The Irish Women's Movement

Ireland’s long history of patriarchy is matched by the ongoing evolution of its women’s movements. Today’s complex, transnational feminism finds its precursor in the colonial era. The first wave of the Irish women’s movement dates from the mid-19th century, with the franchise secured for women in 1918 while still under British colonial rule. First-wave feminists played a role in the nationalist movement, but their demands were sidelined later, during the construction of a conservative Catholic post-colonial Irish state. In the 1970s, the second wave marked a critical period of radicalism and consolidation, with important gains on issues of violence against women and women’s reproductive rights. The 1980s, in contrast, were a period of social conservatism, high unemployment and emigration, marked by a significant backlash against gains made by women’s rights advocates, including constitutional bans on divorce and abortion

Investing in Talent - Promoting Gender Balanced Leadership : Conference Report

A conceptual note prepared for the conference by the Gender Equality Division of the Department of Justice and Equality underscored the need to focus on the issue of gender balanced leadership. OECD1 and European research shows tangible and measurable benefits from better gender-balance including: increased labour productivity; enhanced governance and performance; improved corporate image; higher return on investment; greater ability to attract and retain the best talent; increased workplace innovation; and a reduction in employee turnover. Women account for an important part of the global consumer market and make 70% of the household purchasing decisions in the EU and it is crucial that senior management in companies adequately reflect this consumer base. Economic growth and sustained business investment requires a diverse and highly skilled workforce. Greater gender balance in senior decision making roles can contribute to this in important ways. The low numbers of women in senior decision-making positions in Ireland represent a vast pool of untapped potential and under-utilisation of talent. In April 2014, women accounted for only 10.5% of the board members of the largest publicly listed companies in Ireland, up only 2.1 percentage points from 2010 whereas, for the EU as a whole, the average share of women on the boards of the largest publicly listed companies had risen by 6.7 percentage points to reach 18.6%. Three in one hundred (3.3%) of the largest listed companies in Europe have a woman CEO (Chief Executive Officer), while in Ireland the figure is around 6%. Despite efforts to address these issues in the public sector in Ireland, traditionally a key employer of women, the sector remains largely pyramidal with relatively few women compared to men rising to senior positions. More recently there have been a series of positive examples of female appointments to decision making positions traditionally held by men, particularly in the Justice area. The overall trends, however, tell us that women as a highly skilled source of leadership talent and potential are being largely overlooked to the detriment of business performance and the wider economy as a whole

Investing in Talent - Promoting Gender Balanced Leadership : Conference Report

A conceptual note prepared for the conference by the Gender Equality Division of the Department of Justice and Equality underscored the need to focus on the issue of gender balanced leadership. OECD1 and European research shows tangible and measurable benefits from better gender-balance including: increased labour productivity; enhanced governance and performance; improved corporate image; higher return on investment; greater ability to attract and retain the best talent; increased workplace innovation; and a reduction in employee turnover. Women account for an important part of the global consumer market and make 70% of the household purchasing decisions in the EU and it is crucial that senior management in companies adequately reflect this consumer base. Economic growth and sustained business investment requires a diverse and highly skilled workforce. Greater gender balance in senior decision making roles can contribute to this in important ways. The low numbers of women in senior decision-making positions in Ireland represent a vast pool of untapped potential and under-utilisation of talent. In April 2014, women accounted for only 10.5% of the board members of the largest publicly listed companies in Ireland, up only 2.1 percentage points from 2010 whereas, for the EU as a whole, the average share of women on the boards of the largest publicly listed companies had risen by 6.7 percentage points to reach 18.6%. Three in one hundred (3.3%) of the largest listed companies in Europe have a woman CEO (Chief Executive Officer), while in Ireland the figure is around 6%. Despite efforts to address these issues in the public sector in Ireland, traditionally a key employer of women, the sector remains largely pyramidal with relatively few women compared to men rising to senior positions. More recently there have been a series of positive examples of female appointments to decision making positions traditionally held by men, particularly in the Justice area. The overall trends, however, tell us that women as a highly skilled source of leadership talent and potential are being largely overlooked to the detriment of business performance and the wider economy as a whole

Trade Union Mobilization and Female-Dominated Care Work in Ireland: Feminised and/or Feminist?

