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When you are involved in the race to shed light on some of our biggest scientific questions, does your gender matter? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two successful female life scientists at the new world-leading Crick Institute in London. They are both leading ground-breaking research in their respective fields, and are joined by young women from Camden School for Girls who are considering a career in science. Dr Vivian Li grew up in Hong Kong and completed her PhD there, and says it was only wh...
Kim Chakanetsa is in candid and intimate conversation with two women who have made the life altering decision to enter a religious order. Mother Hildegarde is a nun in a silent, cloistered Catholic convent that overlooks London's Hyde Park. Originally from Australia, she entered religious life at 35, giving up her family, friends and name. She says she wanted to wear a habit, but found obeying the monastic 'rule' very hard to begin with, and as a self-confessed chatterbox she also really struggl...
Siphokazi Mdlankomo comes from South Africa and Marissa Begonia from the Philippines but they have plenty in common. They have both dedicated a great deal of their lives to taking care of other people's households and children. They are Kim Chakanetsa's guests on this programme and they are discussing life as a domestic worker. Marissa Begonia left her three young children to work overseas. It was a tough decision for her but she couldn't bear to see them going hungry at home in the Philippines....
Growing up in Santiago Melissa Aldana learnt to play the tenor saxophone or 'horn' at her father's knee, though he took some convincing that she would stick with it. She did, and went on to become the first ever female instrumentalist to win the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Award in 2013. Melissa is now the leader of a successful jazz trio based in New York, and loves her work, but is concerned that a musician's life on the road will be hard to square with starting a family when the time com...
Kim Chakanetsa meets two women who are taking on the challenge of combating bullying in Pakistan and the US. Zainab Chughtai says the bullying she endured as a young girl inspired her to go into schools to try and stop other school children experiencing what she did. The emotional impact was so severe on Zainab, she says it's affected her personal relationships as an adult. Her campaign, Bully Proof, travels across Pakistan providing workshops to school children which create a safe space for the...
Sapna Bhavnani is one of India's most celebrated hair stylists and is known for her own cropped hair and tattoos. Her Mumbai based salon, Mad-O-Wat, is the go-to place for Bollywood's A-list when their hair needs some attention. Clients include actors, politicians and sports stars like Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Sapna says her hair appointments can often turn into therapy sessions as her clients want to get their problems off their chest when they're sitting in her chair. Charl...
Two women whose aim is to make sex work safer in Uganda and New Zealand join Kim Chakanetsa to exchange experiences. Daisy Nakato is the founder of WONETHA, a sex workers' rights and support organisation in Kampala, Uganda. She says she chose to go into sex work at 17, but did face many challenges including violence from clients and running from the police. She is now building a better relationship with the police, which she hopes will lead to a reduction in violence against sex workers, but for...
Kim Chakanetsa gets into the driving seat with two female truckers from Sweden and Australia. Elin Engstrom test drives heavy haulage trucks for Swedish transport company Scania. The 26 -year-old has been in the business for six years and started out operating forklift vehicles, which had to be loaded manually. When she saw that the big trucks had rollers she realised that was the job for her. Elin has driven oil tankers and double trailers and describes driving as an art form. Despite the snow ...
Kim Chakanetsa finds out what it's like to run a ship in South Africa and the Philippines. Zimasa Mabela is the first African woman to command a navy vessel. Commander Mabela is in charge of a de-mining ship based in Cape Town, South Africa. She grew up two hours from the sea, but only saw it for the first time aged 18. A few years later she felt compelled to join the navy so she could see the world. Zimasa was recruited as a radio operator and has travelled around the world to countries like In...
Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women from the US and UK, who have been at either end of the adoption process, to reflect on their choices. Judith Fleming is an actor and writer based in the UK who decided to adopt a child, on her own, at the age of 40. We are using a different name to protect Judith's and her son's privacy. Judith looked through many profiles, but says when she saw a picture of her son she knew he was the one and she had to be his mum. Judith's open with her little boy about...
