Woman's Hour

Katie Price and her family have lived their lives in the public eye for more than 15 years - and now in a new BBC One documentary, she's having to make tough decisions about her son Harvey's future. Born with Septo-optic Dysplasia, a rare disorder that affects brain function, hormones and vision, Harvey is moving onto the next stage of his development as he turns 18. Katie joins Emma to discuss. Senior judges in the Family Courts were heavily criticised last year for outdated views on allegations of marital rape in family court proceedings. This week the Court of Appeal is holding a legal review into the Family Courts’ approach to domestic abuse and sexual violence for the first time is 20 years. Barrister, Dr Charlotte Proudman explains why this review is both important and necessary, and why it may prompt cases being overturned.It's been reported that the former First Lady Melania Trump did not write her own thank you letters to her White House staff. The goodbye letters were allegedly written by an aide. Around 80 White House staffers received a typed note from the outgoing First Lady, and were under the impression she wrote them herself. But two sources familiar with the letters claimed Mrs Trump outsourced the work to a lower-level East Wing staffer. Comedian and writer, Katy Brand reveals where she stands on thank you letters.Christina McAnea is the new leader of the UK's largest trade union UNISON, also the fastest growing in Europe. Representing 1.4 million public sector workers - around 80% of which are women - we ask what's top of her in-tray when she starts in the job tomorrow?Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Kirsty Starkey Editor: Karen DalzielInterviewed Guest: Katie Price Interviewed Guest: Charlotte Proudman Interviewed Guest: Katy Brand Interviewed Guest: Christine McAnea

Emma Barnett with Clemency Burton-Hill's first interview since she suffered a brain haemorrhage a year ago today. She talks about how music has helped her ongoing recovery, and how she has learnt to speak again. Sindiso Khumalo & Dr Christine Checinska on the V&A museum's African fashion exhibition, the new interim mayor of Liverpool Wendy Simon talks about being thrust into the role last month as Covid 19 cases were rising exponentially and as Joe Biden assumes the US Presidency we hear from Sarah Elliot from Republicans Overseas UK and Joan Walsh, the National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation and a CNN political contributor. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lisa Jenkinson

Some top British ballerinas have become new mums during lock-down. In fact, there are so many in the Royal Ballet that they've created a Whatsapp group. We know that being a ballet dancer is competitive and careers can be short, so has lock-down given the chance to get pregnant? Lauren Cuthbertson, is principal of The Royal Ballet and had her baby a few weeks ago, and Tara-Brigitte Bhavnani, first artist of The Royal Ballet, is due in April.There’s been a surge in calls to domestic abuse services. As so many of us are working from home at the moment the Business Minister has written to employers urging them to be a be supportive as they can be, and that means helping victims of abuse in the home. We hear from Paul Scully. When it comes to the Covid vaccine, research from the University of Glasgow indicates that BAME communities are much less likely to get the vaccine if or when it's offered. Reasons include language barriers and misinformation. We hear from Dr Zubaida Haque, as well as children speaking various different languages to persuade their grans and granddads to get the jab. The Welsh Labour MP, Alex Davies-Jones, says she was left without the majority of her cervix because she delayed getting a smear test. She wants to tell other women not to make the same mistake. According to the Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee, the MP Caroline Nokes, more then six hundred thousand women could miss their routine smear tests during the pandemic.

Music producer Phil Spector who has just died in a California jail was serving a life sentence for the murder of the actor Lana Clarkson. Lana Clarkson starred in a number of 1980s B movie sci-fi films like "Barbarian Queen" but at the time she met Spector she was working in a bar. Emma is joined by the biographer of Phil Spector, journalist and author Mick Brown. New exclusive research by reporter Melanie Abbott for Woman's Hour has found more and more aesthetic doctors and nurses are treating women for mistakes made injecting fillers by untrained practitioners. Melanie Abbott, Sharon Bennett from the British Association of Cosmetic Nurses and Labour MP Carolyn Harris from the all party parliamentary group on Beauty, Aesthetics and Wellbeing join Emma. Duchess is the new podcast from Duchess of Rutland Emma Manners and daughter Lady Violet in which they talk to titled women who are responsible for ancestral piles around the UK. They have their own huge place, Belvoir Castle, and they join Emma to discuss the pros and cons of running such a business. We've all seen images in the press of houses where terrible things happened and heard stories of children held captive by their parents. Abigail Dean's first novel 'Girl A' is told by Lex the survivor, the one who flagged down a car and escaped from 'The House of Horrors'. It explores the impact on 'Girl A', as she was dubbed, of childhood trauma. She and her six siblings have different stories and different outcomes - what happens to those left behind when the headlines and the fascination fall away?Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

