August 23, 2022

The One Where I Talk To Journalist, Presenter & Podcaster, Geeta Pendse

1 hour 7 minutes

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In this week’s episode of Spinsterhood Reimagined, I talk to journalist, presenter, and podcaster, Geeta Pendse.

Geeta is a freelance journalist and presenter with 15 years’ experience delivering content for broadcasters, who is based in Nottingham, UK. She has worked for BBC Sunday Morning Live, BBC Radio 4, BBC Breakfast, BBC Politics, East Midlands Today, BBC Three and Sky Arts as a reporter and presenter. She presents the weekly politics show on BBC One in the East Midlands, and anchored the BBC’s General Election Debate for the region.

Geeta has developed a specialism as an Arts reporter, and alongside creating original and daily content for BBC news outlets, she has also presented the Sky Arts series ‘Music of India’, BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts programme ‘Front Row’ and ‘Civilisations Stories: The Art of Mining’, a half-hour documentary for BBC One in the East Midlands and BBC Four.

In this conversation, Geeta and I talk about a range of subjects including how she never wanted to be in a relationship just for the sake of it; the emotions she experienced as the majority of her friends began to ‘pair off’ and her particular life path began to feel like the less common one; and how she navigated those changing friendships in her life.

We also discuss how Geeta decided to train as a yoga teacher in her mid-thirties, and how that helped her find role models in her life who didn’t have children; how her podcast has made her realise that there is no one story of childlessness and how each different story comes with many, many nuances; and how she has subsequently spoken to all kinds of women who don’t have children - from those who are childless by circumstance, to those who are childless by choice, as well as those who have felt ambivalent about it.

Geeta and I also chat about the stigma that can come from not having children, including how some women suffer the implication that they are ‘pointless’ or ‘selfish’; the sense of failure that can come as a result of societal projections onto those women who find themselves without children, whether by choice or not; and what ‘active choice’ means when it comes to making a decision about whether or not to have kids.

In this episode, we also cover turning forty, and the increasing number of female role models in their forties and above who are empowering women to embrace the ageing process; learning to care less about what people think and how freeing it can be; and how ultimately, any one of us can have a good life whether with children or without.

Apple Podcast link to ‘The 1 in 5 Podcast: Leading A Life Without Children’: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podca

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