Woman's Hour - Woman's Hour in Ireland

Episode Date: May 7, 2019

This time last year there was a referendum in Ireland about abortion. The country voted to change its strict laws and make it legal up to 12 weeks. So Jane and the crew are taking the whole show to Dublin to talk about how the country's changed for women over the last 12 months. As well as examining how abortion provision is actually working, we’ll discuss divorce because in a couple of weeks they’ll be another referendum on that too. We'll also talk about the correct way to memorialise Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes and Industrial Schools. Plus, there's a clause in the Irish Constitution about a woman's place in the home but many women argue it's outdated and patriarchal, so we'll tackle that subject too.There’s so much to talk about. It’ll be a lively, freewheeling discussion with our panellists Dr Rhona Mahony who is Executive Director of Women's Health in Ireland East; Susan Lohan who's a member of the Collaborative Forum on Mother and Baby Homes, and the author and essayist Sinéad Gleeson. And there's live music from singer and songwriter Ailbhe Reddy. We're live from the beautiful meeting room in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is the Woman's Hour podcast, Tuesday, May 7th, 2019. And today's programme was at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. We were in the meeting room there, a splendid Georgian setting. We had a fantastic panel of guests. And we were basically hoping to scrape the surface, really, of Irish women's lives

lots and lots of changes over the last decade or so and it's something we thought was really worth marking and celebrating and discussing so that's what we did on the programme today. I should say that at times the sound quality at the start of this programme isn't brilliant but trust me it does get better and it's worth persevering because some of the contributions this morning were really really interesting good morning and welcome to the fantastic georgian splendor of the royal irish academy in dawson street in dublin can we have some applause from the audience oh thank you thank you very very much that ended brilliantly very very quickly Real drama there. This incredible building, it is magnificent actually. It has this incredible duck.

Now what colour did we decide the ceiling was? Duck egg blue. Duck egg blue ceiling with magnificent cornicing. So it's really an atmosphere that's far too posh for the likes of me, but I'm very, very chuffed to be here. We are talking about Ireland and about women and about how Irish women's lives have changed so much over the last, well, notably over the last decade or so, but of course, change has been going on forever. There's an enormous amount to squeeze in to 44 minutes, so I'm going to shut up as quickly as possible and bring in our guests who are this morning Susan Lohan who is from the Collaborative Forum on Mother and Baby Homes, also one of the founders of Adoption Rights Alliance. Susan, welcome to you. Thank you very much, Jane. We have the singer-songwriter Alva Reddy here. Alva's been cast in the role of young person which she's playing magnificently. Welcome to you, Alva. Thank you very much. The writer and broadcaster Sinead Gleeson is here.

Sinead, good morning to you. Morning, Jane. Author of a book called Constellations, which has a lot to say about Irish women, their bodies, their lives, and the way they have lived. And also today, we're joined by Dr. Rona Marnie, who used to delight in the title of Master of the National Maternity Hospital. Thank you. Yes, and you were the first woman to hold that role.

I was. And we said that earlier, that's a very matriarchal title. Not, but absolutely. So that was effectively a CEO, just to translate. But an unusual title. And as a woman, it was often the opening introduction, Master and Mistress. And this was always the hilarious joke I had to endure.

But I was, for a while, capable of being both master and mistress. Really okay I'll take your word for it and you now have you have a different job now? I have a different job I'm now in a network of maternity hospitals so hopefully working to improve maternity services generally and and women's services. Now if anybody wants to interact with us of course on social media you can do on Instagram at BBC Women's Hour it's the same same on Twitter. And you can email the programme as ever via the website bbc.org, which we're about to go on to discuss here. Abortion, of course, is not legal in Northern Ireland, which is... The vote was, well, it was overwhelming, but we should also acknowledge that a third of those who voted, voted not to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

What would you say about the impact that's made? I think it was, to all of us, somewhat of a surprise. It was such a strong vote. I mean, 66% voted in favour. And actually, we had been very uncertain before that vote as to what the outcome would be. A lot of people had been very quiet about their views. We had the usual debate. People described that referendum as being very divisive, but actually it wasn't. It was quite an informed debate, and I think we do have to look back at the history of it. We look back to 1983 when the Eighth Amendment

was put into the Constitution, which effectively stymied any ability to legislate for abortion. And that was a really divisive debate. I was 11. I still remember it. And a lot of misinformation, a lot of emotion. This time around, we'd had quiet voices of women for many years who'd taken cases to the European courts, women who'd spoken quietly, but more importantly, many women who travelled to have a termination of pregnancy.

And so many women in Ireland had direct experience of travelling, usually to the UK, for termination. So we were quite au fait with this subject. We were quite aware of it. And then coming up to this referendum, we had the Citizens' Assembly, where we had a group of citizens taken from, if you like, all walks of life who grappled with this.

And in fact, their recommendations were far more liberal than anyone had anticipated. And then we had the various health committees in the Oireachtas, where information again was presented. We had a lot of very respectful conversation on various programmes, which I think was really helpful in terms of dealing with the actual issues of fixed women. Alba, you are, I'm sure, have a big group of friends, of people who, young women who have been, were adversely affected by the situation before the vote. Yeah, of course, and I think that women of many generations ahead of me were also affected, and there's still women up north who

are being affected as well and I know a lot of people part of Anna Cosgrave's repeal campaign came out and talked about their experiences and I think that was a lot of those personal stories are what brought it over the line in a lot of ways for a lot of people. Yeah I'm interested there's a your book Constellations Sinead is brilliant and there's a paragraph I just want to draw people's attention to. Reproductive health is about autonomy, agency, choice, and heard. It's also about money, class, access, and privilege. Ireland's history for women is the history of our bodies.

We should say, of course, that abortion in Britain in 1967 was the Abortion Act. And before then, if you had a few quid, you could get a safe abortion, but not if you didn't have any money. This issue is sometimes we forget, don't we? Yeah, forget that the 1967 Abortion Act, while it applies to UK, doesn't apply to Northern Ireland and still doesn't. And we've had a couple of convictions

for women who've taken tablets. We've had a mother up in court for trying to procure tablets for her 15-year-old daughter who was in an abusive relation, and both mother and daughter didn't want this pregnancy to go ahead. In my experience,

I mean, I thought in my lifetime we would never have this vote. I'd really started to think that we wouldn't, and I have a daughter and thought about her life and how it would be. But it is about money and it is about class.

