Women and Work in Ireland

A Half Century of Attitude and Policy Change

Margret Fine-Davis

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367564919
• eBook ISBN: 9781351595780
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Rural Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book chronicles the evolution of women's participation in the labour force in Ireland over the last five decades. This was largely spearheaded by married women and mothers, leading to many related social issues including childcare, flexible working, the sharing of domestic work and work-life balance. The book presents empirical data on these topics, drawn from the author's research spanning several decades, and shows how attitudes have evolved and influenced the development of social policy.

The book begins by exploring the factors which predisposed some married women to enter the workplace in the early 1970s while most did not and examines the relative well-being of housewives and employed married women. It demonstrates the effects the anti-discrimination legislation of the 1970s had on women's perceived discrimination over time, showing that women initially denied their own discrimination. The history of childcare policy is examined from the early Government Working Party reports of the 1980s to the evolution of childcare policy in Ireland. Issues of work-life balance are presented through cross-cultural comparisons from Ireland and several European countries, and key questions are asked, such as "are men who work part-time seen as less serious about their careers?" The concluding chapter focuses on how women's role in the workplace impacts on men and gender relations. Questions are posed concerning the ways in which men's roles need to adapt and the extent to which workplaces and social policy also need to change to accommodate men and women's needs for work-life balance.

The book will be of interest to social scientists and to students. It will be a valuable resource for courses in the sociology of work and the family, gender studies, social psychology and Irish studies. By providing quantitative data in an accessible form, it will also provide a valuable case study for courses in social research methods.

Chapter 1 Background and introduction

Until relatively recently Ireland was a more traditional society relative to many other Western countries and for centuries women’s role in Ireland was a traditional and subordinate one, influenced in large part by the power and authority of the Catholic Church (Chubb, 1971; Flanagan, 1975; Mac Curtain and Ó Corráin, 1978; Robinson, 1978; Whyte, 1980; Inglis, 1987, 1998; Hornsby-Smith and Whelan, 1994; O’Connor, 1998; Garvin, 2004; Craven, 2006, 2010; Ferriter, 2009). It was not always thus. Ó Corráin observed that while early Irish society up through the sixth and early seventh centuries was patriarchal, from the late seventh and early eighth century the situation changed fairly rapidly. Women were granted extensive rights during this period, particularly with regard to marriage, divorce and property rights under secular law and this held until the middle ages (1978, p. 1). The wide ranging and flexible grounds for divorce available to women under the Brehon Laws “served as a guarantee of extensive women’s rights and protected women in a way which was remarkably different from the customs of other European countries” (Ibid., p. 8). Ó Corráin believes that historical developments which followed, beginning with the Norman invasion in 1169 and followed by the imposition of English law in the early seventeenth century, had the effect of curtailing the natural development of these Gaelic customs:

As a result, in its attitude to women and their place in society – as in its attitude to many other matters – modern Ireland enjoys no continuity with its Gaelic past.

(Ó Corráin, 1978, p. 11)

Since Ó Corráin wrote in the late 1970s, many changes have taken place in Ireland, which have given Irish women some of the rights which they had under the Brehon Laws, including divorce, finally enacted in 1995. However, in the last several hundred years women’s role in Ireland has been traditional in comparison with many other Western countries, and it is only in the last fifty years that significant reforms and policy changes have taken place to modernise the position of women and the society as a whole in the area of gender equality. It is this time period up to the present day on which we focus in the book, and our substantive focus is on the area of work, specifically women’s entrance into the workforce in significantly greater numbers from the 1970s onwards and the social policy issues which ensued in response to this new situation. We take a social-psychological approach, focusing on social attitudes and how they have changed over time. We also take a social policy approach, juxtaposing social attitudes and attitude change with relevant social policy developments of the day, both in terms of policies of Government, the Social Partners and other relevant non-Governmental bodies and in terms of legislation, both Irish and that emanating from the European Community.

