1916 (37 page)

Within the labour and trade union movement post-1916 women activists also had to maintain vigilance regarding their status. Louie Bennett was among those whose close identification with Labour did not inhibit criticism where she felt it necessary. During the Irish Convention of 1917, she reported in the
Irish Citizen
:

When Labour Sunday was celebrated in Dublin a few weeks ago, no woman was invited to stand on the platform by the Labour party. The women of Ireland might have all been free to enjoy the comforts of a home, a fireside, and a cradle to rock for all the interest the Labour party of Ireland manifested in their affairs.
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Following the passing of the Representation of the People Act in 1918, which granted the parliamentary vote to women over thirty, Bennett was nominated to stand for the 1918 general election. The
Irish Citizen
congratulated the Irish Labour party on being the first political party to choose a woman candidate. However, reporting on the local elections of the following year, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington noted that ‘official Labour has the unenviable distinction of entirely ignoring women on their ticket’.
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The attitude of the Labour party did little to encourage change. Describing overtures made to the party from the IWWU in 1923, Jones has noted that ‘articulate women trade unionists found only a measured welcome’.
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Late in 1919 a lively debate took place between Bennett and Cissie Cahalan of the DAA in the pages of the
Irish Citizen
on the issue of single sex unions versus one big union. Advocating separate organisation, Bennett argued that it was futile to deny latent antagonism between the sexes in industry, commenting:

There is a disposition amongst men workers not only to keep women in inferior and subordinate positions, but to drive them out of industry altogether. So long as women occupy a subordinate position within the trade union movement they will need the safeguard of an independent organisation.
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Cissie Cahalan, one of the few examples of working class involvement in the Irish suffrage movement, defended the concept of mixed trade unions. She laid the blame for the under-involvement of women on their own shoulders, arguing that women’s reluctance to go forward as candidates for branch or executive committees left the management of trade unions in male hands.
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The arguments raised in this debate continued for many years, Bennett’s involvement within the trade union movement reinforcing her beliefs. In 1930 she noted that, but for the IWWU, a woman’s voice was rarely heard at trades union congress or trades council. Cissie Cahalan, writing in the same journal as Bennett, observed that it was ‘deplorable to find men who still think of woman as the enemy – and shut their eyes to the real barrier to a full and complete life for all – the capitalist class’.
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Helena Molony likewise concluded that working women had made little progress since Connolly’s time, pointing out that women were still excluded from certain industries because of their gender, and that a woman’s wage was still only 20 to 30 per cent of a man’s average wage.
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Writing in the
Dublin labour year book
of 1930 Bennett, Molony and Cahalan each addressed the issue of women in the political wing of labour. All were unhappy with that role. Molony, referring to the ‘sorry travesty of emancipation’, advised women and the labour movement to reflect on Connolly’s writings and beliefs. Bennett noted that, despite the fact that women made up 50 per cent of the electorate, political parties still treated them as a side issue and women themselves made little use of their political power. She commented that politically the labour movement was completely in the hands of men, and it was evident that working class women did not desire to be so involved. In a similar vein, Cahalan noted that there was not one female labour representative in the Dáil or Seanad. She observed that this reflected the situation of women within the labour movement itself, pointing to the few women delegates appointed to the male dominated Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress (ILPTUC).

