislation was, was agreed. And at the time the UN sustainable development goals were going through the United Nations. We drew on that. We had a national conversation about the Wales we want with the citizens of Wales to say, what is the Wales that you want to leave behind to your children and your grandchildren? And from that, we came up with

seven national wellbeing goals and this legislation which has this overarching principle that all of our main public institutions, so our councils, our health boards, and significantly the Welsh Government itself, must demonstrate how they're meeting today's needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. And then it

appoints an independent commissioner to oversee that and hold those bodies to account. It's a very wide ranging remit. But as you mentioned there, you're focused on the long term, whereas politics and often discussions around the climate crisis are notoriously short term. So have you met with a lot of resistance? How difficult has it been to try and influence people to think about these things differently? Well, it is challenging, because although we've got the legislation, we've still got a five year political term, and we've got short term budget cycles, and so on. But actually, I think the way to approach this is to not regard kind of the

interests of future generations and current generations as kind of mutually exclusive. Really, if we think about some of the things that would make a really big difference, and this is where I try to focus my attention and really interesting to hear Michaela and Maya Rose and Holly talk about the interconnections between different issues. So if we do things like improve, you know, invest in improving the energy efficiency of our homes, that's going to be helping us to reduce our carbon emissions targets, which is important, of course, for the climate and for future generations. It's going to keep current generations warmer, older people out of hospital in the winter months. If you're, you. If you're committed to tackling poverty,

it's going to be taking people out of fuel poverty. If your interest is in the economy and creating jobs, investment in that area is going to help to create jobs. So what we need to do, I think, is to try and find those things which have multiple wins across all elements of wellbeing. And that's where I suppose our legislation is quite interesting because it covers social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being, all four pillars on a kind of equal footing. And so, you know, thinking about the things that are going to be, have multiple wins across those areas. Now, I'm interested, Sophie, in this idea of how the individual can help the environmental crisis. There seems to be a lot of attention given to the fact that we should be recycling our tins and our boxes and perhaps taking fewer flights without there being so much attention on the negative impact made by big companies in terms of their emissions. So how much do you think the focus should be on changing what big companies do rather than the individual? Well, I think it's got to be it's got to be both.

I mean, in Wales, we the levels of emissions that come from our manufacturing sector are disproportionate as compared to the rest of the UK. And just yesterday, I was with representatives from all of those manufacturing companies in Wales meeting with the Welsh government to talk about some ambitious decarbonisation plans there and how we could do that in a way which doesn't just, you know, help us to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions fairly quickly, but also help to create new jobs in green industries, you know, particularly in the current climate with COVID and job losses and so on. That's absolutely crucial. So I think we do need to have that focus there. I think that the government do need to be showing leadership and they do need to be creating the conditions

which enable people to make sustainable choices. So we've had record low investment in public transport in Wales over a number of decades. And that means that it's really difficult for people to make sustainable travel choices. That is starting to change now because of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. And just this week, the government have produced a strategy which I've been working with them on and providing some quite vocal challenge on over the years. But what we're actually seeing now is that that transport strategy is based primarily around reducing the need to travel. So in Wales, the government have

a target of 30% home working to continue, for example, because that helps us to reduce our emissions. Then we talk about active travel, walking and cycling, then public transport, then electric vehicles. And only if you, you know, there's nothing else, no other solution left, should the government be investing in kind of roads and private, you know, use of private vehicles and so on. So I think that, you know, the government does have to show leadership. But I also think, and, you know, we've heard this from the young activists that we've been talking to this morning. I think that young people are showing the way in terms of many of their behaviours. So, you know, I've got a 21 year old and a 17 year old. They don't buy any new clothes. They buy it all, you know, through the circular economy on Depop and various other platforms and so on.

They don't own a car. And in fact, you know, the patterns of young men in particular are that they're just not bothering learning to drive. They'd rather not have the hassle of that and be able to use public transport. You know, the increase in vegetarianism and veganism, you know, that's being driven by young people themselves. So I think, you know, if we could have a, you know, a pincer movement of better leadership from government and better choices from individuals, that's where I think we can make a real difference.

