International Women's Day was celebrated in Dublin yesterday with events ranging from coffee mornings to readings of stories of women torture victims. On the day which has its roots in a 1907 protest by women trade unionists in America, women were reminded that a pay gap still existed in Ireland, more than 20 years after equal pay legislation was enacted.
Amnesty International published a report on torture of women and girls, with prominent Irish figures including Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries reading stories of women torture victims from Guinea, Iraq, Kurdistan, Mexico and the Philippines.
Ms Doreen Coleman, president of Network Ireland, an all-Ireland organisation for women in business, and Ms Mary Doyle, an economist from ICC Bank, hosted a coffee morning in the Merrion Hotel.
The National Women's Council of Ireland also had a coffee morning to honour women volunteers, past and present. Ms Grainne Healy asked why women did not have half the power to make decisions about the issues affecting their lives.
She said women in the EU still earned on average 83 per cent of male earnings, still performed more than 80 per cent of household tasks and accounted for only 18 per cent of decision-makers in EU institutions.
Among those gathered for the event were Ms Mary Banotti MEP and Ms Margaret Erraught, a member of the Irish Countrywomen's Association since 1956 and a former chairwoman of the Council for the Status of Women.
Ms Hilda Tweedy, the council's first chairwoman, recalled returning from an international congress in 1949 "all starry eyed about equal pay for work of equal value". She said it was extraordinary there remained "grey areas" of equal pay. "It's like women's work in the home. It's never done. You can't relax and say women have got things, even though they may have got it in law."
In Galway yesterday tributes to the late "Queen of Connemara", Ms Bina McLoughlin, were paid on a day marked with music, poetry and a parade, writes Lorna Siggins. Some 50 women attended the gathering hosted by the Women in Media and Entertainment group in the Town Hall theatre, and on the city's streets. In the theatre, Ms Margaretta D'Arcy delivered a eulogy to Ms McLoughlin, who died several weeks ago at the age of 72 in Merlin Park Hospital, Galway.
Ms McLoughlin was a dramatist, actress and a farmer, who championed the rights of her sex. She made news after her death when she bequeathed her property at Leenane to the Minister of State for Rural Development, Mr Eamon O Cuiv and his family. He has arranged for its return to her relatives.