Woman's Hour - 12/05/2010

Presented by Jenni Murray. As a new era in British politics dawns, we ask what role female politicians will play in the coalition government and discuss why women still make up just 21.7% of MPs at Westminster, despite attempts to get a more representative parliament. We hear about Dorothy Hodgkin who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964, for her work on penicillin and vitamin B12. The Royal Society is holding a celebration day to mark her centenary. What do you do when the children gang up with your spouse to demand another furry addition to the family? And how do a pet person and a non-pet person ever reach a compromise? And the novelist, Michelle Lovric, talks about the medical and historical research that led to her novel, 'The Book of the Human Skin'.