Sarah McGraw, the first woman to serve as Resident Ambassador of Ireland to Singapore, reflects on the importance of female firsts in leadership roles. She highlights significant figures like Constance Markovic and Mary Robinson, emphasizing the impact these women have had on future generations and the importance of diversity, particularly gender diversity, in leadership positions. In recognizing these trailblazers, she stresses the need for all women to have representation, showing how progress for women benefits societies as a whole.
The journey of female empowerment and gender equality in Ireland is traced through pivotal moments, such as the abolition of the marriage bar and the introduction of equal pay. McGraw acknowledges the transformative changes that have occurred over the years, noting the crucial role of advocacy and campaigning in driving these changes. While recognizing the progress made, she acknowledges the distance still to be traveled in achieving full gender equality, pointing out that some advances came later than they should have.
Main takeaways from the video:
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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:
1. invidious [ɪnˈvɪdiəs] - (adjective) - Causing resentment or envy in others. - Synonyms: (unfair, offensive, discriminatory)
Even if it's a little invidious to be the last speaker of the evening after all the wonderful speeches we've heard.
2. intersectionality [ˌɪntərsɛkʃəˈnæləti] - (noun) - The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping systems of discrimination or disadvantage. - Synonyms: (interconnection, interrelationship, overlap)
I want to highlight at the outset that intersectionality is crucial to true equality across race, disability, sexual orientation, religious and socioeconomic background, to name only some.
3. empowerment [ɛmˈpaʊərmənt] - (noun) - The process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights. - Synonyms: (enablement, authorization, enfranchisement)
Any study you care to consult will show the direct economic and other benefits of female empowerment
4. litmus test [ˈlɪtməs tɛst] - (noun) - A decisively indicative test that resolves or determines the true nature of something. - Synonyms: (deciding factor, test case, critical test)
This is because I passionately believe that gender equality can serve as a litmus test for broader equality.
5. seismic [ˈsaɪzmɪk] - (adjective) - Relating to a powerful and often unexpected or destructive event; immense in impact. - Synonyms: (momentous, colossal, monumental)
Her election was nothing short of seismic, and in her acceptance speech, she said proudly that she had been elected by the women of Ireland.
6. suffrage [ˈsʌfrɪdʒ] - (noun) - The right to vote in political elections. - Synonyms: (franchise, ballot, voting rights)
Just over 100 years ago, women's suffrage, or the right to vote in what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, had, after much campaigning, been introduced.
7. stigmatizing [ˈstɪgməˌtaɪzɪŋ] - (verb) - Describing or regarding someone or something as worthy of disgrace or disapproval. - Synonyms: (disparaging, denouncing, branding)
...often at a time when to be outspoken on such issues was socially stigmatizing and politically unpopular.
8. inclusive [ɪnˈkluːsɪv] - (adjective) - Not excluding any section of society or any party involved in something. - Synonyms: (comprehensive, encompassing, all-embracing)
When the right to vote was extended, only women who owned property and therefore were already better off.
9. fundamentally [ˌfʌndəˈmɛntəli] - (adverb) - In central or primary respects, essentially or most importantly. - Synonyms: (essentially, primarily, basically)
...the status of women in society did not fundamentally change in the newly established Irish state...
10. vision [ˈvɪʒən] - (noun) - The ability to think about or plan for the future with imagination or wisdom. - Synonyms: (foresight, insight, imagination)
I hope that, like the women of Ireland that Boland wrote about, all of you will find your voice where you have found your vision.
Visible Women – The Legacy of Women Pioneers - Sarah McGrath - TEDxTanglinTrustSchool
Good evening. Even if it's a little invidious to be the last speaker of the evening after all the wonderful speeches we've heard. I'm delighted to be here with you today as we bring to a close our exploration of this interesting topic of legacy. My name is Sarah McGraw, and as you've heard, I am the first woman to serve as Resident Ambassador of Ireland to Singapore. Two years ago, when I arrived to take up my post, I presented my credentials to the first woman to serve as President of the Republic of Singapore, Madame Halima Yakob. You might say to me in the second decade of the 21st century. Why does that matter? It matters because it took until the seventh Irish ambassador and the eighth Singaporean President for that quite small double first to happen. It matters because if you cannot see it, you cannot be it. And we need diversity, including gender diversity in every aspect of society. It's the right thing to do, but as we all now know, it's also the smart thing to do. Any study you care to consult will show the direct economic and other benefits of female empowerment. In short, when women succeed, societies succeed.
