Why do women earn less than men across the world, and what can be done to narrow this gender pay gap? Two experts from Italy and Kenya give their ideas on how to make the workplace more equal and pay women what they are worth.Paola Diana (@paoladiana_) is the founder of PariMerito or Equal Merit, an organisation through which she lobbied the Italian government to pass new equality laws in the workplace, including one requiring company boards to have at least 30% women. Paola started her own businesses as a single mother of two, and believes real change will only come from all nations having more women at the top of politics, business and industry. She is also the author of 'Saving The World - Women: The Twenty First Century's Factor for Change'. Dr Njoki Ngumi (@njokingumi) is a writer, physician and feminist thinker who has held positions in private and public health care sectors in Kenya. She is now coordinating learning and development for the NEST Collective, a Kenyan multidisciplinary artistic squad. She also works at HEVA Fund, Africa's first creative economy catalyst fund. In her experience, official gender gap statistics fail to reflect the reality of most women's work in Kenya, which tends to be informal, and in low wage manual jobs. Thus she says the biggest change would come from improving pay and conditions for domestic workers.(L) Image and credit: Paola Diana (R) Image and credit: Dr Njoki Ngumi

Planting, pruning and giving the orders - Kim Chakanetsa meets two female head gardeners who are challenging the idea that gardening is a hobby for women but a career for men.Sharon Cooke runs Andromeda Botanic Gardens in Barbados, the only Royal Horticulture Society Partner Garden in the West Indies. The garden was created in the 1950s by award-winning horticulturist Iris Bannochie. After Iris died, the garden fell into decline, but Sharon is now restoring it to its former glory. Sharon says that when people ask to meet the Head Gardener, they usually expect a man, and are surprised to see that she is in charge. Sandra Pella has been the Head Gardener at the public Toronto Botanical Garden in Canada since 2008. Sandra is self-taught, but came from a family of green-fingered farmers. She quit her job at a bank and made the change from gardening as a hobby, to gardening as a profession. She says that because of her gender, people sometimes don't believe she is strong enough to use a wheelbarrow or climb a ladder.(L) Image: Sandra Pella. Credit: Paul Zammit (R) Image and credit: Sharon Cooke

Women making history on the snow and ice. Kim Chakanetsa meets two female athletes who are pioneers in their winter sports. Simidele Adeagbo is a Nigerian who is the first African woman to compete in the skeleton category of the Winter Olympics. Originally a track and field athlete, she set out to break barriers in winter sports but was faced with the challenge of no snow or tracks to practise on. The first time she touched a skeleton sled was in 2017, but she qualified for the Pyeongchang Games earlier this year. Lindsey Marie Van is a veteran of women's ski jumping, and was instrumental in fighting for its inclusion in the Olympics. Lindsey campaigned and was part of a gender discrimination lawsuit. After 90 years of male ski jumping, one competition was finally added for women at the 2014 Sochi games (men have three chances to compete). After this huge victory, Lindsey's recurrent knee injury forced her to retire. The Utah athlete was, however, a 16-time national champion and the 2009 world champion.(L) Lindsey Van (credit: Lars Baron/Getty Images) (R) Simidele Adeagbo (credit: Candice Ward)

Explosions in classrooms and a commute threatened by bombs and bullets - academics from Yemen and Syria who found themselves working through a civil war. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women who are passionate about educating their country's next generation, but were forced to leave them behind when they fled to safety in Europe. They discuss why they had to make that painful decision, and how they are continuing their work in exile.Dr Fathiah Zakham is an award winning Yemeni microbiologist whose research focuses on drug-resistant tuberculosis. She was based at Hodeidah University, a port city in Yemen that came under rebel control in 2015. Despite her institution being destroyed by an air attack, Fathiah stayed in Yemen and even won a global award for female researchers. But eventually the situation became impossible and she left for Switzerland in 2017. She is now doing post-doctoral work at the University Hospital of Lausanne.Reem Doukmak is a Syrian linguist and was working at Al Baath University in Homs, a city at the heart of the uprising against the government in 2011. Homs has been under siege for much of the time since. Reem endured two years living in a war zone before managing to leave Syria with the help of a charity. Reem is now continuing her studies at Warwick University in the UK and she also volunteers as a translator for other refugees.(L) Image and credit: Reem Doukmak (R) Image and credit : Fathiah Zakham

Travelling alone while female - what's the reality? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two wanderlust women who won't let sexism stop them from adventuring into different cities, countries and hemispheres. Meruschka Govender is a travel activist, and experience seeker from South Africa. She regularly backpacks around the continent, but says she always felt that there was a local voice missing in African travel writing, so she began her blog Mzansi Girl. When Meruschka first started travelling solo, as a woman of colour she was seen as unusual, but she says things are now changing. Atikah Amalina is a Singaporean traveller who writes the popular blog The Tudung Traveller. In an age of travel bans and Islamophobia, Atikah travels solo in a hijab, encountering sexism and racism as a Muslim woman, but also friendship and generosity. She says that she tries to be a bridge to a better understanding of Islam for the people she encounters.Image: Atikah Amalina (L) and Meruschka Govender (R), female solo World travellers. Credit: Meruschka Govender c/o Daréll Lourens. Composite: BBC

