An equal-opportunity culture: Our attitudes are the real glass ceiling

When she opened the National Women’s Council’s new offices in Dublin earlier this week Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald emphasised again that a lot more needs to be done to support women — and families — to ensure that more women are in a position to be decision makers in defining roles in society.

Despite great and welcome advances it is more than unfortunate, and stupid too, that this call to arms remains valid and barely answered.

This is especially so as the barriers to this entirely rational and desirable state of affairs are all too obvious, suggesting that if there was a real will in society, or in politics, the situation might be different, particularly as this is now an equality rather than a gender issue.