Emma, a pediatric nurse, who has been redeployed to an Intensive Care Unit talks about what it’s like to care for Covid patients and the daily stress and pressure currently experienced by health care professionals.Amy Pope, former deputy home security advisor to President Obama talks about Congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of ten Republicans who crossed the floor and voted with the Democrats to impeach President Trump for the second time. Author Debra Waters and science journalist and author Helen Thomson talk adult crushes. Should we see crushes as normal, exciting and harmless ways of understanding ourselves and our needs? Or is it morally questionable if you’re in a loving, committed relationship? We hear from Anjali Raman-Middleton who went to primary school with Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah who was nine years old when she died in 2013. She had a rare and severe form of asthma. Angali co-founded 'Choked Up' with three other teenagers to lobby against the pollution that contributed to Ella's death.Richard Holden, MP for North West Durham, Natasha Rattu, Director of Karma Nirvana and Dr. Naomi Crouch Chair of the British Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology Society and spokesperson for The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists talk about the Virginity Testing (Prohibition) Bill that was introduced in the House of Commons by Richard in December . Debbie McGee and Naomi Paxton talk about being sawn in half and what it’s like to be a magician’s assistant.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Paula McFarlane Editor: Lucinda Montefiore

As Wonder Woman 1984 hits video on demand services this week, a new generation is introduced to the superhero styled as Diana Prince. Later this year, she'll celebrate her 80th anniversary - so what is her story? And what makes her so culturally relevant still? G Willow Wilson is one of the women who's written for the comic series.Richard Holden, MP for North West Durham, introduced the Virginity Testing (Prohibition) Bill into the House of Commons in December. His interest was sparked by an investigation for BBC Newsbeat and 100 Women which found that virginity tests are being offered at British medical clinics. Richard joins Anita to explain why he wants to make this controversial practice illegal. She also speaks to Dr. Naomi Crouch, Chair of the British Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology Society and spokesperson for The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and Natasha Rattu, barrister & Director of the charity Karma Nirvana. If the first lockdown was all about watching Normal People on TV, why is this lockdown all about Bridgerton? We hear from writers Marian Keyes and Kathryn Flett and from the Bridgerton star Kathryn Drysdale.Anjali Raman-Middleton is a 17 year old activist, and one of the founders of Choked Up, a group set up by black and brown teens campaigning for changes to clean air laws. Anjali went to primary school with Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who died, aged 9, in 2013. At an inquest in December, Ella become the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death.