Up until the early 1970s, while it was acceptable for single women to participate in the workforce, it was unusual for married women to do so. Their proper role was seen to be in the home. This was explicitly expressed in the Irish Constitution (1937):

• 2.1 In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.
• 2.2 The State shall, therefore, endeavor to ensure that mothers should not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to neglect of their duties in the home.

(Article 41.2, Constitution of Ireland, 1937)

Because married women were expected to make their lives in the home, it probably did not seem unreasonable to create a social order which actually provided obstacles to their participation in employment. These included a lack of contraception, so that women could control neither the number nor the spacing of the children they had, nor did they have the option of having no children if that was their wish. There was a lack of equality in the workplace, notably in the area of pay. It was normal to see job advertisements in the newspapers with different pay scales which favoured men, particularly married men, who were seen as having to support families and hence be entitled to a higher wage. The tax laws also were designed to discourage married women from working, as their income was added to that of their husband and taxed at his highest marginal rate. In the early 1970s the highest marginal rate was 70%, and there was at times a 10% surtax, bringing the highest marginal rate at that time to as much as 77%. Thus married women whose husbands earned salaries taxed at the highest marginal rate could expect to take home just 23% of their salary. Clearly this was a disincentive to working. Indeed Walsh and O’Toole pointed out in 1973:

A substantial reduction in the tax liability of working wives would be the most appropriate policy for the Government to pursue in this area at present. This policy would extend the effective freedom of choice of married women regarding entry to the labour force, by allowing them to retain a larger proportion of their gross pay. It is likely that some who are now deterred from working by the burden of taxation at a high marginal rate, in addition to child-care etc. expenses, would find it worthwhile to work if their tax liability were substantially reduced.

(1973, p. 143)

As there were very few childcare centres, if a woman worked outside the home she would have to arrange and pay for her own childcare. If these obstacles were not enough there was also a “marriage bar” in place up until 1973, which required that women had to give up their jobs upon marriage if they were employed in the public service, in teaching and in some other employments (see Daly, 1978, for a discussion of this). Thus, it was a determined woman indeed who would face all of these obstacles and go out to work in the Ireland of the early 1970s and before.

The social change which began in the 1970s and gained momentum in the following decades was a major upheaval for the society, having profound effects and changing it in ways that would be impossible to reverse. The women’s movement, which was occurring internationally since the late 1960s, emerged in Ireland in the early 1970s, and it was one of the prime catalysts for social change in women’s roles in this country. Also, significantly, Ireland joined the European Community in 1973, and this too had a catalytic effect in spurring a period of rapid social change which impacted on women’s roles. These two major influences independently, and undoubtedly synergistically as well, had a profound effect on gender-role attitudes and behaviour in the country and indeed on the emergence of related social policy responses.

All of these influences were reinforced by a series of administrative and legislative changes which had significant implications for the role and status of women. These began with the removal of the marriage bar (1973), followed in rapid succession by legislation for equal pay (passed in 1974, implemented in 1975), employment equality (1977), contraception (1979) and taxation of married women (1980). Legislation concerning equal pay and equal employment were direct results of EU membership, as they followed EU directives. There was extensive public debate on contraception in the 1970s. In 1971 senator and barrister Mary Robinson, later to become Ireland’s first woman president, attempted to introduce a contraception bill into the Senate but was not allowed to. However, in 1973 in the McGee case, the Supreme Court ruled that contraceptives could be imported for personal use. This decision helped, through a series of interim steps over several years, to precipitate legislation in 1979 in this area. In 1980 there was also a significant change to the tax code which removed the discriminatory tax laws which had served to discriminate against married women (see Scannell, 2000). Further significant changes followed, including the legalisation of divorce (1995), following two national referenda in 1986 and 1995, the latter successful by a very small margin (O’Connor, 1998).