And so that's why being the first matters, although it isn't everything. So let's explore a couple of female firsts over the past century or so in Ireland and see if there are some lessons we can draw on as part of our own continuing efforts to make the world a more equal place. I want to highlight at the outset that intersectionality is crucial to true equality across race, disability, sexual orientation, religious and socioeconomic background, to name only some. But in our conversation today, I will focus on gender. This is because I passionately believe that gender equality can serve as a litmus test for broader equality. If women continue to be underpaid, underrepresented, and frankly, underestimated when they are more than half the world, then what will it take to ensure proper representation for groups which find themselves in the minority? So let's begin.
Just over 100 years ago, women's suffrage, or the right to vote in what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, had, after much campaigning, been introduced. In 1918, the first election in which women could vote and run for election was held. One woman was elected Countess Markovich, born Constance Gore Booth, a revolutionary Irish Republican. She refused to take her seat at the British Parliament in Westminster, although 100 years later they did put up a portrait of her there, and instead she became the Minister for Labour in the first Irish cabinet in 1919.
Constance was a pretty, extraordinary woman, born into wealth and privilege she left both behind and dedicated herself to Irish freedom and women's rights. She was introduced to these causes by her younger sister, Eva Gore Booth, herself a hugely interesting figure who, while quieter and less of a firebrand than Constance, was no less determined and in fact was crucial to saving her sister's life and ensuring freedom for her and many others who were imprisoned for their part in a rebellion which took place in Dublin in 1916. As perhaps befits a revolutionary leader and an eldest daughter, Constance had a flair for the dramatic. Now, as an Irish woman myself who likes to make an entrance and dislikes a long meeting, I often reflect on the description of her by locals in her hometown of Sligo, where she was described when going to events as the Countess blew in, blew up and blew out.
So back to 1919. We have the first female cabinet minister in Western Europe. So we're ahead of the game, right? Well, yes and no. Would anyone like to guess when the second female cabinet minister in Ireland was appointed? I'll let you. Don't Google. Don't Google. I'll tell you. I have it written down right here on the cards. It would be a full 60 years later when Maura Gagan Quinn was appointed minister for the Gwailtocks, or Irish language areas in 1979.
While she was the second woman to serve on an Irish cabinet, in a way, she was another first. Because a lot changes in six decades, Ireland was effectively a different country. Unlike in 1919, it was now firmly established as a sovereign, independent republic and only six years earlier had joined the European Economic Community, which was and remains transformative to Ireland's development, including in the area of gender equality and the economic empowerment of women.
Because I'm not going to keep you here all night. We're going to skip ahead now from 1979 to 1990. In 1990, political life in Ireland was pretty much still male dominated. By now, there had been five female cabinet ministers in the more than 70, that's seven zero, year history of the state. And that year there was a presidential election. I was 10 years old and I remember watching on television as Mary Robinson was elected the first female president of Ireland. She would go on to be the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and a founding member and later Chair of the elders.
Her election was nothing short of seismic, and in her acceptance speech, she said proudly that she had been elected by the women of Ireland, who, instead of rocking the cradle, had rocked the system. For me, the photograph that's behind me here of Mary Robinson's inauguration paints a Thousand words. One woman about to take on the highest office in the land, seated wearing suffragette purple, surrounded by the men in dark suits. That election changed Ireland for the better. And it showed a generation of little girls, my generation, that there was no need to place limits on their ambition. Mary Robinson is now 80 years of age and, I'm pleased to say, still going strong and championing the rights of the most vulnerable. Now with a particular focus on climate justice.
It would take several days to talk you through the impact she has had on the status of Irish women through her work as a lawyer, a senator, an activist, a president, a UN High Commissioner. It's enough to make a movie. And in fact, someone has just done that, and I encourage you to check it out, and I will do my best to make sure it gets a release in Singapore.
