Women’s wisdom: Raise your voice, don’t live a lukewarm life and just go for it

Mary Crilly (67)

Chief executive of the Sexual Violence Centre Cork

When we set up the Sexual Violence Centre Cork in 1983, it was a very bleak time for women. For example, 15-year-old Ann Lovett died giving birth, alone, in a grotto in 1984. The reporting of sexual crime was very low and there was a huge amount of victim-blaming. People knew that sexual violence was happening, but the gardaí didn’t believe it was, and nothing was being done to address it.

I found the first 10 years of the centre an uphill battle. I was on my own with two young daughters and they were difficult times as we were challenging the status quo in Ireland and challenging the Catholic Church. In the 1980s there were no qualified counsellors and very few places to train as counsellors. Many women became pregnant as a result of rape and the morning-after pill was unavailable and the options were very limited.

This year, the centre is marking 40 years of service provision and we have seen huge improvements in those 40 years. Victims are more likely to be believed. Perpetrators are more likely to be held accountable. Services and the criminal justice system have improved. But we still have a way to go.

My hope is that the Sexual Violence Centre Cork will no longer be needed in 40 years time, but I fear it will still be needed. My hope is that more men will get involved in stopping violence against women, that they will call their friends and colleagues out for their abusive behaviour. I also hope that in the future women won’t blame themselves for the criminal actions of men.

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I want young girls to know that they have a right to be free, to feel safe and to not be abused or objectified in any way. To the boys out there, I say, “call it out”, cop on and be the generation and ends sexual violence in Ireland.

Mary Moriarty (79)

Traveller and educator

Growing up during wartime was tough. I was born in 1943 and grew up around Galway, Mayo, Roscommon and Clare. It was difficult for mothers to provide for their children at the time because of food rationing, and the winters were very tough with the bad weather.

In the late 1940s, I remember my third brother being born in a tent. We were brought to our grandmother’s tent until we were brought back to our tent to a new baby. We didn’t question where he came from. We didn’t want to know. There wasn’t much sex education back in those days.

I went to England when I was young and got married at the age of 22 to a settled man over there – that was unusually late to get married in the Traveller community. I soon came back to live in Ireland, in 1973, and we bought a house in Tuam, Co Galway. We had five children and I’ve lived here ever since.

I worked in training centres for young Travellers all over the country, and got involved with the European Parliament through that. In the travelling community today, education has improved things for women. Now we have teachers, doctors, midwives, solicitors, gardaí – you name it, we’ve got it in the community all over Ireland.

Much has changed in the community over the years, but Traveller women found it hard to adjust to the change. The men were the bosses and the women more or less had to do what they were told. My mother said a very funny thing one day: “Let the man think he’s the boss, let him talk away, but you make the final decision.”

Women are making their own decisions now, and they have more control over their lives. But there are still a lot of women who haven’t, both in the settled and Traveller communities.

I remember years ago some women used to have 14 or 15 children, sometimes more. Women in the community are having fewer children today. It’s nice because they can put more into those children today, do things for them and educate them. There’s a lot of young kids who are going to college and getting degrees and everything.

For a young woman looking to get married today, she should look for a suitable partner. You don’t want to get married to somebody who is good for nothing. You want to have a good life and not have too many children.

Ailbhe Smyth (76)

Academic, feminist and LGBTQ+ activist

Growing up as a girl in Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s was awful. It was very difficult because you really didn’t have any sense of your own strength and power as a girl. Even at that young age I realised I had to push to raise my voice. I knew that to be able to get anywhere in life as a woman, you have to be able to stamp your foot and raise your voice. A lot has changed, but I still think women need to do this.

Even as this young, middle-class girl who went to university, I still did not think I had the right to have a very satisfying working life – I would get married and stop working. I did those things, but the marriage only lasted six months after realising it was not for me, so I carried on.

Not staying married was an outrageous thing to do in Ireland in the 1970s. I then went on to have my daughter by another man to whom I wasn’t married – that was an even more outrageous thing to do. And then 10 years later I came out as lesbian and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back altogether.

Women have much more sense of freedom today. The gender rules for women have certainly changed, but we still don’t have access to the resources and the power that we need to be on equal terms with men – that’s because men have not moved aside.

Things have changed greatly around reproductive rights for women too, but more is needed. We don’t have equal pay, but we do have the right. The women and girls who have experienced the most positive changes are generally women who are already privileged because of their class, ethnicity, race and so on.

While we have made important changes, it is very uneven because of profound inequalities in our society. Equality for some is not equality.

On the other hand, men’s violence against women is atrocious. We have an ongoing pandemic of violence against women and girls, and that is absolutely appalling.

I want the whole system to change so there is real equality. That’s what I say to my granddaughter who is only 10. I don’t quite use the word systemic, but I do say: “Equality for everybody.”

My advice for young women today? I say just go for it.

Salome Mbugua (53)

Chief executive of AkiDwA

I was born and grew up in a rural part of Kenya, the sixth born in a family of nine. When I was growing up the role of women in Kenya was clearly defined by society.

