Baroness Helena Kennedy is one of Britain’s most distinguished lawyers and has dedicated her more than forty-year career to giving voice to those who have least power within the system. Helena has worked on some of the UK’s most high-profile cases, including the appeal by the Guildford Four, who were wrongly accused and imprisoned for planting an IRA bomb in a pub used by British soldiers. She is also a leading voice for equal opportunities for women working in law and has championed reforms...

Earlier this month, Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee after 70 years of service. In this special Spotlight episode, we’ll be exploring her historic reign and what it can teach us about gender roles and female leadership.   For this conversation, Julia is joined by Anna Whitelock a historian, author and broadcaster who specialises in monarchy. Anna is a Professor of the History of Monarchy at City, University of London, and Director of...

Our Spotlight episodes take a deep-dive into the latest news, issues and ideas on women and gender equality, and feature incredible researchers from the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London and beyond.    In this episode, Julia is joined by Andrea Ellner, a Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London who specialises in gender, war, and security, to explore how the Ukraine war is impacting women and girls.   If you would like to support women in Ukraine,...

Julia is joined by feminist icon Gloria Steinem. Gloria has been at the vanguard of the women’s rights movement and has been questioning the status quo and pushing against the patriarchy for almost 60 years. They discuss Gloria’s career as a political activist, journalist, writer, and editor, the erosion of reproductive rights in the US, and what feminism means today. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Now in its 10th year, the Stella Prize is a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing and championing diversity and cultural change.   To celebrate the 2022 prize, Julia sits down with Evelyn Araluen, this year’s prize winner, to discuss her award-winning debut book, Drop Bear, which weaves together past and present, her personal history and the story of indigenous Australia through powerful lyrical verse. Evelyn shares her writing experience, her journey into poetry and...

  In this special episode – which is a recording from a live Global Institute for Women’s Leadership event held in London in the week of International Women’s Day, in partnership with Ipsos UK – Julia speaks to Theresa May, who in 2016 became only the second woman to serve as UK prime minister.   The two former leaders sat down to discuss their experiences at the highest level of politics, the obstacles they faced, and what we can do to improve gender equality and women's political...

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’re bringing you a special episode of the podcast. This will be the first of our Spotlight series, where we take a deep-dive into the latest research, news and ideas on gender equality and hear from incredible researchers at the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership and beyond.   We’re delighted to be joined today by Kelly Beaver, the recently appointed Chief Executive of Ipsos UK, and first woman to hold that role. Ahead of International Women's...

A remarkably similar proportion of mums and dads would like to work flexibly to spend more time with their children – yet mothers are much more likely to work part-time than fathers. These patterns can be ingrained early. In the UK, fathers and non-childbearing parents are eligible to take up to 50 weeks of shared parental leave, but estimates for uptake vary from just 0.5% to 8%. These unequal divisions of parental care and flexible working are significant drivers of the gender pay gap. So,...

Our host, Julia Gillard, takes a walk down memory lane and looks back on her podcast highlights of 2021. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On the back of her hit television show 'Ms Represented', documenting the last 100 years since women were elected to the Australian parliament, much loved journalist Annabel Crabb talks with Julia about the history, power and influence of women in Australian politics, and what she has seen to be one of the most exciting developments in politics in the last few years.    In this episode, Annabel also explores her own career as a journalist from young cadet at the Adelaide Advertiser to a...

Julia is joined by Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, the co-creator of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, one of the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines in the world. She shares her experience of working around the clock with her team to develop the vaccine at record speed, what it’s been like to see the impact of the vaccine in the UK and beyond, and her frustration at the inequity of vaccine distribution around the world. Sarah also underlines the need for more funding for vaccine development to...

Manal al-Sharif is a human rights campaigner who received global attention for her arrest for “driving while female” in 2011, an event that shocked the world and highlighted the lack of rights and autonomy experienced by women in Saudi Arabia. In addition to her activism, Manal is also incredibly accomplished in the world of technology and was listed as one of Forbes’s top 50 women in tech and by Newsweek as one of the top tech revolutionaries in the world. See acast.com/privacy for privacy...

Julia is joined by Helen Clark, the 37th Prime Minister of New Zealand and the second woman to ever hold the position. Since stepping away from frontline politics in 2008, Helen has continued her vital work on the world stage, most notably as the first female head of the United Nations Development Programme and as co-chair of the independent panel set up by the WHO to learn lessons from the coronavirus outbreak.    She and Julia discuss the impact of the pandemic, the damaging effects of...

