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By Carol Hunt, Journalist, permanent student, mother, feminist, book addict…
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Over the past few months there has been a sudden concern about the civic rights of red-heads.

That David McWilliams must be so pleased.

On Twitter, Facebook – and in various newspaper columns I’ve seen – appeals to government to introduce quotas not just for red-heads, but also, plumbers, volvo-drivers and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The point, supposedly, is to suggest that the bill on Gender Quotas, to be introduced into the Seanad this Thursday, is somehow unfair and faintly ridiculous.

The people who, for whatever reasons, are against an honest attempt at increasing the number of women in Leinster House don’t believe the majority gender in this country should be afforded a temporary discriminatory quota (although it actually applies to both genders) because that will mean “everybody will want one”.

It’s a fallacious argument.
There is absolutely no correlation between hair colour, religion etc and gender – to suggest that there is, is absurd & also a little bit desperate.

But we can be guaranteed that the nonsense will continue.

Modern Ireland…
has always been a cold house for feminists despite our constant bragging about electing the first female MP to UK parliament.

In 1866, Corkwoman Hannah Haslam (1829-1922) signed the first women’s suffrage petition on these Islands. It was handed into the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill.

About 20 years later Hannah Haslam & her husband Thomas, founded the Irish Suffrage Society.

Helen Chevenix, Eva Gore-Booth, Aine Ceant, Helena Molony, Louie Bennett & Hannah-Sheehy Skeffington are just some of the extraordinary women who fought for suffrage & labour rights at the end of 19th & early 20th century.

Their achievements were many; sadly their names are remembered today, in the main, only by historians.

What happened?
In a word? Nationalism.
The Republican Brothers insisted the election of Constance Markievicz was living proof of the manifestation of equality as enshrined in the 1916 Proclamation.

The Sisters who’d fought long & hard before & during the War of Independence disagreed: The suffragette Irish Citizen Newspaper wrote on the day following this “historic achievement”:

“Under the new dispensation the majority sex in Ireland has secured one representative. This is the measure of our boasted sex equality.”

Should our revolutionary women have been surprised?

Perhaps not. Anna Parnell, ferociously successful leader of  Ladies Land League was cynically betrayed by her brother on his release from prison – she never spoke to him again.

And it was the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1912, led by the anti-feminist John Redmond, who used their balance of power in Westminster to defeat the Conciliation Bill (limited suffrage).

Redmond was so terrified of female power he specifically banned women from a conference on Home Rule.

Sinn Fein’s Arthur Griffith wasn’t much better. He had little time for “women’s causes”.

In 1914, those who’d decided not to support the Home Rule Bill – because the franchise for women was not included – were accused of  putting their feminist principles before their nationalist ones.

Republicans insisted Women’s Emancipation could only – should only –  be achieved after Independence. The founding of the nationalist Cumann na mBan had been seen as a retrograde step by feminists. Their fears were justified.

1917
In the 1917 Sinn Fein Convention – estimated attendance of 1,000 – only 12 women were selected as delegates.

Increasingly an agenda was created in which Suffragette women, Republican women, Socialist women, would have no voice or influence.

After Treaty Debates of 1922, a plea was made that women over 21 be given the vote – in accordance with the pledge contained in the Republican proclamation. But the boys of the “Free” State believed equality meant a 21 year old man was somehow “equal” to a 30 year old woman… They thought they were  being magnanimous.

And, contradicting the accusation made against Suffragettes in 1914 (that they were putting their feminist principles before their nationalist ones), they were denied equal rights because their motivations were Republican (anti-Treaty) rather than feminist.

Which makes one wonder who the contrary sex is?

With the establishment of the ultra-Catholic Free State, Irish men ensured women were returned to their proper sphere – the home.

Fianna Fáil
Just when your average feminist thought things couldn’t get any worse, Fianna Fail gained  power. Believe me Sisters, things can always get worse.

Eamon De Valera emulated the German mantra of  Kinder, Kuche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church) when he included a constitutional article which maintained that a woman’s legal place was within the home.
[In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, women gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. The State shall, therefore, endeavor to ensure that mothers shall  not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home. Article 41.2.]

(Historian Margaret Ward has commented that Dev’s comments were indistinguishable from Nazi decrees.)

The majority of exhausted double-jobbing mothers I know are either howling with laughter or annoyance at the above constitutional piece of nonsense.

Interestingly, no-one has actually challenged it in court (many families today need two incomes to pay the bills). Could all those mortgages given to two-income families be unconstitutional?

Any takers?

The Gender Quotas Bill
It seeems likely the Gender Quotas Bill will be passed – if all the parties supporting it are to be believed (never a given).
And Fianna Fail’s suggestion that it be extended to the 2014 Local Elections should be taken up (before they get back into power & change their minds).

We need to take this chance
… for greater equality in political representaion and run with it. It may not come again. We have to support our female candidates –  and all candidates who support what are condescendingly called “women’s issues”.

As UCD historian Rosemary Cullen-Owens said of the aims of our early Suffragettes:
“… That it took fifty years for such demands to be voiced again by Irishwomen is perhaps a lesson to be noted by their successors.”

Indeed.

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We are delighted to welcome Carol Hunt as author here.  Carol recently wrote a great piece for Irish Independent after the How to Elect More Women Conference – here’s the link