When Tunisia led on women's rights

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. We start with a BBC archive interview where one woman recounts what it was like to survive the earthquake and landside in 1961 following the volcanic eruption in Tristan da Cunh ... Show More

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes.Tea expert Sabita Banerji talks about the history of tea in India. We look back at how women teapickers in 2015 fought for justice - and improved the lives of thousands of tea plantation workers.We hear the ... Show More

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes taking us from India to Texas. Professor Sunny Singh, author of A Bollywood State of Mind, discusses the origins of Indian cinema in 1912. And we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of Bollywood ro ... Show More

This 1956 march was a protest against pass laws that were part of South Africa’s system of apartheid – and specifically the requirement that women carry passes. The protest was simultaneously part of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the movement for women’s rights ... Show More

One of the leading figures in Nigeria's fight for democracy was Margaret Ekpo, a feminist politician and trades union leader. After Nigerian independence in 1960, Ekpo became an MP and a hero to a generation of Nigerians - men and women. Rebecca Kesby tells the story of her life. ... Show More

Début 2022, Anahid Djalali demande à son amie Juliette Rauwel de l'accompagner en Iran. Ce pays qui a vu naître ses parents, elle ne l'a jamais connu: depuis quarante ans, les islamistes font la loi et son père est trop engagé politiquement pour pouvoir y retourner. Anahid Djalal ... Show More

“Femme ! Vie ! Liberté !” : depuis septembre 2022, ce slogan féministe venu d’Iran parcourt le monde entier. Apparu après le décès de Jina Mahsa Amini le 16 septembre 2022 – une femme iranienne et kurde de 22 ans tuée par la police des mœurs pour avoir mal porté son voile – cette ... Show More

Tunisia in North Africa was the birthplace of the Arab Spring, a wave of popular uprisings that shook or toppled authoritarian regimes in the region. But, after a decade of fragile democracy, in 2019 a new strongman, President Kais Saied, swept to power. He directed his campaign ... Show More

Music for sex, dancing, and watching the straight world go by… The explosion of Disco provides an extraordinary window into the tumultuous world of the 1970s, with its themes of sex, drugs, race and sexuality. By the start of the 1970s, America was a nation of dystopian gloom. Th ... Show More

The daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti were not just "ornaments" for their parents. Like many princesses, they also participated in the religious rituals and royal pageantry of the Egyptian government. In this interview, Courtney Marx (MA, George Mason University) joins us on b ... Show More

Between 1932 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of women and girls across Asia were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army.Referred to as "comfort women", they were taken from countries including Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia to be raped by Ja ... Show More

The Sasanians are renowned as one of Rome's most feared enemies. Founded in third century Persia by an Iranian noble called Ardashir, their dynasty oversaw the growth of a mighty empire that brought down the Parthians and survived into the early Middle Ages. But how did one famil ... Show More

Au Rwanda, 25 ans après le génocide des Tutsi qui a fait plus d'un million de morts, des femmes continuent de se mobiliser pour venir en aide aux victimes. De nombreuses associations ont vu le jour depuis 1994, dans un pays dévasté, où entre 250 et 500 000 femmes ont été victimes ... Show More