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Woman's Hour: Family Fertility Donors; Eliza Haywood; Beth Orton; Playing with Children

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20/02/2015

Family Fertility Donors; Eliza Haywood; Beth Orton; Playing with Children

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Family Fertility Donors; Eliza Haywood; Beth Orton; Playing with Children

Jenni Murray presents discussion on family fertility donors and a Beth Orton performance.

Brit Award-winning artist Beth Orton has been directing a week-long residency for emerging female musicians in Manchester. She joins Jenni Murray in the studio to perform live.

Mary Portas made headlines this week when she announced that they had turned to Mary's brother Lawrence to be a sperm donor for the child she has with her wife Melanie Rickey. What's the reality of asking a relative to become an egg or sperm donor and does that muddy the waters of parenting? Joining Jenni are sisters Eleanor and Alice, Eleanor has a 22 month old daughter who was conceived thanks to Alice donating her egg, and Laura Witjens, the Chief-Executive of the National Gamete Donation Trust and herself an egg donor.

'The Female Spectator' was written and edited by Eliza Haywood at the end of the 18th century. It's believed to be the first magazine by women, for women. An early proto-feminist, she was writing romances well before Jane Austen. The Female Spectator only lasted for 4 volumes, but it was extremely popular and marked the beginning of magazines written by women, for a female audience. Jenni will be talking to Dr Holly Luhning about Eliza Haywood's extraordinary life.

In its 18-year history the Mercury Prize has only been awarded to five women. Beth Orton has been nominated twice, but has not yet won. This week she has been leading a week-long all-women musical residency in Manchester, due to culminate in a live show on Friday night. She'll be joining Jenni in the studio with one of the musicians involved, Josephine Oniyama, to talk about women in music and the equality gap they still face and they'll both be performing a new song live.

Playing games with her daughter is dull, repetitive and even on occasion humiliating, so says journalist Esther Walker. But does refusing to play with a child make a bad parent? Jenni will be speaking to Esther and to an expert in child development and play, Dr Amanda Gummer.

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