Equality battle hampered, women told

Women's battle for equality is being hampered by the view that the women's agenda for equality is finished, the National Women's Council has warned.

At its annual conference, Ms Grainne Healy, the council chairwoman, said the gender agenda had not gone away. "The progress of this rumour that women's equality is passe has created a situation where many women find it difficult within their local community, within the community and voluntary sector, and within the social partnership structure to talk explicitly about women's needs or to offer a gender analysis," she said.

Referring to controversy between traditional and liberal groups over who represented the interests of the family, she said no one group owned the family.

"We are all products of, or are part of a variety of, family set-ups, whether traditional, non-traditional, two-parent, one-parent, blood-bound or families of choice," Ms Healy said. All types of families needed the full support of society.

She encouraged people not to take a "rose-tinted" view of family life in the past. "The Arcadian viewpoint of the Irish family in the past ignores the reality of whence many Irish people have come; the poverty, forced emigration, long-term unemployment, appalling housing conditions, childhood killer diseases, sexual abuse in many families and institutions where the sacred responsibility to care for the most vulnerable was abused."

She said gender equality was not about eliminating differences between men and women. "It is about eliminating inequality."

Ms Healy criticised the Government's decision to introduce unpaid parental leave. "The NWCI wanted an introduction, as a starting point, of five days' paid parental leave for fathers. This was not agreeable to the other social partners or Government and has been kicked into yet another committee for consideration next year."

She encouraged people to ask the social partners why they did not agree to "this most basic demand for working parents".

"Equality, like charity, really does begin at home," she said.

Early next year the National Women's Council plans to meet members on a regional level.

"We are working to devise ways to ensure that the voices less often heard are made audible," Ms Healy said.

Meanwhile, Dr Germaine Greer's portrayal of men as unreliable and lazy was challenged by some audience members, who said these men were in the minority. "Not all men are irresponsible," Dr Greer responded, "but too many of them are."