Ireland
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Bottom of the Class: Ireland and the Impact of Single-Sex Schools on Gender-Based Violence By Eoin Ryan, SF Law and Political Science Editors’ Note: This piece deals with gender-based violence, which some readers may find distressing. The tragic murder of Ashling Murphy in Tullamore, Co. Offaly reignited an important and overdue conversation about how we deal with the endemic level of gender-based violence in our society. The statistics are alarming and disgraceful: a 2014 study by the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency found that in Ireland, 1 in 4 women (26 per cent) have experienced physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15. The perpetrators of these crimes are overwhelmingly male, with 2020 data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) revealing that 98 per cent of suspected offenders of detected sexual violence crimes reported were male. Education is a key preventive measure against the misogynistic attitudes and values pervasive in society that cause and enable gender-based violence. Speaking in the wake of Ashling Murphy’s death, Director of the National Women’s Council, Orla O’Connor, submits that “what we need is real, systemic change through the education system” if we are to tackle this issue head on. While a progressive and comprehensive Relationships and Sexuality Education curriculum is a core aspect of any new educational approach, this article will seek to examine the impact of sex-segregated education in Ireland. Single-Sex Schooling in Ireland When it comes to the number of single-sex schools, Ireland is a outlier when compared to the international norm. According to the Global Education Monitoring Report, Malta is the only other country in Europe that has a higher concentration of single-sex schools than Ireland. The same report found that over one third of Irish second level schools are single-sex, significantly higher than all other Western countries. The unusually high proportion of single-sex schools can be attributed to the dominance and control of the Catholic Church over the Irish education system.
Since the founding of the State, the Church has played a prominent and outsized role in Irish schools, with nearly half of second-level institutions continuing under its patronage. The religious practice of sex-segregated education is based on antiquated notions that girls and boys are intrinsically different and thus, should be taught separately. The Church-controlled education system can be traced back to 1831, which precipitated the decline of hedge schools and the establishment of a national system of education that the Catholic Bishops managed to successfully monopolise. This allowed the promotion of Catholic doctrine which espoused many stereotypical views in regards to sex such as the conceptualisation of women as “homekeepers” and men as “breadwinners.” Effects of Sex-Segregated Education Studies reveal that sex-segregated education leads to the reinforcement of gender roles which can manifest itself in different forms. Professor Chris Hickey of Deakin University, Melbourne argues that single-sex boys’ schools can facilitate and incubate hypermasculine and misogynistic cultures. Drawing on research from
