Since 2018, 22 June has been celebrated as Windrush Day in the UK — a chance to honour the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948 and recognise the generations of Caribbean people who came to Britain to help rebuild the country after the Second World War. Their contributions have shaped modern Britain, from the NHS and public transport to schools, businesses and communities across the nation.

To mark this year’s Windrush Day, we had the privilege of spending time with six remarkable women at The Positive Network in Balham, South London. Carmen, Beryl, Veronica, Betsy, Zena and Alicia all travelled to Britain from Jamaica or Guyana during the Windrush era, many of them as teenagers or in their early twenties, leaving behind family, familiarity and the lives they had known.

Despite the challenges they faced along the way, every single woman told us the same thing: she never regretted making the journey.

Read the full article below.

Welcome back to Take The Lead, the fortnightly newsletter from The Female Lead.

Here’s a roundup of the articles you loved this month.

This month, we spoke to Emma Barnett about her new documentary on endometriosis and the hidden toll of a condition that affects millions of women yet remains misunderstood, underfunded and too often ignored.

We also looked back at the history of women’s football, from pioneering teams and a decades-long ban to the rise of the Lionesses, celebrating the women who transformed the game and changed its future.

And while progress has often been painfully slow, 2026 has offered signs that women's health is finally being taken more seriously. We explored some of the year's biggest advances so far, from breakthroughs in endometriosis and menopause research to new approaches to chronic pain, heart health and personalised care.

Enjoy this issue, share it if you like it, and reply directly to let us know what you think.

You can also catch up on our most recent full newsletter here.

The Female Lead Team

Share

What to watch in London…

‘I felt a mixture of horror, anger, apathy, helplessness, and rage’

Playwright Georgie Dettmer on the inspiration behind her debut play Are You Watching?

In the weeks and perhaps years before the first draft of my play ARE YOU WATCHING? arrived, I had been consuming the horrors of various lives and geopolitical events from my phone. I wrote the first draft of the play in one go. I hadn’t planned to write it but woke up with a conversation between two young girls in my head, opened my laptop and began.

ARE YOU WATCHING? takes what we see on our screens and places them in front of us - no glass protection. When the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act came into force in 2022, I had an immediate sense that theatre, both form and buildings, would have to become a place where anyone can come to feel, express, and hopefully be enlivened to make physical, tangible change. More than posting and reposting, but genuinely looking out to the world around them and reaching to.

This isn’t a diatribe against the Internet, by the way. I’m not an anti-internet luddite who wants us all to run off barefoot into the forest. Although that is how I spent my bank holiday. The internet calls to us to see, to watch, to witness and so we must. And then we must do more.

I think government crackdowns in the form of the aforementioned Act and the internet are obstacles to the most crucial, gorgeous, holy and hopeful of acts which is communion. Communing with others is how we enact change and it’s how we keep hope alive. Yeah sure, it sounds hippy dippy, and I promise you - the play is not hippy dippy - but nothing can replace all of us sharing a space together. In the streets, auditoriums, living rooms, meeting houses, community centres, parks, wherever. I used to watch and now, I try to watch and do.

Theatre is doing it in its purest form. We love to watch people do. And I think we are happier and healthier in ourselves for it. I have felt no more alive, hopeful, angry (not a bad thing), and moved than when I have been with people.

I sat and watched as Gisèle Pelicot spoke at the Southbank Centre for the launch of her new book, ‘A Hymn to Life’. As she walked on to the stage, the room - mostly women - rose from their seats and applauded her. We cried and we laughed and we smiled and we felt pain in our chest.

At an anti-fascist march, we cried and we shouted and we greeted one another because, in the act of congregating, we escaped the limitations of our screens and reached towards the world. Listen, I’m not convincing you to buy a ticket to the show, although I’m sure there will be a link at the end of this. I’m hoping to share with you how apathetic I felt, how still and stupid, privileged and hopeless I felt. And that if you feel like that as well, you can stop watching and you can start doing something else. Our world is bigger than the screen at the end of our fingertips.

Georgie Dettmer’s Are You Watching?, now in performances at the Royal Court to 4 July

Subscribe now

Become a paid supporter

The Female Lead is a charity on a mission to empower women.

In the last 8 years, we have given access to books and teaching materials to 2.5 million students in 25,000 schools around the world. We carry out research that reframes our understanding of women’s experience, such as our Fulfilment Findersurvey which reveals what matters most to women at different life stages. It has now been completed by 150,000 women globally.

We can’t run the charity without your support.

For just £3.50 a month or £25 a year, you can make a huge difference.

Your donations allow us to continue to provide teaching resources and education to girls and women around the world, conduct groundbreaking research, and share science and stories online.

By pledging to make a donation, you get a host of other benefits like:

• Access to our full archive of content on everything from advice from CEOs, to early menopause, to the brain impact of the mental load

• Get the first look at our research reports busting myths around women

• A virtual supporter badge to share and display online

  Subscribe now

  Share

Since 2018, 22 June has been celebrated as Windrush Day in the UK — a chance to honour the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948 and recognise the generations of Caribbean people who came to Britain…

Read more

Since 2018, every year on 22 June, the UK celebrates Windrush Day, honouring the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in 1948 and celebrating the generations of Caribbean people who came to Britain to help rebuild the country after the Second World War. Their contributions helped shape modern Britain, from the NHS and public transport to schools, factories and communities across the country.

To mark this year’s Windrush Day, we had the privilege of sitting down with six extraordinary women at The Positive Network in Balham, South London. Carmen, Beryl, Veronica, Betsy, Zena and Alicia all came to Britain from Jamaica or Guyana during the Windrush era, many of them as teenagers or women in their early twenties.

Their stories are different but all of courage, sacrifice, hard work and a determination to build a better life. Every woman we spoke to was proud of the life she had built here. Not one regretted making the journey.

Carmen Hinkson

When Carmen Hinkson left Clarendon, Jamaica, in 1956, she was just 18 years old and had never travelled by sea before. “I came by boat, it took 17 days. I’d never been on one in my life,” she laughs. Carmen arrived in Southampton in June and travelled straight to London Euston. “It was raining,” she remembers. “I’ll never forget the first thing I ate was liver and bacon.”

Carmen had come to Britain to join her boyfriend, who would later become her husband. He had already made the journey after his sister came to Britain during the war and trained as a nurse. “I was hoping he would come and send for me too,” Carmen says. “And that’s exactly what happened.”

Like many young people arriving from the Caribbean, Carmen had grown up hearing Britain described as the “mother country”.

“I expected Britain to be very nice. And the people to be friendly. I expected it to be a bed of roses,” she says. “But it wasn’t.”

Just two weeks after moving into a rented room, the landlord gave them notice to leave. Carmen remembers him walking into the house one Sunday morning as she was making tea and turning off the kettle. “He said, ‘You’re not allowed to make any tea. You don’t live here anymore.’ Just like that.”

When her husband went to the police for help, they told him there was nothing they could do. Carmen was devastated. “I was walking through Balham crying, thinking, ‘My mother was right. I shouldn’t have come here’.” When she returned, her suitcase had been left outside on the street.

Out of desperation, Carmen approached two men she saw walking nearby and asked if they knew of anywhere she could stay. One simply replied: "Follow me." Nervous but with nowhere else to go, she followed him to a small back room with an outside kitchen and toilet. "I was so desperate," she says. "I'd have taken anything." That same day, Carmen and her husband moved in.

They ended up staying for over a year. "Him and his family were so nice to me." Soon, Carmen was helping to look after the family's children while the adults were out. "They'd say, 'Miss, could you look after the children until we come back?' I'd say, 'Certainly!'"

There were difficult moments throughout those early years. Carmen remembers signs in windows that read: ‘No Blacks. No Irish. No Dogs.’ She remembers how Britain had called on people from the Caribbean to help rebuild after the war, but “they had no preparation for us coming. There was nowhere for Black people to live. Some used to sleep down in Balham tube station.”

Carmen refused to be defeated. Once she started work and built a circle of friends, Britain slowly began to feel like home. Weekends were filled with parties and laughter, neighbours gathered in one another’s homes.

Her first job came through a cousin, who told her about a Jewish woman who owned a factory making clothes for Marks & Spencer. The only problem was that Carmen had never used a sewing machine in her life. “I said, ‘Yes man, I can do it’,” she laughs. “It was a lie.”

On her first day, the sewing machine caught fire. Panicked, she confessed to the woman sitting beside “to tell you the truth, I’ve never used a sewing machine before.”

“’Don’t worry, my love. I’ll help you,’ she said.” Only later did Carmen realise she had been speaking not to another employee, but to the factory owner herself. “I didn’t know it was her business!” she laughs. The owner not only kept her on, but helped relatives of Carmen find work too.

Seventy years later, Carmen has spent her entire life in Britain living in Balham. What kept her going through the difficult times? “My family. Everybody looking to me to keep going and help them all.”

And if she had the choice again?

“I’d do it all over again. I would right now.” She says, smiling.

“I have no regrets. Even though it was hard, it made me tougher and stronger.”

Beryl Palmer

Beryl arrived from Jamaica in 1961 aged 22, joining relatives who had already settled in Britain. “After they come here, they try to help you instead of sitting there doing nothing,” she says. Her parents paid her fare and a cousin helped her find somewhere to live. Within days, Beryl had found work. “As soon as I came here I got a job. And since then I was never been out of work. I’ve never been on the dole. I’ve always worked.” She tells us proudly.

Her first job was at a cotton mill in Stockport. It was there, just a year after arriving, that she met Noel, the pair married in 1963. More than sixty years later, they are still together, both attending community sessions at The Positive Network - they even recently received a congratulatory letter from the King. “We worked and we put our money together,” Beryl says proudly. By 1967, they had bought their first home — a semi-detached house they paid £2,500 for.

Over the years, Beryl also worked at a brewery, and had a job sewing (which she learnt to do on the job!) and later worked at Trinity Hospice, travelling back and forth between Britain and Jamaica while caring for her ageing parents. “I always thought it was the right choice,” she says of coming to Britain. “I was fully occupied. Working five days a week and getting paid.”

Beryl speaks fondly of the independence Britain gave her. “You used to be at your parents’ home. So coming here meant you became independent.”

Her advice to her younger self? “I would give myself more holiday,” she laughs. “I used to work so much.”

Otherwise, Beryl looks back on her life with satisfaction — proud of the home she built, the marriage she has cherished and the life she created from the opportunities she found here.

Veronica McLean

When Veronica McLean left Guyana for Britain in 1960, she was in her early twenties and ready for a new adventure. She travelled on a large Dutch ship with a group of friends — refusing to fly because she didn’t trust aeroplanes. Her husband had already arrived separately, studying mathematics at Cambridge University.

