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Woman's Hour

Women and sheds, Environment Minister Rebecca Pow, Rape threat insults, Declining birth rate in China

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.13K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2021

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Since the beginning of the pandemic, shed sellers have seen a surge in demand - especially those that can be used as home offices. And existing summerhouses and garages have been commandeered, particularly by women, as a growing number expect to be working from home. Instagram is awash with images of so-called "She Sheds". Emma discusses the attraction with Joanne Harris who writes from her shed and Gill Heriz, author of A Woman's Shed.

What does it say about society when protestors threaten to rape their enemies’ mothers and daughters? This is what happened in North London at the weekend when protestors waving Palestinian flags passed through a Jewish community in Finchley. Four men have now been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences. We look at the wider issue of how rape is threatened as a common insult, used for revenge in gangs and in the wider context of war. Emma talks to the writer and feminist activist Julie Bindel and to the historian Sir Antony Beevor.

This week the government has announced a range of measures to protect the environment, from banning peat in garden centres to increasing the rate of tree planting and reversing the loss of species diversity. A 10p charge on single-use plastic bags will also come into force on Friday. But what difference will these policies - and others made in the run-up to COP26 - make to the crisis facing nature and the climate? Emma Barnett speaks to Environment Minister Rebecca Pow.

Five years after China scrapped its one-child policy in favour of allowing families to have two children, the country's population growth has slumped to the lowest levels seen since the early 1960s. What's behind China's falling birth rate? We hear from Dr Ye Liu, a senior lecturer in international development at Kings College London.

Presented by Emma Barnett Producer: Louise Corley

Image by Nicolette Hallett © CICO Books, taken from A Woman's Shed by Gill Heriz

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, music radio podcasts.

0:35.0

Hello, I'm Emma Barnet and welcome to Womonsa from BBC Radio 4.

0:40.0

Good morning and welcome to the program.

0:42.0

Where do you work? Where do you think best? How do you

0:45.2

find or create a space that lets you be you and perhaps breathe a little easier in the

0:50.6

world? If you could have such a space, how would you decorate it? Of course we've been

0:54.8

thinking about how we're working at the moment and working differently with lots more people now

0:58.4

working from home and the need for women to have both money and a room of one's own to write.

1:04.0

That was her argument that Virginia Wolf argued for nearly a hundred years ago is still as prevalent today.

1:09.5

And we're talking about this today because the sale of sheds, as some people call them it seems on social media

1:14.8

she sheds quite hard to say that has skyrocketed during lockdown today I'll be joined by one

1:20.5

woman who has three sheds and the author and

1:23.0

Shokala writer you'll know from that book Joanna Harris about that need and

1:26.7

desire but how about you let us know where and how you have carved out some space

1:32.0

for yourself.

...

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