The Women's Podcast

In 2020, Irish musician Sharon Shannon was due to travel the world celebrating her 30th anniversary in the music industry. However, Covid as we know, scuppered everyone's plans. Making the most of her time in lockdown, the Clare native, set about writing and recording a brand new album called The Reckoning. It features over a dozen remote collaborations from artists in locations across the globe....

Somali-Irish activist Ifrah Ahmed is one of the world's foremost campaigners against Female Genital Mutilation. Ahmed came to Ireland in 2006 after fleeing her war-torn home country and during a medical examination it was found that she had suffered terrible trauma as a result of FGM. A founding member of the United Youth of Ireland, she has been gender adviser to the prime minister of Somalia and...

This year marks the fifth anniversary of a pivotal moment in Irish cultural history. In November 2015, the Waking the Feminists movement emerged in response to decades of underrepresentation for women in Irish theatre and performance practice. In today’s episode, Róisín Ingle is joined by Lian Bell and Sarah Durcan, the two powerhouses behind the campaign which began on social media, gained tracti...

In today’s episode, we’re bringing you the recording from our recent Women’s Podcast Live event. On Thursday evening, in front of a very festive Zoom audience, our crack squad of Irish Times columnists presented the ultimate Christmas 2020 survival guide. Joining us on the evening was beauty reporter Laura Kennedy, who came bearing the best gift ideas this side of Bethlehem, including a pandemic t...

Rhonda Byrne shot to worldwide fame in 2006 with her massively successful film and book, The Secret. With fans like Oprah Winfrey, the book went on to sell more than 30 million copies, making Byrne a multi-millionaire. The Secret claimed to show us the path to create anything we want to be, do or have. Now Byrne has written its follow-up, The Greatest Secret, through which she hopes to help people...

In this book club podcast Róisín, Ann Ingle, Bernice Harrison and Niamh Towey discuss our latest read, Nick Hornby’s ninth novel, Just Like You. The author, known for his portrayal of the interior lives of men in books including the much loved, High Fidelity, is back with a funny age-gap love story set to a backdrop of Brexit London. In it, Hornby attempts to inhabit the point of view of a black m...

It's Food Month in The Irish Times but you might say it's been Food Month pretty much everywhere since last March when the pandemic took hold and we found ourselves spending a lot more time in our homes and particularly in our kitchens. We were delighted to welcome resident Irish Times Food Columnist Lilly Higgins back to the podcast to discuss the foods that have been keeping her and her family g...

While many of us were rightly outraged by the Government's approach to rushing through the Mother and Baby Homes Bill, and relieved by the U-turn that followed the public campaigning of survivors and human rights experts, one aspect of that story got very little attention. For black or mixed-race people born or raised in mother and baby homes and industrial schools, the abuse they received was of...

You might have seen a shocking and disturbing news story in The Irish Times this week by Kitty Holland who wrote about a cluster of suicides among young women in west Dublin last year which was linked to the housing crisis, domestic violence, social media and recreational drug use. Though the area has had a female suicide rate three times the national average since 2015, it was the deaths of eight...

In this episode, we meet Ruth Medjber the talented young music photographer who, having lost all her work due to the pandemic, found a novel and engaging way to capture the story of Ireland in Lockdown. Medjber told Roisin Ingle about why she began taking photographs of people at their front windows, to show the rich and diverse tapestry that made up the universal details of our locked down lives....

Four years ago this week, we called an Emergency Episode of this podcast to lament and analyse the ascent of racist, sexist Donald Trump to The White House. Four years later we assemble again in a slightly more hopeful mood against a backdrop of Biden possibly emerging victorious. We can't forget though that nearly 70 million voters choosing Trump again, despite or perhaps because of, his four yea...

In today's episode, Kathy Sheridan talks to broadcaster Aine Lawlor as she marks the move from anchoring RTE Radio 1's News At One to a gig she has to set the alarm much earlier for as one of the co-presenters of the flagship programme Morning Ireland. She talked to Sheridan about her long career, her passion for current affairs, her thoughts on the US Election and the importance of speaking so op...

