Kim Chakanetsa brings together top female football referees to discuss their passion for the game, the demands of rigorous fitness training and how they handle aggressive players.Melissa Borjas Pastrana was inspired to follow in her uncle's footsteps to become a referee. Melissa, who lives in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, referees men's games in Honduras and women's games at Fifa level. Melissa reveals how you have to be good at psychology to succeed as a referee, because you are managing 22 players on the pitch as well as the support staff and the fans in the stadium. Sandra Serafini grew up in a football obsessed household in Canada and from a young age was a keen player. When she discovered that her talents lay more with officiating rather than playing she began to referee at men's and women's games at an amateur level, until eventually she turned professional and joined Fifa in 2006. For much of her career she has combined refereeing football matches with neurosurgery, her work as a neuroscientist helps her to understand why things can go wrong in a game and how to try and fix them. She now works with the Professional Referee Organisation where she coaches the next generation of female referees.(Photo: Melissa Borjas Pastrana (L) Credit Omar Martinez. Sandra Serafini (R) Credit Dominic Chan)

Women make better city traders than men according to research, but most trading floors are dominated by men. Kim Chakanetsa explores why this might be and meets two traders from Russia and the Philippines who are helping to redress the balance.Currency trading is Louise Dispo's area of the market. Originally from the Philippines, Louise work's in London now. She says she's used to being one of the only females on the trading floor and thinks it's the high pressure, risk and unpredictable hours that put other women off choosing this as a career. Chocolate, coffee and nuts get Louise through the day and she says the office is filled with high screens, people shouting and phones ringing.Lucy Shitova has traded base metals, such as aluminium and steel, for 10 years. She began her career in Russia and also works in London now. Lucy says she was drawn to this profession because of the buzz, the "pay-off" and the fact it's like getting paid to gamble in a casino with someone else's cash. Lucy admits that it hits hard when you lose money, but you've got to be confident in your decisions and move on.Image: City Traders Louise Dispo (L) and Lucy Shitova (R) Credit: Louise Dispo & Lucy Shitova

Kim Chakanetsa brings together leading women vets from Uganda and Sri Lanka to talk about their careers and their trickiest challenges.As a new vet graduate, Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka was made chief veterinary officer of the Ugandan Wildlife Service. She set about restocking her country's national parks with giraffes and lions following years of civil war, but it was the endangered mountain gorillas that really captured Gladys' heart. She now leads her own charity Conservation Through Public Health, which looks after both the health of the gorillas and the people who live near them, who are crucial to their survival. Sri Lankan vet Dr Nalinika Obeyesekere prefers to treat smaller creatures such as cats and dogs. Nalinika grew up looking after her parents' adopted animals, everything from fish to a leopard cub! But she soon decided that working with wildlife was not for her, and instead started up her country's first multi-doctor veterinary practice. Nalinika is passionate about improving training and education around animal care, and she uses a portion of her profits to provide free treatment for Colombo's huge stray dog population. (Photo: (L) Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. (R) Dr Nalinika Obeyesekere)

Patrice Banks says she was an 'auto airhead' before she fell in love with fixing vehicles. She was an engineer for a big chemicals company, but despite her passion for problem solving she avoided her own car maintenance and preferred to pay a man to do it. The Philadelphia born mechanic discovered that many other women felt the same way and decided to do something about it. Patrice started work in a garage, went back to school and set up Girls Auto Clinic to help women feel more connected with their cars. Nigerian Sandra Aguebor got her first job in a car repair shop aged 13 and has never looked back. Sandra did not let the jokes and jeers about being a girl doing this job get to her. Now Sandra is famous for being Nigeria's first female mechanic and has run her own garage, Sandex Car Care, for 20 years. She also leads the Lady Mechanic Initiative, which trains women to work with cars. (Photo: (L) Patrice Banks. Credit: Girls Auto Clinic. (R) Sandra Aquebor. Credit: Lady Mechanic Initiative)

Kim Chakanetsa travels to the Global Philanthropy Forum conference in California to speak to two philanthropists and finds out why they give so much money away.Amy Rao grew her Silicon Valley tech company, Integrated Systems Archive, during the dotcom bubble of the 1990s and says she started giving large amounts of money to causes close to her heart as soon as she launched the business. Amy grew up in a household where helping others and entrepreneurship were a priority, even when they were broke her parents still helped those less fortunate in the community. Today, Amy's philanthropy is focussed on human rights and the environment and she is the chair of the Human Rights Watch Voices for Justice events in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and is on the board of the Schmidt Family Foundation, as well as being the president of the 11th Hour Project.It took determination and defiance for Tsitsi Masiyiwa and her husband Strive Masiyiwa to build their telecoms empire following a lengthy legal battle with the Zimbabwean government who had a monopoly. Tsitsi also grew up in a community where helping others was important. She says as soon as she realised they might make money with their company, Econet, she committed to giving some of it away because "you can only sleep in one bed, drive one car and have one home". Today Tsitsi is the co-founder and co-chair of the Higherlife Foundation, which has sent tens of thousands of children to school and university in southern Africa. (Photo: From left, Amy Rao, Kim Chakanetsa and Tsitsi Masiyiwa. Credit: Noah Stout of Stout Film)

