Is the oppression of women overstated?

SugarHigh

In terms of the general population were Women really that worse off than Men?

CDfm

SugarHigh wrote: »

In terms of the general population were Women really that worse off than Men?

That is a very contentious area Sugar High. Isn't this more a Humanities topic.

It is subjective and you should be specific as to the time periods and the measurement criteria that you wish to use and if it is specific to Ireland .

In Ireland , for instance, class, property ownership and religion were more important when looking at the franchise and voting.

We had a look at some issues here.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055905013&page=3

During the famine -it did not matter what gender you were -starving is starving.

jonniebgood1

SugarHigh wrote: »

In terms of the general population were Women really that worse off than Men?

If you mean in terms of in history I would say that women were not worse off by men as the stereotypically adopted roles saw women being protected by men for the most part. Whilst taking modern views this could be seen as denying of equal rights but when different eras are considered I think its hard to agree with this suggestion.

MarchDub

SugarHigh wrote: »

In terms of the general population were Women really that worse off than Men?

Well in terms of the Common Law married women were essentially owned by men and had no rights to leave a marriage for instance and no rights to direct or sole ownership of any property including money.

But really "worse" is such a relative term. Most men had pretty dismal lives as regards work and responsibility for families.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

I don't think it is. Its only very very recently that women have moved towards equality in any sense, and for the vast majority of human history women were second-class citizens.

CDfm

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

I don't think it is. Its only very very recently that women have moved towards equality in any sense, and for the vast majority of human history women were second-class citizens.

I think the OP is expecting us to be comparative -for whatever reasons he has - but hasnt indicated any measurement system to suit his statenent.

MarchDub wrote: »

Well in terms of the Common Law married women were essentially owned by men and had no rights to leave a marriage for instance and no rights to direct or sole ownership of any property including money.

But really "worse" is such a relative term. Most men had pretty dismal lives as regards work and responsibility for families.

Marriage contracts were/are based on contract law

lazygal wrote: »

Yes indeed, property transfers necessitated the marriage contract, as the wife's assets became her husbands (she was a chattel ie a piece of his property like cows or furniture until various Married Women's Property Acts were introduced) and a contract was needed to solidify these transfers in law-goes all the way back to Magna Carta etc and "marriage" contracts of various forms is a universal concept in almost all societies.
And, I have (over) stated, marriage is nowt but another form of contract like buying a house or tendering for a service and, as such, has its own legal principles-when you sign the register thats the contract in all its glory, and I don't think anyone realises that what they are signing is comparable to a bog standard contract to purchase property.

and

the Statute of Frauds 1695, which governs the marriage contract

But if you are a serf or a peasant in a feudal system (essentially a slave) modern concepts are of little use to you as subsistence is still subsistence.

Pre 1800 in Ireland ,maybe 2 or 3% of people had the vote and so the other 97% were all equal because they had nothing other than their personal possessions.

EDIT -but this being history we can deal with historical fact and see where the cards fall.

It could be fun really.

CDfm

Here is what I mean.

Local politics was very important in Ireland and the system was based on the grand jurues. Basically the more property you had the more power you had.

The franchise/vote was very limited.

Many men or catholics did not have the vote so its an imperfect measurement system.

Waterford County Council Collections

Local Government in Ireland was reorganised under the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898. The Grand Juries that had been in existence from the thirteenth century in Waterford County were abolished and replaced by County Councils and Rural District Councils.
Members of the first Waterford County Council, 1899
Under the Grand Jury system there was a limited franchise which resulted in control of the local government by a small minority. Under the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898 the Grand Juries ceased to exist and the functions of the Grand Jury were taken over by Waterford County Council. The extension of the franchise meant that the members of Waterford County Council were elected by a larger section of the population in Waterford. In 1898 the local electorate consisted of the parliamentary electorate and also women and peers. The parliamentary electorate were property owners, occupiers of property who paid rates direct or through the landowner as an addition to rent and any lodger paying more than 10 rent per annum.
Waterford County Council met quarterly in the early days and as the business of the council increased so too did the meetings of the Council until they met, as they do now, once a month. The matters dealt with at these meetings are detailed in the Minute Books.



http://www.waterfordcoco.ie/services/archives/archivecollections/countycouncilcollections/

The overall franchise and suffrage movement was more than just votes for women.

CDfm

This is an interesring article on some historical literature I came across once.

I haven't read it but love the names in Castle Rackrent and it seems a bit more fun than Dickens.

PRIVILEGED OR IMPRISONED IN THE ANGLO-IRISH BIG HOUSE?

Women’s Opportunities as Presented in Three Irish Novels

Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent,
George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin, and
Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September
© 1999 by Lynnette E. Fitch

For Mr. Derek Hand
Big House Seminar
Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama MA Program
University College Dublin
Fall 1998