Like many young people in Guyana at the time, Veronica saw Britain as a place of opportunity. “A lot of people left the country to do nursing or some other kind of study,” she says. In Guyana, she had attended commercial school three times a week - something she is still proud of herself for. Before Veronica travelled to England, she decided nursing was the path for her. Armed with a reference from a doctor her mother worked for, Veronica arrived at a hospital, sat an entrance exam and passed. “Then I went to live on the wards,” she recalls.

Before arriving, Veronica hadn’t expected England to be very different from home. Friends who had travelled back and forth told her that life was much the same. The biggest surprise? “We thought all the houses were factories,” she laughs.

Veronica eventually “packed in” nursing, and found a new career at The Dorchester Hotel, where she worked for 16 years. “I had a good time working at The Dorchester, it was quite nice. The people were quite nice too.”

Later, she devoted her time to raising her family while her husband established his career as a solicitor.

Visits home were rare. "I never had much money to go back on holiday at that time," she says. "People who got kids couldn’t afford to travel." But she speaks about this without regret. Life, she says, was challenging wherever you were. "Everywhere was hard at the time. England as well. There were no beds of roses over here and no beds of roses there. Everywhere you went, same thing."

Veronica embraced the life she had built. "You got to get used to the place a little while and then move about and see what you can do."

Veronica says that she never regretted moving here.

Betsy Osbourne

Betsy Osbourne was just 19 when she left Jamaica and came to Britain with her aunt.

“I suppose I came because I had family here,” she says. “As a young person, you want to venture out and see different things.”

What did she know about England before she arrived? “Nothing at all,” she laughs. And her first impression? “It was cold in London. Very cold.” In fact, she remembers turning to her aunt and saying, “I want to go home.”

But Betsy stayed. Within three weeks she had found her first job making injection needles, and she began to build a life for herself. Settling in was both easy and hard, she says. “Because I knew people, then you make more friends. And at the weekend, you go out and things like that.”

Over the years, Britain became home. Looking back now, Betsy is proud of the life she built through hard work and determination. “I am proud that I was able to work myself up and do something for myself, you know, make my life better. And have my four children.”

Zena Josiah

At 92, Zena Josiah still has the warmth, humour and energy of someone half her age. She talks to everyone on her street, knows all her neighbours and regularly hosts parties to welcome new people to the road. “I love life,” she tells us. “I love meeting people.”

But when Zena arrived in Britain from Guyana in April 1956, aged 22, life looked very different. She had travelled to join her fiancé, who had come to England three years earlier after the war to work in printing. Zena flew first to Trinidad, then boarded the SS Antilles for the journey to Britain. “Oh, I was sick all the way,” she laughs. “There were nine girls coming to join their fiancés and I was the only one that was sick.”

She arrived during what was apparently the hottest April England had seen. But much of Britain still came as a surprise. The houses especially. “At home you have garden space around you,” she says. “When I saw these houses joined together, I’d never seen that before.” She was also astonished by the crowds in London. Growing up in Guyana, she remembered seeing photographs of football matches and wondering, “Where are all these people coming from?”

Zena and her fiancé began married life in a single rented room, paying £2.50 a week. Then came a frightening setback when her husband became seriously ill and was hospitalised for a long period. “I thought he was going to die,” she says quietly. “I was very upset because I was here alone.” Thankfully, he recovered and together they carried on.

Zena threw herself into work, working in Junior Miss on Oxford Street. “Because I was so tiny, they used to use me like a model before the clothes went into the store,” she says with a smile. She worked long hours and took every bit of overtime she could while she and her husband saved for a home.

Eventually, they had enough money for a deposit on a house. But just before the sale completed, they were told expensive work needed to be carried out on the property — money they didn’t have. The next day, Zena went to work upset. Her employer, Mr Goldman, noticed immediately.

“He said, ‘Zena, you mean to tell me you have a problem and you didn’t come and ask me?’” she recalls. He sent his son to the bank to withdraw the money she needed. “When I went home with that, my husband was so shocked. We got the house.”

Zena still becomes emotional telling the story. “I’ll never forget that man,” she says. It was in that house that she and her husband raised their children and built the life they had dreamed of.

“I never thought I had made a mistake coming here,” Zena says firmly. Together, she and her husband worked hard, raised a family and achieved their goals. “I’m proud to know that my husband and I made it in life. Through it all, we made it.”

After working in fashion, Zena went on to spend 20 years working nights in a hospital before moving into care work, which she says she “really did love”. Now retired, she remains deeply involved in her community. Her beloved husband died five years ago, just short of his 90th birthday, but her optimism has never faded.

Her advice to younger generations is the same philosophy she has lived by all her life, “whatever you want to do, do it with confidence. Don’t be negative. Be positive in everything that you do. Don’t say you can’t do something. Do it and see how it works out for you.”

Alicia Henry

Alicia Henry was 25 when she left Guyana and came to Britain to train as a nurse. It was the early 1960s and life at home had become difficult. She was married with four children but saw nursing as her chance to build a future for herself and her family.

“I left the children with my parents and I came over,” she tells us matter-of-factly. She passed her entrance exam, moved into nurses’ accommodation and threw herself into her training. Within a few years, Alicia had secured a mortgage through the council and bought her own home in Battersea. She then brought her four children to Britain, alongside the baby she had in England. “So there were five of them I had over here,” she says proudly.

Supporting them all meant extraordinary sacrifice. Alicia worked night shifts for 25 years so she could be home with her children during the day. “I couldn’t do days because I’d have to pay somebody to look after the youngest,” she explains. “So permanent nights for 25 years.” Even now, she laughs, the routine has stayed with her, “That’s why now I can’t sleep at night.”

Life was not always easy. Her husband “went off with another woman” and she found herself raising five children and paying the mortgage alone. When the council questioned whether she could keep up the repayments, Alicia stood her ground. “I said, ‘What are you going to do for me? Are you going to take back the place?’” She set up a standing order, never missed a payment and “never heard from them again.”

Nursing remained her passion throughout it all. She went on to specialise in burns and plastic surgery at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, a career she still considers her greatest achievement. “What I’m most proud of is my work,” she says simply.

As her children grew up and married, Alicia downsized to a smaller home in Croydon and found time to travel, visiting Guyana, Canada, America, Ireland and Australia, where her youngest daughter was living.

Then, just before her 90th birthday, Alicia discovered a lump on her arm. It was cancer. Faced with the possibility that it could spread, she made the decision to have her arm amputated at the age of 89.

Alicia - and indeed all the women we met at The Positive Network - have stories that are full of hardship, sacrifice and obstacles that would have defeated many people. Yet they tell them with humour and immense pride in what they achieved. Their resilience, work ethic and determination to build better lives for themselves and their families are the very essence of the Windrush generation and the extraordinary contribution they made to Britain.

The group is now raising funds to secure a permanent home of its own, so it can continue supporting members and expand its vital work — any donation would help make that possible.

Donate here

Women have been playing football for centuries. One of the earliest references appears in a 1580 poem by Sir Philip Sidney, describing girls playing football with their skirts tucked up. Even Mary, Queen of Scots, is said to have owned what may be the oldest surviving football.

Although football was a popular pastime, it wasn’t until 1863 that the Football Association created a standard set of rules. The new laws helped make the game more organised and opened the door for greater female participation.

The first recorded women’s match took place in Edinburgh in 1881, when teams representing Scotland and England faced each other. Interest quickly grew, with crowds of more than 1,000 attending matches in Sheffield and thousands more turning up to watch the pioneering British Ladies Football Club in the 1890s. One of the era’s leading figures was Nettie Honeyball, founder of the club and a passionate advocate for women’s sport.

Women’s football truly flourished during the First World War. As women entered factory work in huge numbers, workplace teams sprang up across Britain. Factory football became a major attraction, and in 1917 the Munitionettes’ Cup was launched. The most famous team of the period was Dick, Kerr Ladies, who played hundreds of matches, raised money for charity, and featured legendary striker Lily Parr, one of the greatest goal scorers the game has ever seen.

By 1921, around 150 women’s clubs existed and some matches attracted crowds of 45,000 spectators. Yet just as the sport was booming, the Football Association dealt it a devastating blow. On 5 December 1921, the FA banned women’s football from affiliated grounds, declaring the game unsuitable for women. The ban forced teams into parks and smaller venues for almost 50 years.

Despite the restrictions, the game survived. The English Ladies’ Football Association was formed days after the ban, while clubs such as Manchester Corinthians kept women’s football alive through the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, even touring internationally and winning trophies abroad.

The tide finally began to turn in the late 1960s. The Women’s Football Association (WFA) was established on 1 November 1969 with representatives of 44 clubs attended the first meeting in London. After years of pressure the FA finally lifted its ban in June 1971. Women's football could now be played on FA-affiliated grounds and registered referees could officiate at women's matches.

That same year saw the first Women’s FA Cup, while England’s official women’s team played its first recognised international match in 1972.

The following decades brought steady progress. England reached the final of the first UEFA women’s championship in 1984, and the 1990s saw the launch of a national league structure, the first strategic development plans, and increasing support from the FA. Women’s football was also growing worldwide, helped by the introduction of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 1991.

Since the turn of the century, women’s football really transformed. By 2002 in England, it had become the top participation team sport for women and girls. The FA achieved this target three years earlier than expected. In the same year, Lily Parr of Dick, Kerr Ladies was posthumously inducted into the National Football Museum Hall of Fame, the first woman to do so.

England hosted the UEFA Women’s EURO in 2005, the Women’s Super League launched in 2011, and record crowds began filling stadiums. The Lionesses became regular contenders on the international stage, reaching the World Cup semi-finals in 2015 and 2019.

A defining moment arrived in 2022 when England won the UEFA Women’s EURO at Wembley in front of a record crowd, inspiring a new generation of players and fans. The Lionesses followed that success with a first-ever FIFA Women’s World Cup final appearance in 2023 and another European title in 2025.

Another historic milestone in 2022 saw the original 1972 Lionesses finally awarded their official bespoke England caps, 50 years after their inaugural international match. The team's achievement - a 3-2 victory over Scotland on November 18, 1972 - was celebrated with a special legacy cap presentation at Wembley Stadium.

England’s back-to-back victories had an immediate impact, with searches for women’s football opportunities rising 196% the day after the EURO 2025 final. Five months later, participation was up 5%, while the number of female coaches and referees had increased by 12% and 29% respectively.

It also accelerated progress towards equal access to football for girls. The target for 90% of schools to offer equal access through Key Stage 2 and 3 PE lessons, originally set for 2028, was achieved three years early, giving 2.6 million girls access to football in PE, up 31% since 2020/21.

We're really only just getting to see what the sport can become when women are given the support, investment and visibility they deserve.

