The Conversation

After lockdowns, gig cancelations and a long and painful period for those in the industry, this year has seen the return of a full festival season around the world and millions of people have been making the most of it partying and dancing in vast crowds to live music and DJ-sets.Beatriz de la Pava is joined by two female DJ/producers from Denmark and Colombia to talk about creating a sound and vibe that brings thousands of people to dance as one.Rosa Pistola is hard to miss. Hailing from Colombia yet dubbed the Madonna of Mexico City, she mixes high energy reggaeton and sensual ballads to encapsulate the soundscape of her adopted city. Her mission is to celebrate the sounds of the Latin underground with the entire world, including Fabric in London on the 9th of December.Manda Moor is a Danish-Filipino DJ and producer based in Paris. Her productions and DJ sets are somewhere between techno and house and she’s spent much of her summer performing on the party-island of Ibiza.Produced by Jane Thurlow

There are many reasons people cut back on travelling once they have children - the cost for one, and the extra luggage! Beatriz de la Pava talks to women from Lithuania and the United States about bringing children along for a life of travelling adventures.Sunshine Abou Bakar describes herself as ‘an ochre obsessed mom of two’ who blogs and updates her social media followers about sustainable journeys under the name of African Boheme. Her moto is ‘Children are going to throw tantrums no matter where you are, might as well deal with the tantrum 30,000 feet in the air en route to paradise’.Jurga Rubinovaite describes herself as the chief adventure planner for her family holidays with her husband and three sons. Born and raised in Lithuania she now lives in Belgium where she blogs about her travels on her site Full Suitcase. Featured in Lonely Planet travel guides she also works with brands and holiday destinations – she says her aim is to help other families plan dream trips to create unforgettable memories.(Image: (L) Jurga Rubinovaite with her husband and children, courtesy of Jurga Rubinovaite. (R) Sunshine Abou Bakar, credit Sunshine Abou Bakar.)

Nearly half of the world’s population lives in an area that faces water scarcity for at least a month every year and one in three people globally do not have access to safe drinking water. Today we meet two women who are working on solutions to cope with droughts. Jimena Puyana is a sustainable development programme specialist with the UNDP Country Office in Colombia. She works on implementing nature and community-based solutions to fight climate change in La Mojana, a region with one of the most complex water deltas in the world.Smita Kurup is a scientist at Rothamsted Research, a non-profit organisation based in the UK. She leads research in seed developmental biology and has been working on developing drought-resilient and more sustainable rice crops.Produced by Alice Gioia(Image: (L) Jimena Puyana, courtesy of UNDP Colombia. (R) Smita Kurup, credit Alasdair Cross.)

Throughout history, women have been fearlessly taking up arms and waging war, but the stories of female fighters tend to be forgotten. That is changing, with more female warriors taking centre stage in films and TV series. Kim Chakanetsa talks to two women committed to bringing these stories into the limelight. Cathy Schulman is an Academy award winning producer, showrunner and screenwriter. She’s one of the producers of The Woman King, starring another Oscar winner, actor Viola Davis, and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. The movie is set in West Africa in 1823 and tells the story of the Agojie, an all-female army that protected the Dahomey Kingdom. Caroline Henderson is a Danish-Swedish singer and actor. After winning eight Danish Music Awards and working in theatre productions across Europe, Caroline now stars in the Netflix series Vikings: Valhalla as Jarl Haakon, the ruler of the fictional town of Kattegat. In real life, Caroline is a Knight of Dannebrog, a title she received from Queen Margarethe II of Denmark in 2010.Produced by Alice Gioia(Image: (L) Cathy Schulman, credit Getty. (R) Caroline Henderson, credit Karina Tengberg.)

Despite being more likely to be concerned about climate change women are less likely than men to buy an electric car, or to say that they plan to. But they could be key to driving growth in the industry. Kim Chakanetsa speaks to women from US and India about driving change and innovation in electric vehicles.Linda Zhang is the chief engineer responsible for leading the team delivering an all-electric version of Ford’s F-150 pickup truck, the best-selling pick-up truck in the world. Linda was born in China, she moved to the US as a child and followed her father to work at Ford where she’s been now for 26 years. The F-Series has 16.6 million trucks on the road in the US where it’s the country’s best-selling vehicle. The all-electric version was released 26 April 2022.Sulajja Firodia Motwani is CEO of Kinetic Green, a company based in Pune in India which specialises in electric three-wheelers and scooters. She says the industry is a vibrant one that offers huge opportunities for women. Produced by Jane Thurlow (Image: (L) Linda Zhang, credit Linda Zhang. (R) Sulajja Firodia, credit Sulajja Firodia.)