The Anglo-Irish Big House is a historical structure that has been employed for various purposes in the literature of a variety of Irish authors. In reality, an Anglo-Irish Big House was big only in comparison to the peasant cottages and hovels dotting the Irish countryside; a Big House was a far cry from a castle or a palace, for example. And yet the Big House represented in a very concrete way the comparative wealth and power of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy as a class as they spraddled the chasm between the colonized, impoverished, predominantly Catholic, Gaelic Irish and their colonizers, the imperialistic English. Due, no doubt, to the fascinating identity conflicts and unique social predicaments of the figurative space the Anglo-Irish occupied in Ireland, Irish authors have long been interested in depicting the literal space, the Big House, within which the Anglo-Irish lived. Perhaps the most intriguing conflicts and predicaments in both the historical and the literary Big Houses involve the uncertain opportunities for females dwelling within Anglo-Irish Ascendancy homes. Three novels dealing with the relative advantages and disadvantages of the women living within Anglo-Irish Big Houses at pivotal points in Irish history are Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth, A Drama in Muslin by George Moore, and The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen.
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth was first published in 1800 at the time of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. This book is generally acknowledged to be the first Anglo-Irish novel and is thus the logical starting point for a brief, chronological look at female characters in the Big House. The Big House in Castle Rackrent is not really a castle, but more of a once-grand country manor house which has degenerated a bit further under the ‘management’ of each successive heir of the Rackrent family. In the novel, the men of the family occupy center stage while the females are marginalized, which is revealing in and of itself, especially as the author is a female! What mention the narrator, Thady Quirk, longtime family Rackrent servant, makes of the females is sketchy and often descends into stereotypes. The first Rackrent female Thady mentions is the wife of Sir Murtagh Rackrent. This Rackrent wife was from the Skinflint family, and, according to how Thady describes her, she lived up to the family nomen! Thady makes it clear he did not care for this mean, stingy, tightfisted woman and that Sir Murtagh only married her for her money. In doing so, Thady says Sir Murtagh made a bad bargain for she outlived him. Thady rather racistly comments of his lady Rackrent that "...I always suspected she had Scotch blood in her veins; anything else I could have looked over in her from a regard to the family" (Edgeworth 68). She is unpopular with Thady and others for such actions as stopping the tradition of providing whiskey to the tenants on rent day. Lady Murtagh Rackrent, it would seem, made the most of her residency in Castle Rackrent; she had poor children spinning for her for free, she collected duty yarn and household linen from the tenants, and she extorted "presents" of food (fowl, eggs, honey, butter, meal, fish, game, bacon, and ham) from the tenants. In addition, she "had her privy purse - and she had her weed ashes, and her sealing money upon the signing of all the leases, with something to buy gloves besides; and besides again often took in money from the tenants, if offered properly, to speak for them to Sir Murtagh about abatements and renewals" (Edgeworth 71). After Murtagh Rackrent dies as a result of an argument with Lady Rackrent over which of the two of them had the right to the abatement money, a generous jointure is settled upon her, and she departs Castle Rackrent a much wealthier woman than when she arrived. Indeed, she made sure to take all her acquired possessions with her: "...for my late lady Rackrent had sent all the featherbeds off before her, and blankets and household linen, down to the very knife cloths" (Edgeworth 72). Clearly, Big House living agreed with her! She, as a materialistic and motivated person, found great opportunities as a woman to acquire greater wealth while dwelling in Castle Rackrent.

Here is a link to the whole article

http://www.pulli.com/lynnette/bighouse.html

CDfm

Interesting enough at the end of the 19th century legislation was enacted allowing women to elect and be elected at local government and property qualifications were the key to qualifying as a voter.

1896 Women can be elected as Poor Law Guardians. 1898 Local Government Act. Women can be elected to some local councils. 1899 85 women elected as Poor Law Guardians.

From the start of the 20th century in Ireland and the UK the womens movement became associated with radical politics.

I had never looked at it that way before. There was an incident in Westminister around 1906 and the middle class suffragettes saw the effectiveness of the the working class womens action.

While that does not deal with the OP's point it may explain some of the theories and history of the movement.

CDfm

I have posted this elsewhere but it is fairly obvious that the Womens Movement was alligned with the Labour Movement.


Eva Gore Booth, Countess Marcievicz and Hannah Sheehy-Sheffington were all active in the suffragette movement in Ireland and it followed a much more benign movement in which Anna Haslam was a leading figure.

36 Charlotte French, b. in 1844 in Ripple, Kent, England, d. 1939, m. French businessman Maximilian Carden Despard in 1870, and had no children. He was very wealthy and was one of the founders of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Charlotte was the suffragette and Sinn Féin member, Ireland’s oldest political movement who were Irish Republicans and worked for lasting peace and justice in Ireland with sustainable social and economic development. She remained highly critical of her brother throughout his career.
By the age of ten her father had died and her mother was committed to an insane asylum and she was sent to London to live with relatives. She expressed regret of her lack of education, although she attended a finishing school in London.


Charlotte Despard Pub, London, England


See the Charlotte Despard Pub website on Archway Road in London, England. A street in the Battersea district of London where she formerly lived and worked is now named Charlotte Despard Avenue in her honour. See another biography.

