WOMEN'S Which Way

Women's Day 1981, sections of the Southern women's movement are attempting to re-define the strategy for women's liberation. The recent women's conference organised by the Status magazine in Dublin, which attracted over 800 women through the day, attempted to do this.

Many of those women have not failed to tum out in the last number of years whenever the possibility of a programme for political action has been held out to them. Unfortunately such a programme was not, forthcoming nor was these any plan for activities which could pressurise politicians to implement the proposals which were passed.

The seven areas laid out by the organisers of the conference as appropriate for lobbying were the lowest common denominator of universally acceptable and immediately achiev -able aims. No analysis was made of the situation of the most oppressed women in Ireland, in order that the most real and concrete demands could be put to the politicians on the doorstep. Instead “areas of concern" to the more privileged women were prioritised while the vital issues stemming from the relationship between Church and State were avoided.

These priorities came from the speakers on the platform and were general and ambiguous, leaving too much open to the interpretation of politicians. In the discussion from the floor, women added detail and emphasised the role of working class women, the importance of controlling our fertility and the relevance of the Armagh women prisoners. The motion on Armagh fell because the number of abstentions outnumbered those voting for or against Since its publication in early February, "The Armagh Women" has shown itself to be a Hest seller in the 26 counties. Below, we reprint a review of Nell McCafferty's book by a PD commde, who is o member of Women Against Imperialism and was one of the 'Armagh 11' - arrested on a peaceful picket outside Armagh gaol on International Women's Day 1979. (by eight to one). This shows that many women still don't understand the importance of this issue.

In the last ten years any minimal reforms which have been implemented either North or South have come about through direct and independent organisations and campaigns. Even then these reforms have only been piecemeal. The contraception legislation restricted birth control both financially and by marital status, Marital breakdown has only been considered insofar as it has already been recognised by the Catholic Church, and annul ments here are the Irish solution to the Irish problem. Equal pay can be a reality only for those women who con directly compare themselves with a male worker on the job.

The Southem state is incapable of following the linear line of development established in other European countries. This fundamental fact cannot be ignored. Politicians are not just misled. They are constrained by the social facts of an economy dominated by imperialist interests, where even the most obvious democratic demands have a destabilising organised and where necessary (after internment, after the removal of distract the women's movement from our larger princip'es and in particAs it stands, the programme of demands for the Southem elections, decided on by the conference, is so broad that it is meaningless. It does not map the way forward for the lrish women's movement.

Failure to discuss the position of women in the North, and especially the women in Armagh jail, exposes the weakness of the conference in understanding the oppression of women in Ireland and therefore in formulating policy on how we should fight this. The resolution to text.

An important task is to solidarise with the women in Armagh Jail who are on hunger strike for political status, for their right as women to have a political identity. As the review of "The Armagh Women" book on this page shows, there is a real ferment of political activity by women in the nationalist areas of the ment wants to influence these women thea they have to relate to this ROSE O'MAHONY