Show Notes
This week Rachel is joined by Baroness Kishwer Falkner, the recent chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. During her time in the role, Baroness Falkner found herself at the centre of one of today’s most politically charged debates: the argument over sex and gender. In her first sit down audio interview since the end of her term, she tells Rachel about the hostility she faced both externally from activists as well as an internally, after bullying allegations were made by staff, all while dealing with her own personal battle with advanced ovarian cancer.
More from Rachel Johnson's Difficult Women
This week’s Difficult Woman, Anne Jenkin, sits in the Lords as Baroness Jenkin of Kennington. Anne has packed several lifetimes into politics, particularly the cause of women’s representation, having, co-founded the Women2Win group, with former Prime Minister Theresa May. Rachel also asks Anne about the time she made the headlines for using a certain word in the Lords to lay out how the abuse received by politicians could risk damaging democracy...
This week Rachel is joined by Tulip Siddiq, and what a whirlwind of a conversation it is. Tulip has been the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, previously Hampstead and Kilburn, since 2015. Not unacquainted with scandal, she is the niece of former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, and was issued with an arrest warrant by Bangladesh as part of investigations into her aunt's premiership. Tulip tells Rachel about how hard it was to weather the storm of the press over the allegations. She also reveals how it felt when politics became personal, as she campaigned for the release of her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was detained in Iran.
This week Rachel is joined by Sonya Barlow, the founder and CEO of the Like Minded Females network. Sonya has carved out a space for herself as a female, minority tech entrepreneur, and her network crucially also makes room for others to thrive. Together they talk about what it’s like being a woman in tech, an industry still heavily dominated by men. Sonya also tells Rachel about how becoming a mum for the first time has recently changed her life.
This week Rachel is joined by Julia Perowne, the founder and CEO of Perowne International, a global PR and marketing consultancy that specialises in luxury travel and hospitality. Having worked in the industry for 20 years, Julia is the 'PR's PR' when it comes to travel. Julia and Rachel discuss the complexities of her job in today's chaotic world as well as what it's like to be a woman working in what is still a male-dominated industry. Julia also reveals the staggering story of how her life was saved by a doctor she was working with while on a job in Germany.
This week's Difficult Woman is Kathryn Stockett, who, 17 years after the release of her hit novel 'The Help', joins me to talk about her long-awaited second book, 'The Calamity Club'. Kathryn tells Rachel why characters are so central to her process of writing and what she wants readers to take away from the novel. They also discuss the parallels between the 1930s and today's society when it comes to women's rights.