Women’s Sufferage and Charlotte’s Political Career











Charlotte was shocked by the poverty she saw in London and as a result developed radical political opinions. In 1870 she fell in love and married Max Despard, a Frenchman who shared her political beliefs.
In 1874 Charlotte's first novel, Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow was published. During the next sixteen years Charlotte wrote ten novels. Most of these novels were romantic love stories but A Voice from the Dim Millions dealt with the problems of a poor young factory worker. Charlotte was unable to find a publisher for this novel.
When her husband died in 1890, Charlotte decided to dedicate the rest of her life to helping the poor. She left her luxurious house in Esher and moved to Wandsworth to live with the people she intended to assist. Charlotte joined the Social Democratic Federation and later the Independent Labour Party.
In 1894 Despard was elected as a Poor Law Guardian in Lambeth. Charlotte became friends with George Lansbury and for the next few years became involved in the campaign to reform the Poor Law system. Despard also got to know Margaret Bondfield, the trade union leader and Keir Hardie, the new leader of the Labour Party.
Despard became a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). However, in 1906, frustrated by the NUWSS lack of success, Despard joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Despard was arrested and imprisoned for her WSPU activities.
Despard was very critical of the dictatorial way that Emmeline Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst led the WSPU. In October 1907, Despard, Teresa Billington Greig, Edith How Martyn and seventy other women attempted to make the WSPU a more democratic organisation.
When their efforts failed, the three women left the WSPU and formed the Women's Freedom League (WFL). This new organisation still took a militant approach but unlike the WSPU the Freedom League concentrated on using non-violent illegal methods.
Despard spent a great deal of time in Ireland and in 1908 she joined with Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Margaret Cousins to form the Irish Women's Franchise League.
In 1909 Despard met Gandhi and was influenced by his theory of 'passive resistance'. As the leading figure of the WFL. Despard urged members not to pay taxes and to boycott the 1911 Census. Despard financially supported the locked-out workers during the labour dispute in Dublin in 1913. She also helped establish the Irish Workers' College in the city.
Despard, like most members of the Women's Freedom League, was a pacifist, and so when war was declared in 1914 she refused to become involved in the British Army's recruitment campaign. Ironically, her brother, General John French, was Chief of Staff of the British Army and commander of the British Expeditionary Force sent to Europe in August 1914. Her sister, Catherine Harley, was also a supporter of the war and served in the Scottish Women's Hospital in France. Despard and the Women's Freedom League disagreed with the decision of the NUWSS and WSPU to call off the women's suffrage campaign while the war was on. Despard argued that the British government was not doing enough to bring an end to the war and between 1914-1918 supported the campaign of the Women's Peace Council for a negotiated peace.
After the passing of the Qualification of Women Act in 1918, Charlotte Despard became the Labour Party candidate in Battersea in the post-war election. However, in the euphoria of Britain's victory, Despard's anti-war views were very unpopular and like all the other pacifist candidates, who stood in the election, she was defeated.
In 1920 Despard toured Ireland as a member of the Labour Party Commission of Inquiry. Together with Maud Gonne, she collected first-hand evidence of army and police atrocities in Cork and Kerry. The two women also formed the Women's Prisoners' Defence League to support republican prisoners.
Charlotte continued to be involved in politics after the war. In the 1920s Despard became involved in the Sinn Fein campaign for a united Ireland.
In 1930 Despard and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington made a tour of the Soviet Union. Impressed with what she saw she joined the Communist Party and became secretary of the Friends of Soviet Russia organization. Charlotte Despard died in Ireland in 1939.

And this

The Irish Times - Wednesday, April 28, 2010
April 28th, 1906: Women's protest for right to vote polarises opinion






FROM THE ARCHIVES: A noisy protest in the gallery of the House of Commons in 1906 by women campaigning for the right to vote was criticised by The Irish Times in an editorial, drawing a prompt counter response from several letter writers, including Francis Sheehy Skeffington, who was later murdered by a British army officer during the Easter Rising. – JOE JOYCE
Sir, – Will you allow me space for a few words of common sense in relation to the scene enacted in the House of Commons upon Wednesday night? Some comments in the Press remind me forcibly of a modification of the old saying to the effect that, while a man may steal a horse, a woman may not look over the wall. No one proposes to disenfranchise the entire male population of the United Kingdom on account of the disgraceful scenes that are sometimes exhibited, not, indeed, in the galleries, but upon the floor of the House, amongst the members themselves, and under the eyes of the Speaker; but because some half-dozen foolish women got an admission to the Ladies’ Gallery upon Wednesday night, the entire womanhood of the Kingdom are to be denied their constitutional rights indefinitely, if not, indeed, to the end of the world! I do not believe that the incident will have the effect of retarding the Parliamentary enfranchisement of women by a single day. Such incidents, if they were multiplied one hundred fold, would not have a feather’s weight, with reasonable men, in annulling the legitimate claims of women, which 400 members of the present House of Commons are pledged to support. Whether that support will embody itself in an Act during the existence of the present Parliament, I am not in a position to predict; perhaps the deputation to the Prime Minister upon the 19th of May may elicit an answer; but the cause of women is progressing by rapid strides throughout the whole civilised world and their Parliamentary enfranchisement cannot be much longer postponed at the bidding of an ever-diminishing number of opponents, even though consisting of both sexes. - Yours, etc., Thomas J. Haslam.
125 Leinster road, 27th April, 1906.
Sir, – I need not occupy much space in protesting against the tone of your leading article on the Woman’s Suffrage Demonstration, because your London correspondent, in a neighbouring column, has given an effective reply by telling us that, in the opinion of some “old Parliamentary hands,” the vigorous agitation which culminated in Wednesday’s disturbance cannot fail, in the end, to benefit the feminist cause. These old Parliamentarians are right, and the officials of the National Union of Woman’s Suffrage Societies, in deploring and repudiating the occurrence, are wrong. The question has passed beyond the stage of argument. Only hide-bound prejudice now stands in the way of woman’s emancipation, and that prejudice can only be overcome by vigorous and even violent attacks. That women have at last roused themselves to organise such attacks is a healthy sign, and should dispose of the worn-out argument that “women don’t want to vote”. A new earnestness and fervour have come into the movement, with the growing interest in it of the working-women. Mrs [Millicent] Fawcett , who will not be suspected of any strong sympathy with revolutionary methods, put the case admirably in her letter to the Morning Post in a few months ago. She said, in effect (I am quoting from memory), “We, middle-class women, have been agitating the suffrage question for a long time, in our own middle-class way, and have made very little progress. Now the working-women have taken up the question, and are agitating it in their own way. It is not our way, but it may be a much more effective way.” And she went on to instance, as a parallel case, the difference in methods and in success between Butt and Parnell.
Some suffragists may be too “respectable” to approve of the methods of the working-women; but they may have to choose between respectability and efficiency. Napoleon won his battles by breaking all the rules of warfare. – Yours, etc.,
Francis S. Skeffington
8 Airfield road, Rathgar, 27th April, 1906

