Woman's Hour - 03/02/2009

Presented by Jane Garvey. Gabriel Weston tells Jane about life as a surgeon and describes what it is like to be a woman competing in a world dominated by alpha males. Anna McNamee meets some sewing aficionados and Jane talks to May Martin, a sewing tutor from the WI's Denman College, about why, as a nation, we are increasingly shunning the disposable nature of high street fashion in favour of doing it ourselves at home. Were women more equal under Communism? Jane discusses gender equality in the Czech Republic with the journalist Jana Ciglerova and Petr Pavlik, Professor of Gender Studies at Charles University in Prague. St Margaret's Gospel Book is still kept at the Bodleian Library and one of the few to have studied it is Rebecca Rushforth, an expert in Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge. She has now written her own book about it. Lizz Pearson meets Rebecca at the Library where she explains why the book was of such significance to Margaret. Including drama: The Lady of the Camellias.