National Women's Forum Report

Ten years ago, when the Commission for the Status of Women was formed, there was no equal pay legislation, no availability of contraceptives, glaring inequities in social welfare payments, no social welfare payments at all for unwed mothers or single uninsured young women, different pay scales for men and women in many jobs, as well as marriage bars used to discriminate against married women joining the workforce.

Ten years ago varying opinions on issues like divorce, contraception (should it be for married women only?), and most particularly poverty (is overcrowding in the home really a women's issue?) were enough to split the emerging feminists movement into myriads of factions and organizations. The profound changes that the women's movement has since effected and the changes within the movement itself were particularly obvious at the conference organized by the Council for the Status of Women at the RDS in mid-November.

During the past decade a steady and inexorable change has taken place in Irish society. Women have become conscious of the depth of inequality, and have begun to effect changes. Society as a whole has become sensitive to "the women's issue". Politicians feel obliged to condescend to women's rights - a gesture unnecessary and unmade ten years ago. Within the movement itself, those who once defined women's rights and equality in terms of very specific issues, and argued bitterly over just what those issues should be, have now developed a feminist overview to all the problems facing society.

Ten years ago the Women's Liberation Movement could agree on six demands - equal pay, equality before the law, equal education, justice for deserted wives, widows and unmarried mothers, and adequate housing. At the recent women's conference everything from family law to new technology was discussed as a women's issue, and discussed by women who represented a fairly complete cross section of Irish society.

The weekend conference in the RDS, called by the Council for the Status of Women, was a direct off-shoot of the United Nation's Conference for Women held in Copenhagen earlier this year. The Council - a government funded body which acts as an umbrella organization to some 30 women's groups - invited suggestions from groups and individuals, through newspaper advertisements, about what the topics of discussion for the conference should be. Around these suggestions, workshops were organized, the Council intends to draw its five year plan of national action on equality to be presented to the Government.

Just how committed the Council for the Status of Women is to the recommendations coming from the workshops is, as yet, unclear. Certainly the workshop reports represented a surprising degree of unanimity about quite controversial topics, the recommendations might prove too radical for what has, in the past, been a conservative, though persistent and effective, organization.Given the nature of workshops, particularly those crammed into the limited time span of a weekend conference, it is difficult to gauge the consensus opinion on many .of the recommendations. Obviously, those keenly lobbying to change divorce legislation will attend the divorce workshop. Of the 17 workshops going on, it was physically possible to fully attend only three of four. Women who attended the workshop on the status of rural women for instance would necessarily miss those on church control of education, reproductive cycles, and trade unions.

Still, limited though the workshops may have been they overlapped considerably and several produced the same or similar recommendations, indicating a fairly large body of agreed opinion. The following are some of the more striking recommendations emerging from the workshops.

Workshop recommendations

- The Family Planning Act should be scrapped and replaced with legislation allowing for freely available contraceptives.

- If the Government is going to commit financial resources to research into natural family planning methods, it must also do so with "unnatural" contraceptives, especially as these greatly affect the health of many women.

- Sterilization should be a readily available option for women.

- Abortion should be de-criminalized (some recommendations went further and demanded free, safe, legal abortion.)

- The legal status of illegitimacy should be abolished.

- The law prohibiting the adoption of legitimate children should be scrapped.

- Full recognition of the economic and management role of women on farms.

- Legal recognition of property rights of women on farms.

- Abolition of inequities in social welfare, tax and inheritance laws which discriminate against rural women.

- Enquiry into the Land Commission attitude to compulsory purchase especially as it affects female owners.

- Recognition in RTE farming programmes of the role of women on the farm.

- Co-education in the schools. - The banning of corporal punishment in schools and in the home.

- Establishment of a women's studies programme in schools.

- Equality of curriculum choice. - Expansion of the present AnCO re-training courses for women re-entering the workforce, especially for women in rural areas.

- Scrap plans to build a new women's prison.

- Form a legal committee under the Council to take test cases to challenge the laws on prostitution, petty larceny, drunkenness, and vagrancy. (The vast majority of the female prison population is convicted under these laws.)

- Abolish the constitutional ban on divorce and introduce comprehensive divorce legislation.

- Recognition of rape within marriage as a criminal offence.

- Extension of the current legal aid scheme to provide a more comprehensive service.

- An end to sex-role stereo-typing in television programmes and advertisements.

- The Council should press the National Union of Journalists to enforce its existing Code of Conduct with regard to images of women in the media.

- Positive discrimination in employment and promotion of women in all areas of the media, to ensure that women are represented at decision making level.

-Affirmative action to ensure that women are adequately represented at all levels in trade unions and State bodies.

- More women broadcasters on RTE.

- The terms of reference of the Broadcasting Standards Board needs to be broadened to deal with cases of demeaning representation of women in advertising.

- The establishment of a committee under the Council to monitor instances of sexism in the media.

- Recognition that pornography is violence against women, and demeaning to men and women alike.

- The establishment of a national minimum wage for all workers.

- Legislation providing for f1exitime and crèche facilities to facilitate working parents with small children.

- Equal rights for part-time workers.

- Further implementation by the trade unions of the 1977 Employment Equality Act.

- Legislation to ensure maternity and paternity leave.

- Removal of social welfare inequities against women who care for aged relatives in the home.

- Establishment of at least one refuge for battered women in every county.

For all the apparent unanimity of the workshops, the conference was not without an undercurrent of tension. The women from the workshop on women in Armagh prison were suspicious that their workshop report - which supports the five demands for political status - would never make it past the Council for the Status of Women, which will be reporting to the Government. Dr. Hazel Boland, who was chairing the meeting, did her best to side-step the issue. As it stands, the workshop reports are to be incorporated into a report on the conference which is to go to the Government. Entirely separate to this will be the Council's own five year plan for national action, which will also go to the Government and will undoubtedly receive more attention.

Many women resented the Council's decision to open and close the meeting with speeches by male politicians. As the architect of the "Irish solution to an Irish problem" Family Planning Act, Mr. Haughey's presence was particularly unwelcome.

Regardless of how radical or conservative the report and proposals from the Council to the Government are, the issues debated will be picked up again in two more women's conferences in the near future. On the weekend of November 29 The Women's Political Association "Focus on Women" seminar is on in Jury's Hotel. The highlight of that weekend is likely to be the speech by Betty Friedan, veteran feminist, founder of the National Organisation for Women in America, and author of The Feminine Mystique.

In the new year, Status, the news magazine for women, will be sponsoring a day-long conference to coincide with the publication of the first issue in February. The conference, entitled "Women and Election 81", will take place on February 14 in Liberty Hall and will give women an opportunity to decide which issues relating to women should be pressed on the political parties in the forthcoming general election.