Where is 'a woman's place' in Ireland today?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2024
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Earlier this year, on International Women's Day, the Irish electorate was asked to vote in two referendums on changing Ireland's constitution regarding family and care.
One of those questions was whether they wished to remove a reference to the role of women in the home, which some view as being out-of-step with modern Irish society.
A lot has changed since the constitution was written in 1937. Ireland is now among the highest-ranking countries in Europe for gender equality. However, in both referendums, voters rejected the bid for constitutional change.
In this programme, Leanna Byrne travels back to her home city of Dublin to explore Ireland's story when it comes to women, the family and work; speaking to Irish women about their experiences over the decades to now.
(Image: From left to right Niamh O'Reilly, Lorraine Lally and Rena Maycock, who spoke to the BBC World Service in Dublin in March 2024.)
Presented and produced by Leanna Byrne
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Business Daily from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:03.5 | I'm Leanna Byrne and today we're hearing from Irish women about their working lives, |
| 0:07.8 | the progress that's been made and the hurdles many women still face. |
| 0:16.2 | I'm going to start this episode of Business Daily by giving you a few hypotheticals. |
| 0:22.4 | Right now, I live in the UK, but say I was living back where I'm from, in Ireland. |
| 0:28.0 | And say I was born 70 years ago, and I had a job. |
| 0:31.9 | But then I met someone, fell in love and got married. |
| 0:36.1 | Well, then I'd have to give up my job, |
| 0:38.5 | all because of something called the marriage bar. |
| 0:41.6 | Women in certain sectors had to give up their jobs when they got married. |
| 0:46.3 | That's Professor Linda Conley, |
| 0:48.4 | director of the Manus University Social Sciences Institute in Ireland. |
| 0:53.0 | Now, some of you might find that surprising. |
| 0:55.5 | You might think the 70s wasn't really that long ago. |
| 0:59.3 | Then again, there are plenty of countries around the world where women are not afforded |
| 1:03.3 | the same rights as today. |
| 1:04.9 | Ireland was a very religious country with traditional family values. |
| 1:10.3 | And to spend your life in the home is actually a direct |
| 1:13.7 | reference to a line in Ireland's constitution, a clause known as the woman in the home clause. |
| 1:19.9 | The main premise was what we might call a strict sexual division of labour in society. But over the |
| 1:26.0 | past few decades, a lot has changed. |
| 1:28.5 | The country has made big progress in terms of women's rights. |
... |
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