The Conversation

What's life like for women in hip hop? Nelufar Hedayat brings together two outspoken female hip hop artists from Guatemala and Yemen, who aim to change attitudes with their songs.

Rebeca Lane is a feminist hip hop star in Central America. She embraced hip hop as a form of protest music, and raps about issues that affect women such as domestic violence and femicide. She co-founded Somos Guerreras, an all-female rap collective that tours Europe and the Americas and holds workshops for women. Although famous outside her country she keeps a lower profile when in Guatemala, as she says being an activist there can be dangerous.

Amani Yahya is a Yemeni musician who grew up in Saudi Arabia, returning to Yemen for high school. She became part of a thriving cultural scene there, performing her own brand of hip hop ballad to rapt audiences. However she also received threats from religious conservatives. When war broke out in 2014 she escaped back to Saudi Arabia only to face a backlash there too. Now based in the US, she is passionate about getting social messages across in her songs, including against child marriage.

Image: L: Rebeca Lane (credit Belen Marco) R: Amani Yahya (credit Fredrik Gille)

What does good care look like? Kim Chakanetsa talks to two women who have dedicated their lives to looking after and advocating for people with dementia in different parts of the world.

Morejoy Saineti is a specialist dementia care nurse originally from Zimbabwe, now living in London. She has won numerous awards for her work after she pioneered a community palliative care service for people with dementia in the UK. After her own mother developed the condition, Morejoy also founded Africa Dementia Service to raise awareness of dementia in southern Africa. She has also partnered with Alzheimer's Society UK to tackle stigma in Zimbabwe as part of their Global Dementia Friends Network.

Rabiab Nantarak works at a care facility in a village near Chiang Mai in Thailand, looking after western patients who have been diagnosed with dementia. Rabiab is a trained nursing assistant and has worked in this role for five years, having previously worked in the tourism industry. She believes that the most important skills for any caregiver are patience and the ability to give people space. The care home where Rabiab works is featured in a new documentary by Kristof Bilsen, Mother, which gives a moving portrait of the lives of the carers and their patients.

L: Rabiab Nantarak (credit: Rabiab Nantarak) R: Morejoy Saineti (credit: Morejoy Saineti)

Do you really know the person you're dating? Kim Chakanetsa talks to two acclaimed female authors whose stories shine a harsh light on the duplicity of romantic relationships.

Kristen Roupenian is the author of Cat Person, which became the first short story to ever go viral when it was published in the New Yorker in 2017. It's the tale of a young woman's brief relationship with an older man, and it sparked an online debate about consent, unwanted sex and honesty when dating. Cat Person is included in Kristen's book of short stories, You Know You Want This.

Oyinkan Braithwaite is the writer of the novel My Sister, The Serial Killer. It's the story of two Nigerian sisters, one of whose boyfriends somehow keep ending up dead. Oyinkan says the murderous and stunning Ayoola has become an unlikely heroine for some readers, and that she is very interested in exploring the superficial nature of romantic liaisons, which lead to women's physical beauty often being their most powerful asset.

L: Kristen Roupenian (credit Elisa Roupenian Toha)

World-class sportswomen combining motherhood with incredible athletic achievement. Kim Chakanetsa asks how they do it, what support they have behind the scenes, and what it means to them to be both a mother and a top athlete.

Jasmin Paris is a record-breaking British ultrarunner and the first woman to win the infamous Spine Race, a winter marathon along the UK's Pennine Way which is widely regarded as one of the world's toughest endurance races. At the time Jasmin was still breastfeeding her baby daughter, and she had to express milk along the way. And that's not the only demand on her time - she also works full-time as a vet at the University of Edinburgh.

Nicola Spirig is a 37-year-old professional Swiss triathlete, who gave birth to her third child in April this year, and was back competing just a few weeks later. Nicola won the gold medal in triathlon at the London 2012 Olympics, and came back after having her first child to win silver in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Now she's aiming for Tokyo 2020. She says she couldn't do it without the support of her husband, who does the bulk of the childcare.

l: Nicola Spirig (Credit Swiss Triathlon)

Most people's idea of a band 'roadie' is a burly bloke in a black T-shirt, lugging kit around a stage, living hard and touring constantly. Kim Chakanetsa speaks to two women who have broken this mould, living on the road with music royalty, and making them look and sound amazing.

Known as the world’s first female roadie, Tana Douglas is something of a legend in her field. She started off working for the Australian rock band AC/DC when she was just 16. She went on to tour with huge international artists such as Elton John and Status Quo, specialising in lighting.