From 1934 attention focused on Seán Lemass’ forthcoming Conditions of Employment bill. The ostensible aim of the 1936 Conditions of Employment Act was to improve working conditions by imposing a maximum forty eight hour working week, guarantee one week’s paid holiday, and establish controls regarding overtime.
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As such, it was in line with international labour office policy. But the Act, which had been drafted by the minister following detailed consultation with male trade union leaders, gave him power under section sixteen to prohibit and/ or control the employment of women in certain industries. The IWWU sought and was refused consultative status in its framing.
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The campaign by the IWWU against the implementation of section sixteen of the Act was carried out within the trade union movement, on the political front, and in the public arena through the media and public meetings.
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Within the trade union and labour movement, the women’s case received little if any support. Male trade union leaders supported the proposed legislation, viewing with alarm rising male unemployment figures. The IWWU sought the support of male trade unionists in its campaign. Debate on the issue at the ITUC in August 1935 showed the extent of trade union hostility to any amendment. William O’Brien of the ITGWU revealed that section sixteen had been framed in response to a request by his union’s national executive. In the ensuing debate most speakers argued that the replacement of male workers by lower paid female workers provided justification that men should benefit under the Act.
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Generally it was felt to be ‘a very wrong thing that young girls should be sent into factories and young men kept out’. The congress secretary argued that while the Labour movement generally was in favour of equality, increasing mechanisation, which facilitated the replacement of male workers with cheaper female workers, posed a dilemma. He, along with the majority of members, believed that the needs of male workers should be prioritised to preserve the greater good of working people generally. Defending the right of man as breadwinner, one speaker enthusiastically declared: ‘Woman is the queen of our hearts and of our homes, and for God’s sake let us try to keep her there.’
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Helena Molony, in a scathing reply, deplored ‘such reactionary opinions expressed … by responsible leaders of Labour in support of a capitalist minister’.
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The Labour leader, William Norton, was adamant in his opposition to the IWWU, citing Molony’s assertion of women’s right to be carpenters and blacksmiths as proof of a wish by women workers to displace men. A memorandum sent to the Women’s Consultative Committee at Geneva by Bennett, regarding Irish women’s expectation that a native government would have ensured female equality with men, commented that while initially this appeared to have been achieved, ‘more recent legislation shows a violent movement in the opposite direction, depriving women of fundamental liberties’.
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Bennett sent a copy of this memorandum to President de Valera, who subsequently met a deputation of women to discuss the status of women in the Free State. The success of this meeting can be gauged from Bennett’s report to the IWWU executive that the President ‘could not see how men and women could be equal’.
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In the Dáil none of the three female TDs spoke for or against the proposed bill.
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On the other hand, as before, female senators were most vocal in their opposition. When it came to an attack on the rights of women old political adversaries such as Jenny Wyse-Power and Kathleen Clarke buried their differences.
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Wyse-Power recalled the hopes of those young girls who had lost their jobs following the 1916 Rising, but who had faith that ‘when our own men are in power, we shall have equal rights’. Clarke, responding to the accusation that ‘the feminists have run riot’ over the bill, stated that although she was sympathetic to the feminist movement, ‘her opposition to section 16 of the bill was based on nationalist grounds, and specifically on the 1916 Proclamation which granted equal rights to all citizens’. Both women criticised Labour party support for the bill, Clarke wondering what Connolly’s attitude would be, and pointing out that the proposed ‘very dangerous’ legislation represented ‘the thin end of the wedge against women’.
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The 1936 Act had been drafted by Seán Lemass following detailed consultation with male trade union leaders who roundly supported the power given by this Act to the minister to regulate or prohibit women workers. The trade union movement during the years following independence reflected the dominant values, the prevailing ethos of the time, in placing emphasis on the family unit, not on individual rights. Confronted with the power of both a trade union movement and a government that was predominantly male both in membership and leadership, women workers and their organisation were vulnerable and restricted in their options. By 1937 the Irish Free State was placed on a blacklist at the international labour organisation.
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Why were the first governments of the independent state so determined to keep women out of the public life of the nation? What economic determination justified the removal of jury rights from women? Was the conservatism of the new state as reflected in these Acts unique to a small predominantly Catholic country recently emerged from civil war? On the contrary, similar conservative attitudes emerged worldwide following the 1914–18 war.
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In the immediate post-war situation, emphasis hinged on population issues and on the need to reverse the fall in birth rates. Pro-family campaigns were initiated in almost all European countries, emphasis being placed on women’s reproductive role. The dominant political ideologies of the decades following the Great War agreed that the role of women was within the family, developing ‘the cult of the cradle’.
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Suffrage activity had ceased in many countries during the war years, with voting rights being granted to most women post-war. The absence of a focused women’s movement in the post-war years allied to national governments’ emphasis on retrenchment and rebuilding helped the promotion of women’s family role. The predominance of conservative values during these years was strengthened by Catholic social thought and emergent fascism, both of which had fixed views regarding the role of women. Within an Irish context, Margaret O’Callaghan has argued that the Irish hierarchy’s revulsion against the anarchy and breakdown of social and familial bonds during the civil war was a strong element in determining the shape and ethos of the Irish Free State.
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Given the equality of citizenship and opportunity granted by the 1922 constitution, based on principles drawn from the 1916 Proclamation, and taking account of the high profile of women such as Constance Markievicz, Jennie Wyse Power, Mary McSwiney, Dr Kathleen Lynn, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Kathleen Clarke, to name but a few, it was not unreasonable to expect that women would continue to play a prominent and meaningful role in the development of the new state. Yet, as time would show, this period was in fact the peak of women’s political involvement until the early 1980s. Factors contributing to this development included the strong anti-Treaty stance of many nationalist women, the lack of a cohesive women’s movement post-suffrage, and the development of an authoritarian society with traditional views regarding women’s place. Contemporary argument from women’s groups during the 1920s and 1930s against restrictive legislation regarding women clearly articulated their concerns. As early as three years into the new state, protesting against the implications of the 1925 Civil Service (Amendment) bill, the Irish Women’s Citizens Association (IWCA) argued that the question was one of principle, pointing out that the bill created ‘a principle of sex disqualification which does not at present exist in our legislation’.
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In December 1935 Mary Kettle, in an address to the National University Women Graduates Association (NUWGA), urged her audience to have vigilance regarding the constitutional position of women, noting that while equality of citizenship had been conferred on women through the existing constitution and the Proclamation of 1916, ‘men had little by little begun to take away what they had conferred’.
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As noted above, while female Dáil deputies rarely spoke against any of the restrictive measures discussed earlier, and generally voted with the government of the day, ‘the erosion of women’s rights drew a united response from politically divided women senators’, despite the legacy of deeply-rooted civil war differences.
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Were these then the steps that brought about what Mary Robinson has described as ‘the non-participation of women in the new Irish state’?
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For many who had been active within labour, nationalist, and feminist circles, the state that emerged from the mid-1920s became a travesty of what they had expected. Independence quickly saw the silencing of radicalism, particularly in regard to social legislation. Political leaders between 1922 and 1937 displayed an attitude towards the role of women in the new state ‘which was as remarkable for its consensus as it was for its conservatism’.
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In particular, the opposition of Kevin O’Higgins and Éamon de Valera to a public role for women was instrumental in the passing of a series of restrictive legislative measures. From the introduction of the first such measures in the mid-1920s, the clear message to Irish feminists was that ‘the struggle for women’s equality in the Free State was far from over’.
¹⁰⁹
The road map for the role and status of women in Ireland during the first fifty years of the state was established by criteria laid down by church and state during these years. Predominantly during these decades, a male voice – clerical or political – laid down the guidelines and rules to be followed by women. Perhaps the answer lies in a comment made by Margaret Connery in the
Irish Citizen
in 1919: