What is it really like to go undercover as a woman? Our two guests set out to better understand the sex trafficking trade, and to gain deeper insight into life in North Korea. Suki Kim and Mimi Chakarova talk to Kim Chakanetsa about how they did it, and the challenges they faced. Suki Kim is an investigative journalist and novelist who was born and raised in South Korea. Her bestselling 2014 book, 'Without You, There Is No Us', describes the six months she spent undercover in Pyongyang, teaching...
Feb 11, 2019•28 min
What difference does it make when women run universities? There are many higher education leaders who champion the idea of diversity, but few of them truly embody it, so the view from the top is still largely pale and male. Kim Chakanetsa talks to two women who are shaking things up in their institutions in the United States and Ecuador. Ana Mari Cauce is the first woman, the first Latina and the first openly gay president of the University of Washington in Seattle, US. She says it’s important t...
Feb 04, 2019•28 min
What’s it like to grow up away from your family? Two women who spent part of their childhoods in care tell Kim Chakanetsa how they look back on that time, and how the experience has shaped them as adults. As a child, Rukhiya Budden experienced terrible neglect and abuse growing up in an orphanage in Kenya. Today she campaigns for orphanages to be abolished worldwide, as she believes such institutions can never provide the level of care that children really need. Following her mother’s death, Hay...
Jan 28, 2019•28 min
What is making women angry, and can that rage be channelled for good? Kim Chakanetsa speaks to feminist writers from South Africa and the US. US writer and media critic Soraya Chemaly says women across the world have a right to be angry. Their rights are undermined, they're routinely underpaid and belittled. But from an early age girls are also taught to suppress their anger and calm themselves down when fired up. She says women need to learn to embrace rage as a tool for positive change. Soraya...
Jan 21, 2019•28 min
Taking event planning to another level, from supplying bespoke flip flops to conjuring unforgettable scents and flying a plane filled with flowers into the desert, two luxury party planners working in Ibiza and Kuwait reveal the secrets of their trade. Their work demands a keen eye for detail and an endless ability to manage vast budgets and the sometimes outlandish expectations of the rich and famous, all while keeping a cool head. Serena Cook is the founder of Deliciously Sorted, a firm that o...
Jan 14, 2019•27 min
Is being an agent to female soccer players different from representing men? Kim Chakanetsa speaks with two female football agents from the UK and France who have male and female clients. They handle everything from tough salary negotiations and sponsorship deals to the all-important image management. Jennifer Mendelewitsch was the only woman out of 400 agents in France when she qualified 15 years ago. She has built a reputation as a fearsome negotiator and describes herself as part-mother part-f...
Jan 07, 2019•27 min
A floor-length gown, a strong pose and hundreds of flashing cameras: Kim Chakanetsa brings together the women behind the glamour, making actors and models look good on the red carpet, on stage and even on the street. They are stylists working for some of the most photographed women in Bollywood and Hollywood. How does fashion shape these celebrities' careers, and how do they handle the scrutiny and criticism their clients can receive? Tanya Ghavri is one of Bollywood's busiest stylists. With a d...
Dec 31, 2018•28 min
Gaining freedom and strength from your everyday environment. The sport of parkour involves moving around urban obstacles as quickly as possible. Athletes run up walls, scale fences, and jump between roofs. Two female parkour enthusiasts tell Kim Chakanetsa what this sport gives them in areas where women can feel unsafe in the streets. Reem El-Taweel is a parkour athlete from Egypt, living in Dubai. She says when she was living in Egypt it was tough to train because of the street harassment she f...
Dec 24, 2018•28 min
As a conflict photographer you need bravery, passion and an ability to bear witness to unimaginable horror. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women who are exceptional photojournalists and asks do female photographers look at conflict differently? The American photographer Lynsey Addario is one of very few women on the frontline, documenting major wars and humanitarian crises around the world. During her career she has been kidnapped twice, but despite the toll on her personal life, she remains...
Dec 17, 2018•27 min
Why is classical music still so male and pale, and what can be done about it? Kim Chakanetsa talks to two leading female musicians who are working to challenge the status quo and open up orchestras to more women and people of colour. Of Nigerian-Irish parentage, Chi-chi Nwanoku realised that 30 years into an illustrious career as a double-bassist she was still one of vanishingly few non-white faces on the classical music stage. So in 2015 she started Chineke!, Europe’s first majority-black and m...
Dec 10, 2018•27 min
Nelufar Hedayat unites two women with disabilities from Toronto and Mumbai, who are challenging misconceptions about their sexuality and what they’re capable of achieving. Maayan Ziv is a fashion photographer and entrepreneur from Toronto, Canada. She uses a wheelchair and became frustrated with the lack of information about accessibility of venues in her city. Having discovered early on that technology can alter the day to day life of disabled people all over the globe, she decided to develop a...
Dec 03, 2018•27 min
Take your baby into prison or leave them behind? Kim Chakanetsa speaks to two women from Kenya and the US faced with that reality when their lives were up-ended by their wrongful imprisonment. They talk about how they found a purpose while serving time, and have since gone on to support others. Sunny Jacobs was sentenced to death for her role in an alleged double murder in the US in 1976. Separated from her two children, she served five years in solitary confinement - and was only finally releas...
Nov 26, 2018•27 min
Gowns, glittery bikinis and a lot of hair spray: thousands of women around the world wear them on stage every year, hoping to win a beauty pageant. Many say these pageants are demeaning and outdated but others argue that beauty pageants can be life changing experiences that help contestants to go on to academic and professional success. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two beauty queens to find out what's in it for women? Dee-Ann Kentish-Rogers is an Anguillan-British barrister and former athlete ...
Nov 19, 2018•27 min
The most extreme hate crime against women is femicide, the act of killing a person because they are a woman. But there is a growing movement of women who are taking a stand against this crime and demanding that their community takes it seriously. Nelufar Hedayat talks to two activists from countries where the death toll for women through violence is high: Mexico and Pakistan. Khalida Brohi grew up in Pakistan and saw her family being torn apart when her cousin Khadija was strangled to death with...
Nov 12, 2018•27 min
Campaigning for gay rights in Uganda and Sri Lanka - Kim Chakanetsa speaks to two women activists in countries where homosexual acts are punishable with a prison sentence. Kasha Nabagesera has been described as 'the face of Uganda's LGBT movement'. Since her twenties Kasha has fought for the rights of her fellow lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, which has brought her into conflict with the authorities. She says she faces daily harassment and serious threats, and doesn't walk the streets ...
Nov 05, 2018•27 min
Is women's sport still not taken as seriously as men's? What needs to happen to achieve the same pay, prize money and media coverage as their male counterparts? Presenter Kim Chakanetsa talks to two women about how they have fought to get equality with men in their chosen sport. Kathryn Bertine was a professional cyclist in the US for five years. She was shocked to discover that the average earnings of a professional female cyclist are well below the poverty line. She was so outraged that she lo...
Oct 29, 2018•27 min
Traditionally made by men and often criticised for sexism and colourism, Kim Chakanetsa asks two top female directors if the portrayal - and the power - of women in music videos is now changing. Kemi Adetiba is the only high-profile female video director on Nigeria's thriving music scene, working with artists such as Tiwa Savage, Wizkid and Falz. Now branching out into feature films, she still directs videos on request. She says she wants young girls to know that she is competing in a male-domin...
Oct 22, 2018•26 min
One year ago a #MeToo tweet by Hollywood actor Alyssa Milano encouraged an outpouring of women using the hashtag to talk about experiences of sexual harassment or assault. What followed were allegations against high profile figures in entertainment, the media and politics with many of the accused denying any wrongdoing. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women who have made public allegations of sexual abuse in countries where that's highly unusual, to find out if the ripples of #MeToo are being...
Oct 15, 2018•27 min
Does the beauty industry fuel insecurity and undermine a woman's choice to look how she wants? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two beauty entrepreneurs from Singapore and the UK who say they have lifted women up. Sharmadean Reid is a British Jamaican entrepreneur who founded WAH Nails, which she believes changed the beauty landscape with its millennial voice, feminist attitude and innovative salon space. Sharmadean went on to create FutureGirlCorp, workshops aimed at young businesswomen, and has ...
Oct 08, 2018•27 min
How do you improve women's access to good healthcare? Two female doctors talk to Kim Chakanetsa about the issues they face in two starkly different places - Somalia and the United States. Paula Johnson is an American cardiologist who has dedicated her whole career to thinking about health from a woman's perspective, focussing on the different ways men and women respond to diseases. When Paula learnt that medical research and trials traditionally were only tested on men, she decided she had to fi...
Oct 01, 2018•27 min
What is it like to put yourself in danger fighting for your rights as a woman? Kim Chakanetsa unites two women from Iran and Saudi Arabia, who decided to defy their governments' discriminatory laws - and suffered huge personal sacrifices as a result. In Iran women must cover their hair in public, according to the dress rule enforced after the Revolution in 1979. Masih Alinejad says she began to defy this compulsory wearing of the hijab as a teenager and continued to question it from within Iran ...
Sep 24, 2018•27 min
Two female plumbers on what puts women off from entering the industry, the messy reality of the job and the joy of solving problems with your hands. Judaline Cassidy has worked on the pipes of some of New York City's most iconic buildings in a career that has spanned two decades. She grew up in Trinidad & Tobago and came to plumbing because she didn't have enough money to go to law school. But she fell in love with the profession and has become a passionate advocate for women in trades. Juda...
Sep 17, 2018•27 min
Just 12 women have won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine since it was founded in 1901. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two of these female Nobel Laureates - both extraordinary scientists from Norway and France. Professor May-Britt Moser won the prize in 2014 for the discovery of a type of cell in the brains of rats, which helps them locate their position in space. She won the prize jointly with her former husband Edvard, with whom she had collaborated since they were students. Now divorc...
Sep 10, 2018•27 min
The lost role of women in the development of the computer industry is brought into focus by an internet pioneer and a computer historian. Radia Perlman is an American computer programmer often described as the 'Mother of the Internet' for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol, an algorithm which allowed early networks to cope with large amounts of data. She describes it as a 'simple hack' and it is still in use today. Tilly Blyth is Head of Collections and Principal Curator at the Science ...
Sep 03, 2018•27 min
Two award-winning African writers sit down with Kim Chakanetsa to talk race, gender and getting published in your early 20s. Nigerian author Chibundu Onuzo started writing her first book aged 17, became the youngest woman ever to sign to her publishing house at 19, and released her first novel, The Spider King’s Daughter, at the age of 21. Chibundu is based in London and her second book is called Welcome to Lagos. Panashe Chigumadzi is a Zimbabwean-born novelist and essayist. Raised in South Afr...
Aug 27, 2018•28 min
Is it possible to end child marriage in a generation? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women working to make it a thing of the past in Malawi and in the United States. Memory Banda's sister was just 11 when she was forced to marry the man who'd made her pregnant. Determined not to have the same fate, Memory persuaded local leaders in Malawi to change their minds about this cultural practise and then - still a teenager - she successfully campaigned for the government to raise the marriage age t...
Aug 20, 2018•27 min
Can hats be liberating for women? Nelufar Hedayat brings together a hatmaker to the British Queen and a turban designer to Beyoncé. Rachel Trevor-Morgan is a London based milliner who has been making hats for the Queen for over a decade. As well as royalty she also sells to top fashion retailers, and thinks it's a shame that we don’t wear hats as much as we used to. Rachel is not trying to push the boundaries of fashion with her hats - she says her mission is to make her clients look classically...
Aug 13, 2018•27 min
Can translating a book be a feminist act? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two female translators from Egypt and the UK who explain why it matters that more women, and particularly more feminists, are translating texts into Arabic and English. Emily Wilson is the first woman to translate Homer's The Odyssey into English. She says she often found sexist language in previous translations by men which did not actually exist in the original ancient Greek. She believes that all translators have an agen...
Aug 06, 2018•28 min
Body shaming is discrimination against 'non-perfect' bodies and it is usually directed at women. Kim Chakanetsa sits down with a Danish comedian and a British blogger who are challenging society's perceptions of a beautiful female body. Chidera Eggerue - aka The Slumflower - is a British blogger whose hashtag #saggyboobsmatter started an online movement, empowering women who were considering plastic surgery and breast-feeding mothers to love their breasts. Through her public profile, she tackles...
Jul 30, 2018•27 min
The professional kitchen is often seen as a place where bravado, machismo and sexism are standard. Kim Chakanestsa brings together two top female chefs to ask why there are so few women in the industry - and what if anything is holding women back? Dominique Crenn is a French chef living and working in San Francisco. She has two Michelin stars at her restaurant 'Atelier Crenn' - the first woman in North America to do so. In 2017 she also won the Best Female Chef in the World award - although she ...
Jul 23, 2018•27 min
