The Conversation

Two female plumbers on what puts women off from entering the industry, the messy reality of the job and the joy of solving problems with your hands. Judaline Cassidy has worked on the pipes of some of New York City's most iconic buildings in a career that has spanned two decades. She grew up in Trinidad & Tobago and came to plumbing because she didn't have enough money to go to law school. But...

Just 12 women have won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine since it was founded in 1901. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two of these female Nobel Laureates - both extraordinary scientists from Norway and France. Professor May-Britt Moser won the prize in 2014 for the discovery of a type of cell in the brains of rats, which helps them locate their position in space.  She won the prize jointl...

The lost role of women in the development of the computer industry is brought into focus by an internet pioneer and a computer historian. Radia Perlman is an American computer programmer often described as the 'Mother of the Internet' for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol, an algorithm which allowed early networks to cope with large amounts of data. She describes it as a 'simple hack' an...

Two award-winning African writers sit down with Kim Chakanetsa to talk race, gender and getting published in your early 20s. Nigerian author Chibundu Onuzo started writing her first book aged 17, became the youngest woman ever to sign to her publishing house at 19, and released her first novel, The Spider King’s Daughter, at the age of 21. Chibundu is based in London and her second book is called...

Is it possible to end child marriage in a generation? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women working to make it a thing of the past in Malawi and in the United States. Memory Banda's sister was just 11 when she was forced to marry the man who'd made her pregnant. Determined not to have the same fate, Memory persuaded local leaders in Malawi to change their minds about this cultural practise and...

Can hats be liberating for women? Nelufar Hedayat brings together a hatmaker to the British Queen and a turban designer to Beyoncé. Rachel Trevor-Morgan is a London based milliner who has been making hats for the Queen for over a decade. As well as royalty she also sells to top fashion retailers, and thinks it's a shame that we don’t wear hats as much as we used to. Rachel is not trying to push th...

Can translating a book be a feminist act? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two female translators from Egypt and the UK who explain why it matters that more women, and particularly more feminists, are translating texts into Arabic and English. Emily Wilson is the first woman to translate Homer's The Odyssey into English. She says she often found sexist language in previous translations by men which...

Body shaming is discrimination against 'non-perfect' bodies and it is usually directed at women. Kim Chakanetsa sits down with a Danish comedian and a British blogger who are challenging society's perceptions of a beautiful female body. Chidera Eggerue - aka The Slumflower - is a British blogger whose hashtag #saggyboobsmatter started an online movement, empowering women who were considering plast...

The professional kitchen is often seen as a place where bravado, machismo and sexism are standard. Kim Chakanestsa brings together two top female chefs to ask why there are so few women in the industry - and what if anything is holding women back? Dominique Crenn is a French chef living and working in San Francisco. She has two Michelin stars at her restaurant 'Atelier Crenn' - the first woman in...

Can financial markets transform women's lives? Kim Chakanetsa unites two financiers from Nigeria and Bangladesh who are trying to increase wealth for women in very different ways. Durreen Shahnaz was one of the first Bangladeshi women on Wall Street, and later founded Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) through which she set up the world's first social stock exchange. She recently lau...

Their children became sick, and they wanted to know why. Nelufar Hedayat brings together two women who identified toxic water supplies that were poisoning their children and their communities. Phyllis Omido is a Kenyan activist who won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015. Phyllis was working for a smelting factory in Mombasa, when she found out that her breast milk was giving her baby lead poi...

What does it take for a woman to excel in the ruthlessly competitive, male-dominated world of chess? Kim Chakanetsa meets two outstanding female players from Hungary and China to find out. Judit Polgar is the strongest female chess player of all time. As a child prodigy she broke Bobby Fischer's record to become the youngest grandmaster, aged 15. She went on to beat the World No 1 Garry Kasparov,...

In the art world, how much power do women hold? In 2017, of the top 100 artists whose work fetched the highest amount at auction, just 13 were women. Two female art-dealers who have pioneered Czech and Asian art on the international scene, discuss how that affects the way they value and sell art made by women. Pearl Lam is an iconic art dealer and a pioneer in raising the profile of Chinese art. S...

