Absentee fathers 'must all pay'

UNEMPLOYED AND low-waged absentee fathers may be forced to pay maintenance for their children after strong signals from the Minister for Social Affairs that she is unhappy with current policy.

Speaking at an International Women’s Day event in Dublin yesterday, Mary Hanafin said the policy, which exempts men living on social welfare benefits or earning less than €18,000 a year from paying child maintenance, mitigated against stable families.

“We as policy makers are supporting men in not supporting their children,” she said.

She said that she was “anxiously trying to promote new policies” which would improve the lives of children and get more lone parents into education, training and work.

“There are things we have to get right, things we haven’t got right yet. One is lone parents. Despite our best intentions and significant investment children of lone parents are four times more likely to be in poverty.”

Ms Hanafin was speaking at the annual women’s day lunch in aid of An Cosán, a Tallaght-based education and development initiative for women.

Chief executive of An Cosán Liz Waters said the service of women to the country during the recession needed to be recognised.

“Women are the backbone, they are keeping the country going. They are carrying the burden of poverty but by working to educate themselves and their families they are finding a route out of poverty.”

Feminism remains one of the world’s most important movements for social justice, feminist writer Kat Banyard has told an International Women’s Day conference.

The popular idea that we are living in a post-feminist society where feminism was no longer a necessary force was a myth, Ms Banyard told the conference organised by the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI).

Rights such as the right to equal pay became “abstract pledges” when women did two-thirds of the world’s work, earned 10 per cent of the world’s pay and owned 1 per cent of the world’s means of production, and even in the UK women earned 23 per cent less then men, she said.

The most worrying threat to women’s equality was the rise of the global sex industry, she said. Pornography, prostitution and stripping were seen as “leisure activities”. It had become acceptable for businesses to entertain clients in lap-dancing clubs.

“In the last two decades the global sex industry has boomed. It has never been more acceptable, prevalent or approved. In the UK the number of men paying women for sex doubled in the 1990s.”

Rape was seen as a “natural hazard” for women walking home alone. Women saw their own bodies as inanimate public structures, maintained for the benefit of others, she said.

“The objectification of women is one of the most harmful forces operating in the world today.”

NWCI director Susan McKay said it was important that the advances made by women in recent decades were maintained and built upon. “We have achieved so much and come so far. We need to be careful that that is not taken away from us.”