Groundbreaking women

With gender representation an issue currently under review by Sinn Féin as a party, it is appropriate as we celebrate International Women's Day to examine these two books. While both are academic tomes and not exactly light reading, the issues raised in each are such that they will hopefully make invaluable contributions to the debate on gender equality and the necessity for the broader participation of women at all levels and within all spheres of Irish society.

However, there are problems with the very nature of these two books. Women's history continues to be written as a separate entity from the broader history of society. While this remains a valuable academic exercise in terms of examining the role of a particular group within society, it often leads to a marginalisation of women's roles in the mainstream view of history. The day has not come when the roles played by women throughout history are adequately incorporated into the examination and recording of such. Pick up any recently written history book on the shelves of your local bookshop, look in the index for references to women in general or even specific high profile women of a given period and you will find cursory references.

From the Parnell sisters to Countess Markiviec to Hannah Skeehy Sheffington to Mary Robinson, the work of these women has been minimised in the broader constructs of written and published Irish history. Thus, the continuing need for women to write their own history, separate but equal to that of the history of Ireland.

The first book, Women and Paid Work in Ireland, 1500-1930 is the result of the tenth annual conference of the Women's History Association of Ireland, held in 1998 at the University of Limerick. It consists of papers presented at the conference addressing the theme of `women and paid work'.

Loaded with statistics and footnotes, as such academic works are, this book is useful as a reference tool in examining the patterns and evolution of women in the workplace in Ireland. It goes a long way in breaking down stereotypical assumptions of the roles women played in Irish society at a time when they held little in terms of statutory rights. Women were involved in creating and influencing policy on everything from childcare to health provision, labor union organising and workplace safety issues, but the ``economic significance of their labour has been obscured in historical inquiry, until relatively recently... Women have always made a significant contribution to the economy, but the way in which work was officially recorded through the collection of census data, often ignored that contribution.''

The collected papers in this book address women in paid work in Ireland as early as 1500 and progress through their roles in running businesses in 18th century Dublin, as domestics, matrons in the prison system, within the medical profession and as groundbreakers in the organisation of childcare for working mothers in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

Its academic nature should not deter anyone interested in women's issues or of the larger issues facing the Celtic Tiger economy and Ireland's current workforce problems from picking up the book. Slogging through some of the academic speak may be a bit of a bore but the history is fascinating.

`Women in Parliament, Ireland:1918 -2000 more specifically addresses the role of elected women in the politics of modern Ireland, north and south. Countess Markievicz's election as the first MP in Westminster may have been a tease of sorts, for the women working to effect radical social change in the early part of the 20th century, but her election became the cornerstone for the work of women in politics to follow. At the time this book was written, only 13% of Leinster House deputies were women and only 15% overall of elected officials in Ireland were women, far below the actual population breakdown of women in Ireland. In the foreword President Mary McAleese addresses the disappointingly low statistics: ``We need to do our utmost to change that, not just as a matter of equality, but also because Irish society as a whole will otherwise be the poorer for it. We need the insights and experiences of women to inform our policy-formation and decision-making processes. And we need to seek and change the factors which discourage women from entering and remaining in politics.''

Very succinctly put. Women need to be heard in politics, business and society at all levels, elected and otherwise. With International Women's Day upon us, these two books give us cause to celebrate the progress made thus far but also give us concrete tools for furthering the adequate representation of women throughout Irish society.