So OP -what issue's do you want to discuss.

SugarHigh

Thanks CDFM a lot of interesting info. I'm really just curious about the quality of life in the general population and was one gender worse off than the other. Whenever I see things about the oppression of women it's usually in things that only applied to the elites. Like the land ownership laws and voting rights that have already been brought up in this thread.

In terms of the job the average man would typically have done farmer/coal miner/ soldier I'm not really sure how the average man was better off than the average women which I feel is the image we are often presented with.

Is there a particular point in history where women were significantly worse off in terms of quality of life in the general population?

CDfm

Thats not the way history works though you do get partisan historians.

If you look at the crime and execution thread I think you will see a lot of equality there.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055944797

There is a women in history

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055944797

There is a treatment in asylums thread

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056235296

Certainly, if you look at civil servants and teachers -my Mum was a teacher and up to the 60's and 70's her terms and conditions of employment were different to her male colleagues.Some ambitious women became nuns - an Aunt of my mothers did - in the same way some guys became priests for education and status. Clerics were viewed as professions.

So it is not that simple though, factories also had differential pay rates between married and single men.

So a lot of real discrimination was in the workplace.

Social history comparisons are not simple and I imagine there are answers there but not as clear cut as you want. Charlotte French Despard was a very well to do communist.

There were laws for the rich and poor. Take the O'Sheas divorce (Parnell) that was conducted in the House of Lords and you had to be rich to divorce. It was beyond the aspirations of working class & middle class people as was property ownership.

Its a good topic and I imagine if you looked at the career of Hannah Sheehy Skeffington in the 30's and 40's you would see the teachers angle and from there you might find comparisons.

You should have fun finding out.

premierlass

Well, the simple answer is yes. As James Connolly said when talking of women's working conditions

Upon women, as the weaker physical vessel, and as the most untrained recruit, that struggle was inevitably the most cruel; it is a matter for deep thankfulness that the more intellectual women broke out into revolt against the anomaly of being compelled to bear all the worst burdens of the struggle, and yet be denied even the few political rights enjoyed by the male portion of their fellow-sufferers. ... The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

Connolly exposed the explotation of women and children in Belfast and Dublin, and it's worth googling the subject because he goes into detail. That's not to say that men did and do not have to engage in back-breaking labour, but in the industrial age women's and children's pay for a full day's work was not a living wage. Their working conditions were also worse. Female domestic workers may not have had such bad conditions, although that varied, but the pay was very bad, and they were often subject to sexual harassment from their employers.

Middle-class women were afforded a measure of protection, but don't forget the large families of Victorian and Edwardian times and the high numbers of death in childbirth up until the early-to-mid twentieth century. Daniel Defoe was the first to observe that men who tired of their wives could have them committed to a lunatic asylum. The growth of the psychiatric industry from the mid 1800s and its assumption that, in essence, madness equated to femaleness, made women in particular extremely vulnerable to abuse from the medical profession.

Violence against women, specifically rape, is often used as an act of war. The British labour commission revealed that it may have been used by the Black and Tans.

Those are just a few instances off the top of my head.

Nhead

The Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869 definitely treated working class women differently from working class men: it effectively allowed the authorities to arrest working class women if they suspected she was a prostitute.

http://www.herstoria.com/discover/proscontagious.html

http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume1/issue1/features/?id=103

The Act shows that the state believed that women should be more moral and that the fault for men using prostitutes was due to the 'loose morals' of women.

CDfm

premierlass wrote: »

Well, the simple answer is yes. As James Connolly said when talking of women's working conditions

Connolly exposed the explotation of women and children in Belfast and Dublin, and it's worth googling the subject because he goes into detail. That's not to say that men did and do not have to engage in back-breaking labour, but in the industrial age women's and children's pay for a full day's work was not a living wage.

But are these issues quantifiable.

Don't forget Connolly was also a Marxist politician who sucessfully recruited for a political cause.

I have an elderly relative who was an apprentice in the 1940's and his father paid for the first year of his apprenticeship, the next year was free , and the third year he was paid the weekly equivalent of the first years fee.

Room & board being extra.

Their working conditions were also worse. Female domestic workers may not have had such bad conditions, although that varied, but the pay was very bad, and they were often subject to sexual harassment from their employers.

You also had male domestic workers and farm labourers whose conditions were very bad.

