Woman's Hour - 06/10/2009

With Jenni Murray. Jo Brand discusses her autobiography, Look Back In Hunger. Jo was one of the first women on the stand-up comedy circuit, fearlessly tacking taboos about the female body and violence against women, as well as directing much of her comedy against herself; 'I was the child who was asked to play Bethlehem in the school nativity play' was one of her lines. So how did a clever young girl with a seemingly idyllic country childhood drop out of school at 17, retrain as a psychiatric nurse and then end up topping the comedy circuit? In July this year the Centre for Social Justice, the think-tank set up by former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, issued its report Every Family Matters. One of its recommendations was that marriage should be recognised as the most stable model of family - best for the health, wealth and happiness of everyone concerned, and should therefore be favoured in the tax system. This is now Conservative Party policy, and the party are committed to tax breaks for married couples should they win the next election. From Manchester, where the Conservative Party conference is being held, Jenni is joined by Philippa Stroud, executive director of the Centre for Social Justice, and Katherine Rake, director of the Family and Parenting Institute. They be discuss whether in our modern society, where 'family' means different things to different people, it is legitimate to favour marriage over other family models. The 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is about to be awarded and there are three women on the shortlist of six: AS Byatt, Sarah Waters and Hilary Mantel. All are strong contenders, with novels that are heavyweight in every sense. So are we seeing a change in the status of women's writing, and if so, why? Has the women-only Orange Prize had a role to play? Jenni is joined by the novelist and critic Louise Doughty, who was a Man Booker judge in 2008, and by the writer and broadcaster Bidisha, who was on the 2009 Orange Prize jury.