DEEP in the aspirational mound of "letters to answer" on my desk is one from the Philosophical Society in Trinity College which invited me to chair a meeting in the middle of last month. The motion is/was: That boy is boy, girl is girl and never their minds shall meet.
All I can offer now to Joe Guerin, hon sec, who penned the sweetest letter with the invite, is my most fulsome apologies and a suggestion for another debate.
It would run something like: That man is man, woman is woman and as long as man is around (in his present form) he will make damn well sure that woman never gets the chance to show that she has a mind, let alone show that her mind is capable of rational thought and that, since the average woman's mind is aeons ahead of the average man's mind, I agree with the motion that their minds are never likely to meet in any meaningful way, that forever their meeting of minds will be confined to occasional, inconsequential, pseudo intellectual slap and tickle jousting for the amusement of students who managed to get 80 million points (what is the going rate?) to study any old thing that will keep them off the live register for another few years. For students you can substitute husbands, etc, etc.
Except for Mervyn Taylor. On the eve of International Women's Day, I suggest that we flood the Department for Equality and Law Reform (Mespil Road, Dublin 4) with roses. It may sound a lot but it need not break the bank. If each of us just sends one rose; multiplied by a million or so, the effect could amount to something like the little incident of the loaves and fishes. And if you are trying to operate on a mean husband's budget, it is simple. Do not buy the bread for his tea. Spend the money on a rose for Mervyn Taylor and, tell his nibs that he can offset it against the price of the annual, micro box of toffees or cheap bundle of daffs for Mother's Day.
In this benighted country (whatever was wrong with emigrating, living dysfunctional lives and going to cold graves with bitter secrets? I blame Oprah Winfrey) when we are sitting around waiting for the next hideously anguished story from some other area of our lives to cover acres of newsprint, Minister Taylor is simply the only mane worth bothering about. Okay, the head boy and the head prefect and loads of others are up to their eyes with the North and we are never allowed to forget it and we are deeply appreciative - are we? Actually, I would hand it all over to Finola Bruton, Kristi Spring, Pat Hume, Lady Mayhew, Daphne Trimble, Norma Major, Colette Adams and a few others like Mary O'Rourke, Mary Harney, Avril Doyle and Joan Burton and let the men look after the kids for a few months. I bet, a pound, to a penny, the whole thing would be sorted in no time. But that is simply too simple to be considered. Big, bad men need big, good men to sort them out. Is that it?
While the agonies and the ecstasies go on, Minister Taylor just keeps his head down and tunnels on through the mountains of work he inherited from all and sundry when he took on his portfolio. He is in an area in which there are pretty few votes and with a lot of grumbling groups who have been so oppressed for donkeys years that a lot of the time, probably all he hears are our groans and sighs. We who are women, we who are disabled and we who are travellers or gay, or black or brown, are so conditioned to moaning that we do not recognise a good thing when we see it. Mervyn Taylor deserves rose gardens, but in the meantime a single bloom will do.
While we are handing out the prizes, this week in particular, you should add Maureen Gaffney to your list. Why? Because, as chairwoman of the National Economic and Social Forum, she has just published the snappiest and most sensible report in the last few years, for getting women in there and up there. It is called Equality Proofing Issues and only costs £4 from Government Buildings or the Government Publications Sales Office in Molesworth Street.
BRIEFLY, what Gaffney and the members of the forum - made up of Ministers, TDs, senators, trade unions, employers as well as women's organisations and others who are disadvantaged, unemployed, disabled, young, old, greens and academics - have thrashed out is a whole new table of geometrics for equal lives for us all.
There has been nothing like it since the report of the Second Commission on the Status of Women, published in 1993. Of necessity, that report was more in the nature of a bible since it had to catch up on 20 odd years of women's history and make recommendations for changes in our lives at least 20 years hence, so it is not exactly the thing you would take on Slattery's bus to London. But it is the most valuable reference book around.
What Maureen Gaffney and the forum have done is look at the lives of women, travellers, people with disabilities and others and examined the ways in which discrimination works against us. They have come up with a whole list of irrefutable "Take thats!".
Like: "Direct discrimination occurs where a person experiences exclusion or is treated less favourably than another on the grounds of their membership of a particular group. The grounds on which direct discrimination occurs are listed as gender, marital or parental status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race, colour, nationality, national or ethnic origins including membership of the travelling community. This form of discrimination is relatively overt and usually involves intent".
The report also gives examples of indirect discrimination in the area of gender, including the way the labour market is structured, the socially ascribed domestic and caring responsibilities of women and the difficulty for women in participating in mainstream programmes through inadequate provision for their child care needs.
This is only a flavour of the nuggets of information, the pearls of wisdom and the pithy recommendations towards making the world a half way even place. The only problem I have with it is that I would like aspirations to be replaced with something like hefty fines unless people shape up.
At the launch of the report, Mervyn Taylor applauded the work of Maureen Gaffney and her crew. Actually why don't they just get rid of the rest and let the two of them run the entire country? Mervyn Taylor has two major Bills coming up. There is the Employment Equality Bill, which will make radical changes in the current legislation and the Equal Status Bill which aims to equalise everybody up. You have already seen and heard publicans and others talking guardedly about the problems it will create for them by not being able to keep out "trouble makers". The T-word they are all tripping over themselves not to say, of course, is travellers. We know it. They know it. And if they think they are fooling anyone, they should cop themselves on. As my old granny used to say, they should say a prayer and let the grace of God into their souls and be thankful for what they have. So there.
And a happy International Women's Day to you all.
