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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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“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.”

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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.”

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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

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

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New research shows women in the UK are turning to AI to help diagnose medical issues because their pain is being dismissed by doctors.

Nurofen’s fourth annual Gender Pain Gap Index reveals the scale of pain dismissal experienced by women across the UK and the devastating impact it has on their lives and their lack of trust in the healthcare system. When dismissed by doctors, women are turning to AI to seek out answers, risking their health and misdiagnoses.

The findings of the Gender Pain Gap Index show that:

• More than half (53%) of women feel their pain is ignored or dismissed - rising to 73% among 18–24-year-olds, compared to 40% of those over 55

• 74% of Black women and 65% of Asian women report being dismissed, compared to 51% of White women

• 94% of women who experienced dismissal say it had a negative impact on them

• Nearly half (46%) reported becoming reluctant to seek help again; more than a third (35%) said their trust in the medical system had been impacted, with 13% giving up seeking help entirely

With so many women not finding the support they need from doctors, sadly 3 in 4 (74%) have used unverified sources for answers, with 1 in 5 (21%) using AI tools like ChatGPT. This puts women’s health in danger with misinformation and unreliable sources.

Women are suffering because of medical misogyny and it’s time for the gender pain gap to be closed for good. One in six women experience severe pain every day, and are in more pain, more often than men according to the new research published. And one in two women believe their pain is ignored or dismissed because of their gender.

The new report states nearly three in five (57%) women say they felt dismissed by their GP (57%), with 67% of women feeling that they were dismissed by healthcare professionals (GPs, specialist consultants, and pharmacists) compared to 53% of men.

Penny East, CEO of the Fawcett Society, said: “The Gender Pain Gap is a long-standing equality issue affecting women and girls. When more than half of British women continue to feel their pain is dismissed and millions are resorting to unverified sources for health advice, we’re seeing a systemic problem at play. Having our pain minimised affects our wellbeing, our worth and our health outcomes.”

The UK government’s Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) warned women’s health is not being sufficiently prioritised in the Government’s system-wide NHS reforms, in March this year.

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Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee and Labour MP Sarah Owen said: “Our inquiry has shown that too many girls and young women are still being let down by a system that fails them at every stage, from the lack of access to a school nurse to dismissal in primary care, and they continue to face unnecessarily painful procedures in diagnosis of relatively common conditions. The Government’s response to the Committee’s 2024 ‘medical misogyny’ report was deeply disappointing, and as our new report sets out, the Committee is not convinced that the menstrual and gynaecological needs of young women and girls has been sufficiently prioritised in wider reforms to the healthcare system.”

In April 2026, former Health Minister Wes Streeting vowed to stop women being “gaslit” by doctors as he relaunched the women’s health strategy for England, saying, “[Women] have for so long been let down by a healthcare system that too often gaslights women, treating their pain as an inconvenience and their symptoms as an overreaction.”

“It’s clear the system is failing women. Women’s voices must be central to delivering effective, respectful and empathetic care. We need to hit medical misogyny where it hurts – the wallet. Today’s renewed strategy will tackle the issues women face every day and ensure no woman is left fighting to be heard.”

Penny East, CEO of the Fawcett Society, said: “The government’s renewed Women’s Health Strategy is a welcome step, but policy must be met with action and wider societal change: we need everyone from the NHS to brands to employers to confront this issue and make improvements in the way women are supported. Nurofen’s Pain Pass is an example of a tool that provides women with practical support to communicate their pain. We need much more innovation and education throughout the health system; women are living with the daily consequences of not being heard.”

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We hear a lot about inclusivity from brands - but what happens when the marketing looks more inclusive than the actual product? That’s the question Stefanie Reid found herself asking after trying to …

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We hear a lot about inclusivity from brands - but what happens when the marketing looks more inclusive than the actual product? That’s the question Stefanie Reid found herself asking after trying to buy a pair of running shoes. Or more specifically, just one.

