International Women’s Day - A lot done but, as ever, a lot to do

INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day will be celebrated on Sunday.

In a country where nearly all of the senior positions in our justice and police systems are held by women, it is easy to forget that an Indian rapist awaiting his destiny on death row who suggested his victim, gang-raped and mutilated on a bus, might have survived if she had not fought back, that the gang of rapists might have been kinder to her had she been less hostile, represents the real, unequal, and dangerous world for millions of women.

That chilling misogyny was amplified when one of the defendants’ lawyers in the Delhi bus rape case declared: “If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse and, in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight.”

It is frightening that someone, no matter how caged by cultural or religious dogma, who has had the education needed to practice as a lawyer, should express these views in 2015. It is even more frightening that those views, that level of hatred, are still the default position in so many societies.

Gender inequality is not confined to those backward, savage societies. In America, three women graduate from college for every two men but still earn just 77 cents for every dollar that men earn and fill just 14% of Fortune 500 boardroom seats.

In Australia, a country with one of the best educated female populations in the world, women, just like Irish women, complain about the absence of affordable childcare, saying it is as a major deterrent to returning to work after having children. In China, where Mao once declared that “women hold up half the sky”, the income gap is widening.

Last year’s annual gender gap survey from the World Economic Forum, a survey that measures gender equality under headings such as health, education, the economy, and politics, put Ireland in eighth place out of 142 countries.

That is a commendable rating, even if fewer than 16% of our Dáil deputies are women. Though not a perfect response to that situation — can there be one? — all political parties face the prospect of losing some of their State funding unless at least 30% of the candidates they run in the next general election are women. It is sad, though, that a sanction such as this was needed to force a change in our political representation.

It is easy to talk about appalling attacks in India, widening wage gaps in China, and how very hard it is to have a career and be a good mother in Ireland, but it does seem that we have a considerable distance to go before we can say this society does all it can to help women realise their potential.

That is tragic because all of us, not just our sisters, wives, and mothers, pay the price.

It is questionable, too, whether we really have the deep commitment to the parity and cross-gender respect that would underpin a society where the battles around equality can be set aside. We have, as in so many areas, done a lot but a lot more needs to be done if this is to be a truly equal society.