The Women's Podcast

Activist, writer, addiction specialist and senator Lynn Ruane was the brilliant guest for our seventh Big Night In hosted by Róisín Ingle. An audience of over 150 joined us on Zoom to watch this force of nature speak about some of the lighter moments from inside the Seanad, her learnings from lockdown and why The Real Housewives of New York has become her new obsession.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No pandemic is gender-neutral and neither is Covid-19, which is negatively affecting the lives of women and girls. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is the Executive Director of UN Women and she spoke to Roisin Ingle from lockdown in South Africa about the three areas where women and girls are particularly at risk in the current crisis: Domestic violence, frontline work - the majority of workers are women - and financially. Previously, Mlambo-Ngcuka served as Deputy President of South Africa, the first woman to hold the position and at that point the highest ranking woman in the history of South Africa. Also in the episode, singer songwriter Megan O'Neill spoke about her new song Fire With Fire, inspired by the way women in the music industry are pitted against each other.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the pandemic, there has been increased pressure placed on one parent families, from shopping struggles and homeschooling demands to dealing with feelings of loneliness and isolation. In today’s episode, we hear from Clare O’Leary, a single parent living in Wexford with her 5 year old son Peter. Clare has just completed the first year of a psychology degree at Waterford IT and spoke to Róisin Ingle about lone parenting and studying while in lockdown. We also hear from Niamh Wynne, from One Family Ireland, who coordinates the New Steps, New Futures programme which helps single parents going back into education or the workplace

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Where are you going on your holliers? That's the question we are asking on this episode with travel writer Joan Scales who has been uncovering deals up and down the country from castles to hotels, from campsites to cottages. Whether you are the adventurous type or fancy a bit of luxury, there is an Irish holiday for you so we wanted to help you with all the options that are available. In pandemic times. supporting our homegrown tourism industry and the 250,000 jobs reliant on that industry feels positively patriotic. From June 29th the tourism sector will start to slowly crank back into gear and in this episode we explore the many wonderful possibilities when it comes to a great Irish holiday.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born in Ireland, to Breton parents, Olwen Fouéré is a writer, producer and theatre maker. A reviewer once said of her that if she sat on a stage doing nothing it would still be completely compelling. Fouéré makes theatre that people find disturbing or unsettling and much of her extensive body of work is provocative, the kind of art that stays with you or even might change you a bit. Since the 1970s she has been working solidly in film and theatre. Her film work includes This Must Be The Place with Sean Penn, Mandy with Nicolas Cage and The Survivalist which is very apt these days. In theatre, she is best know for a powerhouse performance of Salome at The Gate and Riverrun, her own seminal work which evoked the voice of the river in Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and toured all over the world. Fouéré spoke to Roisin Ingle at our sixth Big Night In on Zoom about life, loss, art, love, family and open relationships.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some listeners may remember Cindy Gallop from 2009 when she did a hugely popular Ted Talk in which she shared her experience of how hardcore pornography had distorted the way a generation of young men thinks about sex - and now she's fighting back. This was the genesis of her social sex company Make Love Not Porn, a user-generated video-sharing platform where people can submit videos of themselves having “real world” sex. Make Love Not Porn has been positively thriving during the pandemic and Gallop joined Roisin Ingle to discuss how dating younger men led to her creation of the company and why her mission to get people talking about sexual activity in a normal, shame-free way could mean the end of rape culture and gender-based abuse. In this episode, we also pay tribute to the seven sisters and their aunt in Co Tipperary, members of the traveling community, who this week spoke out about the horrific sexual abuse they were exposed to over decades. Their bravery followed the sentencing of their father James O'Reilly to jail for 20 years after being convicted of 58 counts of rape and nine counts of sexual assault following a 27-day trial at the Central Criminal Court.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It feels like a lifetime ago, but it was only March when Morning Ireland presenter and best-selling author Rachael English came in to the Irish Times studio talk to us about her fifth novel The Paper Bracelet. The gripping story centres around a fictional Mother and Baby home in the West of Ireland and the paper bracelets that were used to identify the babies born there who were then sent away for adoption. Each bracelet contains details of the lives of the young women incarcerated in these homes and the secrets, shame and lies that still echo in Ireland today. Roisin Ingle talked to English about her writing, about her 30 year career in RTE and about the excitement of covering the last General Election. (Remember that?) In this episode, we also bring you an update into some of the issues raised at the recent Webinar: Unpacking The Impacts: Covid-19 and Women's Mental Health particularly around domestic violence during the pandemic.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was not on the agenda at her career guidance meetings at school, but somehow in Lockdown 17-year-old schoolgirl Hannah McSorley has ended up as a "Tik Tok Tadpole Influencer". The tens of thousands of tadpoles in her garden have earned more than half a million followers on the platform and a US Influencer agent has come calling, so it looks like tadpoles are going to be this teenager's lucrative new career. You can see why we needed to get her on the podcast. We also had to talk about women's mental health in this episode, because we know that women are disproportionately affected in terms of depression, anxiety and sleeplessness. We spoke to two women, Louise O'Leary and Dr Cliona Loughnane, working in this field about the mental health Webinar they are running on Friday June 12th.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our fifth Big Night In happened on Zoom in front of an audience of 250 on Saturday June 6th with author, playwright and Irish Times columnist Hilary Fannin. She spoke about her debut novel The Weight of Love, her early childhood memoir Hopscotch and about life in lockdown with her sons, partner and long suffering cat. Fannin also reflected on her decision to become a college student - doing a masters in creative writing in Trinity College - for the first time in her fifties. She spoke with warmth and humour about her insecure childhood with bohemian parents Bob and Marie, which at one point saw the family being evicted from their home. We had a lot of excellent feedback about the event and are delighted to bring you this conversation between Irish Times columnists Roisin Ingle and Hilary Fannin.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The year 2020 will not just be remembered for the pandemic. It will also be remembered for George Floyd and his final words 'I can't breathe' as he lay dying, the knee of a Minnesota police officer on his neck. The incomprehensible killing of Floyd, a father of two, shone a light yet again on the pervasive racism experienced by the black community all over the world. The protests in America saw people express collective outrage and solidarity. In Dublin thousands gathered to do the same, kneeling together in silence and calling for an end to the Direct Provision System. It's not good enough, as political activist Angela Davis said, to not be racist. We need to be anti-racist. And we need to talk about what that means. Three young black Irish women Amanda Adewole, Tobi Lawal and Felicia Olusanya aka Felispeaks came on the podcast to discuss their experiences of everyday racism, the events in America and the ways in which white people, with all of the privilege we benefit from because of the colour of our skin, can become part of the solution rather than the problem.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.