WINDOWS WERE SMASHED at Dublin Castle today as Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington reenacted her grandmother’s historic actions in 1912.
Irish suffragette Hanna Sheehy Skeffington smashed windows in protest against women not having the right to vote.
Dr Sheehy Skeffington dressed up in the clothes of the time and broke some glass from a mock window while an actor – dressed as policeman of that period – arrested her.
A large crowd gathered to watch the reenactment. Dublin City Council has approved plans to erect a blue plaque to mark where Hanna smashed the windows – in a centenary year since women got the right to vote in Ireland.
When asked what her grandmother would think of women’s role in society today she says Hanna would have been delighted to see Ireland having two female presidents and representation in the Oireachtas, Seanad and the Dail.
“But have we got equality?” she adds. “I think she’d be surprised at how we haven’t got equal pay, we’re not equal in the government, we’re not equal in the universities.”
“We don’t command the respect I think that we should.”
She said today was about commemorating women like her grandmother, who spoke out and took action.
Today marks 100 years since Irish women were given the right to vote.
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