If you have the money to take a cheap flight, it used to to be the ferry and if you're undocumented if you're in direct provision in this country and if you're not wealthy if you're in an abusive relationship where you can't slip away for a couple of days and the laws it stands while is a huge change and important is still only up to 12 weeks not everybody knows that they're pregnant by 12 weeks so it's quite still quite problematic yeah and there are issues with the timing aren't there rona actually because sometimes i mean you can actually forget the pregnancy is counted not from when you conceived but the last menstrual period yeah yeah there's a very 12 plus zero there's a very acute cutoff and in fact even if you had started on the road of a termination of

pregnancy once you go beyond say if you took tablets and they didn't work, once you go beyond those 12 weeks, that's it, it is illegal. I think the point being to the criminalisation of termination of pregnancy, and I think that's something that has disappointed a lot of people with the current situation, and very problematic for women, and something indeed we've seen play out in Northern Ireland. This is a very necessary part of our healthcare, and I think the criminalisation, which still exists in Ireland, is a very necessary part of our health care and I think the criminalisation which still exists in Ireland is a very negative element of this in relation to care of women. I do think it's important that we acknowledge those who didn't want to repeal the 8th. Let's hear from a young woman, Christine Nilové. She's 22 and she voted no to repealing the 8th. The danger of having abortion laws and allowing for abortion in a

country is that it's kind of like an easy way out that they say well we're providing choice for them they can have an abortion now. I mean like where were the committees on adoption laws? Where are the committees on supports for women? They were only committees on abortion and I think that as a society we shouldn't be settling for that And that is why when we have abortion in our country, the government isn't under as much pressure to provide the other supports there for women. Susan Lohan, from your perspective, what do you think of that? Well, Adoption Rights Alliance and our sister organisation, Justice for Magdalene Research, we unequivocally supported unequivocally

supported uh women's choice in in the last referendum and we would have encouraged people to uh to vote to repeal the eighth i find it very interesting and listening to recordings such as you just played the adoption argument is always trotted out and why aren't we supporting and you know why don't such women access state reports or state supports of course the evidence is irrefutable we have never supported women in pregnancy in Ireland particularly those who were unmarried and the international evidence is that where abortion is available adoption rates remain fairly static because it's not the actual pregnancy per se, the choice whether to continue or not, that women are contemplating when they're contemplating adoption.

The main issue is how will they proceed once the child is born? Will they have sufficient funds? Will they have a common... In the 1980s in Ireland, there were still small hearing and newspapers with unmarried mothers seeking accommodation because landlords weren't going to allow any of those hussies into their bedsits. So, you know, the mention of supports is highly exaggerated, I think. Your own personal story, obviously, is what drives you. Can you

briefly outline that? Well, I was born in the 1960s. I'm not going to give my exact age away. To an older woman, I am unusually... My mother was 30 years of age. She was a successful civil servant, not the kind of stereotypical 16-year-old ingenue that most people perceive such women to have been. She was fortunate in that she escaped having to go into a mother and baby institution because she lived alone. She was a working woman, had her own accommodation, didn't have to explain herself to parents. So I had a relationship with her from the 1980s onwards that was at a time when the shutters actually hadn't come down on most of the agency files and then in the 19 in 2001 I sought information on my natural father and my siblings and that's when I was dubbed a destroyer of lives for wanting to do that.

And that really set me on my current path. So it only took me 17 years to identify my father and my siblings. 17 years. Yes. But it's been interesting. Yes. Interesting is an incredible adjective in the circumstances. So progress. What do you want to see happening now? Well, I think there's a rush within government, which we found in the collaborative forum, which was a group of 19 individuals directly affected either by their own stay in a mother

and child institution or a relative stay in one of those places. And it was said by the children's minister, Catherine Dupone, and we were tasked, we were given a mandate from the department to write a detailed report on issues of concern

and to make recommendations. Now, unfortunately, the minister is now declining to publish our report and the recommendations have appeared in a vacuum. So we want everybody affected by these issues to have access to all of their personal information.

We want them to have access to institutional files so they can actually ascertain the human rights abuses they suffered and a state apology. It's quite detailed, really. For the benefit of people listening in Britain who may not be completely aware of the scale of this, you gave me an incredible statistic before the programme started. What was that? Yeah, in 1967, the official Irish government figure for adoption was that 97% of all non-marital children were taken for adoption.

Now, that's a figure that eclipses other Catholic countries like Italy and Spain by a factor of maybe 30%. So we're looking at a forced adoption regime in Ireland, which of course no Irish politician will ever utter those words. And last May, we had the special UN rapporteur on children's exploitation, and particularly the sale of children. She met with us and she very much took on board all of our comments particularly the sale of children, she met with us and she very much took on board all of our comments about the sale and trafficking

of Irish children to the US and particularly on a cross-border basis from north to south or south to north. So the UN is very, very frustrated with successive Irish governments. They want a prompt, timely investigation into these matters

and similar areas such as the Magdalene laundries. Yeah, I mean, people, again, people listening will have heard of the Magdalene laundries, might have seen a film, I've certainly seen the film. Their industrial schools also existed. And mother and baby homes, which sound, sort of on the face of it, sound quite benign. It sounds very bucolic. And actually, when I was on the face of it sound quite benign it doesn't it sounds very bucolic and actually um when i was on the um the collaborative forum i chaired one of the

committees which dealt with terminology and one of our our first issues to address was the naming of these institutions so we want people to recognize that they were institutions never homes and we've replaced baby with the world's words children because what most people don't realize is that they were children abandoned to their own fates in those institutions up to maybe nine years of age particularly in you know the the institution which of course has received considerable international attention. There were children up to age 10 in that particular place who didn't get a schooling, who weren't fostered out, who were denied the opportunity to be brought up by their own mothers simply because they were

