Áilín Quinlan: So many women have helped the GAA... they deserve better

I had my wooden spoon sunk deep into a mixing bowl – I was making porridge bread for somebody who cannot tolerate gluten – when Mary McAleese came on the radio.

I froze. I’ve listened to the former president speak out on many controversial topics over the years, but never before have I heard this tone of thinly veiled fury in her voice.

The former president had resigned in frustration from a body charged with the integration of the three Gaelic Games organisations – the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA), and the Camogie Association (CA).

Just to be clear, given all the acronyms here, Dr McAleese has resigned as chairperson of the special Steering Group on Integration (SGI).

Formed in 2022, the SGI’s job was to align the memberships of the three organisations and match fixture schedules, combine injury benefit funds, and unify the staffing structures by 2027.

Makes complete sense.

But, it seems, when push came to shove (given that the target is next year) the boys wouldn’t play ball and now the whole thing lies in tatters.

Dr McAleese had walked off the stage. She made scathing remarks about the GAA, saying she now didn’t believe the integration of the three groups would happen under the current leadership.

It seems the final straw was when the GAA announced that it wanted to pause the process, delay the target date, and kick the integration can down the road for up to another five years or so. Five years?

The GAA is a great organisation. It has done an enormous amount of good for communities the length and breadth of this country.

That said, however, Dr McAleese’s resignation and her utter frustration with the organisation’s top table has lobbed a big question mark over its fundamental attitude towards women.

Despite the cheery optics of all those girls training on its pitches, is it a case that, in reality, the higher echelons of the GAA remain very much an old boys’ club?

Have we got a situation where some of the old boys publicly approve of appearing inclusive and letting the girls in - while in reality they’d walk through fire to keep the boys’ club a boys’ club?

Are we now seeing what the top echelon of the GAA secretly believes, in what is a real-life manifestation of the Tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes?

Because, for those of us who were looking forward to the integration of camogie and ladies’ football into the GAA bastion, we’re thinking: hmmm, straws in the wind. Tips of icebergs. Writing on walls. Thin edges of wedges.

Listening to the very impressive Dr McAleese that day, I recalled what I’d seen as I walked through a big, modern multi-million euro GAA complex recently.

Sadly, I feel, it speaks to what Mary McAleese discovered and why she resigned.

The thing that struck me in this complex, as I headed towards the ladies toilets, were the walls crammed with framed photographs. Serried ranks of photographs of men and boys.

I could have been walking through a military base. An all-boys school. A Men’s Social Club.

Where, I wondered, were the women?

Because, even if you wanted to get technical about it, and insist that although camogie and women’s football clubs train on GAA pitches, they don’t actually have membership/ownership of them, so why should their photographs be displayed there … what about all those women who have supported the GAA through the generations?

The female volunteers who fund-raised on behalf of the organisation? Who made sandwiches and served the tea at functions? Who washed the jerseys? Who served in a plethora of administrative roles – club secretaries, treasurers... the women who managed club social media channels and promoted club events, and God knows what else?

Where were the faces of those women in that hallway?

Sure, there were a couple of female faces here and there, but the number was so low as to be negligible.

I was amused to hear the GAA describing as “offensive” and “regrettable” Dr McAleese’s suggestion that there was misogyny at the top level of the organisation.

Seriously. What else do they think it looks like?

Not that the GAA is unusual.

There are strong undercurrents of misogyny at every level of our society.

Some are everyday and blatant, like the small tractor which is, regrettably, so often parked near where I live. It has a sticker on the back window saying, ‘The deeper I plough, the louder she grunts.’

I find this slogan hugely misogynistic and deeply offensive to the point that it saddens me to have to even drive past it.

The words slope across the glass in a beautiful white cursive font as if this was a Shakespearean sonnet and not a piece of misogynistic smut.

There are other examples of societal misogyny we only find out about when somebody brave blows the whistle.

The National Ambulance Service – a service full of the very best kind of people – has been brought low in recent days by allegations of sexual harassment, misogyny, bullying and intimidation, carried out, I have no doubt, by a minority.

It all leaves me wondering, where do so many men in this country appear to get the idea that they can disrespect women?