The first woman to climb Everest
Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest
Sporting Witness · BBC World Service
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (open.live.bbc.co.uk) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
In 1975, the Japanese mountaineer, Junko Tabei, became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. As well as being an achievement in its own right, Tabei had to defy the cultural norms of a country where women were not expected to be world-class mountaineers. Louise Hidalgo talks to Setsuko Kitamura, who was on Tabei’s Everest climb, and to her friend and biographer, Yumiko Hiraki.
Picture: Junko Tabei (left) with Ang Tsering standing in front of the southern wall of Mount Everest at the start of the climb that would result in the two of them reaching the summit. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)