So if we look back now at the years of these firsts, 1919, 1979 and 1990, and compare it to the country that I am proud to represent today, it is fair to say that there has been transformative social change in Ireland which has improved the status and lives of women. And I'm going to highlight just a few elements of this. The abolition of the marriage bar, a rule where female civil servants had to resign upon the occasion of their marriage. The introduction of equal pay for women, and measures to ensure financial and legal independence of women from their husbands. The right to maternity leave, to divorce, to contraception, to full bodily autonomy.
Some of these changes came later than they should, and at great cost to those women that could not avail of them. But every single one of those changes was rooted in advocacy and campaigning by ordinary women and men, often at a time when to be outspoken on such issues was socially stigmatizing and politically unpopular. Some names like Mary Robinson's, we know, but hundreds and maybe thousands we do not. But we remember them. And their legacy is immense and it is infinite as it lives on in every daughter of Ireland. And it is the duty of every daughter of Ireland and every son of Ireland to ensure that we don't stand still. Proud as I am of the country I represent, and much as we have achieved, like everywhere else in the world, we still have a way to go.
Which brings us to whether there are any lessons we can draw from Ireland's legacy of women firsts. When we consider our effort to achieve gender equality and social equity in the world today, I think there are a couple. The first of these is to quote the UN Sustainable Development Goals to Leave no one behind. When we look at why women's suffrage and the election of Constance Markovich did not take root and result in a growing, growing role for women in politics and public life back in 1920.
There are a myriad of reasons, but one which can also be seen in other countries which gave votes to women at the time is that not all women were included. When the right to vote was extended, only women who owned property and therefore were already better off. While full voting rights were subsequently extended to all women over the age of 21, the status of women in society did not fundamentally change in the newly established Irish state and in many other places around the world. So maybe one lesson we can draw is that while every advance we make is welcome progress, the job is not done until no woman or girl is left behind. Eva Gore Booth, who I spoke of earlier, was deeply conscious of this and after the introduction of women's suffrage, focused her activism on social justice for women for the rest of her life.
For all of us, it is important to remember that our floor for gender equality, the minimum we can accept, will become someone else's ceiling, the limit they can reach. For those of us in more equal societies and positions of privilege, we need to keep pushing, not just for ourselves, but for those elsewhere, those coming after us. And because it is what those who came before us are entitled to expect of us.
The second lesson I think we can draw is about being, well, second. I talked about the gap between Markovich and Geoge and Quinn. And while I'm glad to say that there's been a far more steady representation since that time, there's still a very, very long way to go. 102 years after the first female cabinet minister, 42 after the second. We had another first in 2021, when Minister for Justice Helen McEntee went on maternity leave, becoming the first Irish cabinet minister to do so.
By contrast, after Mary Robinson's historic term as President of Ireland, the successor elected was another woman, Dr. Mary McAlise, also the first person from Northern Ireland to hold the office. This marked the first time worldwide where an elected female head of state took over from another elected female head of state. It also meant that if you were born In Ireland in 1990, you would have been 21 before there was a male president, or indeed a president not called Mary.
First get a lot of headlines. I'm no exception, given how I started out on my topic today, but I think in many cases, the more telling point of change comes with the second. Anything can happen once, and there can be a risk that when it does happen, people say, well, we've done that and go back to old, unequal social norms. So to everyone here today, especially the women and girls, but also the men and boys whose activism and whose feminism are needed to make the world a better place for everyone, I say this Be the first or help the first to get there, then don't stop. Be or help the second woman and the third and the fourth and the 500th. Because each of those will also be a first, as we have seen in more recent Irish political life. The first migrant woman, the first black woman, the first woman with a disability, the first LGBTQ woman. To name only a few.
In closing, I'd like to share some lines from a poem by the late Evanne Boland, an amazing Irish poet who was announced this week will have the library at Trinity College, Dublin renamed for her. Another first. Boland's work focused a lot on women being outside history in Ireland and inspired by Mary Robinson's election in 1990, which she attended, she wrote this poem entitled Singers, which contains the line and only when the danger was plain in the music could you know their true measure of rejoicing in finding a voice where they found a vision. I hope that, like the women of Ireland that Boland wrote about, all of you will find your voice where you have found your vision.
Gaurav Mila Mahagat, thank you very much.
Inspiration, Education, Leadership, Gender Equality, Ireland, Global, Tedx Talks
