Main content

Weekend Woman鈥檚 Hour: Education Sec Bridget Phillipson, Author Marni Appleton, Women and prison

Highlights from the Woman's Hour week

One manifesto pledge of the incoming Labour government was to provide over 3000 new nurseries in empty school classrooms in England. The first 300 of these will open by September and offer an average of 20 places each. Nuala McGovern speaks to Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, about this announcement and also about the current state of provision and funding for children with special education needs.

Darkly funny, unsettling, and razor-sharp, I Hope You鈥檙e Happy by Marni Appleton is a haunting collection of short stories exploring modern womanhood through the lens of horror and satire. From viral photos to eerie performances in dead-end jobs, these stories capture the weirdness of millennial life... where power struggles, fleeting connections, and social media anxieties collide with the surreal. Marni joined Nuala to discuss the themes and her inspiration.

A new exhibition called Curious Cures at Cambridge University Library explores medicine in the medieval era. Dozens of unique medical manuscripts, recipes, cures and guides to healthy living from the 14th and 15th centuries are on display. To discuss women鈥檚 role in medieval medicine, Nuala was joined by the exhibition鈥檚 curator and medieval manuscripts specialist, Dr James Freeman.

The Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood believes 鈥減rison isn鈥檛 working鈥 for women and wants to reduce the number of female prisoners. Nuala speaks to Scarlett Roberts, a former prisoner and is now a Churchill Fellow and to former prisoner Jules Rowan, who co-hosts the Life After Prison podcast. They are joined by former prisoner officer and former Head of Security and Operations at HMP Wormwood Scrubs Vanessa Frake-Harris, and by prison Intelligence Analyst, author of Five by Five, Claire Wilson and Lucy Russell, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the charity Women in Prison.

The Neonatal Care Act starts tomorrow. It allows employed parents to take up to 12 weeks of additional leave on top of their maternity or paternity leave if their newborn baby stays in hospital for more than seven days. We hear from Catriona Ogilvy, founder of premature baby charity The Smallest Things, who has been fighting for this law change for 10 years.

Echo vom Eierstock is Switzerland鈥檚 first feminist yodelling choir. Elena Kaiser is their founder and joined Nuala to discuss where her love of yodelling came from, and why she is challenging the make-up of traditional yodelling choirs and songs.

Presenter: Nuala McGovern
Producer: Annette Wells
Editor: Emma Pearce

Available now

56 minutes

Last on

Last Saturday 16:00

Broadcast

  • Last Saturday 16:00

Follow us on Instagram

Get all the pictures, videos, behind the scenes and more from Woman鈥檚 Hour

Podcast