Kaos with Janet McTeer, India protests, author Clare Chambers

Woman's Hour

Protests have been happening across India after a 31-year-old junior doctor was raped and murdered in a hospital in Kolkata earlier this month. Her death prompted marches and strikes nationwide over safety issues for female doctors and this soon developed into a talking point for women’s safety in general. BBC Delhi Correspondent Kirti Dubey joins Anita Rani to report on the latest news, along with Dr Aishwarya Singh Raghuvanshi, a female doctor in India.

A new Netflix series, Kaos is a modern, darkly comic retelling of Greek mythology that will perhaps have you seeing the gender politics of ancient Greece in a new light. Stage and film actor Janet McTeer stars as the Queen of the gods, Hera. Janet joins Anita to talk about Hera’s sexual power as well as her previous roles and what has changed in the industry.

In a new analysis, researchers from Imperial College, London estimate that the number of people living with food allergies in England has more than doubled since 2008, with the largest increase seen in young children. Using anonymised data from GP practices covering 13 million patients, researchers estimated trends in the prevalence of food allergy in the UK population. Anita is joined by Dr Paul Turner, Professor of Paediatric Allergy at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College, who led the research.

Author Clare Chambers’ novel Small Pleasures was inspired by an interview she heard on Woman’s Hour about a 1950’s local newspaper competition to find a “virgin mother”. That book, Clare’s ninth, became a whirlwind bestseller and now she’s back with another, Shy Creatures. Based on a newspaper article Clare discovered in an archive, this story focusses on a man who is found with a beard down to his waist and whose aunts have kept him locked away for several decades. Set in Croydon in 1964, the novel takes in the world of 1960s psychiatry and is told from the perspective of art therapist Helen, a single woman in her thirties and is having an affair with a married man. Clare joins Anita to tell her all about it.

Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rebecca Myatt