Woman's Hour - 02/12/2009

With Jenni Murray. The link between mental illness and childbirth has been noted for hundreds of years, so why is it that suicide is still a leading cause of maternal death in the UK today? As the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists hosts a lecture exploring 'Motherhood and the Mind', Jenni is joined by Dr Ian Jones of Cardiff University and by those who have been affected by post-partum psychosis to discuss some of the problems that can affect the mental health of new mothers. Just over 100 years ago, women working in the sweatshops of the Lower East Side went on strike, and they stayed out for three months. They won union recognition, the right to overtime pay, and a limit to their working hours - and for the first time working women became a political force to be reckoned with. Woman's Hour explores some of the celebrations that are taking place to mark the centenary of the 'Uprising of the 20,000'. Whether it's about equal pay or maternity rights, women have been battling for nigh on 200 years around issues of equality. Woman's Hour asks why it is that whilst many would argue that the proposed Equality Bill will address gender imbalances that still exist, there are those that are convinced its measures are now superfluous to requirements. Jenni asks Antonia Senior, Deputy Business Editor at The Times, and Ceri Goddard, Director of the Fawcett Society, whether such legislation reinforces the idea that women are victims. And as Andrea Levy's novel Small Island comes to our TV screens, we ask what it was really like for the first generation of mixed race couples and their children? Jenni finds out what their lives were like with Tony Sewell, a columnist on The Voice, and Sharron Hall, whose English mother and Barbadian father met and married in the 1950s.