non-marital children. Sinead Gleeson, at the heart of all this is judgment, really, judgment on women and what women have done. And you talk about that in your book, don't you? Yeah, I think Ireland has operated for a very long time in a culture of shame and a culture of collusion that has actually lots of the sort of societal pillars and things that are meant to protect us like the church, like the medical world, like the Gardaí, the police, often all collaborated to the detriment of its citizens, often vulnerable citizens, often children, often women. So when girls tried to run away from mental laundries or mother and baby homes, it was the Gardaí

who were tasked to bring them back. Often their own families brought them back. And a lot of the culture and shame has come from the place of the body and sexuality, about sex outside of marriage, about pregnancy, about the culture of symphysiotomy, about abortion. Yes, we have discussed... I'm afraid I can't pronounce that. Symphysiotomy, yeah. Rona would be more of an expert on this, but it's a very troubling and invasive operation

that was performed on pregnant women where their pubic bone their their hip bones are basically broken to facilitate a birth and we've talked before earlier about the program about whether it intersects with the catholic church or not but lots of what's happened in the in this country has been about shaming people about morality about judging people and it's caused untold damage, and that's before we even get into, you know, it's actually, it's 10 years since the Ryan Report was published, which was the first kind of, the child abuse institutions,

20 years since the first public apology to survivors. So lots of what's happened in this country, unfortunately, has been at the hands of the church and the morality and complicity that goes hand in hand with church thinking and ethos, and it's been very, very damaging for Ireland. Rona? Yeah, I agree. I mean, when we go back, you know, we've recently been celebrating, you know, 100 years since

1916. And when we go back, so many women took part in that revolution. We've been honouring women who actually had been written out of that history completely. But a big part of what Ireland wanted then was this republic that would be equal for all of its citizens. And women really believed that they would be equal. But the moment the free state was formed, women were put right back in their box again. And in 1922, the first laws the free state passed were employment laws that said, you know, God forbid there be a woman in the army or a male telephonist.

And we weren't allowed certain civil service examinations and we weren't allowed to be on juries in 1931 the juries bill said the extra delicacy of Irish women meant that we couldn't sit on juries but many of the cases going through juries were actually rape um child abuse sexual abuse and in fact infanticide which we discussed earlier and that was um because in the slums of Dublin and indeed around the country women who had children outside marriage could not support those children. Many had no jobs. If they did they were in domestic jobs and where they weren't allowed to have those children and so they killed their children. I mean Cleo and Eratkin's work What Else Could I Do? Ina P the woman who killed her son. So many of those cases going through the courts were infanticide and the cases going through the courts were actually the tip of the iceberg.

And that's another piece of our history we haven't really got to grips with. We knew then that children outside marriage, 50% of them died before their first year of life. But the big part of the state also was in its interference with reproductive rights. And it was very influenced by Catholicism. You know, the Constitution was written, and although many elements of the Constitution are very good and espouse principles that protect society, they have been very difficult for women. And the worst probably being the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1935, which planned contraception, which meant that women couldn't plan their families to a huge piece of autonomy and that wasn't actually reversed

under the 90s in 1992 virgin megastore prosecuted in ireland condoms i mean we're talking about about history and yet it's only the 1970s and most of our lifetimes in this room that the marriage bar existed so if you were a woman who's a civil servant you forcibly had to leave your job if you got married also it's only 1996 since the last mile and laundry closed in dublin that's not that's not that long ago i need to say to people listening in britain apparently reception is a bit patchy so we're doing our very best to sort that out we're having a great time in dublin but apparently not everybody in britain can hear it um there was a really interesting point that helen in the audience made can we just get the microphone to helen um helen yes helen's on the front row helen, your point.

Yeah, I just wanted to ask the panel about Northern Ireland. Obviously, I'm originally Northern Ireland, but I left in the height of the troubles because I saw no future for my future children. But now as an older woman, I think sometimes we do need to look at the past in order to help shape the future so I just wondered how the panel feel about that idea. Sinead? Well it's been a really interesting couple of weeks in the north of Ireland and I knew Lyra McKee was devastated at her death and I think that part of what's happened it's happened in a vacuum where you don't have a government you don't have parties talking to each other and that's never going to be helpful and i think a lot of what has happened within that

vacuum has been um a lot of unhappiness a lot of people feeling outside of the situation and different elements that are problematic elements been allowed to gather momentum um and i think also i know we don't want to talk about brexit but i think northern ireland's been left out of the conversation on Brexit an awful lot, particularly in Britain, where most people the North voted to remain, and I think that conversation is not being had an awful lot when everybody talks

about the UK, and I think it's a really important conversation that we have to have. It's going to be hugely impactful for the South as well if Brexit goes ahead, and loads of those conversations are difficult to have, but need to be had, I think. I wonder if alvin wants to say anything about helen's original point not the b word necessarily but about well young women's lives um sorry young women in northern ireland well in in ireland northern ireland um i'm not sure i'm when you talk about the mothered

baby homes i think that uh i mean we haven't brought it up yet, but Sean McDermott Street was meant to be turned into a hotel. I think that that's a dangerous thing. That was, apparently, that plan has been shelved. Yeah, it has been. Wise words in my head. It's been shelved, yeah, yeah. I think something like a memorial, coming from a historical point of view,

I think it would be important to, we have to learn from the past to move forward, for sure. And I think that there's a lot of kids up north who are getting involved who don't really know what happened in the troubles because it hasn't been taught properly in schools either and if they're not going to see through things like that then how are they going to learn it would be it would be something if the death of lira led perhaps to stormont working again wouldn't it be It would be something. Susan, what do you think about that? Well, I think what was astonishing

after the awful murder of Lyra was that people so very quickly came out and said, not on our name. And I believe even the pro-Republican slogans that appeared temporarily have now been painted over. And I think what

hardliners don't realise is that there's a whole generation, maybe even two generations, who have no memory of what it used to be like and certainly wouldn't want to revisit those situations. So I think I agree with you, Jane, that if anything is to be achieved from that orphan murder, it might be that politicians will knock their heads together and reconvene Stormont. Right let's have another question from the

audience actually this is from Anna Maria who was one of the listeners who came from Cork which we really appreciate because that's quite a quite a journey. Anna Maria what would you like to say? My question was how might feminism shape Irish society for the good? And I'd be interested to hear what the panel have to say. OK, let's go to Rona on that. Thank you. I think really we move beyond feminism to some point. It's about society being able to reach its potential no matter who you are

