The Conversation

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

Women who are acting as religious leaders in two Muslim communities in Europe. As women doing this is highly unusual, and is not accepted by most Muslim scholars and believers, Kim Chakanetsa asks them how they have been received and why it's so important to them.Sherin Khankan set up the feminist Mariam Mosque in Copenhagen in 2016. She calls herself a 'female imam' and she hopes to revolutionise thinking about the role of women in Islam, and offer an alternative to the traditional patriarchal structures within the religion. Though her mosque is controversial and not recognised by many within mainstream Islam, she says she has only received threats from the Danish far-right and not from fellow Muslims. Halima Krausen became Germany's first 'female imam' in 2013. She took over the running of the Hamburg Islamic Centre having stood in for a male imam on an informal basis for many years. She is currently focussing on her academic career at the Academy of World Religions at the University of Hamburg. She says more than anything else the role of imam is about being a counsellor.Left: Halima Krausen (credit: Jenny Schaefer) Right: Sherin Khankan (credit: Manyar Parwani)

Fighting fires and stereotypes at the same time - Kim Chakanetsa speaks to two senior fire women in India and the UK. Dany Cotton joined the London Fire Brigade at 18, just a few years after it opened up to women. She has worked her way up to be the force's first ever female Commissioner, and is now spearheading a campaign for the general public to stop using the term 'fireman' because it's sexist. Dany still regularly attends fires with her force, including at Grenfell Tower, where more than 70 people died in June 2017. She says it's the worst incident she has ever experienced in 30 years of firefighting, and she has never felt such an overwhelming sense of responsibility.Meenakshi Vijayakumar is the Deputy Director of North Western Region at the Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Service. She was one of the first ever female divisional fire officers in India, joining in 2003. Meenakshi has been called out to over 300 fires in her career, as well as frequent floods and the devastating 2006 tsunami in the coastal city of Chennai. All the way she has battled a widely held belief among her own colleagues that women should not be firefighters, and says she has had to work twice as hard as a man. In 2013 she was awarded the President's Fire Service Medal for Gallantry for rescuing two people from underneath a collapsed building.(L) Meenakshi Vijayakumar. Credit: Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Service (R) Dany Cotton. Credit: London Fire Brigade