Woman's Hour

Police in the Netherlands have taken the unusual step of launching a campaign on social media to track down women and girls who were blackmailed into sharing explicit pictures of themselves on line. Detectives have found 50 alleged victims of the man who has pleaded guilty. They're aged 13 to 20 and include those in the UK. But they believe there may have been many more. Our reporter Anna Holligan, in the Netherlands, has been following this.
Riki Lindhome is a comedy songwriter and actor who went viral for her song Hysteria, about medically induced orgasms, and her break up anthem, So Long Farewell, on behalf of Baroness Schraeder from The Sound of Music. She's also appeared in cult TV series The Big Bang Theory and played therapist Dr Valerie Kinbott in the the hugely popular Netflix sequel to The Addams Family, Wednesday. Currently on stage at the Soho Theatre in London, she talks to presenter Anita Rani about her very personal and poignant one-woman comedy, Dead Inside, which documents her own experiences of infertility and longing for a family as well as having a child through surrogacy.

Student loans have made the headlines multiple times this year with critics calling them unfair. But does student debt affect women differently? Amy Brooker from the feminist economics group the Women's Budget Group thinks so. This week she's written a blog post to highlight her own student loan story and why women may be impacted more than men in repaying their loans. This comes as the Government’s Treasury Committee calls for people to share their experiences of student loans. Amy joins us along with Kate Ogden, a Senior Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies who focuses on higher education.
Lucy Apps’ debut novel, Gloria Don’t Speak, has recently been longlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The novel paints a tender portrait of 19-year-old Gloria, a young woman with a learning disability. When she forms an unlikely friendship with a man named Jack, it offers her a new sense of connection - but after an act of violence, their relationship is forced to come to an end. Lucy speak to Anita about her book and why she wanted to explore themes of vulnerability, connection, and agency.

Presenter: Anita Rani
Producer: Sarah Jane Griffiths

The Church of England is planning to issue an apology for its role in forced adoption, according to a draft seen by the BBC. During the 1950s, 60s and 70s tens of thousands of babies were forcibly taken from their unmarried mothers, women who had been sent away to homes run by the Church and state. The news of a potential apology comes just a fortnight after the House of Commons education committee published a report of their inquiry into the issue and called for a state apology from the Government. Anita Rani is joined by Labour MP Helen Hayes, chair of that committee, along with Diana Defries, Chair of the Movement for an Adoption Apology, whose daughter was taken away 12 days after she gave birth.
The largest display of Queen Elizabeth II’s clothing ever to be staged will open on 10 April at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. The exhibition, called Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style, marks the centenary of the late Queen’s birth and includes around 200 items, about half of which are on display for the first time. It charts clothing worn in all 10 decades of Queen Elizabeth’s life, many designed by Norman Hartnell, and it spans the full breadth of her wardrobe, from couture eveningwear to impeccably tailored off-duty clothing. Ahead of the exhibition opening to the public, Anita went to meet its curator, Caroline de Guitaut, to take a tour.
Once thought politically unstoppable, recently Italian voters said 'no' to Giorgia Meloni’s proposed judicial reforms in a referendum. So what does that rejection tell us about her current political position after more than three years in charge? And why, earlier this morning, did she feel the need to address the Italian Parliament? In October 2022 she became Italy’s first female Prime Minister and as of September this year she will have had the longest continuous term in office in Italy since the Second World War, surpassing the late Silvio Berlusconi’s record. Anita is joined by senior BBC European reporter Laura Gozzi and Director of the Institute of International Affairs Nathalie Tocci.
Indigo Reign, formerly known as Lady MC, is one of the first female MCs in jungle music. She's just been part of a landmark moment for global music culture, bringing the "godfathers" of drum and bass, Fabio and Grooverider, to headline the first-ever jungle and drum & bass festival in East Africa, called NURAFest and it took place in Kenya. Born in prison, she grew up around gang culture and found her voice in jungle music, becoming an award-winning MC and artist, who turned disadvantage on its head. She's also the founder of the Young Urban Arts Foundation, helping thousands of young people through music.
Presenter: Anita Rani
Producer: Andrea Kidd

