MacGill inequality is outdated and unjust

GRANTED, it was another country and another era, but when Henry Kissinger argued “nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes, there is too much fraternising with the enemy”, people thought it was funny. It was never supposed to be about winning, just not continually losing, as the Me Too campaign has tried to remind us. One would hope 21st-century Ireland is no longer comfortable with a notion of life as a competition between men and women, seeing it more as a collaboration.

If that was the hope, it is not the reality. Despite the fact that more than 50pc of our population is female, gender blindness is alive and well.

Although the theme of this year’s MacGill Summer School is “the future of Ireland in a new Europe”, there are 45 male speakers and moderators compared to 15 female speakers. So are women not perceived as having a role in forming that future?

This year the oversight seems even more invidious given the role women played in driving the referendum.

Joe Mulholland, director of the school, ham-fistedly defended the number of women speaking in Glenties, Co Donegal, at the school on the grounds he had done his best to ensure a fair representation but at times it was difficult to find “the person with the correct aptitude for some of the topics that are discussed in sessions”.

He later apologised. Such thinking has to be called out for what it is: out-dated and unjust. Many centuries ago Socrates foresaw: “Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.” But not quite yet in Ireland, it seems.