WOMAN IN IRELAND.

Grey River Argus, 1 July 1922, Page 6

WOMAN IN IRELAND.

(By Hanna Sheehy Skeffington.) Moman, in some respects, has a greater place in (he sun in Ireland than she has in Britain. Ireland was till first country that admitted women doc tors to all the privileges of lectures in the Dublin College of Science; ot the three old universities Dublin was the first to grant equal rights to worn (‘u graduates (rights which Cambridge still refuses) and we had the curious I spectacle of British women who had been for years refused the addendum privilege accorded the graduates of the sister universities by Trinity College. Dublin. Continuing the tradition, Irish women were the first to lie admitted to the Bar when the legal profession was at last opened to women. In politics, similarly. Ireland was the first to return a woman to Parliament whi'ii, in i'.Hs, Countess Marki-evicz was returm (1 for a Dublin division at the first 'election in which women voted and were declared eligible for Parliament. Not until many months later did Britain return Lady Astor. And in this Ireland still leads, for at our elecHon in 1921 (held under proportional representation, a system Britain has not yet applied to herself) lo! socalled ‘Southern’’ Ireland returned no less than five women to Dail Eireann | (most of whom wore in jail at the time or had already served sentences). Nor was the “Norlhern'’ Parliament of the Unionist .Die-Hards to be out done, for in this, at least, they too were progressive; they put up and returned two women Al. P’s as against Britain’s two-—and neither of Britain’s members has yet gon-e to jail for a -ause! Another remarkable fact is that D‘r Ada English was returned by the university—usually universities being utra-reactionary in matters of feminism. in 1916, when the Irish Republic was pro: kiimed, equal citizenship to men and women was granted—an advance upon the Republic of France, which still dei'ics citizenship to women, and wlii.-e “Rights of Man” might more fittingly be described as “R’gnts ot Males’’—and the United States, which <•! iy recently, after a sharp struggle of many years, decided to admit its women to equal citizenship. Britain of course, lags behind still with her absurd age ri slriction. confining citizenship fur women to those of 30 and upwards. It is a distinct hardship to Irish women that our franchise is still obliged to conform lo the limited British one. and that young "women —more than one-seventh of the entire electoraJe —should be debarred from voting at the coming election. True, we arc promised adult suffrage in "the conI stitution under the Free State, but to many tliis seems to be the usual case I of jam yesterday, jam to-morrow, but never jami Up-day. In matters outside politics and in administration Irishwomen, too, have always played a prominent part —as in tin' Executive of Labour, Sinn Fein (whose vice-president is a woman), the Gaelic League, and other bodies. Sinn Fein has appointed many women judges in its courts and had a woman Labour Minister in its Cabinet. A woman was last year president of the Children’s Court in Dublin, and this year a woman is president of the Dublin Court of Conscience, appointed thereto by the Lord Mayor. Signs arc many that women in Ireland will in Ilie future play a still larger part. It is probably not without significance that Ireland is always symbolised in song and story as a dark Ttosaleen, for whose love so many fought and died, the Kathleen Ni Houlihan, the Shan Van Vocht, as contrasted with the masculine John Bull. Uncle Sam. Jacques Bonlionime, or Dutch Michael of other nations.