Áilín Quinlan: ‘Addressing ingrained misogyny in society needs to begin at home’

Seriously? In less than a week?

Background: We’d had some work done to the house. Serious work, sensible work, dirty, dusty, noisy work that was both necessary and for the long-term good; the kind of work that turns a house upside down, drives you insane and costs a small fortune.

The kind of work which nobody else really notices unless you deliberately point it out to them, though at least it makes you feel satisfied you’ve done the sensible thing for once.

Of course you’d have preferred a new car and a couple of five-star holidays on the other side of the planet, but it is what it is.

Eventually, though, the trucks and the men went away and we got down to the cleaning.

Once we’d pulled down all the plastic sheeting and hoovered and washed the floors 17 times, and spent untold hours dusting and washing things before returning them to their previous positions, there was the re-hanging of curtains and lots more dusting, polishing, hoovering and floor-washing.

My point is that after a week of this, after all the cobwebs were gone and the floors were spotless and the wooden surfaces were gleaming with Pledge and everything had been washed and put back in its place, my husband observed:

“I’ve never seen the house looking so clean.”

I looked at him.

“Oh, really?” I asked stiffly.

“You never did? See the place looking so clean? In what, 40 years?” Oblivious as always to the chill that descends in the wake of one of his more annoying foot-in-mouth moments, my husband grinned and disappeared off out into the shed.

For a moment, I was really irritated. Murderously annoyed.

I stamped upstairs with a load of freshly laundered sheets that had to be put away, and as I did I happened to glance up and see a large spider busily making herself a new home, a nice big two-storey one while she was at it, with gables and a sunroom extension and all, in a nice sunny corner at the top of the landing.

“Oh for God’s sake,” I expostulated.

Just days after the Great Clean-Up - the clean-up that, apparently, had never been equalled in the history of this home - the spiders were back as if nothing had happened. I felt like kicking the wall.

I was not, I firmly told Mother Spider, starting all of that again.

Trad wife I ain’t. (If you’re not familiar with the term, a tradwife is part of an internet subculture which promotes extremely traditional gender roles for women.) All the same though, I thought, wasn’t I in fact, doing the tradwife thing, by reacting to a comment about the cleanliness of my house as if I was fully responsible for it? That’s socialisation for you.

Norma Foley, I thought, all is forgiven. The plan for the National Strategy for Women and Girls will (it’s hoped) counteract at least some of the more demented messaging from tradwife and manosphere influencers (the philosophy being that real women practice stay-at-home subservience, unquestioningly accept the concept of male superiority and partake in lots of smiling and non-stop baby-making.) For those not familiar with the manosphere, it’s basically a network of online communities that promote narrow, aggressive definitions of maleness, are anti-feminist, champion dominance over women and claim gender equality has come at the cost of men’s rights.

In fairness to her, Norma’s new campaign sets out to challenge, for example, the sort of trad wife/manosphere messaging which brainwashes women into thinking like a Stepford Wife. There will also be, among other things, a €1 million employment fund to help women get back to work.

But there’s one issue we all seem to be forgetting. A very big white elephant in the sitting room.

That issue is the way we in Ireland (and in non-tradwife/manosphere households, it should be said) automatically raise boys compared to the way we raise girls and the often unconscious but distinctly pink and blue expectations we pass on to them. Expectations which become very deeply ingrained very early on.

In other words, however we do it, we seem to raise many men who, despite outward appearances, despite knowing how to engage in politically correct conversation and behaviour, don’t, in their heart of hearts, really believe that housework or indeed, in some cases, childcare, really has anything to do with them.

They genuinely don’t believe that they’re responsible for doing anything about the cobwebs or the beds that need changing or the dust building up in the corners, about the bits of food dropped down the side of the cooker or pasta water spills on the floor, let alone much ,if any, of the caring side of things, from birthday cards upwards. Don’t even get me started on Irish men and the caring stuff.

So there’s that. It begins from birth. It’s deeply ingrained early on and it’s very hard to reverse. It’s 2026 for God’s sake, and women still spend easily twice as much time on housework and childcare duties than men. And that’s only some kind of average; mostly it’s far more.

I appreciate the excellent intentions behind the government’s plan to challenge trends which can result in women being brainwashed into behaving like tradwives.

But the thing is that all this mad new online messaging is only the topmost layer in untold generations of silent but deadly socialisation and unquestioned gendered role-play which many children witness every moment of every day in the home.

How many women unquestioningly shoulder not just the demands of a full-time job but also the domestic chores ranging from the care of children, the mealtime preparation the GAA/soccer/ ballet runs, the childhood illnesses, the parent-teacher meetings and so on; you know the score, it goes on forever.

So it’s not just about counteracting the toxic messaging of Andrew Tate and his ilk, or the wittering of these new-age tradwives in their gingham prairie dresses with the perfect babies they birthed in candle-light and without pain relief.

It’s also about counteracting the generations of very deeply ingrained and structured misogyny in our own society.

A society where, as I read recently, women are expected to parent as if they have no jobs and work as if they have no children.

Now, changing all of that really puts it up to you, Norma.

But, in fairness, an awareness campaign is a good start.

Tosach maith leath na hoibre.