and that you're not held back in some way because you're a man, because you're a woman and because you're not held back in some way because you're a man, because you're a woman, and because you're transgender. So it is really about a society that allows people to succeed. But what we've seen in Ireland, as with many European societies, and indeed much worse in some African society around the world, is that women are held back by virtue of their gender. I'm always horrified when I see maternal health outcomes, for example, in Africa, countries I visited where 99% of maternal deaths occur in the developing world, where you have female genital mutilation still practiced in 90% of the female population. So while we've come a long way in Ireland, we are grappling with societal issues like employment,

the fact that so many women are in part-time employment. How do we equip women to be truly autonomous and to be independent? And I think that's what society has to strive for all the time, that all of its citizens are able to realise their potential. And the biggest tools in that have got to be education. And that means educating everyone, educating men and women. When we look at some of the big conversations at the moment and even in relation to termination of pregnancy

many men obviously involved in that conversation too we look at issues now surrounding sexual health education we need men and women involved in those conversations and issues around consent we need men and women involved in those so the greatest thing that I think feminists can do is to look at the ways in which we can engage everyone in society so that people can be born and live freely and have the tools to recognize and to achieve their potential. I'm an educator and what I'm noticing is that a lot of the students I have do tend to do what you've just done there, which is to equate feminism with women's thinking

and women's positions. Whereas I would contend that feminism is about equality for all, as you're actually saying. But I think it's actually a way to achieve equality for all. So I'm interested that you're kind of shying away from it and you're kind of emphasising inclusivity and delicately sidestepping the idea of feminism as would you agree i think no i think it is about equality for all but i think we can't sidestep that women have been very disadvantaged i think we have to

acknowledge that and certainly coming from my area from reproductive health you know through my lifetime i've seen real disadvantage for women and we have to call that out but it is as I said about achieving equality for all of course it is for all citizens um and I mean I can see you smiling there but we do have to face the issues and look at what we've been through for women look at where we've come in the last hundred years in Ireland and I think Irish women were very disadvantaged in 1922 in the beginning I think Irish women have come a long way. And I think society has come a long way. But I completely agree with you. It is about all people and how we respectfully listen to each other, how we respectfully engage with each other and how we respectfully allow each other and reach our potential. We should say there are elections coming up later in May. There are local elections, of

course, European elections as well. And all around Dublin, there are lots and lots of posters of loads and loads of female candidates. There hasn't ever been a female Taoiseach Prime Minister. No. Any chance of that happening, Sinead? Does it matter, actually? Oh, I think it does matter.

And again, it's the whole, you know, we hear this said a lot, it's trotted out. If you can't see it, you can't be it. I think visibility is a huge problem. In our Dáil, our parliament in dublin it's still overwhelmingly male and there are various barriers to women going into politics but the idea of feminism and this is one thing i've seen with those posters is a lot of women who became um activists and became politicized by the

repeal movement and the marriage equality movement are up on those posters also ireland is much further behind the uk in terms of multiculturalism and we're starting to see people who've come to live here and make a life here the new irish are appearing on those posters as well and in terms of feminism it has to be i can't remember the quote who said this but it's you know my feminism will be intersectional or will be bullshit it has to be about people of class people of color working women people in direct provision and trans people, LGBT people. It has to be about everybody.

It's not just for a certain strata of feminism. OK, that's certainly something we've discussed on Women's Hour in the past and will continue to do. Divorce, there is a referendum on divorce in a couple of weeks as well. You do referendums a lot here, don't you, Susan? Yeah, and like the UK, we have written constitutions. So instead of just these issues being banged out in the courtroom, we have to have a plebside where the people actually vote to change the relevant paragraph in the constitution.

I'm simplifying it, I'm sure, but the referendum on divorce is about basically making it easier. Yes, I mean, thankfully, we've had divorce now for a couple of decades and the the dreadful scenario of you know every second person in the country applying for divorce has not materialized and this latest change that Ireland has the lowest divorce rates yes in Europe yes yes despite what the naysayers were predicting all those years ago. So the latest referendum deals with time limits. So at the moment, it's quite onerous. Couples who are seeking a divorce have to prove that they've lived apart for four years before they can apply for divorce.

The referendum is going to change that to two years. But actually, I think, you know, these very prescriptive wording in the Constitution should ideally be taken out and should be dealt with by legislation. I think that's what will ultimately happen. Yeah, OK. Any thoughts on that, Sinead? Well, it was in 1995, and the vote was only 50.3% in favour. It barely got over the line.

And the people who voted against it, there was a famous quip from the Count Centre that people who were going to vote for divorce were wife-swapping sodomites. So we've come a long way from that, I think. Yes, go on, Rona. Yeah, you know, the whole hello divorce, you know, bye-bye daddy.

So at the time, one of the big arguments was that women would be economically disadvantaged by divorce and that, you be economically disadvantaged by divorce, and that by maintaining divorce, this was somehow a pro-female vote. Of course, that's all been knocked on the head. The majority of women in the circuit court, or the majority of people applying for divorce or moving on divorce, are in fact women. And the Catholic Church even argued that there was property thrown into it. There was all kinds of things thrown into the argument.

And of course, as I've said said the floodgates didn't open what's been good about divorce in ireland i think it's been that it's been a no fault unlike the uk it's a no fault system and there is provision also um for spouses and dependents and i know that can often be very contentious but at least that's part of it but i completely agree with susan having detail in the constitution is incredibly difficult we need to legislate for these elements. So while the constitution might have concepts and philosophy, if you like, the actual legislature has to deal with the nitty gritties of these issues. Playing devil's advocate a bit, and I am divorced myself, I should say, the fact that Ireland has the lowest divorce rates in Europe, is that actually not something to be proud of? Some people would say it is. Irish women are very stoic. OK. Good answer, Susan.

