Woman's Hour

The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police has met and personally apologised to three victims of grooming gangs in Rochdale for failures in the investigation of the sexual exploitation of children. The apology comes exactly a decade after the 2012 trial that resulted in some members of the gangs being convicted for their crimes. We hear from Maggie Oliver, the former detective who blew the whistle on the police’s failure to tackle these crimes.

Anya Taylor-Joy's decision to leave school at 16 to pursue a career in acting has certainly paid off. In 2020, in the first month of its release – a staggering sixty-two million households watched her play chess prodigy Beth Harmon in the Netflix mini-series 'The Queen’s Gambit'. She discusses her latest film – The Northman - a brutal and bloody viking revenge epic.

In August 2018, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic travelled to Iran to attend a seminar and conduct academic research. At Tehran airport on her way back home to Australia, she was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Accused of espionage, she was imprisoned and later convicted and given a ten year sentence. She was released in November 2020 as part of a prisoner exchange deal negotiated by the Australian government. She’s written about those 804 days, in a new book The Uncaged Sky.

The UK government has been told to stop matching lone female Ukrainian refugees with single men. The UN has intervened following concerns that women and sometimes children are at risk of sexual exploitation. Under the government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme, British hosts must link up with refugees themselves, leaving tens of thousands of people to resort to unregulated social media groups to connect. We hear from Louise Calvey, Head of Services and Safeguarding at Refugee Action and Times reporter, Shayma Bakht.

With over 100 million record sales, an Academy Award, a Grammy, and an award from The Council of Fashion Designers of America, very few artists have a catalogue that matches the iconic Cher. A new musical, touring the UK - “The Cher Show” - tells the story of the Goddess of Pop’s meteoric rise to fame. The director and choreographer behind the show are two Strictly Come Dancing legends - Arlene Phillips and Oti Mabuse.

The actor, writer and comedian Diane Morgan. She started her career as a stand-up but you may know her best as the ill-informed interviewer Philomena Cunk, or laid back Liz in the parenting sitcom Motherland, or even Kath in Ricky’s Gervais series After Life. She’s also written, directed and starred in her own comedy series Mandy about a woman who's got big dreams but can’t be bothered to do the work to get there, and whose short lived jobs are a disaster. Now she's in Inside Number 9 on BBC 2.

Police in Northern Ireland are investigating a clinic in Belfast which claims to help infertile couples have a baby. The police investigation follows a BBC Northern Ireland documentary called The Babymaker Uncovered. The clinic is called Logan Wellbeing and Medical and is run by Ruth Ellen Logan who claims that she was trained in America. She's been offering treatments like massage and reflexology, as well a IV drips and vitamin injections. Women who are desperate for a child, including some who are medically menopausal, have spent thousands. We speak to reporter, Jennifer O’Leary and fertility expert Professor Alison Murdoch.

In the second part of our new series on divorce, our reporter Henrietta Harrison meets Amina who talks about the impact it's had not just on her but on her parents too.

And we talk to Kate Jayden who's completed 100 marathons in 100 days. She was raising money for charity and describes what kept her putting one foot in front of the other.

Described as 'darkly comic feminist fables' ‘Roar’ is a new eight-part drama series adapted from Cecilia Aherne's short story collection. Each episode shines a spotlight on women's experiences and how women navigate through other's perceptions of them as well as their own. Comedian, writer, playwright, singer, journalist and actor, Meera Syal, plays ‘The Woman Who Returned her Husband’. She joins Chloe Tilley.

A new report highlights the experiences of over 260 Black, Asian, minority ethnic and foreign national women in the twelve prisons across England. Their accounts of indirect and direct racism have been described as shocking and distressing The report is compiled by the Criminal Justice Alliance in collaboration with the Independent Monitoring Boards. Nina Champion is Director of the Criminal Justice Alliance and Dame Anne Owers is National Chair of the Independent Monitoring Boards and the former Chief Inspectorate of Prisons.

