Nour Swirki in Gaza, Baroness Falkender's secrets, Divorce, Alzheimer's, Hot flushes
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2023
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We have been bringing you women's voices from Israel and Gaza since the start of the war. Yesterday, you will have heard on the programme Rachel Goldberg, mother of a 23-year-old hostage Hersh Goldberg Polin, kidnapped by Hamas from a music festival in Israel. Today, we hear from a mother in Gaza. Nour Swirki is a journalist with two children living in Khan Younis, a city in the southern strip of Gaza, with her husband, mother and sister - they have had to leave their home in Gaza City for safety reasons and relocate to the south - a fraught journey many more Palestinians are expected to make. Due to the difficulties in speaking live to guests in Gaza, we asked Nour to record for us voice notes explaining the situation she and her family are currently in. She and her husband continue to work as journalists while her wider family look after her children - a son and daughter aged 10 and 12.
The ABC News Breakfast guest host Imogen Crump has been praised for helping to normalise symptoms of perimenopause, after she experienced a severe hot flush on live television. Emma Barnett asks her about what happened.
Research from the University of Bristol demonstrates that women can lose out financially when they divorce. The number of couples seeking legal advice during divorce proceedings is falling, and old-fashioned procedures that disadvantage women are being used. To find out more, and get advice on how to make sure you are not penalised financially, Emma speaks to financial planner Megan Jenkins and family lawyer Amanda McAlister.
The NHS is launching a new study into Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, which affects around twice as many women as men. The study, a joint project with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society, will use a blood test to detect for the disease at an early stage. There is currently no single test for Alzheimer's and patients can wait years for a diagnosis. Dr Susan Mitchell, Head of Policy at Alzheimer’s Research UK, one of the charities leading this study talks to Emma.
Emma talks to journalist Linda McDougall about her new biography of Marcia Williams, who went on to become Baroness Falkender. Linda hopes to shift public perception of the Baroness as a Svengali figure who influenced Prime Minister Harold Wilson during the sixties and seventies, and gain recognition for her achievements for the Labour Party. Linda's alternative history is called Marcia Williams, The Life and Times of Baroness Falkender.
Presenter: Emma Barnett Studio manager: Duncan Hannant
Transcript
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| 0:45.0 | Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's A from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:50.0 | I hope you're doing okay wherever you join us from today. |
| 0:53.7 | Shortly we will bring you a report of a woman's experience existing in Gaza at the moment. |
| 0:59.3 | This is following on from my conversation yesterday with a woman whose son was kidnapped and |
| 1:04.1 | taken hostage by Hamas from that music festival in Israel, which became a scene of a |
| 1:09.2 | massacre. We will also bring you the latest on how women can try to avoid missing out financially in divorce settlements. |
| 1:17.0 | A lot, it seems, can hang on the value of pensions. |
| 1:20.0 | And the amazing life and times of Baroness Falkender, the Labour Prime Minister |
| 1:25.1 | Harold Wilson's right-hand woman, you may not have heard of her, you may vaguely remember |
| 1:29.4 | her, maybe you remember her being referred to as Baroness Fork Bender or being decried as a |
| 1:34.0 | political dominatrix. One woman now wants to reframe her life and legacy. We'll |
| 1:38.8 | find out more. But it is a clip of another woman, an Australian editor that has gone viral after she had to stop what she was doing on live TV because she was having a hot perimenopausal flush. Have you seen this? I want to ask you about it. I'll be |
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