Kim Chakanetsa brings together two athletes from the UK and Egypt who know what it's like to stand on the start line and have the whole world watching you. Dame Kelly Holmes became the first British female athlete to win a double gold at a Games when she won the 800m and 1500m in Athens, in 2004. Her talent was spotted by a PE teacher at school and her Olympic fire was sparked at the age of 14 watching Team GB win in Moscow. Kelly's fought the physical and mental strains of injury to become the ...
Ekaterina Dobrokhotova was born in Moscow, and moved to Quebec when she was eight. She learnt magic as a teenager via the internet, practised every day for hours, and soon began to perform in public. Ekaterina is now the most watched female magician on YouTube. She specialises in the art of card manipulation, and believes the true secret of magic is not how good you are, but about how you make people feel. Adeline Ng is the only practising female magician in Singapore. She incorporates elements ...
Presenter Gemma Cairney gets behind the decks with two female DJs who get dance floors pumping in America and South Africa. DJ Lady Lea got hooked on house music and the Cape Town dance scene as a teenager in the early 1990s. She started taking her record box to clubs and playing early morning sets. Now rated as one of South Africa's top female DJs, Lea plays electro, funky, deep, tech, minimal and progressive house. She started an all-women DJ agency called Divas on Decks, which promotes up and...
A celebrity nanny from Australia and a Brazilian nanny who works in the US tell Kim Chakanetsa what it's like to look after other people's kids 24/7. Australian nanny to the stars Philippa Christian has worked for actors, singers and Middle Eastern royalty. Even though she won't name names the 'Nanny Confidential' author reveals what it's like to work for Hollywood employers. Philippa loves the challenge of helping 'difficult' children, and there are definite perks, including the pay, but the do...
Clothes designers from Trinidad and Greece get together with Kim Chakanetsa, to talk about the killer combination of creativity and business sense you need to make it in the competitive world of fashion. Anya Ayoung Chee is from the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Always interested in fashion, but too scared to study it at college, she started making her own outfits when competing to represent her country at Miss Universe. Anya later entered the US reality TV show Project Runway, and ca...
Kim Chakanetsa brings together top female football referees to discuss their passion for the game, the demands of rigorous fitness training and how they handle aggressive players. Melissa Borjas Pastrana was inspired to follow in her uncle's footsteps to become a referee. Melissa, who lives in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, referees men's games in Honduras and women's games at Fifa level. Melissa reveals how you have to be good at psychology to succeed as a referee, because you are managing ...
Women make better city traders than men according to research, but most trading floors are dominated by men. Kim Chakanetsa explores why this might be and meets two traders from Russia and the Philippines who are helping to redress the balance. Currency trading is Louise Dispo's area of the market. Originally from the Philippines, Louise work's in London now. She says she's used to being one of the only females on the trading floor and thinks it's the high pressure, risk and unpredictable hours ...
Kim Chakanetsa brings together leading women vets from Uganda and Sri Lanka to talk about their careers and their trickiest challenges. As a new vet graduate, Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka was made chief veterinary officer of the Ugandan Wildlife Service. She set about restocking her country's national parks with giraffes and lions following years of civil war, but it was the endangered mountain gorillas that really captured Gladys' heart. She now leads her own charity Conservation Through Public He...
Patrice Banks says she was an 'auto airhead' before she fell in love with fixing vehicles. She was an engineer for a big chemicals company, but despite her passion for problem solving she avoided her own car maintenance and preferred to pay a man to do it. The Philadelphia born mechanic discovered that many other women felt the same way and decided to do something about it. Patrice started work in a garage, went back to school and set up Girls Auto Clinic to help women feel more connected with t...
Kim Chakanetsa travels to the Global Philanthropy Forum conference in California to speak to two philanthropists and finds out why they give so much money away. Amy Rao grew her Silicon Valley tech company, Integrated Systems Archive, during the dotcom bubble of the 1990s and says she started giving large amounts of money to causes close to her heart as soon as she launched the business. Amy grew up in a household where helping others and entrepreneurship were a priority, even when they were bro...
