Nottingham Inquiry, New generation thinkers, Female sexual pleasure, Serena Williams

The Women's Hour podcast delivers a powerful, multi-layered examination of systemic failures, historical erasure, and the radical potential of female pleasure. At the heart of the episode is the aftermath of the Nottingham public inquiry into the 2023 murders of Barnaby Webber, Grace O'Malley-Kumar, and Ian Coates, where their mothers expose a cascade of institutional negligence across mental health services and policing—revealing deliberate cover-ups, such as withheld CCTV footage and falsified housing records—while demanding accountability and systemic reform. The episode then pivots to a groundbreaking historical reckoning: Dr. Kate Lister’s book *Flick* dismantles the myth that women have less desire than men, tracing a centuries-long suppression of female sexuality from ancient Mesopotamian goddesses to Victorian medical pathologization, culminating in the tragic story of Ida Craddock, a pioneer silenced by censorship. This leads to a bold call for a new academic term—'obstetric violence'—to name the systemic harm women face during childbirth, championed by new BBC thinker Frances Hand, who argues that reframing birth trauma as a human rights violation could force national change. The episode closes with Serena Williams’ return to tennis at 44, not for glory but to show her daughters, a moment that symbolizes both personal triumph and the shifting narrative of women’s strength in later life.