What does it take to be the world’s best teacher and win a million dollars at the same time? We meet two women who have won the Global Teacher Prize for transforming the lives of their students. Andria Zafirakou is deputy headteacher at a community school in a deprived part of London which has one of the highest murder rates in the UK. Violent gangs often try to recruit the children at the school gates. But Andria is determined to give her students the best possible start in life.Maggie Macdonnell teaches at a school in a small and remote Inuit village in northern Quebec on the Arctic circle. It's an isolated place and there are few jobs for the young. Maggie has made it her mission to do something about the shocking levels and drug abuse and suicide amongst teenagers.Main image: (L) Maggie Macdonnell (image credit: The Varkey Foundation) and (R) Andria Zafirakou (image credit: The Varkey Foundation)

Feminism! Freedom! Identity! When it comes to frank discussions, podcasts by and for women are leading the way in creating communities where nothing is off limits. Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women who are seizing the mic and recording their own stories and conversations. Their podcasts are all about challenging assumptions about gender, race and sexuality and building armies of like-minded individuals.Deborah Frances-White is an Australian comedian and the host of The Guilty Feminist, a podcast which tackles the feeling of not always being a good enough feminist with a dose of humour. Each episode features guests discussing a feminist topic in front of a live audience. Deborah has recorded the show around the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and the US. She says podcasts are a micro-climate where women do well because the audience want them to. In just over two years, her podcast has been downloaded three million times. Ifeyinwa Arinze is a Nigerian neuroscientist and one of the four co-hosts of the podcast Not Your African Cliché. She and her friends Ifeoluwa Olokode, Onyeka Ononye and Amayo Bassey were spurred on to make the podcast after hearing ignorant comments about Africa when they travelled to the U.S. for college. They are on a mission to tell diverse stories of Africans, and invite guests from different African countries to discuss literature, travel and politics with healthy servings of laughter and critical analysis. Ifeyinwa says her podcast is creating a voice for African migrant millennials across the globe. (L) Deborah Frances-White (credit: Linda Kupo) (R) Ifeyinwa Arinze (credit: Mohini Ufeli)

Promoting women's writing around the world - Kim Chakanetsa brings together the heads of pioneering feminist publishing houses in Australia and India, and asks how they stay relevant in an age of self-publishing and e-books?Susan Hawthorne runs Spinifex Press in Queensland. She and her partner Renate Klein set it up in 1991 as a response to what they saw as a dearth of diversity in Australian publishing. She says that despite the proliferation of online platforms for writers to publish their work in recent years, they still find they need a real publisher to select, edit and promote them. Susan finds her books in a variety of ways, but is frustrated by the mainstream publishing sector's focus on 'star authors'. Susan is also a writer and her new novel Dark Matters is about a lesbian who is tortured.Urvashi Butalia co-founded India's first exclusively feminist publishing house in 1984, and now runs Zubaan books based in New Delhi. Her aim is to reflect the experiences of marginalised women and she says she is also seeing a resurgence of interest from young women - and young men - in the history of the women's movement in India. Urvashi is an award-winning author herself, whose best known book is The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.Image and credit: (L) Urvashi Butalia. Image: (R) Susan Hawthorne. Credit: Naomi McKescher

Two women re-define what it means to be a bread-maker. While women and baking have always been closely associated with each other, the billion dollar industry is actually dominated by men. This week, two young women speak to Kim Chakanetsa about becoming the face of bread-making, taking on the family business, and the sacrifices it takes to make the perfect loaf. Apollonia Poîlane's grandfather opened Poîlane bakery in Paris in 1932, and his son Lionel took over the business in 1970. Lionel turned it into one of France's most famous bakeries. However in 2002 he and his wife were killed in a helicopter crash, and his 18 year old daughter, Apollonia, took over the family business. She has turned Poilâne into a multi-million dollar international brand and says her father's friends and baking team helped her become the CEO she is today.Maya Rohr is a young American baker currently doing an apprenticeship with a Swedish chocolatier. 25 years ago Maya's mother opened a bakery in their hometown of Homer, Alaska, just a few days after Maya was born. Maya is in the process of deciding whether she wants to carry on the family business, Two Sisters Bakery, or pursue her own path. The bakery is more than just a company for Maya - she says it's a vital part of her small community.Image: (L) Apollonia Poilâne (Credit: Helene Saglio) and (R) Maya Rohr (Credit: Brianna Lee)

Professional female gamers excelling in a male-dominated environment. Emily Webb unites one of the UK's most successful live streamers, and a champion e-sports player from Canada to discuss their gaming highs, lows and strategies for dealing with trolls. Leahviathan has amassed almost 150,000 followers on the gaming website Twitch, streaming footage of herself playing video games such as Destiny 2 and Overwatch. Leah plays for six hours at a time, and makes her living from people subscribing to her channel and giving her tips. She says despite having a lot of support online, there are also people trying to bring you down just for being a woman, but she finds ignoring them is usually the best strategy.Stephanie Harvey - or missharvey as she's known in the gaming world - plays the game CounterStrike in front of thousands of fans at huge arena events, and has played in female teams that have won major international e-sports competitions six times. Stephanie also co-founded the website misscliks.com in reaction to what she saw as a lack of support and promotion for women in gaming. She says the situation has improved a lot in the last five years, and she now takes a different approach to trolls, persuading them to be better people, which actually works.Image and credit: (L) Stephanie Harvey Image and credit: (R) Leahviathan