Weekend Woman’s Hour: Female breadwinners, Married but living apart, Traditional craftswomen

What happens when a woman earns more than her partner, or is the sole earner in a household? For some couples, it’s a practical arrangement that works well. For others, it can bring unexpected tensions, challenging traditional ideas about gender, identity and power. Listener Karla emailed the programme to say that she wanted to talk about what it means to be a female breadwinner. She joined Anita Rani along with Melissa Hogenboom, author of the book Breadwinners.

After 30 years of marriage, Margaret Murphy moved from the family home in Australia to the UK—alone. Fifteen years later, she and her husband are still married, despite living on opposite sides of the world. She talks to Nuala McGovern about how she believes her later-life choices reflect a freer, more modern way to look at traditional married life.

Listener Brenda wrote in about her situation: “I would love to hear you talking about a mother's play-book or instruction manual for getting through cancer. I would love to know how others are doing it.” Ailsa McDonagh also got in touch after an on-air shout out. She has been living with cancer for almost 10 years and received her diagnosis when her children were aged one and three. Both Brenda and Ailsa joined Anita to discuss.

Mary-Havana Little is a traditional fibrous plasterer. She got in touch for Listener Week to suggest we talk about traditional crafts. Mary is one of the few women in the plastering world, working to create ornate decorative mouldings using techniques from hundreds of years ago. She joined Anita to speak about working in this male-dominated craft, and why she wants to inspire more women and girls into the industry.

Listener Sally Ruffles describes herself as a 68-year-old woman with one daughter and no grandchildren. She got in touch with Woman's Hour for Listener Week to say: "There’s this common assumption that having grandchildren is always a wonderful thing. But nobody really stops to think that not having them might also be okay—or even a positive thing for some people." She joined Nuala with her daughter Hannah, who persuaded her mother to write to Woman's Hour, to discuss why it can be difficult to talk about not being a grandparent.

To kick this week off, we heard from listener Melanie Williams. Melanie is forever having to adjust her seatbelt because of her bust size. She worries if she were to be in an accident she would end up choking or being strangled by her seatbelt rather than protected by it. Melanie joined Nuala, along with motoring journalist Maria McCarthy who has been looking into the issue.

Jess wrote in to tell us about a poem she came across on social media about the post-partum period, calling it “absolutely beautiful”. She added: “There are hundreds of comments across Instagram and TikTok of mothers feeling exactly the same way. Please check it out, I would love to hear more from this poet.” We’ve tracked her down and her name is Amy Williams. She joined Nuala to perform the poem live in the studio.

Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Annette Wells Editor: Rebecca Myatt