Liz, is Liz Harper here? Yeah, can we get the microphone to Liz? Liz, your question. We've heard a lot about silences and we've heard a lot about conversations and what that can do and how that can help. And I'm just wondering, I'm wondering actually, my original question was how different is my life

from my mother's and my grandmother's, but now I'm wondering how different is my daughter's life going to be from mine and what are the possibilities for my grandsons? How is that going to be different mine and what are the what are the possibilities for my grandsons how is that going to be different or can it be different you mean that your grandsons might be have a harder time well no no not necessarily i'm just i'm struck by this you know the the idea of because i don't believe it that feminism is about men against you know it's not it's not about that it is about equality for everybody so also

for grandsons it's difficult i think to raise boys in in a way okay um didn't be on the panel have sons yeah i have a son and a daughter and i wrote i wrote about i wrote about my children quite a bit in the book and particularly around the time of the referendum where they asked a lot of questions about the posters and were presented with very graphic imagery that children shouldn't see and was often offered to us by people who pretended to care about children, which I found very troubling.

And often they were very young and were asking these sort of questions. So I've talked to them about equality and fairness and kindness and empathy and the things that we're meant to talk to children about, but I talk to them in the same way. I don't talk to my daughter in any different way, even though she does happen to be a girl.

But her life is going to be immeasurably different to mine in the way that mine, I'm the first person in my family to go to university. My grandparents lived in tenements. My mother left school at 14. Things change in different generations. And I'm really grateful for that. I'm also really aware of my own privilege

that it might not have been my life. And I don't know where my daughter's life will be but I absolutely have to talk to to sons because there's lots of problems it's a bigger show maybe about around masculinity and maleness um which is something we'll come back and do that yeah we have to look out for our boys as well as our girls uh Rona yes I have two boys and two girls so there you are like you all equality but uh it's um you know it's funny uh again i tried to talk to all of them together around the table so the conversations are kind of family-based conversation and the different viewpoints are coming and it's actually fascinating to talk to your children i've learned

all kinds of things that i never knew um and what what's really interesting um is that there is this ability for children to converse in terms of gender fluidity. That's a very normal conversation, as it should be. And they're dealing with a lot of very sophisticated issues and well able to talk about them when you engage them, which I think is really healthy. Again, you're trying to bring everyone up in a very mutually respectful environment,

but like all parents, you're terrified about what they're downloading on internet. And you see this rise of pornography and it becomes so much more acceptable at a younger age and and what impact will that have because that is truly not about equality and so it is trying to keep those channels of communication open and actually learn from our children as well because they are living a very different life I think think. I mean, the changes in Ireland, particularly in the last 13 years, have been enormous. And the kind of conversations we're having are very different,

I think, in a good way, because conversation's always good. But I find myself learning, actually, a lot of my children. My biggest failure has been sex education. Every time I try to bring this up, and I'm a gynaecologist and I should be good at this, the just glaze over they go oh mom not again you know and I'm going listen you know and that's quite funny both boys and girls although I was talking to some of our young doctors in the hospital because I've been very exercised by sex education generally because having four kids coming they're all 21 down to 12 so they're at that age um and also just the whole con in relation

to the whole abortion debate how do we prevent unwanted pregnancy and how do we empower um couples and how do we promote that autonomy and decision making um in relation to um having children um and you know it's it's one of the young doctors talked about going to a mixed school and i had gone to an all-girls school instead in ireland our education system can be very much And, you know, one of the young doctors talked about going to a mixed school. I had gone to an all-girls school. And still in Ireland, our education system can be very much the all-girls schools and the all-boys schools. That's still very prevalent. But one of the young doctors had been to a mixed school.

But for sex education, they were separated. So it was boys into one room and girls into the other. And you're thinking, oh, God, doesn't that miss the whole point? So anyway, like all mothers, and suggestions or helpful suggestions I would gratefully receive and do we've got time just approach Rona

and tell her what you need to know Alva what about you? yeah well just on the mention of sex education I remember I went to a mixed primary school

and they separated out we got to hear all about the boy stuff but when it came to periods periods and period pains and all that kind of stuff

and cramps, they were sent out of the room and they got to play football in the yard. You just think, what's the point? Now they just don't have a clue if they have sisters, mothers, girlfriends, wives in the future, and they have no idea how that all works. That's not a big deal. There's a really good bit in your book, actually, where you talk about bleeding, which in men is often a rather heroic thing thing but with women is not so much.

It's kind of get on with it. It's a very everyday occurrence where men, it's like acts of valour and fist fight and manliness and it's very different for women. But then, you know, there's male pain and female pain. Again, I talk about that in the book and doctors and, you know, obviously not doctors like Rona but the idea of like women not being listened to

and two weeks ago on radio here, there was a whole slew of stories about women with terrible childbirth stories. And there's been an awful lot of that going on in this country as well, about not listening to women and the things they're actually saying. Yeah, and are people going to listen more in the future, Rona? How do you make certain that happens? I hope so, but I think we've also been talking out more. And again, coming back to the abortion referendum,

it was women who came out and spoke about their experience and who were really brave. And we were talking about really difficult experiences, you know, women who lost babies with, you know, fetal anomaly, who traveled because they weren't adopted in their own country. And so a lot of our, you know, these issues are being talked about now. And it is conversation that brings these things to to the mind but also to policymakers and you know that's when we think back to a point about female politicians you know the first uh countess markievicz was the first female elected to our stall in 1919 but it was like first female mp elected to westminster absolutely didn't take her seat so it's nancy astor i think

who um that's right but you know it was sort of 60 years later before the number of women in the door numbered more than 10 or 20. And we're still struggling to get that 30 percent. But that's a huge impact on policy. So I wonder how often you encounter resistance to what you're trying to do, not necessarily from the state, which we've talked about, but from other individuals who might just say to you, you know, Susan, let it go. We don't want to talk about this anymore. Well, actually, there is a noticeable group of people who would like us to take that approach, brush it under the carpet. They're often apologists for the Catholic Church and other organised religions because some of the Protestant churches were involved with incarcerating women as well. But I think, you know, that old adage,

we need to investigate our past mistakes, identify them, apologise for them, compensate people for them, lest we repeat those mistakes. And I think Sinead has mentioned women and children and men in direct provision. You know, we're creating another generation of people who will have spent years behind very high walls and institutions.

