The Women's Podcast

In today’s show, Roisin Ingle speaks to the Irish-Nigerian journalist, author and academic Emma Dabiri about her book Don’t Touch My Hair. The book is about the history of black people’s hair and for Emma, this story begins with an upbringing in Ireland where her hair was a “constant source of deep, deep shame”. Emma, who lives in London, talks to Róisín about growing up in inner city Dublin, why...

In her latest book, Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists, Joan Smith writes that the violence perpetrated by men against women – whether it is sexual, physical, psychological, or all of the above – creates terror but is not recognised as a form of terrorism. In today's podcast she speaks to Kathy about how this link was identified decades ago, but never acted upon. Later: Ró...

Award-winning Irish Times reporter Rosita Boland has been enthralled by travel ever since gazing out at the Atlantic Ocean near her childhood home. In the last 30 years she has visited some of the most remote parts of the globe carrying little more than a battered rucksack and a diary. Now she has written a book about some of the stories from those adventures, Elsewhere. She shares some of them wi...

France will host the Fifa Women's World Cup for the first time when the tournament kicks off tomorrow – Friday 7th June. Ireland and Arsenal footballer Louise Quinn tells Róisín who to look out for. Also today: Irish Times business journalist Laura Slattery on sexist advertising, the Spice Girls and the French Open. Plus: At their AGM this week, the National Women’s Council of Ireland brought toge...

As a nine-year-old girl, French author Adélaïde Bon was raped by a stranger in the stairwell of the affluent Parisian block of flats where she lived. Now her memoir, The Little Girl on the Ice Floe, has been translated into English, telling the story of the rape she suffered that day and the self-harm and self-hatred that followed. Most movingly, though, it captures the way Adélaïde’s pain was hid...

What is rewilding? Well, it’s an adventure that exists somewhere between a holistic retreat in the wilderness and an uncivilised summer school, designed to re-kindle our connection to our untamed nature. On today's show Róisín talks to Carol McInerney a movement therapist and meditation teacher, Siobhan de Paor, a poet and performance artist, and Kathy Scott of the Trailblzery, about Solstice, a o...

Executive Director of Oxfam International Winnie Byanyima talks to the Women's Podcast about her early life growing up in Uganda during the regime of Idi Amin, her activism at university which led her to flee to England, the role she played in writing the country’s constitution and her work on global gender inequality. Ms Byanyima has just begun her second term as Executive Director of Oxfam Inter...

This time last year we were gearing up for May 25th, the date of the referendum to repeal the 8th Amendment. It was a momentous time, so today the Women’s Podcast looks back, forward and outward. This episode focuses on what has happened in Ireland in the past year and what needs to happen next. It also looks at the situation in Northern Ireland where abortion is still illegal, the United States w...

On today's show, Kathy talks to acrobats Molly Keczan and Glory Dearling - AKA The Silver Starlets – about how they got into their line of work, what it's like to be women street performers and their participation in the Laya Healthcare City Spectacular, which returns to Dublin and Cork this July. Later: Róisín meets architect and interior designer Denise O’Connor, who runs her own design consulta...

566 out of a total of 1,960 candidates running in next week’s local elections are women. That’s 29 per cent and marks an increase of more 100 on the 2014 local elections – or just shy of 22 per cent. So, progress is being made, but is it happening quickly enough? Kathy talks to Women for Election chief executive, Ciairín de Búis. Later: We meet three more women who are entering politics for the fi...

Following her own brilliant short story collection Multitudes, Lucy Caldwell has guest edited the sixth volume of Faber's long running series of new Irish short stories. This collection is called Being Various and it includes stories by writers living on both sides of the Irish border - Sally Rooney, Jan Carson, Kit de Waal, Lisa McInerney and Kevin Barry to name a few - in a bid to capture the en...

First: A new report has found that thousands of women who are currently "on home duties" represent a major source of untapped potential in terms of addressing skills shortages. The research, carried out by the state's further education and training authority SOLAS, shows that of the 218,000 women between the ages of 20 and 64 who are not currently participating in the workforce, 16,000 could poten...

