Ireland promised the UN it would draw up an action plan on women's issues. Eight years later there's still no sign of it, reports Lorna Siggins

Family-friendly employment. High-quality childcare for all. Better health services for women. Further protection of women and children from domestic violence . . . . These were among Ireland's commitments to the United Nations when it participated in the largest gathering of its type in history, the Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing in September 1995. Labelled by cynics as a feminist Woodstock, the conference was attended by 18,000 representatives, from more than 180 countries, with diverse political and religious views.

Sino-US relations, the Vatican's determination to concede nothing on reproductive rights and a guest list that included Hillary Rodham Clinton and Benazir Bhutto dominated headlines, but the 10-day conference did produce an international platform for action. "A document we can do business with" was how Amnesty International described the agreed agenda for the next century, building on the legally binding 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Although not legally binding in itself, the Beijing document had considerable moral authority. To quote one phrase coined that week in China, governments were challenged to sign all the documents but then send the cheques. For although there were many compromises, including a failure to tackle the structural causes of women's poverty and marginalisation, there were important advances, such as the copper-fastening of women's sexual autonomy as a human right.

The Irish delegation, led by Mervyn Taylor, as the equality minister of the day, argued that it already reflected much of the platform in its legislation and that Ireland was not a state with a reputation for serious human-rights abuses. Ireland had signed up to the UN women's convention in 1985; Taylor's team produced 12 commitments in Beijing, including the four already mentioned, which would form part of a national action plan for women. More than 60 representatives of Irish non-governmental organisations who had travelled to China felt that many of the commitments didn't go far enough, but there was a general welcome and enthusiasm for the promised action plan.

More than eight years and several governments later, there has been no plan, only a promise last September by Willie O'Dea, Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, to draw up a five-year "national women's strategy" by the end of this year.

"Absolutely not good enough," says Noirin Clancy, co-ordinator of the Women's Human Rights Project. Established in 2001 by the representatives of non-governmental organisations who travelled to Beijing in 1995, to keep women's issues on the agenda, it is an umbrella organisation representing groups from the Disabled Women's Working Group to Ruhama, Women's Aid, the National Women's Council and the African Women's Network. "A strategy is very different from a practical action plan, and the Government is just seeking a further stalling mechanism," she says.

Not so, says the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, which points out that when O'Dea made his announcement he was also marking the publication of the Government's latest progress report on the elimination of discrimination.

The document, which combines Ireland's fourth and fifth reports to the UN, highlights "considerable progress", as the Department puts it. It cites the increase in the female labour force from 601,700 in 1997 to 771,300 in 2002 - or from 41.4 per cent of the workforce in 1996 to 48.9 per cent in 2002. It also records a legislative "milestone": the enactment of the Employment Equality Act 1998 and the Equal Status Act 2000 and the establishment of the Equality Authority and the Equality Tribunal.

"The Department has instituted various institutional, administrative and legal reforms to further gender equality and has overseen a number of important developments since Ireland's last report," O'Dea said in a statement. "However, the Government is conscious that much work remains to be done to achieve full equality of opportunity for Irish women and men."

The Women's Human Rights Project believes the report to be full of omissions. To hear the views of its members it held a series of regional workshops late last year, involving more than 150 participants, from Ballybeg to Belfast. Its alternative assessment of the Government's progress identifies four critical areas: political representation, violence against women, health and barriers to education and employment.

Political representation

The overwhelming majority of decision-makers are still male, the project's report notes. The proportion of women elected to the Dáil has risen by only 5 per cent in 20 years, to 13.25 per cent, and attempts to address this have been limited. It identifies key barriers: an inhibitive all-male culture, underrepresentation of women in traditional entry points to politics, such as law and business, family-unfriendly working hours and practices and lack of childcare support for women seeking to enter politics.

Violence against women

The project's report notes that the Government describes this category as domestic violence in its document, even though it also involves rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment in the workplace, trafficking and prostitution. The statistics in the Government's progress report also deal only with domestic violence, even though the UN requested comprehensive information on all types of violence. Failure to include more details adds to the invisibility of the problem, the report comments.

Almost 90 per cent of women stay with violent partners, as they have nowhere to go, yet the Government appears to be leaving a solution to voluntary organisations, according to the project's report. The Government's document claims asylum-seekers who have been sexually assaulted are referred to a rape crisis centre; the Women's Human Rights Project says the centres are struggling to cope with demand.

The project's report also highlights the judiciary's inconsistency in cases involving violence against women and the limited nature of gender-sensitive training for judges. No more than 6 per cent of perpetrators of domestic violence are sent to prison, the report says. It quotes the National Women's Council, which describes the justice system as "the area where participants experienced the most devastating humiliation and disempowerment".

Health

This subject elicited some of the most impassioned contributions during regional workshops, according to Noirin Clancy. The links between poverty, inequality and health are widely acknowledged as a significant challenge, but they are not reflected in the Government's document. Asylum-seekers, Traveller women and women with disabilities are the most vulnerable when it comes to a discriminatory health system, and the delays in extending initiatives such as BreastCheck and the cervical screening programme nationwide are of great concern.

The project's report addresses the unresolved abortion issue, also noting that women asylum-seekers who leave the country to terminate a pregnancy run the risk of not being able to return. It welcomes the establishment of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency but is concerned about plans to amalgamate it into the Department of Health and Children; funding for this critical service must be ring-fenced, it says.

The chairwoman of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, Olive Braiden, who went to Beijing, acknowledges that setting up the agency marks one positive development since 1995, and government departments have responded very positively to the agency's strategy document.

Implementation is the next challenge; she is due to meet the Minister for Health and Children shortly to discuss the agency's lifespan, which is officially limited to five years.

Education and employment

Although the number of women in paid employment is rising, much of the work is relatively poorly paid and part time. The project's report deals with the pay gap (women's industrial earnings are still 30 per cent below men's), the social-welfare dependency of spouses, the absence of sufficient and affordable childcare; the lack of paid parental leave; and what it describes as a particularly serious omission in the Government's document: no reference to the contribution or value of unpaid work to the community and to the economy.

The report of the Women's Human Rights Project is due to be submitted to the UN in March, after it has been launched by Mary Robinson. "It was perhaps the most extensive consultation of its type," says Clancy. There are no immediate plans for a fifth UN women's conference, but there are moves within Europe to convene a regional follow-up to Beijing. "The idea is being pushed by Finland in particular, and it has the support of the Europe Women's Lobby, an umbrella network which the National Women's Council is party to here," says Clancy. "We are hoping that Ireland will use this current EU presidency to ensure that such a regional council does take place - sooner rather than later."

Until then, she hopes, the project's report will put pressure on the Government to draw up that long-awaited action plan - and then send the cheques.

The Women's Human Rights Project is at www.whrp-ireland.org