Sound engineer to the stars, Becky Pell, regularly plays huge arenas on sell-out tours for artists like Kylie Minogue and Westlife, and for three years has been in charge of the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, the world’s biggest festival. She says it's a myth that you need to be big and brawny to work on stage, it’s all about staying calm amid the chaos.

l: Tana Douglas (credit BBC)

Two women who hear voices and battle with delusions, tell Kim Chakanetsa about the stigma they have faced as women and how they have learnt to live with their condition.

Esme Weijun Wang is a Taiwanese-American writer and author of the bestselling memoir, The Collected Schizophrenias. She talks about the long road to being diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, having suffered from poor mental health since she was a child. She finds what grounds her now, alongside therapy and medication, is journalling, dancing and spending time with loved ones.

Reshma Valliappan is a Malaysian artist and activist living in India. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 22, and, after several years of treatment, decided to manage her condition without medication. Her unconventional approach is chronicled in the award-winning documentary, A Drop of Sunshine. She has also written a book, Fallen, Standing: My Life as a Schizophrenist.

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Raising four or six babies at once - what's it like? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women in very different situations who are experiencing motherhood in its most concentrated form.

In April 2012, Lauren Perkins gave birth to sextuplets in Texas, following fertility treatment. Her six children - Andrew, Benjamin, Caroline, Leah, Allison and Levi - are now seven years old. Lauren says the first year was a blur of feeding and laundry and now the family exist in a kind of controlled chaos. Her biggest challenge is balancing the needs of their daughter, Leah, who has severe disabilities, with those of the rest of the family.

Inga Mafenuka is a single mum to baby quadruplets, who were born in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2018. Inga was 22 when she became pregnant naturally, and she gave birth to the two boys, Bubele and Buchule and two girls, Bunono and Bungcwele. To support the family, Inga has taken on a part-time job in retail, and is also continuing her IT studies, which were broken off by the pregnancy, but they are struggling for space in their two-bedroom house in the township.

Sadly, following the broadcast of this programme, Inga Mafenuka’s baby son, Bubele, died on August 1st 2019.

Produced by Jo Impey for the BBC World Service

L: Lauren Perkins (credit: Lisa Holloway)

Zero tolerance for street harassment. Two activists in France and India tell Kim Chakanetsa why they won't accept wolf whistles, groping or violent attacks on women in public spaces.

Marie Laguerre is a French student who was cat-called and then assaulted outside a café in Paris in July 2018. The moment was captured on a video which went viral, getting nine million views. The man responsible was sent to prison for violence, but not for harassment. Marie has now become a figurehead for activism on this issue, and has started a website where women can anonymously report their stories of harassment and abuse.

Elsa D'Silva is an Indian activist who founded SafeCity, an app and a movement to identify, map and combat sexual violence on the streets. Spurred on by the gang rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey in Delhi in 2012, Elsa decided it was time for women to take matters into their own hands. Her project has now expanded to Nepal, Kenya and Cameroon, and has had concrete results - toilets and streetlights have been fixed, police have upped patrols and men have been shamed into stopping staring.

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The way we talk about gender is evolving, but what impact do words have? Kim Chakanetsa meets two women at the forefront of the study of language and asks them whether the language we speak can impact on the way we think.

Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive scientist, who moved from her native Belarus to the USA at the age of 12. She has long been fascinated by how the mind works and studies how language shapes the way we think. She argues that words can impact our thinking about gender. Lera is currently Associate Professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Sophie Bailly is Professor of Language Sciences at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France, a country where debates about language have long been polarised. Earlier this year, the Académie Française, the guardian of the French language, gave the go-ahead for female versions of certain job titles to be used, which represented an important step for French feminists.

Produced by Jo Impey for the BBC World Service.

(l) Sophie Bailly (credit: David Mayer) and (r) Lera Boroditsky (credit: Lera Boroditsky)

Microlending is touted as a way to lift women out of poverty - with stories of small loans transforming lives in developing countries. But is that the reality? Kim Chakanetsa speaks to two women who lead microfinance organisations in India and the US.

Julie Hanna is an Egyptian-born entrepreneur and chair of the board of Kiva, a US-based non-profit organisation that allows people to lend money via the internet to people on low incomes in over 90 countries. Julie herself came to the US as a child refugee, fleeing civil wars in Jordan and in Lebanon, where her family were living. She says it shaped her as a person. In 2015, President Obama named her Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship.

Vijayalakshmi Das is the CEO of Friends of Women's World Banking, India, which is based in Ahmedabad. The organisation looks to not only provide women in India with microloans but also, through a group structure, provide support, knowledge and education for women in poverty so that they're able to use their new access to finance in a positive way.

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