Are You a Male Chauvinist? Ireland 1990

Despite advances made by the women's rights movement, stereotypical male chauvinism is alive and well in Ireland. For decades the women's movement in Ireland has fought for rights and equality. While attitudes in 1990 are more enlightened, the age of equality remains an aspiration. Stereotypical male chauvinism is alive and well on Irish streets, in the workplace and in the schools and universities. Some men on Grafton Street in Dublin are not happy with the impact the women's rights movement is making on their lives. One man is convinced it has had a detrimental effect on his mother. Another sees the problem for men started when women started to patronise the lounge bar in pubs. Chauvinism is rampant in the workplace where there are deep seated attitudes regarding which professions that should be done by men and which are for women. Chauvinism still makes women secretaries and men mechanics. Up until 1974 it was accepted that married women would leave their jobs as soon as they became married. Women will no longer put up with an attitude that says your life basically involves going to school, working for a couple of years and rearing a family after that. A rubgy player thinks women have no right to be at work and definitely have no place running for the position of President of Ireland. A woman's place is in the home, It's been the way of the world for years, why should it change now all of a sudden. Gender attitudes are formed early and some school children have clear ideas about gender and work. One boy is clear his father should not do housework because It seems like a girl’s job. Students in University College Dublin (UCD) are debating the motion 'That Sid the Sexist is alive and well and living in UCD’. Some of the male students at UCD believe women’s liberation has turned women into militants prepared to attack men on any issues. One student feels men cannot win because, When you give them they want they say you are being patronising and if you don’t they say you are discriminating. Another UCD student fears that in striving for equality, women have lost their sense of humour. This episode of ‘Scratch Saturday’ was broadcast on 10 November 1990.