Have you got an inner goblin? Do you ever let it out? Not washing for days, slobbing in bed, binge watching TV series in one sitting, eating random things left at the back of your fridge with melted cheese on… these would all be considered ‘goblin mode’. You might do it in private but would you post pictures to social media for the world to see? Well this has become a new trend taking over TikTok with videos using the hashtag gaining over 2.1 billion views. So why are generation Z women turning their back on the gym going, smoothy drinking, ‘It’ girl whose aim is self-improvement, to reveal their inner goblins to the world? To explain more we hear from Ione Gamble, writer and editor-in-chief of Polyester zine and podcast and Halima Jibril, writer and editor of Ashamed zine.

The UK government has been told to stop matching lone female Ukrainian refugees with single men. The UN has intervened following concerns that women and sometimes children are at risk of sexual exploitation. Under the government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme, British hosts must link up with refugees themselves, leaving tens of thousands of people to resort to unregulated social media groups to connect. More than 200,000 people in Britain have applied to host refugees under the scheme but just 28,500 visas have been issued so far. We hear from Louise Calvey, Head of Services and Safeguarding at Refugee Action and Times reporter, Shayma Bakht. She posed as a 22 year old Ukrainian woman online and within minutes was inundated with inappropriate messages.

Esme Young has been at the cutting edge of the fashion industry for over 50 years. From launching her own label Swanky Modes, dressing stars like Grace Jones and Cher and more recently being one half of the judging duo on The Great British Sewing Bee. Esme joins Chloe to discuss her new book, 'Behind The Seams', where she recounts iconic outfits and raucous parties and the clothes in her wardrobe she just can't part with.

Presenter: Chloe Tilley

Interviewed Guest: Meera Syal

Throughout April the UK holds the presidency of the United Nation’s Security Council as the world focuses its attention on the war in Ukraine. The woman who takes on that role is Dame Barbara Woodward who’s the UK’s Permanent Representative to the UN. She talks to Emma about her priorities and plans for a new global code of conduct to improve the pursuit of justice for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence.

The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police has met and personally apologised to three victims of grooming gangs in Rochdale for failures in the investigation of the sexual exploitation of children. The apology comes exactly a decade after the 2012 trial that resulted in some members of the gangs being convicted for their crimes. We hear from Maggie Oliver, the former detective who blew the whistle on the police’s failure to tackle these crimes.

Two new authors, Georgina Scull and Tanya Shadrick, both open their books with a description of how they came very close to death in their thirties. The experience changed them radically. Their books are Regrets of the Dying and The Cure for Sleep. They join Emma to talk about what they have learnt.

This week, Alice Walker from Derbyshire became the oldest female winner of the BBC quiz show Mastermind. She was 66 when the grand final was recorded - she has turned 67 now, and joins Emma to talk about her specialist subject the Peak District and Morris dancing in clogs.

The debate over sex and gender filters through to many areas of our lives today whether its about women-only spaces, trans athletes competing in sporting events or our use of language to define what a woman is. It’s now being put centre stage of the local elections next month by a new campaign called "Respect my Sex if you want my X”. The campaign run by Women Uniting UK is urging voters – both men and women - to quiz prospective candidates canvassing on the doorstep with questions like “What is a woman?” or “What is more important, sex or gender?” The Labour MP Rosie Duffield talks about her support for the group and why she believes the issue could have an impact next month as well as on the wider political landscape.

The sequel to Johnny Depp and ex-wife Amber Heard's bitter legal battle is coming to America. - Virginia to be more precise. After losing the first round - a libel trial set in the UK - Depp, is suing Heard, for $50m (£38m) over a piece she wrote in The Washington Post in which she claimed to be a victim of domestic abuse. She is suing back, with a $100m counterclaim against him. His legal team successfully argued that the trial should be held in Virginia - home to two Washington Post offices and where the paper is physically published. It's expected to last up to seven weeks and will in many ways be a rerun of the London trial, exposing lurid details about their relationship, with accusations of abuse aimed at both sides. BBC Media and Arts Correspondent, David Sillito joins Woman's Hour standing outside Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia.

