Julie Kimberley takes us inside the cloisters of one of the few remaining Catholic Carmelite Convents to meet her Aunty Janny, or Sister Johanna of the Cross, as she is formally known.

The headscarf has cut a swathe through Turkish society, like a sharp edged knife. The debate about whether women should be allowed to wear 'turban' to university has threatened the very core of the Turkish secular state. When Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey he discouraged women from wearing this symbol of Muslim belief. Today it is illegal for teachers, public servants and university students to wear it. For years some students have got around this ban by wearing wigs to uni. Since the 1970s students have been agitating to lift the ban and earlier this year the ruling AK Party, a religious party, did just that. However in June the Constitutional Court upheld the ban, saying that the Turkish Consitution is secular and so Turkish society should remain secular. In this program we hear from women who choose or choose not to cover their heads about this decision and their lives in contemporary Turkey.

There's a lot of everyday poverty going around among single parents. It's often felt by people who never expected to be poor but who find themselves sliding daily deeper into debt; buying the groceries on the credit card and moving into smaller houses or flats. Even doing the unthinkable and living without a car. They're mainly women. Some work outside the home; some don't but almost all struggle. We're spending time with a mother of four who grew up in a middle-class family and works twenty hours a week. She feels she's doing well because she's found a flat to buy for $180,000 -- less than the fortnightly cost of many rentals -- but she's had to come to terms with making occasional calls for help to charities in order to survive. Then there's the professional woman in her late thirties who unexpectedly fell in love, became a mother, and two and a half years later finds herself a single parent living in a cold, damp one-bedroom granny flat with her little daughter. Until she recently caught up with him, her ex had contributed nothing to their child's upkeep. She pays $200 a week rent, which leaves her $180 a week for all food and other expenses. She'd like to work part-time but can't afford childcare and is still on a waiting list. She can't afford a car. And finally there's the solo dad with three daughters. The oldest is six. They live in a comfortable house with a nice car but since his ex-partner died (they were separated) and he became the sole carer for the girls, he's given up paid work. Right now he's eating into his superannuation, while clocking up $75 debt each week. He hopes the right woman will come along to be a mother to the girls so that he can get back out into the workforce before the debt gets much bigger. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that by 2026 there will be between 1.1 million and 1.4 million sole parent families. In 2001 there were 838,000 sole parent families living in the country. Thanks to The Smith Family for their help with this story.