Middle-class women were afforded a measure of protection, but don't forget the large families of Victorian and Edwardian times and the high numbers of death in childbirth up until the early-to-mid twentieth century. Daniel Defoe was the first to observe that men who tired of their wives could have them committed to a lunatic asylum. The growth of the psychiatric industry from the mid 1800s and its assumption that, in essence, madness equated to femaleness, made women in particular extremely vulnerable to abuse from the medical profession.

There is a very good thread here.

I imagine it was legally possible but practically impossible to do & you probably needed to be a real "lunatic ".

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056235296

Those are just a few instances off the top of my head.

Nhead wrote: »

The Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869 definitely treated working class women differently from working class men: it effectively allowed the authorities to arrest working class women if they suspected she was a prostitute.

http://www.herstoria.com/discover/proscontagious.html

http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume1/issue1/features/?id=103

The Act shows that the state believed that women should be more moral and that the fault for men using prostitutes was due to the 'loose morals' of women.

This bit always does intrigue me and I did a thread on Monto . The Magdalene Laundries were run and administered by women.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=66974496

The story of the Wrens of the Curragh is very sad.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinphillips/2459273225/

Of course, when reading it you have to take into account that until recently in Ireland you had the real thing.Depending on the area in 1900 you had 10 to 20% of the population living in "cottages" which could only be described as mud huts.

The Mud Hut may not be for everyone but is an experience for someone who doesn't mind roughing it a bit. In 1963 I went to Donegal to visit my Mothers family who were farmers in Glenties, County Donegal and they lived in the real thing. The Mud Hut was really great in jogging my memory!

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g186643-d1233943-r71445330-Slaney_Manor-Wexford_County_Wexford.html

EDIT - Just a quick point on syphillis - this was not cureable until penecillan was readily available.

Famous deaths include Lenin, Al Capone, Randolf Churchill (winstons dad), Napoleon & Henry VIII.

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/lenins-death-caused-by-syphilis-1922528.html

Syphilis can be very dangerous to a person's health if left untreated. In both guys and girls, the spirochetes can spread throughout the whole body, infecting major organs. Brain damage and other serious health problems can occur, many of which can't be treated. A woman who is pregnant and hasn't been effectively treated is at great risk of putting her baby in danger

http://www.lycos.com/info/syphilis--untreated-syphilis.html.

I am not excusing the treatment of prostitutes just pointing out how damgerous ut was considered.

SugarHigh

premierlass wrote: »

Connolly exposed the explotation of women and children in Belfast and Dublin, and it's worth googling the subject because he goes into detail. That's not to say that men did and do not have to engage in back-breaking labour, but in the industrial age women's and children's pay for a full day's work was not a living wage. Their working conditions were also worse. Female domestic workers may not have had such bad conditions, although that varied, but the pay was very bad, and they were often subject to sexual harassment from their employers.

In what way were the conditions worse?
Was it case that they got paid less because they worked less. I say this because even today we hear that women get paid less than men in Ireland but whenever I look into the stats it's simply because they work less.

Middle-class women were afforded a measure of protection, but don't forget the large families of Victorian and Edwardian times and the high numbers of death in childbirth up until the early-to-mid twentieth century.

Am I right in thinking that women still had a longer life expectancy?I genuinely don't know. So it doesn't really prove women had it worse if they were still expected to live longer. In fact I think life expectancy is something that really goes against the idea that women had a lower quality of life. The higher quality of life you have the longer you tend to live. People from poor countries don't outlive people from rich countries so how could women outlive men if they had it worse?

Daniel Defoe was the first to observe that men who tired of their wives could have them committed to a lunatic asylum. The growth of the psychiatric industry from the mid 1800s and its assumption that, in essence, madness equated to femaleness, made women in particular extremely vulnerable to abuse from the medical profession.

That is awful but how often did it happen? Is it really something that was common enough to consider women to have a lower quality of life?

Violence against women, specifically rape, is often used as an act of war. The British labour commission revealed that it may have been used by the Black and Tans.

I don't understand violence against women shows they had it worse. Is it not obvious that was causes more violence against men? Isn't the fact men were expected to fight kind of shows they didn't exactly have it well? I'd prefer to be a housewife than a soldier.

Those are just a few instances off the top of my head.

Thanks for contributing and I'm not intentionally trying to be dismissive but I just don't really see a picture of women having it worse. Terrible things happened to women but they also happened to men and I'd actually find it easier to believe they were more common against men which would explain why they live shorter lives.

CDfm

I am finding it hard to get to grips with either side of the arguments as there was a surplus of labour in Ireland and widespread emigration from 1850 onwards.

The World of Work

Black and white print depicting a shipyard worker, late 19th century
© Dublin City Public Libraries
Enlarge image
In 1904, workers were subject to a longer working day and a longer working week, far less holidays and far less comfortable working environments than is the norm for Ireland in 2004.
In some cases workers were expected to work up to 100 hours a week, though the standard week was around 60 hours. Employees had much less rights, as legislation enshrining these rights and such concepts as established holidays and minimum wages had yet to be enacted.
In Dublin, for example, the vast majority of male workers had jobs as casual labourers and messengers, employed or laid off at will. There was never enough work for everyone and in 1904, the employment situation was so bad that the unemployed marched to City Hall in July in protest at the lack of work. The Lord Mayor, Joseph Hutchinson, called a special emergency meeting of the Corporation in December, in order to examine "the best means of alleviating the distress at present existing in the city owing to the want of employment." The Corporation decided to bring forward its Municipal Works programme in order to create more jobs and the Irish Times set up a special shilling relief fund for the distressed of Dublin over that Christmas.

