The Women's Podcast

On today's show, Róisín hears about Anna Parnell, pioneering Irish feminist, founder of the Ladies Land League and younger sister of Irish Nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell. Anna has long since been written out of Irish history, but Lucy Keaveney has been working hard to reverse that. She talks to Róisín about Anna and about her commemoration at Ilfracombe in England this weekend. Lucy is joined...

On today's show, Róisín Ingle talks to Alice Malseed and Sarah Gordon about their hilarious Fringe Festival production, BILLY, which takes a disbelieving look at the reassuring rituals of our pastel-coloured, neatly organised, turbo capitalism-fuelled world. Later, Bernice Harrison talks to actor and playwright Gina Moxley about her latest work, The Patient Gloria, which has been called “a timely...

The world’s first gathering of women’s parliamentary groups is being held in Dublin Castle as part of its commemoration of a centenary of female suffrage in Ireland. The two-day conference is being arranged by the Oireachtas women’s caucus, which was founded in Leinster House last year. We talk to Catherine Martin, Chair of Oireachtas Women's Parliamentary Caucus and Fiona O’Louglin FF TD about wh...

Belfast woman Suzanne Connolly was 11 when her adoptive father John Rossi began sexually abusing her. He did so almost daily until she was 14 when after disclosing the abuse to a school friend she was taken out of her home and placed into care. Despite telling the police about the abuse and Rossi admitting his crimes in the 1980s, it took 34 years for the case to be heard. This week John Rossi was...

The German Ambassador to Ireland, Deike Potzel, has been touring the country since her appointment last November in a bid to learn about Ireland from the Irish. Her Excellency has worked in the diplomatic corps since the late 1990s, with postings in Singapore and Tehran in the past. On today's podcast Ambassador Potzel speaks to Kathy Sheridan about growing up in East Berlin before the wall came d...

Pope Francis touches down on Irish soil this Saturday morning 25th August, for the second papal visit in Ireland's history. For many Catholics this is an occasion to be celebrated, but for countless other people the arrival of the pope stirs up feelings of anger at the legacy of the relationship between church and state in Ireland. Maeve O'Rourke is a senior research and policy officer at the ICCL...

Irish Times journalist Rachel Flaherty did what many people are understandably wary of doing, she opened up about her unhealthy relationship with food and her challenge to become fitter and healthier. In an article in the Irish Times, she explains why she made the decision to do something about it when at five stone overweight, she found herself struggling to climb the stairs. She speaks to Róisín...

In case you missed, it the Irish women’s hockey team made history last week, becoming the first Irish team ever to reach a world cup final. They lost to a formidable Dutch side in that match, but they were already winners by then, having entered the competition as underdogs and never expecting to get so far. In this episode Kathy Sheridan speaks to two of those amazing women, forward Anna O’Flanag...

In this week’s episode, Roisin Ingle talks to Portlaoise novelist Helen Cullen who is causing a stir with her debut novel The Lost Letters of William Woolf. Cullen explains how she went from working in RTE to writing her first novel which to her delight was snapped up by Penguin. The book is being described as Up-Lit, short for ‘uplifting literature’ and an antidote to the doom laden global politi...

Ten of Ireland's leading theatres, drama festivals and theatre companies have agreed to a range of gender equality policies, which in some cases will see “gender-blind casting” or ensuring that half of new shows will be written by women. The gender equality policy for the theatre sector, launched by Minister for Culture Josepha Madigan, arose from the Waking the Feminists campaign to address the u...

From Margaret Atwood's adventurous canoe trip in the Canadian Wilderness, to Alison Spittle's irate naked granny, to Lisa Dwan's near-death brush with a barracuda, here are some memorable summer holiday stories from friends of the podcast. Hats off to Joya and Priya Hobson who were put to work by their mother Róisín Ingle at the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas, to gather these stories. Hosted...

Sexism has been a bigger problem than racism at the World Cup in Russia, according to anti-discrimination experts advising FIFA. There have been reports of fans harassing female broadcasters while they worked and the head of FIFA’s diversity program says they want less focus on attractive women in stadiums in TV broadcasts. Female pundits have been more plentiful for this tournament, but there is...

