EDITOR – As a former winner of the Housewife of the Year and one of the ten participants in the documentary shown on RTE on June 2nd, I would like to respond to Mr. O’Sullivan’s letter in last week’s Southern Star.
I agree that naming the documentary ‘Housewife of the Year’ was somewhat misleading. I thought it would be better if it added, ‘a social history’ or something similar to the title. The producers merely used the Housewife of the Year period from the mid-sixties to the mid-nineties as a context to show how women were confined to a role in Irish society, initially laid out in the constitution and subsequently by the state and the Catholic Church.
I don’t agree that the programme was religion-bashing. It depicts a true account of how the Church and state colluded in confining women to the role of carer. Contraception was not allowed, and many people had large families when they could not provide for them adequately. Women had to stop working when they got married, and later lost out on pensions.
Many younger people in audiences at the programme’s viewing asked about the scene where a mother was blessed by a priest, a practice that women had to undergo after having a baby before they could go back into society. Practices such as this were accepted by a generation of women, practices that women and many men too I believe find extraordinary today.
Many inequalities are portrayed in the documentary which made life very difficult for women during those years, depending on their relationships and their standard of living. Many women were very happy to be housewives, and we did valuable work in raising our children and being involved in our communities.
However, there were also many women who were in very difficult situations as depicted in the documentary, who had no choice but to ‘put up and shut up’ as one woman said in the programme. The women in the annual Housewife of the Year competition presented themselves very well in order to compete for the title, but there was often another story behind the facade.
Margaret Carmody,
Skibbereen.
Research ignored in the portrayal of the fox
EDITOR – The introduction to Dáil Éireann of Ruth Coppinger TD’s bill to ban fox hunting has predictably prompted the usual few politicians to regurgitate falsities about foxes.
They maliciously mis-portray these cute and clever creatures, who are very much part of our natural heritage and play an important role in the ecosystem.
Claiming foxes are a threat to the farming industry, they ignore research by Teagasc which confirms that the vast majority of lamb deaths are caused by infection, dystocia, hypothermia and starvation.
Teagasc stresses that farmers may ‘perceive predators (fox, mink, dog, etc) to be the main cause of lamb mortality, ‘even though ‘it is unlikely that predators are the main cause.’
In any case, no farmer should seek to solve any perceived problem by inviting dozens of hunters on horseback to hurtle heavily across wet winter fields, leaving pockmarked trails of destruction in their wake and posing a biosecurity risk as they traverse numerous boundaries.
The wild and wondrous madra rua (red dog) deserves to be cherished and afforded the same protection given to domestic dogs. It’s unacceptable that they are the victim of recreational animal cruelty, chased for miles and attacked, disembowelled and pulled apart when caught.
Opinion polls have repeatedly shown that most people want fox hunting banned. FF, FG and SF – all threatening to vote against Deputy Coppinger’s bill when it returns to the Dáil – must take note and come together to finally kill off this obscene bloodsport.
Philip Kiernan.
Irish Council Against Blood Sports.
Mullingar.
Trump’s MAGA is a mega failure
EDITOR – The doctor or dentist, or painter earns their wealth by doing what they do best, doctoring or dentistry or painting. So long as they are fully occupied doing that specialist task, they will maximize their wealth. The same applies to countries, and so long as a country has near full employment, it will maximize its wealth. The US has 4% unemployment currently and for the last number of years, which is near full employment. It has little or no capacity for further employment (manufacturing) unless it imports workers from other countries. But it is doing the exact opposite and deporting migrant workers and others in large numbers.
In this situation, tariffs on imports from the EU and elsewhere will only result in higher prices and inflation in the US, making it less competitive on the international marker, and so it will sell less to other countries, resulting in increasing its trade deficit, which is the exact opposite of what Trump wants. MAGA is thus a failed project, if not in its conception, certainly in its execution.
Kevin T Finn,
Mitchelstown.
State must take better care of the elderly
EDITOR – Many viewers would have been seriously concerned watching RTÉ Investigates relating to ‘care’ of the elderly.
In my opinion, it’s another example of politicians absolving themselves of responsibility in the ‘care’ of elderly people.
In my day – I am almost 80 years old – if an elderly person required care beyond the ability of family they were taken to care home, provided by the state, attached to hospitals.
In the past number of years responsibility has been shifted to private enterprises. This, I suggest, results in what we have seen on our screens, and it’s another example of politicians failing in their duty of care to the people of Ireland.
My work has taken me to many so-called third world countries, but there is one thing I can say about most, and it’s that they treated the elderly with dignity and respect.
I suggest those in authority here could learn from third world countries.
Michael Moriarty,
Rochestown.
