To mark tomorrow's International Women's Day, Kathryn Holmquist asks five women how life in Ireland compares with life in their homelands.
Tomorrow is International Women's Day, which celebrates the achievements of women and highlights equality issues. Women's experiences of inequality vary enormously. Many arriving in the Republic from developing countries find a freedom that changes their lives and attitudes, although they don't necessarily feel Irish women are better off in every way. Western women who settle in the Republic tend to find that Irish women are worse off. US and European women seem to be far less aware of the importance of equality issues than women from countries where they are still struggling for basic rights such as education and the freedom to practise religion.
Carolyn Porter (United States): "If I was a woman who needed a divorce or an abortion, I wouldn't want to be in Ireland," says Carolyn Porter, who is on the board of the American Women's Club of Dublin. She has lived in Ballsbridge for 18 months, because her husband is setting up the European operation of a US-based insurance company.
But apart from legislation, which bans abortion in Ireland and requires four years of living apart before a legal separation, Porter sees Irish and US women as fairly equal in their inequality. Both countries, for example, have a "glass ceiling" that prevents women from attaining management positions - although it seems more common for Irish women to be paid less than men for the same job.
US and Irish women also have in common an apathy about women's rights. "Talking with other American women and some Irish women about the issue, I've been surprised at how we all have the same reaction. We all agree that we haven't thought about it very much, maybe because the issue has not affected us as it has previous generations."
Porter has also noticed that men and women socialise separately in the Republic. In the US, men, women and couples tend to socialise together. "I think this stems from a historical separation of the sexes, which is why I've put my children in a co-educational secondary school," she says. Irish women are educated, intelligent and compassionate, according to Porter. "In 10 to 15 years, Irish women will be at the top."
Inge Sophia Lilleste (Norway): Ireland is 20 years behind Norway in terms of women's rights, says Inge Sophia Lilleste, a shiatsu therapist. Originally an archaeologist, Lilleste came to Dublin to work at Wood Quay, where she met her husband, Coli O'Donoghue, an architect whose projects have included work for the National Museum of Ireland.
From the perspective of women's health and complementary medicine, the Republic is at the cutting edge and very much the California of Europe, she believes. Irish women have been at the forefront of this movement because they value the hands-on therapy and listening skills that alternative practitioners offer.
But when it comes to childcare, Irish women are at a real disadvantage. In Norway, childcare and parental leave are heavily subsidised, allowing women to participate fully in society. The fact that fathers enjoy paid parental leave is one of the reasons that women make up 40 per cent of the Norwegian parliament and comprise at least half of the Cabinet, including the Minister for Defence. Norway's Gro Harlem Brundtland, a widely respected former prime minister, is now the head of the World Health Organisation. In her years as Labour Party leader, she championed positive discrimination to get women into power.
Norwegian women admire the "soft man" who looks after children and does domestic duties. Irish men have yet to embrace the ideal.
Cynthia Suncen (China): Suncen has been studying English in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, for 18 months. From Anshan, in northern China, she lives with her boyfriend, James, who is also from northern China. The couple have the blessings of their parents, who want to see them perfect their English.
She sees great differences between Chinese and Irish women but thinks Irish women are not necessarily better off. Although Irish women enjoy more "freedom", they also smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol "a lot", which Suncen sees as a bad thing.
Chinese women feel a greater responsibility about childbearing, in her view. In China, she says, you would never see a 15- or 16-year-old mother. There, a teenage girl is supposed to be getting an education. She may not have a child until she is 20 or marry until she is 22. And she is generally allowed to have only one child, at most two.
When Chinese women become pregnant in their teenage years, they seek abortions, which is a woman's right, Suncen believes. She sees Irish women with two and three children as having to work harder than Chinese women. Irish women are respected, but no more so than in China, she says - although the fact that the Republic has a female president shows a respect for women that has yet to happen in China, she believes.
Mahin Sefidvash (Iran): Mahin Sefidvash left Iran 36 years ago, to escape religious persecution. As a member of the Baha'i faith, Sefidvash was "humiliated" and discriminated against in her native country and her property was confiscated. All Baha'is were denied third-level education and banned from government jobs. She didn't want the same thing to happen to her children, and so with her husband, a lawyer, she travelled to Europe.
Now a resident of Dalkey, in Co Dublin, Sefidvash has Irish citizenship, which has allowed her to work for women in the developing world, and she is founder and chairwoman of the Irish branch of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, or Unifem. The freedom the Republic gives women has allowed Sefidvash to practise her faith, in which men and women are equal and deserve equal education and in which racial or religious prejudice is banned.
Tomorrow Sefidvash will be at Castleknock Community College, raising funds for widows and orphans in Afghanistan. A donation of €20 pays for a child to be educated for a week. Education is crucial in a society where women are the primary educators of children yet don't have the same rights as men, she says. "Ireland is getting close to the Baha'i ideal," she says: Irish women are getting more involved in decision-making and grandmothers are going to university.
Shamime Saljugi (Afghanistan): "I feel free, free of everything, and I can decide my future for myself. In Afghanistan, girls have no future," says Shamime Saljugi . A survivor of many "bad memories" as a nine-year-old, when missiles and rockets were a part of her life, Saljugi is now studying for her Leaving Cert at Pearse College in Dublin. She has experienced only goodness from Irish people, she says, and hopes to study early childhood care and education.
Were she living in Afghanistan rather than in Dublin, she would have great difficulty getting any kind of an education. She would probably have had to marry by now, just to be economically secure. Under the Taliban, young women had no choice but to marry and have babies, although Saljugi hears things are changing. "Afghanistan has been very oppressive, and I am happy to be in Ireland," she says. Saljugi finds a "wonderful freedom" in the Republic but intends to marry an Afghan Muslim and would like to build links between the Republic and Afghanistan in support of Afghan children.
