The tradwife bogeywoman and the weaponisation of loose words

I admit to being confused. I had been reading a lot of hyperbolic assessments of the first Action Plan for the National Strategy for Women and Girls. The strategy, launched last November, runs from 2025 to 2030, became news with the launch of its first ‘Action Plan’ covering the years 2028 to 2030. A three-year plan.

The Government’s plan to tackle the ‘manosphere’ and the ‘tradwife’ phenomenon was thrust in our faces in the last few weeks. But I looked at the Action Plan, and for the life of me, I could not find a reference to either of these things. Yet, they were central to the news about this action plan.

Disinformation or misinformation? Was it the agitation of the patriarchy? Or toxic male influencers? Was it the far-right? No. It seems the agit-prop came from the mainstream media who honed in on this particular issue that was, at best, peripheral. Rage-bait?

The National Strategy itself was launched last November. It mentions ‘tradwife’ once and ‘manosphere’ once. In the same paragraph. “Concerningly, anti-gender equality movements are now emerging alongside a notable rise in online hate speech and misogyny produced by male influencers who propagate misogynistic views in an online realm colloquially referred to as the ‘manosphere’. By consuming such hateful rhetoric and misinformation, young men and boys are increasingly at risk of being indoctrinated into ideologies that do not accept gender equality and instead seek to normalise discrimination and violence against women. Other online influencers, colloquially referred to as ‘tradwife’ influencers, many of whom are women, seek to promote restrictive, stereotypical roles for women and girls.”

Strategy

You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the whole strategy and this was the priority issue being addressed in the three-year action plan. What does the action plan commit to in this regard? It wants to “challenge trends where women can be pressurised, particularly by online messaging, into particular care roles” and, in 2027, to conduct a public awareness campaign on Shared Caring Responsibility.

This is one strategy commitment out of about 80 in the Action Plan. One. Yes, I agree, the Government should not be wasting resources trying to tell its people who to ‘be’. The Government certainly should not be beating down on anyone who chooses to take on a caring role or give the impression that there is something negative about caring roles.

Caring is what makes us human. What’s the alternative to caring? Institutions, everything farmed out to the State, who farm it out again to private suppliers. Focusing on this one area gives the rest of the strategy a free pass.

Perhaps that was the objective. Create a furore about this teeny-tiny bit of the strategy so the rest avoids scrutiny? Let me state that I think it is unwise, imprudent, and adolescent to bring such recent, ill-defined, urban slang, such as ‘manosphere’ and ‘tradwife’, which are politically loaded, contentious and divisive, into a government strategy that seeks to address real issues such as violence and pornography.

The problem is that introducing these terms distracts from the lack of any concrete plans, the lack of evidenced solutions, that are going to be put in place in the next three years to address the more serious issues.

They are throwing their hands up in the air and conceding that they have given up, and are leaving the kids to the wolves, armed with ‘effective education’”

What is the plan to “Reduce people’s exposure to violent and extreme pornography”? It is to “Commission research on how to reduce the harms from people’s exposure to violent and extreme pornography.” In other words, no plan at all. Not even research on how to stop violent pornography, just a harm reduction strategy.

And for children, the objective is not to stop their exposure to pornography nor its availability but to “Provide effective education for children and young people on the impacts and harms of pornography”. They are throwing their hands up in the air and conceding that they have given up, and are leaving the kids to the wolves, armed with ‘effective education’.

What is the plan in this regard? To “consider if there are specific measures required to address the issue of violent and extreme pornography”. Yes, there are. Do something about it. Come up with an Action Plan.

This is the problem with the strategy and action plan. It is laden with campaigns, with consideration, with loose-aims, but no real measurable actions. It is an action plan to come up with action plans. The strategy is devoid of actionable solutions.

Scrutiny

Yet, the content of the strategy has come under no scrutiny. The lack of measurability goes throughout the document. What gets measured gets done. And nothing seems to be getting measured. Except gender pay gap reporting. But that is already underway. Taking old things and padding the strategy and the action plan is not a strategy.

On launching the Strategy in November, Minister Norma Foley said: “New threats to gender equality have emerged more recently. There are toxic influencers who have been banned by social media platforms for saying women should not be allowed to drive, claiming that men have ‘authority’ over their female partners and much, much more.

“It is more important than ever for those of us to hold equality between women and men as not only essential, but an achievable goal, to say so loudly, clearly and repeatedly: ‘A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.’”

Yet, being a ‘tradwife’ oughtn’t be what or who she should want to be? They got me. They pulled me into that argument as well. The manipulation of terms like masculinity, tradwife and manosphere triggers me. I react to them because they are red flags.

Well played. Look over here.

Minister Foley continued, “Women’s equality is a goal we can all share and all work for together. In the words of Malala Yousefzai – the world’s youngest ever Nobel Laureate and a tireless champion of the rights of girls and women to education: ‘We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.’ You could say the goal of this Strategy is to prevent half of us from being held back, so that we can all succeed together.”

What constitutes being held back? Is being a housewife or a carer, being held back?

“Developed in coordination with the National Women’s Council of Ireland, this Action Plan seeks to adopt an intersectional approach to better recognise the diversity of women and the challenges they face. Many women today experience multiple and compounding forms of discrimination.”

There are important issues being dealt with in the strategy, but it is lost to the type of language favoured by activists and ideologues”

It seems that tradwives are experiencing discrimination too. In the name of gender equality.

The report proceeds to mention the different intersectionalities and sub-groups of women that face discrimination and challenges. Disabled women, Traveller women, lone parents, older women, LGBT women, migrant women, women living in rural communities and younger women and girls. Every kind of woman really – maybe except married city women between younger and older ages. And tradwives.

There are important issues being dealt with in the strategy, but it is lost to the type of language favoured by activists and ideologues. The public deserves a strategy that is in plain language, using words that have a shared and common-sense understanding. And mentions mothers and wives. Not once is either important role of a woman mentioned in the action plan or the Strategy itself. Unless they are a tradwife.

There is an ‘easy-read’ version of the strategy available and there is a case to be made that it should be the strategy itself. I encourage you to read both and make up your own mind. Which one reads most like a strategy? And which one makes more sense?