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Woman's Hour

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Factual: Life Stories

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.

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Tina Daheley

Nadine Benjamin

Candy Huxham

Crystle Rogers

Roseann Lake

Jo Morris

Woman's Hour: Nadine Benjamin, Aid abuse, China, Off the Rails

Factual

08/03/2018

Nadine Benjamin, Aid abuse, China, Off the Rails

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Nadine Benjamin, Aid abuse, China, Off the Rails

Marriage of Figaro, 'Leftover Women', International aid open letter, Handy Trust.

Soprano Nadine Benjamin, women 'left over' in China, aid sector women asking for an overhaul of the system and helping teenagers to turn their lives around.

Soprano Nadine Benjamin grew up on a council estate in Brixton and, after school, got a job with a brokerage firm in the City. But her music teacher had told her that she had the potential to sing opera, so she left her job to give that dream her best shot. Hailed by Opera Now magazine as 'one of the top ten sopranos destined to have impressive careers', she is playing The Countess in English Touring Opera's Marriage of Figaro.

Now continuing our series Off the Rails. Candy Huxham has been a youth worker since 1991, when she left banking. She set up the Handy Trust, a charity in Hythe and Dibden, Hampshire, to literally give young people a hand, offering advice on anything from drugs, to teenage sexual and mental health. One of those young people was Crystle Rogers who now works alongside Candy, also as a youth worker and supports kids like her former self. Our reporter, Jo Morris joined them to ask why they go out on the road to talk to teenagers.

Over 1200 women working in the aid sector have signed an open letter demanding a complete overhaul of the system. The women work all over the world, from the UK, to North Korea, to Kenya, and the letter shows the depth of the anger felt by them with what they see as a culture of silence, impunity and inaction towards abuse within the international aid sector. They hope that it will make international aid a better place for the women who work within it, and for those whose rights they campaign and advocate for. 

In China, if you're a woman, unmarried and over the age of 27 that makes you a "Leftover Woman". They are highly educated, career focused and the unexpected by-products of the one-child policy who were pushed to succeed as if they were sons. So why is the societal pressure to marry still so strong? We talk to author Roseann Lake about her new book, 'Leftover In China: The women shaping the world's next superpower'.

Presenter: Tina Daheley
Reporter: Jo Morris.

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