REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE CORNERSTONE CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S FORUM
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE CORNERSTONE CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S FORUM
Dia dhíobh a cháirde.
Tá áthas orm bheith anseo libh inniu.
Madame President, distinguished speakers and guests.
It is good to be with you and to have the pleasant task of opening such an important conference. My thanks to your President, Karen Erwin for the kind invitation and to you for that warm and generous welcome.
In turn let me, welcome each one of you to our capital city and to those who are here for the first time, I offer our traditional greeting, Céad Míle Fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes. We are delighted you are here and though your purpose is serious and the programme busy, nonetheless I hope Ireland will stamp its own personality on the memories and friendships you will take away from here.
Why do women need to connect in a global world? Over twenty-five years ago the United Nations set the scene fairly succinctly “Women constitute half the world’s population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, receive one tenth of the world’s income and own less than one hundredth of the world’s property”
That is our past and it is still the present for many women. Wherever it is a lived reality it is horrifically wasteful of human talent, a recipe for skewed lives and skewed societies. It is not of course true for all women. This organisation is witness to a different story- of successful achieving women who are giving leadership across the many diverse areas of human endeavour and whose success is not an end in itself but rather the start of a responsibility to empower other women. The International Women’s Forum is an expression of commitment to that responsibility and this conference along with the work of the Forum world wide and the work of many other individuals and organizations is what reassures us that someday our world will fly steadily and purposively on two wings instead of flapping about incoherently on one.
At the Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 Lucretia Mott put it well and her words still ring true; “The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.”
Your work is fundamentally about decontaminating those sources and doing it in very practical ways. Proving the worth of women through your own lives, proving the worth of others by helping them to find their own pathway to their fullest potential.
We are privileged to meet at a time when women are taking their rightful place more and more in areas of society previously denied to them. New opportunities in education, employment, business, politics and religion have been seized with enthusiasm by women, transforming their expectations and self-confidence as individuals but also, and crucially, radically transforming the potential of family, of community and of country. Their genius, their energy has flowed much more freely than ever before into the human energy grid and we in Ireland have seen first-hand the manifest resulting uplift in economic, social and political fortunes. Now we know with a vengeance that a society which harnesses only half its resources can never expect to realize more than half of its potential. That knowledge imbues us with unbounded anticipation for a future when the potential of each human being will blossom to its fullest extent and an impatience to reach that future sooner rather than later.
Your conference pushes us inexorably towards that future. You are exemplars of the excellence women are capable of. Old theories about the limitations of women are rendered redundant by your very success. Your achievements and your faith in women inspires others, tempts others to try no matter how difficult the obstacles. And of course your outreach creates a bridge between achieving women and women who dream of achieving.
Last week two young women from the Travelling Community became the first travellers to achieve Gold awards in the President’s Award Scheme - Gaisce. I am proud to be President of an Ireland in which new opportunities are opening up to women generally and to marginalized women especially. We have some of the most modern equality legislation in Europe. It outlaws many forms of discrimination and promotes a culture of full social inclusion free from the paralysing effects of deep-rooted and destructive old prejudices. That culture is inexorably and visibly establishing itself but is still some way from fulfilling its widest potential. The continuing absence of women from politics in significant and truly representative numbers has the effect of keeping one foot on the brake though it was encouraging to see the crucial involvement of women in the Peace Process in Northern Ireland and in the creation of the Good Friday Agreement. Through their efforts and those of many peacemakers we now have a strong foundation on which to build a decent partnership based future free from the old vanities and distrusts of history. No doubt the session devoted to Vital Voices will reveal the remarkable role women are performing in generating the critical mass necessary to carry Northern Ireland through a culture change of seismic proportions. At its simplest that change is about moving from supremacy to equality, from contempt to consensus and there is no doubt that the quiet insistent work of women from all perspectives and politics, from inside the North and from around the world, helped nurture the fragile plants of reconciliation and hope.
No one should underestimate the energy, the insight the wisdom generated by a sharing such as this. Each of us wherever we live faces huge challenges and each of us is here because we believe there are answers and they must be found. None of us has all the answers but each of us has our own particular piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Maybe at this conference that piece will find its match. Maybe here something only vaguely understood will become clear, something experienced will receive validation and in the process of sharing a new wisdom will emerge and from that wisdom a renewed heart, a fresh vision to keep us moving in the right direction. It was Mother Teresa who said “Give the world the best you have got, and it may never be enough. Give the world the best you have got anyway.” You are here because you believe in giving your best and in seeking the best for women in your homelands and around the world. Many millions of them live lives utterly disconnected from their true talents and abilities. They will never know what they could have become. We will never know what is absent from our world as a result. Their daughters and our world deserve better. Connections draw together those who would otherwise live in ignorance of one another. They facilitate the transfer of skill, knowledge, support and power. They help make individuals strong and their strength becomes the fulcrum of change. We should be very grateful to those who bother to make and sustain connections. Thank you for the work you do, for the commitment to this conference and for the work that will follow it through the new networks formed here.
I wish each of you every success with this Conference. May it create a store of happy memories and a reservoir of fresh wisdom to guide you and give you encouragement for the road ahead.
Go raibh maith agaibh. Thank you.