SECOND OPINION:Patriarchal views are still alive and kicking in Irish society, writes JACKY JONES
TODAY IS THE 100th International Women’s Day. The first one was promoted by Denmark in 1911 and focused on the rights of women to work, vote and hold public office. The lives of Irish women have changed utterly since then, but there is still some way to go before we can say patriarchy does not influence Irish society.
The small number of women elected to the 31st Dáil is just one example. The National Archives show that most Irish women had appalling lives in 1911. Dublin had the worst housing than any UK city at that time with the number of families living in one room put at more than 20,000. In one street, 835 people lived in 15 houses.
More than a third of women had at least seven children and it was not uncommon for half the children in a family to die before their fifth birthday. Infant mortality rates were 150 per 1,000 and a poor woman’s child was 17 times more likely to die than a child of a better-off woman.
Because men had to work if work was available, they got most of the food going, so the tenements were disease-ridden and teeming with malnourished women and children. There were unbelievably high rates of death in childbirth, which happens so rarely in Ireland today it makes the news.
Rural Ireland was little better. In Galway, for example, the population decreased from 422,000 to 182,000 in 1911 due to famine, disease and emigration, a majority of emigrants being young women.
Fast forward to 2011. Legislation has improved women’s lives for the better. Some things have not changed however. Within the HSE, maternity leave is still regarded as a human resource problem. Pregnancy, which is absolutely necessary for the nation’s health and a service to the State from women, is not seen as such by HSE management. Maternity leave is regarded as the same as all other types of leave such as sick leave, annual leave and career break. The moratorium on recruitment in the HSE includes the non-filling of maternity leave posts and when women take their leave the work has to be covered by someone else.
Since most front-line workers in the HSE are young and female, it is inevitable that they will get pregnant, perhaps several times during their careers. Yet there is no ongoing plan to deal with this inevitability.
At management meetings the numbers of women on maternity leave is presented as a problem, with the hidden agenda of management (mostly men) wishing there was no such leave as it is so inconvenient. What is forgotten is that it takes two to get pregnant, so every maternity leave is actually paid for by two people’s PRSI contributions as opposed to being a burden on the system.
When I worked in the HSE I wrote to top management pointing out that as only women could get pregnant, maternity leave should be treated differently to all other leave which can be availed of by both sexes. I got an acknowledgement but no action. I also challenged the negative attitude to maternity leave and this was quickly denied with a “Now Jacky” comment. It was like I was some kind of crank for questioning the status quo.
This is nothing more than ingrained patriarchy, so ingrained that a different way of seeing maternity leave is not even considered. In fact, it is really surprising that trade unions which represent health workers have not taken legal action. I’m certain that this negative attitude to what is a woman’s right, and to which she has contributed financially, is widespread in other Irish workplaces.
An unwelcome consequence of female liberation is an increase in women smokers. The March Bulletin of the WHO shows that there is a very strong association between the empowerment of women and increased smoking rates. In Ireland, for example, 22 per cent of women and 25 per cent of men smoke. In Sweden more women than men smoke. It is estimated that lung cancer will be predominately a female disease by 2020. Surveys have shown that when women are asked why they smoke, they say, “It’s all I have for myself”, so they bizarrely see smoking as some kind of freedom.
So yes, Irish women’s lives are better but we still have to keep an eye on things such as attitudes to maternity leave. Patriarchal views are still alive and kicking in Irish society and this is just one example.
Dr Jacky Jones is a former regional manager of health promotion at the HSE