Bray women are responding to the needs and challenges faced by women in the area.
Bray has been a seaside resort town since the 19th century when the rich and the fashionable visited. Behind the fashionable seafront, there is another Bray with its own character.
In 1971, the population was 15,000 and since then the town has grown and the population along with it. As the cost of living in Dublin continues to grow, Bray has become a dormitory town for many people working in the capital. New housing estates have emerged creating their own challenges placing pressure on health and educational resources in the town. Bray women have come together to form a group to address these challenges.
The Bray Women's Group are campaigning on women's issues in the locality and have published a magazine covering all the major issues of concern for women such as contraception, women's legal rights, women at work, and education. The magazine covers
All the main areas of women's concerns.
Some of the members of Bray Women's Group speak to John O'Donoghue about their main concerns.
We're dealing with specific issues that affect women in a specific area.
The group are campaigning for a local family planning clinic for the women of Bray. One member says that many men are simply not interested in issues such as contraception believing it to be an issue for women. However, she says that the group is making headway against this prejudice. Their objective is to change attitudes of both men and women to issues such as contraception. They say that they are reacting to the problems and challenges experienced by women in the area.
Most of the things we've actually taken up are the result of women coming to us and saying I've got this problem, what can you do for me.
They refute any claims that they are a group of middle class upstarts and say that their members come from a broad cross section of Bray society.
In relation to education, they are campaigning for co-education schools and want to see single sex schools scrapped. They believe that parents have a greater part to play in school management and that mothers have a greater role to play in assisting teachers where class sizes are so large.
The group says that they have had a fantastic response to the publication of their magazine and have sold 1,200 copies in just eight days.
This episode of 'PM' was broadcast on 12 October 1977. The reporter is John O'Donoghue.
'PM' was a magazine series reporting on aspects of Irish life with interludes for music from Irish performers.
'PM' first began on Tuesday, 20 September 1977 and was initially aired three nights a week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7.00pm on RTÉ 1.
The original presenters John O'Donoghue, Áine O'Connor, Nicholas Coffey and Doireann Ní Bhriain were later joined by Pat Kenny.
As editor Noel Smyth sees it, the Tuesday programme will consist mainly of film reports on topical events anywhere in Ireland, the Wednesday edition will concentrate on studio discussions, and the Thursday programme will be in Irish, with just as wide a brief as the other two.
(RTÉ Guide, 16 September 1977, Vol.1, No.37, p.18)
'PM' ran until Thursday, 12 April 1979.