Black and white illustration depicting house cook in The Lady of the House, 1900
© Dublin City Public Libraries
Enlarge image
At the other end of the spectrum, emphasising a prevailing system of class distinction, directorships of companies were made available through family connections, shared schooldays at one of the private schools or membership of the same clubs. The principal of open competition was only beginning to be recognised.
Workers tended to work close to their homes, although in many cases the citizens of the city of Dublin travelled out to the townships of Pembroke and Rathmines in order to earn their living as domestic servants. Those engaged as domestics usually had Sunday off and a half-holiday on Saturday, but for the rest of the time they were at the mercy of their employer.
Salaries were lower in Ireland than in Britain; wages for a "Good Plain Cook" was around 20 shillings a week, which was also about the average for an unskilled male worker; a skilled worker such as a printer could earn closer to 35 shillings a week. Shop girls could be paid as little as 7 shillings a week. However, the movement towards unionisation had already begun, especially in the industrial parts of the north.

The movement grew, with the ITGWU founded in 1909, though it was to encounter a major defeat with the Great Lock Out of 1913. But many workers felt they had no chance of employment in Ireland and left the country for England and America, a trend that had begun with the Great Famine and that was really only reversed in the 1990s.
© Dublin City Public Libraries


http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/pages-in-history/Ireland%20in%201904/the-world-of-work/

The outflow of people from 1700 onwards is often given as 10 million people.

In agricultural Ireland pre the Land Acts in the late 1800's tenant farmers and their families had less rights and benefits then the serfs in Russia for instance.

We should look at what arguments the history will support.

EDIT

Just to help things along I came accross this

http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/webfac/cromer/e211_f07/klasen.pdf

Nhead

CDfm I agree that we should look at the arguments that history supports. As you have already stated though the question is a vague one. For instance in many ways it could be argued that the oppression of women was understated in Irish historiography as by and large women weren't really mentioned that much. IMHO I think the difficulty lies in how do you prove/disprove whether or not the oppression of women was overstated. Maybe a starting point would be to look at how women were treated under the law, were treated in education, in politics, in medicine and how they were treated and judged by society and its mores and then see how men were treated.

Nhead

With the above in mind and with this topic being in the news: what about the Magdalene laundries? The last one to shut in Ireland was 1996. They were originally established for 'fallen women' i.e. women who were prostitutes but over time a fallen woman came to mean one that was promiscuous, having social dysfunctions and had a child out of wedlock. Now what about the men that used the prostitutes and those that were promiscuous ?? Were they not 'fallen' also and was there an equivalent punishment for them? (I'm not sure but it would be interesting to see if there was). I suppose, what I am trying to say is : Was sexual morality applied to both women and men equally?

CDfm

On the Magdalene Laundries - I have always thought of these as being run by women -just like the nuns ran hospitals, orphanages and schools.

They were clerics and virewed it as a profession and joining the nuns was one of the few occupations where women competed in running large institutions. A woman could reach the top.

I think that sexual morality was not really an issue for the establishment as much as disease prevention.

ejmaztec

If it was the tradition here that young women were married off to middle-aged men, then women were probably more hard done by, given that they were the ones left looking after 10 kids after their husbands died of old age.

CDfm

Nhead wrote: »

CDfm I agree that we should look at the arguments that history supports. As you have already stated though the question is a vague one. For instance in many ways it could be argued that the oppression of women was understated in Irish historiography as by and large women weren't really mentioned that much.

If you did not own property you were not mentioned much and had no rights.

My brother in laws family surname does not appear on any execution records as none of them were executed. My family surname does with an execution and a murder.

So ommission proves nothing.

IMHO I think the difficulty lies in how do you prove/disprove whether or not the oppression of women was overstated.

First by looking how they were treated.

I mean the 38 years age of death for each gender up to the famine shows that at least subsistence farming families had "equality".

Maybe a starting point would be to look at how women were treated under the law, were treated in education, in politics, in medicine and how they were treated

To a point.

In genealogy everyone wants to be descended from royalty.

You also need to take class into account as not all classes are treated equally.

Social mobility is also a factor. Becoming a lawyer or doctor etc was restricted. You had an officer class etc.

If you are going to differentiate between how genders are treated in the upper classes.

Upper class and middle class families often used trusts to arrange assets in families so property bypassed the husbands ownership.

In Ireland voting rights attatched to property ownership - so not owning property by definition meant religion was important.

and judged by society and its mores and then see how men were treated.

that is more difficult to judge as only the literate kept records and you can only judge a particular class.

So how do you categorise it factually.

CDfm

ejmaztec wrote: »

If it was the tradition here that young women were married off to middle-aged men, then women were probably more hard done by, given that they were the ones left looking after 10 kids after their husbands died of old age.

My great-grandfather outlived 3 wives

So multiple marriages were an issue.

The middle classes inheritted "upper class" laws so adaptation of laws is an issue.

Nhead

CDfm wrote: »

On the Magdalene Laundries - I have always thought of these as being run by women -just like the nuns ran hospitals, orphanages and schools.

They were clerics and virewed it as a profession and joining the nuns was one of the few occupations where women competed in running large institutions. A woman could reach the top.

