I am Women!

Community Activist
Ógra Shinn Féin

Inequality of the sexes and institutional maltreatment of women is the oldest form of discrimination.

Women have from the dawn of civilisation been subjected to lower class citizenship, having been denied access to jobs, the right to vote, and if ‘allowed’ to work, the right to safe and proper paid employment.

Women have been subjected for centuries, if not millennia, to abuse and a life dictated by men, in their family and in power.




The systematic abuse of women has happened throughout history, from forced marriage, systematic slavery and the trafficking of women, which continues to this day.

From the obvious cases of slavery, like African women being robbed from their shores, shipped to America to be then forced into slave labour, or the horrific abuse and slavery of Irish women and girls in the Magdalene laundries of Ireland.

The list of abuse and inequality goes on and on…

Of course men suffered injustice throughout the centuries, but scratch the surface and a constant feature is that women have endured and suffered more.

These injustices, abuses of human rights, continue today and are not confined to the developing world, they are very much apparent in the supposed progressive western world.

Women still endure more discrimination and abuse in the workplace and at home.

We all have a duty at school, at college, in the workplace, in our communities and at home to challenge this patriarchal society that confines women to the kitchen, we need to challenge machoism and chauvinism and start to practice what we preach – equality.

Sinn Féin also needs to play a more active role in ending the inequality that exists, both in the party but also in society. True, we have made strides forward but this has largely been down to a few committed feminists in our ranks. Imagine the progress we could make with the assistance of all our activists.

We need every activist to challenge sexism wherever it rears its ugly head, we need male comrades to promote women and ensure that the party becomes more representative of Irish society with 51% of the population being female.

And of course the young women in Ógra and Sinn Féin need to claim their space and need to let their voices be heard.

While we all have a duty and moral obligation to this most vital of tasks, does any young women think Mairead Farrell, Maire Drumm or Sheena Campbell would have been waiting around for gender equality in our ranks to happen? – of course not. They would have been leading the fight and the young women in our ranks today need to be taking the lead, ably assisted by their male comrades.

Let’s use International Women’s Day tomorrow 8th March to commit ourselves to the task of liberation for women across the globe, by playing our small part in making our movement representative of society.

In the words of a song,

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an 'pretend'
cause I've heard it all before
And I've been down there on the floor
No one's ever gonna keep me down again