Steve Biddulph; Diane Abbott; comfort food

Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys was a worldwide bestseller. Now he has turned his attention to girls. He claims that they are the ones in trouble in a world that seems bent on poisoning their confidence and trashing their lives. But are they? Steve Biddulph joins Jane Garvey in the Woman’s Hour studio to discuss. They are joined by author and feminist Kate Figes.

Some of Shakespeare’s most glorious female characters are the sluts and wenches such as Doll Tearsheet who plies her trade at the Boar’s Head Tavern in Henry IV Part Two or the bawdy country women who people the The Forest of Arden in As You Like It and the meadows of Bohemia in A Winter's Tale. As part of our series on Shakespeare’s ‘Best Supporting female roles’, reporter Judi Herman talks to some of the women who have played these roles and also to Pippa Guard, lecturer in Drama and English at the University of Greenwich.