I think that sexual morality was not really an issue for the establishment as much as disease prevention.

I don't want to be a contrary fecker esp since I don't post that often but this is what I mean about the op's question being vague. I took oppression to mean oppression by anyone, so even though the Laundries were run by women it is still oppression. You're totally right about nuns and running large institutions (still subordinate to the male hierarchy) etc. I would disagree with you to an extent on the establishment seeing sexual morality as a non-issue particularly with regards the Victorian era for which I have some sources (and indeed beyond). There is a disease prevention imperative for sure but men also spread sexual diseases but were they sanctioned to the same degree as those in the laundries??

Nhead

CDfm I agree with you on the property rights and being ignored but that doesn't explain the absence of women in historiography for so long after property rights ceased to be a factor. I wouldn't say omission proves nothing in this instance, for how can the oppression of women be overstated if they are omitted from the primary material surely it would point to the oppression being understated? Again, I agree with you on the bias of the sources. As for the class issue it cannot be understated and I agree with you and it is a very telling factor. I suppose a question could be were women oppressed in each class desigination in different ways? The real interesting question you raise is: how do you categorise it factually? Has anyone got any ideas?

CDfm

Nhead wrote: »

I don't want to be a contrary fecker esp since I don't post that often but this is what I mean about the op's question being vague. I took oppression to mean oppression by anyone, so even though the Laundries were run by women it is still oppression. You're totally right about nuns and running large institutions (still subordinate to the male hierarchy) etc.

Be a contrary fecker as the OP is vague.

Split the issues and it is equally important to learn how women built womens power structures and influence.

The nuns were automomous "reporting" to Rome and self regulating.

Mother Frances Bridgeman of the Mercy Order gave Florence Nightengale a run for her money.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=72249069&postcount=13

I would disagree with you to an extent on the establishment seeing sexual morality as a non-issue particularly with regards the Victorian era for which I have some sources (and indeed beyond). There is a disease prevention imperative for sure but men also spread sexual diseases but were they sanctioned to the same degree as those in the laundries??

Lets see - the sex sources should spice the thread up.

( Where are you MarchDub -):pac:

What we dont want to do is get bogged down in minutae.

Nhead

CDfm wrote: »

Be a contrary fecker as the OP is vague.

Split the issues and it is equally important to learn how women built womens power structures and influence.

The nuns were automomous "reporting" to Rome and self regulating.

Mother Frances Bridgeman of the Mercy Order gave Florence Nightengale a run for her money.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=72249069&postcount=13




Lets see - the sex sources should spice the thread up.

( Where are you MarchDub -):pac:

What we dont want to do is get bogged down in minutae.

Ha ha ah no salacious sources. I keep on thinking of the 1800s with this thread. I have done some work on women in eduation during this time and have various quotes from doctors saying women wouldn't be able to reproduce if they were too educated, that women pursuing university education were ugly, just mad stuff. A large section of society were equating the move for equal rights with the effect it would have on the female body, they had a fear that women would lose their femininity. The Contagious Disease Acts gave the law power to arrest women if it was believed they were promiscuous.

CDfm

Now I would like to discuss Ireland really but I found a neat article on India and the Military which may give some insight into Ireland.

I did a thread on Monto which was one of Europes biggest Red Light Areas pre Independence.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=66974496

Medical History, 1998, 42: 137-160
Soldiers, Surgeons and the
Campaigns to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases
in Colonial India, 1805-1860
DOUGLAS M PEERS*


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1044002/pdf/medhist00023-0007.pdf

I shall quote some bits as prostitutes were very much at the bottom of the social hierarchy as coincidentally are squaddies.

Disease was a military issue.

Events in 1857
would confirm what many officers were already insisting upon at the beginning of the
nineteenth century: a large reserve of European soldiers was needed to keep the sepoys in
check. But Europeans were much more likely than sepoys to become casualty statistics:
data from 1836 confirmed that European soldiers were more than twice as likely to be
hospitalized as Indian sepoys.1 The situation was much the same twelve years later when
troop returns from 1848 for the Bengal army listed 847 deaths from among the 15,558
Europeans on strength, but only 1,065 deaths from among the more than 100,000 sepoys.2
Therefore the British directed a good deal of attention to those diseases thought most
threatening to the European rank and file, particularly cholera, malaria, and dysentery.

30 % of European Soldiers were infected

we find that
sexually-transmitted diseases (syphilis, gonorrhoea, and a range of undiagnosed penile
chancres) were constantly threatening to deprive the British of many of their rank and file.
With upwards of 30 per cent of the European soldiers in India in hospital with venereal
complaints at any time, a reduction in venereal diseases became a strategic as well as a
medical imperative. Regimental hospitals of the Bengal army in the 1820s and 1830s
treated approximately 2,400 venereal cases each year, and this was in an army which had
an average establishment of only about 8,500 Europeans. Hence, venereal diseases
became a strategic as well as a medical imperative.4 Moreover, medical and military
spokesmen often pointed to the correlation between venereal diseases and other health and
discipline problems. Troops searching for sexual gratification were lured away from the
safe confines of the barracks where the military could exert some control over them and
into local communities where the army's powers of surveillance were greatly
circumscribed. There, soldiers were exposed to a range of temptations threatening to
military discipline as well as to the troops' own physical well-being.

