There was an fascinating section in yesterday’s Irish Times celebrating 40 years of ‘The Women’s Movement’. Although the title sounds like some uncomfortable euphemism to monthly contractions, the section itself is an excellent read. Try clicking here to see if it’s still online.

So, what has changed in the last 40 years? Ask your mammy if she’s still around. There is no greater source of information than those who lived it.

My mother, who grew up in a particularly open-minded Dublin household, had to leave her job when she married my Dad. There was uproar when she refused to be churched after having her first child in 1969 (women used to require a blessing after giving birth, to purify them as they were seen as dirty, indeed they weren’t allowed leave the house until they had been ‘churched’), and her mother (my granny) was considered worrying when she allowed her children to talk to a young woman who had gotten pregnant outside marriage – other people crossed the road to avoid the poor girl.

My grandfather died very young but my granny had to pretend to charity services that he was alive or she wouldn’t get help from them – she would have been risking losing her children aged under 18 to social services, even though (with the heroic help of her eldest) she managed to take care of things.

This isn’t the 19th century we’re talking about, this is 50 years ago. In my mother’s words, “nothing changed for years and years and then, after the 60s, everything changed. My mother’s world was the same as her mother’s, but suddenly everything was different”.

Fintan O’Toole’s piece in the Irish Times highlights just ten things women couldn’t do in the 60s. All quoted text is from his article.

1.  Keep her job in the public service or a bank when she got married. The Employment Equality Act in 1977, made gender discrimination in the workplace illegal.

2.   Sit on a jury. This changed in 1976, when two women brought their case to the Supreme Court and won

3.   Buy contraceptives.  This changed in 1985 when you could buy condoms in chemists only.

4.  Drink a pint in a pub. If you were allowed in at all, you had to drink from a half-pint glass. It was 2002 before The Equal Status Act made this illegal.

5.  Collect her children’s allowance. The father had all of the rights here, something that changed in the 1974 Social Welfare Act.

6.   Get a barring order against a violent partner. You either put up with it, or went homeless as your house was in the husband’s name. It was 1976 before any legal protection was afforded to women.

7.  Own in her family home. Even if she was the main earner, the husband could sell the house from under her as she had no right to it.

Under the Family Home Protection Act of 1976, neither spouse can sell the family home without the written consent of the other.

8.  Refuse to have sex with her husband.

In 1970 the phrase ‘marital rape’ was a contradiction in terms. A husband was assumed to have the right to have sex with his wife and consent was not, in the eyes of the law, an issue.

Women’s adultery was also specifically penalised in the civil law, the notorious tort of “criminal conversation” or “CrimCon”: a husband could legally sue another man for compensation for sleeping with his wife.

The first successful prosecution for marital rape was in 2002.

9.  Choose her official place of residence.

Under Irish law, a married woman was deemed to have the same “domicile” as her husband. This meant that if her husband left her and moved to Australia, her legal domicile was deemed to be Australia. Women, who could not get a divorce in Ireland, could find themselves divorced in countries where their husbands were domiciled.

10.  Get the same rate for a job as a man

Legislation on equal pay was introduced in 1974 and employment equality legislation followed in 1977, both as a result of European directives.

We’ll have more about the 40th Anniversary in a post this weekend, so keep an eye out.

Documenting Irish Feminisms: The Second Wave

Two Irelands: Literary Feminisms North and South (Irish Studies)

Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women and Wicked Hags

Feminist Activism in the 1990s (Gender & Society: Feminist Perspectives on the Past & Present)

Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland

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