In today’s episode, Róisín Ingle is joined by Doireann Ni Ghriofa, a talented poet and the author of an original, evocative and lyrical book called A Ghost In the Throat. This stunning debut is an exploration into Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, one of the greatest love poems of the Irish language, written by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill. A fluid hybrid of essay and autofiction, Ni Ghríofa weaves in her...

In this episode Kathy Sheridan talks to little person Sinéad Burke about her extraordinary activism and her new stigma-busting book Break the Mould. You'll know Burke from such accolades as appearing on the cover of Vogue (Meghan Markle chose her for the gig) and her TED talk 'Why design should include everyone'. She is a writer, academic, influencer, activist and broadcaster who has been fearless...

In today’s episode Roisin Ingle meets Galway based Erin Darcy the author of a new book called In Her Shoes which tells the stories of women left behind by the Eighth Amendment. In early 2018 Darcy created an online art project, In Her Shoes Women of the 8th to safely and anonymously share private stories of the real and devastating impact of the 8th amendment. In the five months leading up the ref...

For years now, campaigners and activists have been calling on the government to prevent records compiled by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes from being sealed for 30 years. Proposed legislation related to the commission’s records, the Records Bill, was brought forward by Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman and the debate continues this week in Dail. Organisations such...

The 15th of October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Each year, to mark the day, a global wave of light is created through the lighting of candles by parents who have lost a baby through miscarriage, stillbirth or in infancy. It is estimated that one in four pregnancies ends this way and yet there is still a silence and taboo that surrounds the subject. In this episode, Irish Times pa...

You’ve probably heard of the 400 Welcomes campaign, an all-female campaign group, made up of doctors, teachers, writers, community and social care workers and musicians . One of the women behind the campaign is Caoimhe Butterly, a human rights campaigner who has been fighting for justice all over the world for most of her adult life. Originally from Dublin, she was inspired by her parents to look...

In 1984, Majella Moynihan was a fresh faced young garda recruit when she gave birth to a baby boy. Charged with breaching An Garda Siochana disciplinary rules - for having premarital sex with another guard and for becoming pregnant and having a child while unmarried - she was pressured to give up her baby for adoption or face dismissal. It forced her into a decision that would have devastating imp...

Who knows when we'll get to lose ourselves in the darkness of a cinema again? But when we do all of us at The Women's Podcast are urging you to go and see a wonderful Irish film called Herself which tells the story of a brutalised single mother Sandra and her dream to build her own house where she and her two small daughters can be safe. The story of the film was written by Dubliner Clare Dunne wh...

The most fabulous and famous family dynasty in Britain and Ireland during the 1920s were the grand-daughters of the first Lord Iveagh also known as the Glorious Guinness Girls. The glamour, the drama and the secrets are explored in fiction by writer Emily Hourican who spoke to Kathy Sheridan about her new novel The Glorious Guinness Girls. Hourican talks about the inspiration for the book, her geo...

On the podcast today we have skin expert Jennifer Rock who aswell as talking about her new book The Skin Nerd Philosophy, deals with all your pandemic skin problems and delves into looking after this most important organ every day of the year. We are also very excited to bring you details of season 2 of our Big Night In. From this Saturday October 3rd we'll be back on zoom to bring you conversatio...

Last April, which seems a hundred years ago now, we spoke to Dr Catherine Motherway, consultant anaesthetist at University Hospital Limerick and former President of the Intensive Care Society of Ireland. In this episode, Roisin Ingle catches up with her to find out Dr Motherway's views on Level 3, life on the frontline, societal compliance with covid restrictions and her hopes and fears as we face...

Cork author Louise O'Neill joined Roisin Ingle on the podcast to talk about her latest novel After The Silence. The book marks a departure for O'Neill in that it's a thriller but what hasn't changed is the uncompromising, gently probing voice of the writer of novels such as Asking For It which on publication became a national talking point. In After The Silence, set on a small Island off the coast...

There is a lot of confusion and covid-weariness swirling around at the moment so we thought we'd bring you an episode that will divert, intrigue and definitely distract you. Jenny Keane is an holistic sex expert and yoga teacher who runs hugely popular online workshops teaching people to explore their sexuality and enhance sexual pleasure. Her path to an empowering form of sex education began when...