Some Irish women did not want equality with men 1982 files show

Letter to Irish leader Charles Haughey denounced women who worked

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The Irish Women's Liberation Movement

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How times have changed! 1982 government files just released in Ireland show that a leading Irish women’s organization had great contempt for the idea of women working outside the home and the notion of career women and new freedoms that women were enjoying back then.

The letter to-then Irish leader Charles Haughey from the head of the Irish Housewives Union Una Nic Mathuna (Una McMahon), stated women who worked outside the home  were completely wrong to do so and noted “some of whom occasionally play at housework and just as occasionally are part-time mothers."

The letter claimed that a request for childcare facilities were “A typical career women’s demand. It simply means that they want to dump their one/two kids on the taxpayer.”

The letter also dismissed the notion that there was any call from Irish housewives for family planning clinics, post-abortion counseling services, sex education classes, having the contraceptive pill “pushed” on them, nor did they want pre-menstrual advice clinics – which they called “disgusting” and “never, never brought up by our decent women.”

Ah yes, times have changed!
 

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