Reflecting on the success of 2025, Sue Day, Director of Women’s Football & Para Football at The FA, said: “2025 will be remembered as a historic year for women’s sport… That victory has ignited something powerful, strengthening a special connection with fans and driving more women and girls than ever before to play, coach, referee and get involved in football.”

“With record levels of participation in schools and clubs, there is so much to be proud of this year – but no room for complacency. We must use this momentum to drive the game forward. It’s up to all of us to keep building on the legacy of the Lionesses, ensuring the game continues to thrive for generations to come.”

In 2026, a commemorative plaque was unveiled in Nuneaton to mark the site of England Women’s first official home fixture against Scotland in 1973, as part of celebrations for the Lionesses’ 500th match and to honour the pioneers who helped establish women’s football in England.

After missing automatic qualification for the 2027 World Cup, the Lionesses must now progress through two play-off rounds. England will first face Greece over two legs between 7–13 October, and if they advance, will play either Slovakia or Ukraine between 26 November and 5 December for a place in Brazil.

Share

For years, intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien has helped reshape how intimacy is choreographed on screen, developing industry-leading guidelines across film and television that create safer, clearer and more respectful working environments for actors. Having worked on TV shows such as Normal People, Sex Education and I May Destroy You, her book Intimacy: A Field Guide to Finding Connection and Feeling Your Deep Desires takes those same principles and applies them beyond the screen, offering ways to reconnect with yourself and others in everyday life.

Speaking about what helps people find more connection, pleasure and intimacy, Ita’s advice is simple and accessible. At its core, it comes back to one thing: paying attention. Whether you’re looking to deepen a long-term relationship or rekindle a sense of closeness, these are ideas anyone can bring into their own life.

Put your phone away

The first thing Ita recommends is removing one of the biggest barriers to connection: “We live on our screens.”

While technology can bring people together, Ita believes it’s important to recognise what it can take away too. Constant notifications, endless scrolling and divided attention make it harder to be fully present with the people around us.

“If you want to really be with your partner, then [it’s about] being present in yourself.”

The advice is straightforward. If you’re spending time with someone you care about, put the phone down.

Be present

Being physically beside someone isn’t the same as being mentally present.

For Ita, intimacy starts with paying attention to what’s happening in the moment rather than rushing ahead to what might happen next.

One exercise she recommends is taking “20 connective breaths” - a simple pause to reconnect with yourself before connecting with somebody else.

“It’s both honouring yourself to be present and then it means you’re really honouring your partner.”

The goal isn’t to perform intimacy, it’s to experience it.

Listen to yourself

One of the strongest themes running through Ita’s work is that many people stop listening to their own bodies.

Instead of focusing on expectations or assumptions, she encourages people to get curious. “What do I want? What do I desire? What’s worked for me?”

It sounds obvious, but many people spend years learning how to please other people without properly understanding themselves first.

The better you understand your own body, boundaries and preferences, the easier it becomes to communicate them.

Stop assuming your partner can read your mind

According to Ita, one of the biggest myths about intimacy is that people should instinctively know what their partner wants.

She describes a feeling that, “we should just know. We should just assume. It should just happen. It should just be spontaneous.”

In reality, Ita says, knowing what you want - and expressing it - is a skill.

Whether it’s a desire, a boundary or simply something you’ve enjoyed before, understanding it yourself is the first step towards sharing it with someone else.

“My partner and I find it easier if we go for a walk. So going for a walk in the woods is a really lovely way to just talk about what you want.”

For many people, intimate conversations feel less intimidating when they happen naturally.

Dance more

One of Ita’s more unexpected pieces of advice has nothing to do with relationships.

“Put some music on and just move and feel and find that play.”

For her, intimacy isn’t only about sex. It’s also about feeling alive in your own body.

Movement can help people reconnect with confidence, sensation and playfulness - qualities that are often squeezed out by busy schedules and everyday pressures.

Keep getting to know your body

Many people think self-discovery is something that happens and is final. Ita sees it as a lifelong process.

“Continuing to know your body is great. Continuing that self-play, that self-discovery.”

She believes intimacy works best when we stay curious about ourselves rather than assuming we’ll always want the same things. Our bodies change throughout our lives, and our relationship with pleasure can change too.

“Especially as we get older, we might need to bring in lubrication. We might need to bring in perhaps some toys.”

For Ita, adapting isn’t something to be embarrassed about. It’s simply part of getting to know yourself.

Rather than seeing intimacy as a fixed destination, she encourages people to treat it as an ongoing exploration.

“Keep that play going and invite your partner to bring in that play.”

Related articles

Make time for intimacy

Relationships often begin with excitement and spontaneity. Maintaining connection over time requires intention.

“Make time and space for you and your partner.”

Ita believes intimacy needs nurturing, particularly when work, family responsibilities and everyday life compete for attention.

But she also warns against treating intimacy like a task with a specific outcome.

“Don’t end-game it.”

Spending time together shouldn’t come with pressure or expectations. The point is simply to create space for connection and see where it leads.

Ita is honest about how difficult it can be to begin that conversation with a partner.

“That shift from having it as something that’s unspoken to open communication and transparency can be really challenging.”

But she believes the answer isn’t to wait until it feels easy. It’s to start where you are and take responsibility for that first step. “I would take ownership and take responsibility for yourself,” she explains. If speaking directly to a partner feels impossible right now, she suggests support can come in other forms, such as couples therapy or working with an intimacy coach.

More than anything, she encourages beginning with yourself. “If you want things to shift and change and you want to have that conversation, just feel into yourself,” she says. That might simply mean identifying one small thing you want or enjoy, rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.

“Start with something really simple and really easy. Explore how to share what you like and then how to ask for that.”

“It could be something as simple as, ‘I really like it when you hold my hand when we go walking’.”

Ultimately, Ita’s advice is less about getting it “right” in one conversation and more about gently learning how to notice what you want, saying it out loud, and having the confidence to bring your partner in on the conversation too.

Ita O’Brien’s Intimacy: A Field Guide to Finding Connection and Feeling Your Deep Desires is available to buy.

My chat with Florrie feels less like an interview and more like catching up with a friend who’s moved abroad, like we haven’t spoken in a while, but the conversation slips effortlessly into place - warm and easy.

Over the past two decades, Florrie has built a career that’s spanned both sides of the music industry. First making her name as the drummer behind some of British pop’s biggest acts - including Kylie Minogue, Girls Aloud and Pet Shop Boys through the legendary Xenomania production house - before stepping into the spotlight herself as a singer-songwriter.

She’s has just announced her latest album, Magic For A While, due for release in October, with new single The Times already out in the world.

As we settle into our video chat, she’s every bit as down-to-earth as she is accomplished.

I begin by suggesting it must be a good feeling to finally be at the point of sharing the album with the world.

“Yeah. This album journey was quite a solitary experience for me. I really enjoyed that actually, I really loved just keeping it close to my chest, really believing in what I’d made without letting anything external influence me.”

Do you think you may be at a point in your life where you're much more comfortable doing that?

“I don’t know what happened to me last year,” she laughs. “But I turned 36 and something literally switched in my head.”

For someone who describes herself as a “lifelong people pleaser”, the shift has been significant.

“I do think it’s an age thing. It’s a great feeling. The older I get, the less I care - in a good way - about what other people think of me. Because I am someone that throughout my life has really cared.”

Florrie wrote the album during a period of uncertainty while living in Los Angeles.

“I was in this transition period of not knowing whether to stay or whether to come back,” she says. “It got me thinking about all these other times in my life where you’ve chosen to go down one path and it’s led you somewhere. But what if you had taken another one?”

This, she explains, is the “overarching theme of the record”.

So where are you finding magic in her own life right now?

“First of all, I love nature,” she says. “The older I get, the more I appreciate being quiet.”

“Seeing my best friend become a mum. That’s really magical. And she’s nailing it. I mean, she doesn’t feel like she is, but she is nailing it. I think I see a lot of magical things around me in a really nice way.”

It’s an answer that says a lot about where Florrie is right now. Less concerned with chasing validation and more interested in appreciating the people and moments around her.

Throughout her life and career, Florrie has been inspired by different women.

“I started this job at Xenomania as the drummer. It was this big house in the countryside, there were like 30 people there, musicians, writers, all different ages. But the lady who ran it was called Miranda Cooper.”

“Before then [the people working around me] were all guys and bands really… I guess there wasn’t anyone in my sort of everyday life who I looked up to.”

“But Miranda was one of the most prolific female songwriters in the UK. She was lovely and she really empowered everyone else around her,” Florrie says. “Miranda was a real leader.”

“I was actually quite nervous of her,” Florrie admits of first meeting Miranda. Looking back now, she sees it differently, remembering Miranda as a “really big” role model in her early years of being a musician.

Closer to home, however, her biggest inspiration has always been her mum, a single parent who ran her own business. “I’m so close to my mum. I speak to her once, if not twice a day, every single day,” Florrie says. “In my head she just balanced everything. She just made it all work. I don’t think she really feels like that, but she was a big inspiration growing up. She’s just my absolute champion.”

Another woman who changed the course of her life was Cassandra Gracey, who spotted something special in a young drummer she’d met briefly in a lawyer’s waiting room.

Months later, Cassandra called with an opportunity.

“She called me maybe six months later and said, ‘This is going to be really random, but I got your number because I remember you from this lawyer’s office. I thought you had a really sort of special energy. And I’ve got a friend who’s looking for a drummer to be part of this team.’ She was amazing. She really championed me as well.”

That connection became Florrie’s introduction to Xenomania.

Although music remains heavily male-dominated behind the scenes, Florrie considers herself fortunate that her earliest experiences in the industry were unusually inclusive.

“Being part of Xenomania, I was very protected from the wider sexism in the music industry,” she says. “It was an incredible environment to have the first ten years of my musical life in.”

In fact, Florrie says she didn’t encounter much sexism at all during the first decade of her career. “It’s only the last six or seven years where I’ve seen it.”

When it did happen, it came as a surprise.

“I was actually shocked when I first experienced very blatant sexism, where someone refused to talk to me and directed everything at a male colleague, even though it was something that I dealt with.”

The confidence she’s developed in recent years has also changed the way she sees herself.

“When I first started out, I definitely felt like I had to look and be a certain way,” Florrie says. “I felt like I had to be thin and pretty and make sure I was always wearing makeup every day.”

Now?

“I literally couldn’t care less.”

So what has changed?

“I trust myself more. I’ve got more confidence in my own decisions. When I make a decision now, I don’t need external validation. I was a real worrier back in my twenties. Whereas now I’m just feeling a lot more sure of myself and just a lot calmer in everyday life.”

I ask her if “stop worrying” would be the advice she’d give to her younger self?

