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Episode details

Radio 4,19 Oct 2012,58 mins

The first successful heart transplant baby, 25 years on, Pimps and Hoes student nights, Breast Ironing and Agent Rose

Woman's Hour

Available for over a year

Presented by Jenni Murray. It's 25 years since the first successful baby heart transplant took place. Kaylee Davidson-Olley was just five months old when she received her new heart and is the longest-surviving person in the UK to have had a heart transplant as a baby. As the new academic year gets under way, there are plenty of party nights and social events being organised to help students make new friends. But a series of student party nights with the fancy dress theme of Pimps and Hoes is causing controversy, with women's groups and MPs calling for the events to be cancelled because they trivialise prostitution and violence against women. Are they just part of the fun, or do they point to a worrying increase in misogynistic attitudes amongst university students? In Cameroon millions of young girls are being subjected to a painful practice known as breast ironing. Mothers use hot stones or heated utensils, such as spoons or pestles, to flatten the developing breasts of adolescent girls in a bid to protect them from unwanted sexual attention. Margaret Nyuydzewira from CAME, a women's community group in London talks about what can be done to protect girls from this barbaric practice. 89 year old Eileen Nearne died alone, after spending her last years as a virtual recluse, but she had a remarkable secret. When council officers searched Eileen's home they found documents which revealed that during the war she'd been an agent for the Special Operations Executive in Nazi-occupied France. Agent Rose is the first biography of Eileen Nearne, and its author Bernard O'Connor joins Jenni to talk about her amazing story.

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