International Women's Day Witness

Nottinghamshire Police

was investigating the case.

Sima Kotecha, BBC News, Nottingham.

Now on BBC News - to mark

International Women's Day,

a special edition of Witness.

Hello and welcome to a special

edition of Witness to celebrate

International Women's Day

here at The British Library.

We are looking back at five

remarkable women who have featured

in the programme over the past year.

We'll meet the civil servant

who challenged one of India's top

policeman after he sexually

harassed her, a pioneering racing

driver and member of

the Women's Land Army,

who helped to feed Britain

during the Second World War.

But first, in 2004, the Kenyan

environmental campaigner

Wangari Maathai became

the first African woman to win

the Nobel Peace Prize.

She spent much of her life trying

to protect Kenya's forests.

We went to the forest on the edge

of Nairobi to talk to her daughter.

My mother was often

asked, were you afraid?

You were fearless, how can you do

all of these things?

She said I was afraid,

but what needed to be done

was so compelling

that I had to do it.

She grew up surrounded by nature,

surrounded by the beauty of nature.

I also remember her describing her

mother being a farmer,

her mother grew all the food

that they ate.

And then she goes away

to school, to university,

out in the United States,

and she comes back and she was

a very young member of the academic

staff at at the university.

She was struck by the issues that

were being presented by women

who were very much like her mother.

There was a lack of fuel,

lack of water and lack

of nutritious food.

And everything with a described

she felt was connected

to a degradation of the landscape,

and so why not plant

trees, she asked them?

The women here till the land

so it is important that they know

how to convert conserve the soil.

She founded the green belt movement

in 1977 to help women plant trees

and at the same time begin

to understand how to look

after the land themselves.

It is 50 million trees

now and counting.

Very quickly, the green belt

movement became more than just

about planting trees,

because we had an extremely

dictatorial government

and a 1-party system.

The land was being parcelled

out to the friends of

the administration of the day.

And so, protecting it

necessarily becomes political.

This was by far one

of the scariest battles.

People are showing a lot of anger

because nobody knew the extent

to which the forest is destroyed.

It was vicious.

She got very physically hurt and she

was in hospital, but she survived.

And so, whenever she survived

she knew it was time to go back

and finish the work.

We are here in Karura forest,

of the most beautiful urban

forests in the world.

And it is ranked to the movement

and the efforts of my mother

at the time that saved it.

But she also was a human rights

activist, a women's rights activist.

I have no idea where these police

men are taking me now.

I have done nothing...

To challenge the president and the

party of the day, that was gutsy.

An ecologist from Kenya has become

the first African woman to win

the Nobel Peace Prize.

Wangari Maathai...

She just didn't believe

that it was her.

I think for a while she probably

thought, maybe it is a mistake!

But it was one of the most amazing

moments, to see her enjoy

the spotlight and the platform,

which she had never had before.

I think the whole day

she sort of spent saying,

I didn't know anyone was listening.

My mother died on the 25th

of September 2011.

She has left quite a legacy I think.

Suddenly, for us as Kenyans,

as women, as Africans,

to believe in the power of one,

I think the fact that one woman

from the highlands of Kenya could be

such a potent force for change,

it is one of the most

inspiring things.

Wangari Maathai, talking

to the programme in the beautiful

Karura forest in Nairobi.

In 1988, India's first ever sexual

harassment case was brought to court

and the accused was a senior

policeman celebrated

for fighting militants.

She may be educated, an educated,

working class, an officer,

a high-ranking officer like me.

Nobody is immune, and it

happens every day.

In 1988, I was serving as special

secretary for finance.

I had about 20,000 people

under me and 90% were men.

There was a dinner party.

Hosted by the Home Secretary

and the Director-General

of the police was also there,

and he called out to me

and he said that I want to talk

to you about something.

He got up and he came and stood

in front of me, towering above the.

He put a finger on my face like that

and said, up, come on.

Come along.

Come on, you come along with me.

So, I said, I said above Mr Gill, go

away from here, you're misbehaving.

And so I got up and that

was the time when he

slapped me on the bottom.

That's what he did.

Always people have considered it

to be a very trivial thing

but I could not get over

the enormity of it.

Letting it go meant living

with lowered self-esteem,

gulping down my humiliation,

facing all the other people.

The consequences of

complaining I had not really

estimated at that time.

Nobody was willing to take up

the case for me because they were

so frightened of him

being the highest ranking police

officer, no-one wanted to do

anything against him.

And I found that no-one had ever

filed in section 509,

which is the lesser offences.

