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As we head into the 2015 General Election just under 23% of MPs are women. And the United Nations puts the UK in sixty-fourth place for gender equality in its index of national parliaments. Over the coming months we’ll be looking at what every party is doing to improve that ranking. But all of this week we’ve been hearing some of the stories of the women who’ve been selected to fight seats in 2015 for the main political parties at Westminster – the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. So what of those parties’ efforts to tackle the numbers of women candidates they’ll be fielding? And how many more women MPs can we expect to see elected on May 7th next year?

Emma Barnett talks to Sarah Newton MP, DeputyÌýChairman of theÌýConservative Party; Gloria De Piero MP, Shadow Minister for Women; and to Jo Swinson MP, the Liberal Democrat Minister for Women and Equalities.Ìý

June Mottershead, whose founded , joins Emma to talk about her extraordinary, from a chimpanzee called Mary, to an orphaned lion cub called Christy whom she hand reared from birth.

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Our Zoo by June Mottershead is published by Headline

Although hair removal has probably been around forever, a new collection claims that it’s the of the 1920s that we have to thank, or blame, for the fashion and business of hairless female bodies.ÌýLouise Adamson talks to Judith Mackrell and Madelaine Marsh, about the history of beauty marketing. And in the Woman’s Hour studio, Emma Barnett asks journalist Hadley Freeman and advertising creative Gail Parminter what, if anything, has changed about the way that the beauty industry responds to, and even contributes to, our insecurities.

Maddy Prior has been part of the British folk music scene since 1969. She joins Emma to discuss her career and with , and her upcoming tour with the reformed .Ìý