Woman's Hour - 09/03/2010

With Jane Garvey. Should MPs be allowed to job share? That's a proposal being put forward by one Liberal Democrat, who says it's a good way to make Parliament more manageable for people with families, especially women. Two people would stand on one ticket and, as now, voters would decide if they were happy to return them to Westminster. Jane discusses the merits of this suggestion with Dinti Batstone, vice chair of the Liberal Democrats' Campaign for Gender Balance, and Angela Knight, who was Conservative MP for Erewash from 1992-1997 and is now chief executive of the British Bankers' Association. Lynda Bellingham is one of Britain's best-loved actresses, with an acting career spanning more than 40 years. Now she's written her autobiography, where she talks for the first time about being adopted and the effect this had on her sense of self worth. Lynda was in her mid-40s when she finally met her birth mother, and she joins Jane to reflect on the impact this had on her life. Beate Sirota Gordon was born in Vienna, grew up in Japan and spent the Second World War studying in America. At the end of the war she took a job with the US military so she could travel to Japan to be reunited with her parents. Then, in 1946, at the age of just 22, she was given the task of drafting the women's rights section of the new Japanese constitution. The result of her work established a basis for the equality of the sexes in Japan. She talks about her contribution to improving the social status of Japanese women and the position of Japanese women today.