Woman's Hour

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Woman's Hour: Kate Shortman & Izzy Thorpe, Dame Katherine Grainger, Nicola Adams, Anna Kessel, Frankie Miren, Laura Middleton-Hughes.

23/07/2021

Kate Shortman & Izzy Thorpe, Dame Katherine Grainger, Nicola Adams, Anna Kessel, Frankie Miren, Laura Middleton-Hughes.

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Kate Shortman & Izzy Thorpe, Dame Katherine Grainger, Nicola Adams, Anna Kessel, Frankie Miren, Laura Middleton-Hughes.

Women at the Tokyo Olympics and a new book by Frankie Miren's about life as a sex worker

Anita Rani on Women at the Tokyo Olympic with Dame Katherine Grainger,  Nicola Adams , Anna Kessel and artistic swimmers Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe.

The Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics starts today and Team GB are taking more women athletes than men for the first time in 125 years.   Of the 376 athletes selected, 201 are female. So could this be the best ever Games for women? We talk to Dame Katherine Grainger, Britain's joint most decorated female Olympian and Chair of UK Sport; double Olympic boxing champion Nicola Adams and Anna Kessel, Women's Sport Editor at The Telegraph.

Staying with the games, we’ll hear from artistic swimmers Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe who are representing Great Britain at Tokyo 2020. The pair have spoken out about receiving trolling and bullying for their professional synchronised swimmer physiques, describing themselves as having "big shoulders, small boobs and small bums". 

We talk to the writer and activist Frankie Miren’s about her novel "The Service" in which she draws on her personal experience to look at the vulnerabilities and dangers of life as a sex worker. 

One listener has contacted us about a new support group they've set up  based on her own experiences of abuse within a religious organisation. She tells us about  “Escape-escapee” which she says will help people who want to leave what she calls "high control groups". She was abused by a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses and her case went to the High Court six years ago. 

Another listener Laura Middleton-Hughes got in touch about her nipple tattoos. She tells Anita why she chose to have 3D areoles tattooed on her breasts after reconstructive surgery, 

Presenter: Anita Rani
Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
Studio Engineer: John Boland

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Kate Shortman & Izzy Thorpe, Dame Katherine Grainger, Nicola Adams, Anna Kessel, Frankie Miren, Laura Middleton-Hughes.

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