Gone are the days when online dating was viewed with judgement or derision. Now, it's where hot young things seek out consensual one-night stands, where long term couples meet and where 50-something widows find "the most gorgeous man" they've ever seen, like Irish Times writer Joan Scales did. On today's podcast, she talks to presenter Bernice Harrison and Irish Times agony aunt Roe McDermott abou...

Today's episode was recorded in front an audience on the Woodlands Stage at the Body & Soul festival last weekend. The topic was Ireland after the #8thRef and how we got here. The guests: Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Ailbhe Smyth, co-director of the Together for Yes campaign, founder of the Repeal Project, Anna Cosgrave and Claudia Horeau from Migrants and Ethnicities for Reproductive Justice. Up and c...

Recently, Irish Times Social Affairs Correspondent Kitty Holland wrote about the increase in the number of young women taking their own lives in some of the poorest parts of Dublin. On today's podcast, she speaks to Kathy Sheridan about this story. Also on the show, Professor Veronica O'Keane, consultant psychiatrist at Tallaght Hospital, speaks about her initial shock at the figures and the facto...

Joe Mulholland, director of the MacGill Summer School, has apologised for the lack of gender balance on its 2018 and promised there will now be panels on the #8thRef and gender balance. A draft programme of the event shows there are 45 male speakers and moderators compared to 15 female speakers and moderators. Women's Podcast co-producer Róisín Ingle and Irish Times feature writer Deirdre Falvey j...

A two part documentary charting the lives of Irish women over the last century begins on RTÉ One on Tuesday (19 June) at 9.35pm. 'No Country For Women' travels through time, seeking historical answers in the journeys of a number of Irish women today, women whose lives and those of their mothers and grandmothers collided with discriminatory legislation. With contributions from the likes of former p...

Imogen Heap is an Grammy-winning songwriter and performer, who has worked with everyone from Taylor Swift to Jeff Beck. An early adopter of technology in her art, Heap has been involved in designing and producing musical gloves called MiMu. This week she was in Dublin to talk about her latest venture, the Creative Passport, at a spin-off of the Web Summit, MoneyConf. Heap came into studio while sh...

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of several acclaimed novels, including The Interestings, The Uncoupling and The Wife. One of her first books, This Is Your Life, was made into a film and became the directorial debut of the late great Nora Ephron. On today's episode, Wolitzer speaks to Jennifer Ryan about her 12th novel, The Female Persuasion, which explores inter-generational...

Waking the Feminists shone a light on the representation of women in Irish theatre. Now, women in Irish traditional and folk music are trying to address the gender imbalance across their sector through the Fair Plé initiative. It began with a meeting at the Cobblestone pub in Dublin and two of the women who were there that night – harpist Una Monaghan and singer Pauline Scanlon –speak to Róisín In...

The book being reviewed today, a tense, deftly written novel about an apparently perfect nanny’s transition into a monster, will take your breath away. It's called Lullaby and it's an English translation of a book by the French writer Leila Slimani. Our book clubbers Roisin Ingle, Bernice Harrison and Niamh Towey were totally freaked out by Lullaby and might not recommend it to parents of young ch...

Kurdish journalist Nurcan Baysal has been called a terrorist by the Turkish state. Her house, with her two young children inside, has been stormed by Turkish police armed with Kalashnikovs seeking to jail for her Tweets and she faces up to three years in prison for the crime of humiliating Turkey's security forces, by reporting on human rights abuses against the Kurdish people. Recently Baysal vis...

Minister for Health Simon Harris speaks to Kathy Sheridan in this episode, telling her that legislating for abortion is his “number one priority” and he will “get it done this year”. Following a landslide win for the Yes side in Friday's referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment, Minister Harris is joined by Together for Yes campaigner Ailbhe Smyth and Róisín Ingle, who told her abortion story thr...

On #8thRef Eve, we invited three women into studio to reflect on the campaign with Kathy Sheridan. Straight from doing her rounds at the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street in Dublin, Master of that hospital, Rhona Mahony, joined Professor Fiona de Londras, an Irish academic and the Professor of Global Legal Studies at the University of Birmingham, to look back on what has felt like a ver...

As Ireland prepares to go to the polls in a once in a generation referendum on the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution this Friday, Irish Times political reporter Sarah Bardon talks to Kathy Sheridan about what exactly we'll be voting on, what happens if the Eighth is repealed and she also debunks some of the campaign myths that have been circulating for the past few weeks. Hosted on Acast. See a...