Anya Taylor-Joy's decision to leave school at 16 to pursue a career in acting has certainly paid off. In 2020, in the first month of its release – a staggering sixty-two million households watched her play chess prodigy Beth Harmon in the Netflix mini-series 'The Queen’s Gambit'. More recently, you may have seen her play Gina Gray in the final series of 'Peaky Blinders'. She discusses her latest film – The Northman - a brutal and bloody viking revenge epic.

The artist Celia Paul currently has an exhibition at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London, called Memory and Desire, and her latest book is called “Letters to Gwen John”. Gwen John was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. Her brother Augustus John was more famous during her lifetime, but her beautiful paintings, mainly of female sitters, often reading in domestic settings, have gained wider attention since her death. Celia Paul shares much in common with Gwen John: both studied at the Slade, and both were models and lovers of older artists - Gwen had a relationship with Auguste Rodin and Celia with Lucian Freud. Celia joins Emma.

Presenter: Emma Barnett

Interviewed Guest: Rosie Duffield

With over 100 million record sales, an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, three Golden Globes and an award from The Council of Fashion Designers of America, very few artists have a catalogue that matches the iconic Cher. A new musical, touring the UK - “The Cher Show” - tells the story of the Goddess of Pop’s meteoric rise to fame. The director and choreographer behind the show are two Strictly Come Dancing legends - Arlene Phillips and Oti Mabuse. They both join Emma to discuss the new show and their own careers.

In August 2018, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic travelled to Iran to attend a seminar and conduct academic research. It was her first visit to the country. At Tehran airport on her way back home to Australia, she was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Accused of espionage, she was imprisoned and later convicted and given a ten year sentence. She spent over two years in prison, half of it in solitary confinement. She was released in November 2020 as part of a prisoner exchange deal negotiated by the Australian government. She’s written about those 804 days, in a new book The Uncaged Sky, and speaks to Emma from Melbourne.

The Chancellor Rishi Sunak, his wife Akshata Murty and their finances have been in the headlines for several days now. Emma gets the latest from the woman behind the story, Economics Editor for the Independent, Anna Isaac. Anna broke the news that Ms Murty was a 'non-domicile' resident - meaning she doesn't have to pay tax to the UK authorities on any income that she earns outside Britain, something that is entirely legal. 48 hours after the story broke last Wednesday, Ms Murty announced that she would pay UK taxes on her worldwide income.

The actor Sienna Miller has said she took the step of freezing some eggs at 40, following the pressure she felt to have more children. Professor Imogen Goold has been looking into how women make decisions to delay fertility including in this way – and she questions the assumption often made in the media and in medicine that women are not properly informed, and make poor decisions about how long they can wait to have children. Imogen joins Emma to discuss, ahead of a lecture she is giving at Gresham College called Freezing Eggs and Delaying Fertility: Law, Ethics and Society, at 1pm on Monday 11 April. It can be viewed online for free. Professor Imogen Goold is Visiting Professor of Medical Law at Gresham College, and Professor of Medical Law at Oxford University.

We explore No Fault Divorce. The biggest reform of divorce law for 50 years comes into force- changing a law that dates back to Henry VIII. We hear from listener, Helen, currently going through a divorce.

The Paralympic five time gold medallist Ellie Simmonds was born with achondroplasia, the most common type of dwarfism. A new drug currently being trialled in the NHS and now approved for use in the USA aims to help children with achondroplasia grow taller. In a new BBC documentary: A World without Dwarfism, Ellie raises the question if cutting edge medicine can stop disability in its tracks, should we use it?

There are reports that women in Ukraine have been raped in front of their children, and Russian soldiers have filmed what they're doing. We discuss why rape in war happens, justice and trauma with Dr Jelke Boesten, Professor of Gender and Development at King's College London.

