Jennifer Horgan: Even The Bible tells us that 'respect your elders' is flawed life advice

The views of older men on working from home are not worth listening to if you're a mother who has made the juggle work

Remote working is a lifeline for women with children. File picture

Respect your elders was something I heard a lot growing up. Increasingly, I’d say it’s pretty awful advice. Certainly, there are elders worth respecting — those who admit to knowing only a little, who are slow to judge and slow to anger.

Actor Bill Nighy’s new podcast Ill-Advised is a safe listen in this respect. In his breezy intro, Nighy advises people to “call a cab” if he attempts any kind of profundity.

His 75 years have afforded him no wisdom whatsoever, he says.

The podcast is a refreshing antidote to our advice-drenched culture, described by the amiable Nighy as nothing more than “an invitation to squander some time”.

Gabriel Byrne is another elder I could listen to at length. I heard him chat for an hour last Sunday at the Dingle Literary Festival. He discussed all sorts without the faintest whiff of pontification, entertaining with tales of his very first kiss — in Dingle with a local — his ‘Tingle in Dingle’, as he put it.

Among books that influenced Byrne (the focus of the hour’s chat) he listed The Bible and one story in particular. I’d never heard of Susanna and the Elders and it got me thinking of relationships between women of my age (and far younger) and powerful, male elders.

Gabriel Byrne is one elder you could listen to at great length. Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty 

In the Bible story recalled by Byrne, a beautiful woman named Susanna bathes privately in her walled garden. Two elder judges spy on her. Together, they demand she have sex with them. She refuses and they have her arrested, claiming they saw her committing adultery with a young man under a tree.

God intervenes through Daniel. The men are eventually identified as liars when they give contradictory accounts of her crime. The villainous elders are put to death, the woman exonerated.

I doubt even Gabriel Byrne knew why he mentioned the story last weekend. Maybe it was random. Maybe he was conscious of being a male elder himself (though a benign one) in conversation with a much younger woman. Or maybe a part of him is painfully aware of the male elders out there, the powerful ogres wreaking havoc on our natural world, and on women.

The story of Susanna is still sadly so relevant. Consider the most obvious examples first — elders such as Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Donald Trump. It’s easy to imagine these creeps playing the role of the perverted judges. 

The impact of Trump’s “quiet, piggy” comment, to a female journalist on Air Force One, has been considerable. For whatever reason, given how heinous the man is, it still shook people. 

There is something in Trump’s delivery that makes it incredibly chilling.  Speaking in a more measured way seconds before, it is a Jekyll-and-Hyde moment caught perfectly on camera. His tone lowers as his finger points. The footage reveals a darkness, a metallic cold-heartedness, beneath his already despicable public demeanour.

There are less obvious ways in which gender equality is undermined by men of a certain age too.

The attitudes might not seem overtly misogynistic, but the goals are the same. They are power plays that work to put women back in their place. Back in the home.

Remote working

Many column inches have explored Denis O’Brien’s comments on remote working in recent weeks. The billionaire, who took a considerable hit in a libel action this week, has long opined that remote working is making people lazy.

Denis O'Brien has opined that remote working makes people lazy. Picture: Javier Borrego/Getty

We are told by many commentators that we should listen to the message, even if we don’t approve of the messenger. What nonsense when the two are inextricably linked. O’Brien’s attack on remote working, at its core, would disproportionately affect women, particularly those of child-rearing age.

The reality is remote work offers a lifeline to women with children, who can now attend meetings from their home office between emptying the dishwasher and hanging out clothes, in the time they used to spend chatting at the watercooler. They can pick up the children between deadlines as colleagues take a coffee break.

Most Irish families illustrate the myth of gender equality. Both parents work but one parent also brings up the children and runs the house. Men are praised for taking a portion of this challenge out of women’s hands, but child-rearing and housework are still considered women’s business.

Remote working offers women the chance to at least compete in the working game, albeit at a persistent disadvantage. 

It provides an opportunity for women to stay in full-time employment, securing reasonable and equitable pensions, and the chance of financial independence as an older adult.

Remote work makes it a little less impossible for them to (most gag-worthy of all phrases) have it all.

According to Grow Remote, a remote-first social enterprise founded in Ireland in 2019, the data is clear: Two out of three women say hybrid working has created more career opportunities in 2025.

The research they share is hefty. According to the latest CSO Labour Force Survey, they say, female employment increased by 11,000 in Q3 2024, bringing the total number of employed women in Ireland to 1,317,000 — the highest level for females on record. The number of women working from home rose by 306% between 2016 and 2022.

In contrast, the number of men working from home increased by 114% during the same period.

Funnily enough, remote work isn’t proving as problematic as O’Brien suggests. A survey in February 2025 by Accenture and the 30% Club Ireland shows that 1,300 employees across 150 employers found that companies with care-supportive policies benefit from higher retention, increased productivity, and reduced absenteeism.

'Women's work'

O’Brien is full of hot air but make no mistake; by targeting remote work, whether consciously or not, his remarks inadvertently affect women.  

It was fascinating to hear Eoin O’Malley, associate professor in political science in Dublin City University, back O’Brien on the Mick Clifford Podcast this week.

Stay-at-home mums used to keep young people in line, says O’Malley on the podcast, by supporting teachers and instilling a positive work ethic in their charges. Now, the same women are off working outside the home, losing the run of themselves, clearly.

These women (he’s talking about me here) feel a deep guilt over their life choices. This guilt causes them to overprotect and over-parent their darlings, creating young people without resilience. Like O’Brien, it is O’Malley’s contention that people need to get back into the office and ‘toughen up’. He jokes that his own parenting style might be described as ‘benign neglect’. We hear you, Eoin O’Malley. Parenting is women’s work.

This is the son of Des O’Malley, founder of the Progressive Democrats, a party that split from the establishment partly to take a more liberal stance on issues such as contraception and divorce. The grandson of Donogh O’Malley, who introduced free education in response to “the crying needs of our young children”.  

Listening to this younger iteration, one wonders if it’s backwards we’re travelling. That’s the thing about time, isn’t it? It’s the thing about age. Neither time, nor age, will necessarily bring wisdom.