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A Guarded Life and Feminism Backwards: Fighting sex-based discrimination in Ireland

Book review: Majella Moynihan and Rosita Sweetman unfold struggle for female liberation

Majella Moynihan in 1998. Moynihan spoke on RTÉ’s Documentary on One about being investigated by gardaí when she became pregnant by a colleague on the force. Photograph: RTÉ

Estelle Birdy
Fri Oct 30 2020 - 06:00

Two recently published books make this a felicitous time to examine the history of sex-based discrimination and the struggle for women’s liberation in Ireland.

Majella Moynihan’s life story, as told in A Guarded Life, is a sobering read. Moynihan and her four older sisters were raised in a Mallow orphanage following the death of their mother and the disappearance of their father to England.

Contrary to what we’ve come to expect, her early days in St Joseph’s Industrial School were joy-filled and the description of this time reflects Moynihan’s straightforwardness and optimism. But a change of management dramatically altered the caring atmosphere and Moynihan, treated to beatings and humiliations for the rest of her time at St Joseph’s, eventually fought back, clattering the nun-in-chief.

Rosita Sweetman’s new book recounts her life fighting for women’s rights in Ireland. Photograph: Collins

So ended the pastings. This once-hidden inner strength would be tested again in later life.

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In the early 1980s Moynihan was training to join An Garda Síochána when she became pregnant. The father, also a guard, initially acknowledged his part and she weighed up his dutiful marriage proposal.

“For starters, I was only 21 years old and in truth I wasn’t sure that I loved Fintan enough to spend the rest of our lives together and, in a country where divorce was still illegal, that was a very big qualm indeed. In the end, it came down to the fact that, if Fintan and I were married, I would be able to keep the baby.”

Fintan reneged, plunging Majella into a nightmare. Having revealed her pregnancy to her superiors, her days were filled with interrogations, visits to Cura and outright bullying. The bishop, the minister for justice and a seemingly never-ending line of the Garda top brass became involved.

What amounted to a trial was conducted in Donegal – pregnant while unmarried was the charge. Fintan received a slap on the wrist. Pilloried and grieving the loss of her child through forced adoption, Moynihan’s life fell apart.

As a chronicle of State- and church-sponsored misogyny and one woman’s fight for justice, A Guarded Life is slow-paced at times but quickly develops into a dizzying account of the institutional harassment and abuse of women.

Feminism

To understand how the kind of treatment meted out to Moynihan was both tolerated and commonplace in Irish society, look no further than Rosita Sweetman’s latest, Feminism Backwards. The journalist, author and doyenne of the women’s liberation movement brings us on a romp through her life and the history of feminism in Ireland and women’s place in society.

Sweetman moves from childhood days by the sea in Dublin, through boarding school – dubbed the Madrasa – to swinging ’60s London, exciting times at the Irish Press, revolutionary days with the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM), the Repeal movement and the present-day horrors of the sex industry.

This is light-hearted prose with a furious edge. Backed up by shocking facts and figures, Sweetman’s exuberance carries us along, in turn laughing uproariously and weeping in disbelief. Bishop Eamonn Casey, the Profumo scandal, Ann Lovett, witch trials and the Inquisition are all here.

When the IWLM published its notorious pamphlet Chains or Change, metaphorical bombs exploded in both the Pro-Cathedral and the Dáil. Now archived in the National Library alongside the Communist Manifesto, it was a “comprehensive list of the injustices inflicted on the women of Ireland by church and state”. And what a list it was, sisters. Read it and weep.

Direct actions followed. A Late Late Show spot turned to chaos when Mary Kenny went off-script. “Before you could say ‘political opportunity’, Garret FitzGerald, then leader of the opposition, ‘left his fireside’, so outraged was he at Mary’s slur. He was, of course, ushered straight into the studios and on to the set.”

The contraceptive train from Belfast – loaded with pills and rubber – carrying women’s libbers was a PR coup although Sweetman missed the occasion herself. “It was my 23rd birthday and I stayed in bed with my man, Prince Charming, who had returned to me, claiming to have missed me terribly, and who, ironically, since he was English, had plenty of contraceptives.”

It’s not all sex and sisterhood. There’s real personal pain – the death of her sister Cathy in childhood, her father’s death, her mother’s long-term depression, the break-up of her marriage and white-hot rage at the poor treatment of women, past and present. Sweetman rails against the normalisation of the sex industry, its violent debasement of women and its reach into our daily lives.

Feminism Backwardsd is not just a history book – it is a book of the moment. It whispers to women and girls everywhere of a feminism that centres women, their lives and rights. I urge you, sisters, to read this book, if only for Sweetman’s joyous and liberal use of the word “wanky”.