1. ‘Nollaig na mBan’ ‘Celebrating Women’s Roles and Contributions
Dr Catherine Conlon
Changing Generations Research Project
School of Social Work and Social Policy
Trinity College Dublin

2. Two Spheres of Society Public Sphere Private Sphere
economic, political life
Private Sphere
home, family life
The society we live in, though spanning two jurisdictions, has many similarities for women living their out their daily lives. Our society is organised along the lines of what are considered modern, western democratic states. We vote to elect our governments at regular intervals and expect them to implement laws and policies on our behalf and in our interests. This type of society is made up of two spheres. The private sphere of family and home life, and the public sphere of economic and political life. Both of these spheres shape the families, communities and societies we live in. Participation of women and men in each sphere is highly gendered.

3. Womanist vision of society
Common sphere
with
participation of all
for
enrichment of all
Over generations, women have questioned this way of organising society and taken many different kinds of action and steps to ensure that women’s contribution can join with those of men to work together for a vision of society that is inclusive and just. The vision of women’s full participation in society is not about taking away from men – work, power, position, pride – but rather about realising the full potential of humanity that is made up of both the male and female. Restricting women to the private sphere deprives the public sphere of women’s insights and perspective, and women of the opportunity to inform how society is regulated and governed. Restricting men to the public sphere deprives them of the enrichment that attending to caring and nurturing relationships within the private sphere brings. All of humanity can be enriched and flourish by full participation of both genders in all spheres of society.

4. Some steps women have taken
securing the vote;
removing the bar on women working after marriage;
equal pay for equal work;
recognition for work of bearing and rearing as fundamental contribution to society....

5. New opportunities
During our lifetimes, whether we sit here in our 80s, 60s or 40s or younger, we have witnessed a period of rapid social and economic change. One of the biggest changes for a young girl being born in this new century, as compared with being born in 1922 when the Island was partitioned, are the opportunities she has available.

6. Network of women mentors
Mothers
Aunts
Neighbours
Teachers
Community volunteers
Mothers, aunts, neighbours, sisters, teachers, community volunteers – many women young girls encounter in their extended families and communities as they grow up - provide resources, encouragement and example to young girls that give them confidence to know they have a valuable contribution to make in both spheres of public and private life.

7. Steps women take every day
Campaigning at national level;
Setting up and joining local community groups;
Getting children to school
Sending them to college
Returning to education
Taking up jobs
Taking on caring roles
Uncovering histories, poetry, art and craft of women in the past
Changing family size
In these and many other ways women of each generation have cleared a path for the next generation and each contribution, no matter how private, local or individual it seems, has shaped a revolution in the roles open to women today in private, public and cultural spheres.

8. Controlling fertility
Changing Family Size
Controlling fertility
Changing population
Changing Roles
Family planning has contributed much to improving women’s health and how long we live. Along with other health related developments, a feature of women’s lives now is much longer life expectancy. Women on the island are now expected on average to live to age and men to age 77 whereas 60 years ago in 1960s this figure for women was 67 years of age and for men was 65 years. Women are living longer, having families with fewer children, and extended families of each generation are made up of fewer children. Big, wide-branched family trees are being replaced by narrow bean-poles!

9. Women’s Roles in 2011

10. Women’s roles in 2011 In RoI 45% of labour force are women
Women aged 15-65
RoI 56% in employment
NI 63% in employment

11. Women in work (%)
But when women strive to combine participation in both spheres – that is family work and paid work – they find participation in paid work less possible.

12. Women in Politics 166 TDs, Northern Ireland 22 or 15% 20 or 19% women
Republic of Ireland
166 TDs,
22 or 15%
women
Northern Ireland
108 MLAs,
20 or 19% women
While women have moved into the realm of paid employment within the public sphere, the political realm has proven much more hostile to women’s participation. The gender quota proposed for implementation by legislation in the RoI in 2013 may improve this.

13. ‘A woman’s work is never done…’
A 2008 study by the Economic and Social Research Institute of how Irish people use their time found that about the same amount of time is spent on unpaid work as on paid work or education in any week across the population. However time spent working differs by gender in quantity and content. Overall when involvement in all types of paid and unpaid work by women and men was analysed, women’s total workload is somewhat higher than men’s. Women work on average around forty minutes longer per day than men in both paid and unpaid labour. Women spend substantially more time on caring and household work and it is women who do most of the work of physical care-giving for older and younger family members who need it, even when women are in paid employment.

14. I want to share with you some ways in which women are supporting each other in their roles every day that emerged from our intergenerational solidarity and justice study. Changing Generations is looking at the give and take between generations in the context of our ageing populations. It is called Changing Generations to reflect how roles and lives have changed during the lifetimes of those taking part, particularly the older participants people across the RoI took part in the study, 52 women and 48 men ranging in age from 18 to 102 from rural and urban areas and from across social classes.

15. Changing Generations Study
Trinity College Dublin, NUI Galway collaboration
Give and take of help and support across generations
100 people interviewed, 52 women & 48 men
High levels of solidarity expressed across generations
The changes in women’s lives and roles I have just talked about are one of the biggest changes witnessed in older people’s lifetimes. We heard this reflected in what women talked to us about in Changing Generations. We also heard of ways in which women support each other in their everyday lives as they go about pursuing new opportunities and fulfilling all their roles. We do not use women’s real names in presenting our findings.

