It has not just been women who have been liberated by the struggle for gender equality

Fintan O'Toole

IN THE mid-1970s, demands for equal pay from Irish women and from the European Community were becoming irresistible. The Confederation of Irish Industry eventually agreed that equal pay could in fact be conceded -- provided men took a cut in their wages. The so-called war of the sexes was a zero-sum game. If women were to gain, men must lose.

There are still men who see it that way. Inequality, after all, gave even the humblest man the knowledge that there was someone he was superior to - a woman. James Connolly's dictum that "Man is a slave and woman is the slave of a slave" expressed a basic truth. And the reality is that few groups that benefit from inequality give up their privileges willingly.

Yet Connolly's formulation also implied that there did not, in the long term, have to be losers in this war. If women ceased to be slaves, men might not have to be either. Feminism may have taken away all sorts of male entitlements (to whatever decent jobs were going, to a sexual double standard of "ladies' men" and "sluts", to free domestic service, to unfettered control of the public world). But for the vast majority of men, those entitlements had only ever provided a hollow illusion of power and choice.

There is a reactionary argument that feminism was good for men only in that it freed up women for sex and conned them into contributing to the family income while continuing to bear the burden of housework and childcare. In fact there are at least three ways in which the benefits have been mutual.

At an obvious level, many of the things for which women fought directly added to the possibilities for men as well. Access to contraception allowed men to overcome the stultified and stunted sexuality that was, for all the boasting and preening, the reality for most. It gave them, as well as their wives, the chance to escape from the treadmill of having baby after baby. Divorce made it possible for men, as well as women, to escape from unhappy marriages and to hope for a new start.

The idea and language of equality which feminism developed also helped to liberate many men. The struggle of gay men for full citizenship has been long and hard (and is not yet over) but it would have been much harder without the challenge of the women's movement to the existing orthodoxies about sexuality. The equality legislation that was driven in part by the demands of the women's movement has given rights as well to men with disabilities and Traveller men.

The second area in which feminism has been positive for men is emotional. For the vast majority of heterosexual men, a relationship with one or more women is at the centre of their personal lives. The quality of that relationship has always been dependant, not just on lust and tenderness and friendship, but on mutual respect. Men are happier with women who don't have to regard them as a master but can actually love them as equals.

And this change has also affected men's relationship with their children. Most fathers will tell you that one of the happiest moments of their lives has been witnessing the birth of a child. How many men did that before feminism broke down the very restricted version of masculinity that made it almost unthinkable? And while the burden of caring for children may still be grossly unequally shared, this is not necessarily because most fathers choose for it to be like that. Most are grateful that at least the notion that children are a joint responsibility allows them some more space in which to be fathers.