Search Results for 'Gender equality'

Issues with childcare in Ireland are a barrier to achieving gender equality in the workplace but many steps can be easily taken to improve the system, according to Darragh Whelan, Director of Childhood Services Ireland, the Ibec trade association for childcare providers.

The final chapter in the history of Shakespeare and Company, the famous Paris bookshop, began with the publication of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, in May 1939. The shop closed in December 1941 when a Nazi officer saw a copy of Joyce’s book in its window and asked to buy it. Sylvia Beach refused saying it was her only copy, and was not for sale. The officer threatened to return and confiscate her entire stock, and left. He returned the next day and demanded she sold him the book. Again Sylvia refused, and the officer, ‘trembling with rage’ warned that he would be back that afternoon and seize all her books.

The recent murder of Ashling Murphy has catapulted the issue of femicide and male violence against women to the forefront of the political and social spectrum.

If you have ever considered running for local election in counties Westmeath or Roscommon or simply want to find out more about how the local authority works and the role of a county councillor then a FREE online course from SHESchool could be just the answer.

"Achieving gender equality for women and girls is the greatest unfinished business of our times. Seventy eight per cent of those on the frontline healthcare are women, we were never more reliant and grateful for their work than we have been this year."

Graça Machel, a one-time freedom fighter in Mozambique turned human rights and equality activist will this month visit the West of Ireland.  Together with her husband, civil liberties icon Nelson Mandela, Machel was instrumental in founding The Elders and has made women’s rights a lifelong cause. 

While major gains have been made in the last 100 years which transformed the position of women in Ireland “persistent and serious” gender gaps remain which must be addressed before gender equality can be truly achieved.

International Women’s Day, celebrated throughout the world on March 8, will soon be upon us. It was first nominated as a national holiday for women in 1908 to highlight a strike by New York women clothing workers against the sweatshop conditions in the factories. From its beginning it has been rooted in years of struggle and used as a rallying point to demand women’s rights and women’s suffrage. Here in Ireland, something we can be proud of is that in the First Dáil on January 21 1919, a woman, Constance Markievicz, was appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Labour. This was truly historic when you consider that Constance Markievicz was the first female cabinet minister in western Europe and that Irish women didn’t gain the right to vote until 1928.