When Jane Garvey announced to the audience who had just ‘taken part’ in the 70th birthday celebrations of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on Monday morning that a woman listener had sent in an email asking, ‘Why do we need a programme like this in 2016?’, she almost caused a riot in the BBC Radio Theatre. A riot of disbelief and horror. What? Abolish the only programme on the BBC entirely devoted to the issues that affect women? Cut down in its prime a daily audio magazine that since its first broadcast in October 1946, and in spite of initially being commissioned and presented by men, has raised provocative questions about the right to equal pay (Nancy Astor, the first woman MP, was a frequent guest on those early programmes), to equal appreciation for the role of motherhood and housework in the national economy, to equal opportunities for women in the workplace, and to equality within the home? That has never failed to champion women’s achievements, from the pioneering composer Elisabeth Lutyens to the extraordinarily graceful and quietly subversive Bake Off champion Nadiya Hussain (who was a guest on Monday’s birthday programme).
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