Bonus podcast: The Conversation 100 Women
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2020
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Celebrating the BBC 100 Women list 2020 Kim Chakanetsa and a panel of inspirational and influential women discuss whether some changes made because of Covid-19 restrictions could be seen as positive. They answer questions about bringing communities together, supporting lonely people and increasing flexibility for more inclusive employment.
Shani Dhanda is an award-winning disability specialist and social entrepreneur from the UK. She founded the Asian Woman Festival and Asian Disability Network. The pandemic has proved that flexible and home working is viable, and she wants to make sure our new online solutions are here to stay so that the world remains accessible to us all.
Karen Dolva has been seeking technological solutions to involuntary loneliness since 2015. A co-founder of No Isolation based in Norway, she’s helped develop a telepresence robot for children with long-term illness, and KOMP, a one-button screen for seniors. With reports from around the world of people feeling increasingly isolated because of Covid restrictions – should tech like this be used more widely?
Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, became Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone in 2018 with an inclusive vision of the city's renewal and a three-year plan to "Transform Freetown" and tackle environmental degradation and facilitating the creation of jobs in the tourism sector. #FreetownTheTreeTown was launched this January and already over 450,000 seedlings have been to address flooding, soil erosion and water shortages faced by the city. She says we can turn frustration and dissatisfaction into positive change. What can we learn from such an approach post-Covid?
Aditi Mittal is India’s best known female stand-up comedian, who is finding new ways to perform safely and online. She also hosts the Women in Labour podcast, and hopes that the increased time at home for many male workers in India has shone a light on the amount of time required to run a household, something that has always been a big barrier to the female workforce.
Produced by Jane Thurlow and Caitlin Sneddon
Image from left: Aditi Mittal (credit Nanak Bhatia), Shani Dhanda (courtesy Shani Dhanda), Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr (credit TJ Bade) Karen Dolva (credit No Isolation)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hi, it's Jane Garvey here. I thought you might be interested in this podcast from the |
| 0:40.6 | Conversation team on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:44.0 | It's part of the BBC 100 women's season. |
| 0:46.8 | In it, Kim Chakonetsa talks to some of the most inspiring and influential women from all over |
| 0:51.7 | the world about how to build a |
| 0:53.7 | brighter future after COVID-19. |
| 0:56.7 | Hello and welcome to a special edition of the conversation. |
| 1:00.5 | I'm Kim Chakaneta, and today we are celebrating the BBC 100 women lists |
| 1:05.3 | Which every year names a hundred influential and inspirational women from around the world and shares their stories |
| 1:16.8 | With me are a panel of women who through their creativity, tenacity and optimism are making a difference in their own way. These are four women who want to turn the COVID-19 pandemic into an opportunity |
| 1:25.6 | to be seized, a chance to re-examine the way we live and address issues such as how can we bring |
| 1:31.8 | communities together, how better can we support |
| 1:34.4 | lonely people and what can be done to make employment more flexible and |
| 1:39.2 | inclusive. Those are some of the questions I'll be asking them with the help of my on-screen audience, which includes some of our former guests on the program, who in true 2020 style are joining me remotely. |
| 1:50.0 | But first, let me introduce our four panelists. |
... |
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