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Woman's Hour

Girls State, Author Holly Gramazio, First female prime minister of the DRC

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.13K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the run-up to local elections in England and Wales, the Local Government Alliance have called for the law to change around publicising local councillors' home addresses. This is after some councillors are warning that a recent upsurge of abuse and threats is forcing large numbers of women to quit their roles in local government. Emma Barnett speaks to viral lockdown star Jackie Weaver about being a woman in local government.

Judith Suminwa Tuluka has been appointed the first ever female prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A former planning minister, she’s relatively unknown – so what does this mean for the DRC, and the women who live there? Emma finds out more about the new prime minister with BBC Monitoring’s Beverley Ochieng and the co-founder of a DRC NGO, Anny Modi.

How did 77 women from the same Cambridge college end up working at Bletchley Park during the war? Dr Sally Waugh, an alumna of women-only Newnham College, has uncovered a previously unknown contingent of female codebreakers and other staff who were recruited to conduct top secret work as undergraduates. Emma speaks to her to find out more.

A new documentary film, Girls State, spotlights the girls hoping they will become the first female President of the United States. It follows a real-life mock government programme attended by teenage girls in Missouri. The American Legion, who run the programmes, hold separate programmes for boys and girls in all fifty states in the US. Emma is joined by the film-maker Amanda McBain and Emily Worthmore, one of the girls who stands for Governor, the highest position in the mock government.

Games writer and author Holly Gramazio’s debut novel explores a world where an endless supply of husbands emerges from the attic. But when you can change husbands as easily as a lightbulb, how do you know when to stick with the one you’ve got? Holly joins Emma, live in the Woman’s Hour studio.

Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lottie Garton

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Fladiated.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:25.0

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC Sounds.

0:29.0

BBC Sounds.

0:30.0

BBC Sounds Music music radio podcasts.

0:35.0

Hello, I'm Emma Barnet and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4.

0:40.0

There's a bit of an unwitting theme on today's Woman's Air.

0:42.0

Sometimes that just happens here.

0:44.8

Today I would describe it as firsts for women, ambition,

0:48.6

leadership and politics.

0:50.7

Today we will bring you a sobering update on local elections and the experiences of some female

0:55.5

councillors in this country. Leaving these shores, we will share news and insights about the very

1:00.5

first woman to become the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo,

1:05.2

of the DRC. That's Judith Siminwa Toulica. We'll be hearing about her and what we know of her.

1:10.5

We're also going to hear from a young woman, Emily Wirthmore, who states that her ambition

1:15.6

is to become the President of the United States.

1:18.9

Should she or any of her teen female cohorts on a mock government program that's now the subject of a new Apple TV documentary

...

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