The person brought in to oversee Women's Hour was Mrs Ella Fitzgerald, a former Fleet Street journalist, and the inaugural programme included two talks, one on "The Adoption of Babies" given by Princess Alice, the Duchess of Athlone, the other on "Fashions" by the couturier, Lady Duff Gordon.

Broadcast six days a week, initially at 5pm, Women's Hour encompassed topics such as cookery, infant welfare, poultry keeping, tennis, beauty culture, electricity in the home, society gossip and gardening.

In many ways, it replicated the sorts of items that were then found in the women's pages of newspapers and Ella Fitzgerald often drew on her journalist friends to write and present talks.

So, for example, regular "Kitchen Conversations" were given by the famous cookery writer Mrs CS Peel while Edith Shackleton spoke about journalism as a potential career for women.

The former suffragist, Lady Emmott, who sat on a number of local government committees, spoke on "How Local Government affects the Home"; Alderman Miss Smee, who chaired Acton Council's Public Health Committee gave a talk on "Women and Public Health" and Lettice Fisher, the founder of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, talked about "Education".

It was decided that two members of the Committee, Mrs Hardman Earle (who had worked for the Ministry of Food and Public Kitchens during the First World War) and Evelyn Gates (who was Editor-in-Chief of The Women's Yearbook) should appear on the following Saturday's programme to canvas listener views.

Writing about the change in the BBC listings periodical Radio Times, Ella Fitzgerald explained how "a tour of Constantinople" was substituted for "the cure of constipation" while "talks on the English country-side" replaced those about "stocking the kitchen cupboard".

Over the years it has been presented by Mary Hill (1946–1963), Joan Griffiths (1947–1949), Olive Shapley (1949–1953), Jean Metcalfe (1950–1968), Violet Carson (1952–1956), Marjorie Anderson (1958–1972), Teresa McGonagle (1958–1976), Judith Chalmers (1966–1970), Sue MacGregor (1972–1987), Jenni Murray (1987–2020), Martha Kearney (1998 to March 2007), and Jane Garvey (8 October 2007 to December 2020).

Fill-in presenters have included Andrea Catherwood, Sangita Myska, Sheila McClennon, Carolyn Quinn, Jane Little, Ritula Shah, Oona King, and Amanda Platell.

Clare Selerie-Gray became the producer in 1987 and steered the programme away from its tendency to include merely whimsical topics and ensured that the books read in the last section were more relevant to women's lives rather than ordinary novels.

[11] In September 2015, the programme hosted "Woman's Hour Takeover" with a week of guest editors, including Kim Cattrall, Nimko Ali, Rachel Treweek, Michelle Mone and Jacqueline Wilson.

In its earlier years, it used a variety of popular light classics as signature tunes, including such pieces as H. Elliott-Smith's Wanderlust (Waltz), Anthony Collins' Vanity Fair, and the lively Overture from Gabriel Fauré's Masques et Bergamasques.

[19] A listener complained about the 1 October 2018, edition of Woman's Hour, which featured an item discussing the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.

[20] The feature included an interview with a law professor who had worked with Anita Hill, in her pursuit of a sexual harassment complaint against an earlier nominee, Judge Clarence Thomas.

The listener believed that allusions to the earlier case were immaterial and prejudicial, that the selection of interviewee was biased, and that presenter Jane Garvey had expressed her personal view on a controversial topic.

My legal vulnerabilities or past agonies dragged up for salacious entertainment and the paying of the mortgages of mostly men, who, thanks be to God, have never and will never know what it's like to be a female trauma survivor in this world.

Because if we were you wouldn't have dragged up the madwoman in the attic scenario.Former Woman's Hour presenter Jenni Murray is president of the Fawcett Society[23] and a former patron of the charity Women's Aid.