I believe they don't even have access to their local election candidates. Those candidates would have to make a special application to visit people in such centres. So it's very, very, it's deeply worrying. And likewise, children who are in care of the estate, minors, some of the more punitive institutions are often just, you know, training institutions for young criminals. And we're not really caring, I feel, for those young people. Well, your own personal story story which has been resolved was resolved to a degree yeah well was it i mean how did it make you feel satisfied is the wrong word but was there a sense of achievement or yes there was there was a certain amount of closure um i suppose in my

adoptive family whilst i loved them deeply they loved me deeply i was a bit of a round peg in a square hole. And it was deeply satisfying for me to discover when I met my mother in the 1980s that she came from a long line of, you know, well, revolutionaries, actually, because two of her uncles, and this is in writing, it's acknowledged, fought alongside Pearse at the GPO. My natural mother was the first female

president of a trade union in ireland so i was delighted with that and actually wished i had been privy to that history much earlier in my you know character development i was always the rebel without a cause really i then discovered only in the last two years that on my father's side my grandfather was similarly a republican revolutionary and you know his name pops up in dispatches. Right so you found your people but goodness it was an effort. Susan thank you very much. Let's go to you're in the podcast lounge now by the way people who are listening to the podcast you've heard the live show this is now the what I call the kind of more the quality bit where you get proper listeners the people who really invest in Woman's Hour and actually choose to listen rather than just have Radio 4 rumbling along in the background so this is special territory

you can be even more frank and explicit in the Woman's Hour podcast. Belinda Perry's got a point. Belinda? Yes, it was just about my parents who were married in the 50s and my father wouldn't let my mother have a job outside the home. She had trained secretarial before they got married but he would not let her have a job outside the home. And how did that manifest? I mean, what was her life like? What did she say about it? Well, she was at home, you know, looking after the children in the home, you know, as a lot of women in those days were. I mean, she was, as far as I knew in those days, content to do it. But it was only when we were older that we realised she would have liked to have had some sort of a job, even part-time or, you know, she wasn't an't an academic you know when she didn't go to university

but she would have liked to have had something outside the home for herself yeah um and your dad i mean your dad from that anecdote might seem unreasonable but was he unreasonable he could have been a lovely bloke well he's actually still alive at the age of 93 right and yes i would say he's would have been a difficult man and a difficult husband and a difficult father. Right. So his point was that it was his role to go out and earn the money and your mother had a rather different role. Yes. And Jane, could I just, on the back of Belinda's point, could I get us all to reflect on the ongoing impact of the marriage bar in Ireland which although it was phased out in the mid-70s the women who were deprived of continuous employment

there they were deprived of course of continuous pension contributions so there's a great deal of pension poverty amongst women and that generation is still with us and I certainly don't feel that the any government has really addressed that issue despite constant reminders from the National Women's Council of Ireland and various equality groups you know it's kind of oh yes yes we hear you but we're not actually going to do anything about it and I think increasingly it's women at the margins of Irish society who are experiencing inequality in its worst form so it's older women ditto in the health service Rona might agree with me there I mean women are over represented as patients due to their longevity

in the Irish health system be that in A&E which is just it's like Beirut if you go into any A&E hospital or department in Ireland and you see a lot of elderly women there on trolleys or worse on chairs for hours on end with no privacy no dignity and and very often frightened by you know the the more alarming aspects of an A&E department and I think that's that's going to only worsen I fear over the next few years. I've got to say that you find plenty of people in Britain who would say you know what the same thing happens in Britain too and also in terms of pensions and pension of poverty I'm at this point honour bound to mention the WASPI women in Britain who are campaigning for equality in terms of their pension provision so there is

it does sound to me like many of the problems in Ireland are reflected across the Irish sea and exist as well in terms of I suppose I immediately think about Belinda about your mother's mental health I remember my mum going back to work actually when I was about seven I think and she became a changed woman overnight because clearly she was she she wasn't a professional person either but she absolutely loved getting out of the house and away from me astonishing so what was she was she happy I mean I think to all intents and purposes she was happy I mean she was very much in love with my father and um you know he was the boss as it were but um yeah I'm sure there were times when she was depressed or yeah not you wouldn't have known inoververtly but you wish she would have maybe like definitely

would like meeting other people and getting outside the house um it doesn't seem a lot to us does it really no i think it also comes from the place we've talked a lot about referendums today and we were meant to have another referendum about the women's place in the home which is enshrined in our constitution and we were meant to vote on this and a lot of that your family situation is very typical of a lot of families they were the very strict patriarchal and gendered roles for women it's like you stay home have 10 children and that's what your life is going to be and it's still said it's still in the constitution where it does say the state shall endeavor to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity, meaning to work, to engage in labour, to the neglect of their duties in the home. So it's still in our Constitution.

That's sort of very, it sounds, you know, almost antediluvian or something like that, but it still exists. And we're still kind of feeling that ripple effect of that constitutional sort of declaration. Yeah. I mean, there's a huge social element to that. And, of course, I come back to childbirth. And when we look at IBEC reports on female employment, we see that 70%... Sorry, what are those?

So IBEC would be one of our big industrial commentary bodies, and they would, you know, study workforce. But when we look at part-time work, for example, 70% of part-time work is performed by women. And at the very time when women are in careers, where careers are, you know, experiences being accrued or people are learning and careers are really developing, that's kind of the time you have your children.

And we have very poor provision for preschool childcare, which is really expensive and actually really patchy in Ireland. And that's a huge barrier to women returning to the workforce. And in certain areas you know if you are out for two years you may have to retrain and you're back to the beginning again and you've lost out on huge opportunity and taxation as well is against young parents there's no tax relief for child care so you've got these big barriers still in society that actually are a real inhibitor and to women progressing where they wish to in careers. And our constitution does still enshrine that concept

that women should be in the home. It's quite a redundant clause. And to turn that around and flip it around, it's been very interesting that no one, the judiciary I think have referred to it four times in four cases. And their fear is what would the socioeconomic consequence be of actually legislating for women's place in the home? So it should be the concept of a carer. Should be paid should that be pension should there be provision and so

people have really sort of kept away from that because the socio-economic implications actually could be enormous but i guess um sorry i've forgotten the name you were the lady who mentioned grandsons but yeah sorry what was liz yeah and i just I just wonder whether, does progress for women necessarily mean that grandsons, men, have to go backwards? It doesn't, does it? It shouldn't. I don't think it does. And in fact, I'm just thinking about my own mother who trained as a nurse in the UK

and moved here with my father. And she was a nurse and she was horrified because she didn't know anything about the marriage bar so she arrived here in her 30s assuming that she'd be able to work and then she wasn't so she ended up ironing her dusters basically I mean she just went into overdrive by it yeah yeah completely absolutely and it took her maybe 10 or 12 years to get back in after the marriage bar went back into nursing. But yeah, it was very, just very, very, and very structural. There was nothing she could do about it.

