The gains achieved by the Irish women's movement were robustly defended by the director of the European Women's Foundation at the Parnell Summer School in Co Wicklow yesterday.
Acknowledging a "current backlash" against the women's movement, Ms Gemma Hussey said the State's laissez-faire attitude to childcare, with its implications for empowerment and employment, was a scandal.
However, she flatly rejected a suggestion by Ms Teresa Mullen, a non-party county councillor from Kilkenny, that the movement had contributed to a demeaning of the position of women, particularly in the home. She said that in her view Irish women had long been devalued before the rise of the women's movement.
"Before the days of the Irish women's movement, women were extraordinarily unprotected in terms of their legal rights, their financial rights and from violence in the home," she said.
Major changes had been made in the rights of women in these crucial areas, and the Irish movement had been about securing equality for women, particularly in the home. These were women who had already been devalued and demeaned and who had to endure "so much hidden suffering.
"It is understandable that a new era, speaking out, was threatening to some, but childrearing is at the centre of society and supporting that role is what the women's movement was about."
In contrast to the situation with regard to childcare in Ireland, Ms Hussey said, the system in Scandinavia was extensive.
She was joined on the summer school platform by the independent senator and outgoing general secretary of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, Mr Joe O'Toole. He said that only about one in four people he had asked in the Dail were aware that the phrase "cherishing all children equally" was not part of the Constitution. It was in fact in the 1916 Proclamation.
If it had been in the Constitution "we could not have had the Jamie Sinnott case. People would be guaranteed equal access to education depending on need, not their age".
