10 things that changed women's lives

Roisin Ingle

1 THE AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINE

It didn't come from the most reliable feminist source, but it's worth name-checking an article published last year in a Vatican newspaper which asked what had contributed most to liberation of Western women: "Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine".

Others maintained that until the patronising assumption that it was women who would mostly operate the new time-saving domestic appliances was challenged, we were getting nowhere. Still, any woman who can recall endless hours of washing clothes by hand in a bath tub followed by cranking them out through a mangle would probably maintain the Vatican had a point.

2 LYCRA

How do women love you? Let us count the ways. Back in the day you provided the crucial ingredient in stretch jeans that allowed many of us to access to an item of clothing which otherwise would have been out of reach. We love you less for leggings and leotards in the 1970s, but in the 1980s you excelled yourself, making the wearing of tights and underwear a more pleasurable experience giving us a close, comfortable fit instead of a scratchy, baggy, uncomfortable one. While we are not suggesting for one second that women should be encouraged to think that they need to transmogrify their inferior bodies through the medium of Lycra, the truth is a simple thing such as feeling more streamlined under clothes can do wonders for the self-esteem.

You, a humble man-made fabric ingredient, made that and so much more happen.

We heart you, lycra.

3 THE PILL

Strictly speaking, it’s 50 years old, but by the time the majority of Irish women got around to popping it en masse we were well into the 1970s.

The Pill gave females ultimate control over avoiding an unwanted pregnancy. It also meant unromantic faffing about with condoms, diaphragms

or other contraceptive contraptions could be a thing of the past.

On the downside the “have I taken it today or not, jaysus, I can’t remember” dilemma was a new one that had to be mastered if the full potential of the Pill was to be exploited.

4 YOGA

It’s not every woman’s cup of chai, but there are plenty of busy women who keep sane and, as a bonus, physically fit by escaping the house and partner and children a couple of times a week for their Bikram or Ashtanga or Hatha yoga class. For women who were allergic to the likes of aerobics (far too much jigging around), this more serene activity offered a way to relax while convincing yourself that Madonna-style upper arms were only 10 downward dogs away. In truth, Madonna ruined the yoga buzz for a while with her unhealthy leotard addiction, but yoga provided a quiet space in which to reflect and aspire to fitness in the mind and body which has been a life saver for many women over the last couple of decades.

5 WINGS

You know, the ones on sanitary towels. Actually, let's hear it for all those modern sanitary products which help make menstruation such a joy. Thanks to tampons and towels with wings we discovered we could go rollerblading and abseil down cliffs wearing white jeans. Kotex made a clever ad recently inspired by those enthusiastically euphemistic commercials. In it, a young woman talked about how much she loved her period: "Sometimes I just want to run on a beach. Usually, by the third day, I really just want to dance ... the ads on TV are really helpful because they use that blue liquid, and I'm like 'Oh, that's what's supposed to happen'."

Even though we've reached a stage where we can be ironic about it, we shouldn't forget to be ashamed of the whole bloody thing. In the original Kotex ad the word vagina was used, but some of the big TV networks refused to air the commercial because it was too "frank".

6 BLOGS

Blogs are this generation’s equivalent of the coffee morning. Naturally men were the early adopters of the internet so at first computer geekery and gamery dominated the blogosphere. Over the past decade women beheld the internet and, lo, saw that it was a place where they could listen, speak and learn from each other. The “Mommyblogger” phenomenon in the US is now a multi-million dollar industry with the ultimate poster mom of the genre, Heather B Armstrong, who writes the blog Dooce.com, attracting more than one-and-a-half million followers on Twitter. She is rapidly catching up on Paris Hilton, who has never composed a baby poo-related tweet in her life.

The Irish equivalents – take a bow redmum.ie – are rapidly gaining traction. Mammy bloggers of Ireland unite and take over.

7 ELECTRIC BREAST PUMP

It was only the 1990s when the first electric- powered, vacuum-operated breast pump became available outside hospitals making it easier for women to "pump in style" as one manufacturer puts it. Some of them were noisier than others, but the latest models emit a harmless hum. These days there are pumps with memory (mammary?) chips, ones that pack away into designer backpacks and a no-hands model that can be powered by a car's cigarette lighter. Unfortunately, none of these take away the feeling of being a lumbering cow attached to a milking machine.

8 THE MOBILE PHONE

A few years ago Samsung brought out a phone that was pitched at the female market. It was lavender pink, naturally, and incorporated "lifestyle features" such as a calorie calculator, shopping list maker and an ovulation calendar. You could put in your birth date and find out if you were intelligent, attractive or emotionally stable. It wasn't possible to be all three - you're a woman, remember. Thankfully most mobile phone manufacturers know all we actually want from a phone is to be able to text the objects of our affection at

3am on the wrong side of two bottles of Chardonnay. Joking aside, the advent of the phone meant women felt safe while out alone, were able to make contact in the event of an emergency and keep track of their children in the manner of Big Mother.

The downside of that last one means having to deal with texts like "no funds, can you cllct me, msd last bus, sry".

But still. ...

9 THE MICROWAVE

Ping! That's the sound of millions of women being liberated

from the shackles of the conventional oven. As Shirley Conran once said "life is too short to stuff a mushroom". Luckily, it's not too short to stick a ready meal in the microwave. It also meant leftovers could be transformed. Yesterday's roast dinner, cold and congealed on a plate in the fridge, could with a ping be transformed into a heated-up version of the original - you just had to watch you didn't scald your tongue. While we are at it, let's hear it for Angel Delight, Pot Noodle and the Fray Bentos pie - convenience foods that, while they were never going to win any culinary prizes, allowed women to spend less time in the kitchen.

As a bonus, the proliferation of microwaves in the 1980s introduced some Irish men to what was up until then the foreign and dangerous terrain of cooking.

10 NAPPIES

Absorbent. Leak proof. Comfortable. And the holy grail: disposable. The cries of “hallelujah” coming from Irish women leaving behind the thankless, repetitive task of changing and washing soiled cloth nappies behind could be heard from here to Pampers HQ in the United States. By the 1970s the giant safety pin had been replaced by the adhesive strip, which made the product safer for babies. For years environmentalists have argued against landfill- clogging disposable nappies and this has led to a slew of reusable products gaining in popularity as the designs have grown more sophisticated. But the green argument, according to novelist Adele Parks, is not as important as the fact that disposable nappies liberated women from “lugging around endless pails of hot water and steeping nappies”, the freedom, she said, was “a giant leap for womankind”.