The poet Carol Ann Duffy - who served as the first woman poet laureate between 2009-2019 and has won numerous awards for her poetry including the Whitbread, Forward and T. S. Eliot Prizes - joins Emma with a poem which feels particularly apt in the current circumstances, as we enter another lockdown and people are separated from their families and friends – it is called Long Table. Carol Ann talks to Emma about what she has been doing in lockdown and the importance of writing in recording our experiences over the past year.
The world looked on in horror yesterday in what has been described as an act of domestic terrorism as thousands of President Trump supporters ransacked Congress and stormed the Capitol building in Washington. Their aim? To bring a violent halt to the formal confirmation of his election defeat. Before they headed to the building, Trump roused his followers to fight for him - and his lawyer - the former mayor of New York Rudy Guliani said: "Let's have trial by combat." To look at the photos, you would think it was a march dominated and led by gun toting, animal skin-wearing men. It was men who sat in chair of the US speaker of the House - Nancy Pelosi and in the Senate chamber - two of the defining images of the riot. But women were there and are there as part of the mass online movement which led to this action: Stop the Steal. What role do they and are they playing in these groups? Emma speaks to Helen Lewis, staff writer at the Atlantic and author of the book Difficult Women and Melissa Milewski, lecturer in American politics at University of Sussex.
A tree has been pulled down in Hackney. So what? Trees get pulled down all the time. But it wasn’t just any old tree: it was 150 years old, and was called The Happy Man, named after a pub that used to be nearby. Campaigners have been trying to save it for months and despite the bitter cold they've been in the branches, even sleeping in them. One of them is Maria Gallastegui and she joins Emma to talk about her experience.
A key legal hearing starts in Scotland today with a campaign group challenging the Scottish Government over the meaning of the word “woman”. For Women Scotland has been granted a judicial review into the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act 2018 (GRPBA) which was passed as part of efforts to drive up the number of women in senior positions on public bodies. Its wording covers trans women who have changed their legal sex from male to female using a gender recognition certificate, as well as others who are “living as a woman” and are “proposing to undergo” such a change “for the purpose of becoming female”. Emma Barnett talks to Susan Smith from For Women Scotland and to Jennifer Ang from Just Rights Scotland about the review.