Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

During the Covid crisis, I hear from shattered women everyday. If they are working, it is likely that they are in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment or on the frontline. If they are caring for children with special needs, they are terrified. They feel imprisoned and are terrified of catching Covid. They worry who will mind their children if they die. If they have a problem with alcohol or food, it is magnified. If they are working from home, they are doing the times tables and spelling with their children between Zoom meetings. If they are living with a violent partner, they feel that there is no escape. In overcrowded housing, they are moving piles of people and piles of stuff - physical, emotional and psychological. Globally, the Covid crisis is hammering everybody, but it is hammering women in particular. Ireland is not immune from this.

Last Saturday there was a violent attack on the Garda at an anti-lockdown demonstration. My father was a Superintendent in An Garda Síochána, so my thoughts were immediately with the families of the gardaí. I remember, as a child, sitting on the pillar in my front garden on the day of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, waiting for him to come home. It was long before the days of mobile phones. Saturday's demonstration was a threat to public health and a right kick in the teeth to all of us, but it was a particular insult to our healthcare workers, cleaners, supermarket workers, teachers and SNAs, women who have been heroes this year.

Beyond the violence, there were ordinary women and girls, mostly not well-off, and many misinformed, misled and manipulated by two sides: first, by some elements of the media who riled them up one week and excoriated them the next; and second, by the far right, who have nothing to offer these women but fear, hate and lies, and the possibility of a fine, or worse, a criminal record. They create trouble for them and trouble for all of us. These women do not matter to the populist politics of the right, where "welfare cheats cheat us all", and migrants are left to drown in the Mediterranean. These women do not matter because they are outside of the tight, patriarchal circle of power, influence, leaks and access.

On International Women's Day, the challenge for us, as democrats and parliamentarians, is to ask how these and other women are being manipulated in this dangerous world of division and disinformation.

Ireland is a tiny island where practically everyone knows everyone else. Excoriating each other as "deplorables", as people did in the US, would destroy our communities. We are too small an island to allow that to happen and, if we did, it would be democracy itself that would pay the price.

Will we make the effort to reach out to women and girls in difficult situations and, instead of mocking them and pointing fingers at them as we did in the past, can we listen to their worries? Women without money and security are terrified in this Covid crisis. Most are not spending lockdown in airy villas looking out on views of the sea or a Victorian square. The women who contact me across north Kildare are barely breathing with fear and loss. They have hardly any money, inadequate supports and are coping with overcrowding. On International Women's Day, and every day, we need to listen to women in this country. In particular, we need to listen to their experiences during this pandemic.

In my first year as a Teachta Dála, I have been involved in all kinds of debates affecting women and dealing with the legacy of this conservative State. It is not enough to have more women in politics; we need more women who reject the politics of the patriarchy, which is the politics of austerity, cuts and poverty. Throughout this island, women are at the heart of every community group and local project. Could the Covid-19 crisis and other issues have been handled differently if we had diverse, progressive women at decision-making tables? I believe the answer is "Yes". It seems to me that we have been facing a reckoning in this State over the recent period and it is now time truly to listen to women. As we plan for life after Covid, the women of Sinn Féin will give our all to changing and challenging the residual elements in the patriarchal State apparatus that are trying to hold back the change that is so badly needed.

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