AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
Just the other week we said ‘Goodnight Sister’ to Nell McCafferty, journalist and founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation movement. While she may be gone, she was unforgettably unique and scores of illuminating memories and tributes to her have shot across the media like August meteor showers.
There are seminal moments among my own memories of her. There was the arrival of the Contraceptive Train, where I was waiting with other supporters and got whacked over the head with my own placard by a protesting member of Mna na hEireann, as Nell and other libbers hurled contraband Dutch caps and spermicides over the heads of customs men to waiting women.
There was Nell’s stalwart defence of Joanne Hayes, wrongly accused of murdering the Kerry baby, followed by her book ‘ A Woman to Blame’. Most of all I remember Nell’s presence at the gatherings of women journalists in Gaj’s café which ignited the slow burning rocket of women’s lib.
There was a daunting amount of change to be achieved then, women’s rights were almost non- existent in the early 1970s, no contraception, no divorce, no unmarried mothers or deserted wife’s allowance, no abortion, no protection for battered wives and their children, no right to obtain a bank loan as a married woman without the husband’s consent. While all the above have been ticked off the to-do list it seems right to ask the question in honour of Nell, how much more remains to be done: are we nearly there?
Lately it might seem that the powers that be have become more conscious of women’s needs with free contraception available to women aged between 17 to 35, free HRT coming on stream and the proposal by Justice Minister Helen McEntee that abusive , violent men should have to leave the family home rather than the woman involved and her children being made homeless by domestic violence . But no, we aren’t there yet, not by a long chalk.
Even in the last week ways in which the legal system can fail women and hit the headlines. Celine Cawley was beaten to death by her husband Eamonn Lillis in 2008 yet he still retained his parental rights over his daughter Georgina who is campaigning to have the law changed. The trials of sex crime victims, take years to reach court in a system which can re-traumatise the victims who are not allowed legal representation and may be subjected to inappropriate personal cross examination. In one recent case cross-examination involved the display of intimate garments with the question: “Is this the kind of underwear you usually wear?”
This summer the inappropriate sentencing for violent crimes against women was made glaringly obvious when Natasha O’Brien was beaten unconscious in an assault by soldier Cathal Crotty who received a three- year suspended sentence, and boasted on line: “One (punch) to put her down, two to put her out.”
More than the law needs to change: most of all it’s the sexist culture which encourages some men to have a mind-set of entitlement to subservience and sexual gratification from women. On the day we learned of Nell’s passing there was a report of a case where Marius Lacatus dragged a woman into a Dublin Park and threatened to kill her in a sex assault.
I don’t think Nell would be cheering Minister Roderick O’Gorman for contesting bids to broaden the scope to the redress scheme for thousands of survivors of Mother & Baby homes, for many it is already to late for justice long denied.
It can take more than campaigning though to change minds and Nell had a great way with her of bringing humour and a fine sense of the ridiculous to bear on situations. On the notorious Kerry Babies Tribunal set up to investigate Garda conduct of the case, the character and morals of Joanne Hayes were questioned intrusively by all male professionals, Nell’s writing says it all.
“The most illuminating example of the male mind at work on Irish womanhood came from Dr Brian McCaffery, Clinical Director of Psychiatry for the Eastern Health Board. ’She got herself pregnant on three occasions,’ he said.
“She did not.
“Joanne Hayes did not impregnate herself.
“It merely slipped Dr McCaffery’s mind that men are responsible for pregnancy too.”
Right on sister!
