ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY MCALEESE AT A FUNCTION IN DUBLIN CASTLE TO MARK INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY MCALEESE AT A FUNCTION IN DUBLIN CASTLE TO MARK INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 1998
Last week, I had the great pleasure of opening a conference in Glencree entitled “From Rebellion To Reconciliation: The Women Of 1798-1998” which dealt with women in Irish history over the last two hundred years. I made the point that the story of Irish women – indeed the story of women everywhere – was unseen and buried, because women, their roles and their achievements did not get the kind of publicity that was given to the ‘establishment’ figures, and to spectacular headline events.
- Fortunately, that situation has begun to be redressed in Ireland by the great work of the likes of Margaret McCurtain, and the many whom she has inspired to do research and to write – to turn over the stones of history – to reveal a clearer picture of what was done, what was achieved and, perhaps more importantly, what was not done for women because of the low profile of their existence and work. For generations, and indeed in my own time at school, history, and it was largely his-story, was taught as a series of heavily edited highlights - the stories nuanced, to create a sense of awe, about the greatness of the men who dominated the pages, and the magnitude of their achievements and failures.
- In my study, I have a collection of fifty-four books, bought several years ago, entitled “The Great Ideas”. They cover the hierarchy of contributors to Western thought, from Sophocles to Kepler, from Montaigne to Freud. Not a single one among them was written by a woman. Since I bought them, six new volumes have been added. But you have to get to volume fifty-nine, before a tentative reference is made to the 20th century American writer, Willa Cather, who’s hardly a household name. Not until volume sixty, is a substantial female contribution to any ideas, let alone great ones, acknowledged. Virginia Woolf shares her volume with ten other writers, including Lawrence, Eliot and Beckett. Aquinas, by contrast, gets two volumes to himself.
- In an age where popular media has such tremendous significance and influence in forming and shaping minds – in leading opinion and setting trends - we can quite easily see the profound impact which ‘bad’ press, or worse still, ‘no’ press can have on people and events. In a society where the role of women meant that they were largely ‘seen but not heard’, is it any wonder that the recorders of news – the chroniclers of history – the keepers of posterity – made little or no references to women, apart from social anecdote? Is it any mystery that women and their lives were absent from the annals of history and the catalogues of mankind’s achievements, fortunes and misfortunes?
- But should we have to rely on the media – the popular press – to record the achievements and struggles of women? Surely, publicity shouldn’t be a pre-requisite for the validation of achievements – shouldn’t be the only mechanism to give status to women and their work. The world isn’t peopled by ‘film stars’. History isn’t a series of ‘spectaculars’. The story of mankind is of people struggling in their daily lives, working to improve their own lot and the lot of their communities. There is no glamour in much of that effort – just hard work and endurance. That is the reality of life for countless women all over the world.
- While there have been great ‘institutional’ and administrative achievements in recent decades, much of what women do and have done still remains unsung and, to some degree, unrecognised. But it is up to women themselves to redress the imbalance – to record what’s been happening off stage, if you like, and ensuring that the status of women is not just a series of legislative measures or employment regulations. Minds need to be swayed. Opinions need to be changed.
- International Women’s Day is a day when we reflect on what has been happening in the whole area of women’s rights – human rights. It’s a day when we pause to think and to empathise with those women who are less fortunate than ourselves and who bear the brunt of conflict, tyranny and economic deprivation in the world today. And when we congratulate ourselves on the great achievements in the status of women, we know that much work remains – though much of it in a different sphere – in the shaping of hearts and minds – in changing attitudes and in promoting acceptance of the status of women as full participants in society. Many people, who are not necessarily legislators or employers, need to be educated and convinced that women can be, have been, and are achievers, doers, builders and makers – that they too are fully entitled to the full spectrum of human rights – which after all are the foundation on which civilisation will be built.