Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

People Before Profit sends solidarity to women across the world who are suffering from the absolute brutality of war, particularly in Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan and Palestine, and, indeed, Syria and beyond. Wars, like all emergencies, be they related to housing, health, poverty or climate change, always affect women and children disproportionately. Of the 365 days in the year, we focus on this incredible inequality on only one. It is remarkable how inequality has been perpetuated down through the decades and centuries.

The oppression of women, sexism and misogyny stem from an economic system that devalues the labour of women in the home and assigns them to the role of raising the next generation as cheaply as possible for that system. More than 100 years on from the first International Women's Day, our world may look different but the issues that have dominated are still the same. These include unaffordable childcare; inadequate resources for the whole care sector, including family care and, in particular, home care; and unequal access to healthcare, especially reproductive healthcare and abortion rights. Wages are always lower and conditions are poorer predominantly in female work in the care sector, nursing, retail and hospitality. These are the real issues facing women. Whatever progress we have made in the intervening years, we still have these problems and inequalities. We still prioritise the needs of an economic system over human needs, particularly the needs of women and children.

What the Russian revolutionary movement set out to achieve 100 years ago when Clara Zetkin named 8 March as International Women's Day is still unfinished business. International Women's Day has a history based on opposition to war and a capitalist system that breeds war and oppression. It is, in fact, working women's day in a struggle for equal pay, the right to vote and the abolition of the slavery of workers. I do not think that, down through the years, most working women were concerned with the number of women who were on the boards of corporations; rather, they were concerned with the inequity in society and the fight to end poverty.

In this country, we have been dealing with the legacy of systemic abuse of women in one form or another, and the issues in this regard have dominated the past two Dáileanna. Included are the issues of the eighth amendment, childcare costs, mother and baby homes, the lack of redress, Magdalen laundries, symphysiotomy, CervicalCheck, gender-based violence, the lack of refuge spaces and the economic struggles that women have faced, including, significantly, those of the Debenhams workers, nurses and teachers, who are mainly women.

I want to take time to deal with the national maternity hospital. The historical role of the church in subjugating women and their reproductive lives has to be put to an end. If we do nothing else in this Dáil, we must ensure the national maternity hospital is publicly owned and controlled. The State is paying more than €1 billion for it but it is not going to be owned by the State.

It is still unclear how all the procedures that should be legally available to women and other genders will be available under this arrangement. There is a sinister and disingenuous attempt to paint campaigners as delaying this, when it really comes from the religious orders that refuse to hand over the freehold to the State. We need to see the deal that the Minister for Health is allegedly due to sign off on. We need a proper national reproductive care centre that is free of Church influence and is publicly owned and controlled. For that reason, we need a full Dáil debate on the issue.

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