Tuned out? A Study of RTÉ radio 1 programmes Dear Frankie/Women Today and BBC 4’s Woman’s Hour

Abstract

In the conservative, Catholic milieu of 1920s and 1930s Ireland, it should come as no surprise that women’s issues were not addressed on the national broadcaster, Radió Éireann. Women’s voices were effectively ‘tuned out’ and it would not be until 1963 that some attempts were made to publicly address, however benignly, issues on female sexuality. This came in the form of Ireland’s first radio agony aunt, Frankie Byrne and her programme Dear Frankie. However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that Irish radio really began to give women’s concerns the attention they fully deserved. It began in earnest in the form of Women Today, a pioneering radio programme, broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 from 1979 to 1984. The fact that it lasted just four years and did not enjoy the longevity of the BBC 4’s flagship radio programme, Woman’s Hour, serves as a useful comparator for the issue addressed in this article; namely the differing cultures experienced by women, both on and off-air, at the BBC and RTÉ between 1926 and 1984.