ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE GALWAY AND DISTRICT BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CLUB
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE GALWAY AND DISTRICT BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S CLUB WEDNESDAY, 6 JUNE, 2001
Is mór an onóir agus pléisiúir dom bheith anseo libh inniú agus ba mhaith liom mo bhíochas a chur in iúl díbh as an chaoin-chuireadh agus as fáilte fiorchaoin.
It gives me great pleasure to join you here today in Galway to address the annual summer luncheon of the Business and Professional Women’s Club. A special thank you to Una Cullen, President of the Club for the kind invitation to meet with the members of an organisation that is continually working for the advancement of women in all areas of Irish society.
Twenty years ago, Margaret McCurtin, the woman who “discovered” Irish women in history wrote “Many Irish women find it difficult to learn about their historical identity, or their role in the life of the country because they have neither the information readily available, nor the skills of evaluation at their disposal”. History in the telling has been less than fair to women and has been described cynically but with a large dollop of accuracy as literally His-story.This audience needs no reminding of the deep-rooted blinkered attitude to women that permeated public and academic life for centuries. My daughters look at me in disbelief when I tell them that Cambridge University was closed to women until half way through the twentieth century, that women were routinely forced to give up work on marriage until the closing quarter of that century, that the first book I was obliged to read on entering law school told me that women were wasting their time contemplating careers at the Bar because their voices did not carry as far as the male voice. The eminent jurist Glanville Williams had obviously limited experience of the vocal range of even the quietest of Irish mothers. Still he did admit that the bar was a good place to find a husband and that such marriages provided a satisfactory “way out”. Empowering stuff!
The point that strikes me about Margaret McCurtin’s observation is that the failure to incorporate the knowledge and experience of both men and women into all disciplines and areas of Irish life has distorted not just our perceptions but the knowledge and experiential base of many of those disciplines. It deprived many young women of role models to follow. It affected their self-esteem and self-confidence. It cruelly wasted the talents and wisdom of so many women by putting artificial limits on their ambition, by corralling them into narrow spaces. It skewed our world. It is still skewing our world. But the work of rebalancing, recalibrating that world is the work you are engaged in and it is accelerating in pace.
I began studying law in 1969, not exactly the dawn of the Ice Age, but at a time when probably fewer than 10% of the students in my year were female. Thirty years later the story is very different with female law students often equalling or outnumbering men. Women now dominate medical schools and even engineering that great male bastion is absorbing larger and larger proportions of women. These changes are just small visible, outward signs of a remarkable revolution in attitudes and expectations, in opportunities and choices.
Thankfully, in this last decade, Ireland has witnessed a wonderfully uplifting and long overdue explosion of women’s talents into every sphere of life. Today’s success in economic, cultural and political terms owes much to the fact that the genius of women is now flooding through the warp and weft of Irish life in ways unthinkable only a couple of generations ago. I look at young women of my daughters’ generation, and marvel at their self-confidence, their unselfconscious assumption that they are capable of competing and achieving in whatever walk of life they choose, irrespective of gender. But the fundamental changes that have taken place, particularly for women, were not brought about only by the politicians and by legislators but by the courageous and energetic action of women who decided to devote themselves to the welfare of their sister and fellow citizens. For this has always been about correcting a lop-sided world, a world that was flying on one wing. This has always been about aiming for harmony, for balance. It has always been about helping Ireland to realize her full potential by empowering all her children. Any society which uses only half of its talent is only going to realize half of its potential. We have wasted too much talent, suffered too much as a consequence and there is a gritty determination on this island that the future will be very, very different. And the evidence is in that a new landscape is emerging.
Women today seek choice and opportunity. They do not have the benefit of robust age-old networks to assist them. There are still plenty of obstacles around to discourage them. That is why organizations like yours are so important. You are forging the sustaining, supporting, encouraging networks that are so essential at psychological and practical levels. The Business and Professional Women’s Club has tapped into a whole wealth of talent and skill that might otherwise have remained buried. By sharing common burdens with each other, building partnerships and forging alliances, encouraging people to seek and acquire new skills – thereby increasing self-confidence and belief in themselves – you are continually developing new opportunities for women to bring about the economic and social regeneration of their own areas. Your mission statement – to develop a comprehensive framework of structures to provide the necessary education, training and opportunities to help women achieve economic independence, and assume their rightful place in work and business, the professions, in politics and in all decision-making processes - recognises that true equality is the key to human progress and to a humanly decent society. By strengthening the public resolve to keep on dismantling the legal, social and attitudinal straitjackets which constrict the genius of women you are helping to bring nearer the day when the goal of equal participation in decision-making is a reality and not a dream.
Looking around me at the quite exceptional level of talent and achievement at this gathering, I am struck by just how far women have come in the professions and in business. We take enormous pride in what women of this generation have achieved on an individual basis. But we take even greater pride in the fact that you want others to know success too and you care so deeply about their well-being that you have created, sustained and developed this organization with its mission, its special destination. We are a very lucky generation.
We are nearer than we have ever been to enabling the full genius of women to blossom. But we still have a distance to go. We still need champions, men and women who push out the boundaries, who work to achieve equal access at all levels, because it is intrinsically right in itself and because our society will be immeasureably better off for availing of all the talent, imagination and expertise at its disposal. We are entering uncharted territory, and we are entering it at a time when women are ideally placed to be among its most adventurous pioneers.
As we celebrate the achievements of women in business and the professions in Galway today, I believe that the best, the most exciting times are yet to come.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.