Woman's Hour

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Magazines & Reviews

Podcasts

Factual: Life Stories

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

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

BBC Radio 4 LW

Woman's Hour: Age-gaps in dating, Women and Epilepsy and How to Build Resilience

08/10/2020

Age-gaps in dating, Women and Epilepsy and How to Build Resilience

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Age-gaps in dating, Women and Epilepsy and How to Build Resilience

Are women disproportionately affected by epilepsy? Why younger men are turning to much older women?  We discuss resilience and how to build it.

Experts in epilepsy say women are disproportionately affected by the condition. Around 300,000 women have it in the UK. Epilepsy Research UK say that hormones can affect epilepsy, and drugs used to control it need to be very carefully balanced with medication that women take like The Pill or HRT.  Women with epilepsy are also ten times more likely to die in pregnancy. Dr Susan Duncan is a consultant neurologist. Torie, 30 and Ruth, 60 both have it. 

Dating apps have changed how you can meet a potential partner and you can choose exactly what you like as all the information about sexuality, age, background and sexual preferences are laid out. Our reporter Henrietta Harrison, in her forties, recently joined a dating app and was inundated with messages from men in their twenties but felt uneasy about some of the approaches.  It seems the ‘older woman with a younger man’ dynamic is growing in popularity on dating apps and it has long been popular in porn.  She wanted to understand more about the attraction between younger men and older women.  Henrietta spoke to 28 year old man we are calling Richard who is in a polyamorous relationship and regularly dates women in their forties and fifties. 

What is resilience? Is it something we are born with, or do our life experiences help to shape it? And does failure help us to build it?  Jane discusses the issues with the writer and podcaster Elizabeth Day, author of Failosophy A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong, with the Psychologist, Emma Kenny and the Paralympian and motivational speaker Martine Wright MBE. 

Producer: Henrietta Harrison
Editor: Karen Dalziel

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Woman's Hour

Age-gaps in dating, Women and Epilepsy and How to Build Resilience

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4