All of these changes profoundly affected the role and status of women in Ireland and removed impediments to their freedom and labour force participation. They also greatly facilitated their participation in the labour market. Increasing numbers of married women entered the labour force from the 1970s onwards (Callen and Farrell, 1991), and this trend has continued to the present day. As a result of this, new issues came to the fore, including the need for childcare, flexible working and work-life balance, and these key policy issues still remain central to the equality agenda not only in Ireland but also in Europe and elsewhere. This book is about the evolution of women’s participation in the labour force over the course of the last five decades of social change in Ireland, the social-psychological factors surrounding it and the policy issues generated by it. The book presents empirical data spanning a 35-year period, with some of this data in the form of replicated measures over time, providing a rich tableau of attitudes concerning women and work in Ireland over time, thus enabling us to see how attitudes have evolved in a number of key areas, together with related policy developments. Several of the surveys referred to used large nationwide representative samples (Fine-Davis, 1983a, 1983b, 2016; Fine-Davis et al., 2005). Others were based on stratified samples (e.g., Fine-Davis, 1988a, 1988b, 1988c), re-weighted wherever possible so as to be comparable to the nationwide samples. The measures used in these studies tap a very wide range of issues concerning women and work and related policy issues. The studies and their methodologies are described in Chapter 2.

The data presented in Chapters 3 through 8 provide an historical overview of the major trends in women’s labour force participation and corresponding social attitudes of the day and how these intersected with developing social policy. On the basis of empirical data over time, the book describes women’s journey into the world of work, from a subordinate role to a more equal role and sometimes to a leadership role. It begins by looking at what predisposed some married women to enter the labour force in the early 1960s while the majority stayed at home. Who were those 5% of married women who were working outside the home in the early 1960s when it was more usual for women to be housewives and stay at home? It tells the story of the women – particularly the married women who entered the labour force beginning in the 1970s – and explores what made them different from their non-employed counterparts. Chapter 3 presents the research which examined the determinants of married women’s labour force participation at this time (Fine-Davis, 1979). It explores which social-psychological characteristics of married women determined whether or not they became employed. The findings from this analysis highlight the characteristics of employed and non-employed married women in the mid-1970s, at the very beginning of Irish women’s influx into the labour market. The predictor variables explored included women’s own attitudes to labour force participation and gender roles, their perception of the attitudes of their ‘important others’ (i.e., mother, father, close friend, husband) towards their actual or potential employment and their attitudes to contraception (not yet legally available in Ireland at that time), among others.

While just a very small proportion (precisely 5.2%) of married women were in the labour force in 1961, this rose to 7.5% in 1971, and from that point onwards their participation continued to increase at a very rapid rate and stood at 54% in 2009, with an even higher rate (72.6%) amongst those in the childbearing age group 25–34. Apart from women in the workforce generally, women have also made strides in the political arena: women now comprise one-third of the Irish cabinet, the first woman president of Ireland was elected in 1990 (Smyth, 1992) and two of the last three presidents of Ireland have been women. Thus Irish women’s progress in the labour force and indeed in leadership roles has been quite remarkable over such a relatively short period of time.

A key focus of the book is on well-being, and Chapter 4 looks at the effects of employment on married women’s well-being, comparing it with that of non-employed married women (Fine-Davis, 1985). The question of whether employment of married women led to greater well-being was a subject of debate beginning in the 1970s (e.g., Oakley, 1974; Hoffman and Nye, 1974; Ferree, 1976), and this controversy in the literature continued into the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Adelmann, 1988; Hoffman and Youngblade, 1999). The data presented are contextualised in this literature.

Chapter 5 charts the progress of women in the labour force, looking at such issues as discrimination in the workplace (in areas such as hiring, pay, promotion, etc.) and barriers to women’s career advancement. It does this f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Preface
• 1 Background and introduction
• 2 Method
• 3 Social-psychological predictors of employment status of married women
• 4 Effects of housework vs. employment on married women’s well-being
• 5 Denial of discrimination? Attitudinal and other barriers to women’s equal participation in the workplace
• 6 Attitudes to childcare and the evolution of childcare policy
• 7 Work-life balance and well-being
• 8 Implications for men, gender relations and social policy
• Index