Woman's Hour

• 27/10/2025

  Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.

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• Weekend Woman's Hour: Landmark policy change in the Family Court, Essex Witches, Women rowing across the Pacific

  The Essex witch trials represent one of the darkest chapters in British history. A new Sky History series, Witches of Essex, revisits the real lives of women accused of witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries, drawing on newly examined court records and the latest historical research. Historian Dr Eleanor Janega joins Nuala McGovern to discuss.A landmark change to the Family Courts has been announced this week - the court will no longer work on the presumption that having contact with both parents is in the best interest of the child. Domestic abuse campaigners have said the move will save children's lives. Nuala talks to Claire Throssel MBE, one of the campaigners who has driven this change. In October 2014, her two sons, Jack, who was 12, and Paul, who was nine, were deliberately killed by their father. He had been awarded five hours weekly access to the boys despite Claire's warnings that he was a danger to them.After 165 days at sea, two British women have just made history becoming the first pair to row non-stop and unsupported across the Pacific Ocean, from South America to Australia. Jess Rowe, 28, and Miriam Payne, 25, set off from Lima in May and arrived in Cairns in Australia on Saturday, completing more than 8,000 miles in their nine-metre boat, Velocity. Along the way they faced storms, broken equipment, and even navigated by the stars when their systems failed - they join Anita Rani to talk about the highs and lows of their Pacific adventure.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Simon Richardson

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• First mum in space, Tiggy Walker, Recruiting women to Formula 1

  50 years ago today - in 1975 - 90% of women in Iceland took part in a nationwide protest over inequality. Instead of going to the office, doing housework or childcare, 25,000 women took to the streets, forcing factories and banks to close. It was known as the 'Women's Day Off' and fifty years on, Iceland still leads the world in gender parity, topping the Global Gender Gap Report for the 16th straight year. Anita Rani is joined by Tatjana Latinović, President of Icelandic Women's Rights Association and on the organising committee of today's strike, and Kristín Ástgeirsdottir, former Women’s Alliance MP and former director of the Icelandic Centre for Gender Equality. Tiggy Walker was married to the legendary BBC broadcaster Johnnie Walker, for 23 years before his death last year. Johnnie presented his 'Sounds of the 70s' show on Radio 2 right up until two months before he died. Tiggy was his full-time carer and joins Anita to talk about the emotional toll of caring for her soulmate Johnnie after his terminal diagnosis, as described in her new book, Both Sides Now.Former NASA astronaut Anna Fisher talks about becoming the world’s first ‘mom in space’. In 1978 Anna, an American emergency doctor, was accepted by NASA onto their astronaut programme, during the space agency’s largest and most diverse recruitment drive. In 1984, Anna took off on the Space Shuttle Discovery, leaving behind her 14-month-old daughter. Anna joins Anita to talk about how that decision triggered intense media scrutiny and looks back on her trailblazing career, as featured in a new BBC 2 documentary, ‘Once Upon a Time in Space.’Stephanie Travers is a trailblazer with an impressive list of firsts during her career. She became the first black female trackside fluid engineer in Formula 1 after beating 7,000 other applicants. She is also the first black woman to stand on an F1 podium after being personally invited by the team to collect the Constructor's Trophy at the 2020 Styrian Grand Prix. Today, she’s moved into a new role as Senior Impact Manager at Mission 44, Sir Lewis Hamilton’s foundation which is focused on diversity and inclusion. Stephanie joins Anita to discuss diversifying motorsports and making STEM and motorsport careers more accessible to young people from underrepresented backgrounds.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rebecca Myatt

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• Wes Streeting, Virginia Giuffre memoir, Pacific Ocean rowers

  Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting joins Anita Rani to announce new government policy on women’s health. Anita speaks to Amy Wallace, the writer and journalist who worked with Virginia Giuffre on her posthumously published memoir Nobody’s Girl. After two years of conversations, emails and extensive fact-checking, the book lays bare the life-wrecking impact of power, corruption and industrial-scale sex abuse, but it is also the story of how a young woman survived and became an advocate for sex trafficking survivors and continued to work toward justice.The Government have announced that the SEND White Paper expected this autumn is delayed until next year. BBC Education reporter Kate McGough joins Anita to tell us more.After 165 days at sea, two British women have just made history becoming the first pair to row non-stop and unsupported across the Pacific Ocean, from South America to Australia. Jess Rowe, 28, and Miriam Payne, 25, set off from Lima in May and arrived in Cairns in Australia on Saturday, completing more than 8,000 miles in their nine-metre boat, Velocity. Along the way they faced storms, broken equipment, and even navigated by the stars when their systems failed - they join Anita to talk about the highs and lows of their Pacific adventure.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones

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• The Nocebo effect, Women sports photographers, Parental involvement in family courts

  We’ve heard about the placebo effect, when belief in a treatment makes us feel better, but what do you know about the nocebo effect? It’s when our negative expectations of a treatment, medicine or procedure - or even mistrust of our health care services - can actually make us feel worse. And it’s a growing area of scientific research. Professor Giuliana Mazzoni from the Department of Psychodynamics and Clinical Psychology at the University of Rome and Dr Annabel Sowemimo, NHS Consultant in Sexual & Reproductive Health tell us more. A landmark change to the Family Courts has been announced today - the court will no longer work on the presumption that having contact with both parents is in the best interest of the child. Domestic abuse campaigners have said the move will save children's lives. Nuala McGovern talks to Claire Throssel MBE, one of the campaigners who has driven this change. In October 2014, her two sons, Jack, who was 12, and Paul, who was nine, were deliberately killed by their father. He had been awarded five hours weekly access to the boys despite Claire's warnings that he was a danger to them. Earlier this month, for the first time, every match across England’s top two tiers of women’s football was photographed exclusively by female photographers. So how important is it that breakthrough moments in women's sport are captured and told through the eyes of women? We speak to Eileen Langsley, a pioneering sports photographer who has captured moments from some of the world’s biggest sporting events over the last five decades, and Morgan Harlow, who was part of the all-female photography team for the Women's Super League.Long queues for the toilets are something women are very used to, whilst often watching the men dash in and out quickly. We speak to two women who are trying to resolve this issue, Amber Probyn and Hazel McShane, who have invented flat packed ‘female urinals’. They have already been deployed at Glastonbury and the London Marathon. They've just secured almost £1m investment, enabling them to take their invention around the world.

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