“The thing is, you just can’t say ‘stop worrying’. Does it ever work? Does it? No.”

“I’d probably just say: trust your gut a bit more.”

“There were a lot of times where I had quite a definite feeling about something, and some label exec would be like, ‘No, that’s a stupid idea’. And I would think he must know better.”

Now, Florrie knows that’s not the case.

“Creatively, you know yourself better than anyone else ultimately.”

As our conversation comes to an end, I ask how she hopes people will listen to Magic For A While.

“I would actually love for people to just sit with it. Just them and the record.”

The album is introspective, she says, and deserves a quiet moment to absorb it.

“And then tell everyone about it.”

Florrie’s single The Times is out now

The full album Magic for a while is out in October 2026

It can feel like women’s health is always on the back burner - and whilst it’s true there is still plenty of work to be done, developments are happening more often than you might think, and some of the biggest shifts can easily slip under the radar. We’ve pulled together some of the major women’s health stories and breakthroughs from this year so far.

From menopause being reframed as a whole-body transition, to new hope in endometriosis diagnosis, growing investment in women’s heart health, and even research taking women’s health into space, the way women’s health has previously been understood is starting to shift.

In this issue of Take The Lead, we’re sharing some important stories making headlines for women.

FIFA has launched a major new project focused on female athletes’ health, covering topics including menstrual health, pregnancy and menopause. The initiative aims to tackle the long-standing lack of research into women’s bodies in sport.

We also spoke directly with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer about newly announced plans that could make the UK the first country where children cannot take, share or view nude images on their devices. The announcement follows growing concerns that progress on the issue has been too slow.

Plus, journalist Emma Barnett spoke to The Female Lead ahead of the release of her BBC documentary Emma Barnett: Fighting Endometriosis. Watch a powerful clip of her describing endometriosis as a disease that “steals” from women, and read our full interview.

Across our social channels, we’re continuing to share the latest news, research and conversations affecting women. This week, a comment from Irish singer CMAT about body shaming particularly caught our attention.

Enjoy, share with your friends, and let us know what you think!

The Female Lead Team

Share

We’re talking about…

⚽ FIFA launches a major project focused on female athletes’ health - FIFA has launched the Female Health and Performance Project to tackle (😉) the long-standing lack of research on women in sport.

The initiative includes 30 free online modules covering topics such as menstrual health, pregnancy, menopause, nutrition, recovery and injury prevention. It comes after research found that just 6% of sports science studies focused exclusively on women, meaning many training methods have been based on evidence gathered from men.

FIFA hopes the project will improve performance, reduce injury risk and help normalise conversations around women’s health in sport.

📱 A major move to stop children sharing nude images - The government has announced plans to make the UK the first country where children cannot take, share or view nude images on their devices.

This is not a new law yet. Tech companies including Apple and Google have been given three months to introduce or activate technology that can detect and block nude images for children. If they fail to act, the government says it will bring forward legislation, including fines for companies and potentially criminal liability for tech bosses.

The Female Lead raised concerns directly with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer after former Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips said progress on the issue had been too slow. A major announcement - but one many feel is long overdue.

Read the full article and interview

Inspire me…

For decades, women have been told that their symptoms were normal: pain was “just part of being a woman”, exhaustion was stress, and brain fog was expected in ageing.

In 2026, that narrative is beginning to change, and it can’t come soon enough.

Across healthcare, research, policy and public conversation, one theme has emerged again and again: women’s health is finally being recognised as more than reproductive health.

Read the full article here

Final thought…

Become a paid supporter

The Female Lead is a charity on a mission to empower women.

In the last 8 years, we have given access to books and teaching materials to 2.5 million students in 25,000 schools around the world. We carry out research that reframes our understanding of women’s experience, such as our Fulfilment Findersurvey which reveals what matters most to women at different life stages. It has now been completed by 150,000 women globally.

We can’t run the charity without your support.

For just £3.50 a month or £25 a year, you can make a huge difference.

Your donations allow us to continue to provide teaching resources and education to girls and women around the world, conduct groundbreaking research, and share science and stories online.

By pledging to make a donation, you get a host of other benefits like:

• Access to our full archive of content on everything from advice from CEOs, to early menopause, to the brain impact of the mental load

• Get the first look at our research reports busting myths around women

• A virtual supporter badge to share and display online

Subscribe now

Share

It can feel like women’s health is always on the back burner - and whilst it’s true there is still plenty of work to be done, developments are happening more often than you might think, and some of t…

Read more

For decades, women have been told that their symptoms were normal: pain was “just part of being a woman”, exhaustion was stress, and brain fog was expected in ageing.

In 2026, that narrative is beginning to change, and it can’t come soon enough.

Across healthcare, research, policy and public conversation, one theme has emerged again and again: women’s health is finally being recognised as more than reproductive health.

From endometriosis and menopause to heart disease, chronic pain and neurodiversity, researchers are questioning decades of assumptions that were built largely around male bodies and male experiences. The result is one of the most significant shifts in women’s healthcare in a generation. Here are six of the top stories from this year so far…

Menopause is finally being treated as a serious health transition

In 2026, researchers are increasingly treating menopause as a major biological transition with implications across the entire body.

New research suggests cardiovascular health may begin to decline during perimenopause, before menopause itself occurs. Changes in cholesterol levels and blood sugar regulation appear earlier than previously understood, raising important questions about whether women should be screened sooner for heart disease risk.

At the same time, menopause is becoming a neurological conversation. Research from University of Cambridge has linked menopause to changes in brain structure, sleep disruption, anxiety and cognitive symptoms. The significance is not that menopause damages the brain, but that symptoms often dismissed as “just stress” may have a genuine biological basis.

For millions of women who have struggled with concentration, memory lapses and so-called “brain fog”, that shift in understanding is significant.

Validation matters. So does research.

New Endometriosis research to help millions

Despite affecting millions of women worldwide, diagnosis in the UK still takes an average of more than nine years. Yet 2026 has delivered some of the most hopeful developments in endometriosis research for decades.

Researchers are increasingly treating endometriosis as a complex inflammatory disease that can affect the whole body, rather than simply a menstrual disorder. This broader understanding may ultimately transform treatment approaches and improve outcomes for the one in ten women and girls of reproductive age worldwide - an estimated 190 million people - who live with endo.

Even more promising are advances in diagnostics.

One of the most exciting developments is coming from Oxford University, where researchers are trialling a non-invasive imaging technique designed to identify endometriosis tissue without surgery. Early pilot results suggest the scan could detect disease with far greater accuracy than existing procedures. If larger studies confirm the findings, it could dramatically reduce the need for diagnostic laparoscopy and shorten the years-long journey many women face before receiving answers.

Earlier diagnosis would not only reduce suffering but could also improve fertility outcomes, treatment options and long-term quality of life.

Funding focus on women’s heart health

Heart disease remains one of the leading causes of death among women globally. Yet for decades, cardiovascular medicine has largely been shaped by research conducted in men.

The consequences have been significant. Women often experience different symptoms during heart attacks, including fatigue, nausea, breathlessness, jaw pain and upper-back discomfort rather than the “classic” chest pain that many people associate with cardiac events. Those differences have contributed to missed diagnoses and delayed treatment.

This year, researchers have increasingly focused on menopause, hormones and sex-specific cardiovascular risk factors. In one of the largest investments in women’s cardiovascular research to date, the VISIBLE initiative from Wellcome Leap - jointly funded by Pivotal - announced $55 million in funding dedicated to improving understanding of women’s heart health. The programme aims to accelerate research into how heart disease develops differently in women and to improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment strategies that have historically been based on male-centred data.

The investment reflects a growing recognition that closing the women’s health gap is not only a medical challenge but an economic and societal one.

Neurodiversity is forcing a rethink of women’s health

Another area undergoing rapid change is the understanding of ADHD and autism in women.

Historically, diagnostic criteria were based largely on male presentations. As a result, countless women have reached adulthood before receiving diagnoses, often after years of struggling with anxiety, depression, burnout or other challenges that masked the underlying condition. New research this year states: “Gender bias and frequent misdiagnosis were recurrent issues, contributing to significant psychological distress. The findings emphasise the urgent need for gender-sensitive diagnostic frameworks, enhanced professional training, and a person-centred approach to care.”

Researchers are increasingly exploring how ADHD and autism present differently in women, including the role of masking behaviours and hormonal fluctuations.

Recently studies have shown “Autistic people and ADHDers may be particularly vulnerable to difficulties during menopause”. Doctors have found women seek assessment during perimenopause, when hormonal changes can disrupt coping strategies that previously helped them navigate daily life.

The result is a growing recognition that female neurodiversity deserves female-specific research.

Women’s Health Research Heads to Space

One of the most unexpected women’s health stories of the year is not happening in a hospital or research laboratory, but in orbit.

In 2027, the world’s first space mission dedicated to menstrual health research is scheduled to launch, marking a significant milestone in understanding how female biology responds to extreme environments.

Despite more than six decades of human spaceflight, little research has been conducted on menstruation and reproductive health in space. Scientists hope the mission will provide valuable insights into hormonal regulation, reproductive function and long-term health impacts in conditions of microgravity. The research has the potential to deepen our understanding of menstrual health, hormonal changes and women’s physiology more broadly.

For generations, women were excluded from medical research because their bodies were considered too complex to study. Now, researchers are preparing to investigate women’s health beyond the boundaries of Earth itself.

Melinda French Gates donates $215 million to women’s health

Philanthropist Melinda French Gates has announced an additional $215 million donation towards women’s health, with a new focus on menopause. Currently, less than 1% of aging research focuses on menopause. The additional funding brings her total investment into women’s health issues to more than $600 million in two years.

Related articles

“Women deserve to live in a world that prioritizes their health—full stop. I’m continuing my focus on reproductive and maternal health—protecting contraceptive access, strengthening community-based maternal care, and integrating mental health support into routine care. I’m also turning more attention to midlife—supporting new research on conditions impacting women’s lives and improving care for menopause and perimenopause. It’s time to make women’s health a priority—because when women are healthier, everyone benefits. That’s the future we should be building,” she wrote recently.

Melinda founded Pivotal, a group of organisations working to accelerate the pace of social progress for women and young people in USA. and around the world, in 2015 and continues to invest in research to improve the everyday lives of women.

This is what true altruism looks like.

What happens next?

Women’s health is receiving more attention than ever before. Researchers are asking better questions. Governments are acknowledging longstanding failures. New diagnostic tools and treatments are emerging.

Yet many women still face long waiting lists, delayed diagnoses and inconsistent access to care.

The healthcare system is moving forward for women. The question is whether it can move fast enough.

Share

Just four months later, we were invited to speak to Sir Keir Starmer again about the government’s goal for Britain to become first country in the world to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images.

