Some people of a more liberal persuasion might have felt they had been transported back in time, to the Ireland of the 1950s, listening to Liveline earlier today. Oliver Cromwell even got a mention, in a debate centring around two issues concerning women and farming.

The motions in the debate ran something along these lines.

Firstly, if a woman inherits a farm, and gets married, and then dies, the husband (and therefore his family, her in-laws) gets the farm. And so (horror of horrors) it is out of the male line of inheritance.

You haven’t entered the Twilight zone. This was an actual point made on the show today.

Secondly, a more fundamental question. Should women become farmers at all? After all, they are the fairer sex, with their delicate frames and their tendency to do things like have babies.

Both of these points were made by a caller called John, whose arguments went as follows. First of all, the inheritance issue.

“Irish people want the farm in the family since Cromwell’s time. If a daughter takes the farm and gets married, the farm goes across to the in-laws. If the daughter marries, and she gets the farm, then the farm goes out of the family.”

And point number two?

“With children and that sort of thing, it’s very unrealistic for a woman to run a farm. It’s very unrealistic for a woman to run a farm, in terms of strength. Pulling calves out of cattle, lifting tonnes of beet, or whatever. All that kind of thing, is not particularly suitable to women.”

Presenter Joe Duffy was having none of it. “There are no female vets in Ireland?”, asked the presenter, sarcastically. “Oh there are, yeah,” replied John. “There’s more female vets coming through now and then male.”

And the reply from Joe?

“How do they ever manage to birth a cow?”

All of this took place in the context of phone calls which came into the show from women who had been left out of the family will on the basis of their gender. That is to say, women who grew up on farms, where the farm was the principal asset disposed of in the will, and was then directed solely at the male heirs in the family.

Does that sound like the carry-on of another era?

You decide.

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