Kim Chakanetsa quizzes two heavy metal bass guitarists about their roles in their bands, how they learnt to head-bang, and juggling the music with their day jobs.Doris Yeh tours all over the world with best-selling Taiwanese metal band Chthonic. She says she only got into heavy metal by accident, but now loves it. Being the only woman in the band can have its down-sides - at performances her male colleagues used to expect her to get changed in the toilet while they occupied the one dressing room! However, Doris learnt to assert herself, and says when she gets on stage and starts playing, she is just excited to be able to treasure that moment with the audience. Slovenian Sasha Zagorc formed the heavy metal/hard rock band Hellcats with her sister ten years ago. She's always been a metal-head so just wears her own black leather clothes in their videos and on stage. Initially the band had to deal with quite a lot of criticism as the first all-female band on the Slovenian metal scene, but they just kept going and now have fans all over the world. For Sasha having a band provides much needed relaxation, and she loves going on tour with her best friends.(L) Photo: Sasha Zagorc. Credit: Simon Podgorsek. (R) Photo: Doris Yeh. Credit: CHTHONIC.

When Australian mechanical engineer Marita Cheng got to university, she was shocked to discover that only five out of 50 students on her course were female. She responded by starting Robogals - an organisation that goes into schools and teaches robotics to girls as a way of encouraging them into choosing engineering as a career. Having won multiple awards and starting her own robotics company, Marita is now an inspiring role model herself, and has developed a robot arm that can aid people with mobility issues.Lebanese civil engineer Nisrine Chartouny oversees miles of tunnelling on London's ambitious Crossrail project. Her work requires precision, skill and very long hours. Nisrine joined her company Bechtel 10 years ago, and says she and her husband put off having babies for five years because she was enjoying her job so much. Now a mum of one, she was able to go back to work four days a week and wants the rest of the industry she is so passionate about to embrace flexible working, so that it can hold on to women like her.(Photo: Marita Cheng (L). Credit: University of Melbourne, Australia. Nisrine Chartouny (R). Credit: Bechtel)

Cat Hulbert started gambling for a living 40 years ago. A blackjack player in her 20s, she became so skilled at winning money from casinos, she was soon very unpopular with them all around the US. Cat took up poker in the 1980s, and was one of the first women to break into the ranks of professional card players. The Game Show Network called her "the best female gambler on earth." Now retired, Cat says she is not sure that she would legalise gambling in a state that did not have it, as it can ruin so many lives.Celina Lin, who has been described as 'China's Queen of Poker', was born in Shanghai and moved to Australia as a child. Always a gaming enthusiast, she got into poker by accident, but quickly became a skilled online player and has been employed by the company PokerStars for the last eight years. She is now based back in China, playing high-level poker tournaments in the casino city of Macau. Celina has won the prestigious Red Dragon cup twice, and views poker not as a game but as an extremely demanding mind sport.Image: Celina Lin (L) and Cat Hulbert (R) (Images courtesy of Celina Lin and Cat Hulbert)

Megan Harrington-Johnson doesn't let worry and doubt stop her when she wants to complete a 13km open-water swim. The South African endurance swimmer has swam in shark infested waters, even though she's petrified of them and has had a close shave with a Great White. Megan says she's often the only woman on the team, but thinks it's fear rather than ability that holds other women back from doing what she does. Sweating in the water is an issue and Megan talks about the importance of staying hydrated and eating lots of calories to get through a big swim. Manu Vilaseca started by running 5km races and now does 160km ultra-marathons. The lengthy courses are rarely on flat terrain, they're normally up and down mountains and the conditions can be unpredictable, but Manu, who's from Brazil, says even when her mind is telling her to stop she knows how to talk herself round and get through. The competitions might be punishing on Manu's body, but she says she loves the feeling of total exhaustion and almost craves the pain she will feel afterwards so she knows she's pushed herself to the limit.Photo: (L) Megan Harrington-Johnson. Credit: Charl Rorich. Photo: (R) Manuela Vileseca. Credit: Bernardo Rodrigues.

Cathy Bramley is the UK author of best-selling romantic comedies such as Appleby Farm and The Plumberry School Of Comfort Food. Cathy has spent most of her working life in marketing, however reading has always been a passion of hers, and she says one particular book inspired her to take up writing herself. Four years ago she went for it and self-published her first novel. She was then taken on by a publisher and was able to give up her day job to write full-time in 2014.Cheryl Ntumy has written 11 books, including romance novels for a South African audience and young adult fiction. She grew up surrounded by books and has been writing stories since she was very young. Originally from Ghana, Cheryl now lives in Botswana and her characters often reflect her feelings and experiences of being an outsider. She says writing isn't really taken seriously as a career in Botswana, so it has been a challenge to keep going at times. Photo credit: (L) Cathy Bramley and (R) Cheryl Ntumy