Discrimination against women is as bad now as it was almost 20 years ago, a conference in Dublin was told yesterday.
Ms Cathleen O'Neill, manager of the Kilbarrack Community Development Project, was speaking at the In From the Margins conference hosted by the National Women's Council of Ireland.
The conference, which brought together over 300 women from marginalised backgrounds marked the publication of the council's Women Creating Change report, a review of a three-year consultation project with marginalised women on their needs.
In her keynote address, Ms O'Neill asked participants to note that another occasion at which women came together was the Women Together Against Poverty conference in 1988.
"Isn't it shameful that 16 years later we are still calling for action on these themes? Isn't it shameful that the women who attended the In From the Margins workshops are still seeking equality and a political voice?"
She said the ranks of women experiencing marginalisation, whether due to poverty, caring responsibilities, racism or disability, had swelled as the numbers of ethnic minorities grew.
The issues highlighted in the report of the 1988 conference were repeated in yesterday's publication, among them that more women than men lived in poverty, that women's poverty was hidden and that it was women who disproportionately bore the burden of managing poverty.
Ms Missie Collins, a Traveller and primary healthcare worker, said no Traveller woman wanted to live in the squalid conditions into which up to 1,200 families were "forced" - by the side of the road or on illegal halting sites.
"Why are we so big a problem [to accommodate]? They say we choose to live like that. No one chooses to live like that," she said, adding that the living conditions of hundreds of Travellers contributed to their far higher mortality rates and worse health than experienced in the settled community.