To the conqueror the spoils

The manliness of the European conqueror was set
against the fickle and effeminate Indian male.5 Although not all Indian males were typecast
the same (the Bengalis for example were singled out as the most effeminate, while Sikhs
were credited with being more masculine), a clear line was laid down between Europeans
and Indians. To maintain such a hierarchy required that nothing be done that could raise
uncertainties about the European male and so the soldier was left alone.
It is no surprise that attention then turned to those viewed as the principal carriers of the
disease-the prostitutes of the cantonment.6

So it was a key military issue but also a public health issue

Between 1805 and 1833, lock hospitals for the
forcible confinement of women suspected of venereal infection were established at most
cantonments, in which were housed the some 26,000 European soldiers normally
stationed in India. Interestingly, and in contrast to the situation later in the century, their
introduction did not cause much debate. Support for lock hospitals was initially greatest
amongst army officers, who sought to stem the flow of soldiers seeking medical treatment
for venereal infections. By the 1830s, military officers were joined by many surgeons who
had also come to view the lock hospital as a necessary and possibly unique solution to the
problem of venereal diseases. Yet in 1833 the system of lock hospitals, which had hitherto
enjoyed wide support from the Anglo-Indian military, medical and civilian communities
in India, as well as from the East India Company's Court of Directors in London, suddenly
came under attack from the Governor General. William Bentinck (Governor General
1828-1835), armed with a lengthy condemnation of lock hospitals written for him by the
Inspector General of His Majesty's Hospitals in Bengal, ordered their closure. This
directive triggered a great deal of discussion, much of it quite acrimonious, and it is from
these debates that we can begin to reconstruct some of the military, medical and moral
agendas, and their transformations, which so powerfully shaped colonial rule in India.

Also disease did not respect class

British medical and military officers in India were white, male and middle- if not upperclass;
gender and race set them apart from the Indian prostitutes, while class distinguished
them from the rank and file. Consequently, questions of race, gender and class all came
into play whenever the army looked to control venereal diseases within its ranks.

I wonder what the Irish experience was like

ejmaztec

CDfm wrote: »

My great-grandfather outlived 3 wives

So multiple marriages were an issue.

The middle classes inheritted "upper class" laws so adaptation of laws is an issue.

There had to be at least one exception to the rule.:D

premierlass

CDfm wrote:

premierlass wrote:

Well, the simple answer is yes. As James Connolly said when talking of women's working conditions

Connolly exposed the explotation of women and children in Belfast and Dublin, and it's worth googling the subject because he goes into detail. That's not to say that men did and do not have to engage in back-breaking labour, but in the industrial age women's and children's pay for a full day's work was not a living wage.

But are these issues quantifiable.

Don't forget Connolly was also a Marxist politician who sucessfully recruited for a political cause.

Yes, but he was also a journalist and not a bad historian, so he knew his facts. As cited by Connolly in 1915, these were the wages of Messrs Williams and Woods, a Dublin firm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/09/women.htm):

10/10 for Female Workers of 18 years and upwards, and 22/9 for Male Workers of 22 years and upwards. For younger workers the rates begin for Girls at 5/- per week, and for Boys at 6/-, proceeding by yearly increases to the amount stated for workers at 18 years.

You also had male domestic workers and farm labourers whose conditions were very bad.

That is true.

SugarHigh wrote:

That is awful but how often did it happen? Is it really something that was common enough to consider women to have a lower quality of life?

The thread title mentions "oppression". Your definition of that seems a little arbitary to me. It would generally be accepted that civil rights movements agititate on the basis of legal and social as well as economic inequalities.

Nelly Bly's exposé of lunatic asylums in 1887 is very interesting. She feigned insanity to find out how easy it would be to be committed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly - extract taken from a biography).

After a night of practicing deranged expressions in front of a mirror, she checked into a working-class boardinghouse. She refused to go to bed, telling the boarders that she was afraid of them and that they looked crazy. They soon decided that she was crazy, and the next morning summoned the police. Taken to a courtroom, she pretended to have amnesia. The judge concluded she had been drugged.

She was then examined by several doctors, who all declared her to be insane. "Positively demented," said one, "I consider it a hopeless case. She needs to be put where someone will take care of her." The head of the insane pavilion at Bellevue Hospital pronounced her "undoubtedly insane". The case of the "pretty crazy girl" attracted media attention: "Who Is This Insane Girl?" asked the New York Sun. The New York Times wrote of the "mysterious waif" with the "wild, hunted look in her eyes", and her desperate cry: "I can't remember I can't remember."

Elaine Showalter's The Female Malady argues that madness was feminised, that psychiatric treatment was primarily applied to women, and that women exemplified madness in culture until the 1970s.

SugarHigh wrote:

premierlass wrote:

Violence against women, specifically rape, is often used as an act of war. The British labour commission revealed that it may have been used by the Black and Tans.

I don't understand violence against women shows they had it worse. Is it not obvious that was causes more violence against men? Isn't the fact men were expected to fight kind of shows they didn't exactly have it well? I'd prefer to be a housewife than a soldier.

Rape targets the vulnerable because they are vulnerable. They have no defence. Systemised war rape is recognised as a war crime. Female rape during war is less frequently prosecuted than other war crimes because of its gender-specific nature.

CDfm

ejmaztec wrote: »

There had to be at least one exception to the rule.:D

that was just on one side - another had 2 wives

Family Motto

"Women & children first"