TRALEE: "Has Women's Liberation been Won?"

kerry | rights and freedoms | event notice Tuesday March 02, 2010 11:31 by swp - swp

A talk & discussion to mark International Women's day

International Women’s Day owes its origin to protests among female textile workers in New York City. Women from clothing factories in the city staged a demonstration on 8 March 1857, in protest against conditions and low wages in local factories.

In Tralee, the Socialist Workers’ Party plans to mark the event with a talk by Kerry woman Sara O’Rourke, “Has Women’s Liberation Been Won?

Venue: Grand Hotel, Tralee, Wednsday 10th March @ 8PM
All Welcome!

International Women’s Day owes its origin to protests among female textile workers in New York City. Women from clothing factories in the city staged a demonstration on 8 March 1857, in protest against conditions and low wages in local factories.

It was then formally observed in February 1909 in the USA by the Socialist Party of America, whose presidential candidate, Eugene Debs later won 6% of the vote in the Presidential Election!

After 1911, International Women’s Day was used as an occasion to commemorate the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, when 146 garment workers, mostly women, lost their lives.

This day is an official holiday in many European countries (but not in Ireland). In Italy men give yellow flowers to women. In Iran, the festival has met with official resistance.

In Tralee, the Socialist Workers’ Party plans to mark the event with a talk by Kerry woman Sara O’Rourke, “Has Women’s Liberation Been Won?

There are unprecedented numbers of women workers in Ireland today but they come to the labour market still carrying the burden of women's oppression despite the many freedoms they have won including the vote, contraception and divorce. They earn, on average, little more than two thirds the earnings of men. The new jobs being created are increasingly “women's jobs”: low wage and often part time. There is no free child care.

Thirty years after the birth of the Irish women’s movement at least some of these gains are under attack. For every career woman on a high salary, there are ten in low paid work with few of the material advantages which can help lessen the burden of women's oppression.

Today single mothers are angry at attacks which try to make them out to be scroungers or somehow immoral.

The same is true at work. Women today expect the right to work, and refuse to accept that they should be kept in the home. Unemployment and cuts in welfare, services and Community Development Projects mean that women are now finding that many of the supports they took for granted are no longer available or are under threat.