Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome to the House. It is now international women's week. We are celebrating it for an entire week these days. It is another week of repetition and asking for the same things again - demanding and hoping for equal rights, better healthcare, safer streets and homes, improved childcare and asking to be listened to in this male-dominated world. It often feels overbearing. There are so many issues to work on and there have been many setbacks. I can say with confidence, however, that we are moving in the right direction.

The Minister outlined an awful lot in his speech. We saw yesterday a huge investment in women's health. The Minister announced the regulation for gender pay gap reporting. The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, announced funding into gender-based violence against people with disabilities. The Minister had the biggest childcare budget in budget 2022. I know he is working on the next phase of his plan for next year towards public childcare because that is where we need to go.

As Senator Garvey said, the third national strategy to combat domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is movement in the right direction. Many things have happened in the 12 months since the previous International Women's Day. As I said, many were positive but some desperately negative things and horrific crimes have occurred. I think of all those people who have been murdered, raped, assaulted and beaten to a pulp at the hands of someone else over the past 12 months.

Then, we look to our eastern European friends and the dark cloud that hangs over all of us due to Russian aggression and the greed and lies from Russia towards its neighbour. I cannot stop thinking about those families inside and outside Ukraine and the mothers who are holding them together. They are holding their babies, children, husbands and partners together.

Everyone suffers and feels the pain of war and violence. It is mostly women who make homes out of the most desperate of situations, however. When peace reigns again, it is usually women who put families back together, build people up again and are the backbone of those communities who bring things back to some sort of normal.

As we stand here, absolutely everything to me these days seems so small. We see an entire country being destroyed by a man who has simply no regard for any life or any rule of law but his own. He has no regard for decency or for the utter destruction and pain he is inflicting on people.

Look at the beautiful wee faces on all the little children, and the mothers and fathers struggling to bear the weight of the horror of war and the pain of trying to simply stay alive. I cannot even comprehend how they are not breaking under this but still they stand with courage and conviction. They are protecting their children for the love of their family and country. I cannot even imagine what it is like to send a child off to war or to go to war oneself; to leave one's husband or wife and either fight for one's country or life or find sanctuary. All our privilege in this beautiful room seems almost obnoxious. We seem so detached and I feel so useless. In so many countries, we could not prevent this happening to one. We could not protect one. It is all-consuming, all-devastating and heartbreaking. I am only watching it. I am trying to explain it to my children and to myself. Peace will be won by men and women. We must make sure that no woman will be left behind.

This year, the theme is breaking the bias, which I will speak about very briefly. We must break the bias within us first. We must be confident in our uniqueness, difference and individuality of who we are as women. Women all around the world are held back by the bias that is ingrained in us by centuries of patriarchy. I meet that bias every single day. I also have to break it within me.

I leave my children at 7 a.m., for example, and I do not see them until the next morning for a little while before I leave again. It can be so hard and soul-shattering. Ironically, when a man is working those long hours and days away from home and not getting to see his children, he is often seen as a good provider, worker, father and decent man who works all those hours to provide. When women do it, however, they are sometimes perceived as a bad parent who is not providing what a mother should provide. I can tell the Minister it is hard enough to leave my four boys at home without that unconscious bias within me and which comes from society as well.

Perhaps we will stand here next year and it will be a great day on which we actually look towards real gender equality. It is necessary to bring both men and women with us. I do not want my male colleagues to give us platitudes that they recognise the difficulties and barriers we face. I want them to come into both Houses, speak on the radio and tell us what they are planning to do to change the norms and make it better for all of us. We are humans on this land and we need to support each other.

What can men do to challenge the norm and break the bias that men need to be strong and brave and not weak, or to be the breadwinners and not stay at home with their children? Things are changing but we need to support one another and challenge those gender-based norms. We all need to be permitted to show our strengths, weakness and vulnerabilities because every single one of us has them. We need men to take the lead on gender-based and domestic violence. We have been speaking about it for years. We need men to start. Instead of standing behind twitching curtains and saying that a man has a reputation for beating the wife, when we all know it and no-one says anything, we need to call out gender-based violence. We need to make this the safest and best country for women so we do not need all those refuges. Let us provide a safe space for us all to call out our vulnerabilities, to be proud of them and to allow both men and women to live in safety. Ours is often as difficult a world for a man to navigate as it is for a woman. I fear for my young boys, who are growing up with the norms of nowadays. I want that to change for them.