Each week on The Women’s Podcast we ask listeners a question. This week’s presenter Sorcha Pollak wanted to know about your New Year’s Resolutions.

“Are you making any?” she asked. “If you are, which ones and how are you getting on with them? If you are not making any, then why not?”

Tell us about your resolve or lack of it by emailing thewomenspodcast@irishtimes.com or posting your thoughts to facebook or twitter @itwomenspodcast

This week’s episode of the podcast was a special sex themed show with a panel of experts including sexologists and counsellors. It included a discussion about female masturbation with sexual health educator Emily Power Smith saying women should masturbate “as often as they can”.

“It’s a really healthy thing,” she told Pollak. “It releases great endorphins and chemicals into our bodies that help us to feel happier, to feel more creative, to feel braver. It lifts depression and helps with headaches and period cramps.”

Smith joined physiotherapist Maeve Whelan, who specialises in women’s health at Milltown Physiotherapy in Dublin, for a conversation about painful sex, the importance of pelvic floor muscles and what all women can do to improve their sex lives.

According to Whelan, there are a number of physiological and emotional reasons women might experience pain during sex.

Smith said: “I don’t know of many women who have an issue with pain that they can do nothing about.”

Also in the sex episode there was a discussion about how Irish cultural, educational and social history has shaped women’s sex lives.

Joining that discussion were Dr Mel Duffy, head of the only master’s degree programme in sexuality studies in the country at Dublin City University; Shawna Scott, owner of Sex Siopa, Ireland’s health and design-focused online sex shop; and Hot Press sex columnist Anne Sexton.

According to Sexton, some of the “cultural and economic reasons for prudery and repression” include the country’s Victorian roots, the famine’s strain on the population and the Catholic Church.

The podcast included a vox pop conducted at the Knitting and Stitching show where visitors were asked about their first sexual experiences.

The Women's Podcast was recently named Best New Irish Podcast for 2015 by iTunes.
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or soundcloud and it is also available on irishtimes.com