HOUSEWIFE OF THE YEAR (Ciaran Cassidy, 2024)
Possibly one of the most important Irish documentaries, Housewife Of The Year reminds us of Ireland’s troubled past and dares us not to forget it.
Housewife Of The Year tells the story of a reality TV competition from which the film gets its name, Housewife Of The Year. The show ran annually from 1967 until 1995, featuring women from all across Ireland competing against each other to find the best housewife in Ireland. The contestants were judged on their cooking ability, their appearance and their personality, amongst other things. The prize? A gas cooker and some cash.
The concept of this gameshow to us now seems alien, but in reality, the show isn’t that far back in the past. When the show first aired, women were banned from working after they were married, contraception was illegal, and the church ruled all. The Housewife Of The Year competition was a celebration of these values in a sense, a celebration of the role of “housewife” when that really was the only option for the majority of women at the time. During the interviews with Gay Byrne as part of the competition, the women are asked how they met their husband, what their husband does for work and what their husband does for fun. The women are, of course, celebrated, and asked about their own interests, but when it comes down to it, it seems that the women are merely seen as extensions of their husbands, and as sometimes nothing more than to give their husbands a child.
The documentary goes deeper than just issues within the competition itself, focusing on the women involved and getting their side of the story. The women come from all walks of life, but each seem to agree on one thing, the church completely ruled their lives then, and not just their lives, but society as a whole. One of the women was born into a mother and baby home, taken away from her mother and raised ten minutes down the road from her. When she finally reunited with her birth mother, excited to meet her long lost sisters, the sisters did not want her, claiming she was interrupting their idilic, perfect family life. Another woman struggled to make ends meet after being left by her husband. Some of the women had children out of wedlock, absolutely not meeting the standard of the perfect woman in Ireland at that time. Some of the women were the ideal housewife, and enjoyed being a housewife. Several of the women featured had big jobs and plans, some had worked as nurses, one woman had gone to study business at an American university, with a successful career after, but when marriage and babies came into the mix, career ambitions were left behind. Many of the women were married with children before the age of twenty one. Many of us know women like this, our grandmothers and their sisters were living in this world, facing the same struggles of these women on screen. These ideas are not as foreign as they seem, and the film does an amazing job of reminding the audience of this truth, reminding us that this happened not as long ago as we perhaps would think it did.
The church’s control over every element of life in Ireland had fatal consequences for women all across the country. The film is absolutely not afraid to touch on this subject. One particularly heartbreaking moment reveals news reports and interviews after the death of a fifteen year old girl who had died during a secret childbirth, too afraid to tell anyone that she was pregnant. With contraception banned, and talking about sex being completely taboo, many of the women featured in the documentary had upwards of eight children, despite seemingly not wanting to ever have this many children. At one point, one woman who won the competition was interviewed alongside a priest after her win, the priest assures the camera and audience that there are ways of natural contraception, but our winner replies that she had tried these natural methods and that they had not worked. The priest insists that the church would not change its teaching and morals around the issue of contraception.
The film is a portrait of culture in Ireland at the time, and it isn’t afraid to show the ugly side. One woman tells the story of how she went out on a boat with some friends, snapping photos on her film camera, but when she left the film in to get developed with the chemist, the chemist passed the photos onto the local priest, who recommended she be sent to Magdalene laundries, despite having done nothing wrong. Another contestant’s daughter reveals that she was forced out of the flat she was renting as a single mother with a child, as to be a single mother must have meant she was a prostitute, according to her landlord. These women, having done nothing wrong at all, were completely shunned from society, and the trauma they faced must not be forgotten. The women speak bravely about what they went through, as horrific and traumatic it was for them, and it’s of the upmost importance for us to listen to their stories, along with other women who went through similar events. This events happened, and they happened to thousands of women, all across Ireland, and not long enough ago to be forgotten about.
As heartbreaking as the film is, it’s filled with tender moments, moments that remind us that the world isn’t all bad. Each woman interviewed lights the film up, even as they discuss the traumas they faced. The women have all managed to move on with life, to make life good. In a particularly heartwarming moment, one woman reveals to her family that she is planning on going back to school to get her leaving cert. The film is a message that the future is bright, no matter how dark the past was, and it makes essential viewing for the world we live in today.
