70 years ago at 2pm on 7th October 1946 the first edition of Woman’s Hour was broadcast. To celebrate our 70th birthday Jane joined former Woman’s Hour presenter Sue MacGregor and Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History from the University of Westminster speaking on microphones from the early days to look back into the BBC archive.

Last week an employment tribunal in Bristol found that the airline EasyJet had discriminated against two cabin crew members, Sara Ambacher and Cynthia McFarlane, by failing to let them work shorter shifts while breastfeeding. We examine the details of the case and the implications this ruling could have for other employers and the rights of women in the work place. With Nicky Marcus, Regional Legal Officer for Unite the Union and Katie Wood, a Barrister and legal officer for Maternity Action UK.

As her new play No’s Knife, adapted from a number of Samuel Beckett’s prose pieces, continues at the Old Vic in London, Lisa Dwan talks to Jenni about her passion for Beckett, what he has to offer women and why some people struggle with his work.

70@70, Late Night Woman’s Hour presenter Lauren Laverne has created a BBC Music playlist for Woman’s Hour to celebrate the programme’s birthday – 70 tracks by 70 female artists from across the last 70 years. You can find the list of tracks on the BBC Music website by following the link on the Woman’s Hour homepage from 10am on Friday.

Ballet Black is a professional ballet company for dancers of black and Asian descent. Their most recent show, Triple Bill, sold out the Barbican in London, and is now touring the country. Artistic Director, Cassa Pancho, founded the company in 2001 after noticing the lack of ethnic minorities in classical ballet. She talks to Jenni about her desire to build diversity into ballet from the school dance-floor to national companies.

Presenter: Jenni Murray
Producer: Kirsty Starkey.

For Donald Trump it was an 11 year old dusty tape that appeared from the archives. For Sam Allardyce it was a sting by undercover reporters. For the Olympic gymnast Louis Smith it was a video leaked on to the internet. All of them conversations they thought were private becoming embarrassingly public, with varying degrees of consequences. We all say things in private we wouldn’t want made public, so what right to privacy should those in the public eye be entitled? Is it a simple case that we have a right to know if it tells us about the character of people who have power or who are asking us to trust them? If that’s the case how do explain the myriad of examples from minor sporting celebrities to victims of stings by fake sheiks? Should we put them in the same category? We may think their views are unattractive, even offensive, but shouldn’t they be allowed to express them in private, like the rest of us, with some confidence that they’ll remain private? What right do we have to know? Would the world be a better place if we never said anything privately we wouldn’t want made public? In our clamour to expose and condemn are we creating an unhealthy reality gap between what our leaders and politicians are allowed to say and what they actually think? Or has the digital age rightly blown apart the tight and elitist clubbable privacy that was once so much part of our society? Chaired by Michael Buerk with Anne McElvoy, Michael Portillo, Giles Fraser and Matthew Taylor. Witnesses are Prof Steven Barnett, Prof Josh Cohen, Paul Connew and Tom Chatfield.