We meet two women who earn a six-figure salary by sharing their lives, fashion tips and their most personal moments on social media. Kim Chakanetsa delves into this digital world of influencers and finds out how to be successful in marketing online. French-Cameroonian Freddie Harrel left her career in banking to start a fashion blog. She also writes about her own personal struggles and hopes to in...

Why do women earn less than men across the world, and what can be done to narrow this gender pay gap? Two experts from Italy and Kenya give their ideas on how to make the workplace more equal and pay women what they are worth. Paola Diana (@paoladiana_) is the founder of PariMerito or Equal Merit, an organisation through which she lobbied the Italian government to pass new equality laws in the wor...

Planting, pruning and giving the orders - Kim Chakanetsa meets two female head gardeners who are challenging the idea that gardening is a hobby for women but a career for men. Sharon Cooke runs Andromeda Botanic Gardens in Barbados, the only Royal Horticulture Society Partner Garden in the West Indies. The garden was created in the 1950s by award-winning horticulturist Iris Bannochie. After Iris d...

Women making history on the snow and ice. Kim Chakanetsa meets two female athletes who are pioneers in their winter sports. Simidele Adeagbo is a Nigerian who is the first African woman to compete in the skeleton category of the Winter Olympics. Originally a track and field athlete, she set out to break barriers in winter sports but was faced with the challenge of no snow or tracks to practise on....

Explosions in classrooms and a commute threatened by bombs and bullets - academics from Yemen and Syria who found themselves working through a civil war. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women who are passionate about educating their country's next generation, but were forced to leave them behind when they fled to safety in Europe. They discuss why they had to make that painful decision, and how...

Travelling alone while female - what's the reality? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two wanderlust women who won't let sexism stop them from adventuring into different cities, countries and hemispheres. Meruschka Govender is a travel activist, and experience seeker from South Africa. She regularly backpacks around the continent, but says she always felt that there was a local voice missing in Afric...

What does it take to be the world’s best teacher and win a million dollars at the same time? We meet two women who have won the Global Teacher Prize for transforming the lives of their students. Andria Zafirakou is deputy headteacher at a community school in a deprived part of London which has one of the highest murder rates in the UK. Violent gangs often try to recruit the children at the school...

Feminism! Freedom! Identity! When it comes to frank discussions, podcasts by and for women are leading the way in creating communities where nothing is off limits. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women who are seizing the mic and recording their own stories and conversations. Their podcasts are all about challenging assumptions about gender, race and sexuality and building armies of like-minded...

Promoting women's writing around the world - Kim Chakanetsa brings together the heads of pioneering feminist publishing houses in Australia and India, and asks how they stay relevant in an age of self-publishing and e-books? Susan Hawthorne runs Spinifex Press in Queensland. She and her partner Renate Klein set it up in 1991 as a response to what they saw as a dearth of diversity in Australian pub...

Two women re-define what it means to be a bread-maker. While women and baking have always been closely associated with each other, the billion dollar industry is actually dominated by men. This week, two young women speak to Kim Chakanetsa about becoming the face of bread-making, taking on the family business, and the sacrifices it takes to make the perfect loaf. Apollonia Poîlane's grandfather op...

Professional female gamers excelling in a male-dominated environment. Emily Webb unites one of the UK's most successful live streamers, and a champion e-sports player from Canada to discuss their gaming highs, lows and strategies for dealing with trolls. Leahviathan has amassed almost 150,000 followers on the gaming website Twitch, streaming footage of herself playing video games such as Destiny 2...

Women who are acting as religious leaders in two Muslim communities in Europe. As women doing this is highly unusual, and is not accepted by most Muslim scholars and believers, Kim Chakanetsa asks them how they have been received and why it's so important to them. Sherin Khankan set up the feminist Mariam Mosque in Copenhagen in 2016. She calls herself a 'female imam' and she hopes to revolutionis...