THE MOVEMENT towards equality for women has generated some of the most radical changes ever made in the nature of human societies. It has touched almost every aspect of life, from the bedroom to the boardroom, from the most intimate aspects of our lives to the most public. For both women and men it has shifted the very foundations of identity, forcing all of us to rethink basic assumptions about who we are.
Modern feminism has been around for at least two centuries now, but its “second wave” began to gather force 40 years ago in 1970. In Ireland, the vigour of women’s organisations and their role in the creation of the State had been suppressed for many decades. Two events in 1970 made key contributions to the process of putting women back on the map. The establishment of the first Commission on the Status of Women began what was often a slow and tough struggle to remove the legal provisions that essentially defined women as second-class citizens. And the first meetings of what was to become the short-lived but highly effective Irish Women’s Liberation Movement began, not just a process of institutional change, but a redefinition of the public image of womanhood. Between them, these two forces – one official and relatively cautious, the other unofficial and decidedly flamboyant – accounted for the robustness of Irish feminism. There would not be a Madam Editor without them.
Our Sisters supplement today may be equally thought-provoking for younger and older readers. As well as marking the contributions of a tiny sample of the many thousands of women who created change in so many different areas of Irish life, we have tried to reflect both the challenges that faced the movement in 1970 and those that present themselves in 2010. Younger readers may be shocked to discover the sheer extent of institutionalised sexism that feminists had to confront, from the obligation to give up a job in the public service on marriage to the inability to order a pint in many pubs. But women who lived through those struggles may also be unsettled by the sense that, for all the victories won, full equality is still a work in progress.
There is pride in remembering the courage of those who fought for basic equality. There is also perhaps a degree of dismay and discouragement in reflecting on the reality that legal change has not in itself swept away all of the inequalities. Legislating for equal pay, for example, has only partly closed the gender pay gap: so long as women have to take on a disproportionate commitment to domestic work and childcare, notional equality will not be translated into reality.
Nor has the large-scale movement of women into the paid workforce been an unqualified triumph. Women often find themselves having to juggle both the new expectations and the old ones. With male unemployment having risen so sharply, many women find that they have to be both breadwinners and traditional mothers. And young girls face pressures to conform to stereotypes and physical ideals that are at least as heavy as those faced by their mothers. Yet, in the long view afforded by a 40th anniversary, the progress towards equality is genuinely remarkable.