In recent years, more and more women have been speaking openly about their decision to not have children. There are numerous books on the subject, dedicated social media spaces for childfree women and an ever increasing media interest in sharing the stories of those who refuse to go down this well-trodden path. However, some of the lesser told childfree stories are those of older women, who went against the grain at a time when motherhood was not only expected of women, but regarded as central t...
Aug 14, 2025•40 min
Following the breakdown of her long-term relationship in 2021, Orla Donoghue became a single parent to her then one-year-old son, Rory. The transition, however, was far from easy. As a new mother, she grappled with feelings of isolation, shame and uncertainty and despite the fact that one in five households in Ireland are single parent families, she also found the experience deeply isolating. However, it was this difficult experience that ultimately led her to set up Solas Coaching, a support sp...
Aug 07, 2025•37 min
This month on The Women’s Podcast Book Club, Bernice Harrison, Niamh Towey, Róisín Ingle, and Ann Ingle are discussing The Marriage Vendetta by debut author Caroline Madden. The book tells the story of Eliza Sheridan, who seeks the help of a marriage therapist to mend her relationship with her unloving and unsupportive husband Richard. As their sessions unfold, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary counselling service. Week after week, Eliza is encouraged by her therapist to commit a series ...
Jul 31, 2025•27 min
Would you sleep in a different room to your partner? Or do you think couples should share a bed together? That's what we’re asking on today’s episode of The Women’s Podcast. While many people enjoy sharing a bed with their other half, there are many others who prefer to go solo when it comes to sleep. This could be for reasons including loud snoring, a partner tossing and turning in the night or even a disagreement over what temperature the room should be. While there’s still a stigma attached t...
Jul 24, 2025•56 min
In today’s episode, Róisín Ingle is joined by women’s health and fitness coach Elaine Gillespie, to talk about the transformative power of lifting weights and strength training. From navigating fitness during perimenopause to returning to exercise postpartum, Gillespie explains why lifting weights isn’t just for bodybuilders - it’s essential for women’s health, energy, and confidence at every stage of life. The pair discuss gym intimidation, how to get started if you’re a total beginner, and how...
Jul 17, 2025•57 min
Anne Marie Allen was just 15 years old when she first entered the world of Opus Dei. It was the late 1970s and the young woman from Cork had enrolled in a cookery course run by the religious order. The program promised culinary qualifications and a pathway to a professional career, but it didn’t take long for her dreams to shatter. As Allen spent most of her days cooking, cleaning and doing laundry for the members of Opus Dei, it soon became clear that she was not there to learn, but to serve. I...
Jul 10, 2025•1 hr 10 min
This month, actor and mother and baby home survivor Noelle Brown and singer Camille O’Sullivan will take to the stage together for a new theatre performance called In Plain Sight. The project, written by Brown, focuses on Ireland’s history of mother and baby homes, paying particular attention to the large stately buildings dotted around the country that incarcerated young pregnant women. In today’s episode, the pair join Róisín Ingle to discuss the show and how it explores the design and history...
Jul 03, 2025•43 min
Concerns about the rise and rapid development of artificial intelligence often tend to focus on AI’s threat to jobs or its potential to influence politics and elections. But what about the very real threat that AI poses to women? In her new book, The New Age of Sexism, feminist writer Laura Bates explores how the ever-evolving world of technology has become a danger to women and how the expanding scope of what’s possible online is “reinventing misogyny.” In this episode, Bates talks to Róisín In...
Jun 26, 2025•1 hr
Last weekend our Book Club gathered for a live show at Kildare Village to discuss the best reading recommendations for summer 2025. Róisín Ingle, Bernice Harrison and Ann Ingle were joined at the event by special guest bestselling author Marian Keyes and a room full of Women’s Podcast listeners. There were recommendations to suit every style and every mood, including a gripping crime thriller, a “life-changing” self help book and a couple of exciting fiction debuts. But before we bring you that ...
Jun 19, 2025•1 hr 21 min
The tradition of women taking their husband’s surname stems from a time when marriage effectively erased a woman’s legal identity and she would become her husband’s property. While this is no longer the case and society has thankfully moved on, the practice of women changing their last name upon marriage still persists today. But why? In a recent feature for The Irish Times, journalist Áine Kenny poses the question: “If changing one’s name isn’t a big deal and isn’t sexist, why don’t we see more...
