Speaking at the Trocaire conference on International Women’s Day, NUI Maynooth

I am delighted to have the opportunity to be with you this morning and share some thoughts in advance of International Women’s Day on Sunday.

International Women’s Day was, of course, an initiative of the International Labour Movement back at the start of the last century. To be more exact it was, in the first instance, an initiative of the American trade union movement in 1909, just three years before the Irish Labour Party was founded. From the start, the socialist and social democratic parties in Europe and elsewhere were fully aware that workers’ rights and women’s rights go hand in hand. That is true today, as it was a century ago.

It is equally true to say that social democratic parties, including the Labour Party, have always had an international focus. It is not enough for us to focus on our own back yard – much though that needs work. We believe – I believe – that we need to work with our sisters throughout the world in looking to enhance the rights of women, in working for gender equality.

Like many people, I have been hugely inspired by one particular woman over the course of the last two years.

In October 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban for daring to go to school. Despite horrible injuries, she recovered and since then she has used her time to focus very effectively on the hugely important issue of girls’ education.

This is an issue that I take a personal interest in. Back in the 1980s my husband Pat and I lived for a period in Tanzania. I saw at first hand the real progress that can be made if girls are sent to school and remain in school for as long as possible.

Put simply, education, particularly the education of girls, is a ticket out of poverty. A good education doesn’t guarantee anything, but it does offer girls and women by far the best chance of a decent standard of living, by far the best chance to realise their potential in life. In sub-Saharan Africa, girls who don’t go to school are almost always poor. Those who go to school have a fighting chance of improving their lot.

And the positive effects often extend well beyond the individual concerned. School education gives girls the self-confidence to assert themselves; the self-confidence to challenge the status quo. It gives them the power and the self-belief to challenge social norms, which they might have accepted previously.

In very simple terms – it gives them the belief they need to challenge men; it gives them the self-belief to challenge the social and cultural practices used, abused and often invented by men to keep women in their place.

Let us face up to a simple fact. Very few people, women or men, will claim that inequality or discrimination is a good thing in itself. More often than not, women are told that we are not unequal – we are just “different”. We are told that cultural and social practices, built up over centuries, cannot simply be jettisoned overnight. We are told that religious belief dictates that women have a different – and usually inferior – role in life. We are told that discrimination is not just a matter of law or politics. Instead, it is a result of “culture” or “religion”.

Let me be clear about this. I do not believe that culture or religion is an acceptable reason to continue to treat women as second-class citizens – or worse.

We know that rape and violence against women is endemic in many parts of the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, women are all too often raped by members of their own family – brothers, uncles, often their father or their husband. In South Asia too, violence against women is a regular fact of life.

In December 2012, a 23-year-old student was brutally attacked, raped and left for dead in a bus in New Delhi by a group of men. One of those men later said and I quote:

“A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars. About 20% of girls are good.”

Not everyone in India shares that view. Not everyone in Africa thinks it is okay to rape a female relative. Far from it. But far too many people do hold such views. In many cases, they think that social attitudes of this kind are part of their culture.

We need to be unambivalent about this.

Violence against women is wrong. It cannot be excused by describing it as part the culture of one society or another. If men genuinely believe that violence against women is part of their culture, if they believe that women are part of their possessions, if they really believe that, then they are wrong and they must be challenged.

In my book, the rights of women come ahead of any cultural or social practice or norm. Women’s rights also come ahead of any interpretation of religious texts.

I understand that this is sensitive territory and it needs to be tackled with sensitivity.

I have no intention of getting into theological debate. That is not my province. I have no right to tell religious people what to believe or what to think.

My province is the law. I am a legislator and, as a legislator, I strongly believe that the laws of the land should be used to enhance the rights of women, and indeed the rights of men, and to prohibit discrimination. Women have been fighting this particular fight for decades in Ireland and in the western world. And the fight is gradually being won.

Progress is also happening in other parts of the world. The gang rape case in India which I mentioned a moment ago led to a public outcry, which in turn led to a change in the law.

But there are many parts of the world where the separation of church and state is not an accepted principle, where civil and criminal law directly reflects religious belief. This is often – not always, but often – to the detriment of women and the principle of equality between men and women.

As a general rule, change in these countries will come from within. As people get better off, as more girls go to school, as people live in less homogenous communities, attitudes change.

But the international community also has a role. One of the priorities of Ireland’s international aid programme is to combat gender-based violence and to promote gender equality. The Government reaffirmed this when we set out our current plans in “One World, One Future” published 18 months ago.

More recently, we published the second National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. And I know that our friends in Trocaire had significant input into that. In fact, as you know as well as I do, much of our work in this area has been done in co-operation with civil society organisations such as Trocaire.

It is an important statement of our own values as a country that we give such priority to working on the issue of equality, and as Tánaiste and Leader of the Labour Party, it is something I strongly support.

Of course, we shouldn’t pretend that violence against women is a phenomenon of the developing world. Rape and violence against women are all too common much closer to home, including in our own country.

I mentioned earlier Malala Yousafzai as a woman I greatly admire. Last year I met another woman, an Irish woman, whom I also admire, a woman who has also displayed great courage. That woman is Mairia Cahill.

Mairia has described publicly how she was assaulted as a young woman by a member of the IRA and how the IRA moved to cover up the crime. She believes that the IRA and their friends in Sinn Fein continue to use weasel words in order to discredit her. She has said repeatedly in recent months that she feels violated not just by the way the IRA dealt with her at the time, but also by the way they continue to do so today.

I believe Maria Cahill. I stand with her not just as a politician, but as a woman.

I don’t believe that members of Sinn Fein are any more likely to support or conceal abusers than anyone else is. But one thing is clear. Sinn Fein, like the Catholic Church before it, has placed its own interests ahead of the interests of the victim.

In doing that, they have done real damage to Mairia Cahill and a real disservice to all women who are victims of violence. It is all the more distressing when women politicians who should and do know better, fail to support victims who are entitled to expect support.

As I said earlier, violence against women is wrong. There should be no excuses, no attempts to explain it away, no ambivalence, no silence.

One thing is clear. As long as there are men out there who feel that they are entitled to treat women as something they own, as long as there are men who hit and rape women, and as long as there are people who make excuses for them, then there can be no equality between men and women.

Women have made huge strides over the years and today is a day when we celebrate the improvements in the lives of women that have been brought about. But we also have some distance to go, not just abroad but in our own country too.