Woman's Hour Folgen

Bernardine Evaristo is the winner of The Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award - a one-off literary honour to mark the 30th anniversary year of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Bernardine joins Nuala McGovern to discuss her huge body of work and career highlights including winning the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel Girl, Woman, Other, and her role as a champion for women and women of colour in the creative industries. Yesterday South Korea voted in its new president Lee Jae-myung, but many women are concerned about the leader’s silence on gender equality in a country where the gender pay gap is one of the largest in Asia. Min Hee Go is Professor of Political Science at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, she tells Nuala McGovern about the growth of anti-feminist rhetoric within South Korea’s political establishment, and the future of women’s rights in the country.Hundreds of historic child sex abuse cases could be re-opened after police forces carried out reviews ordered by the Home Secretary to tackle grooming gangs. Some 287 closed cases have been identified so far by police in England and Wales to be looked at again by a national task force on child sexual exploitation, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the Home Affairs Committee yesterday. Nuala gets reaction from Maggie Oliver, the former detective who blew the whistle on the failure to tackle grooming gangs in Rochdale.Consumed by paranoia, superstition and a ruthless sense of justice, a climate of fear and mass hysteria sweeps through the town of Salem, Massachusetts when rumours grow that a group of girls are practising witchcraft. What lies are the townspeople prepared to tell themselves in order to survive? A new production of The Crucible is currently on stage at the Globe Theatre in London. Nuala is joined by Ola Ince the director and Hannah Saxby who plays Abigail Williams – the primary instigator of the witch trials that follow.

Tina Knowles, the mother of icons Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, has just published her memoir Matriarch. It tells the story of how a resilient little girl, born in difficult times, became a powerhouse, guiding her daughters to their potential. How she, the great-granddaughter of two enslaved women, went from what she describes as a little, two-bedroom “poor house” with seven people in Galveston, Texas, to being the head of one of the most successful and high-profile families in the world. Ms Tina joins Nuala McGovern in the Woman’s Hour studio. A new search has been launched in Portugal by police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Madeleine was just three years old when she vanished while on holiday with her family in the resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007. Her disappearance sparked a Europe-wide police investigation and is one of the most high-profile unsolved missing person cases. German detectives are leading the search as they suspect she was murdered by a man who's currently in prison in Germany. BBC correspondent Daniel Sandford joins us from Praia da Luzh. Northern Ireland doesn’t have a Mother and Baby unit to treat mums who are diagnosed with severe post-natal depression including post partum psychosis. Instead women are admitted to a General Psychiatric ward where they are separated from their babies. A BBC investigation has found that around 100 mums in Northern Ireland are admitted to a general psychiatric ward each year where they will be among other men and women who have a range of complex mental health issues. And these can be mixed wards. We hear from BBC’s Northern Ireland correspondent Marie-Louise Connolly who has made a Spotlight programme called Mums in Crisis and Dr Julie Anderson, consultant perinatal psychiatrist and Chair of the Royal College of Psychiatry in NI.We know that there are structural barriers that women face to take the leap and start up a new business. Less than 2% of venture capital private investors funding goes to women only start-ups, according to Government figures. But Imperial College London are taking some big steps to address the barriers through a programme they run for women in the evenings called “WE Innovate” which gives women coaching and the practical skills and tools they need to figure out if their business idea has legs, how to pitch it to investors and how to develop it into a fully formed product. We’re joined by the head of the programme, Sarah Ranchev-Hale, and Dr Olivia Ahn, a success story of the programme who has invented the first certified flushable period pad which will be launched in shops soon. Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Kirsty Starkey

Ita O'Brien is the world renowned intimacy co-ordinator. She is behind the kisses, embraces and sex scenes in Normal People, I May Destroy You, It's A Sin and Gentlemen Jack, to name a few. She is also the creator of the Intimacy On Set guidelines, which are now used around the globe. She has used her expertise on set to inform her debut book, Intimacy, and joins Nuala McGovern to discuss it. A group of experts have highlighted that in global heart disease clinical trials, less than 30% of the people taking part are women. This is despite more than 30,000 women being admitted to hospital in the UK each year due to a heart attack. One of these experts, Vijay Kunadian who is Professor of Interventional Cardiology at Newcastle University, joins Nuala. An open letter organised by UK aid organisations has been delivered to 10 Downing Street today - signed by Sudanese activists, UK aid leaders and high profile figures demanding the UK government take urgent action to addresss the rapidly worsening crisis in Sudan. This comes as the charity Medecins Sans Frontières reported that of 659 survivors of sexual violence in South Darfur between January 2024 and March 2025 86% reported they were raped. Nuala speaks to Eva Khair, Campaigner and Founder of Women4Sudan and Sudan Transnational Consortium, one of the signatories of the letter. Flat racing jockey Hollie Doyle just surpassed the record set by her hero, Hayley Turner, who recently bowed out of the sport. At Ascot in May, Hollie had her 1,023rd win, becoming Britain’s ‘most winning’ female jockey of all time'. She joins Nuala. Model Hailey Bieber has sold her make-up company Rhode in a deal worth up to $1 billion. She joins a list of other celebrities earning millions from their cosmetic brand. Nuala is joined by make-up artist to the stars Val Garland and Beauty Editor for the Telegraph, Sonia Haria, to discuss. Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Emma Pearce