The Paralympian, broadcaster and executive coach - who lost her right leg below the knee as a teenager - shared her frustration at having to pay hundreds of pounds for two trainers when she only needed one. It sparked a much bigger conversation about accessibility, authenticity and whether brands are really designing for the people they claim to include.

In this issue of Take The Lead, we’re spotlighting some exciting news for women. A new non-invasive scan for endometriosis diagnosis has shown promising results in an early trial at the University of Oxford. We’re also celebrating Rachel Entrekin, who became the first woman ever to win the ‘Cocodona 250’ outright - a brutal 250-mile race across Arizona. She finished in a record-breaking 56 hours, 9 minutes, and 48 seconds, smashing not only her own previous women’s record, but the men’s course record too.

We also caught up with Melanie C about the women from real life, history, and fiction who’ve inspired her for the first episode of My Female Leads. We especially loved her fictional hero. Meanwhile, at the British Academy Television Awards, disability advocate Tasha Ghouri encouraged people to make accessibility part of everyday thinking, not just an afterthought.

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

The Female Lead Team

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We’re talking about…

🩻 A possible breakthrough for endometriosis diagnosis - A new non-invasive scan for endometriosis has shown promising results in an early trial at the University of Oxford. Researchers tested an experimental radiotracer called maraciclatide, which can “light up” endometriosis tissue during scans - potentially removing the need for diagnostic surgery.

Women in England currently wait an average of more than nine years for a diagnosis. Researchers say the breakthrough could dramatically speed up access to answers, treatment, and support for millions of women living with pain.

🏃‍♀️ A woman has won one of the world’s toughest ultramarathons outright - Rachel Entrekin has become the first woman to win the Cocodona 250 overall, beating the entire field in a record-breaking time of 56 hours, 9 minutes, and 48 seconds.

The 250-mile race across Arizona is considered one of the toughest endurance events in the world. Rachel smashed the previous course record by more than two hours, despite powering through on minimal sleep and stopping along the way to pet dogs.

Inspire me…

Stefanie Reid MBE doesn’t call herself a disability campaigner. In fact, she actively resists the label.

“I think there’s a big issue as soon as you start segmenting the population into people with disabilities and people without,” she tells The Female Lead. “What I advocate for is every single person being able to find themselves existing in an environment that allows them to reach their full potential.”

Read the full article here

Final thought…

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Stefanie Reid MBE doesn’t call herself a disability campaigner. In fact, she actively resists the label.

“I think there’s a big issue as soon as you start segmenting the population into people with disabilities and people without,” she tells The Female Lead. “What I advocate for is every single person being able to find themselves existing in an environment that allows them to reach their full potential.”

That distinction matters. Because Stef - paralympian, broadcaster, keynote speaker and executive coach - isn’t interested in rage for rage’s sake. She’s interested in solutions.

The former Paralympic sprinter and long jumper, who lost her right leg in a boating accident just before her 16th birthday, took up recreational running after retiring from elite sport. While searching online for a new pair of high-performance trainers in early 2024, Stef hit a familiar frustration: she only needs one running shoe.

“The Nike trainers I was recommended by friends at parkrun were between £200 and £250,” she says. “It’s not that I’m opposed to funding my hobby, but it’s so frustrating when I’m literally going to throw half of this away.”

Then Stef remembered Nike had displayed their running gear on amputee mannequins with a running blade like hers. “It was so cool to see the inclusivity. My sister sent me photos of models with a blade like mine in a store in America and a friend spotted it in Nike’s London store a month later,” Stef says. “Obviously, somebody in that store had to dress that model with one shoe and they would have realised there’s one shoe leftover.”

So she contacted Nike to ask whether she could buy a single shoe or receive a discount. The answer was no.

“At one point they offered me a one-time 15% discount,” Stef says. “And I was like, ‘That’s great, but I’m still going to have this problem for the rest of my life’.”

