Sir, – I write in response to the article “Norma Foley’s anti-tradwife campaign is absurd,” by Jennifer O’Connell recently. While the article rightly points out that women deserve much more tangible and meaningful long-term state support when it comes to issues of childcare and overall care, the National Women and Girls strategy is an important commitment by Government to gender equality.
The idea of a strategy “for women and girls” comes from the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women where the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, of which Ireland was one of 189 signatories, set about achieving gender equality through an agreed framework internationally.
The chosen framework to achieve gender equality is called gender mainstreaming. Areas of policy are to be viewed with a gender mainstreaming lens before proceeding to the legislative process, thus moving away from the method of adding women to achieve gender equality, instead creating equality from the beginning in a meaningful way.
This was welcomed as a solution to a problem that was not just viewed as unfair; it was seen as impeding economic growth.
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In 2000 the then Department of Justice published a report titled The Development of a Mechanisms to Monitor Progress in Achieving Gender Equality in Ireland, which reaffirmed the government’s commitment to the Beijing Platform for Action, and the commitment to the development of national women’s plans as a key vehicle of gender mainstreaming delivery. The report calls gender mainstreaming an instrument through which equality between women and men is advanced.
Next the Report to the UN on the National Plan for Women 2002 on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action was published and finally in 2007 a full strategy was launched called the National Women’s strategy 2007-2016. There followed the National Women and Girls strategy 2017-2020, which was extended to 2021 due to the pandemic.
Subsequently, Ireland had no cross-departmental approach or strategy for gender equality, which was criticised by that Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, until the launch of the current plan at the end of 2025.
In the meantime, the European Institute for Gender Equality has published a report on care in the EU noting that of all issues related to gender equality, care has been singled out as a steadfast barrier for decades.
The 2024 report shows that gender inequalities are prevalent across the EU in housework and in unpaid care. Women spend the most time and intensity in unpaid care work, and this is shaping life in every one of the 27 Member States. While many will say we don’t need report after report to tell us this, data is key to being able to create policy, budget and meaningfully change the system.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Women’s Rights Annual Report in 1995 noted that “Women and men should both be in a position to combine parenthood and gainful employment if they so wish. This can only be achieved through a system of widely available, high quality childcare.”
It’s hard to fathom that the same issue would still be a barrier more than 30 years on. This clearly demonstrates how imperative it is that the current Government strategy for women and girls achieves change in a timely manner, and I remain a hopeful feminist that it will succeed in that mission. – Yours, etc,
CAITRÍONA FITZPATRICK,
Doctoral researcher (gender equality),
Department of Applied Social Studies,
Maynooth University.
