Our national broadcaster is polling the public on who is the ‘Greatest Irish Person Ever’. Controversially, only three women made the long-list of 40 candidates. So is lack of knowledge or plain old sexism at the root of Irish indifference to women’s achievements?

“It wasn’t one of those things where a lot of people in a smoky room decided who should be put forward. The survey was as statistically representative of the population as possible,” insists TV producer John McHugh, who commissioned the poll from leading research company Ipsos MRBI.
McHugh followed closely the methods used for a 2002 BBC series, Greatest Britons. The BBC’s long-list of 100 included 11 women – among them, Queen Elizabeth I, Jane Austen, Florence Nightingale and suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst. In the end, Winston Churchill came out on top.
The three women on the Irish long-list are Sonia O’Sullivan, Mary Robinson and Adi Roche. The latter two have also made the shortlist of 10.
Most of the nominees are big names from the struggle for independence and from 19th- and 20th-century politics – Parnell, O’Connell, Collins, Pearse, Dev, Haughey (!) and so on, as well as literary greats like Yeats and Joyce. There are also a number of sportsmen including Brian O’Driscoll, Paul Harrington, Paul McGrath and Roy Keane.
Musicians include Bono, Bob Geldof, Phil Lynott, Christy Moore, Ronan Keating and Stephen Gately. Louis Walsh is in there too, grinning away between Wolfe Tone and Oscar Wilde. Apparently Boyzone has made quantifiably as great a contribution to Irish public life as have generations of women.
To compile the list, Ipsos MRBI conducted 1,000 face-to-face interviews with rural and urban men and women of all ages from 15 upwards. The interviews were non-directional and no definition of the word ‘great’ was provided.
“To be honest, I can’t think of a fairer way to do it,” says McHugh. “Once you start making rules, you’re moderating people’s opinions. If women make up half the population, it’s hard to see how there’s only three on the list. What does that say about women’s perceptions of themselves? Because half the people asked were women. That, to me, is one of the most curious things.”

“Obvious” female omissions
Dr Mary McAuliffe is a historian and a lecturer in Women’s Studies at UCD’s School of Social Justice. She says the most obvious female omissions from the list include Countess Markievicz, Maud Gonne, Anna Parnell, Grace O’Malley, suffragette and nationalist Hannah Sheehy Skeffington (“a colossus of the early and mid-20th century”), writers Elizabeth Bowen and Edna O’Brien, and singers like Sinéad O’Connor and Dolores Keane.
“They’d be the women most people would know of, though women’s history is not taught that well in schools,” says McAuliffe. “I think women’s achievements aren’t seen in the realm of ‘great’ because that’s a very male-orientated historical canon. The ‘great’ people are the Pádraig Pearses and the Wolfe Tones.”
Singer Gemma Hayes makes a similar point about the male connotations of the term ‘great’.
“Picking one person out as ‘the greatest’ is a very male, egotistic thing to do. So straight away the odds are stacked not in our favour,” she says.
Does it matter, then, if women’s successes remain outside the mainstream represented by lightweight, popular history polls? Dr McAuliffe believes it does matter – because polls like this hold a mirror to Irish people’s lack of awareness of women’s achievements.
“It reflects our lack of education on women’s history, the lack of women in documentaries made on great Irish people. It’s the fault of the education system and of our historians. And it reflects the lack of women’s voices in politics and the media,” she proffers.
Gemma Hayes isn’t surprised that no female musicians made it onto the list – it’s the reality of the music industry and of female singer-songwriters’ struggle for airtime.
“I can think of three female songwriters off the top of my head who are at least as good as any of the men,” she states. “I don’t think it’s something to be upset about. It’s just the way it is. I know of a lot of female singer-songwriters who find it hard to get their foot in the door.
“I don’t hear any Irish female songwriters on the radio. If someone stopped me on the street and asked me who was the greatest Irish person – quickly, one, two, three – I’d probably think of Bob Geldof or Bono.
“I don’t think it’s that Irish people are out and out sexist. Female musicians aren’t in the public consciousness. The public hasn’t been given the opportunity to listen to all these other artists.”
The other group that is conspicuous by its absence from the list is the women’s lib movement. Perhaps Irish women now take for granted the rights – equal pay, contraception, the right to work after marriage, to sit on juries – that were hard won in the 1970s.
But Dr McAuliffe perceives a very strong appetite among students to learn more about the history of women and of feminism.
“The young women taking our courses in feminism want to know what changed and what the process was. It’s a struggle to get women written back into history. People are beginning to realise that women have contributed, but to get that recognition is a struggle. We still have a long way to go – second-wave feminism hasn’t achieved it as yet. Hopefully if they do another poll in 10 years time, there’ll be more women on the list.”

The top 10 greatest Irish people, in alphabetical order, as voted for by the public. Documentaries about the top candidates will air in September, after which the public will vote again (come on Mary Robinson!).

1. Bono
2. Dr Noel Browne
3. Michael Collins
4. James Connolly
5. Stephen Gately
6. John Hume
7. Phil Lynott
8. Padraig Pearse
9. Mary Robinson
10. Adi Roche