And she didn't know before she came, so there was no choice. Right. I mean, the BBC did have a marriage bar as well, I should say. I can't remember when it ended, but it certainly had one. No, I don't think that it's... I think that equality, I don't think it's either or and i think i actually i think that women women can't have the freedom unless unless we're all free do you know it doesn't make sense i don't think but but that whole business of having that the women's place in

the home enshrined in the constitution there it gives men it gives men i'm not saying that they need it necessarily we have even got men in the room, but a sort of certainty, a status in their own home, if nowhere else, that might actually... But I don't think my father wanted that. You know, I don't think that would have been his choice. He had no expectation that his wife was going to be at home. I'm sure she drove him just as mad actually with ironing the dusters you know i don't think it was any benefit to him thank you liz um right doreen has a question about writing yeah my question is about women's writing and creativity

um and i was wondering that with the huge social changes that we've seen in the last, I mean, sort of since we'll say 1983, but particularly we'll say since the Ryan Report 10 years ago and the changes that have happened, how will we see, sorry, not rather than how, will we see an impact or a change in women's art and women's writing, women's music? I was just wondering how would that manifest itself as change? What is that report? The Ryan report came out 10 years ago into child abuse in the Catholic Church. And so since then,

there's been much more open dialogue about that, or we've been striving for open dialogue. And then we repealed the Eighth Amendment a year ago. There was marriage equality four years ago. And I was just wondering, do you think we'll see a change or an influence in women's creativity, music or writing from this? Sinead, that's one for you. Yeah, I mean, we already have in terms of who's making music,

who's writing books, what they're writing about. Only last month we celebrated The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien as the Dublin One City One Book. Edna's book famously burned. Lots of her male Irish contemporaries didn't want to know her. She writes about it in her wonderful memoir, Country Girl. And what she was writing about, which seems almost quite tame in lots of ways now

about young women's lives and sexuality and wanting to have relationships and, you know, touching on the idea of abortion. You can write anything you'd like now. And that wasn't the case in Ireland in terms of banned books and what women could say and what they couldn't say. And, you know, I've edited two all-female anthologies of short stories. And I did that because the voices who were raised up for a very long time were male voices. The gatekeepers and the anthologists were all male,

and the people that they chose to put into books were predominantly male. When they did pick women, it was the same one or two women. It was Edna O'Brien, it was Somerville and Ross, it was Mary Lavin and Elizabeth Bone. Every book I picked up had the same people in them. Some of them had no women in them. One had Mary Lavin with her name misspelled, and she was the only woman in the book.

So I found this all the time. So I feel like now, if you look at Sally Rooney, if you look at Nicole Fattery, if you look even at Eimear McBride, that idea of writing about what we would for a long time thought of traditional Irish subjects, you know, bad priests,

abuse, alcoholism, terrible things happening in Irish families. Eimear McBride absolutely broke that asunder with the way she told that story in terms of language. She used language as a type of form.

And I think now, where we did have a type of Irish writing, whatever that is, which was parochial and small and influenced by religion and politics, that's all gone away. I mean, Sally Rooney's book, to a lot of people, doesn't feel like an Irish book at all. It feels like a global book. And in terms of, like, last year,

a lot of what was going on around Repeal the Eighth was to do with art and performance. If you look at Waking the Feminists, I leon bell is down there and lots of different things that's been a rising up of voices and and a breaking down of silences and a lot of that has been in the artistic and creative world and it's and long may continue i was um i was doing stuff that nobody from women's i will believe this but i was doing some research at the weekend junaid and i watched you um on youtube you were at a literary festival, and it was billed as you were in conversation with someone,

but it was some fella, and he never stopped talking. A couple of times you tentatively put the microphone to your mouth, thinking, maybe I'll get a chance in a sec. No, and then you put it down again. But he was talking about your work. Yeah. Not explaining. Yeah, I've had this happen,

and I chair things at literary events and i have noticed that uh you know if you're sharing a mixed panel the the male voice which we often there's no such thing as a as a male writer or a man writer but there are you know the separate section with wikipedia for female writers and we think of that writer equals man and that the authoritative uh writing voice is a male voice and. And I've had that experience where I've been on panels and you've got wonderful people on the panel, and the man just happens to say an awful lot more and talk over people. So it does happen.

Not always. I've been on panels with lots of wonderful men as well. But, yeah, I know the occasion you're talking about. Right. Well, Susan. Actually, I'm really pleased that, obviously, Sinead mentioned Waking the Feminist for the British audience. That was an initiative by women working in the Irish theatre world.

It was a call for equality across all aspects of their industry. And it was kick-started when they saw the Abbey Theatre, which is our national theatre's line-up for 2016, which is the centenary of the Easter Rising. And they discovered that of the 18 playwrights, 18 of them were men. There were no plays by women, and there were only two women directors in the programme.

There was one play by a woman, but it was for children. Oh, that's right, yes, yes. So, and certainly the areas of concern for me, I have found that the people in the arts are often the first to address the issues. So, in addition to the dogs in the street knowing about, you know, abuses that women experienced in so many institutions in Ireland, we have authors, poets, singer-songwriters writing about these issues. If any of you get a chance to see Noelle Brown's postscript,

that's a really up-to-date play about the issues that those of us who were non-marital children born to unmarried mothers experience in accessing our personal information and she was one of the first women to have a play on in the Abbey Theatre in goodness knows how many decades. Well Alva in music is it honestly any well you don't know any different I was going to say is it easy? No it's in I mean I know I'm, but even in the last five or six years since I started in music, there's a huge difference. And I mean, I grew up with probably Sinead O'Connor and Dolores O'Riordan being the big female Irish names out there. But now there's so many people and they're breaking out outside of Ireland and it's a huge difference. When I first started playing a few years ago,

I never even met a female sound engineer. I think the first time I met a female sound engineer was when I first started touring in the UK. I've still never worked with a female producer. And I work with kids. I volunteer at a thing called Girls Rock and we're trying to get teenage girls involved and teenage girls who are from direct provision as well.