What do you think, Myros? Would you like to see more focus given to big businesses rather than individuals? Yeah, I think this has always been quite a difficult question for me in that when I first found out about essentially how large corporations have manipulated individuals into feeling like they're responsible for issues like climate change when that's not true at all my first instinct was to be like oh wow okay that means you know I need to go and fight them I don't

necessarily have to think about my own lifestyle choices um and I think every environmentalist has one or two things that they do which are a bit like I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that I'm doing this and I think I was like that for a few years until I suddenly sat back and thought like no but I don't want to be that person who is also contributing to an issue whether or not that contribution actually has an impact and so for me it partially feels like almost a moral responsibility to try and do the right thing in terms of environmentalism. But I do definitely think that there is still this narrative of blaming people for their individual choices and suggesting that that causes climate change. Like the one that really annoyed me was when a countdown clock was put in Nework to when climate change was essentially going to tip

over and we weren't going to be able to do anything about it and it was this massive clock and it was like uh essentially counting down to the end of the world and it was like why do the people walking around doing their shopping need to see that when they are for the most part not responsible for this issue go and put it inside i don't know know, Shell's HQ or inside Wall Street or something like that. Because I think that it's so easy to push the blame back onto individual people to make them feel so helpless about this issue. And it's an incredibly harmful narrative that's not to sound very cynical, but it was entirely on purpose because essentially when these big oil companies discovered climate change back in the I think it was the 70s, they had their think tanks go out and start spreading misinformation about how individuals needed to make better choices in their lives because they knew that it was going to be very poor for their businesses otherwise. And that is misinformation that has stuck around for

decades. And I think it's, yeah, I think it's terrible, in my opinion. And I think we need to hold these big companies, these big corporations much more accountable. Yes, certainly. And of course, Shell and those other oil companies aren't here to give their side of the story. But I wonder, Makeda, what are your thoughts on that? Because do you feel there needs to be a change in focus? I think currently there's too much of a focus on individual action. So 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all greenhouse gas emissions. 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all greenhouse gas emissions. And yet constantly the narrative that I feel like we're being pushed is that we need to make individual change in order to save the planet or to prevent the climate crisis like shell the other day put a poll as

we mentioned already put a poll like asking what we were like individuals are willing to do um to prevent the climate crisis when actually everyone was replying saying like we're willing to stop you from lying about the climate crisis we're're willing to stop you from killing indigenous activists in Nigeria and from destroying the natural world. I think that we do need both. We need behaviour change and we need system change and putting pressure on these big businesses and these big corporations. But I think currently there's been just too much focus on the individual.

And when you focus on the individual, these people and these organisations that have so much power and are causing the most amount of damage to both people and to planet they kind of are getting away with it and they're almost like laughing like oh you're spending and i always say to people if you're spending more time having to go to maybe many different shops to try and get plastic free stuff when you could use that same time to join an activism group or join a group in your community or start lobbying against these bigger corporations then I think we need to think about like where our time is best spent

is it best spent um focusing on like more maybe ego-based um like change or is it more like better spent like focusing on these big corporations because collective action is how we see change and collective action means us working together and putting pressure on the systems that exist. And I think we should like think about that a bit more. Definitely lots to think about. And again, just to reiterate that Shell obviously aren't here to give their side of things and perhaps might disagree with some of what Michaela has said there. of time but there will be some people listening to this Holly that are inspired by what you and Michaela and and Maya Rose have been saying and perhaps want to get involved as as young activists environmental activists what advice would you give them? So my first advice would be to connect with other young people because if you start if you go it alone then it can feel

extremely isolating and you'll feel like you're getting nowhere whereas if you start if you go it alone then it can feel extremely isolating and you'll feel like you're getting nowhere whereas if you connect with that wider movement and if you find people who care about this just as much as you do then you you'll be able to keep campaigning for much longer and you'll be much more effective and you won't experience things you you're less likely to experience things like burnout and despair and also talk to your parents because if you have the support of your parents and if you make your parents because if you have the support of your parents and if you make your parents understand what is going on and what you want to do it makes a massive difference and so I feel like I'm going on a bit but also do find your niche do what feels right

because when we see massive protests going through the streets that's only a tiny bit of what goes into activism so just decide are you good at writing are you good at art are you good at cooking and use those skills um to support the this movement and other movements and yeah don't feel like the whole world the fate of the whole world is resting on your shoulders because it isn't. You can take time off. You can take time off and you can look after yourself without the whole world coming crashing down because you decided not to do any activism for an evening. If we join together as a movement, we can change things. But please don't go it alone because there are so many people out there that will support you and will welcome you. Wow. Not going on a bit at all. I was listening intently. And as I said, all three of you ladies, I'm very much inspired.