It’s been over two weeks since the Taliban went back on their plans to allow girls in Afghanistan to return to school. Sara Wahedi, a tech entrepreneur explains her new idea of helping Afghan girls access education - through SMS on their phones.

On Thursday, 100 individuals and their families wrote to the Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid, asking him to appoint Donna Ockenden to conduct an independent review of maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust. They are members of an online support group for those affected by unsafe maternity services and have shared harrowing accounts of their experiences. Sarah Hawkins talks about the death of their daughter, Harriet, on 17th April 2016 as a result of a mismanaged labour.

Presented by Andrea Catherwood

The new season of Top Boy currently on Netflix, shines a light on the reality of life for those involved in London drug gangs and the people who live around them. This season covers social issues such as deportation, homophobia and child neglect, with the character Lauryn’s experience of domestic violence being a central storyline. Actor Saffron Hocking, who plays Lauryn on the show joins us to talk about her portrayal of the issue.

Sunday 10th April sees the first round of the French Presidential elections. According to the latest polls the two candidates likely to go through to the next round are the current President Emmanuel Macron and The National Rally’s Marine Le Pen. She’s rebranded her party and herself for this latest attempt. The Economist's Sophie Pedder joins us to discuss the potential first female President of France.

Just over a week ago Woman’s Hour devoted a whole programme to the long awaited and landmark Ockenden Report into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust - in what has been described the biggest maternity scandal in the NHS's history. We had a huge response from our listeners as well as a significant number of midwives. We speak to two - Sarah and Ruth.

It’s been just over two weeks since the Taliban went back on their plans to allow girls in Afghanistan to return to school. Schools were set to open nationwide after months of but at the last minute the education ministry abruptly announced girls' secondary schools would stay shut. Sara Wahedi, a tech entrepreneur joins us to explain her new idea of helping Afghan girls get access to education - through their phones.

Do you know much about ‘farming’? Author Jendella Benson has released her debut novel, Hope and Glory, which explores the topic of private fostering - ‘farming’ - which was common amongst British West African communities during the 50s-70s and even into recent years. Jendella joins us to talk all about writing her first book and reflecting the experiences of those in her community.

Presenter: Andrea Catherwood

Grace Lavery is an Associate Professor of English, Critical Theory, and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Originally from the West Midlands, Grace moved to the States in 2008, and transitioned in 2018. She is an activist as well as an academic, and has now written a memoir called Please Miss – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis.

This morning 100 individuals and their families have written to the Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid, asking him to appoint Donna Ockenden to conduct an independent review of maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust. They are members of an online support group for those affected by unsafe maternity services and have shared harrowing accounts of their experiences. Jack and Sarah Hawkins join Emma to talk about the death of their daughter, Harriet, on 17th April 2016 as a result of a mismanaged labour. At the time both of them worked for Nottingham University Hospital Trust and their medical knowledge meant that when they were told she had "died of an infection" they knew this was inaccurate.

As we discussed in yesterday’s phone-in no fault divorce came into effect in England and Wales yesterday. More than 40% of marriages end in divorce – and most of us will have been affected by one - whether it be our own, our parents’ or our children’s. In a new series Life After Divorce our reporter Henrietta Harrison, who has recently been through a divorce herself, meets other divorcees to hear their stories and share experiences. We begin with Amanda - not her real name - who is 51 and split from her husband 12 years ago when he came out as gay.

The biggest reform of divorce law for 50 years comes into force today. As ‘no-fault divorce' comes into practice Woman's Hour are opening our phone lines to listen to what YOU have to say on the changes. We want to hear your experiences of ending your marriage and what difference you think these new measures will make? Would this change have made your divorce more amicable? Have you postponed getting divorced waiting for this reform to come into force and have already booked an appointment at the solicitors? Or are you considering divorce and this conversation has made it feel a bit less daunting?

Join our phone-in today.

You can call us on 03700 100 444.

The lines will open at 8am.

Presenter: Emma Barnett

Interviewed Guest: Helen Marriott