The Girlfriends - Season 1 & 2

In 2013, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s nine-year-old daughter, Ella, died from a catastrophic asthma attack. Her death transformed her mum into a formidable campaigner. First, she fought to find out what had killed Ella - why had her previously healthy little girl suddenly developed breathing problems so bad they would become fatal? The answer lay very close to home - Ella, Rosamund and her siblings lived just off the busy South Circular Road, and the air pollution levels were dangerously high. Rosamund’s fight led to Ella becoming the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause of death on her death certificate. Now Rosamund is one of the world’s leading campaigners to clean up dirty air globally. In this episode, she’s joined by a very special guest: Anna’s mum, Rachel Sinfield. Rachel’s tiny son, Kit, also died from an unexpected asthma attack, and she’s inspired by Rosamund’s work. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit novel.audio

It’s the 1990s in San Francisco, and Antonia Crane is a dancer at the legendary peep show, the Lusty Lady. In the dressing room and the mirrored ‘Fishbowl’ where the dancers perform in six inch heels, a revolution is brewing. The dancers are sick of putting up with workplace injustices, or customers filming them without their consent. And they’re about to take on the system and fight to become one of the first unionised strip clubs in the United States. Antonia Crane is author, activist, sex worker and PhD candidate at USC. You can read more about her life in her memoir, ‘Spent’. The other books mentioned in this episode are ‘Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry,’ by Professor Siobhan Brooks, another Lusty Lady alum; and ‘The Ethical Stripper’ by Stacey Clare. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

Germany. Spring 1945. The writing is on the wall for the Nazis. And thousands of women are marching along dirt roads. If they stop walking, they’ll be shot. Their route is lined with piles of corpses. It’s a death march. Among these women are The Nine. Nine young women, all members of the French resistance, who have formed an extraordinary bond of friendship and support in the concentration camp in which they’ve been held. Their unofficial leader is 25-year-old Hélène Podliasky. And she’s about to suggest something incredible: The Nine are going to escape. Hélène’s story is told by her great niece, the writer Gwen Strauss. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit novel.audio

When Visaka Dharmadasa’s soldier son was kidnapped by the fearsome Tamil Tigers in the midst of Sri Lanka’s bitter civil war, she couldn’t find anyone who could help find him - or the 608 other soldiers who had been taken the same night. So Visaka transformed herself, first into a fighter against the bureaucracy of the Sri Lankan government and the Red Cross, and then into a fearsome peace activist. Defying warnings, she crosses into Tamil Tiger territory and sits down with some of the terrorist group’s most notorious leaders, appealing to their humanity as a mother. And eventually, they listen. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

When you’ve suffered childhood trauma, endured alcohol abuse, been through awful bereavements, how can you heal? For Silvia Vasquez-Lavado the answer was to climb to the top of the world - and then take other traumatised women and girls with her. Silvia is the first Peruvian woman to summit Mount Everest and the first openly gay woman to complete the Seven Summits, the tallest mountain on each continent. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit novel.audio

Miss saHHara was born to be a beauty pageant queen. As a child at home in Nigeria she would wrap herself in a mosquito net and sashay along a make-believe cat walk, delivering inspirational speeches to an imagined audience. But when she grew up and started to compete, she found that not only was she rejected from all the mainstream pageants she tried to enter, even trans beauty pageants seemed to celebrate all the cliched cisgender beauty norms. So, Miss saHHara decided to do something about it: She founded Miss Trans Global, a pageant where everybody is welcome, and where your advocacy and community work mean much more than the lightness of your skin or the bounciness of your hair. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

When Jasvinder Sanghera was just 15 years old, her mum told her that she was going to be married to a man she had never met. Jasvinder’s older sisters had been through similar things. But instead of going along with the way things had always been in her family and community, Jasvinder escaped. And then, she helped thousands of other women and girls to do the same.

As a trans woman, Eilís Ní Fhlannagáin didn’t have much faith in mainstream health care. So when she wanted gender affirming surgery to remove her testicles, she turned to her best friend and trainee doctor Willow, and asked her to perform the operation in her living room… From this humble beginning, Eilís and Willow built a whole clinic dedicated to trans women - in a tractor barn in the rural Pacific North West. Related Resources Sylvia Rivera Law Project Big Door Brigade - Mutual Aid Toolbox Transgender Law Centre Trans Rescue The Gender Reveal Podcast Jesse Lou Lawson - Media consultancy The Girlfriends: Spotlight is not affiliated to any of these organizations and we are not in a position to endorse them.

Rose Brady’s job running Baltimore County’s SVU was a frustrating one. The sexual violence crimes she and her team were investigating were just the tip of the iceberg. Her department was sitting on thousands of unsolved rape cases, dating back decades - with little hope of ever finding the perpetrators. That was until Rose made an incredible discovery: At a local hospital, a diligent forensic pathologist had kept in storage all the biological evidence from every rape exam he had ever performed. This could be the key to getting justice for hundreds of desperate women. This is a story of hard work, dogged persistence and a series of incredible coincidences… If you’ve been affected by sexual violence, there are organisations which can help. In the US: https://www.nsvrc.org/survivors In the UK: https://survivorsnetwork.org.uk/get-help/

Nellie Bly was a true trailblazer. In late 19th century America, women were expected to get married and become housewives, or go into a suitable career like teaching. But Nellie didn’t do any of that. Instead, she changed journalism forever, becoming one of the world’s first female investigative journalists, and paving the way for a generation of incredible ‘Girl Stunt Reporters’. And Nellie’s first investigation was probably her most dangerous: In 1887, she deliberately got herself committed to the most notorious insane asylum in New York, to expose the abuse of women inside its walls. She was drugged, half starved and manipulated by doctors as the screams of other patients echoed around the corridors… Researcher and author Kim Todd tells us Nellie’s story. Kim’s book about Nellie and the journalists she inspired is called Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s ‘Girl Stunt Reporters’.

In 2019 Tracy Otto was a college student in Tampa, and a fitness fanatic. Then a violent attack by an ex-boyfriend changed her life forever. She was left paralysed from the chest down, and lost her left eye. But that’s only the beginning of Tracy’s story. In the aftermath of the attack, she rebuilt her life through sheer force of will, and discovered a passion for archery. That passion would take her all the way to the very top of elite sport: the 2024 Paris Paralympics.

In Season 1, The Girlfriends told the story of how a group of incredible women came together to bring down one bad ex-boyfriend and seek justice for the murder of Gail Katz. In Season 2, we found the truth about a torso washed up on Staten Island, and gave Heidi Balch the memorial she deserved. Now, we want to introduce you to a global gang of girlfriends in our new show, The Girlfriends: Spotlight. Each week, Anna Sinfield is bringing you stories of women winning.  The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit Novel.AudioSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.