The statistics for for online abuse and pornography viewed by children are shocking:

• 91% of online child sexual abuse reports recorded in 2024 contained self-generated content from children themselves and the average child now views pornography by age 13.

• 39% of teenagers aged 13–17 experience emotional or physical abuse from a partner.

• 52% of all child sexual abuse and exploitation cases involve children aged 10–17 offending against other children.

Progress to tackle online child sexual exploitation has been slow - something Jess Phillips acknowledged when she resigned as Safeguarding Minister in May 2026 to protest the Prime Minister’s leadership.

Now the Prime Minister has announced Big Tech firms like Apple and Google must introduce safety measures on children’s smartphones and tablets to detect and block nude images for children - with the government prepared to legislate if they do not act.

If companies do not act within three months, the Prime Minister has said legislation will be brought in to force them to activate the technology. This will include fines for companies with criminal liability for tech bosses who fail to comply also a possibility.

Speaking exclusively to us at London Tech Week - albeit it for just five minutes to tackle such a crucial safeguarding issue - Sir Keir Starmer spoke about the responsibility of Big Tech to protect children and changing the law to enforce it if they don’t act swiftly - and we told him The Female Lead community is frustrated at the lack of action, demanding more be done to protect women and girls in Britain.

On Jess Phillips stating the Sir Keir Starmer had dragged his heels on legislation to force tech companies to ban nude photos on children's phones - and The Female Lead frustrated at the slow progress

“Let me record my respect for Jess Phillips and what she has done and continues to do. This is an area we announced back in December when launched our Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, that we would take action in relation to the ability to children to send and receive nude images. I’m pleased to say that since we’ve made that announcement some companies have taken necessary measures. Today is about taking it up, putting the bar higher, saying to all tech companies, ‘You’ve all got to do this now. And if you don’t do it, we’ll change the law to ensure that you do’. These tech companies are brilliant innovators, this is not beyond their ability so it’s a question of will, their will to do it and our will do something about it if they don’t.”

On Australia and Germany having strong take-down regulator models in place with Big Tech

“As tech and Ai have developed, very many people, particularly parents, are getting worried. Each country is looking at what can we do to protect children better? So we are looking at what other countries have done and talking to other countries about it. This device level control to stop children sending or receiving nude images will make us a world leader.”

On banning social media platforms in the UK if they don’t comply

“I do expect all tech companies to comply. There is no question this can only apply to some and not others, it has got to be everyone across the board. I genuinely believe they have the ability to do it. This is to say, ‘You must have something to stop these images being sent or received by children. It’s pretty common sense.’ There are no excuses for anyone. It does need to be backed up by us saying, ‘If you don’t do it we’ll change the law.’”

On The Female Lead wanting a deadline and more action to protect women and girls

“You’re right to keep pushing it. It’s a personal priority. Working with you and others, there’s always this question of pushing us further. Quite right too. That’s what accountability is about. People having the right to say to their government, ‘I’m glad you’ve done that, but go further, go quicker’.”

After just five minutes talking to the Prime Minister at London Tech Week, we left him with one ask: Do better, do more.

Watch the full interview here:

Related article

Last year, I was lucky enough to see Malala Yousafzai speak at the Southbank Centre in London about her newly released book, Finding My Way. I couldn’t quite believe that this Nobel Peace Prize winner, world-famous activist, and poster girl for women’s rights and education was just like me.

This week, I was lucky enough to watch her speak again. And actually, I think that’s exactly what she’s trying to tell us.

The first question host Pandora Sykes asked was why she felt ready to write about her life in such a vulnerable and honest way.

“When you have a public image and people can look you up on Wikipedia, there is a fixed story of you. You are changing, but that story isn’t changing. Time passes by, you grow, things happen that teach you a lot in life.”

Whilst Malala did something rare and extraordinary, the world often forgot that she was still a teenage girl.

She shares a similar misconception in her book. After becoming known worldwide for being attacked by the Taliban, the media painted her as a kind of “mythical heroine”. As she writes, people began to describe someone she didn’t recognise: “a serious and shy girl, a wallflower forced to speak out when the Taliban took away her books.”

But Malala’s reality was different.

“Growing up in Mingora, I was a troublemaker. At school, I ferried bits of gossip back and forth between groups of girls and cracked jokes that made my friends laugh and scold me in the same breath.”

It was this perception that led Malala to approach university the way she did.

“At Oxford my only goal was to make friends - I signed up for everything... rowing society, Christian society, Hindu society, cricket, baking. I chose the social life because I thought this was the only chance to meet people my age.”

“I may have heard a rumour that the Christians brought baked goods to your dorm room, and the Hindus threw the best parties,” she writes in her book.

It sounds humanly impossible to be doing this much whilst also studying PPE - widely regarded as one of Oxford’s most demanding degrees - and even Malala admits she probably went overboard at the start.

“When you are sitting with presidents and prime ministers, you are expected to be a very serious person. I wanted to be a normal student at college. I wanted to separate myself from the work that I did.”

Her excitement to embrace every aspect of university life is a reminder that, despite her status as a Nobel laureate, she was also a young woman figuring out who she was.

It was especially moving to hear her say: “When I think about the Malala who entered college and the Malala who graduated, they are two completely different people and that is the biggest success of my education.”

Malala married her husband, Asser Malik, in November 2021, but before that she had publicly questioned marriage altogether. The reasons behind those views really stuck with me.

“Growing up in Pakistan, I knew that protecting yourself from marriage was so important for girls because that is the only way you can have a future. Girls were married whilst they were still children. I saw it happen to friends at school. So I thought, to protect myself, I have to stay away.”

“Even as I got older, that didn’t change. I realised that often women still have to make more compromises than men.”

“I thought about all the women throughout history who took that burden on their shoulders and still do.”

Ultimately, Malala got to a point where marriage felt right.

“We were on the same page. We had respect for each other... I realised he was the right person.”

But even with that reassurance, she describes feeling as though she was “making a decision for all women.”

It’s a striking example of the pressure placed on women who become symbols. Even deeply personal choices can feel political.

Related articles

Malala has been fighting for girls’ education since the world first heard her name in 2012, so it may be less surprising to hear that her passion for the issue remains as strong as ever.

“There are so many girls who lost their opportunity to complete their education because of marriage and other reasons. It’s so hard for girls to break out and beat the cultural expectations and stereotypes. Education means they can learn about their rights, to stand up for what is right and wrong in their lives.”

Of course, she’s right. The scale of the issue remains enormous. According to the UNESCO, around 122 million girls worldwide are out of school, while millions more are at risk of dropping out because of poverty, conflict, discrimination and child marriage.

“Everyone should have access to education. It shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a right. No one should be left behind because of their gender. I want every girl to be able to go to school and complete their education.”

“Education is so much more than learning. It is empowerment. It is emancipation.”

Watching Malala speak, I was struck by how she is both extraordinary and ordinary. She has addressed world leaders, survived an assassination attempt and become one of the most recognisable activists on the planet. Yet she also worried about making friends at university, questioned whether marriage would limit her future, and spent years figuring out who she wanted to be.

Perhaps that’s what makes her such a compelling role model. Not because she’s superhuman, but because she isn’t. Behind the activist is a woman still learning, changing and finding her way - just like the rest of us.

Temperatures have climbed to an almost unbearable 34 degrees in London by the time we arrive at the BBC studios to meet broadcaster and journalist Emma Barnett for her last interview of the day. As I clip on my microphone, she compliments my outfit. She’s warm, calm and generous.

She also has severe endometriosis.

Emma’s spent the day travelling across London in the heat, smiling for cameras and speaking to a steady stream of journalists about her new documentary. And chances are, she’s done much of it while managing the kind of pain she later describes as a “silent, invisible emergency”.

Emma was diagnosed with endometriosis at 31, but she has been living with symptoms since she was ten years old. Like many women with the condition, she is carrying a pain people cannot see. That invisibility is exactly what she set out to expose with her latest documentary, Emma Barnett: Fighting Endometriosis.

I ask Emma what she seeking to challenge with the documentary?

“Amazingly, it’s the first film of its sort in the UK, which I still am struggling to compute and believe,” she says. “I wanted to give it its importance. Endometriosis is not a small thing.”

According to the World Health Organization, endometriosis affects around one in ten women and girls of reproductive age worldwide - an estimated 190 million people. The condition occurs when tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows elsewhere in the body, causing inflammation, scar tissue and often severe pain. It most commonly affects the pelvis but can also impact organs such as the bladder and bowel and, in rarer cases, areas outside the pelvis altogether.

Yet despite affecting millions, diagnosis remains notoriously slow. In the UK, it takes an average of nearly ten years for women to receive a diagnosis.

For Emma, diagnosis is only part of the story.

“It’s horrendous, of course, that it takes an average of ten years in a country like this to be diagnosed,” she says. “But what about afterwards? That would be like only talking about birth and never talking about parenting.”

The documentary follows that question. Alongside sharing her own experience, Emma speaks to doctors, researchers and women living with the condition, exploring not just diagnosis but the reality of life with endometriosis. Whether it’s making huge life compromises, dealing with constant uncertainty or the sheer amount of labour involved in managing a disease for which there is still no cure.

“It is a silent, invisible emergency,” she says.

Part of what makes endometriosis so difficult to understand is that its symptoms are often hidden. Severe menstrual pain, chronic pelvic pain, fatigue, digestive issues, infertility and pain during sex can all be symptoms. Some women experience debilitating pain that prevents them from working or attending school. Others become experts at masking it.

“I think we have to, as a society, get a lot more comfortable with taking people seriously with things that they can’t see,” Emma says. “It’s very difficult even in a medical setting to describe pain.”

One symptom Emma describes is a heavy dragging sensation in her legs. “It was so amazing when I met other women with the condition and they said, ‘That’s what I have.’ Because it’s not normal that you can suddenly not really easily walk up some stairs and you’re in your twenties or thirties.”

Despite commonly being discussed as a period problem, endometriosis is far more complex. “It’s not a period condition,” she says. “It’s not a gynaecological thing. It’s a system-wide inflammatory disorder.”

It’s an important distinction to make, since so many women spend years being told their symptoms are simply part of having periods.

Experts also suggest cultural attitudes play a role. Suzannah Weiss, author of Eve’s Blessing: Uncovering the Lost Pleasure Behind Female Pain, argues that many women have been conditioned to normalise suffering.

“Many women do not speak up when they’re experiencing pain because they’ve been taught it’s normal,” she says. “Many cases of endometriosis and other reproductive illnesses go undiagnosed because women are told to just take a painkiller or go on birth control instead of identifying the root cause.”

One of the documentary’s most striking themes is the burden placed on patients to become their own advocates.

