What’s your lockdown style? Are you still getting fully dressed, washing your hair and putting makeup on? After 12 months at home, for many of us, leggings have become part of our daily uniform while our jeans are gathering dust. A year into this new comfy way of life, we ask the question, what have we become? To discuss this, Roisin is joined on today’s show by beauty columnist Laura Kennedy, comedian and co-founder of the MOB comedy theatre and school, Erin McGathy, and Jen Hogan, parenting co...
Jan 28, 2021•36 min
In our latest podcast we hear about the Gender Disparity Report on Irish radio, compiled by the Why Not Her? collective. It outlines a continuing gender disparity among the 20 most-played songs by Irish artists on Irish stations between June 24th and December 24th, 2020. On today’s podcast, Roisin Ingle speaks to activist and Why Not Her? founder Linda Coogan-Byrne about the report’s findings, where improvements have been made and what she believes needs to be done to achieve greater gender and ...
Jan 25, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Five Minute Therapy is the first book by Dublin-based psychotherapist Sarah Crosby. Packed full of practical exercises and powerful insights, it provides readers with the tools to reflect on their life experiences and explore who they are and who they might like to be. Think of it as your own pocket therapist. In today’s episode, Crosby speaks to Róisín Ingle about her journey from archaeology to psychotherapy, her early struggles with an eating disorder and how the Instagram page @theMindGeek s...
Jan 21, 2021•41 min
This Friday, Trinity College Dublin professor Jane Ohlmeyer will deliver the Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford in England. Just ten women have delivered the prestigious lectures since they were founded in 1896 and prof Ohlmeyer will be the first woman from a university in Ireland to be invited to do so. Born in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to a Northern Irish mother and a South African father, Ohlmeyer grew up in Belfast at the height of the Troubles. On today's podcast s...
Jan 19, 2021•39 min
Raw, tired, angry and emotional. That’s how our guests on today’s podcast feel.It’s as they attempt to digest the government-commissioned report from the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes released this week. It found a shocking number of deaths and widespread abuses at religious institutions for unmarried mothers and their children in this country. Set up in 2015 following revelations about the deaths and burials of hundreds of children in Tuam, Co Galway, the commission was...
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 7 min
Author and podcaster Caroline Foran took the world by storm in 2016 with the release of her best selling self-help book, Owning It: Your Bullsh*t-Free Guide to Living with Anxiety. Now, she’s back with her third book Naked: Ten Truths to Change Your Life, which challenges readers to explore, embrace and expose their vulnerability. From realising that you’ll never really have it all figured out to accepting that someone else’s success doesn’t take from yours, the truths featured in this practical...
Jan 11, 2021•32 min
In our first book club of 2021, Róisín, Ann Ingle, Bernice Harrison and Niamh Towey discuss Untamed, a memoir by American author Glennon Doyle. This is Doyle’s third memoir, which follows on from her two previous best sellers, Love Warrior and Carry On, Warrior. Untamed is the story of how Doyle left her troublesome marriage, fell head over heels in love with soccer star Abby Wambach, found her inner voice and eventually learned how to stop pleasing and start living. The book has garnered many f...
Jan 07, 2021•49 min
If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that the future is never certain. But with a number of vaccines against Covid-19 on the way, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Last year we learned how to live in a pandemic, somehow managing to keep the show on the road in ways we never thought were possible before. We learned that, for many of us, working from home is possible. We found ways to keep in touch with friends and family, even though we couldn’t physically be with them. We got used to...
Jan 04, 2021•35 min
At the start of 2020, as we began a new decade, we were caught up with news stories about the Australian bushfires, the seemingly never-ending Brexit talks, a then-looming Irish general election, and students from 72 schools around the country began opening time capsules sealed in 1996 containing their hopes and dreams for 2020. How many of them could have guessed what lay ahead?Bubbling away in the background, further down the news agenda here, the World Health Organisation was dealing with the...
Dec 31, 2020•57 min
The time has finally come to say goodbye to 2020. But before we bid adieu to the longest year on record, we want to take you on a journey back through the last twelve months of The Women’s Podcast. The year 2020 will not just be remembered for the pandemic, it will also be remembered for the global Black Lives Matter movement, the historic US election result and the scandal around the sealing of the Irish Mother and Baby Home records. Róisín Ingle brings you a selection of these highlights inclu...