What happened next resonated far beyond the disability community. Stef shared her experience online and the post exploded.

“It wasn’t actually primarily people with disabilities reposting,” she explains. “It was an entire population of people who wanted authenticity from brands. They want companies to live out their values.”

That point feels particularly powerful in an era where inclusivity is often used as a marketing strategy. Stef’s criticism was never about “calling out” one company for the sake of it, it was about asking whether representation means anything if systems don’t change alongside the marketing.

“I specifically targeted brands who were using amputee runners in their ads,” she says. “Your marketing has to match your actual practices in life.”

Nike later reached out privately to Stef and had “really productive conversations” with her. “I firmly believe when things like this happen, it’s not because somebody was sitting in a room thinking, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ They just didn’t think about it,” she adds.

That’s where Adidas entered the story.

Following renewed media attention around Stef’s campaign, the sportswear giant quietly contacted her in early 2026. “They said, ‘We don’t want anything from you. We just want to tell you what we’ve done and get your input’,” she recalls. “It was this really lovely, humble conversation.”

Adidas had introduced a single-shoe service for amputees without launching a huge marketing campaign around it. “They said, ‘We know it’s not perfect, but we’d rather try.’”

So Stef decided to test it herself. Quietly. She visited an Adidas store in London as a regular customer. What happened next is the kind of story that changes industries because of how simple it is.

“I went to the till and asked for the single-shoe service,” she says. “And the staff member’s face lit up. She said, ‘This is so exciting, I was just trained on this two weeks ago and this is the first time I get to use the code’.”

“That was the thing that impressed me most,” Stef explains. “They’d actually gone through and done this properly. I do love that Adidas was paying attention.”

The interaction itself stayed with her too.

“She stumbled over her words a little bit and said, ‘I’m really sorry, I don’t know how to ask this properly, but I need to make sure I’m putting the right shoe in the box.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, that is a very important question, ask away’.”

Stef walked out carrying one trainer. “It really was that simple.”

But the bigger issue Stef raises goes far beyond amputees.

“More than half of the adult population has feet that aren’t the same size,” she points out. “For most people it’s fine, they go half a size up and get away with it. But for a lot of people it’s more than that. You’re either buying two sets of shoes or wearing shoes that don’t fit.”

To her, this is about rethinking the entire fashion industry’s relationship with bodies, accessibility and sustainability.

“Nobody’s body fits this one standard,” she says. “And yet that is what the entire fashion industry is based on, a concept that simply isn’t correct. But consumers think, ‘If you’re going to treat everyone with respect, you’re probably going to treat me well too’.”

It’s impossible not to connect this mindset to Stef’s boat accident as a teenager. Her life was saved by a surgeon in Toronto, Canada who amputated her right leg below the knee. Surviving the trauma changed her perspective entirely.

“I spent a significant portion of my life in the able-bodied world and gave very little thought to people with disabilities,” Stef says. “I think of my life in terms of ‘before’ and ‘after my accident’. I realised life is fragile. You face death and it changes your perspective on everything. I emerged as a very different person because my priorities changed. It’s life altering and life affirming. But I could have lost every limb on my body and I still would have been me - competitive.”

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The experience transformed Stef’s relationship with risk and failure. “The worst has happened,” she says simply. “So this can’t be so bad. Let’s just try it.”

It’s now the philosophy behind her Hail Mary Friday Club, where people challenge themselves to do something bold every week.

“Every Friday you do something you’d usually consider too bold or audacious for yourself. They usually don’t work out but that’s not the point. It’s just like inoculating yourself to failure. My accident was super unfortunate. But you realise that at rock bottom there’s actually quite a lot of power,” Stef says. “Because you don’t have anything to lose.”

Stef’s message isn’t about striving for perfection. It’s about building systems that make everyone feel seen.

And sometimes, that starts with something as ordinary as buying a pair of trainers - or just the one you need.

