Woman's Hour

The Labour government has confirmed that it will act on its manifesto commitment to change the way private school fees are taxed across the UK. The current exemption from VAT will be removed, in order to fund 6,500 new teachers in England, and the change is coming in January next year, sooner than previously thought. Nuala McGovern gets the latest from the BBC’s Education Correspondent Elaine Dunk...

A stabbing attack in the Southport area of Merseyside has, at the time of going to air, killed a number of children and critically injured others. Nuala McGovern is joined by BBC Home Affairs Correspondent Lauren Moss to give us the latest. She also hears from the Labour and Cooperative Party Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside, Emily Spurrell, and the Reverend Marie-Anne Kent on how the...

The Irish novelist Edna O'Brien has died aged 93. President of Ireland Michael D Higgins said she was "one of the outstanding writers of modern times". She is perhaps best known for her portrayal of women's lives against repressive expectations in Irish society. Her first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960 and became part of a trilogy that was banned in Ireland for their references to...

The Paris 2024 Olympics start this evening with the opening ceremony. It's the first time an equal number of men and women will compete in a summer Games. To discuss the sportswomen you should keep an eye out for, Anita Rani is joined by Jeanette Kwakye, a former Olympian herself and now BBC pundit, and also BBC Sport reporter Laura Scott. A new film, The Commandant’s Shadow, follows Hans Jürgen H...

The Paris 2024 Olympics start this evening with the opening ceremony. It's the first time an equal number of men and women will compete in a summer Games. To discuss the sportswomen you should keep an eye out for, Anita Rani is joined by Jeanette Kwakye, a former Olympian herself and now BBC pundit, and also BBC Sport reporter Laura Scott. Adoption England have described an ‘unprecedented’ decline...

Kamala Harris has spoken about making childcare and eldercare more affordable, securing universal paid maternity leave and signing into law a bill that would restore and protect the right to abortion. So could these policies win her female votes, and how does this fit in with her strategy to try and beat Trump in the US presidential election? Anita Rani speaks to Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, director of C...

Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has been inspired by Charli XCX and her recent album release, brat. The link between the two is all over social media – but what does it all mean? Nuala McGovern is joined by former Editor-in-Chief of Vice and co-host of the Good Bad Billionaire podcast on BBC World Service to explain the trend, and columnist for The Times, Alice Thomson on Kamala Harris’ appea...

What makes women become whistleblowers? And what happens after they’ve brought wrongdoing to light? Nuala McGovern talks to lawyer-turned-author Megan Davis about her experience blowing the whistle on financial crime, how it inspired writing her new thriller Bay of Thieves, and how a whistle-blower can make the perfect character for crime fiction. When is it socially acceptable to bring your partn...

President Biden has bowed to pressure and made the decision to drop out of the US presidential race. He’s endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the potential Democrat Party nominee to run against Donald Trump – but is America ready for another female presidential nominee? Nuala McGovern is joined by Kelly Dittmar, Director of Research at the non-partisan Center for American Women and Politics a...

The Portuguese-Canadian singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado has sold more than 40 million records worldwide and won awards including a Grammy. Her upbeat, genre-defying pop music dominated the charts in the 2000s, from her break out hit I’m Like A Bird to her 2006 album Loose and its stand out hit Maneater. After finding that her music had been rediscovered by a whole new generation of fans on social...

Vula Malinga started out as one of the lead singers for the London Community Gospel Choir, before becoming a lead vocalist with Basement Jaxx and she has also collaborated with the likes of Adele, Dizzee Rascal and Beverley Knight. Tomorrow night Vula will don her flares and sequins as one of the soloists at the BBC Prom – Everybody Dance! The Sound of Disco, at the Royal Albert Hall. Along with t...

The Portuguese-Canadian singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado has sold more than 40 million records worldwide and won awards including a Grammy. Her upbeat, genre-defying pop music dominated the charts in the 2000s, from her break out hit I’m Like A Bird to her 2006 album Loose and its stand out hit Maneater. After finding that her music had been rediscovered by a whole new generation of fans on social...