Jun 12, 2025•45 min
It was a bright afternoon in April 2015 when Mary Ann Kenny, a university lecturer, received a call that changed her life in an instant. Her husband John, with whom she had two young sons, had collapsed while out jogging and died at the age of 60. Struggling to cope with the sudden loss and the loneliness that engulfed her life in the aftermath, Kenny's grief soon turned to depression, which later progressed into psychotic delusions. In her new memoir, The Episode, Kenny details her descent into...
Jun 05, 2025•1 hr 4 min
What do you really know about the menstrual cycle? Can you tell your follicular from your luteal phase? Can masturbation ease period pains and why do so many women get the dreaded ‘period poo’? To answer all these questions and more we’re joined this week by Dr Hazel Wallace, medical doctor, nutritionist, and author of Not Just A Period, a groundbreaking new book that seeks to understand the entire menstrual cycle, not just the few days each month we bleed. In this episode, Dr Wallace tells Róis...
May 29, 2025•1 hr
This week, we’re joined by the brilliant Kit de Waal novelist, memoirist, and fierce advocate for working-class voices in literature. In conversation with Roisin Ingle, de Waal discusses her powerful new novel The Best of Everything , set in 1970s and 1980s England, which follows the interwoven lives of a single mother, her son, and their neighbours as they navigate grief, love, and survival. Best known for her acclaimed debut My Name is Leon , de Waal also shares insights from her 2022 memoir W...
May 22, 2025•1 hr 5 min
In 2016, Clodagh Hawe and her three sons, Liam (13), Niall (11) and Ryan (6) were murdered in their Co Cavan home, by their husband and father Alan Hawe, who took his own life shortly after. It was and still is Ireland’s largest murder-suicide and the brutal killings sent shockwaves throughout the country. In her book, Deadly Silence, Clodagh’s younger sister Jacqueline Connolly, gives her account of the circumstances leading up to the mass murder and how her brother-in-law, Hawe, coercively con...
May 15, 2025•1 hr 14 min
Two years ago this month, Tina Turner died at the age of 83 at her home in Switzerland. The global superstar and rock icon had a career spanning more than five decades. Although she retired from performing in her late 60s, one of her final projects was to collaborate on Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, which debuted in London’s West End in 2018. This month the show comes to Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre for a two week run and in this episode Róisín Ingle speaks to some of the cast members, Joc...
May 08, 2025•45 min
In March, a group of secondary school students from Co Offaly made history when they became the first ever all-female team to win the VEX IQ All-Ireland Robotics Competition. ‘The Steminists’ will now represent Ireland at the World Championships in Texas this month. The team consists of five students aged between 12 and 14 years old, from the Sacred Heart School in Tullamore. In today’s episode, two team members, Alice Duffy (12) and Rachel Ebenezer (13), along with their teachers Sindy Meleady ...
May 01, 2025•43 min
According to the latest European State of the Climate Report, 2024 was the hottest year on record for Europe and the fourth warmest year ever recorded in Ireland. As part of the global fight against climate change, Ireland has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 51% by 2030 — but are we really on track to meet that goal? In today’s episode, we hear from three climate activists: CEO of the climate change NGO Opportunity Green Aoife O’Leary, marine environmentalist Flossie Donnelly a...
Apr 24, 2025•47 min
Seven years after Amanda Knox was definitively acquitted of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, she flew to Italy to meet the man who had led the prosecution’s case against her, Giuliano Mignini. The now 37-year-old mother of two wanted to ask her former prosecutor why he had identified her as the chief suspect, pursued a murder conviction against her, and whether he felt any remorse for putting the wrong person in prison. In her new memoir, Free: My Search for Meaning, Knox details this emotio...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 21 min
Bookshops and libraries are bursting with books on parenting and what to expect when you’re expecting, but there aren't nearly as many guidebooks out there on how to be a good grandparent. That’s why family psychologist Terri Apter has written her latest book all about the topic. Grandparenting: On Love and Relationships Across Generations offers readers an expert guide on modern grand parenting and how to overcome tricky family dynamics that might occur along the way. Apter talks to Róisín Ingl...
Apr 10, 2025•1 hr 1 min
When Adolescense arrived on Netflix last month, it was streamed nearly 25 million times in just four days and sparked a global conversation on the dark side of social media and the lives of teenage boys. But what is it really like to be a teenage boy in 2025? How much attention do they really pay to masculinity influencers? What kind of pressures do they face? And what do they wish adults would understand about them? To discuss all this and more, Róisín Ingle is joined by three teenagers, Dylan ...