17 years, long years, of my life,

all of it was taken up

by this, by this one case.

The Lords had quashed the case,

the case reached the Supreme Court

and it was the Supreme Court

which called for all of the records,

reinstated the matter and they gave

the definition of modesty.

They've reprimanded the High Court

judge and said, this cannot be

treated as something trivial.

All the people in every

household, this was the talk

between husband and wife.

The limelight was not on Gill,

it was on me, why had

I registered the case?

Must be something wrong with me!

I attended the proceedings

of the trial throughout,

along with my husband.

But on the day the verdict came,

I especially requested, I said,

I don't want to go there.

KPS Gill was expecting to win

and then my husband's

driver rang up and said,

he has been convicted

on both counts.

I never fought against KPS

Gill, I fought against

the mindset of a society.

People have seen that offences

against women are increasing.

No.

Now, now more women

are speaking out.

And Rupan Bajaj is now retired

from the civil service.

Next we're going back

to the Second World War,

when thousands of British women

signed up to work on farms

to grow vital crops

for a country under siege.

They became known as the land girls.

And Mona McLeod was one of them.

I can look back on the war

and I can know that

what I did was worth doing.

Creating food was essential.

RADIO: Down on the farm

the land girls are doing

their bit and a bit more!

I was 17, studying, I thought,

to go to Cambridge.

And I knew nothing

about the land army.

My father appeared one day and said,

I want to talk to you.

And he said, I believe I have always

spoken about the importance

of the higher education of women,

but first we should concentrate

on winning the war.

And so I said, yes, daddy.

And a week later or so I had

left school and I was

on the train for Scotland.

NEWSREEL: The war has taken most

of the younger men away

from Scotland's farms,

leaving the farmers without enough

help to produce our

vital supplies...

They treated me very

nicely, and it was a dairy

farm, about 65 cows.

And the first week I was

sent into the dairy.

And I was told to and milk

the difficult cows.

And I'm sorry to say that at the end

of the week they have all gone dry.

And the Dairymen said he thought

I ought to be sent to the stables.

Fortunately I love horses

and the horses and I got

on very much better.

Work was very hard, and we have no

protective clothing,

and the uniform we had

was absolutely useless

for keeping you warm in winter.

So, the first winter I had

chilblains, my arms,

my ears and my hands and my knees

and my heels and my toes.

And until I got my brother's

cast-off jackets and I got some

wonderful wooden knickers that came

down to my knees, I discovered that

you didn't have to be freezing.

But when I first went out

I thought, you have just got

to suffer to win the war.

The land girls I knew all worked

quite separately on different farms.

I never met a girl

who worked in again.

-- in a gang.

All the girls I got

to know were isolated,

totally and absolutely.

One girl on a farm, and the nearest

girl ever was four miles away.

NEWSREEL: Women have proved

themselves able to undertake

the most skilled work.

All thanks and honour to the land

girls, who are doing

this magnificent job.

I never for one moment

thought of giving up.

I didn't expect the war

to go on for five years.

But the idea of stopping

was not thinkable.

You just went on, went on and on.

And Mona McLeod went

on to write a book about her

experience as a land girls.

experience as a land girl.

Remember, you can watch Witness

every month on the BBC

News Channel or you can catch up

on all of our films

and radio programmes

in our online archive.

Just go to the BBC website

and look for Witness.

In 1977 racing car driver

Janet Guthrie became the first woman

to compete in the prestigious

Indianapolis 500 motivate.

She talked to Witness about taking

part in a male dominated sport.

NEWSREEL: Race drivers are a special

breed of American folk hero,

they have always been men,

until Janet Guthrie.

I had no house, no husband,

know jewellery, no insurance,

I had one used up race car.

I was playing in a millionaire's

sport from the very beginning.

And not having been born

with a trust fund, I learned how

to build my own engines

and do my own body work.

I thought there was a reasonably

good chance that I would be

successful at it, because I wanted

it a lot.

I loved the sport.

It was the passion

of my life, really.

Part of the fun is to accept

the risk, and deal with it

gracefully and well.

You have to have an interest

in what it's like out there

at the limits of human capability.

I was saying to myself, you know,

you really must come to your senses

and make some provision

for your old age.

And that was the point

at which the phone rang and a voice

completely unknown to me said,

"how would you like to take a shot

at the Indianapolis 500?"

It was sometimes said

that the Indianapolis 500 wasn't

the most important race,

it was the only race,

and that's how most

of the United States feels about it.

Over 400,000 people showed up.