Julia is joined by Michelle Ryan, a Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology who famously uncovered the phenomenon of the glass cliff, whereby women (and members of other minority groups) are more likely to be placed in leadership positions that are risky or precarious. Julia and Michelle discuss how this phenomenon has played out during the pandemic, how Covid-19 has impacted progress towards gender equality more generally and why we should interrogate seemingly empowering messages...

Julia is joined by Audette Exel, a trailblazer who has combined the high-flying world of high finance with global humanitarian work that has had a profound impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in poverty around the world. Julia asks Audette about her remarkable career journey, what inspired her to take up her humanitarian mission, and how her work has helped women and girls globally. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jenny Macklin was the longest serving woman in Australia’s House of Representatives, and was the first woman to become the Deputy Leader of a major Australian political party. She served in parliament alongside Julia and was instrumental in driving some of the most important policy reforms in Australia’s contemporary history, including the country’s first national Paid Parental Leave Scheme and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. In this episode, Jenny and Julia reflect on the...

In this episode, Julia is joined by Kate Mosse, a British novelist, non-fiction and short story writer, founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction – the largest annual celebration of women's writing in the world – and creator of the global campaign, #WomanInHistory, launched in January 2021 to honour, celebrate and promote women’s achievements throughout history. Kate shares what inspired her to start writing, the power of fiction to give voice to unheard women and her experience as a live-in...

Cordelia Fine is an academic psychologist and author who brings her work challenging gender misconceptions in science to a wider audience through her best-selling books, including Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds, which was the Royal Society science book of the year in 2017. In this episode, Julia and Cordelia discuss encounters with sexism in their early school years, how the male and female brain are not as different as is traditionally understood, and how...

In this episode, Julia is joined by Wiradjuri woman and acclaimed Australian author, Tara June Winch. Tara’s incredible 2019 novel, The Yield, earned critical recognition, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Julia and Tara discuss the power of storytelling to give voice to underrepresented communities, and why we need to rethink the literary canon to make space for more diverse...

In this episode, we welcome our first Nobel Prize winner to the podcast. Esther Duflo is Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2019 won the Nobel Prize for Economics, making her the youngest person and only the second woman ever to receive this award.   We discuss Esther’s remarkable career journey, her research into the relationship between female leaders and women’s empowerment in India, and the role of economics as...

In this episode, Julia is joined by Alice Albright, the Chief Executive Officer of the Global Partnership for Education. The GPE is the largest global fund solely dedicated to transforming education in lower-income countries and works to put gender equality at the heart of national education systems. Alice discusses how girls’ education is essential to advancing women’s empowerment globally, how Covid-19 has restricted opportunities for girls around the world, and how we can address this in...

On this episode, we welcome Patricia Kingori, Professor in Sociology and Global Health Ethics at the University of Oxford, who has been recognised by the Powerlist as one of the most influential Black women academics in the UK for her research into fakes, fabrications and falsehoods. Patricia explains how the origins of “fake news” predate Trumpian politics and how misleading stories have a history of disproportionately impacting women and communities of colour.  She and Julia also...

Revelations of violent, sexist and misogynistic conduct in Parliament House have rocked Australia, leading tens of thousands to the streets to protest and dominating the news agenda. Meanwhile, in the UK, there has been an outpouring of grief and anger in response to the murder of Sarah Everard, with calls for the government and police to better protect women.   In the wake of these harrowing events, are we experiencing another cultural reckoning, similar to the #MeToo movement? What’s the...

Mary Robinson is one of the most inspiring women political leaders of her generation. In 1990 in a country where women were still largely treated as second class citizens, she was elected the seventh and first female President of Ireland, serving for seven years after which she served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and has continued to use her platform to campaign for human rights, women’s rights and climate justice.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out...

In London, the Metropolitan Police (the Met) are the force responsible for the incredibly complex task of keeping Londoners safe. At the helm of the Met is Dame Cressida Dick, the first woman to ever hold that position. Cressida speaks with Julia about her career path to the Met, and what it's been like to manage the police force in London through the pandemic. They also discuss murder of Sarah Everard and the policing of the vigil that followed, and how Cressida felt when she first found...