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Old allies re-emerge to criticise working women |
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OPINION/Mary Holland /The Irish Times A male colleague in this office put one side of the current argument rather well. Charlie McCreevy's Budget, he said, had discriminated against women working in the home "who are performing the most important service to society by rearing stable and secure children". A number of letters to this newspaper have struck the same note. One correspondent told us that "children only need one thing to achieve happiness and high self-esteem - unconditional love". OK fellas, we get the drift. Children reared by a mother who works outside the home are less likely to be stable and secure. Their chances of achieving happiness and high self-esteem have been diminished because our decision to take up paid employment - even when economically necessary - has deprived them of "unconditional love". I've been listening to this kind of stuff for the past 30 years, but my dim eyes can still recognise a reactionary backlash. The comments on Mr McCreevy's moves to individualise the tax rates for married couples have brought the old allies - the church, Fine Gael and other self-appointed experts - happily back together, expressing views which most of us thought had disappeared from public debate. Let's get a few facts separated from the rhetoric about the McCreevy Budget. First, nothing in its provisions discriminates against the family in which one breadwinner goes out to work and the other stays at home. On the contrary, couples on a high single income will still do better when costs for childcare and other essentials are taken into account. Second, in moving towards individualisation, the Budget goes some way to removing the discrimination that has operated against married couples, both of whom work outside the home, for more than 20 years. It doesn't go as far as I (and many other women) would like in recognising that a married woman is an individual who deserves to be treated and taxed in the same way as her unmarried sister. I hadn't intended to write on this issue. For a start it divides women, and I'm enough of an old-fashioned feminist to dislike that. Of course women have a right to stay and home to rear their children. I welcome Mr McCreevy's move yesterday, which goes some way to recognising the value of their work. But married women also have the right to work outside the home without being penalised for it. That right, believe me, was hard won. I was reluctant to enter the debate precisely because I realise that the statement I've just made will seem like ancient history to many readers. But we forget our history at our peril. When I got married in the late 1960s, I wasn't allowed to continue working as a journalist. My husband's employers, whom I had never met, simply made this decision for me. Times and circumstances change. By the time my children were born I was back at work and the main breadwinner. I worked out of economic necessity. But I also wanted to pursue a job outside the home. It has been an enormous privilege to report on Northern Ireland for the past 30 years. I believe that the media have played an honourable role in exposing discrimination and injustice and I am proud to have been a small part of that. The life of a working mother is, in some ways, not an easy one. And it's because I now realise that many younger women still have to cope with many of the same pressures that I raise this small voice to protest at much of the comment on Mr McCreevy's Budget. Don't get me wrong. My children, as Cordelia put it, are my jewels. I am constantly humbled and grateful that they are not angrier about the many things of which they were probably deprived. Not unconditional love. That was there but, to use a shorthand phrase, no child in our house ever returned home from school to the reassuring smell of baking bread. Here are just a few of my memories of trying to balance different sets of responsibilities. There was the constant guilt that the children might be missing out because I was at work. Would they be doing better, feeling more secure if I stayed home? There were attempts to compensate them. I remember driving to Belfast before dawn one Christmas Eve to buy the last existing "Girl's World" on this island. The toy itself was deeply politically incorrect, being a wax head with false hair that "grew" and accompanying make-up kit. But I have the fondest memories of curling its hair and applying blusher and lipstick to its waxen face. Alongside this there was the pressure, more acute in those days I think, not to give any hint to one's employer that one required time off for some family crisis. Most of all, there were the endless nightmares over childcare. One of the reasons I have a high regard for Peter Mandelson, incidentally, is that when we worked together on television programmes he was endlessly considerate about any crisis which arose over who was minding the children. Nothing in this column should be taken as approving the broad thrust of Charlie McCreevy's Budget. I feel deep dismay that he did so little to target social exclusion. On the issue of childcare in particular, there is a need to devote much greater resources (and political commitment) to transforming the situation for all families. I've been thinking a lot these past few days about Nursey Stoney and how lucky I was to know her. Mrs Stoney ran a local authority creche in the London borough where we lived when the children were born. We paid nine pence a day for each child and didn't pay anything if, for some reason, the children stayed at home. For this they were not only fed and cared for, but taken on trips to the seaside, visits to the zoo and had Santa Claus come round on a fire engine for Christmas. This wonderful place has long since gone. The local council was dominated by "the loony left" and Mrs Thatcher soon put a stop to this kind of tomfoolery. But I still have a photograph of Nursey Stoney, on the beach at Brighton with the children, to remind me of how things could be better for all women who work, inside or outside the home. |
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