Fiona McGarry is a freelance journalist and radio producer. Her radio documentaries have been funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) and the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund. She is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and The Irish Daily Mirror and happiest when well caffeinated in front of a good box set.
Spring is in the air. Well, it must be with all the talk of green shoots and fresh growth. Or is that just the politicians? Back in the heady days of 2006, a certain Taoiseach told us all that the boom was getting ‘boomier’. A year later, we saw the start of catastrophic property bust. So, it’s no surprise that people are just a bit wary of political pronouncements on the economy. After seven years of bitter austerity, politicians are now telling us the end is in sight. Full employment is on the cards for 2018. The debt burden is being brought under control. Sounds like we’re the best small country in the world for political promises.
Back in the real world, things are slightly different. For most people, bills are still mounting, wages shrinking, jobs disappearing, friends and family emigrating and tens of thousands are still sliding from a reasonable quality of life to the edge of poverty. And those are the lucky ones. Thousands more have been forced into bankruptcy, homelessness, despair.
Sure, there are some reasons to be cheerful. Numbers on the Live Register are falling and disposable incomes are rising, if only slightly. This has prompted a lot of metaphor-mangling about light at the end of the tunnel and things bottoming out. But underneath the rhetoric, there is hope, naked and fragile, that the worst may be almost over. For the sake of our national mental health, we have to cling to the positives.
While we’re all striving to be upbeat, there’s a niggling sense that it’ll be years before the country achieves a true recovery. Experts believe that austerity has a corrosive effect that we won’t be rid of for generations, and the figures show there’s real cause for concern about the impact on women and children. The boom years brought the number of women in employment to record levels and while the crash hit the male-dominated construction sector first and hardest, there’s evidence that austerity has undermined progress with gender equality and children’s welfare.
Aoife*, a mum of twins, is one of those who lost her job just after the crash. After a couple of years of trying to get back into the construction sector, she decided to work in the home. She now feels that going back to her former career won’t be an option.
“I was a quantity surveyor, not really a typical job for a female, but I loved it," she says. “Construction was wiped, the company I was in closed down in 2009. It was like slipping off a cliff. I have female friends in architecture and areas like that, none of us has worked full-time in nearly six years. I’d say most have taken some kind of part-time work at different stages, but nothing you could call a career. I actually think a lot of us have written that off at this stage.”
Aoife’s experience of working mainly in the home and depending on her husband’s salary puts her firmly into a traditionally ‘female’ situation. The most recent set of CSO figures show that 98% of those looking after the home and family are women.
“I suppose I didn’t really think too much about taking on a ‘female’ role. In my job, gender was definitely an issue. I suppose I enjoyed showing I was as good as any of the lads. When John and I decided to take the kids out of crèche so that I could mind them at home, that was a bit of a shock to the system. Working at home was supposed to be temporary, but it got to the stage where I had to accept I wasn’t going to go back to the industry. Not unless we could emigrate and that wasn’t an option for us.”
Aoife also believes it’s more socially acceptable for women to make the decision to work in the home.
“When the recession hit, there was a big increase in the number of dads taking the kids to school. Lots of them got some kind of work, eventually, or would be hoping to. I think there is a sense that if you’re a woman with kids and you lose your job, it’s not that big a deal. There’s some kind of idea that you’ll just be happy enough to stay at home. I’ve been doing that and re-training in accounting at night. I’m still doing a bit of work where I can. I can manage it because John’s in the public service and it’s fairly secure.”
Aoife is keenly aware that not all of her female friends have the same opportunity to consider a career change.
“A couple of my friends are separated and raising their children more or less alone. I see how tough things are for them. I know how lucky John and I are. Girls I know, who would have had relationships and careers five or six years ago don’t have them now. A lot of them are on Jobseekers and don’t see any chance of getting off it.”
The experience of Aoife’s friends is typical of a sector hardest hit by austerity. It’s well documented that cuts to Child Benefit, Rent Supplement and other social welfare entitlements have hit lone parents hardest. Combine those factors with the withdrawal of support to disabled or dependent children and older parents and the picture is stark. Single-parent households are at greatest risk of poverty and a 2014 report by UNICEF found that child poverty in Ireland went from 18% in 2008 to 28.6% in 2012. We’re now in 37th place out of the 41 EU and OECD countries.
Meanwhile, the ESRI found that as employment levels began to rise in 2013, they rose faster for men than women. The National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI), in its latest pre-Budget submission, raised concerns about how practices like zero-hours contracts and casual employment were impacting, disproportionately, on women.
Against that backdrop, talk of recovery rings hollow. But whether or not the end of the recession is in sight, Aoife is determined to focus on the positive.
“Two years ago, a friend of ours took his own life. It was a turning point. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t take anything for granted. We have had some low ebbs ourselves, but we had a lot of support and that got us through.”
The availability of family support – often from the older generation - is a constant theme in the growing body of research about the impact of the recession. Some researchers believe that cuts to social supports have put a greater burden back on women in the traditional role of carer. And it seems that initiatives that support gender equality have also suffered from cutbacks.
A study by Ursula Barry and Pauline Conroy at UCD, published in 2013, lists 12 equality promotion agencies which have disappeared since 2008. Among these are the Gender Equality Desk at the Department of Justice, the Women’s Health Council and the Equality for Women Measure – an initiative which was co-funded by the EU. Budget cuts have been imposed, during the same timeframe, on the Rape Crisis Network of Ireland (RCNI) and the SAFE Ireland Network of Women’s Refuges and Support Services.
The report concludes that: ‘Gender equality policy has clearly become a victim of the recession and crisis management of the Irish economy’.
In her own case, Aoife says the twists and turns of the recession have forced her to re-evaluate priorities.
“I think everyone’s lives have been turned upside-down to some extent, over the last few years. I was very career-minded, and I don’t think I could ever place so much importance again on a job – there’s too much uncertainty. My generation were brought up to believe we could have it all. I think the focus shifts when you’re struggling to just have enough and get by. I wouldn’t like to think that we’ve gone backwards in terms of equality though, that’s something that shouldn’t be seen as a luxury.”