“I can’t imagine other conditions where you have to assemble a squad,” Emma says. “You have to get a bowel doctor, a physio, a pain person, maybe a psychologist, all these different people and it is knackering.”

The emotional toll of that is difficult to overstate. Patients are often expected to manage appointments, treatments, symptom tracking and endless explanations while already living with chronic pain.

“It warps your relationship with medicine,” she says. “It warps your relationship with your own body.”

Perhaps the most devastating section of the documentary focuses on the choices women are forced to make because of their illness.

Emma speaks emotionally about Chloe, a young woman featured in the documentary. “I don’t think in 18 years of broadcasting, I’ve broken down. And her situation, it just touched me so deeply.”

Many conversations around endometriosis focus on fertility. Endometriosis is associated with infertility, and studies suggest that between 30 and 50% of women experiencing infertility may have the condition. But Chloe’s story reveals an even more painful reality.

“She could see she wouldn’t be well enough to be the mother she wanted to be,” Emma says. It isn’t a question of whether she could have children. It is whether she could live the life she wanted if she did.

I’m moved by the metaphor Emma uses to describe the condition’s impact.

“Endometriosis is a thief,” she says. “It steals from you. Sometimes it mugs you in broad daylight, sometimes it’s stolen stuff without you even realising.”

According to figures highlighted in the documentary, endometriosis costs the UK economy £12.5 billion annually through lost productivity and women being pushed out of the workforce. It’s this stat that Dr Lucy Whitaker from University of Edinburgh’s dedicated endometriosis research team believes will influence policymakers.

Having spoken to doctors and researchers throughout both her own journey and the making of the documentary, I was curious to know what Emma believes health professionals see as the biggest barrier to change.

“Ultimately it’s money and funding. That doesn’t mean suddenly somebody will figure it out, because there are places which have funding and they still haven’t figured it out. But I think it’s that mixture of urgency and funding coming together to get the best minds on this and for a long period of time.”

But Emma says that because endometriosis doesn’t kill you outright, it struggles to command the urgency afforded to other diseases, like cancer. Yet for millions of women, its impact can be life-altering.

The World Health Organization notes that endometriosis can contribute to depression, anxiety, social isolation, poor sexual health and reduced quality of life. Heavy bleeding can lead to iron deficiency and fatigue. Chronic pain can affect education, careers, relationships and family planning.

Emma adds, “It’s also really important for philanthropists, for those who have the ability to decide what gets funded and what gets the microphone and what gets the time to at least consider a largely silent and invisible force that is warping women’s lives the world over.”

“They don’t necessarily even want that much sympathy,” she says of people living with endometriosis. “They just want you to meet them where they’re at.”

As our interview wraps up, I ask what she’ll be doing next. After a day spent talking publicly about a condition she’s lived with privately for decades, perhaps Emma’s finally heading home to rest.

Of course not.

She’s got a doctor’s appointment.

Emma Barnett: Fighting Endometriosis is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer

The news can feel much the same as the weather in May: unpredictable, and not always matching the mood you’d hope for at this time of year. But in amongst it all, there are always stories worth noticing.

Once again, women have been pushing forward in science, sport, politics, health, and culture in ways that don’t always make the loudest headlines.

Think of this as your monthly reminder: the good stories are out there. You just have to know where to look.

PMDD research finally takes women’s symptoms seriously

For years, premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) was largely dismissed as an extreme hormonal imbalance or written off as “bad PMS”. But researchers are now building a much clearer understanding of the condition, which could change how women’s health is treated. Studies show that women with PMDD often have typical hormone levels. The difference lies in how the brain and body respond to those hormonal shifts, particularly in systems linked to mood, stress, sleep and emotional regulation.

This understanding is important as PMDD can be debilitating, causing severe depression, anxiety, rage, hopelessness and even suicidal thoughts that interfere with work, relationships and daily life. Researchers are now exploring links to genetics, circadian rhythms and melatonin production, helping explain why symptoms can worsen with poor sleep or seasonal changes. It’s a significant shift away from decades of minimising women’s experiences and toward recognising PMDD as a serious neurological and psychiatric condition that deserves proper research and support.

Girl Scouts turn cookie sales into 3D-printed wheelchairs for children

A Girl Scout troop in Dorchester, Boston, USA used profits from their annual cookie sales to purchase a 3D printer and build “Toddler Mobility Trainers” - custom mobility chairs for children with disabilities. Using open-source designs from MakeGood Inc., the Scouts are able to produce nearly every part of the chairs through 3D printing, aside from the wheel bearings and hardware, making mobility aids more affordable and accessible for young children. Once assembled, the chairs are matched with local families in need.

The project is an amazing example of how accessible technology and community-driven effort can make a meaningful difference for children and their families.

European Parliament backs consent-based definition of rape

Okay, this technically happened at the end of April… but when 447 members of the European Parliament vote in favour of a consent-based definition of rape, we’re allowing ourselves one calendar-related exception.

The proposal calls for a standardised EU definition centred around the principle that “only yes means yes”, pushing member states away from outdated laws that still require victims to prove force, resistance or physical struggle. Supporters say women shouldn’t lose legal protections simply by crossing a border within Europe.

The vote reflects a broader cultural shift around consent, partly shaped by the global response to French survivor Gisèle Pelicot and increasing pressure to recognise that rape is defined by the absence of consent, not whether a victim fought back “enough”. It may have arrived a few days early for our May roundup, but it felt too important to leave out.

PCOS renamed to reflect the reality of the condition

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which affects an estimated 170 million women worldwide, has officially been renamed polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS). The change reflects a growing understanding that the condition is not just a reproductive or gynecological issue, but a complex disorder that can affect hormones, metabolism, fertility and mental health.

The renaming initiative, led by Helena Teede and published in The Lancet, aims to improve diagnosis and treatment by giving doctors and patients a more accurate understanding of the condition. Many women have struggled for years to have their symptoms taken seriously but this shift signals we are getting closer to recognising the complexity of women’s health conditions, rather than reducing them to fertility alone.

Women’s sportswear redesigned around women’s bodies

In Ireland, physiotherapist Margaret Walsh is using her company Feirla to help reshape girls’ sport by designing sportswear specifically for female athletes, including Ireland’s first period-proof shorts for Gaelic games. The idea emerged after growing frustration over uncomfortable uniforms designed around male bodies.

“It was about listening to what girls and women were actually experiencing at those stages and responding to that,” Margaret told Irish Country Magazine. “At its core, it comes back to giving female athletes a choice.”

Feirla developed multiple styles to suit different needs, including higher waistbands for support, compression fits, and cuts designed specifically for female proportions.

Margaret’s work addresses a major reason many girls drop out of sport during puberty - discomfort, body image anxiety, and uniforms that don’t work for them.

“When players have choice, they feel more comfortable,” she said. “And when they feel comfortable, it allows for greater confidence and ultimately better performance.”

Harvard researchers receive major recognition for their “vagina-on-a-chip” breakthrough

Scientists at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital have received well-deserved recognition in 2026 for their 2022 breakthrough invention, the world’s first “vagina-on-a-chip.”

The device is a lab-grown model made from human cells, roughly the size of a USB stick, that mimics key features of the female reproductive tract. It allows researchers to study how vaginal tissue responds to hormones, infections, medications, and healthy bacteria, offering an alternative to traditional animal testing, which has historically been used despite major biological differences between animals and humans.

The Lush Prize, which supports advances in cruelty-free science and alternatives to animal testing, recognised the work for its potential to improve women’s health research and deepen understanding of conditions affecting the vaginal microbiome, reproductive health, and chronic illness, while helping guide the development of more targeted treatments for women.

This is your reminder that women are behind so many of the good things that are happening. Share this article with friends, family, or anyone who could use a reminder that progress is still being made, even when it can feel slow.

Share

And if you’ve got stories of your own - from your community, your industry, or anywhere in the world - send them our way. We might include them in next month’s round-up. The news headlines tend to amplify the worst, but we’re just as committed to documenting the better.

The news can feel much the same as the weather in May: unpredictable, and not always matching the mood you’d hope for at this time of year. But in amongst it all, there are always stories worth notic…

Read more

We had our school sex education at 13. The day was split into various sessions where we learnt about safe sex, STDs, contraception and consent.

Even then, there seemed to be a difference in what boys and girls were being prepared for. The boys in my class seemed excited about sex, like pleasure was an inevitability waiting for them. For girls, there was a feeling that sex was something we’d learn to adapt to, maybe eventually enjoy later. Pain was expected. Pleasure wasn’t.

University of Michigan professor Sara McClelland has spent years studying this negotiation. Her research into sexual satisfaction found that young men and women imagined “a very different low end of the sexual satisfaction scale”. Men tended to frame the low point of sexual experience in relatively neutral terms - loneliness, lack of stimulation, an unattractive partner. Women, however, used terms such as “pain”, “degradation”, “emotionally sad”, and “depressed.”

I spoke to Sara, alongside writer and sexologist Suzannah Weiss, to understand where those definitions come from — and why women’s version of “bad” sex can so often include pain rather than just disappointment.

Read the full article below.

Welcome back to Take The Lead, the fortnightly newsletter from The Female Lead.

Here’s a roundup of the articles you loved this month.

After discovering that her great-grandmother had once lived in a women-led community in southern India, journalist Megha Mohan began exploring the hidden history of women-only spaces around the world. From ancient matrilineal societies and medieval beguinages to modern safe havens for mothers, lesbians and girls resisting forced marriage, Herlands examines why women continue to create spaces away from men.

The arrival of The Devil Wears Prada sequel, 20 years after the original, offers a glossy but surprisingly sharp look at how dramatically the magazine industry has changed since the heyday of print publishing. Former Marie Claire editor-in-chief Andrea Thompson, who started her own career in magazines during the era of lavish fashion shoots, expense accounts and pre-social media exclusivity, reflects on what it was really like working in media at the time — and shares the lessons she’s learned from two decades navigating journalism and leadership as a woman in the industry.

When paralympian and broadcaster Stefanie Reid tried to buy a new pair of running trainers, she ran into a frustrating problem familiar to many amputees: she only needed one shoe. After sharing her experience online, her campaign sparked a wider conversation about whether brands are truly designing for inclusion or just marketing it. In her article, Stef explores what genuine inclusivity actually looks like and how small practical changes can have a huge impact on people’s everyday lives.

In her new book The Waiting Room, former Sunday Times editor Audrey Ward explores the unspoken reality of infertility, miscarriage and delayed motherhood through the stories of dozens of women navigating the long, uncertain path to parenthood. Her article reflects on the emotional toll of “waiting” and the many different ways women find meaning, resilience and hope when life doesn’t follow the timeline they imagined.

Enjoy this issue, share it if you like it, and reply directly to let us know what you think.

You can also catch up on our most recent full newsletter here.

