Dublin's statues fail to honour historic Irish women - how do I explain this to my daughters?
3, Photograph In Merrion Daniela, With And Giovanna Nolan Simon Children Tierney Square 1, His Moya ,
Our capital city belongs to men. The office building where I work is named after a man. The same building is surrounded by William, George and Stephen… streets all named after men. Bridges, parks, buildings, streets and statues in Dublin virtually all commemorate historical men. The city centre is a penis parade. How do I explain this to my daughters?
Since I became the father to two young girls, I have come to realise just how male our built environment is. As they grow up, will they be able to see themselves reflected in the city in which they live?
Boys can see their image written in stone but we continue to fail our girls. This needs to change. There has rightly been a focus on the renaming of buildings associated with slavery, such as the recent debacle over Berkeley Library in Trinity College, but not a single building in Trinity College is named after a woman. We need to shine equal attention on the misogyny of our capital’s architecture and urban planning.
Just how bad is it?
Before I began my research, I had an inclination of how male Dublin is but nothing could prepare me for the cold hard statistics of it. Everywhere you look, the city reminds you that this is a man’s world.
Geographer Conor O’Neill has mapped the origins of Dublin’s street names. Currently, just 27 of the 936 streets in the city centre are named after women. The most common female categories? Seventeen of them are saints and 6 of them are British monarchs. Hardly an inspiration.
When I crunched the numbers I discovered that just 13% of the city centre’s statues represent historical women. This includes three separate iterations of Countess Markievicz, Catherine McCauley, Constance Lloyd Wilde, Veronica Guerin and Margaret Ball. The 44 remaining statues of historical figures all depict men.
The names of things matter.
The male nomenclature of our capital infiltrates the imagination, reminding us that the city belongs to men. I want my girls to see that they live in a country which recognises and celebrates the achievements of women.
Paula Murphy, professor emeritus of the UCD School of Art History, wrote in the Irish Times some time ago in relation to public sculpture that "'real-life' Irish women continue to be overlooked for such public commemoration". She argued that this "perpetuates for further generations the ongoing failure to consider seriously women’s contribution to life in all its aspects over centuries in Ireland".
It is worth noting the long history of street name changes in our capital. Just because a street is called one name today doesn’t mean it has always been that way, nor that it will remain that way forever. These changes were not passive or arbitrary. Rather, they were hard-won and the result of the long struggle for self-determination.
From the late 19th century, as Ireland began to move towards independence, a renaming spree began in earnest. Sackville Street, which honoured Lionel Sackville, an English aristocrat and former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was renamed O’Connell Street after the Great Emancipator. Pearse Street, one of the longest thoroughfares in the city centre, was born after Great Brunswick Street was dropped. But perhaps the most compelling change occurred in 1911 when Dublin Corporation voted to rename Great Britain Street as Parnell Street. Because of this tapestry of change, we now have a strong historical precedent to support further evolution of our street names.
Could we swap out some of the more egregious ones to commemorate inspiring women instead?
Marlborough Street, which hosts our national theatre, would be an ideal candidate for renaming. It was christened in honour of John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, who invaded Cork in 1690 on behalf of William of Orange. He led 5,000 men up the estuary, sacked the Rebel City and destroyed much of its property. Surely this isn’t someone we want to commemorate anymore on such an important cultural artery of the city? Renaming it Lady Gregory Street would celebrate a great Irishwoman and a co-founder of the Abbey.
Name changes are subject to necessary bureaucratic obstacles, of course. A motion for a name change is usually brought to Dublin City Council, followed by a plebiscite of the residents of the street in question. The naming committee then examines the proposal, followed by analysis by DCC’s Heritage Officer to ensure any new name is culturally appropriate. Finally, it goes through the Local Area Committee before the Council itself signs off on it.
This process was initiated last year when a motion was introduced to DCC to change the name of Orwell Road, the site of the Russian Embassy, to Independent Ukraine Road. Ultimately, the plebiscite failed to gather enough support for the proposal and the project was dropped — but it showed that change is possible with popular support.
Janet Horner, a Green Party member of Dublin City Council, has been pushing for change in this area.
“It is very stark how few streets acknowledge the role and contribution of women to our city,” she told me. “I’m certainly not advocating for a wholesale renaming of every street but I do think it is worth giving consideration to the who, what and why is commemorated through the names of the streets.”
However, the building bricks of change may well be assembling. Horner, along with her colleagues in DCC, managed to get a female street name over the line in the Gardiner Street area of the city. Iris Court, named in memory of the great Irish novelist Iris Murdoch, recently became one of the capital's newest place names.
The chauvinism of the built environment doesn’t end with our streets. Every single aspect of our public space is dominated by the memory and celebration of masculinity.
All three of the main train stations in Dublin city centre are named after men: Sean Houston, James Connolly and Padraig Pearse.
The city's two largest sports stadiums are named after Archbishop Thomas Croke and Henry Petty Fitzmaurice, the Third Marquess of Lansdowne.
Not a single park in the city centre is named after a woman, and a total of 23 of the 24 bridges that cross the Liffey are all named after men.
Just Rosie Hackett stands as a beacon of female defiance along a river of testosterone.
The lazy response to this toponymic homogeny is to blame history; women didn’t play a role in our story until recently, they tell us. Earlier time periods didn’t allow for buildings or streets to be named after women, they sigh. Why are you being so woke, they quibble.
None of these excuses prevent us from retrospective action. Why can’t the denamed Berkeley Library be named after one of the trailblazing women who were the first female students of the college in 1904? If Lansdowne Road stadium can assume the name of an insurance company, is it not also among the realms of possibility that it could take on the name of one of the great women of Ireland, who dedicated their lives to creating change?
The push for gender equality can be seen in real terms with commitments to pay parity, expansion of maternity and paternity schemes and of course the increasing number of women in positions of power and influence. However, we have a responsibility to the young girls of Ireland to make sure that they grow up with a capital city they can see themselves in, that the built environment reflects their image and that inspires them. Equality can’t be an abstract concept. It should be built into the lived experience of the metropolis.