"Skewed, twisted and unhealthy" thinking and teaching about the role of women over generations has left an "obstacle course" of impediments to their equal treatment, the President, Mrs McAleese, has said.
President McAleese was speaking at a lunch in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham to celebrate International Women's Day, organised by Network Ireland, an organisation representing women in business, the professions and the arts.
The impediments to equal treatment were both "subtle and not so subtle", she said. Although much had been done to "dismantle the legal, social and attitudinal straitjackets which constricted the genius of women to a narrow and confined space", women were still a minority at the highest echelons of the business world. The culture such women operated within remains one which has been created by and for men. "Sometimes women feel they have to adapt too much, sacrifice too much to that business culture in order to be treated as equals," the President said.
It was "no accident that today's economic success story comes at a time when the gifts of women are at last running through every area of business industrial endeavours", she said.
"The fresh new synergies are an essential part of the creative dynamic at the heart of Ireland's economic and cultural confidence." The equality officer of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Ms Joan Carmichael, said the "continuing gap between the earnings of women and men is a powerful reminder of how far we have to go to achieve full equality". Speaking at the launch of an ICTU Equality Information Pack, Ms Carmichael said that "although the Irish economy is now performing better than most economies in Europe, the pay and conditions of women workers in Ireland are lagging behind the rest of Europe".
While the struggle to establish the legal and constitutional right to equal treatment had been largely successful, she said, the "battle to have these rights implemented has yet to be won".
An Irish campaigner on domestic violence, Ms Mary McGoldrick, was an opening speaker at yesterday's United Nations General Assembly in New York.
A live two-way video link allowed rights activists around the world to discuss measures to eradicate violence against women with UN decision-makers, government representatives and academics.
Ms McGoldrick, who addressed the Beijing Platform of Action on Violence against Women in 1995, has worked with Women's Aid and Sonas.
