Clea and Joanna from The Home Edit, Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, Menopause report
Friends and business partners Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin have become stars of pandemic feel-good TV, with their Netflix show Get Organised with The Home Edit. They go into someone’s home – be it a Hollywood celebrity or a stressed family of five - and transform a cluttered space into something beautiful and functional. The emphasis is firmly on giving busy women back some time and headspace through better organisation of their homes. Clea and Joanna join Emma to give some pro tips and explain how they got the business off the ground with a little help from Hollywood actor and exec Reese Witherspoon. Women with learning disabilities die on average 26 years younger than the general population. This shocking figure is contained in a new report which investigates health inequalities for people with learning disabilities, and the resulting premature and, often, entirely avoidable deaths. In her first interview since taking up the role of Chair of Trustees at the Learning Disability charity Mencap, the former Director General of the CBI Dame Carolyn Fairbairn tells Emma about why the life, and death, of her sister Diana Fairbairn, who had learning disabilities and cerebral palsy, and who died last December, has inspired her new campaigning role to improve support for people with learning disabilities. As the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament releases its final report into the overlooked impacts of the menopause, Emma speaks to the Chair of that Committee, Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, about the actions she wants the government to now take up. These include consulting on making menopause a protected characteristic under the Equality Act – meaning employers would have to make reasonable adjustments for menopausal women in the workplace. Last month, we asked listeners about the matriarchs in their lives, the redoubtable women whose stories deserve to be told. Today, listener Kate from Cambridge tells her Grandmother ‘Babushka’s story.