Woman's Hour - 25/02/2010

With Jenni Murray. Actor, performer and all-round entertainer John Barrowman has released a new album of show tunes. He joins Jenni to talk about his music, performing in the West End, growing up gay in the American Midwest of the 1980s and what's it like appearing in the popular TV shows Dr Who and Torchwood. As part of our Winning Women's Votes series, the programme considers the baby boomers who have now reached what used to be considered old age. But what are the issues and the policies that will influence their vote in the forthcoming election and how might that differ from previous generations? Jenni is joined by Emma Soames, editor-at-large of Saga magazine, Bea Campbell, a Green party candidate at the next election, and journalist Yvonne Roberts to discuss. The actor Lesley Sharp is a familiar face on our television screens, with appearances in Clocking Off, Common as Muck and a wide range of films, from Rita Sue and Bob Too to The Full Monty. She is now on stage in the West End playing Mrs Alving in Ibsen's harrowing drama Ghosts. The play was initially banned and still has the power to shock with its raw portrayal of religious hypocrisy, family secrets and the damage done by keeping up appearances in 19th-century bourgeois society. She joins Jenni to talk about her latest work. In 1970, around 500 women came together for the first UK Women's Liberation Conference which was held at Ruskin College in Oxford. Forty years on, Jenni finds out why this conference, which produced a number of demands on equal pay, free contraception, and abortion on demand, is widely seen as a pivotal moment in the growth of the Women's Liberation Movement. With Catherine Hall and Bea Campbell.