The sea was had whipped herself up into a frenzy for our Seagirls International Women’s Day swim. There was this deep rumble, a crash, and the sigh of the sea as she rose, fast and foamy, sound and water filling the cove, wave after wave rushing in and smashing against the rocks in an explosion of spray. Through it, the fleeting colours of a rainbow. Through it, the lilt of women’s voices coming together.
Today, International Women’s Day, Irish citizens (not me!) are voting in a referendum to amend the so-called Family and Care articles of the Constitution. The archaic reference to women’s “duties in the home” is to be deleted and replaced with a new, gender-neutral wording: “The State recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to Society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision.”
This new, gender-blind amendment fails to acknowledge that it is women who carry out the bulk of caring work, unpaid. Instead of meaningful support, we get penalised at every turn for the work we do for free, and we have to wait and beg and fight for services that should be a given.
Our society is structured to ensure that no good deed goes unpunished. There’s a price to be paid for caring and it is, overwhelmingly, women who pay it. There can be no true gender equality while this remains the case.1
Today, on the one day of the year that celebrates women’s achievements and highlights all that is still needed to achieve true gender equality, Irish citizens are asked to vote on an amendment which, rather than begin to address gender inequalities in the provision of care, simply conceals them. We are being told this is a step in the right direction. Maybe. But to glibly hold this referendum on International Women’s Day feels like a slap. Small steps in the right direction don’t cut it. For some reason, I’m humming Tracey Chapman’s song Talking ‘Bout a Revolution.
Like a wave
Be like a wave. Rise and rise and rise some more, conspiring with wind and sand and rock, with kelp and pink and seal, to sculpt a new world. Surrender, flowing yet unstoppable, leaving behind a changed landscape.
Do it all over again, and again, seemingly the same but always different.
It’s March and there is a quickening. Something is rising up, women, the sea, old wounds, new life
Watch us rise like waves, soft and inconceivably powerful, as we burst out of our shackles.
In honour of International Women’s Day 2024, I am joining Claire Venus, Lauren Barber, Lyndsay Kaldor, Laura Oldfield, Lindsay Johnstone and other incredible women to create a beautiful daisy chain of stories here on Substack.
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Referendum wording does not remove conservative 1930s doctrine. It reinforces it – Fintan O’Toole in the Irish Times
Love this Annette... be like a wave... x
What a day to be alive Annette. Happy swimming. Happy writing 🖤