Strong Irish families better models

I LIVED in Ireland for five years recently and was struck by how patriarchal Irish society is.

It seemed to me, after spending all my life in England, to be heavily dominated by men in all towns and cities. I visited many, who made it their business to control communities on many levels and appeared to me to be much bigger busy bodies and gossips than their female counterparts as they stood around on street corners gossiping and watching others.

From running town councils and standing for local government positions, or running business association meetings and family sports and religious events, these men ran everything with the zealousness of tyrants, or that’s how it appeared to me. I always found it suffocating and very sexist as the women always appeared, on the whole, to be minding children and worrying about their hair, or holding down menial jobs in shops whilst juggling motherhood, and this was always the subject of their garrulous chit-chat at the tills.