Everyone remembers their first teenage crush - that feeling of butterflies in the stomach and uncontrollable blushes. As we age, crushes still occur but they tend to be a guilty secret. But are there benefits to having a crush? Facebook introduced a secret crush feature in December last year and it is claimed that crushes can induce mood-boosting chemicals. Should we see crushes as normal, exciting and harmless ways of understanding ourselves and our needs? Or is it morally questionable if you’re in a loving, committed relationship? Emma is joined by Debra Waters, who won the Bridport Prize last year for her short story "Oh Hululu" about an adult crush, and Helen Thomson is a science journalist and author whose new book is called 'This Book Could Fix Your Life' in which she shares her advice on affairs of the heart.Yesterday, the eyes of America were mainly on one woman. Congresswoman Liz Cheney was one of ten Republicans who crossed the floor and voted with the Democrats to impeach President Trump for the second time, something that has never happened before to a President. A key trigger in all of this was, of course, the storming of the Capitol Building last week. Cheney laid blame firmly at the feet of President Trump and criticised his role in stoking the attack. So who is Liz Cheney and is she the political heroine some are saying she is? Is she trying to save the Republic from doom and destruction at its most desperate hour? Emma talks to Amy Pope, former deputy home security advisor to President ObamaAn estimated 30,000 migrants and refugees have lost their lives in the Mediterranean in the last fifteen years. One of the largest shipwrecks took place in October 2013 when a boat went down off the Italian island of Lampedusa, killing 366 migrants on board. A second tragedy, with an even larger loss of life, happened in April 2015 when a boat sank carrying 1000 refugees and migrants travelling from Libya to Italy. Cristina Cattaneo, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Milan, has spent the last five years voluntarily running a project with others to identify just some of those who died.The Equality and Human Rights Commission has a new chair. Her name is Kishwer Falkner. The EHRC's most recent and high-profile investigations have been into pay at the BBC and anti-Semitism within the Labour Party. Its twitter tag line says that it’s here to “to stand up for freedom, compassion and justice in our changing times”, but it has its critics too. The Women and Equalities Committee once said it needed to overcome its ‘timidity’, and be ‘bolder’. That was in 2019, so has it?

To mark the centenary of the infamous ‘sawing-a-woman-in-half’ illusion, Emma Barnett talks to Debbie McGee and Dr Naomi Paxton, also to author Angie Thomas about her new book "Concrete Rose" the prequel to her bestseller "The Hate U Give", Joan Bakewell talks about her legal challenge over the government's decision to delay the second dose of the Covid 19 Vaccine for elderly and we hear how the the nurse Sarah Link lived in a caravan for nine months outside her family home in Cradley Heath in the West Midlands to protect her mum from catching Covid.The programme includes a clip of Baroness Boothroyd courtesy of Sky News Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lisa Jenkinson

Around 2.3 million people in the UK have received 2.6 million doses of vaccine. Yesterday we heard they're planning to vaccinate 2 million people a week, until the middle of February with the aim of reaching the most vulnerable who've accounted for 88% of deaths from Covid 19 so far. A recent poll showed more than a quarter of 18-to-34-year-old women said they would say no to a Covid jab, citing concerns over the vaccines effect on their fertility and pregnancies. Emma talks to Professor Lucy Chappell, Research Professor in Obstetrics at Kings College in London and spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists; and to the Vaccine Deployment Minister Nadhim Zahawi. Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, was due to be executed by lethal injection later today, but a reprieve has been granted. Lisa was convicted for the gruesome murder of a 23-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant. The baby miraculously survived. Emma speaks to Leigh Goodmark, Marjorie Cook Professor of Law and Co-Director, Clinical Law Program. She assisted the defence team with advocacy for Ms. Montgomery. Sex and the City: After six series, 94 episodes and two films - the women are making a return - but without Samantha - the feminist icon played by Kim Cattrall. The lead character and producer Sarah Jessica Parker yesterday announced they would be back with 10 half-hour episodes - showing us how their lives have changed now they're in their 50s. Reaction has been mixed. Hadley Freeman is a columnist and feature writer for the Guardian and a BIG fan of Sex and the City. She explains how she feels on hearing it is coming back.This is an edited version of the programme.Presented by Emma Barnett Producer: Louise Corley Editor: Karen Dalziel

Listeners and practitioners offer advice and support to parents living with violent children. Pat Craven from the Freedom Programme, and Karina Kelly who advocates Non-violent Resistance join Emma.Author of Running Like a Girl, Alexandra Heminsley has written a new memoir about having a baby after much difficulty and finding out not long after that her husband is set on transitioning. She talks to Emma about this tumultuous time of her life.The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, has said this morning that right now we are at the worse point of the epidemic in the UK. He said over 30,000 people who have it are in the NHS system at the moment. In a tweet he's said "the number of people in ICU is rising rapidly." So what about the army of healthcare professionals who are looking after Covid patients? What's the toll on them? We've already had emails from healthcare workers saying they're close to handing in their notice because of the strain and others describing the daily stress and pressure on the wards. Emma speaks to a paediatric nurse who's been redeployed to an adult Intensive Care Unit. and Nicki Credland, Chair of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses.