Street women - Village Magazine

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July-August 2018

BORTION RIGHTS have projected

feminism into the discourse

these last months. But there are

other fundamental discrimina-

tions, some casual, and endemic,

that it may take generations to right: the

constitutional recognition of women’s work

in the home, the fact women (and their chil-

dren) usually take their husband’s name, the

masculine vision of god, manifest in, among

other things, the Roman Catholic clergy.

And…nobody talks about the presence of

women in our streets. Even if a street may

soon be named after Savita Halappanavar,

who died in 2012 following complications

during a miscarriage, after she had been

denied an abortion, men dominate every

where. There is only one bridge named af ter

a woman in Dublin: The Rosie Hackett Bridge

(1893-1976, founder-member of the Irish

Women Workers’ Union and member of the

Irish Citizen Army). It was chosen in 2014

from a list that included all male names

except for Kathleen Mills, one of the best

female camogie players.

There are also several statues: Molly

Malone in Suffolk St, The Floozie Anna Livia

near Arran Quay, Constance Markievicz in

Townsend St. Let’s be clear: it is not enough.

Ar tist and activist Will St Leger, who installed

a pink painted woman’s chest in from of City

Hall in 2012 to protest against this inequal-

ity, notes anyway that Molly Malone and

Anna Livia do not represent real women

By Marianne Lecach

It’s still a man’s

world in street

names, so positive

discrimination is

needed for living

feminists

Street

women

new Sheehy-Skefﬁngton plaque: progress

OPINION

– “they are only a myth”. Moreover, hundreds of

statues can be seen in Dublin. Of men, typically

military and macho.

Five plaques in the capital are dedicated to

women, as against sixt y-four for men. A new one

was unveiled on 13 June by President Michael D

Higgins at Dublin Castle to honour Hanna

Sheehy-Skef ﬁngton. She was an Irish suf fragette

and founder of the Irish Women’s Franchise

League which campaigned for women’s right to

vote. Mrs Sheehy-Skefﬁngton smashed some

windows in Dublin Castle as part of a protest in

1912. The plaque is now at the Ship Street

entrance of Dublin Castle and it is good to see

it.

Even where a place has been named after a

woman, it is not necessarily because of her

achievements. Women often became rich by

relationship - being the mother of a successful

man or a well-born daughter. For example, Ade-

laide Road honours King William IV’s wife, Queen

Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen who was originally

a German princess. Henrietta Street on Dublin’s

Northside illustrates the problem. It is generally

believed to have been named in tribute to Hen-

rietta, the wife of Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of

Grafton, but history just wasn’t that interested

and an alternative candidate is Henrietta, the

wife of Charles Paulet, 2nd Duke of Bolton. This

is in effect naming a street after a woman

“behind a man”. That shouldn’t be necessary.

Certainly, in past centuries, women were even

more discriminated against than today. One of

the most important truths about history is that

they were simply not in a position to

make impor tant decisions and so to make

history. This is what gives the pointer to

what we should do now.

There are historical female ﬁgures who

deserve a place named after them. For

example, Grace O’Malley (also named

Gráinne Mhaol in Irish) was a female

pirate and warrior in the 16th-century.

She had hundreds of men under her com-

mand and owned a huge amount of land.

She was respected and feared, currently

at that time. The avant-garde novelist and

philosopher Iris Murdoch who wrote

about homosexuality and summoned

unforgettably evil imaginative

characters.

But perhaps Ireland’s greatest women

in history have been writers. Maria Edge-

worth wrote several thought-provoking

novels and tales with moral lessons. She

fought for equality children’s education

in the eighteenth century. She was

against arranged marriage and wrote

about interracial marriage between an

African servant and an English girl. She

could be considered one of the most con-

troversial female novelists of the

eighteenth century. Augusta Gregory

founded the Irish National Theatre Soci-

ety and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. She

was a playwright and sponsor of WB

Yeats. The feminist novelist Kate O’Brien

promoted the independence of women

and gender equality. Several novels deal

with homosexualit y. She is one of the pio-

neers in gay literature. Maeve Brennan

was an important Irish journalist at the

New Yorker

magazine between the 1950s

and 1970s. She wrote short stories, usu-

ally about relationships, loneliness and

sadness. Elizabeth Bowen is well known

for her war novel,

The Heat of The Day

published in 1948. It is considered to be

the most realistic novel about London

during the bombing raids in World War II.

Maeve Binchy mainly wrote about wom-

en’s issues in the twentieth century:

marriage, divorce, abortion, the Church.

To be fair, many of these woman writers

are honoured at the improvised but

informative ‘Icon Walk’ in Dublin’s Temple

Bar.

And there have of course been substan-

tial ﬁgures in culture and the arts.Eileen

Grey was a great designer of furniture;

Maureen O’Hara an extravagant and brave

actor. These icons are women for all time.

They have a greater claim to street names

than most of the men who cornered the

market. But all this misses the point.

We need to recognise that it is ok to

acknowledge women have been the victims

of history. Indeed more to the point, it is the

essence of the issue of historical commemo-

ration that women have been the victims of

history. They have been prevented f rom play-

ing their proper role in historical affairs of

state.They have been kept from power: sup-

pressed, often oppressed. As such it would

be fair to consider positive discrimination

towards living women, particularly feminist

models. We should recognise, and learn f rom,

the iniquities of the past. But we should

assiduously counter them in the present. For

this reason we should break one of the silent

rules of the process and name streets after

living women. We do not lack dynamos: like

Mary Robinson, ﬁrst female president of Ireland

from 1990 to 1997; her successor Mar y McAleese

(after whom the Calatrava bridge between

Meath and Louth has already been named);

Mary Kenny and Nell McCaffrey who fronted the

Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s; and

we have great women writers: Edna O’Brien,

author of the Country Girls. Christina Noble who

was homeless and gang-raped but who never-

theless created the Christina Noble Children’s

Foundation in Saigon to help Vietnamese chil-

dren in need. Name streets after these women

and others. Let’s reﬂect the living reality that we

need to act in the present generation to coun-

terbalance the discriminations of the past.

During a meeting on 12 June, Dublin City Coun

cil agreed the following motion: “To honour the

memory of Savita Halappanavar, who tragically

lost her life as a consequence of the Irish State’s

barbaric and antiquated attitude to women’s

reproductive rights, that a street in our capital

city be named in her memory”.

The process to rename a street is drawn out

and is laid out under the Local Government

(Changing of Place Names) Regulations. It

involves a complex coming together of the

City CEO, the relevant Area Committee fund

the plenary City Council. Following adoption

of a list of names by the Cit y Council, the CEO

by Order ﬁxes a time and date as last day for

receipt of completed ballot papers. After the

poll closed and the ballot papers opened, a

report of the result is sent to the Council.

According to the Council “an added compli-

cation to changing the name of a city centre

street revolves around the familiarity of the

public with the existing name and the level

of confusion that may ensue from changing

it.” But is not that the point. It is time the

public got used to a new paradigm.

In other European countries like France,

the process can be a bit easier. Anybody can

propose a new relevant name for a place. The

mayor and the Cit y Council have to agree and

vote.

It is time to recognise, on the streets as

elsewhere, that the inequality of the past

evokes a need for positive discrimination in

the present, with a view to equality for the

future.

July-August 2018

4 1

In Dublin ﬁve plaques are

dedicated to women against

sixty-four for men. Women have

been the victims of history. As

such it would be fair to consider

positive discrimination towards

living women, particularly

feminist models

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