To Holly, to Michaela, to Maya Rose and to Sophie Howe, Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. Thank you very much for coming on the programme this morning. Now, in a moment, I'll be speaking to singer-songwriter Nadine Shah. But first, let's look ahead to something coming up on the programme next week. In a new series report, Jo Morris will be talking to four women about a secret fear, how it feels to reach the age your mum was when she died. Let's hear a bit now from Titania and first, Rachel. It just felt like a bit of a deadline, really. I've never talked about it and therefore, because I haven't talked about it, I assumed it wasn't an issue for anyone else. I've never heard this mentioned before. And I thought it was just me being a bit neurotic, really. Somewhere along

the way, in losing my mum at the age of 40, that decision in my head was like, right, that's my timeline then. That's what I'm working towards. It's there in your mind that you are approaching the age that your mother died or your grandma died. It's kind of an insane thought, so you kind of keep it in your head because it's wrong. I thought I was the only person.

I thought it was an irrational fear that had to be sort of silenced and ignored and just tidied away somewhere safe and glass half full and all that fine you can have fears and worries and concerns and speaking it doesn't make it true you can hear their stories in full on the program next week and on BBC sounds and don forget, if you miss the live programme, you can catch up by downloading the BBC Sounds app. Or why not subscribe to Woman's Hour podcast so you never miss a programme. Do get in touch to share your views and stories as well. We are at BBC Woman's Hour on Twitter and on Instagram as well. Now, joining me now is Nadine Shah. Her new album, Kitchen Sink, explores the themes of fertility, tradition and identity. Good morning, Nadine. Good morning. Hello. Great to have you on the programme. Before we get into our chat, I'm looking forward to it.

Let's just hear a little bit from the new album. Don't you worry what the neighbours think. They're characters from kitchen sink forget about the kitten twitches call me pretty make your maneuver one year younger call me a cougar all dressed up think I did it for you. Make eye contact, think I adore you. You, the beginning of everything. You, the calm in a storm. Let this trail of verses be normal. Dear fantasies in our home.

And indeed, the tone of your voice is mesmerising. It's such a pleasure to be able to listen to that. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I'll use that in a quote, if you don't mind. You can put that on your Twitter profile, if you like. I will do, very shortly. So the tracks that we were listening to there, Kitchen Sink, Club Cougar and Prayer Mat.

Now, what made you choose Kitchen Sink as the title of this album? Oh, I forget. It was that long ago. So Kitchen Sink, well, a Kitchen Sink realism was like it was a British cultural movement in the late 1950s and the early 1960s in art and film and theatre. And typically the protagonists were angry young men who were disillusioned with modern society. And I suppose here I am, 2019, 2020, an angry young woman, disillusioned myself with much of modern day society, I suppose. And then there's the connotations of the kitchen sink and a woman's role and place in the household.

So I think that's pretty much where the album title came from. You said in that sentence, angry and disillusioned. Why so? How long have we got? Oh, all the time in the world come on let's get deep Nadine here we go good morning um I mean there is I mean it's did it start before my 30s I think it did start before my 30s but I noticed it more and more um you know when I got to 30 31 32 these conversations where people were openly commenting on you know um on on my life choices you know uh Nadine why haven't you not you're not gonna have a child you know it's it's time's

getting on TikTok that genuinely people had said to me TikTok um all of this all of this pressure many of my friends have children and um and it's it's a beautiful wonderful thing having children is a gorgeous beautiful thing and getting married is a beautiful thing also but the constant reminder um and people's assumptions that they are allowed to have these conversations with me it it really did start to frustrate me and there was there was many other things going on that people didn't know about when they were mentioning my fertility. People didn't know that I have endometriosis. They didn't know it's a very difficult conversation for me to have.