The Female Lead Team

Share

Subscribe now

Become a paid supporter

The Female Lead is a charity on a mission to empower women.

In the last 8 years, we have given access to books and teaching materials to 2.5 million students in 25,000 schools around the world. We carry out research that reframes our understanding of women’s experience, such as our Fulfilment Findersurvey which reveals what matters most to women at different life stages. It has now been completed by 150,000 women globally.

We can’t run the charity without your support.

For just £3.50 a month or £25 a year, you can make a huge difference.

Your donations allow us to continue to provide teaching resources and education to girls and women around the world, conduct groundbreaking research, and share science and stories online.

By pledging to make a donation, you get a host of other benefits like:

• Access to our full archive of content on everything from advice from CEOs, to early menopause, to the brain impact of the mental load

• Get the first look at our research reports busting myths around women

• A virtual supporter badge to share and display online

  Subscribe now

  Share

We had our school sex education at 13. The day was split into various sessions where we learnt about safe sex, STDs, contraception and consent.

Even then, there seemed to be a difference in what boys…

Read more

Over a hundred years ago, my great-grandmother lived in a women’s space – a community that centred women. She wasn’t a radical, nor was she living in an experimental, alternative commune. This was just how her centuries-old matrilineal society functioned; it had been shaped by and for women, and sustained across generations.

I only learned about my ancestral women-led living space in southern India through a chance conversation with a distant family member, and I found myself wondering why this part of my family’s history was spoken of so little. In trying to better understand my great-grandmother’s life, I also began a search for current-day women-led spaces and societies around the world.

I began listening to the women who created and care for these communities, some of which have existed for several hundred years. I listened to the women who invited me into their private spaces and explained how they function and why they came to fruition.

What I found inside was powerful: across continents and civilisations, women-led communities have reshaped culture, reimagined economies, driven political change and fostered peace. They’ve provided refuge, resilience, and deeper connections to the land. However, they are by no means perfect societies. Not all of them offer women freedom or autonomy.

The more I explored, the more I became convinced that there was an urgent and layered story to be told about women-led spaces and societies. A story not just for women, but for anyone willing to learn from them.

A place for women

When you picture a women’s space, what comes to mind? Is it an imaginary place, like Themyscira, Wonder Woman’s island? Or historic, like a suffragette meeting? A gathering where men are still somewhere on the periphery, like a girls’ night out? A sports team?
I picture the world of Herland, a novel published in 1915 by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

The story starts with three unlikeable American men who hear rumours of a women-only country high in the mountains, hidden within an unnamed continent. When the men reach the settlement hidden within a plateau, they find a 2,000-year-old advanced social structure, free from fear and violence.

The country in Herland is meticulously organised: clean, efficient and harmonious. Forests are cared for, food is abundant and waste is managed sustainably. Even the ‘jail’ is a cosy room. Each woman may become a mother only once, via an asexual process, to prevent overpopulation. Still, no woman is overburdened. Child-rearing is shared, spaces are designed for safety. There is no money, crime or worship of tradition.

There was a glaring omission that I was missing as a reader. Herlandian women were capable, athletic, strong and fearless. They were also all white. Herland may be a trailblazing imagining of what a country created by women could be, but it also offers an important accidental lesson. Advanced feminist ideals do not automatically include all women, and do not always align with anti-racist values. Like many who speak of equality, Gilman’s feminism was selective and exclusionary, and there is no ambiguity that she held racist and supremacist views.

Acknowledging this makes the experience of reading Herland complicated. Could a reader admire writing as visionary as Herland while being repulsed by the racist views of its creator, I asked myself.

Then I had a video call with my cousin Tushanka – an educator for girls in India and an avid reader. As I was explaining the plot of Herland, Tushanka interrupted me. “Sounds a lot like Sultana’s Dream,” she said, going on to describe a short story written by Bengali feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. Sultana’s Dream was published in 1905, a decade before Herland.

Sultana’s Dream imagines a women-led country called Ladyland (which is what Terry calls the unnamed women-led country in Herland). In Sultana’s Dream, women move freely and men are hidden away behind murdahs – a reversal of the gender-seclusion practice of purdah. Ladyland is peaceful, clean, and powered by solar energy – a fringe concept in the early 1900s.

The women of Sultana’s Dream and Herland are engineers, teachers, farmers and scientists who keep their societies functional and free of combat. They are confident and free from the timidness that comes from fearing a predator. The message is clear: when women are undistracted by war and division, they innovate.

Women’s only spaces

In our world, no country has been built with women’s security and comfort at the forefront. More than thirty countries have no laws addressing domestic abuse. Globally, a woman or girl is killed by someone in her own family every eleven minutes.

We are nowhere near the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of achieving gender equality by 2030, and if we’re going at the current rate, it will take more than 135 years for women to be represented equally in positions of leadership in the workplace.

In a world that is so hostile to us, it’s unsurprising that women have created pockets for ourselves where we feel understood and safe. Places, both physical and online, where we can be vulnerable and feel the support of friendship and encouragement from other women.

I learned that a friend of a friend had grown up in an Irish Traveller women-only squat that banned entry to all men, including male cats. In almost every place I have visited, there has been at least one women-only corner. I’ve met lesbian women in Burundi who built a home where they gather to love and have sex, away from their husbands. I’ve stretched my legs in a fenced-off garden near a tea plantation in Malawi, where girls meet for a ‘radio club’ and plot how to avoid early arranged marriage and to stay in school. I’ve spoken with women who are trying to set up a ‘mommune’ in the US, where young and single mothers share accommodation to alleviate financial pressures.

These parallel worlds, quietly healing the failures of the mainstream, are everywhere – the shadow governments cementing the potholes of societies that have let them down.

Worlds without men

I was interested in women’s spaces long before I heard that they existed in my own ancestral home. The seed was planted when I was nineteen years old, in my second year of university and living as the only woman in a houseshare with five men, when I first read about much more desirable lodgings that had existed almost a thousand years earlier. I was transported to the 1200s, a time when Northern European women had two choices of submission: marriage or the convent. However, many pioneered a third way. They chose to live together in a beguinage.

A beguinage was a walled compound for financially independent women from all social backgrounds. These were the women who did not want a husband and did not want to be nuns – the ones who actively resisted the script of mother- hood, wifehood and state-controlled worship. By the 1300s, hundreds of beguinages existed across Northern Europe.

Related articles

The beguinage was a society that strictly excluded men, an almost thousand-year-old community that upended the expectations placed on women by our masculine societies. I felt bubbles of excitement, and so began my voyage to places where women thrive without men. It was the start of a curiosity that has lasted decades, and taken me around the world.

I stayed for hours at the Senate House and Maughan libraries in London, obsessively researching. I became fixated with the beguines, the women who lived in these communities. Their homes – the beguinages – ranged in size from fewer than a dozen women to several hundred. They sprang up in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. While they did have their lodgings donated to them by wealthy church- going families, they were not presided over or instructed by men from a church in the same way as nuns. The beguines were referred to by writers as the ‘sœurs grises’ (grey sisters), because of their humble grey tunics and head coverings.

Unlike nuns, though, these women had to earn a living. Their jobs were diverse, ranging from weaving to childcare and even brewing beer. In the evenings, they were free to return to their all-women haven – behind the high walls and a lockable gate – and they could leave this lifestyle any time they chose.

The beguinages were leaderless, with no founder and no formal way of life. They were urban single-sex phenomena, which produced writers like Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch, and Marguerite Porete – women who were accused of heresy and strongly criticised by wider society’s patriarchal leaders.

I convinced my friend Rachael that we needed to catch a train from London to Bruges in Belgium and see a beguinage in person. I was sure that we were going to visit an ancient but advanced women-only civilisation – some kind of Pompeii of matrilineal preservation.

When Rachael and I entered the beguinage, we were both disappointed. We’d loved walking from the historic centre of Bruges, over the arched Wijngaard Bridge and through the gatehouse and into the beguinage, which had existed since 1245. It was beautiful, but not revolutionary. I didn’t feel we had entered an alternative matriarchal dimension, a sci-fi alterworld, a Disneyland of historic feminism. Instead we found cobbled streets under pale steep-gabled A-frame houses around a central courtyard of lime and poplar trees. The collection of houses had separate sleeping quarters but communal indoor gathering, shared gardens and a church.

It was pretty and peaceful and dull. We couldn’t visualise the sœurs grises who once lived in self-sufficient simplicity – as single women who had chosen a life away from marriage – in this women-only compound.

“Would you have lived here in the 1200s?” teenage-me asked teenage-Rachael as we sat on a bench to eat ice cream. “Definitely not,” I recall teenage-Rachael replying. “I went to an all-girls school. I absolutely would not spend the rest of my life in a beguinage.”

We left to find a bar.

We didn’t speak about it again that day. But I began thinking about women’s spaces more and more. Over the years, after dozens of women I knew sought shelter and strength in women-only communities – and after needing them myself – the topic was pushed to the front of my mind.

I mentally ran through all the gender-separate spaces I had visited as a tourist in my personal and professional life – from sleepovers to sports clubs and religious ceremonies to safe- houses. I questioned what point they had served, and still did serve, in my life as a woman.

I started asking women around me about places they went to without men.

Stories started emerging from the shadows.

Herlands is available to buy now.

By Freja Love

Contributions from Professor Sara McClelland, feminist psychologist and Suzannah Weiss, resident sexologist for Fleshy and author of Eve’s Blessing: Uncovering the Lost Pleasure Behind Female Pain.

I was 13 when we had a sex education day at school. Five sessions spread across the timetable where teachers - who would usually be explaining Pythagoras’ theorem, refereeing netball matches or quizzing us on the War of the Roses - suddenly found themselves awkwardly teaching a room full of teenage girls and boys about STDs, contraception and safe sex.

In one session we were encouraged to shout out every slang word we could think of for vaginas and penises, but the whole day built towards the final session: practising putting condoms onto fake penises. We were giddy with excitement.

We learnt about consent too. I understood that I should always be able to say no to sex, and that even if I changed my mind halfway through, I could ask someone to stop.

But I don’t remember anyone explaining that sex was also supposed to feel good for girls, or that pain might mean something was wrong physically or emotionally. I don’t remember being told I could ask for something different, or that speaking up during sex didn’t only apply to saying “stop”.

Teaching teenagers about sexual pleasure in a healthy, sensitive way is complicated territory. But even then, there seemed to be a difference in what boys and girls were being prepared for. The boys in my class seemed excited about sex, like pleasure was an inevitability waiting for them. For girls, there was a feeling that sex was something to get through, adapt to, maybe eventually enjoy later.

If I did have sex, especially for the first few times, it would probably hurt. Pain was expected. Pleasure wasn’t. Orgasm definitely wasn’t.

