My article in today's Indo👇
Exerpt: A few years ago, I was disinvited from speaking at an International Women’s Day (IWD) corporate event when the organiser belatedly realised an article I wrote (which led to the booking) was satirical. It was called, ‘Women should embrace inequality, not fight it’.
Organiser: “So… you didn’t mean it when you wrote that we should prepare our daughters for working life by giving them less pocket money than our sons…?”
Me: “WTF?”
Another time, I was invited to talk about female empowerment at a women-only event. I suggested tackling female disempowerment at source instead by having a men-only workshop for the 21-member entirely male board.
Me: “Women don’t need assertiveness workshops, we need equal pay, equal rights and equal representation at the top table.”
Organiser: “Sorry, wrong number.”
More recently, I declined an invitation to speak at an IWD event because all six panel members were privileged white women. I suggested they give my place to a friend who fled persecution in Sudan and is now a kick-ass (very cool) doctor. I was replaced by... a privileged white woman.
Perusing the week-long IWD events, I couldn’t help noticing the glaringly absent voices. One panel had 16 women – all of whom were white. ‘Choose to challenge’ was this year’s IWD theme and some marginalised women chose to challenge the women’s movement itself.
When Mincéir Beoir Rosemarie Maughan called out the exclusion of Traveller women from IWD panels, she was offered a last-minute slot resulting from a settled woman cancelling. She declined, instead joining other Traveller women on the Sligo Traveller Group forum where she expressed frustration at being excluded by female allies, adding: “We deserve more than crumbs from other people’s plates.”
Catherine Coffey O’Brien talked about her mother being picked up by the “cruelty man” (agents of the State that took Traveller children from their families and put them into institutions). Three other families were seized the same day, all of whom were first cousins, and all were split up and “thrown like leaves in the wind”. They never came back together as a family and “our clan system”, Catherine said, “was destroyed”.
Catherine, a Bessborough survivor, also expressed irritation that Traveller and other marginalised women’s voices were ignored by the Mother and Baby Home Commission. “They never listened. We were not heard.”
If I could only challenge one act of state-sponsored misogyny this year it would be the egregious Mother and Baby Homes Report. An official document containing evidence of human rights abuses perpetrated against women and babies, yet describing them as “lobbyists” while dismissing, distorting and deleting their testimonies, cannot be accepted as a legitimate historical record.
Bereft of moral and legal integrity, the process exposed survivors to retraumatisation, was underpinned by misogynistic preconceptions and enabled by silence – past and present.
Annette McKay, whose testimony documenting her mother’s ordeal in Tuam was returned to her in tick-box form, vowed to continue the fight after lockdown. “Bring a shovel,” she tweeted, “we are burying their report and digging up the truth.” I've got my shovel.
It references an earlier article, "Women should embrace equality, not fight it". Health warning: contains satire👇
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