16. Rose, 59
I am very involved with my grandchildren as well. I would have [the eldest grandson], he’s 20 now and I would have reared him until he was 14. He lived with me until he was 14.
And was his mother living with you too?
Well, she was for the first few years but then she wasn’t and she went [away] for a year and then she was working. She bought her own house [down the country] and she was working fulltime and then she went back to college and she did her degree and her masters and her PhD in [science]. So when she had all of that done then she decided that it was time for him to be with her. Now, that broke my heart but it was right. I mean it was his place to be with his mother.
We heard mothers talking about making sure their daughters got to follow their dreams such as Rose describes. Rose 59 is from a disadvantaged urban area in a town about an hour from Dublin, she is divorced with five children now all adults.

17. Rose, 59
When she was pregnant her Mammy put her out and we took her in and she was here until [my grandson] was maybe eight or nine months and they moved out together and then it didn’t work and then he came back home and we still support her because she works now and so we go down and collect him in the mornings and bring him to school and we will go now this evening and collect him from school and we’ll have him here and I have to bring him to his dancing this evening at five and then we will bring him home so we will be supporting her. And that is pretty much fulltime child care? Well it is really yes. And then he comes on a Saturday and he stays here Saturday night and Sunday night with his Daddy. … [My son] didn’t like it and he used to say to me when she would be in here ‘What’s she doing in here?’ and I used to say ‘… you brought her into our lives and we grew to love her and just because you and her finished doesn’t mean we have to finish with her. She is the mother of your son and she will always be there in our lives and that’s that.’
Support among women often went beyond ‘traditional’ family lines as Rose further describes.

18. Generational Observing
Members of one generation observing the life strains, as well as freedoms, on other generations and responding
One of the striking things we heard in this study is how each generation is observing the other one and taking stock of the pressures they are coming under. Older generations of women observe their adult daughters who are mother’s themselves and consider them to be under considerable strain and pressure, particularly if in paid employment as well. They often take steps to help them out. This ranged from being as independent as possible to avoid asking their daughters for help or getting involved in childcare.

19. Martha, 70
He goes to a Crèche, he is collected on a bus and they finish at six and it is highly unlikely that my daughter or my son-in-law can get to there before six o’clock. So, what I normally do is I go down around four and pick him up. We might go shopping and go back to my house and finish his homework. … Now I have started to cook and give him his dinner as well. … I am one of many; I can say that several of my friends are doing the same thing. They are jumping into the breach and helping out in minding children, collecting children and babysitting. Some of them are actually, instead of the parents paying money to a crèche are actually now getting involved in collecting the children and bringing them in. My mum did a certain amount of that for me in her later years.
For example Martha aged 70 is a retired woman from an affluent area of Dublin who lived a very different life to Rose. Her three daughters are married and working. Martha recently started looking after her grandson to relieve the pressures she sees on her daughter and her husband who both work full-time. Martha sees this as in keeping with the help her mother gave her in a form of women supporting women down the generations.

20. Susan, 36
Now that I have returned to college and I have a young son, she helps me with school runs, homework and sometimes dinner when I get home late and things like that. I would be a lone parent but that kind of pressure is taken off me a bit. It does feel like there are two people there and I can offload a little bit of the responsibility to my Mam when it comes to doing a couple of the - the running around and maybe the shopping. She does really, really support me when it comes to keeping the home and that kind of thing.
The help older women give to daughters and other women in their families and communities does not go unnoticed, as Martha referred to recalling her mother’s help. Young women are conscious of how important this support is to them, whether it is to help them out with childcare or support in the sense of providing them with the opportunities and freedom to follow their ambitions and opportunities. Susan, aged 34, is a lone mother who returned to college to improve her job prospects so she could support her son in the best way possible.

21. Susan, 36
I do see my Mam in the future if she needs care herself, that she would be with me. That is definitely where I would see the roles changing. It is quite two-way at the moment.
Meanwhile Susan had looked after her mother over the previous summer when she had to have an operation and was committed to caring for her mother in the future if she ever needed care.

22. Stacey, 19
My Nanny is 84 and she is very bad with Alzheimer’s, and it is just mainly I go over because my father lives with her. Obviously he can’t bath her and wash her or she won’t let him, she is very independent like that I am just there to bath her, wash her, dress her, cook the dinner. … My Da leaves for work about seven … I come over about 9.30/10.00 and then just keep an eye on her, make her a cup of tea and a sandwich and stuff or whatever and then cook dinner and then she gets two tablets at six and three tablets at eight o’clock and then he is usually home then so then I go home . … she is my Nanny, I shouldn’t be paid to look after her I feel.
Some young women, especially those in lower class groups took a hands on role in helping their mothers, sisters or other female relatives. Stacey aged 19 has taken on the role of caring for her Grandmother as a full-time role because she is her nanny who she ‘loves to bits’

23. Christine, 19
I know she likes when I call home so I try to do that, you know what I mean, just to even say goodnight or whatever. … I would say ‘Goodnight Mam’ maybe if I was in bed or something like that Ma, what does she want from me? She just wants basically a bit of communication, just to know I am happy, that’s all she wants.
In our study we found high levels of solidarity and willingness across the generations to support each other. Young women got a lot of support from their mothers and older women in their families but we also saw how they were mindful of how women can be a support to each other. Even when living away from home, small gestures could act as contact and support among mothers and daughters. As 19 year old Christine who is in college and away from home for the first time describes

24. ‘Nollaig na mBan’ ‘Celebrate Women’s Roles and Contributions
Today and Throughout 2013!