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When the heads of state and global business leaders gather in for the this week, what proportion of them will be women? What is the WEF hoping to achieve ? Is it any more than a talking shop? We discuss this with Helen Clark, former New Zealand Prime Minister and the current Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and Jane Martinson, Women’s Editor at the Guardian.

During China's cultural revolution Ping Fu was separated from her parents at the age of eight and forced to live in a dormitory where she would attend study sessions of Mao's Little Red Book and work in the factories and farms. At the age of 25, she was expelled from China for reporting on female infanticide. With just eighty dollars, she moved to America to start a new life and is now and a leading entrepreneur and one of the few women CEO’s in technology. Bend, Not Break/A Life in Two Worlds by Ping Fu is published by Portfolio Penguin.

has been making music since the 1980s. She's also been named one of The Huffington Post's '13 Funny Musicians You Should Be Following On Twitter'. The Grammy winner and Oscar nominated singer talks about her new album Charmer and sings in the Woman's Hour studio. 

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Heavy periods, or menorrhagia affects many women aged 25– 50 years and accounts for twenty per cent of gynaecological referrals in the UK. Now a new study, by the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham, has found that a hormone-releasing intrauterine device – the Mirena coil is a better treatment for heavy periods than conventional medication. Professor Janesh Gupta explains how his study could change NICE guidelines enabling more women to benefit from this treatment.