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The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, Roderick O’Gorman has published a report on the impact of gender norms in Ireland.
The report, we are told, compiles data from a number of sources to track Ireland’s progress on the indicators used to measure what are termed ‘the norms of restrictive masculinities, as outlined by the OECD Report Man Enough? Measuring Masculine Norms to Promote Women’s Empowerment.’
For those of you who do not know, and Lord help you, why would you, ‘restrictive masculinities’ are defined by the OECD as “perceived notions or norms, shared by both men and women that promote inflexible expectations of how men are expected to behave in order to be considered a “real” man.
Now, I suspect that the reaction of most people upon reading this would be somewhere in the ‘have they got nothing better to be doing’ category.
And you know-perhaps those people are right, because the report, certainly as it relates to Ireland, is little more than a rehashed presentation of NGO talking points on ‘equity,’ the gender pay gap, or how men (those sneaky savages) remain complicit in consciously or unconsciously perpetuating what Minister O’Gorman calls in his accompanying statement, the ‘hidden and attitudinal drivers of inequality.’ The XY chromosome-based fiends.
We are also told by the Minister that the report highlights how “moving from restrictive masculinities to gender-equitable masculinities has positive consequences for women’s wellbeing and allows men to take on diverse role and behaviours, which in turn is positive for their wellbeing.”
The suggestion is made, through a repeated emphasis on the negative, that there is a massive if concealed problem among the men of Ireland when it comes to respecting or supporting equality for ‘the wimmin,’ and that men, if they only knew what was good for them would embrace the ‘diverse roles and behaviours’ that are routinely prescribed for them by their more enlightened betters in the OECD’s New and Improved Man Department.
Indeed, one of the very first things that Minister O’Gorman points out in his statement is that there is “a significant proportion of the population who believes that the most important role of a man is to earn money and the most important role of a woman is to take care of her home and family.”
This is a rather leading interpretation of the reports finding which showed that 59% of men and women actually disagreed with that statement, while 39% of men and women agreed with it.
One of the major problems with all of this, is that while there is a reluctant acceptance on the part of the Minister to acknowledge the level of progress that has been made on the ‘gender equality’ front in recent years, there is no mention whatsoever in his statement of the most encouraging and striking findings of the report with respect to how open the Irish population already is on these issues.
Instead, we are told, like the kid who proudly hands over his B+ graded paper to an over-bearing parent, ‘more work needs to be done.’
This of course will be music to the ears of the plethora of NGOs in Ireland whose sole mission appears to be about advancing and promoting the idea that it is still the 15th century for the women of Ireland, politically and domestically at least and that men, given half the chance would be only too happy to subjugate them into a version of the Hand Maidens Tale.
More work even though the report itself confirms Ireland to have one of the highest OECD percentages (94%) of people who believe that ‘promoting gender equality is important for companies and for the economy.’
It also confirms that almost everyone (8 out of every ten people) supports the view that women have the necessary qualities and skills to fill positions of responsibility in politics.
86% of the population believe it is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances, for a woman to be paid less than a male colleague for the same job, while 92% of people approve of a man taking parental leave to take care of his children.
99% of people in Ireland think that trying to control a partner is wrong while 98% think that forcing a partner in any circumstances to have sex is wrong, with 93% approving the statement that both partners should do an equal share of household activities.
Does any of this give you the impression that Ireland and in particular, the men of Ireland have a problem with, or a grá for, restrictive (toxic) masculinities?
No, me neither.
But that’s not the impression you would get if you read Minister’s O’Gorman’s framing statement accompanying the Report.
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