Kim Chakanetsa quizzes two heavy metal bass guitarists about their roles in their bands, how they learnt to head-bang, and juggling the music with their day jobs. Doris Yeh tours all over the world with best-selling Taiwanese metal band Chthonic. She says she only got into heavy metal by accident, but now loves it. Being the only woman in the band can have its down-sides - at performances her male colleagues used to expect her to get changed in the toilet while they occupied the one dressing roo...
When Australian mechanical engineer Marita Cheng got to university, she was shocked to discover that only five out of 50 students on her course were female. She responded by starting Robogals - an organisation that goes into schools and teaches robotics to girls as a way of encouraging them into choosing engineering as a career. Having won multiple awards and starting her own robotics company, Marita is now an inspiring role model herself, and has developed a robot arm that can aid people with m...
Cat Hulbert started gambling for a living 40 years ago. A blackjack player in her 20s, she became so skilled at winning money from casinos, she was soon very unpopular with them all around the US. Cat took up poker in the 1980s, and was one of the first women to break into the ranks of professional card players. The Game Show Network called her "the best female gambler on earth." Now retired, Cat says she is not sure that she would legalise gambling in a state that did not have it, as it can rui...
Megan Harrington-Johnson doesn't let worry and doubt stop her when she wants to complete a 13km open-water swim. The South African endurance swimmer has swam in shark infested waters, even though she's petrified of them and has had a close shave with a Great White. Megan says she's often the only woman on the team, but thinks it's fear rather than ability that holds other women back from doing what she does. Sweating in the water is an issue and Megan talks about the importance of staying hydrat...
Cathy Bramley is the UK author of best-selling romantic comedies such as Appleby Farm and The Plumberry School Of Comfort Food. Cathy has spent most of her working life in marketing, however reading has always been a passion of hers, and she says one particular book inspired her to take up writing herself. Four years ago she went for it and self-published her first novel. She was then taken on by a publisher and was able to give up her day job to write full-time in 2014. Cheryl Ntumy has written...
Jacquie Davis began her career with the British police, but soon moved into security and close protection. This was in the 1970's when Jacquie says it was "very lonely" being the only woman in the industry. Today Jacquie runs the security and risk management firm Optimal Risk and her clients include the ultra-rich and famous; she's dealt with everything from hostage situations to screaming fans and celebrity tantrums. Denida Zinxhiria grew up in Albania during a time of social upheaval where it ...
Maria Toorpakai grew up in the traditional tribal region of Waziristan, and from an early age decided she would rather play with the boys than stay inside with the girls. So she burned her 'girly' clothes and cut her hair short so she could run and jump and wrestle outside. When her family moved to Peshawar Maria picked up a squash racket for the first time, and by the age of 16 was Pakistan's number one player. Her success led to death threats however, and she was forced into hiding and playing...
Michelle Payne is the first ever female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup and is the youngest of ten children of Paddy and Mary Payne who grew up in central Victoria, Australia. Mary died in a motor vehicle accident when Michelle was only six months old, leaving Paddy to raise the children as a single father. Michelle entered racing aged 15, the eighth of the Payne children to do so. She won in her first race at Ballarat, riding 'Reigning' a horse trained by her father. Michelle’s book “Life as I...
Imtiaz Dharker and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers explore their individual paths to becoming celebrated poets, discussing the profound influence of diverse languages and personal histories on their work. They share how pivotal life events, such as Dharker's elopement and de Villiers' adoption discovery, transformed into powerful art. The conversation delves into the writing process, the political undercurrents of their poetry, and the vibrant state of poetry, particularly among women and youth in South Africa, concluding with invaluable advice for aspiring writers.
Sandra Magnus is a US astronaut with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and is now the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Sandra always wanted to become an astronaut and has had a lifelong passion for science and exploring how the world works. On the space station she says that every day is about trouble-shooting, and sometimes it doesn't seem very organised, there is a lost and found plastic bag, "I always thought that was rather ...
