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

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Woman's Hour: Nadine Dorries, Dame Donna Kinnair, Women and safety, Organised crime, mafia and gender.

11/03/2021

Nadine Dorries, Dame Donna Kinnair, Women and safety, Organised crime, mafia and gender.

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Nadine Dorries, Dame Donna Kinnair, Women and safety, Organised crime, mafia and gender.

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

Nadine Dorries on Strep B infection, Dame Donna Kinnair talks about nurses' pay, Women's safety,  and Felia Allum discusses organised crime, Neapolitan mafia and gender.

The Health Minister Nadine Dorries joins Emma to talk about her plans to cut deaths caused by Strep B infection in newborn babies, as well as nurses' pay and the government’s new consultation on a women’s health strategy.   The row over the government's proposed one per cent pay rise for NHS staff shows no sign of quietening down - with the attention having moved towards nurses' wages in particular. Strike action has been threatened by nurses' unions over the proposals and the Prime Minister came under fire yesterday about nurses - especially considering the role they have played on the front line fighting the pandemic. 90 per cent of nurses are women. Emma discusses the issue with Dame Donna Kinnear, nurse and chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing.

Today we are thinking of Sarah Everard - the 33 year old woman who went missing walking home to Brixton from a friend's house in Clapham, south London, on March 3.  Reclaim The Night are organising a vigil following the disappearance of Sarah Everard. But how have things changed since the original Reclaim the Night march which took place on 12th November 1977?  Emma speaks to Al Garthwaite, now a Leeds Councillor for Headingley and Hyde Park, she was one of the original organisers, and to the writer and journalist Joan Smith, whose latest book is called Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists.  She has also written a book called Misogynies, and she is on the London Mayor's board about tackling violence against women and girls.

From the Godfather to Goodfellas and The Sopranos, we are fascinated by movies and series about the mafia.   But women are often portrayed as symbolic or the ‘sexy wife’.  How much power and agency do they actually have?  Felia Allum is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Italian at the University of Bath. Her research' Women, crime and culture: transnational organised crime as an equal opportunity industry' is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.   She joins Emma to tell the stories of women she’s spoken to from the Neapolitan mafia.

Presented by Emma Barnett
Producer:  Louise Corley

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