Thanks to my late father, who believed in his five daughters, he worked hard to ensure all of us received education up to highest level. All five us were sent to boarding school and college education, which let us escape from the expected home chores for girls such as cleaning, harvesting coffee, fetching water and taking care of young siblings.

I became aware of discrimination at a young age, where I witnessed high level of inequality and poor treatment of women and girls. As a social worker I engaged in various campaigns and started advocating for women and girls’ rights. Quite often I faced abuse and attack for speaking out especially by men and the police. It was extremely difficult to progress or reach full potential due to hierarchy in the society and cultural norms where women and girls’ human rights continued to be violated and with no access to justice.

I arrived in Ireland in 1994 when there were few women of colour. Demographics have changed significantly since then, with many women of colour calling Ireland their home today. Here, women of colour can reach their full potential, as have I. The majority have been able to access education, they are working – it may not be jobs that match their qualification but at least they are able to find jobs here – and are able to support their needs of their families.

I am one of 15 commissioners with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the external chair of the equality, diversity and inclusion project board of the Public Appointments Service in Ireland. In 2001, I helped found AkiDwA, the network of migrant women in Ireland.

My advice for young women of colour is to dream big. Ireland is a land of opportunities and you can become whoever you want to be regardless of your ethnic background or origin. Turn every occasion into opportunity: When you attend or get invited to meetings, take that opportunity to let people know about you, ask questions, engage in discussions, volunteer to lead some activities or support.

Get out of your comfort zone: You cannot erase who you are and cannot live a lukewarm life. Live with passion. And finally, look for mentors and use them wisely. I have had both men and women as mentors in this journey of life; they help with connections and sometimes directions.

Alice Taylor (85)

Novelist

Growing up on a farm on the Cork-Kerry border, from where we walked across the fields to school, and seldom went further afield, we were not exactly connected to mainstream Ireland, such as it was at the time. Our one connection was the radio which, in order to save the battery, was only turned on for special occasions, but I still remember the booming voice of Churchill as my father followed the war which to us was a million miles away.

On Sunday we went to Mass in the nearby town, which was about three miles away. In our townland there were seven houses, which we visited on a regular basis, and the fields and farmyard were our playground but also our workplace. All of our food was grown on the farm, and women and children were part of the workforce, saving the hay and cutting the corn, and farmyards teemed with pigs, calves, hens, ducks and geese. Women made a huge financial contribution to the farm income. Farm women were the first of the working wives and many, like my grandmother, were strong willed, self-opinionated women. But legal justice came for them all with the implementation of inheritance rights, which were sorely needed.

When we became teenagers, we walked the three miles to the local secondary school in town, which was co-educational and had lay teachers, and we carried a heavy sack of books on our backs.

Then I began work as a telephonist in Killarney Post Office where the wages were dire, and skilful budgeting was required to avail of the social life of the town. I was then transferred to West Cork where I met the love of my life and, as was customary at the time, had to give up my job upon marriage, and settled down to being part of village life in Innishannon. Child rearing was more demanding and time-consuming than I had anticipated, and because I had married into a family business, it was a balancing act between children, work and the quality of life.

Looking at today’s young wives and mothers, they are even more stretched than we were, as life has in some way become more demanding. But then, as now, women need to have at least one special, personal, absorbing interest to stimulate their creativity and enrich their lives.

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Mary Peters (83)

Olympian and philanthropist

I was born in England and moved to Northern Ireland when I was 11. It was a simple life we had: cycling to school, coming home to my mother always being there, running across fields with my older brother and playing with the kids on the road. They used to say: “Is the wee girl coming out to play?” And I was bigger than most of them.

I just enjoyed being physically active, but I was also keen on knitting, sewing and cooking, and later went on to be a domestic science teacher.

I started doing athletics and hockey in school – although the latter not very well. The headmaster encouraged me to train with an athletic coach who was a former pupil of the school. He was coaching some boys, but I joined in anyway and loved it.

Maeve Kyle soon encouraged me to join her athletics club. She was a pioneer in Irish athletics, being the first female Olympian for Ireland, attending the 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics. We went down to Trinity College Sport to be among the first women allowed to compete there. We were able to expose our limbs instead of wearing black stockings or things like that. Writer and sports advocate Ulick O’Connor was officiating the competition, and here was I in very short shorts and a T-shirt, which was quite extraordinary in those days.

A lot has changed since then. Nowadays, every schoolgirl is encouraged to take part in sport. Our Irish hockey team is doing well, the Northern Irish soccer team got through to the Euros, the Irish women’s rugby team are playing well and we’ve got great golfers like Leona Maguire who my charity, Mary Peters Trust, supported from a young age. There are so many opportunities to participate for all sorts of sport, but in my day it was quite rare to get the encouragement I did.

Today, the only people who don’t get equal opportunities in sport are those with disabilities. They don’t get the funding they deserve.

My advice for young women today? Get up, do it and enjoy. I think there are so many opportunities for women now, they should have no excuse not to take part. Not every woman wants to, but I would recommend it for any young person to have it as a hobby. You don’t have to become an Olympian to enjoy it as an activity. That’s the most important word: enjoy.