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Woman's Hour: Lesbian wives; Deborah Ellis; Female characters in drama; Helen Fielding

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28/03/2014

Lesbian wives; Deborah Ellis; Female characters in drama; Helen Fielding

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Lesbian wives; Deborah Ellis; Female characters in drama; Helen Fielding

With same-sex marriage, how comfortable will lesbians be with calling their spouse 'wife'?

Jenni Murray presents the female perspective on the world, discussing lesbian wives, author and activist Deborah Ellis, female characters in drama, and author Helen Fielding.

On Saturday 29th March the first same sex marriage ceremonies will take place in England & Wales. Couples will have the right to legally refer to their spouse as "husband" or "wife". How comfortable will lesbians be with calling their spouse wife? The Canadian author & peace activist, Deborah Ellis, visited refugee camps in Pakistan to talk to women and children who had fled the Taliban, and turned those experiences into novels for children. Her latest book, My Name is Parvana, tells the story of a young girl in post-Taliban Afghanistan. BBC Writers Room script reader and theatre critic Sally Stott has read thousands of scripts in a search for new talent. In many of the stories, she says, the female characters are badly described & characterised and focus heavily on physical appearance. Why does it seems so hard to write a decent female character? And as part of Radio 4's Character Invasion writers have been talking about which of their own creations is their favourite - Helen Fielding talks about Bridget Jones.

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