You can't imagine how many people

but is until you see them in person.

When I got my big chance at the top

levels of the sport,

made a huge commotion.

They simply had not had

the experience of running

against a woman and they were sure

I was going to kill them all.

All I had to do at the beginning

was opened up a newspaper

and there was some other driver

saying that his blood

was going to be on

the officials' hands.

Seriously, when I say

commotion, it was big!

Oh, I was so happy.

I was happy that I had

put a car in the field

for the Indianapolis 500.

I think a lot of drivers would tell

you the first time they make

the field at Indianapolis

is a moment you will never forget.

Of course then you figure out

that what you really

want to do is win the thing!

You're thinking, who's behind you,

what are their driving habits?

Who is ahead of you?

What mistakes are

they likely to make?

On the first lap you just really

want to keep yourself

out of any trouble.

In that race, I had

a mechanical failure.

When we finally decided the car

was not going to be fixable,

I left the pits and headed back

to the garage.

There was a lot of enthusiasm

in the stands at that point.

Janet is not a newcomer

to car racing...

My best finish at Indianapolis

was ninth in 1978 with a team I've

formed and managed to myself.

My best finish in IndyCar racing

was fifth at Milwaukee.

I wasn't racing to prove

anything about women,

because the fact that I was a woman

in my opinion had

nothing to do with it.

A racing driver was what I was,

right through to my bone marrow.

And in 2006 Janet Guthrie

was inducted into the International

Motorsport Hall Of Fame.

And finally we turn to 1964,

when the Windmill theatre

in London's red light district Soho

closed its doors.

It had become a national

institution because for a long

time it was one of the few places

in Britain where it was possible

to see naked women on stage.

But a change in the law

on nude performances met

But a change in the law

on nude performances meant

a decline for its fortunes.

Jill Millard Shapiro was one

of the Windmill girls.

NEWSREEL: A blend of

glamour and sweat...

Something seedy, yet also

touching in innocence...

It was a national institution,

there was nowhere else like it,

there never can be.

Whatever it was, it

has a great story...

It was by accident, I was walking

along the street and I saw

the sign saying Windmill

Theatre, stage door.

So I walked in, I don't know why.

And I said to the stage doorman,

can I have an audition, please?

And so he phoned upstairs

to the office and I was sent

upstairs, and Vivian van Damme

didn't audition me but he just said,

I like you, we will

take a chance on you.

What he didn't know was that

I was 14 and a half years old.

He signed the contract and then

realised my age and told me to go

home and come back when I was 15

and a half.

So I did.

I didn't realise it was naughty.

Looking back at it

I think yes, it was!

The Windmill was non-stop revue,

it was called Revuedeville,

it was a revue theatre.

We did six shows a day.

Once you'd bought your first

ticket, that was it.

So, the audience could

sit there all day.

NEWSREEL: The proudest

years of the Windmill

were during the Second World War.

It allowed nothing to interfere.

They were the only West End theatre

open throughout the London Blitz.

Really brave girls who stood

there while the bombs

landed, all around them.

The house manager came out

onto the stage and asked this show

and asked the audience

if they wanted the performance

to continue, and almost every

time the answer was yes.

One of the most important things,

the think the audience would come

One of the most important things,

the thing the audience would come

to see, was the nude poses

at the back of the stage.

It was the obscenity laws,

and you were not allowed to move

in the nude on a London stage

or on any stage in the country.

It was censorship.

You can't be sexy

if you stand still.

Oh, I don't know!

So, the Lord Chamberlain's office,

they'd come, very happily!

They were very pleased to come

to the shows and say,

oh, no, that's a bit too much,

you can't say that.

But they always tipped us off

when they were on their way!

1964, by then, Soho had changed

with all the strip clubs.

Our little friend Miss Fifi

was three streets away!

Where we weren't allowed to move,

she could shake it all about as much

as she liked.

So, we lost a lot of the audience,

people who perhaps wanted to see

more, they could go to the clubs,

whereas we were still a theatre.

And we felt it was better to close

while we were still respected

than to even attempt to change,

and the girls wouldn't have done it.

So, we closed, with

our heads held high.

We're all friends to this day,

those of us who are still living.

I think we were very lucky,

we were privileged to have

been Windmill girls.

Jill Millard Shapiro

at her home near London.

That's all from this

special edition of Witness,

celebrating

International Women's Day

at The British Library.

We will be back here next

month to bring you more

extraordinary moments in history

and the remarkable people

who witnessed them.

But for now from me and the rest

of the Witness team, goodbye.