We’re used to seeing a sea of black at professional events. Rows of penguins, black suits, white shirts, bowties. That’s what professional life looks like. The Dail looks like that. The House of Commons looks like that. Business conferences look like that. Only the entertainment industry, with its flocks of gorgeously adorned beautiful women tends to [...]
Image from Geograph Ireland copyright John Salter When news broke over the weekend about a Catholic school manager scuppering promotions of one teacher for being Protestant and another for being an unmarried mother, nothing was less surprising than the outrage online. Who do these nuns think they are, cried social media commentators, outraged that [...]
https://soundcloud.com/opinionline96/cork-barber-refuses-gay-and-disabled-customers A couple of weeks ago Mary Bermingham contacted the show after her 13 year old son, Thomas Healy, who has cerebral palsy, was refused service in a Turkish barbershop in Cork city. Mary was understandably very upset about the situation. At the time, we declined to name the shop , mainly because they wouldn't [...]
I spent almost three years of my life researching gender quotas, and there were times I thought I'd never want to see the word feminism again. But over the past few months I've been rehabilitated, and I'm back to reading again with a bang. As part of my (over-enthusiastic) purchasing for International Women's Day, I bought [...]
Lean in to love… it could be the title of a particularly bad rom com starring Matthew McConaughey and probably Cameron Diaz. It’d be the story of a high powered, helpfully very good-looking, female executive making all sorts of classic high powered female executive decisions. These decisions would include wearing shoulder pads, stilettos, a ponytail and [...]
This is the full transcript of Malala Yousafzai's speech when she was awarded the Tipperary Peace Prize in Limerick Junction a couple of weeks ago. My 'First Person' piece on her, taken from this, is in today's Sunday Business Post. Khalil Gibran says: ‘Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which [...]
With only 6 women out of 67 candidates running throughout Cork, the odds are certainly not stacking up at 50-50. As Áine Kerr wrote in yesterday’s Irish Times, Mná na hÉireann are losing ground. But that’s all set to change, if a new group set up in Cork before Christmas has its way. The [...]
“We should round them all up.” No, not a cowboy. Or Hitler. A Cork taxi driver whose cab I had the misfortune of taking on Monday. I rarely take taxis. When I do, I always chat to the driver; I find they can often be very well informed, as they spend more time listening [...]
This is my editorial from last week's Cork Independent As I drove to work last Wednesday, I was delighted to hear on the radio that a protest against the attitude of the Catholic Church to women is being organised, for 26 September. Finally, I thought, women are getting angry.I have been angry for quite some time [...]
'I will put enmity between you and the woman...' 3:15No, that's not a quote from Joseph Ratzinger at 3.15 this morning.It's a quote from the Bible, a compilation of hearsay, rumour, innuendo, misogyny, fairytale, legend, biography, social history and advice written by various men over a period of a few hundred years. The Bible has largely [...]
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