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Woman's Hour

British Ambassador to Ukraine Dame Melinda Simmons, Kirsty Sedgman, Black women and cancer, Eleanor McEvoy and Averil Mansfield

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.22.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dame Melinda Simmons, the British Ambassador to Ukraine, joins Hayley Hassall to mark one year on from the Russian invasion. She talks about the impact the war is having on women and girls in the country, as well as the strength and heroism women are showing as they adapt their lives to exist in a constant state of war. Who decides what’s reasonable or unreasonable? And how do we agree as a society on what is ‘reasonable’ behaviour? Dr Kirsty Sedgman speaks to Nuala McGovern about her new book, ‘On being Unreasonable: Breaking the rules and making things better’, which addresses societal divides over what is, or isn’t, reasonable. New research from Cancer UK has shown that Black women from Caribbean and African backgrounds are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at later stages. To talk about why this happens and what needs to be done to help black women get diagnosed earlier, Nuala McGovern speaks to Kruti Shroti from Cancer Research UK and Adobea Obeng, who tried three times to get medical help before being diagnosed with incurable breast cancer. Irish singer-songwriter Eleanor McEvoy joins Nuala McGovern to talk about her newest album, ‘Gimme Some Wine’ and her UK tour. She explains how lockdown gave her time to heal and reflect on her life while creating new music, and how a purple AGA helped her to get over a particularly bad break-up! Averil Mansfield qualified as a surgeon in the early 1970s, a time when female medics were outnumbered my men eight to one. When she told her consultant she was getting married, his reply was: ‘what a pity!’. She joins Hayley Hassall to talk about her inspirational career and her thoughts on the current state of the NHS. Presenter: Hayley Hassall Producer: Lottie Garton

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

0:05.0

Good afternoon and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour,

0:07.6

the programme each Saturday where we gather together

0:10.2

the best bits of Woman's Hour from the week

0:13.0

and put them all together for you.

0:14.8

Coming up on the programme today.

0:16.8

Black women are more likely to get a later cancer diagnosis,

0:20.6

a study by Cancer Research UK has shown.

0:23.4

We'll hear from someone who tried three times

0:25.7

to get medical help before she was diagnosed

0:28.4

with incurable breast cancer.

0:30.6

And we'll hear from the inspirational woman

0:32.7

who became a female surgeon in the 1970s

0:36.2

when it was an all-male world.

0:38.3

People would be surprised and almost reluctant

0:41.5

to believe that you could be that person

0:44.0

with that amount of responsibility.

0:46.2

It sometimes worked in the opposite direction, of course,

0:49.2

because once they discovered that in fact,

0:51.0

you were that person with that responsibility,

0:53.3

then suddenly it seemed as though

0:55.2

you must be something extra special.

...

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