Apr 04, 2025•1 hr 6 min
This month on The Women’s Podcast Book Club, Bernice Harrison, Niamh Towey, Róisín Ingle, and Ann Ingle discuss Confessions, the debut novel from Catherine Airey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 30, 2025•33 min
On Friday March 28th, the Irish Cancer Society (ICS) will celebrate Daffodil Day. It’s the charity’s biggest fundraising event and aims to raise millions of euros to support cancer patients and progress cancer research. In this episode, Kathy Sheridan is joined by Daffodil Day Ambassador Tara Doonan, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022 at 36 years-old. Tara lives in Cavan but travelled to the Mater Hospital in Dublin for her treatment. In today’s episode she talks about the shock of her...
Mar 27, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Sarah Corbett Lynch was just eight-years-old when her father Jason was killed at their home in North Carolina by her stepmother Molly Martens and her father Tom Martens in 2015. Over the next decade, the Martens, who claimed self defence, were put on trial for murder, had their convictions quashed and later took a plea bargain for voluntary manslaughter which saw each of them spend less than five years in prison. For all of that time, Corbett Lynch and her older brother Jack had to remain silent...
Mar 20, 2025•1 hr 10 min
In Ireland, more than 5,500 children are currently in foster care. This could be because of illness in the child’s family, the death of a parent, neglect, abuse or violence in the home, or simply because the parent or family is not coping. Whatever the reason, foster carers are there to take care of children who cannot live with their own family, either on a short-term or long-term basis. In today’s episode, we hear from two foster carers Sinead O’Donnell and Sharon Kelly. O’Donnell, who lives i...
Mar 13, 2025•1 hr 9 min
To celebrate International Women’s Day, the book club gathered with a handful of podcast listeners for a live event at Kildare Village on Saturday morning. Niamh Towey, Ann Ingle, Bernice Harrison, and Roisin Ingle, explored the books by women that have challenged and changed them and that they think every woman should read. Book Club Choices: Ann Ingle: The Women’s Room by Marilyn French & Anne Tyler novels Bernice Harrison: Heartburn By Nora Ephron & Country Girls by Edna O’Brien Róisí...
Mar 09, 2025•1 hr 3 min
International Women’s Day is on Saturday the 8th March and there are lots of events happening all around the country to celebrate the occasion. Irish Times features writer Ella Sloane joins Róisín Ingle on the podcast today to tell us about some of them, including a free guided tour exploring how women are represented in a selection of works at the National Gallery and a march against gender violence taking place in Dublin city. She’ll also be telling us about a new report from Nasc, which hig...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr
Born and bred in New York, the last place that Rosie Schaap thought she’d end up, was living in a rural village in Northern Ireland, miles away from the bustling city she once called home. But that’s exactly where she’s found herself. Five years ago, the writer and journalist moved from NYC to the tiny town of Glenarm in Co Antrim, in search of a new life. The writer and journalist was grieving the death of her husband and her mother - who died just one year apart - and was also looking for a ne...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 2 min
After lengthy government formation talks and a chaotic first week in the Dáil, the new Government is finally settling into it's first few weeks of a new term. There’s a whole host of new faces in Leinster House, including 10 new women TDs. We wanted to hear what life is like for three of those women, so we’ve invited Labour’s Marie Sherlock, Fianna Fail’s Erin McGreehan and Social Democrats’ Jen Cummins to tell us their first impressions of the Dáil, their background in politics and what issues ...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 8 min
This Valentine’s Day, we’ve decided to shift the focus away from love and relationships and onto the joy and excitement of the single experience. If you’re single and sick of dating apps, Irish Times relationships columnist Roe McDermott is here with some new dating ideas, from singles running clubs to mindful dating events. Later on, Róisín Ingle is joined by Nicola Slawson, an author who has literally written the book on the single life. Slawson shares her advice for living a complete and full...
Feb 13, 2025•1 hr 12 min
America might be rowing back on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, but one woman who is fighting to keep interculturalism at the forefront of people’s minds is Mamobo Ogoro, the CEO of Irish social enterprise GORM. Ogoro is a Nigerian-Irish Social Psychologist and multi-award-winning social entrepreneur, who is “on a personal mission to unify the world”. Through her work with GORM, she helps organisations in Ireland and around the world develop intercultural leaders. In this epis...
Feb 06, 2025•55 min