On today's show, Róisín talks to Bollywood superstar Yami Gautam. The Indian actor’s latest film – the 2019 blockbuster Uri: The Surgical Strike – is currently the highest grossing film in Indian cinema so far this year, but it was the critically acclaimed romantic comedy Vicki Donor that made her a household name in 2012. Yami talks to Róisín about women in her country and the Me Too movement, he...

In the last decade, the Irish author Tana French has become known for her brilliant crime thrillers narrated by various police in Dublin’s fictional Murder Squad, who tended to be outsiders in some way. In her latest book, the Wych Elm, she has done something a little bit different. Regular book clubbers on the Women's Podcast Bernice Harrison, Niamh Towey and Ann Ingle join Róisín to discuss the...

This weekend (3rd-6th of May) the All Woman’s long boat team from St Michael’s rowing club in Dun Laoghaire will be one of two teams from the club competing in the Celtic Challenge race from the coast of Ireland to the coast of Wales. The race is a biennial event covering the 155 kilometre distance from Arklow in Wexford to Aberystwyth in Wales and the St Michael's All Woman’s team will be hoping...

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts officer based in Belfast. Her first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, was published in 2014 followed by a short story collection, Children’s Children, in 2016. Her latest novel, The Fire Starters, is a dark, propulsive and original tale of fierce familial love and sacrifice, fizzing with magic and wonder. On today’s show she talks to Róisín about magic rea...

Mary Pat Kelly, named one of the Top 100 Irish Americans, is an author and a documentary filmmaker. She has also worked in TV on the show Good Morning America and once trained as a nun. Born and raised in Chicago, she lives on New York's Upper West Side with her husband the app developer Martin Sheerin, originally from County Tyrone. Mary was in Ireland recently to speak about her latest book – a...

Young And Trans In Rural Ireland is a new resource that has just been launched by Youth Work Ireland to be used by those who work with young people and in schools, in order to make them the best trans allies they can be and to make Ireland more trans-inclusive. Julie James has personal experience of life as a young trans woman in rural Kildare and in this podcast she talks to Róisín about her life...

Award-winning Irish Times reporter Rosita Boland traveled to India recently with her colleague, this paper's photo editor Brenda Fitzsimons, to investigate waste pickers and innovative recycling projects taking place in Bangalore. One part of what they discovered during their time there was the shocking story of a multi-billion euro industry in the city’s slums, where human hair is a valuable comm...

In 2009, at the height of the recession, Geraldine Swarbrigg and her daughter Jane decided to start a new business. Together they brought the cosmetics brand Inglot to Ireland and ten years on - with Jane's brother Peter also part of the family business - the company employs 300 people, is expanding at breakneck speed and has just announced an exciting new partnership with Next in the UK.On today'...

Mairead Buicke reckons she has been lucky in her career as a singer, from stepping in at the last minute for her first every professional performance at the National Concert Hall, to the teachers she has had the privilege of studying under. Ahead of her one-night-only performance in the Puccini Scandal at the NCH on April 24th, she talks to Kathy about her trad music roots, her big break and why i...

On today’s show, Róisín speaks to Éanna Ni Lamhna, renowned environmentalist, broadcaster and author – who many of you will recognise as a long-standing member of the panel of experts on RTÉ’s wildlife programme ‘Mooney goes Wild’. Éanna is the author of several books including: Talking Wild, Wild and Wonderful and Straight Talking Wild – and she was in the middle of promoting National Tree week w...

Aimée Johnston has swapped Ireland for the white sands and sunshine of the Maldives, after beating thousands of applicants to become the Barefoot Bookseller. The 'Best Job in the World' is in the luxury eco resort of Soneva Fushi in the exotic Indian Ocean destination and was advertised online last year by hotel library curator company Ultimate Library. Aimée has been shoeless on the island for a...

Máirín de Búrca has been a tireless social justice activist for women's rights, housing, prisoner rights, anti-apartheid, and many other issues throughout her life. She has, at times, been a committed member of Sinn Féin and, as a founder of the Women’s Liberation Movement, played a key role in that organisation's infamous Contraceptive Train. Máirín was also a prime mover in a legal case which se...

The gap between what it's really like to be a woman and what people expect women to be is the primary cause of burnout. Why? Because we exhaust ourselves trying to close the space. On today's show we speak to identical twin sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski, authors of a groundbreaking new book about women and stress. It is called Burnout: The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle and it is a science-...