We have scholarships for them and it's just trying to get girls involved involved, and teenage girls who are from direct provision as well. We have scholarships for them, and it's just trying to get girls involved in music because they have the passion, it's just they're not encouraged to do it as much, and maybe the next generation will. Can I just mention some of the emails we've had? This is one that is definitely worth reading out from Emily. I wanted to comment about the programme today.

My wife is Irish, and just prior to the referendum, my sister-in-law came to stay with us. We discussed the referendum and she asked us not to judge her that she was voting to repeal. We were both shocked. Firstly, that we felt she knew we were very liberal, but secondly, because she made it clear she couldn't share her view in her community.

She lives in rural Mayo and we feel that women in rural areas often feel they can't share their opinion unless it's conservative. We were really pleased with the result in Ireland and hope that attitude in rural areas follows the law. We do feel this has happened to some extent after the gay marriage referendum and as an English gay woman married to an Irish woman I always feel welcomed by the community. I hope that women will start to feel they can be open if they are pro-choice and that they would feel comfortable seeking medical assistance without judgment. And Rona, you can talk about that in a moment if you don't mind, but this is one for you as well. Dr. Rona Marnie sounds like a wonderful and compassionate woman and professional. She previously spoke as outgoing master of Hollis Street, this is the National Maternity, yeah, and said its staff did

not act like the police. Well, I went to the hospital in the 1990s after a problem with my termination of pregnancy, stroke, abortion, obviously performed outside Ireland. I was treated with utter contempt, and this was long before you worked, yeah, but it's an experience worth hearing. I required a blood test and was refused a seat to sit on while blood was being taken i was told i had to stand even though i was clearly very weak and wasn't really able to do so i managed to find a step ladder to sit on but i was told that the ward sister or whatever the head nurse was called would be coming along and what would she think did there really need to be a group of nurses around me just for a blood test? My GP was supportive and non-judgmental, actually.

I no longer live in Ireland, but I'm so glad that things have changed for my nieces and for my nephews for the next generation. I'd like to say thank you to all the fabulous women who've been speaking on Woman's Hour this morning. Best wishes to everybody, but please keep me anonymous. I know you weren't at that hospital in the 1990s but that um that is shocking isn't it it's heartbreaking um and it is not

unique um and we've heard so many stories from women over the years um of how they've been made to feel belittled and how they've been held in contempt um either because of why they've presented to hospitals but even in the normal course of childbirth. It's not even in relation to termination of pregnancy, but just in relation to their visits to the hospital. And I have read all the annual reports for 100 years in Hollistreet, you know, and in the 1950s, 1960s, there was the Inukta Ward, which was the ward for unmarried women because they presumably either didn't deserve to be on the ward with the rest of women, and so they were separated,

or perhaps it was a well-meaning objective to let those girls sharing a similar experience be together. But these girls would come to the hospital from mother and child homes where they'd be awaiting their baby, deliver their baby. Babies often given up to adoption and the girls would go home and expected to reenter normal life having endured that. And I have met some women subsequently who've approached me at various meetings and told me their story. And it's absolutely heartbreaking. And it was part of so many elements of our society that made life so very traumatic for women and that failed dismally to engage with reproduction

and the fact that as humans we will have babies. That is part of our life. But our story in Ireland is really very painful and very difficult. And it's terribly important that we move forward in terms of acknowledging and learning from this, but also ensuring that women, when they come to our hospitals, are treated with huge respect, like everybody should be treated. Gynaecology is very intimate.

It's very intimate both physically, in terms of the physical areas we're dealing with but also emotionally and because there is so much in terms of domestic violence in terms of being pregnant wishing to be pregnant not wishing to be pregnant dealing with menopause dealing with so many things that have a big big impact and on how we live our lives and if you are very vulnerable and you know we've all been there when you're having a really difficult time and someone says the wrong thing it can really scar you and those words can really really hurt you

and it's not just words can do so much to help people but words are a real weapon and you can really hurt someone for their whole life with the wrong words and that's something we all have to learn but equally as doctors and midwives we try to do our best but we're not always going to get it right and I know that I have dealt with patients where I won't have said the right thing

and I'll say completely the wrong thing and you look back and so we have to put a lot of time and effort into how we care for people and that whole holistic care, so the practical elements of care, the access to care. And I'm very caught by direct provision and within our own country, we're still not there. There are so many issues surrounding access to good, proper care that must be addressed and then respectful care and how we respectfully deal with each other in society. But I think in the area of maternity and gynaecology particularly, we have the capacity to do great good, but we have the capacity very quickly and very easily to do great harm. Yeah, I don't think anybody would disagree with a word of that. Thank you, and thanks to our other panellists as well, Sinead and Rona.

And Alva, who is a singer-songwriter, is now going to sing her song, which is called True Romance. She's going to go over to the microphone, grab the guitar, and thank you all for participating. It's been absolutely fantastic. Jenny is back with Woman's Hour tomorrow. Amongst other things, she's talking about potty training. That's Woman's Hour, two minutes past ten,

live from London tomorrow. Goodbye from Dublin in the company of Alvaredi. Down the street around the back That's where your house is That's where you've always lived That's where I dropped you off And you told your friend That I tasted like peaches Don't forget Peaches

Why you say Peaches I don't want to move on But you're not giving me the option Maybe I'm not your problem When you withhold love like you're the only one Afraid of being hurt by someone and i'm the closest you'll come or just bitter realize you're wrong

Come back running like a kid to a home Sweet like peaches, don't forget Peaches Why you say Peaches Peaches Peaches Remember when you wake up

The morning's never long enough It was healthy and it was good But now you say you're not in love In love In love In love Love Love Love Love Thank you. I'm Matthew Price. And along with a team of curious producers, we are searching for answers that change the way we see the world.

Subscribe to us on BBC Sounds. And join in on the hashtag Beyond Today. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.