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Sue Lloyd-Roberts is an award winning journalist and reporter who has often risked her own safety to ‘give the voiceless a voice’ and shine a light on a human rights abuses.

Sue first realised that she was ill In January 2015, subsequent tests revealed she had myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, a blood disorder that had developed into leukaemia. Sue now urgently needs a donor whose tissue type is the same as hers so she can have a stem cell transplant but finding a bone marrow match is complicated due to the millions of tissue combinations. She talks to Jane about receiving her diagnosis and her search for a donor. 

What are the best ways to engage girls in engineering and retain women already working in the field? To mark National Women in Engineering Day Jane Garvey talks to Philippa Oldham, Head of Transport and Manufacturing at the Institution of Mechanical Engineering

The 23rd of June is the UN’s International Widows Day. There are 259 million widows worldwide and 115 million of them are living in poverty. Many suffer from social stigmatization solely because they have lost their husbands. Grief is not the only outcome from their spouse’s deaths and many widows find themselves physically, mentally and sexually abused. 

Lord Loomba’s mother was only 37 when she became a widow in India and was told to conform to strict cultural traditions. Jane asks him how witnessing his mother’s experience of the social and economic discrimination whilst raising seven children made him want to create a charity in her honour and why he fought to get UN recognition for the International Widows Day.

2015 saw the number of women on the UK Parliament increase, particularly the number of women on the front bench. But at local level women’s representation is stagnating: there has been virtually no change in the level of female councillors in the last 10 years. In England 32% of councillors are women, in Wales 27% and in Scotland 24% . We hear from Dr Karin Bottom, Lecturer in Politics & Public Management at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Local government studies, on why that might be. And we speak to them about their experiences.