Woman's Hour - 20/08/2009

With Jenni Murray. Official statistics suggest levels of domestic violence against men are only just lower than those against women. But some front line workers dispute these figures, saying men who report themselves as victims of domestic violence often turn out to be primary perpetrators. Jenni discusses the controversial issues with Damian Carnell from the Nottinghamshire Domestic Violence Forum and Mark Brooks from ManKind. Speech Debelle is the rapper from South East London whose lyrics describing her time in homeless hostels have earned her a Mercury Prize nomination. She performs live from her album 'Speech Therapy'. The mystery of musical hallucinations: why are older women the most likely to suffer from the false perception that there's a song playing? Plus, the story of the first women to fight for a tertiary education. In 1869, when five women enrolled at university for the first time in British history, the average female brain was thought to be 150 grams lighter than a man's. Doctors warned that if a woman studied too hard, her womb would wither and die. Despite the prejudice and the terrible sacrifices that they faced, these women persevered with their studies and paved the way for the generations who followed. Jenni speaks to Jane Robinson about her new book 'Bluestockings'.