Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I, like others, welcome the focus on gender equality. The deliberative methodology of the citizens' assembly affords an opportunity to delve into the fundamentals of gender inequality.

Some of the issues have been rehearsed, such as the gender pay gap and the absence or invisibility of women at senior levels in public institutions, and the universities have been correctly cited. It is important that we examine not only the gender pay gap but the phenomenon of women in low pay, women in insecure and precarious employment, women and poverty, women and poor housing, women and a system that not alone discriminates against them on the basis of their gender but also on the basis of their social class, and women and their health. We saw in the course of the CervicalCheck scandal the shocking finding by Dr. Scally of institutionalised misogyny within the health system. We need to look at how, even now, and let me refer to that scandal which still plays its way out, 80,000 women are affected by delays in smear tests and yet those who can pay privately can have their results in a fraction of that waiting time. If we are seriously to get under the bonnet of gender issues, we must get under the bonnet of equality issues. That has to be about class. It has to be about poverty. It has to be about the fact that women disproportionately experience poverty.

With the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's indulgence, I will mention one final issue, that of single-parent families generally, but headed up by women. In the course of the austerity that was unleashed on the population, those families more than any others took the raw end of the stick. In a way, if one were to be cynical, which I wish to assure the Leas-Cheann Comhairle I am not, one might suggest that looking at gender equality now is a bit of a political manoeuvre to take the bad look off matters.

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