Student Jodie Morrow talks to Nuala McGovern about her ordeal of being arrested after her stalker falsely accused her of stalking him. He has now been jailed after pleading guilty to harassment and perverting the course of justice, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland has acknowledged "shortcomings" in how the case was handled. Jodie is now helping the police to try to improve how they handle stalking cases.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Endometriosis is launching an Inquiry into endometriosis and the workplace. The inquiry follows the latest data from Endometriosis UK showing it takes on average nine years and four months for diagnosis of endometriosis in the UK, a statistic that hasn’t improved in over a decade. Labour MP Kirsteen Sullivan, who chairs the inquiry, and Bethan Allen, who has the condition, discuss how this can be improved and what employers should do to support sufferers.
If you’re in your 50s and feeling as though the workplace is quietly moving on without you, overlooked or pushed out, you’re not alone. Author Lucy Standing argues that this could in fact be the most powerful decade of your working life, if you rethink how a career should look. And Eleanor Mills, who runs a website for midlife women, or “Queenagers” as she calls them, argues this period of life is not about decline, but about being on the cusp of something transformative.
Each year egg donation enables between 2,000 and 3,000 women to have children who otherwise wouldn’t be able to. One woman, Gini Bhogal, helped someone in this way after donating her eggs to a woman she met randomly on a London Tube. It began on a crowded carriage in the early 90s, and when she spoke about it on social media she says the reaction was overwhelming. Gini and Christopher, the child born from that donation, explain how he came to be conceived and how he found out about his origins.
Presenter: Nuala McGovern
Producer: Melanie Abbott

Women in Northern Ireland who have had a miscarriage - along with their partners - will now be entitled to two weeks paid leave. The government is planning to bring in at least one week of leave for families in England, Scotland and Wales next year. Nuala McGovern is joined by Niamh Campbell, Reporter for the Belfast Telegraph and Erin Sharkey who is a volunteer with the Miscarriage Association in Northern Ireland.
Last August, 250 harvest mice were released into a nature reserve in Devon to replenish the natural stocks of this little animal that is under-threat. The project wasn’t conceived by a big conservation group or local wildlife centre – in fact it barely involved adults at all. It was the dedication of two 13-year-old naturalists, Eva Wishart and Emily Smith, who bred the mice at home in empty fish tanks, using plants from their garden, and a custom-built release enclosure. We hear from them and we have an update on the success of their project.

Do you think that having kids makes you happy? A new study from the University of Nicosia in Cyprus suggests not. It drew on data from more than 5,000 participants in ten countries, including the UK, and concluded that there is no strong evidence that parenthood leads to a measurable increase in positive emotions. To discuss the findings and weigh up their own experiences, we hear from two mothers of two - Ella Whelan author of ‘What Women Want,’ and Iko Haruna, a family photographer and former presenter of ParentLand, the BBC World Service’s podcast.
Thousands of rapes are reported every year across the UK in fact, and the numbers continue to rise. ‘Sophie’ was raped by a man pretending to be a taxi driver after a night out in Glasgow in 2022. She decided she wanted to talk publicly about her experience and approached BBC Scotland newsreader Laura Miller, presenter of Scotcast, who tells us more of Sophie's story.
What if people who have affairs were sent off, in their extramarital pairings, to an unknown city to spend time together? All the while their 'real' lives were put on pause and waited for them to come back. How long would the paradise last for? This is the premise of a new book, Permanence by Sophie Mackintosh. Sophie joins Nuala to discuss it.
Presenter: Nuala McGovern
Producer: Kirsty Starkey

Easter Monday in the Christian calendar means Christ is risen and symbolises a shift from darkness and death to life, hope and light. We’re also in the middle of Passover which signifies spiritual illumination, freedom, and the transition from darkness to light. So in this special edition of Woman's Hour, Nikki Bedi focuses on women and light. How does light inspire and motivate us, and how can we harness it and use it to our advantage?
Nikki speaks to GP Dr Radha Modgil about the impact of light on our health and wellbeing.
We hear from Paule Constable, an award-winning lighting designer with Olivier and Tony awards for best lighting design for her work spanning theatre, opera, dance and pop music. She is joined in the conversation with Nikki by Ruth Kelly Waskett, a lighting director at engineering consultancy Hoare Lea where she advises architects and engineers on lighting choices in public buildings.
In May last year we dedicated a whole programme to women and farming. When thinking about the impact of light on our lives, who better to ask than early rising farmers? We catch up with Sinead Fenton, an edible flower and herb farmer in East Sussex, and dairy farmer Lorna Burdge.
We discuss light's influence on how our ancestors behaved and what they believed with Carolyne Larrington, Emerita Professor of medieval European literature, University of Oxford and Dr Jennifer Wexler, curator of history for English Heritage.
How can you recreate light in other art forms? Cecilia McDowall, who is one of the UK’s leading composers of sacred and secular choral music, tells Nikki about writing music inspired by light and the changes in the seasons.
Presenter: Nikki Bedi
Producer: Corinna Jones