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A GOVERNMENT CAMPAIGN to “level the playing field for women and girls” has been baselessly described as a plan to discourage women from being stay-at-home parents.
The department in charge said these claims were “absolutely false”.
“Politician Norma Foley has declared WAR on ‘tradwives’,” social media posts by a news account called Catholic Arena read.
“The state is planning to roll out a multimillion-euro plan to convince Irish young people that being a work at home mother is a NEGATIVE thing.”
These posts have been shared hundreds of times on Facebook and viewed more than 43,000 times on X since being posted on 10 August.
A “tradwife” refers to social media influencers who promote conservative gender roles, often by posting images of themselves minding children, doing crafts or cooking in their homes.
According to Google’s n-gram Viewer, which charts the use of words and phrases since the year 1500, the term has no recorded uses before the 21st century, though it saw a surge in popularity starting in 2014.
On 5 August, the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality, Norma Foley, announced the publication of the first Action Plan under the National Strategy for Women and Girls 2025–2030.
While the thrust of the document focuses on battling institutional sexism, the strategy does include one cautionary description of tradwives. This has been the subject of much of the plan’s media coverage, as well as spurring several opinion pieces in major newspapers— these largely argue that the strategy is unnecessary as Irish women are temperamentally and financially disinclined to swap careers for handicrafts.
However, the focus on tradwives may be a little overblown. There is no mention of them in the action plan, and only one mention of the term in the strategy document itself — at the end of a paragraph describing one of the seven objectives.
That objective, described as “Being Me: I can live free of harmful gender norms and stereotypes”, talks about harmful beliefs about women and girls. It notes that there is a surge in sexist and hateful speech online that might “normalise discrimination and violence against women.”
It continues: “Other online influencers, colloquially referred to as ‘tradwife’ influencers, many of whom are women, seek to promote restrictive, stereotypical roles for women and girls.”
There’s no other mention or discussion of tradwives in the documents.
Referring to this as a declaration of war is misleading.
But what about the claim that the plan hopes to “convince Irish young people that being a work at home mother is a NEGATIVE thing”?
A perusal through the documents associated with the strategy comes up short. There is no obvious strategic aim or action plan that this refers to.
As an example, the strategy document includes the word “home” once — it says it aims to “increase the range of choices available to older women living alone to remain living at home.”
The Action Plan also makes this reference, as well as numerous references to extending Parents Leave “to provide more time for parents to remain at home in the first year of a child’s life”, helping women at risk of homelessness, as well as numerous references to the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration.
There is no mention of discouraging work in the home, and there is little in the documents to suggest that women should be discouraged from becoming homemakers.
“The claim that the National Strategy for Women and Girls aims to ‘convince Irish young people that being a work at home mother is a negative thing’ is absolutely false,” the Department of Children told The Journal.
“There has been an online campaign of misinformation about the National Strategy for Women and Girls, and its accompanying Action Plan.”
The plan’s documents instead indicate aims around ensuring that women and girls are safe, healthy, financially secure, and to be properly regarded in Irish policies and laws, as well as in the workplace.
“At the heart of the National Strategy for Women and Girls is the principle that women should have equal opportunities and freedom of choice to pursue the roles that best suit their individual and family circumstances,” the department said in an email.
“This applies to women who are caring in the home, women participating in the workforce, and women doing a combination of both.”
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