Woman's Hour - 10/02/2010

With Jenni Murray. Including: The highest levels of unemployment are among 16-24 year olds, with one in five people under the age of 25 still struggling to find a job, according to the latest Labour Force Survey statistics. And there are warnings that further job losses are inevitable in the coming months, which may well affect the young disproportionately. As part of the programme's Wining Women's Votes series, Woman's Hour asks, with nearly a million young people still out of work, is talk of a 'lost generation' alarmist or a reality? How best can the state support and help them? In 2005 a BBC World Service journalist contacted an Iraqi university lecturer to ask for an interview about living conditions in Baghdad in the run-up to the elections. This initial contact quickly led to an email friendship, but the contrast between the two women's lives was vast. Bee was living a quiet life, juggling work and children in London. May was living with the daily terror of bombs and violence in Baghdad. A collection of their emails over four years has now been turned into a book, Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad. The two women join Jenni to talk about their correspondence and how it had a life-changing effect on both of them. It is easy to argue that the Bible is misogynist and portrays many negative views of women and womanhood. But the author and historian Bettany Hughes says that it is wrong to dismiss these texts as systematically anti-women. Through characters such as Deborah, Bathsheba, Mary and Lydia we see examples of powerful, influential and wise women who were highly valued by the early church. The Old and New Testaments contain some of the few remaining documents from that period that give an insight into what Bettany considers an important turning point for women in history. We also hear from listeners about what they enjoy doing alone or consider to be a 'solitary pleasure'.