Professor Dame Sally Davies is the Chief Medical Officer for England and the first woman to fill this post. She guides government decisions on diverse subjects such as superbugs, drug trials and obesity. She is also number 6 on the Woman’s Hour Power List.

Karren Brady is well known as the right hand woman to Sir Alan Sugar on TV’s The Apprentice, and also as a formidable force in business – standing out not only as a huge success, but also as a woman in the undeniably male world of football. She started her 20 year career in football when she was appointed Managing Director of Birmingham City Football Club aged only 23, and took the club from administration to sell it for an incredible £82 million. Now she’s Vice Chairman of West Ham.

How to be a Powerful Woman - a series of Woman's Hour Power List films are launched in this live programme, presented by Jane Garvey, from the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House. Artist Tracey Emin, paralympian and Life Peer Tanni Grey Thompson, Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti and MOBO's Kanya King are some of the powerlisters featured in the films. They share their experiences, advice and philosophy for a successful working life. In the programme we'll take a look at some of the barriers...

Sophie Turner Laing is the Managing Director, Content of BskyB. She’s responsible for their entertainment and news channels including the likes of Sky 1 and Atlantic. As one of the 100 most powerful women on the Woman’s Hour Power List - she joins Jenni to talk about what it’s really like working in TV, the myth of the work-life balance, and why it’s important to realise that you don’t need to know everything. .

Ann Widdecombe, fines for unmarried mothers in China, US author Curtis Sittenfeld and the proposed anti-social behaviour bill.

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson reveals how life as a top athlete helped her prepare for the rough and tumble of politics and how she manages to persuade her 11 year old daughter to sit quietly through House of Lords debates.

Joanna Lumley is best known as the champagne-swilling fashion luvvie Patsy in the television series Absolutely Fabulous. However, alongside acting she is also known for her modelling, charitable work, and as a rights campaigner. She famously campaigned to allow Gurkha veterans to settle in the UK, and now she is backing a sustainable fashion initiative, run in partnership with Oxfam. She is an influential woman in British life, and so in February our panel of judges included her in our...

Helena Morrissey is the Chief Executive of her own investment company and the founder of the 30 per cent club, and a Woman's Hour Powerlister. She commented on the latest research by the Cranfield School of Management about women on boards.

Dame Sue Ion has spent her life working in engineering. She’s been involved in shaping the UK’s energy policy for the future and been a prominent figure in the UK nuclear industry for decades. Her love for science began at Penwortham Girls’ High School which she shared with her classmate Dame Nancy Rothwell, who is also on the Woman’s Hour Powerlist. Sheila McClennon took Sue Ion back to her old school for the first time in thirty years.

Lucy Heller is the Chief Executive of ARK, an organisation that oversee the running of 18 academies in disadvantaged communities throughout the UK. She is responsible for a model of education which is currently driving current government education policy. Lucy joins Jenni to talk about being nominated for the Woman’s Hour Power List, the ethos that she believes makes her schools so successful and if being a woman in a such senior position is relevant in her day to day work life.

Baroness Sue Campbell has been Chair of UK Sport for ten years now. Also Chair of Youth Sport, a former England netball international, PE teacher and university lecturer, Sue's whole life has been dedicated to sport. She joins Jane to talk about the legacy of London 2012 for women in sport, being nominated for the Woman’s Hour Power List and how her sports training has given her the resilience to deal with some tough challenges in her career.

Nicola Shindler started her career in 1993 at Granada Television and eventually became script editor on crime drama Cracker. She went on to become an Assistant Producer on the BBC’s Our Friends in the North and then in 1998, she founded one of Britain’s foremost independent TV production companies, Red Production. Their output – which has included Queer as Folk, Scott and Bailey and Last Tango in Halifax – has won many awards from BAFTA and the Royal Television Society and Nicola Shindler is...

Frances O’Grady took up her post as the General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress last month, the first woman to hold that post in its 145 year history. Last week the panel for the Woman’s Hour Power List ranked her 11th on their list. Frances talks to Samira about her life, career and influences.

Jenni interviews Tessa Ross, Controller of Film and Drama at Channel 4 who is on the Woman's Hour power list.

Home Secretary Theresa May has been named by the Power List judges as the most powerful woman in politics in Britain today. Overall she was only pipped to the number one slot by Her Majesty The Queen. Today Jenni talks to the woman who holds one of the most challenging jobs in government and asks, what does power mean to her? .

Heather Rabbatts, the first woman director of the Football Association, joins Jane to talk about her place on the Woman’s Hour power list.

Over the past couple of months Eve Pollard and her team of judges – Priti Patel MP, Val McDermid, Dawn O’Porter, Baroness Oona King and the former Woman’s Hour editor, Jill Burridge, have been making their decisions and today we bring you the second selection of their deliberations as they debated the relative influence of some of the women you nominated. We join the panel as they discuss women who influence our cultural life.

Over the past couple of months Eve Pollard and her team of judges – Priti Patel MP, Val McDermid, Dawn O’Porter, Baroness Oona King and the former Woman’s Hour editor, Jill Burridge, have been making their decisions. Here is a selection of their deliberations as they debated the relative influence of some of the women you nominated, an they wrestle with defining what power is.

Jenni Murray interviews Angela Merkel's biographer Margaret Heckel about Merkel's life and legacy.

What is the best way for women to engage in the political process – march and shout loudly or engage in subtle targeted persuasion? Journalist Laurie Penny and Charlotte Vere, founder of Women On, a campaign group for women in the economy, discuss.

As the Woman's Hour Power List judges consider who the most powerful women in the UK are at the start of 2013, we take a look at the women who will come to prominence as the year progresses. Jenni speaks to Emma Barnett, women’s editor of the Daily Telegraph and Helen Lewis, deputy editor of the New Statesman.

The 80s was the decade associated with power dressing. But what would a 21st century woman choose to wear for success?

Do women have an effective equivalent of the old boys’ network? And is it possible to name our power list without the advantage of hindsight?

It was Lord Acton, the British historian, who said: “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Is it possible to become powerful and still be the same person you once were? Margaret Beckett, Labour MP for Derby South, and journalist, Nina Myskow,explore the nature of power, and its affect on those who find themselves at the top.

If we were making a global power list, who would be on it? Angela Merkel and Hilary Clinton are a given. Who are the rest? Jenni is joined by Paola Totaro; vice president of the Foreign Press Association in London and by Baroness Glenys Kinnock; a former MEP.