And all of this kind of it contributed to this anger, I suppose, I was experiencing at the time and anxiety. And then I started having this conversation with my friends more openly. How do you feel? Do you feel pressured to get married? Do you feel pressured to have a child? All of this. And that all really fed into the, that's where the album came from, really, from those conversations with my close friends. It's a very real worry. I'm in my 30s as well, Nadine, and I think I definitely sympathise or at least relate to what you're saying. Before we listen to one of the tracks on the album called Trad, just tell us a little about what it's about, the concept and how you came to writing it, because I think that's relevant to what you've just been saying. Yeah, that was the I think actually the lyric for Trad it was the first lyric that I had for the

whole album all I had written down was um shave my legs freeze my eggs will you want me when I'm old that was the um that was the first lyric that I had and I just I kind of had it sat there for a while and I kept coming back to it and everything that I was feeling were related it's kind of all encapsulated in that one lyric, I suppose. If we're talking about the policing of women's bodies and, you know, there's advertisements telling me, you know, are you beach body ready? Let's hear it. Let's have a listen now, Nadine. Great. Freeze my axe

Will you want me when I am old? Take my hand whilst in demand And I will do as I am told Wow, what a fabulous track, Nadine. Now, these are big issues that you're discussing, you're talking about, and they're very personal. What is it that inspires you to use your voice in this way? What makes you want to put yourself out there? I mean, I do regret it a lot of the time. Oh, really? Yes, because it's a bit like my mother said, it's a bit like hanging up your dirty laundry for everybody to see. Yes, yes. Because it is really exposing.

But, I mean, these are my stories, but they're also from these conversations I've had with other people. These are many other people's stories. And I wasn't hearing these stories being told in music. And I felt a kind of, I mean, it sounds a bit grandiose, but I found it a kind of a duty of sorts to write about these subjects. A duty why? Because I wasn't hearing it anywhere else.

And I was having these discussions with my friends. And I think that it's important. I think it's important to have these discussions in art. And I just, I wasn't, you know, I was seeing definitely in film, I could, that these stories are being told, but in music, not so much. And especially when, you know, youth is currency and especially in music. It's a really sad thing in music. There are not a lot of older female musicians. Why that is, I don't know.

And, you know, in 2016, we had, I think, to four or five men in their 60s releasing albums that were in the top 10 and hardly any of women in their 60s and I really I want to hear their stories I mean my wish is that Amy Winehouse was still alive and I would have loved to have heard what she would have been making when she's 60 years old, to hear her stories and what it's like to be a woman who is 40, who is 50, who is 60. And I just wanted to give my version of things. I was talking there to singer-songwriter Nadine Shah. Lots of you getting in touch and seemed were inspired by our chat with the young activists on our power list. Mary has emailed in to say, thank you to you and the wonderful young women in your programme this morning.

It gave me a sense of hope for the future, something that I've been struggling with. I'm 69 years old and an environmental activist, so no stranger to the topic. But to hear those wonderful young women reignited my flagging energy. Thank you to you all. And Tina has tweeted us in to say such a powerful group of dynamic, visionary young women. You are all pioneers leading the way. We've also

had another tweet here from Fleeting Flow, who says youthful energy always needs a cause to identify itself with. Its natural habitat is one where it can challenge or test the old order. I recall being equally exercised 50 years ago. The more we learn how to protect our sources of nourishment personally, the more extensive we realise it is. So a responsible maturing mind will start with self-care, family, tribe care. But it seems not everyone was quite as inspired. Kumar says, whilst it's great that young people are more aware of the environment, however, these youngsters are the very people who will order goods online, which will be delivered by vans. And also, instead of striking and disrupting everyone else going about their business, why don't they use their spare

time to clean up the environment and the rivers and stop eating meat? We've also had a very lovely email about the interview we did with Nadine Shah. Julie has said, just wanted to tell you that times are changing. I've made it very clear to both my 23-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter that having a family is not a path they have to take. I very much tell them to find themselves and what comes from that is a path I want them to take. I very much tell them to find themselves and what comes from that is a path I want them to take. I look back on my life and felt like I had no choices, but this was my decision. Nobody really forced me into my chosen lifestyle,

but I regretted some choices. But this was because I did not feel I had permission to follow another path. I really want my children to have a fulfilled life and having a family is not the only route to happiness. Now, tomorrow on Woman's Hour, we'll be hearing from another of the women on our power list. Jane will be talking to Kate Humble. Kate was chosen by the judges for her long history of dedicated wildlife broadcasting and bringing environmental issues into millions of homes across the UK.

Enjoy. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby.

It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.