Dec 28, 2020•43 min
In this special festive episode, we’re bringing you a story written by Maeve Binchy, first published in The Irish Times on Saturday, December 29th, 1984. Read by Róisín Ingle, the story captures the beautiful ordinariness of everyday life, the fuss and excitement of the holidays and the place of a woman at the head of her family. With true emotional tugs and important lessons to be learned, we hope this story offers you some solace this pandemic Christmas eve. So sit back, relax, wrap some prese...
Dec 24, 2020•20 min
Emma Gannon is a writer, broadcaster and podcaster who is best known for her podcast Ctrl Alt Delete and Sunday Times Bestselling business book The Multi-Hyphen Method. In 2020 she published her debut novel, Olive, in which she explores the lives of four female friends whose paths diverge after a close-knit college experience. The book’s protagonist is the titular Olive, whose first-person narrative focuses on her decision to not have a baby, or to be childfree by choice. It’s a timely theme and...
Dec 21, 2020•30 min
Over the past year, the sale of puppies in Ireland has increased by over 200%. It’s no surprise that during these difficult times with lockdown restrictions still in place, people have opened their hearts and homes to new four-legged friends. However, many do not realise that by buying dogs online, they could be unknowingly contributing to Ireland’s illegal puppy trade. In today’s episode, Róisín Ingle is joined by model, artist and DSPCA ambassador Thalia Heffernan for an eye opening and import...
Dec 17, 2020•52 min
We’ve reassembled our book club one last time before we bid adieu to 2020, to have a chat about the books they got lost in this year. Ann Ingle, Niamh Towey and Bernice Harrison join Róisín to recommend some great reads that you might consider gifting to your nearest and dearest this Christmas and to drop a few not-so-subtle hints about the books they hope to find under the tree for themselves on December 25th. Ireland’s booksellers have played a blinder throughout this pandemic, going to great ...
Dec 14, 2020•26 min
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. In this conversation, Shannon tells Róisín Ingle all about this new found creative energy, which as ...
Dec 10, 2020•37 min
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 has worked with Unicef, Amnesty International and the Irish Refugee Council.In today’s podcast she ...
Dec 07, 2020•54 min
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 traction all over the world, and can count Meryl Streep amongst its many supporters. The pair reminisce on...
Dec 03, 2020•38 min
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 themed beer and a candle which smells like the Westbury bathrooms. Advice columnist Roe McDermott cam...
Nov 30, 2020•1 hr 2 min
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 learn how to find true peace without having to spend hours meditating each day. She talks to Róisín ...
Nov 26, 2020•59 min
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 man in his 20s and a woman in her 40s, with excursions into football and music.Does he successfully e...
Nov 23, 2020•32 min
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 going over lockdown - did anybody say duck pancakes? She also made a compelling case for her one woma...
Nov 19, 2020•38 min
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 a different nature than that meted out to their white-skinned inmates. Rosemary Adaser was one of th...
Nov 16, 2020•58 min
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 women in their 20s and early 30s over a 10-week period that prompted a HSE report. Four of the wome...
Nov 12, 2020•33 min
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. She traveled the country taking photos of people (and sometimes their dogs) and the result has been...
Nov 09, 2020•47 min
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 year reign which has included white supremacist allegiances, children in cages, lies, sexism, narcissis...
Nov 05, 2020•57 min
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 openly about her cancer diagnosis in 2011. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...
Nov 02, 2020•44 min
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 own lived experience as she sets herself the huge task of writing a new translation of the 18th cent...
Oct 29, 2020•47 min
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 her mission to make the world a more inclusive and accessible place. A tireless campaigner and p...
Oct 26, 2020•47 min
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 referendum on abortion, the project had a simple request for undecided voters: put yourself in her shoe...
Oct 22, 2020•50 min
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 as the Clann Project, Justice for Magdalenes and the Adoption Rights Alliance are all against the re...
Oct 19, 2020•58 min
