Louise O'Reilly pays tribute and demands real women's rights
On International Women's Day, Louise O'Reilly paid tribute to women activists and recorded the loss of her mother, Mary O'Reilly, who died last September. She called for rights that make a tangible difference to working women and criticised remote access legislation as insufficient and harmful.
Tribute and global solidarity
Louise O'Reilly reflects on a personal legacy of activism, naming her mother Mary O'Reilly and describing how that legacy lives on in her daughter. She stresses the urgent need for empowered women activists at home and sends solidarity to women in Cuba, Ukraine and Palestine who struggle daily under exceptional hardship.
Critique of legislation and call for real rights
O'Reilly challenged the government's approach to rights, arguing the remote access legislation merely restores a question-asking right and hands employers a charter to refuse. She insists that meaningful, enforceable rights for working women are required to protect families and strengthen society, not symbolic measures that leave women exposed.
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On International Women's Day, this is my tenth time to do this, but on International Women's Day I generally pay tribute to women activists and I am really lucky that there are loads of them in my party, in my family and in my life. However, this afternoon I want to record the loss of an activist, a feminist, a trade unionist, a campaigner, my own mam, Mary O'Reilly, who died last September. But when I look at my daughter, I know that my mother's legacy will live on in her activism, in the way that she is raising her son to be a fantastic feminist, in the way that she stands up every time for what is right and I see my mam reflected in her all the time and I think we could potentially be in safe hands because now more than ever we are in desperate, desperate need of women activists, empowered women who will stand up, who will speak out, women who will not be silenced, women who will refuse to sit down and I send my solidarity to women in Cuba, in Ukraine, in Palestine and all of those women right across the globe who struggle every single day because it's not just, you know, the women who want to have it all, who need an extra seat in the boardroom, it is women who are sheltering their families from the from the ravages of the IDF, it is women who are sheltering and managing to bring their children up in appalling circumstances and those are the women. We don't often see them and we very rarely hear about them but those are the women that we need to pay tribute about. And Minister, you talked about the need for rights and you undermined your own words by talking about the remote access legislation because that doesn't give people, that doesn't give women rights, it gives them the right to ask a question, a right they had before and it gives employers a charter to refuse. So when we talk about women's rights we have to talk about rights that are real, that actually make a real difference in the lives of working women and therefore in their families and therefore in our society.
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