It probably wasn’t until years later that I properly heard the idea that women could expect sex to feel good too. By then, a lot of us had already learned to negotiate with discomfort.

Feminist psychologist Sara McClelland has spent years studying this negotiation. Her research on sexual satisfaction uncovered something unsettling: when young adults were asked to define what “bad” sex meant to them, men and women described entirely different worlds.

Men tended to frame the low point of sexual experience in relatively neutral terms - loneliness, lack of stimulation, an unattractive partner. Women, however, described something else entirely. Terms such as “pain”, “degradation”, “emotionally sad”, and “depressed.”

For women, “bad sex” sat much closer to harm.

Strangely, even as women described experiences that included pain, distress and emotional discomfort, Sara’s research found they did not necessarily rate themselves as less satisfied overall - suggesting that what they call “satisfaction” has already been reshaped to fit a much lower baseline of expectation.

I spoke to Sara and writer and sexologist Suzannah Weiss to try to understand where those definitions come from - and why women’s versions of “bad” might contain pain rather than just disappointment.

“If you’re taught your whole life that you should expect pain with sex,” Sara explains, “you’ve set a certain kind of really odd standard for yourself.”

Sex itself becomes something “tied to pain from the get go”, so that expectation reshapes what feels normal. “You then have a population of people who are thinking, ‘I guess I’m going to have pain, so I should adjust’,” she adds.

Suzannah also traces it back to the idea that discomfort is part of womanhood.

“From periods and PMS to medical dismissal and first-time sex, we are taught that female bodies are inherently difficult, and pain is something to be managed rather than questioned,” Suzannah says. “Many women do not speak up when they’re experiencing pain [during sex] because they’ve been taught it’s normal.”

“They think life is painful for women - I’ll just have to deal with it.”

Suzannah describes a pattern where women are told to normalise discomfort, to assume that early sexual experiences will hurt, and to interpret that pain as inevitable rather than a warning sign.

And so something subtle happens. Pain stops being read as information from the body and starts being read as expectation.

When women describe “bad sex”, they are often not describing something merely unsatisfying. They are describing something they have already learned to endure.

Suzannah points to the way sex education itself is often structured around risk and restraint rather than pleasure.

Share

“Boys are taught about pleasurable events like erections and wet dreams. Girls are taught about periods, PMS and unplanned pregnancies,” she says. “This sets girls up to believe that becoming a woman is a painful experience while becoming a man is a pleasurable experience.”

In other words, emotional conditioning that can reshape what girls expect from sex before they have had it.

Writer and researcher Peggy Orenstein made an observation in a TED talk on young women and sexual pleasure: “While young women may feel entitled to engage in sexual behaviour, they don’t necessarily feel entitled to enjoy it.”

Suzannah describes how that plays out in practice: women struggling to speak up in bed, unsure whether asking for something different is assertive or “too much”, uncertain whether their discomfort is worth interrupting the moment for.

When women’s pain is consistently dismissed or treated as something to endure rather than investigate, the consequences extend far beyond sex. As writer Lili Loofbourow has pointed out, the gap in how that pain is treated is stark.

“These days, a man can walk out of his doctor’s office with a prescription for Viagra based on little but a self-report, but it still takes a woman, on average, 9.28 years of suffering to be diagnosed with endometriosis.” By the time women are finally taken seriously, she notes, “not just sex but everyday existence has become a life-deforming challenge.”

Related articles

I asked both Sara and Suzannah what they thought needed to change. And ultimately, it’s a reshaping of what we are taught to expect in the first place. For Sara, it doesn’t start with sex itself, but with behaviour far earlier. She talks about reciprocity - how little we are shown, even in everyday life, of what it looks like to treat each other fairly and mutually: “you did this for me, I’ll do that for you.” In her view, sex education is only part of it. What matters just as much is building a culture where supporting each other is expected across all relationships.

“Teach very young children how to share toys. Not as a metaphor for sex, but as a foundation for it” - a way of embedding reciprocity as normal long before intimacy is ever discussed, Sara suggests.

For Suzannah, the shift begins in education and culture too: language that treats female pleasure as real and legitimate, and sex education that centres communication, not just consent in the sense of stopping something, but also in what feels good.

“Women need to be taught that their voices matter in intimate spaces, not only when something is wrong, but when something could feel better,” she says.

A place where pleasure is not an accidental outcome for women, but an expected part of the experience itself. And while I don’t deny that putting condoms on plastic penises was fun at the time, I do wish we’d been told a little more about pleasure too.

When you first start trying for a baby it feels temporary, a brief spell of waiting before real life begins. For many, real life arrives quickly but for others, the months drag on. A due date might come and go with no-one marking it but you.

Late at night, you’ll search fertility forums for reassurance and advice. You’ll wait for blood tests, for test results, for phone calls, for scans, for hospital appointments. We often talk about what it’s like to become a mother or to be a mother. But we don’t really talk about what happens when motherhood is delayed, reshaped or never arrives at all.

Over the past year, I’ve spoken to dozens of women aged between 28 and 78 who, like me, existed in the wait and I collected their stories for a book. They talked about everything from stillbirth to secondary infertility. They recounted their experiences of IVF, solo parenting and surrogacy. Others described watching the door to motherhood slowly close.

If you’ve waited for a baby, I want to give you a sense of how things look and feel on the other side and reassure you that many women’s stories fall outside the mainstream narrative. With the benefit of my own experience and the insight of others, here’s what I wish I’d known.

Infertility has a way of infiltrating every aspect of your life

Even without my own medical notes in front of me, I remember how quickly my body became something to monitor and mistrust. I remember how my relationship with my husband came under strain too. I would seethe with anger when his work trips abroad clashed with my ovulation window.

Others could relate. “One evening I broke down in tears,” a woman wrote. “My husband had been detained at work and hadn’t made it home in time for us to try for a baby during the ‘fertile window’.”

Similarly, relationships with friends and family were tested. The same woman told me, “I wanted to be happy for friends and family who were having babies but it was increasingly difficult to be around them. My husband and I were becoming more reclusive”.

The women also discussed financial pressures and the impact on their career. Blood tests scheduled for early morning, scans squeezed in at lunch, promotions postponed.

Stories have a way of surfacing

Shame and silence are tied to infertility and baby loss, making many feel profoundly alone. One contributor told me, “When I was struggling with infertility, it felt like my secret, like a curse I carried around with me”. But what surprised many of the women, myself included, was how quickly sharing our stories created connection. Doing so gave others licence to speak. “It’s only since we started trying to have a family and I opened up about my experiences that I’ve realised how many women have had a tough time with infertility, miscarriage, stillbirths, fatal foetal abnormalities and complications with childbirth.”

Related articles

You’ll learn a whole new vocabulary of loss

I was stunned by the number of those who, like me, had never heard the term ‘missed miscarriage’, had never known that a pregnancy could end without the body recognising the loss. It was a sonographer who caught me up. “There’s a foetus but no heartbeat” he told me.

One woman described her experience of a medical termination, six months into her first pregnancy. “On a Friday I was given pills to end the pregnancy and on Monday I had to deliver the baby.” She was blindsided when she later started lactating, her body believing she had given birth to a healthy newborn. “I hadn’t been told that my breasts would become swollen and full of milk.”

The medical language could feel brutal; a miscarriage is a ‘spontaneous abortion’. ‘Evacuation of retained products of conception’ is medical speak for the operation to remove what someone knew to be their baby. One woman who had a medical termination after catastrophic complications told me she was heartbroken to hear her doctor describe the operation as an induced abortion. “I am - and always will be - pro-choice,” she wrote. “But this wasn’t that. Language matters.”

No one emerges unchanged

Many said the experience had changed them; they felt more resilient and empathetic. Others responded by creating the support systems that had been lacking for them - they founded charities, businesses and worked on creative projects. A few advocated for change within their companies, bringing about a more supportive work culture. But as one woman reflected “with the joy and the gratitude there is always a tinge of grief”.

Motherhood can arrive in a different way

For some, moving forward meant taking an indirect path to parenthood. “It would have been comforting to understand earlier that it might take several tries [of IVF] and that people who take other routes to parenthood are just as fulfilled,” one woman wrote.

Others became parents through solo parenting, surrogacy, donor conception and adoption. A solo mum said: “While my story didn’t follow the expected order, it’s still a love story of sorts. It’s the story of choosing to become a mum, even when the path wasn’t straightforward.” The words of one donor conceived mum could apply to anyone considering adoption, surrogacy or donor conception: “Something inside me clicked. He was mine. It didn’t matter how he came to me.”

A life without children can be full of love and purpose

For others the hardest shift was accepting they wouldn’t go on to have children. Yet they surprised me by writing about how they found peace and purpose. “I love my childless life, and no one is more surprised about that than me,” one told me. They rebuilt their lives in unexpected ways. Some became step-parents or godparents. One moved on from her dream of becoming a mother through endurance sport. Another found meaning through campaigning for reform. “It still gets me sometimes, a pang of emotion about not having children, but I don’t regret it,” she said. For another, the menopause spelled freedom. “While it brought a finality to the idea of being a mother, it also released me from my hormonal urge to have children.”

We are sold the idea that motherhood is the defining shape of a life but the women I spoke to challenged that narrative. “It’s not about being defeated. It’s about knowing when it’s time to gently let go of your imagined life and begin living life as it is.”

© Audrey Ward 2026. The Waiting Room: Stories of Love, Loss and Hope on the Path to Parenthood (HarperCollins £22), published on 21 May.

Every woman’s experience of money is different. Whether money feels like a source of freedom or stress, we want to hear from YOU.

The Female Lead, the women’s empowerment charity, is hosting a series of focus groups exploring how women really think and feel about money, saving and investing. We’re looking for confident savers, anxious avoiders, those just trying to get by, and everyone in between.

Not to judge. Not to lecture, but to listen.

This is a genuine research conversation. What we hear will help shape a global campaign that better reflects women’s lived experience and champion women’s financial confidence.

This independent research session will be led in collaboration with psychologist and author, Dr Terri Apter, whose work centres on women’s confidence and identity.

As a thank you, you’ll receive:
• A free copy of Smart Money Strong Women book by finance expert and neuroscientist, Sarah Roughsedge.
• An exclusive place on a Money Mindset online workshop with an independent female financial planner where you will uncover your financial personality to help build financial confidence.
• The chance to be part of a global conversation helping rewrite the story women are told about money.

Choose your session - click the link below to book your place TODAY:

Cambridge: Tuesday 26 May 2026, 2-4pm

Notting Hill, London: Wednesday 27 May 2026, 2-4pm

Liverpool Street, London: Thursday 28 May 2026, 2-4pm

Help shape a better financial future for women. Places are limited by design, so apply early.

Share