This article adopts a feminist policy and politics perspective to examine gendered shifts in mobilization of Trade Unions in Ireland. While Unions enjoyed access to policy-setting contexts in a form of social partnership from the late 1980s to 2008, this process was abolished in the economic crisis and was replaced by austerity-era public pay stability agreements. Adopting a case study approach, this research scrutinizes Trade Union campaigns for feminised occupations to examine how gender is used to do political and ideational work in feminised campaigns. This analysis raises larger questions about what happens when national corporatist models decline and Unions in response look to ‘gender’ campaigns and mobilise feminised occupational sectors

National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) Gender Budget Assessment Exercise for Budget 2018. (MUSSI Working Paper No. 4)

This gender budget exercise was commissioned by the NWCI in the context of commitments in the Programme for Partnership Government (2016‐20) to ‘develop the process of budget and policy proofing as a means of advancing equality, reducing poverty and strengthening economic and social rights’ and to ‘ensure the institutional arrangements are in place to support equality and gender proofing within key government departments’. Gender budgeting is also consistent with the wider aims of the budgetary reforms such as providing for greater input into the budget process, and increasing accountability for how public resources are raised and spent

Challenging abortion stigma: framing abortion in Ireland and Poland

Abortion stigma, while observable as a global phenomenon, is constructed locally through various pathways and institutions, and at the intersection of transnational and local discourses. Stigmatisation of abortion has been challenged in varied ways by pro-choice adherents. This article investigates strategies for identifying and opposing stigmatisation of abortion in Ireland and Poland, focusing on campaigns aimed in one context, at repealing a near total prohibition of abortion, and in another, on resisting further restrictions concerning reproductive rights. We examine how mobilisation on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in both contexts worked to address stigma and discrimination in SRH, drawing on the concept of framing and showing similarities between these two national contexts. Our analysis explains how the logic of inclusion and exclusion works in efforts at destigmatising abortion

Indigenous Voice Closing the Gap and Putting Communication for Social Change into Practice

Australian journalism schools are full of students who have never met an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and who do not know their history. Journalism educators are illequipped to redress this imbalance as the large majority are themselves non-Indigenous and many have had little or no experience with the coverage of Indigenous issues. Such a situation calls for educational approaches that can overcome these disadvantages and empower journalism graduates to move beyond the stereotypes that characterise the representation of Indigenous people in the mainstream media. This paper will explore three different courses in three Australian Tertiary Journalism Education Institutions who use Work Integrated Learning approaches to instil the cultural competencies necessary to encourage a more informed reporting of Indigenous issues. The findings from the three projects illustrate the importance of adopting a collaborative approach between the industry, the Indigenous community and educators to ensure a significant impact on the students’ commitment to quality journalism practices when covering Indigenous issues

An Investigation of Cancer Rates in the Argentia Region, Newfoundland and Labrador: An Ecological Study

Background. The Argentia region of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, was home to a US naval base during a 40-year period between the 1940s and the 1990s. Activities on the base resulted in contamination of the soil and groundwater in the region with chemicals such as heavy metals and dioxins, and residents have expressed concern about higher rates of cancer in their community. This study investigated the rate of cancer diagnosis that is disproportionately high in the Argentia region. Methods. Cases of cancer diagnosed between 1985 and 2011 were obtained for the Argentia region, two comparison communities, and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Crude and age-standardized incidence rates of cancer diagnosis were calculated and compared. The crude incidence rate was adjusted for differences in age demographics using census data, and age-standardized incidence rates were compared. Results. Although the Argentia region had a higher crude rate of cancer diagnosis, the age-standardized incidence rate did not differ significantly from the comparison communities or the provincial average. Argentia has an aging population, which may have influenced the perception of increased cancer diagnosis in the community. Conclusions. We did not detect an increased burden of cancer in the Argentia region

Initial Teacher Education Policy and Practice

The purpose of this study was to generate a systematic description of policy and practice across qualifications of initial teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand. The study was conducted in two phases. Data from publicly-available documentation of the 27 providers of initial teacher education were recorded in an electronic data base as a means of compiling individual profiles of each qualification. Subsequently, twenty-five providers participated in interviews to ensure that profiles accurately reflected the policy and practice of the qualification. Qualification profiles were reviewed to identify common and distinctive characteristics of initial teacher education according to sector (early childhood, primary and secondary), type of qualification and type of provider. Findings were considered within a framework of contemporary national and international research and implications identified for future research, policy and practice in initial teacher education. This project confirms that initial teacher education is incredibly complex and multi-faceted and that New Zealand qualifications reflect many of the achievements and the challenges of implementing quality teacher education that are experienced internationally. The official documentation reveals that there is a general lack of explicit coherence among components of many qualifications, that in some cases there is no clearly articulated conceptual or theoretical base underpinning qualifications, and, that, in the documentation of many qualifications, there are conspicuous silences surrounding aspects of initial teacher education critical to the New Zealand context. There is also evidence that the regulatory and compliance environment within which providers operate is sometimes perceived as distracting, rather than ensuring quality. This national project has enabled us to identify key areas for further and ongoing attention both by individual providers of initial teacher education and, more importantly, by the professional community of teacher education in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the New Zealand Teachers Council and others. We need to determine, and thence articulate more clearly, the fundamental goals of initial teacher education and to demonstrate how programmes of ITE are coherent in their underlying values, goals, design, curriculum, pedagogy and implementation. There is a need also to consider how current external quality assurance processes can be made more coherent with fundamental goals of initial teacher education and the research on theory and practice that underpins these goals

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy