Still not a woman’s world – Anna Marie Galea

There’s a moment in every girl’s life where she realises that she is not equal to her male counterpart. Whether it’s the first time she is called bossy when she asserts herself “too much” in class or when comments are made about the length of her skirt, or when she feels a watchful pair of eyes on her back as she gets off the school bus.

The chasm between the sexes starts early and gets deeper as the years roll on. By the time a girl reaches her teens, she simply takes it for granted that she can’t go out jogging after sunset, that it’s probably not advisable to travel alone to certain places and that, if she gets raped, there will still be people that will ask whether she brought it on to herself.

This week, a good friend of mine made a comparison that has stuck and stayed with me, one that I want to share with you today as many of you with daughters casually flip through the pages of the newspaper perhaps not really taking in the current state of the world.

Back in April, the court awarded a man over €87,000 in damages after his friend crashed his dream car five or six years ago. The plaintiff was not physically hurt in the crash but received the money after it was found that...