Climate change is having a devastating impact on the North and the South Pole – melting glaciers and endangering the local wildlife. Kim Chakanetsa meets two women who are monitoring these changes closely. Hilde Fålun Strøm is an explorer and citizen scientist based in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town in the Norwegian arctic. Hilde and her expedition partner, Sunniva Sorby, run Hearts in the Ice, a project raising awareness about climate change. In 2020 they became the first women-only team to overwinter in the High Arctic, where they gathered data for climate change research. Dr Irene Schloss is an Argentinian biologist based in Ushuaia, the world’s southernmost city. She is a principal investigator with the National Council of the Research of Argentina, for the Instituto Antártico Argentino and the Austral Center of Scientific Research. She holds a PhD in biological oceanography and for the past 25 years has been monitoring the impact of climate change on plankton and other marine life in Antarctica.Produced by Alice Gioia(Image: (L) Hilde Fålun Strøm, credit Catherine Lemblé. (R) Irene Schloss, credit Jeremías Di Pietro.)

Fake news can have harmful consequences for those who believe it - but why are women often the target of disinformation campaigns? Kim Chakanetsa meets two experts to discuss how disinformation affect the lives of women around the world. Paulina Ibarra is the Executive Director of Fundación Multitudes, a civil society organization based in Chile. She leads The Women’s Observatory Against Disinformation and Fake News, a project supporting women and members of underrepresented communities who decide to take leadership roles. Hannah Ajakaiye is an award-winning journalist from Nigeria. She’s currently a Knight Fellow with the International Center for Journalists, where she trains fact checkers across Africa and works with social media influencers to dispel myths and debunk fake news stories.Produced by Alice Gioia(Image: (L) Hannah Ajakaiye, credit Monsuru Tiamiyu. (R) Paulina Ibarra, credit Rosario Oddo.)

Flamenco is a complex Spanish artform that includes music, singing and dancing. People often associate it with expressive female dancers - but what role do women actually play in flamenco? Rosamaria Kostic Cisneros is a Spanish-Serbian-American dancer, sociologist and dance historian. Her family is of Roma origins and her mother taught her how to dance flamenco at a very young age. Rosa is a team member of the dance and Flamenco sections for the RomArchive, an international digital collection promoting and preserving Roma arts and culture, and a researcher at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research. Caroline Planté is a flamenco guitarist from Canada and one of the world’s leading female performers. She learnt to play from her father, a flamenco virtuoso, and started performing at the age of 14. After moving to Spain, where she accompanied the country’s top performers, she published 8 Reflexiones, and became the first woman to compose and record a solo flamenco album.Produced by Alice Gioia(Image: (L) Rosamaria Kostic Cisneros, credit Koko Zin Photography. (R) Caroline Planté, credit Hervé Leblay.)

It’s the third annual International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies on Wednesday 7 September. It’s aimed at raising public awareness at all levels of the urgent need to improve air quality. Air pollution is the largest contributor to the burden of disease from the environment, and is one of the main avoidable causes of death and disease globally – killing seven million people a year according to the World Health Organisation. Kim Chakanetsa talks to women from the UK and India who are calling on governments and industry to reduce air pollution.Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah's daughter Ella died, aged nine, after a violent asthma attack in 2013. Since then Rosamund has become one of the most prominent advocates for clean air worldwide. She challenged a coroner's inquest into her daughter's death and succeeded in getting the death certificate changed to show Ella had died as a result of air pollution. Rosamund is now a WHO BreatheLife ambassador and the founder, director, and trustee of the Ella Roberta Foundation.Bhavreen Kandhari lives in New Delhi - the most polluted capital city in the world. She has 18 year old twin daughters and is part of Warrior Moms – a group of women from across India connecting with other clean air campaigns globally to bring attention to the issue of air pollution.Produced by Jane Thurlow(Image: (L) Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, courtesy of Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. (R) Bhavreen Kandhari, courtesy Bhavreen Kandhari.)

Have you ever had your heart broken? It can feel all-consuming and unbearable at points, and cause us physical pain. But why is this the case and how can we overcome it? Kim Chakanetsa finds out the answers from two women who are well versed in matters of the heart.Dr Lucy Brown is an American neuroscientist and clinical professor in Neurology at Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and she’s one of the first people ever to study the neuroscience of romantic love. Lucy is one of the co-creators of The Anatomy Of Love, a website exploring the meaning of romantic love and attachment. Julia Jacklin is an Australian singer songwriter who has written extensively about love and heartbreak. Her second studio album, Crushing, explores the intensity of love and the difficult process of having to let it go. Her latest album is Pre Pleasure.Produced by Emily Naylor and Alice Gioia(Image: (L) Lucy Brown, courtesy of Lucy Brown. (R) Julia Jacklin, credit Nick Mckk.)