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Weekend Woman's Hour: Dame Kelly Holmes, justice secretary Alex Chalk, history of eyeliner

Dame Kelly Holmes on her new book, Unique, which records her experience of being gay in the military.

Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes spoke publicly about her sexuality for the first time last year. Her new memoir, Unique, details how serving in the military in the late 1980s - when it was illegal to be gay in the military – was a major factor in contributing to her decades-long silence. She joins us to speak about her experience.

After a reshuffle that left the government with no women in the β€œbig four” offices of state, we speak to Justice Secretary Alex Chalk about the impact of the reshuffle as well as sentencing reforms which will affect women.

From Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, what is the personal and political power of eyeliner? We discuss with Zahra Hankir, author of Eyeliner: A Cultural History.

Tish Murtha is a celebrated photographer whose images of working-class life in North East England can be found in the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Britain. But in her lifetime, Murtha struggled to find work of any kind. Now her daughter, Ella, has made a film about Murtha’s life and work. We speak to Ella and producer of the documentary, Jen Corcoran.

How is our interaction with AI shifting our concepts of intimacy and sexuality as humans? We discuss with Kate Devlin, Reader in Artificial Intelligence & Society at King's College London, and to Trudy Barber, Senior Lecturer at Portsmouth University in Media Studies.

In April 2020, Debenhams in Ireland closed all 11 of its stores, informing its staff they had been let go in the process. What ensued were pickets and protests across Ireland that lasted for 406 days. As a new film is released on the subject, we're joined by two women who were involved, Carol Ann Bridgeman and Jane Crowe.

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57 minutes

Broadcast

  • Sat 18 Nov 2023 16:00

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