Woman's Hour

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Factual: Life Stories

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

22/03/2024

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

BBC Radio 4 LW

Woman's Hour: Happy Valley & kinship care; Conditions at Eastwood Park women's prison, Declining birthrates in China & Japan, Beyonce

03/02/2023

Happy Valley & kinship care; Conditions at Eastwood Park women's prison, Declining birthrates in China & Japan, Beyonce

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Happy Valley & kinship care; Conditions at Eastwood Park women's prison, Declining birthrates in China & Japan, Beyonce

A new report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons on conditions at Eastwood Park women’s prison.

What’s behind the dramatically declining birth rates in China and Japan, and what will the impact be on their societies? We hear from a listener about her story as a kinship carer.

A new report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons on conditions at Eastwood Park women’s prison has been released today. We speak to Sandra Fieldhouse, lead for women’s prisons at HMI Prisons about the findings. 

The TV drama Happy Valley has captured the public’s imagination with the final episode of the final series airing this Sunday. Catherine Cawood played by Sarah Lancashire is the policewoman who we see bringing up her grandson Ryan after her daughter took her own life.  We hear from one listener who contacted Woman’s Hour about how as a kinship carer she has felt “heard” by the drama and Anita also speaks to Dr Lucy Peake the chief executive of Kinship – the UK’s largest charity for kinship carers. 

The Grammy's will be held on Sunday in Los Angeles and Beyoncé leads the pack with nine overall nominations.   She has also announced her first tour in seven years, which led to the ticket website crashing. The UK concerts are part of a 43-date world tour in support of her Grammy-nominated Renaissance album.  Anita discusses her success with Jacqueline Springer, curator Africa and Diaspora: Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum and music journalist.

China and Japan are seeing a marked reduction in their birth rates which will have a major impact on how their societies function in the next decades. With ageing populations and a birth rate well below the 2.1 replacement level observers are predicting significant problems ahead. By the end of the century China is predicted to drop from more than a billion to around 800 million and Japan’s population will drop from 123 million today to around 75 million. Anita Rani discusses the reasons and implications with Dr Yu Jie, Senior Research Fellow on China Asia Pacific Programme at Chatham House; and Yoko Ishikura an independent business consultant, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University who is working with the Japanese Government’s Digital Agency.  

Presented by Anita Rani
Producer: Louise Corley
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.

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Happy Valley & kinship care; Conditions at Eastwood Park women's prison, Declining birthrates in China & Japan, Beyonce

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