Woman's Hour Folgen

Arooj Aftab is a Pakistani composer, based in Brooklyn. She joins Anita to talk about her music and influences from jazz and Qawwali to Jeff Buckley and Abidi Parveen. She explains how grief has shifted the tone of her music to ‘heavy metal harp’, and discusses her latest album, Vulture Prince, which honours and reimagines centuries-old ghazals, a form of South Asian poetry and music that she grew up listening to with her family.Now the dust has settled on the recent court ruling on compensation for women with PIP Implants, it's become clear a group of women will miss out. The French court ruled that those who had implants pre 2006 will not get any money, as it decided the safety regulator who approved the implants for market couldn't have been aware of any problems before that date. Lawyers representing the women will go back to the French supreme court to fight this. Melanie Abbott has been looking into this.Therapist and researcher, Guilaine Kinouni’s book Living While Black looks at the racial inequalities within the mental health system and their consequences for Black people. She is joined by author, academic, and broadcaster Emma Dabiri whose new book What White People Can Do Next looks at racial justice and how we demonstrations of support can be transformed into real and meaningful change.Language – and the way we use it – is forever changing. We explore how the word ‘bitch’ and other similar words with a sexist history are being reclaimed and reinvented by women to mean something positive. Chante Joseph is a social media creative and writer. Jacqueline Springer is a Black music and culture journalist. Helen Taylor is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Exeter.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Frankie Tobi

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of novels including 'Purple Hibiscus', 'Half of a Yellow Sun', which won the Orange Prize (now called the Women’s Prize for Fiction), and 'Americanah', which won the US National Book Critics Circle Award. Chimamanda has also delivered two landmark TED Talks: The Danger of A Single Story, and We Should All Be Feminists, which started a worldwide conversation about feminism and was published as a book in 2014. She has now written a more personal book. On 10 June 2020 her father died suddenly in Nigeria. A self-confessed daddy’s girl, she has now remembered her father in a tribute, 'Notes on Grief'. Her mother has since also died. How do you deal with double heartbreak? Chimamanda joins Emma to examine the layers of loss and the nature of grief.Lord Michael Heseltine, who was Deputy Prime Minister in the mid-nineties, says he's had to attend a House of Lords course to do with what's right and what's wrong when it comes to conduct between colleagues, especially between men and women. The training is called "Valuing Everyone". The House of Lords has been very firm about this online course on inappropriate behaviour and prejudice, saying all peers must attend. Lord Heseltine was sent a reminder that he MUST complete it, which seems to have aggravated him a great deal. He’s here, and so is Wera (pron: VERA) Hobhouse, Lib Dem MP. In the House of Commons, the course isn't mandatory for MPs.Parm Sandhu grew up in the Midlands - a child of immigrants from the Punjab whose main ambition for her she says was to become an ‘obedient wife’. Forced into an arranged marriage at 16 she later fled to London and in 1989 joined the police. In her memoir ‘Black and Blue: One Woman’s Story of policing’ which is out next week, she tells her story of her thirty years in the Metropolitan police - rising through the ranks from a WPC to Chief Superintendent and becoming New Scotland Yard’s most senior ethnic minority woman in the force. She tells us her 30 year career was marred by repeated racism and sexism and a charge of gross misconduct which she was later cleared of. This led to her bringing an employment tribunal claim against the force and reaching a financial settlement with them last year. The sun is out and if you’re looking out your summer dresses and skirts you might also be weighing up the state of your skin after months of slobbing at home in your lockdown comfies. Sales of personal grooming products like deodorant, skincare products and razors went down during the pandemic so will we be embracing the natural look? Or maybe you already do as a member of the hairy legs club? We talk to the stand-up comedian, Ashley Storrie about her beauty regime and also to George Driver, the acting Beauty Director of ELLE UK. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Interviewed Guest: Michael Heseltine Interviewed Guest: Wera Hobhouse Interviewed Guest: Parm Sandhu Interviewed Guest: Ashley Storrie Interviewed Guest: George Driver

You may have visited Kew Gardens and seen the incredible gallery of botanical art created by Marianne North - she is one of several female artists being featured at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum as part of Coventry's UK City of Culture Celebrations. The exhibition, called UnNatural History, explores not only the historical role of artists in the science of natural history - but also contemporary artists addressing the current climate crisis. But with so much focus on the environment how effective is art in grabbing the public's attention? Alice Sharp is the founder of Invisible Dust who have curated the exhibition and Frances Disley is an artist who examines the medicinal properties of plants and healing power of nature. Why, after decades of social progress is motherhood still so much harder than it needs to be? Why aren't we honest about the realities of being a mother? These are just two of the themes explored in a trio of books about motherhood that have just been published. It's not as if these questions haven't been asked before. There is a rich vein of literature from Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex through to Adrienne Rich's classic study Of Woman Born, Juliet Mitchell's A Women's Estate , Jane Lazarre's The Mother Knot and many more. And many second wave feminists fought hard for the rights of mothers on both sides of the Atlantic. And yet very little, if any progress, has been made according to this new crop of authors. Elaine Glaser author of Motherhood: A Manifesto and Pragya Agarwal author of (M)otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman join Emma. A few weeks ago as meeting up began to look possible again, we asked you to tell us about who you were desperate to see again and why. Last week we heard from Chris and her mates in Cardiff - this week listener Sally-Ann from Reading wanted to nominate 'the girls' - she's had a tough year and not seeing them face to face has been hard. Our reporter Jo Morris spoke to Sally-Ann as she prepared to host a garden get-together and popped into one of their regular Zoom chats to eavesdrop on their banter and memories. Boric acid is a white powder that can do everything from get stains out of your clothes, to stop your fridge smelling, to acting as a pesticide. But apparently there's another use for this chemical remedy, and mentions of it have been popping up lately on social media threads and message boards: it can also be used as a treatment for chronic bacterial vaginosis. However, it is also being used for less serious vaginal infections. Dr Jen Gunter, American gynaecologist, obstetrician and author of the Vagina Bible says she has seen an increase in the use of boric acid vaginal pessaries among her patients over the past few years, paralleling an explosion of new over the counter boric acid products and heavy marketing from celebrities, influencers, naturopaths, and functional medicine providers. She explains her concerns.