Today, Woman's Hour comes live from Lord's Cricket Ground as England face New Zealand for the culmination of a five-match T20 International series. To talk us through the upcoming game we are joined by Ebony Rainford-Brent MBE. Ebony is a World Cup-winning cricketer, now turned presenter and pundit. We begin by looking at the grassroots game which is growing at a fast rate. We hear from girls at C...

One of the most iconic musicals of all time, Hello, Dolly!, has returned to the London Palladium, with Jerry Herman’s unforgettable score including Put On Your Sunday Clothes, Before the Parade Passes By, It Only Takes a Moment and Hello, Dolly! It’s a huge, no-expense-spared production, with a cast of 40, and the legendary Imelda Staunton as the witty and charming matchmaker Dolly Levi. Jenna Rus...

Former Old Bailey judge, Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC, lifts the lid on our legal system. Having worked in criminal courts for almost half a century, she is still asking: what is justice? She tells Nuala McGovern some of the ways women and children struggle through the legal system - and why she wanted to highlight these issues in her latest book, Rough Justice. Twisters – the sequel to 1996 disaste...

A record-breaking number of women MPs have been elected following Labour's win at the general election. It's also the first time in parliamentary history that the proportion of women elected is more than 40%. Harriet Harman, the now ex-Labour MP and former Mother of the House, gives her reaction. Three women who say they were the victims of a racial attack have had the charges of assault made agai...

Three women who were the victims of a racial attack have had the charges of assault made against them by their assailant discontinued by the CPS. Selma Taha, the executive director for advocacy group Southall Black Sisters, and Danae Thomas, two of the women, join Anita Rani to talk about what impact the charges being dropped has had, and how they’re hoping this might impact further action against...

The Department for Work and Pensions has just published statistics on the number of people affected by the so-called two-child benefit cap, which restricts child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households. Some campaigners have called the cap the biggest driver of the rise in child poverty in the UK and are demanding the new Labour government scrap it immediately....

Irish soldier Cathal Crotty was given a three-year suspended sentence after beating Natasha O'Brien unconscious in May 2022. Now, in the latest development, he is due to be formally discharged from the Defence Forces. Nuala hears Natasha's reaction and speaks to Diane Byrne, a spokeswoman for the Women of Honour group, to hear what impact this could have. Hannah Mills is the most successful female...

Former Chief Prosecutor Nazir Afzal speaks to Nuala McGovern about his independent culture review of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which is the independent regulator for nurses and midwifes in the UK. The report is highly critical, finding that a "dysfunctional culture" at the council has "threatened public safety and puts nurses at risk." Sir David Warren, Chair of the Council also joins the...

There are a record number of women MPs in the new parliament. Nuala McGovern is joined by former Mother of the House and now chair of the charity the Fawcett Society, Harriet Harman, who wants to set up a Women’s Caucus made up of female MPs. We also have political reaction from journalists Rachel Cunliffe and Caroline Wheeler. Is sports day something that teaches children invaluable life lessons,...

A new series was released this week on Netflix. It is called Man with 1,000 Kids, and Netflix is billing it as the true story of Jonathan Meijer, a man accused of travelling the world, deceiving women into having his babies - via sperm donation - on a mass scale. Nuala McGovern talks to Jonathan Meijer, the sperm donor, to mums Natalie and Suzanne, who had a baby conceived with Jonathan’s donor sp...

It’s 25 year since the New York Times’ best-selling author Lisa Jewell published her first novel, Ralph’s Party. Since then she’s written another twenty-one novels, and more recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs and the award winning None of This is True. She joins Krupa Padhy to discuss her latest work – Breaking the Dark – which is a...

A new series has been released this morning (3 July) on Netflix. It is called Man with 1,000 Kids, and Netflix is billing it as the true story of Jonathan Meijer, a man accused of travelling the world, deceiving women into having his babies - via sperm donation - on a mass scale. Nuala talks to Jonathan Meijer, the sperm donor, to mums Natalie and Suzanne, who had a baby conceived with Jonathan’s...

British scientist Dame Carol Robinson, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a trailblazer in the field of mass spectrometry, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award during this year’s European Inventor Award 2024 ceremony. She will be first ever British winner. She is receiving the award not just for her outstanding work but also for championing women in STEM. She joins Nuala...