Broadcaster Olivia O'Leary has revealed how her loneliest day in journalism was when she became a mother.
Speaking at the third annual Woman in Media conference in Ballybunion, Co Kerry, the award winning print and broadcast journalist said having children is a public good and warned of the consequences if women decided to “sit down on the job and stop having children”.
“The ensuring of the survival of the race should be central to all economic models but the people who actually do that job are rarely put at the centre of that consideration,” she said.
“I was never lonelier as a journalist than the day that I had a child, because we still live in a world where women are left to bear that weight alone. They are criticised and they are left to bear that weight alone.”
Speaking about her earlier career in journalism, O’Leary said there was a “jealously between commitment to the job and family”.
“There was no suggestion that both could co-exist in any same world. Families and work have to co-exist in any same world,” she insisted.
The well known print and broadcast journalist believes women are still treated differently in journalism and other professions and said the battle for paternity leave must be won so men can also have the opportunity to be at home with young children.
“It victimises a woman if she is the only person carrying all the weight. It makes her weaker, it makes her vulnerable and she will be treated differently,” she warned.
One of the first women journalists to cover the troubles in Northern Ireland Olivia O’leary worked for RTÉ in the 1970s and moved from broadcasting to the Irish Times in 1978 before returning to television.
She has also presented television and radio programmes for BBC and ITV for more than three decades as well as RTÉ’s ‘Today Tonight’, ‘Questions and Answers’ and ‘Prime Time’ shows.
On Saturday she was awarded the the Mary Cummins Award for Women of Outstanding Achievement in the Media.
The award was presented in Ballybunion at the third ‘Women in Media’ conference, established to acknowledge the lifetime achievements of two women with strong links to the North Kerry town – the late Mary Cummins, Irish Times journalist, and the late Maeve Binchy, bestselling novelist and Irish Times journalist.
Presenting the award, last year's winner and former Irish Times editor Geraldine Kennedy said O'Leary is a gifted writer and broadcaster whose "great talents" she envied.
During her address, Kennedy also referenced the issues of gender quotas which she believes are unnecessary, as long as men and women have the same opportunities.
“Journalism is now becoming like the other professions of medicine, the law and many others with many, if not more, female students, applicants and entrants as males. A quota system did not happen,” she said.