Learn more about Stef and the Hail Mary Friday Club here.

If you’ve ever taken a river boat along the Thames and passed under Waterloo Bridge, you might have heard it called the Ladies Bridge. And if you haven’t, consider this your heads-up.

The nickname has been floating around for years, passed on by river boat tour guides. For a long time, it sounded like one of those stories that’s nice if it’s true. It turns out, it is.

By the 1930s, a century after it officially opened, Waterloo Bridge was falling apart. A rebuild was already in motion when construction began in 1939 - right as the Second World War broke out. As men were sent to fight, Britain was left with a labour shortage that reached into every industry, including construction, and women stepped in.

Women’s contribution to the war effort is often told through familiar images - factory lines, uniforms, the “we can do it” poster in the US. (Although, fun fact: “We Can Do It!” wasn’t widely seen during World War II. It was actually an internal Westinghouse image, shown only in February 1943 to encourage existing female employees to work harder - not to recruit women. It was only rediscovered in the early 1980s and later became widely reproduced)

Even Queen Elizabeth II trained as a mechanic and driver with the Auxiliary Territorial Service. But what tends to get less attention is the scale of women’s work in places like building sites.

By 1944, around 25,000 women were working in construction across the UK. On Waterloo Bridge, it’s now believed that up to 65% of the workforce were women. They were doing skilled, physical, technical labour - lifting, welding, assembling - the kind of work they’d long been excluded from.

And yet, when the bridge reopened in 1945, there was no mention of them.

A mix of wartime censorship and incomplete records meant their contribution was barely documented. Without official recognition, the story started to slip. Over time, it became something closer to myth - kept alive more by word of mouth than by anything written down.

It stayed that way until the early 2000s, when historian Christine Wall began looking into it. Alongside filmmakers Karen Livesey and Jo Wiser, she went digging through archives. At the National Science and Media Museum, they found photographs that had been overlooked for decades - including images of women dismantling the original bridge, and a welder known only as Dorothy working in the final years of construction.

They also tracked down testimonies from families of workers, confirming what the nickname had hinted at all along: women made up a significant part of the workforce.

In 2015, the bridge was re-listed, this time acknowledging their role.

The wider context makes that story feel less surprising. During the war, women’s employment rose sharply - from around 5.1 million in 1939 to over 7.25 million by 1943. Nearly half of all women of working age were employed or in national service. Among single women aged 18 to 40, it was closer to 90%.

They became mechanics, engineers, munitions workers, air raid wardens, bus drivers and fire engine drivers. More than 640,000 served in the armed forces through organisations like the ATS, WRNS and WAAF. Elsewhere, over 80,000 joined the Women’s Land Army, working long hours in tough conditions to keep the country fed.

Because women were moving into skilled roles that had previously been closed to them, it forced conversations about equal pay and status. Some limited agreements on equal pay were introduced, but they were narrow and often avoided. On average, women still earned just over half of what men did.

At the same time, Britain had to respond to a new reality. With more women working, childcare became a national issue. Wartime nurseries expanded rapidly, though they were always seen as temporary. The expectation that women would return to domestic life never fully went away.

And after the war, many did - not always by choice. As men returned, women were pushed out of jobs in large numbers. Despite wanting to stay in employment, most lost the economic independence they had gained.

The Ladies Bridge is more than infrastructure - it’s a record of a moment when the workforce shifted dramatically. There’s still an ongoing campaign, supported by the Women’s Engineering Society, to install a blue plaque on the bridge to honour the women who built it.

When you zoom out, the gap between contribution and recognition is hard to ignore. Across both the UK and the US, there are still fewer than ten women-only memorials dedicated to the Second World War. In Britain, the most prominent is the Monument to the Women of World War II on Whitehall, unveiled in 2005 - the same year Waterloo Bridge’s story was formally acknowledged.

