11 Influential Women and Their Interviews With Hot Press

Their resilience towards societies and the workplace where being a woman can be to your detriment and their determination in refusing to abide to gender norms are only a small contribution in what they have done in their vast careers.
Here is a short list of the 11 women we have chosen in honor of International Women's Day. Thank you ladies!

Emma Donoghue

"While I’m very young, I feel quite old in lesbian years. I’ve been out to myself for ten years. Whereas if I meet a thirty-year-old woman who’s only just out, she feels younger to me. So yeah, I do think coming out is the single most effective, and most political thing, that anyone can do. It changes the life of everyone around you, just by you being a living example."

Read the full 1994 interview with Emma Donoghue here.

Anne Enright

"Putting yourself out there is a kind of a way of attracting envy as well as everything else, and it’s awful, it’s really awful – “I was trying to do something really well and now people don’t like me because I did well” – and that’s something you have to get over."

Read the full 2013 interview with Anne Enright here

Saoirse Ronan

"I don’t want to repeat myself with characters that I play and I don’t want to play characters that have been done a thousand times by other people either. Basically repetition is not something that interests me. I don’t want to feel safe as a performer. I want to be tested."

Read the full 2010 interview with Saoirse Ronan here

Enya

"Regrets? None whatsoever. I was asked recently, in passing, would I change anything? And the truth is that I wouldn’t change anything whatsoever. It’s nice to be able to say that."

Read the full 2015 interview with Enya here

Roisin Murphy

"But actually, you know, nowadays you can say ‘no’. I market myself, I make the videos, I style myself. I am a walking work of art, and there is no art without commerce. You’ve got to get your head round it."

Read the full 2015 interview with Roisin Murphy here

Kylie Minogue

"I can only be who I am. Doing a day’s worth of interviews or a week – if you’re always on show whether you’re doing down the street to get a video or to buy milk or waltzing into a premiere, you can’t maintain something that isn’t you."

Read the full 2001 interview with Kylie Minogue here

Katie Taylor

"I don’t go out a whole lot, but when I do I always have fun. I have my beliefs but I’m not judgmental. Everyone’s entitled to live life the way they want to."

Read the full 2014 interview with Katie Taylor here

Ivana Bacik

"I’m very into the idea of a social Europe, that what we should be doing is strengthening protection for workers, protection for women, and trying to get through the issue of paternity leave, which I feel very strongly about. Until men are entitled to paternity leave, you’re not going to have equality, because children are always seen as a women’s issue, and that’s completely wrong – none of my male friends want their children to be solely their partner’s responsibility."

Read the full 2004 interview with Ivana Bacik here

Clare Daly

“We will legalise cannabis in this country. We have to. It’s a normal part of life for a lot of people. And bear in mind I have no interest in taking drugs. I don’t advocate that people would do that, necessarily, but I recognise that it’s a reality"

Read the full 2015 interview with Clare Daly here

Mary Robinson

"The substantial hate-mail which I received, especially in the early 70s, did have a profound effect on me. When you're young and idealistic and you passionately believe in something, it's an immense shock when suddenly you’re wham up against hate and viciousness and slander of a very cruel sort. It was also very good for me as a young politician; I have no doubt about that. It gave me what I call the scar tissue - it hurt and the scars grew over it. I'm much tougher now.”

Read the full 1990 interview with Mary Robinson here

Mo Mowlam

"When I brought Elton John to play in the grounds of Stormont, Ian Paisley did say, ‘that wicked woman is now bringing sodomites to Stormont’.

Read the full 2002 interview with Mo Mowlam here