AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
The latest plans to promote gender equality have been greeted with derision and had fun made of them. A bit unfortunate, but they have come across like a well-intentioned but misguided auntie giving out unasked-for advice and furthermore barking – or rather advising – up the wrong tree.
The National Strategy for Women and Girls, endorsed by the National Women’s Council, includes a campaign against ‘manosphere’ type narratives by the likes of the Tate Brothers, Andrew and Tristan (nasty fellows currently awaiting extradition from the US to the UK on charges of rape and sex trafficking) and ‘tradwife’ influencers in case girls might be pressurised into ‘care’ roles.
Take a look at crime figures: 93% of homicides are committed by males, men are the ones who rape and impose coercive control over women and are almost exclusively the perpetrators in domestic abuse cases. In the domestic sphere, men hardly pull their weight; 98% of intensive, unpaid caring is done by women and 65% of parent caring, according to the Council for the Status of Women, and women still do twice as much of the domestic work as men while holding down a full-time job.
It seems to me, unless I am completely confused, there is a problem with men’s – some men – anti-social and uncaring behaviour. So why, in the name of goodness, are the Department of Children, Disability and Equality directing their 2026-28 plan for the advancement of gender equality at we girls rather than enlightening the guys? It’s a bit like blaming the victim.
Among the aims of the plan are that women “should be free from harmful gender norms, free from violence and harassment and that their needs should be taken into account in policy”. Who, you might ask, is responsible for harmful misogyny, for violence and for policy which fails to take account of women’s needs?
What planet are these strategists and council members living on? Perhaps one dedicated to a mistaken form of virtue signalling? Surely the solution lies in changing the thinking of guys who want the manosphere version of women who are subservient to male domination and are influenced by porn portraying women as sex objects?
If the strategists think that us Irish girls and women don’t see through the American phenomenon of tradwives which monetise a romantic version of motherhood, they are seriously insulting our intelligence. The difficulties of married women’s lot a couple of decades ago, with a marriage bar and no access to birth control, are far too recent for us to have any illusions about a ‘trad’ version of wifehood.
Many women would like to spend more time at home with their children. As things are, they cannot afford to do so; it takes eight to nine times a couple’s combined annual salary to buy a home. Policy doesn’t provide adequate support for childcare for women who work, either. Where is a stay-at-home parent allowance or comprehensive childcare support when we need it?
There are plenty of worthwhile measures in the plan – like encouraging girls to take up apprenticeships – but it seems to echo the thinking behind the ill-judged ‘Women In The Home’ 2024 referendum. Involving two amendments to the Constitution, one dealing with care and the other with the definition of family, the change, which would have deleted the words woman, mother and home, was roundly defeated. Women don’t want their identity and roles deleted. Nothing wrong with equality of opportunity but that shouldn’t ignore the difference between the sexes. Women want to care, it’s part of what they do.
It seems that women are often caught in a conflict between caring and career without enough support from State, employers and partners.
Author Joanna Trollope, a canny observer of domestic angst, writes about Ruth, successful and out-earning her husband to his consternation, who finds she is pregnant. In her novel Second Honeymoon Ruth thinks: ”In behaving in a way that was not automatically self-deprecating and deferential she had surrendered the chief defining quality of femininity, that of being the giver. Never mind the unfairness of it, never mind the way that the most cherished traits of femininity always seem to be defined within a relationship, as if possessing no value unless to others.”
Women need caring to be valued and supported. They also want a fair deal.