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The news cycle? Still fairly bleak. Longer days can’t fix everything - but they do help. And alongside all of that, women - as always - have been getting on with doing remarkable things across space, sport, environmental activism, art, healthcare and human rights.

Consider it our job to make sure you hear about the very best good news stories from the past month.

One giant leap for women

On 1 April, Christina Koch quite literally reached new heights. As a mission specialist on Artemis II, she became the first woman to fly around the moon, joining a four-person crew on a 10-day journey from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. It marks the first time in over 50 years that humans have returned to the moon’s orbit.

Koch, an engineer and physicist, already holds the record for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman, and previously took part in the first all-female spacewalks. In a field where nearly 90% of astronauts have historically been men, her presence is reshaping what leadership in STEM looks like. As she put it: an “incredible privilege and responsibility”.

You can read more about the women involved in the mission here.

A clean sweep for women saving the planet

For the first time ever, all of the Goldman Environmental Prize (often dubbed the “Green Nobel”) winners were women.

• Iroro Tanshi (Nigeria) – Protected endangered bats and their habitat in Afi Mountain by leading community efforts to prevent destructive wildfires.

• Borim Kim (South Korea) – Led the first successful youth climate court case in Asia, forcing the government to strengthen its emissions targets.

• Sarah Finch (UK) – Won a landmark Supreme Court case requiring the climate impact of fossil fuels to be considered in planning decisions.

• Theonila Roka Matbob (Papua New Guinea) – Pressured mining giant Rio Tinto to take responsibility for environmental damage caused by the Panguna mine.

• Alannah Acaq Hurley (United States) – Helped stop a major open-pit mining project in Alaska, protecting land and ecosystems.

• Yuvelis Morales Blanco (Colombia) – Mobilised her community to successfully halt fracking projects along the Magdalena River.

The six winners, representing regions from all over the world, were recognised for grassroots environmental work that ranges from land protection to fighting industrial pollution. Each receives $200,000, but most importantly, global visibility.

Since its founding, the prize has honoured 233 defenders across 98 countries.

Abortion decriminalised

In England and Wales, a significant legal shift took place. The Crime and Policing Bill 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April, meaning women will no longer face criminal prosecution for ending their own pregnancies.

This doesn’t change when or how abortions are legally available. What it does do is remove women from a criminal framework that, until now, meant potential investigation, charges, and even life imprisonment under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.

It sends women in the UK a clear message that abortion is healthcare, not a crime.

Afghan Women United can return to competition

In football, FIFA made a quietly radical move. Afghan women’s refugee players - many of whom fled after the Taliban regained power in 2021 - have been officially recognised as a national team, without needing approval from the Taliban.

The team, known as Afghan Women United, is made up of players now living across Australia, Europe and the Middle East. It’s part of a wider FIFA strategy to support Afghan women in sport, including advocacy and access to play.

Given that the original national team was effectively erased, this is more than administrative - it’s a way of restoring identity, visibility and the right to compete.

Women’s rugby won’t slow down

Women’s rugby is officially the fastest-growing team sport in the world. Around 2.7 million women and girls now play globally, up from just 200,000 in the early 2000s, with a surge in new fans helping to reshape a younger, more balanced audience.

In Scotland, that rise was marked in a very literal way. Claire Luxton unveiled Now We Arrive, a 2,228 square metre artwork spanning the pitch at Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium, during a Women’s Six Nations match that drew a record-breaking crowd of over 30,000 - the largest ever for a women’s sporting event in Scotland.

Commissioned by Skyscanner for Scottish Rugby, and supported by UN Women, the piece takes its name from the Scottish Gaelic Ruighinn, meaning “arrival” - which, at this point, feels about right.

Watch the video on Claire’s Instagram

Better information, safer pregnancies

Tommy’s, the pregnancy and baby charity, has launched the Pregnancy Health Information Questionnaire, aiming to understand how clearly and effectively pregnancy advice is actually reaching people.

