Thread by @TheCountessIE

WOMEN are being removed from our Maternity Protection Act 1994 via the Work Life Balance Bill, with the "replacement of “woman” with “person".
@SenatorKeogan spoke in the Seanad about the removal of Women and female.
#WeWillBeHeard #SexNotGender

The law exists in a state of flux, as do the prevailing social opinions of the people it governs. These two aspects of our shared existence act upon each other — sometimes, changes in the law affect people’s opinions — more often, legislators and government wait to see which way

the wind is blowing before making a decision.
Where this balance fails is when government and legislators are beholden, not to the prevailing, widely held opinions of the public, but to the carefully curated and concentrated views of a vocal minority who have been given powerful

platforms as lobbyists. And yet this seems to have happened yet again in this country, in perhaps the most cynical manner yet.
To all the women and mothers of Ireland — did you know that the government is about to erase all mention of you from our legislation on maternity leave?

The proposition may sound ridiculous — indeed it is — but that’s the plan under the new deceptively named “Work Life Balance Bill”; after all, who could be against work life balance?
But hidden among the miscellaneous provision of the Bill are various amendments to the Maternity

Protection Act 1994 regarding both breastfeeding and maternity leave — amendments which remove all mention of the word “woman”, and which assert that men can breastfeed too.

We are told regularly that words matter, yet when women tell us that the words ‘mother’, ‘female’, and ‘woman’ matter to them they are dismissed as ‘unkind’ or ‘exclusionary’. The reality is that ‘maternity’ is undertaken by women and not by men.

To replace the word ‘mother’ or ‘woman’ with the word “person” is a retrograde step and strips women of a core part of their identity.
Women have wombs where our children are conceived and nourished during pregnancy. Women have breasts with which we feed our children.

These things need to be said, and they need to be said without fear of causing offence.
Who is insisting we deny that there are two sexes, and why? Sex is a protected characteristic in our Equal Status Act because women experience discrimination based on their biology.

Can’t we find a way to be inclusive without erasing women’s biology and women’s experiences from our legislation?
This country has spent years coming to terms with its treatment of women who became mothers outside of marriage — it is a journey we’re still making,

and I’m sure there are more apologies to the women of Ireland to come.
Are we, at the same time as those apologies, going to launch yet another attack on women in the very piece of legislation that was intended to protect them?

Perhaps it was thought that these changes wouldn’t be noticed, or that we wouldn’t care. Both of these assumptions are wrong, and if the government feels that it can quietly remove us from legislation, rest assured that the women of Ireland will not go gentle into that good night

#WeWillBeHeard