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The State, Public Policy and Gender: Ireland in Transition, 1957-1977

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The State, Public Policy and Gender: Ireland in Transition, 1957-1977 The State, Public Policy and Gender: Ireland in Transition, 1957-1977 Eileen Connolly MA Dissertation submitted for the degree of PhD under the supervision of Professor Eunan O’Halpin at Dublin City University Business School September 1998 I hereby certify that this material, which 1 submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of PhD, is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others, save as and to the extent that, such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed Eileen Connolly CONTENTS Page Declaration ii Table of Contents iii Acknowledgements iv Abstract v Abbreviations vi Introduction 1 Chapter One: Gender and the State 8 Chapter Two: Consensus in the 1950s 38 Chapter Three: Breaking the Consensus 68 Chapter Four: Negotiating Policy Change, 1965 -1972 92 Chapter Five: The Equality Contract 143 Chapter Six: The Political Parties and Women’s Rights 182 Chapter Seven: European Perspectives 217 Chapter Eight: Conclusion 254 Bibliography 262 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Eunan O’Halpin for his support and guidance during the writing of this dissertation. I am grateful to DCUBS for the research studentship which enabled me to cany out this research. I would also like to thank the staff of the National Library of Ireland, the National Archives, the libraries of Dublin City University and University College Dublin, the National Women’s Council of Ireland and the Employment Equality Agency for their help in the course of my research. I am grateful to a number of people in DCUBS for commenting on and reading earlier drafts, particularly Dr Siobhain McGovern, Dr David Jacobson and Dr Pat Barker. Thanks are also due to Dr Gary Murphy for his advice and for kindly assisting in the final proof reading. Finally a special thanks to John and to my children Leah, Eamon, Sean and Orla. ABSTRACT The State, Public Policy and Gender: Ireland in Transition, 1957-1977. Ireland experienced a period of major political and social change between 1957 and 1977 which included the redefinition of the role and status of women and the creation of a new public policy paradigm. By 1977 the main features of this public policy paradigm were in place in the form of an ‘equality contract’. The ‘equality contract’ granted formal legal equality to married women in family law and procedural equality to all women in relation to employment. This replaced the hirarchically based system of family law and gender based discrimination that had dominated Irish public life in the 1950s. This thesis examines these changes in the Irish state’s gender regime, describing them as a product of a strong internal dynamic for change which interacted with external influences. Ireland, although it had a comparatively low level of economic development and industrialisation, experienced the impulse for change on gender issues at the same time as this was experienced in other democratic European states. In this context the Irish legislative state and its public policy output is described as being underpinned by views on gender, which are not static, but are renegotiated over time and form part of its political culture. v ABBREVIATIONS AIM Action, Initiative, Motivation [lobby group for family law reform] CSW Commission on the Status of Women EEC European Economic Community ESB Electricity Supply Board FUE Federated Union of Employers ICTU Irish Congress of Trade Unions ILO International Labour Organisation INTO Irish National Teacher’s Organisation ITGWU Irish Transport and General Workers Union IWLM Irish Women ’ s Liberation Movement IWWU Irish Women Workers Union NWCI National Women’s Council of Ireland (previously known as the Council for the Status of Women) OECD ' Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development RCC Rape Crisis Centres RTE Radio Telifis Eireann (Irish public sector broadcaster) TD Teachta Dala (member of the Dail, the lower house of the Irish Parliament) UN United Nations WAC Women’s Advisory Committee [of the ICTU] WPA Women’s Political Association WRC Women’s Representative Committee INTRODUCTION In a twenty year period between 1957 and 1977 the Irish state went through a period of such significant change that it has with justification been described as a watershed in Irish history (Tobin, 1984: 6). These changes affected every aspect of life in Ireland: the family, the labour market, the church and the political system. They also affected the form of the state: this was the period of major expansion of the state into new areas of decision making and service provision. In many ways the changes that occurred in this period still define Ireland at the end of the 1990s. A solid body of evidence testifies to the changes experienced by women in family life (Curtin, 1986; Beale, 1986) in the labour market (Jackson and Barry, 1989; Daly, 1980) and in social attitudes (Fine Davis, 1983). In addition to these changes the state’s public policy regime was considerably redefined to incorporate a greater degree of gender equality. In 1957 the legal position of married women was inferior to that of single women and all men; marriage was based on upholding the authority of men as the heads of families and women’s access to the labour market was severely restricted. By 1977 the idea of an hierarchical marriage had been replaced by a broad, if incomplete, legal equality between spouses, and in the labour market legal support for direct discrimination gave way to employment equality legislation that ensured procedural equality between the sexes. It is the evolution of the state’s public policy paradigm, from one that was based on the dominance of the husband in the family and the exclusion of women from many aspects of public life, to a policy regime based on procedural and formal legal equality between the sexes that is the central concern of this thesis. In particular it examines 1 the role of the legislative state (the Oireachtas and the government departments) in the major policy changes in family law, employment law and social welfare provision that took place in the 1960s and the 1970s. It does this by describing attitudes to gender and gendered relationship as part of the political culture of the elite groups within the Irish state and tracing the way in which alterations in attitudes to gender in the state underpinned and defined policy changes. The source of the information for this attitudinal change is the written records of the state contained in the Oireachtas debates, government publications and archival material. Published material from the social partners, women’s lobby groups and the political parties has also been incorporated to contextualise the value changes exhibited amongst the state elites and to explore the sources of influence on policy. The thesis focuses on the dynamic of change in government and political party elites. It does not investigate the role of the civil service elite in influencing policy. This is chiefly because of the nature of the primary sources used. The Dàil debates provide a verbatim, contemporary account of debate between the members of the political elites; like other primary sources, including published government and political party material they are premised on the idea of the civil service as having a purely administrative input into the development of policy. A different type of investigation is required to penetrate the formal fiction of ministerial responsibility and assess the role of the civil servants vis-à-vis the politicians. It is ultimately the politicians who take the policy decisions, who promote them publicly and interact with the interest groups in civil society. It is for these reasons that policy debates within the state are described mainly in party political terms. The focus on the process of change within the state is one aspect of the thesis that distinguishes it from other writing on women and the state. It also results in the thesis questioning some of the assumptions that have informed this body of literature. Other studies in this area have taken the perspective of women’s interest groups in their interaction with the state (Galligan, 1998) or have looked at the dynamic for change in civil society in a way that has seen the role of the state as marginal (Beale, 1986). Both approaches are united in describing the dynamic for change as something external to the state. While not denying a major role in the creation of social change for women’s organisations and of developments in civil society, the focus of this thesis is on the way in which such changes are experienced in the state. In taking this approach the autonomy of the state and its ability to play an active role in the shaping of constructions of gender and gender based relationships in wider society is being recognised. In the literature dealing with the changes that saw women’s rights issues being incorporated into public policy, a broad consensus has been established which described the public policy regime of the Irish state as more conservative and more patriarchal than other Western European states in its treatment of women (Pyle, 1990; Mahon, 1987; Gardiner 1993, 1996; Galligan 1998). In particular, more so than other states, the Irish state is seen to have been forced into change by external influences - the most important one being its membership of the European Community (Mahon, 1995; Gardiner, 1993; Galligan, 1993; Pyle, 1990). It is argued that while the impact of the EEC was felt especially in the areas of employment and social insurance, in other policy areas the state was forced to take action because women themselves organised politically to demand change.
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