Because knowing your body is one thing - having the right information at the right time is another. The survey looks at how women access and understand health guidance, where gaps exist, and how communication can improve.

It’s open to anyone currently pregnant or who has been in the last three years, including those who’ve experienced baby loss. Tommy’s goal is to ensure that important health information is not only evidence based, but also clear, consistent and available at the right moment.

If you needed a reminder that good things are still happening - and that women are behind so many of them - consider this it. Share this with your friends, your group chats, your mum. Everyone could do with a bit more good news.

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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. Because while news headlines tend to amplify the worst, we’re just as committed to documenting the better.

As The Devil Wears Prada sequel, which has been 20 years in the making, finally hits cinemas, it lays bare just how much the magazine industry has changed in the decades since the glory days of magazines in 2006 when I was taking my first steps as a journalist in the media.

When the first film came out, I was starting out in magazines and ironically shared the name of the protagonist Andrea (Andy Sachs - played by Anne Hathaway) much to my friends’ amusement. Like her, I had just done a stint at Conde Nast (Features Writer at Glamour Magazine). It was the days of huge budget shoots, bottomless expense accounts, dressing in sky high heels and evening-worthy designer dresses to the office, and parties every night of the week. It was also a time before social media, when magazines were the gatekeepers of all that was glamorous and exclusive.

Like Andy though, I craved the world of investigative journalism. I left Conde Nast to work on features and investigative reporting for the Daily Mail, Sunday Times and Grazia, even dipping my feet into some undercover reporting for Channel 4 and ITV before returning to magazines when I landed my dream job as Features Director at Marie Claire.

In the new film, we catch up with Andy who has lived out her dream as a ‘serious journalist’ in newspapers and - without any spoilers! - suddenly finds herself back in the world of magazines as Features Editor on the legendary glossy Runway. The film neatly spotlights a world that has been turned upside down by the demise of print (and advertising) and rise of digital, social media and AI. We watch as Miranda Priestly and her team struggle to navigate the sweeping changes within the world they once ruled.

As someone who has spent over two decades in the industry and most recently 6 years as editor-in-chief of Marie Claire, I’ve seen all this all play out in real time and yet, it’s still a world I love. After all, where could you jet off to Paris for Couture Fashion week one day and be at a Downing Street reception with the Prime Minister talking about gender equality the next? So if you’re still keen to break into publishing, here are a few things I’ve learned along the way...

Hone your personal voice

We live in a world with relentless digital noise. Your unique perspective is your superpower. Be bold enough to speak up and express your own point of view. Have you had an unconventional background? Are you the only person who looks like you in your team? Use that lens on the world to your advantage and write or speak from a place that feels authentic and genuinely yours. This is your personal brand.

Build your network

You cannot climb the ladder alone. Build a network of like-minded women cheerleaders via social media and IRL who have your back. These women will be your sounding board when things get tough and help you navigate the big decisions that will obviously come your way. If you can, also find a mentor or role model who can help you identify what sort of leader you want to be in five or 10 years time. They don’t even need to be from the same industry - mine was an influential black woman I met in my twenties from the banking world, but she gave me so many useful lessons about how to move through the corporate world boldly yet gracefully as a leader.

Do scary things

Some of the best moments in my life have come from saying yes to things that terrify me: speaking on a live TV politics show, interviewing the Prime Minister, accepting a new job I didn’t feel 100% ready for. These wonderful moments are where the growth is, so seize them. Regularly challenge yourself to step outside your comfort zone and see what happens. You’re capable of more than you think.

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Be prepared to compromise

Don’t get hung up too early on the ‘dream’ publication or role. I always wanted to work at Marie Claire but did a total of five jobs at different publications before I got there and learned so much from each one of them. A goal is great, but side-stepping into unanticipated roles along the way is a great opportunity to experience new working environments and learn new skills, which will ultimately make you better at the job you want when you get there.

Build resilience

You need a thick skin to survive in this industry. Make your peace with being rejected for jobs or pitches and don’t take it personally if your work is criticised. I’ve interviewed countless highly successful women, from actors to entrepreneurs, throughout my career and all of them have credited best learnings to their ‘failures’. The ability to learn from and thrive after setbacks is what being successful in any career is all about.

Stay curious

It’s easy (and lazy) to rely on the same handful of news sources, platforms or accounts. To stay informed and ahead of trends you need to be consuming a wide range of content. Not just the outlets whose opinions you agree with, but those you vehemently disagree with too.

Be disciplined

Creativity is nothing without preparation and discipline. Do your research, prepare thoroughly and stick to deadlines. If you have a big interview, meeting or event, over preparation is key. I always find my nerves dissipate before something I’m scared of doing if I’m confident I’ve done the best job of preparing first.

Look after your health

We work in a demanding deadline-driven industry where an element of stress is part of life. Find something away from the day job that keeps you healthy and focussed. I’m a passionate runner and have always started my work day with a run or work out. It sets me up with a positive mindset for the day and is often the time when I get my best ideas.

Follow Andrea on Instagram here.

Living with Tourette’s Syndrome is the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me. I am a mixed race, disabled teenager and none of those things have held me back. If anything, they have shaped me into someone determined to be seen, heard, and unapologetically powerful.

Tourette’s Syndrome (TS) is a chronic neurodevelopmental disorder defined by involuntary motor and vocal tics. I know that definition by heart. I was diagnosed with severe TS at 14, but I had already been living it. The best way I can describe it is like a sneeze - impossible to stop. Suppressing it feels like trapping pressure inside your chest until it burns.

I remember when I was 13 during a maths exam, I had a cold and needed to cough but I tried to hold it in, very aware of the silent hall. That pressure built until it exploded into my first tic attack. I slammed my hands and head against the desk. I don’t remember leaving the exam, but I remember going home and losing control - blinking, whistling, hitting my head against the wall. It was terrifying.

Then I had to give up a lot of things including swimming - something I loved, something that grounded me. Losing it felt like losing part of myself. These moments forced me to confront a reality I didn’t understand and couldn’t control. That is why Tourette’s can feel like the worst thing: because you are constantly learning how to exist in a body that doesn’t always listen to you.

But Tourette’s is also the best thing that has happened to me - because it gave me purpose.

It pushed me toward filmmaking, toward storytelling, toward creating spaces where difference is not hidden but celebrated. I don’t want people to just understand Tourette’s - I want them to understand people. All people. It is also freeing in the weirdest way possible as I don’t have the option to be anything but myself. There is no “perfect,” polished version of me to hide behind. Tourette’s strips that away. It forces me to be myself, unapologetically, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when I wish I could disappear into silence.

And somehow, in that lack of control, I found a different kind of control - the choice to own it.

I’m now 17 and have turned my experience into action. I wrote Tic, Tic, Boom, a story about a girl who sees her Tourette’s as a superpower. Writing it helped me process my diagnosis, but more importantly, it gave me a way to reach others. I am also developing a documentary, Tic by Tic, where people with Tourette’s can share their stories in their own voices. In the hopes of filming it soon I want to reach a global audience to help educate others on the condition and create a comforting and supportive community.

If you’re living with Tourette’s - or anything that makes you feel different - my advice is this: don’t make yourself smaller to make others comfortable. You are not the problem. Having a disability isn’t the problem but the way people treat you is.

You will spend so much time thinking, “What if people stare? What if I tic? What if I’m too much?” But the truth is, people will stare sometimes. You might tic a lot. And yes, you might be “too much” for some people - but you will be exactly enough for the right ones.

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It’s easy to say, “You shouldn’t care what others think,” but in reality, that’s one of the hardest things to do. So start small - care less. Choose one moment where you don’t shrink yourself. Then another.

Use what makes you different. Don’t hide it - shape it into something. Whether that’s art, film, writing, sport, or simply existing loudly in your own space, let it become yours.

Also, find your people. Even if it’s just one person who understands, that connection matters more than fitting into a crowd that never tried to understand you anyway.

I’m determined to educate as many people as possible. It’s not always a great conversation starter insulting someone or calling someone a “bitch”. But it allows me to say, “I’m sorry for calling you that but this is why”. That’s my way of starting a conversation - making people aware of it so it doesn’t come as a surprise and people know from the beginning but don’t feel obliged to do it. That’s just me.

Sometimes people are cruel, unjustified and rude because they are either uneducated, insecure or just miserable. So I will take a page out of my own book and - in my head, of course - stick a middle finger up to them. I don’t believe we should ever apologise for something you cannot control. You don’t see them apologising for something they can.

An example of this is the 2026 BAFTAs where John Davidson ticced a racial slur as Sinners stars Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented the first prize of the ceremony. That whole situation made me realise how the media and society treats disability and how powerless it made me feel. It fuelled me to advocate more than ever.

For anyone else living with Tourette’s I say this: You are not behind. You are not broken. You are building something different - and that takes strength most people will never have to find. You are fighting a battle no one else can imagine going through because they aren’t living your experience so don’t compare yourself to others whose challenges are different to yours.

Tourette’s is my biggest challenge and my greatest strength, equally a curse and a blessing. Yes, I swear a lot, and I’m weird even without my tics. So I will embrace every bit of myself no matter how hard it is. And I will keep using it - through film, through storytelling, through visibility - until no one with Tourette’s, or any difference, ever feels as alone as I once did.

You can follow Lucy on Instagram here.

Stress has an insidious way of creeping up on us, like a cloud covering the sun, and before we know it, we have tipped from perhaps low stress levels into complete and utter overwhelm and even burnout if we don’t notice and act fast to change things.

And it’s more common than you think - research shows 85% of us experience stress at some point and 63% at least on a weekly basis, with women 10% more likely to experience stress than men daily. In 2026, research shows 66% of women experience stress at least weekly.

If you are tired of feeling stressed out then Dr Radha Modgil has 7 ways to tackle it.

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.

Christina Koch made history at the beginning of April as mission specialist on NASA’s Artemis II mission as she took off with her fellow astronauts to become the first woman to fly around the moon. Historically, nearly 90% of astronauts have been men so Christina’s role as a leader in STEM is crucial for inspiring young women and girls.

The sell-out play John Proctor Is the Villain, now set to return to the West End in 2027, follows a group of teenage girls in a 2018 Georgia classroom as #MeToo reshapes how they see The Crucible - and their own lives. What begins as literary analysis turns into a sharp, funny, and devastating look at power while keeping teenage girls - and their experiences - firmly at its centre.

Years ago, Jaqui Rhule-Dagher believed that coming out would “ruin her career” as one of the few Black employees at her firm, and she did not want to add her sexuality to the mix. Now out at work, she says LGBTQ+ visibility in law is still limited, with few senior role models, and founded Legally Queerly in 2023 to amplify queer voices across the profession.

Research shows that women are less likely to receive life-saving CPR in a cardiac arrest, with a third of UK women not given any help before emergency crews arrive. Studies also suggest hesitation plays a role, with many bystanders worried about touching a woman’s chest or using a defibrillator, despite the fact that immediate action is critical in those first minutes after collapse.

And pregnancy and baby charity Tommy’s has launched a Pregnancy Health Information Questionnaire to understand how pregnancy health information is shared across the UK and whether it’s reaching people when they need it most, with findings set to improve future guidance. Participants can also enter a £250 voucher prize draw.

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

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Stress has an insidious way of creeping up on us, like a cloud covering the sun, and before we know it, we have tipped from perhaps low stress levels into complete and utter overwhelm and even burnou…

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