Deena Redmond discusses the issue of the Molly Malone statue, and how women aren't fairly represented in Dublin City.
Molly Malone is a fictional character which originated from the Irish folk song Molly Malone. There is a statue of Molly Malone located on Suffolk Street which has been receiving a lot of media coverage over the past couple of years. A tour guide started a trend claiming that it was good luck to touch the statue's breasts. This trend has since become a tradition that is so widespread with tourists that it has resulted in the statue being discoloured. Many people have protested over this trend with people standing at the statues preventing others from touching it. This outrage resulted in Dublin city council employing two stewards to stay beside the statue and prevent people from touching it. The stewards were removed to allow for the statue to be restored.
It is important to prevent tourists from groping the statue as it exposes a culture of female sexual objectification because the statue is not regarded for its artistic or historical significance but instead for a sexual aspect of it. By stating as a society that groping statues is not acceptable behaviour it reinstates the need to acknowledge and address sexualization and objectification of women.
Having said that, Molly Malone is one of the few statues of women in the city and a fictional one at that. Instead of having a statue of a female fictional character with media coverage and city council funding allocated to keeping the statue from being damaged, it would be far more beneficial to make Dublin’s statues more gender diverse and thus more historically accurate by installing more statues of women.
From the over two hundred statues in Dublin city only seven are of women with three of these commemorating 1916 rising participant Countess Markievicz. Acknowledging the role that women played in history is far more impactful to prevent objectification as it signifies that women have proven they are far more than sexual objects. However, spending money on restoring and protecting a fictional female character does nothing to signify how women have played a far more significant role in society than suggested.
This is essential in a city that is advertised as being primarily influenced historically by men. As exposed by Simon Tierney “there's just under 1,000 streets in Dublin city centre; just 27 of those are named after women. Within that 27, 17 of them are saints, six of them are British monarchs - namely Elizabeth and Victoria. There's very few that are left to commemorate Irish women who played a role in the shaping of this city, of which there are many". Out of the 21 bridges in Ireland only one is named after a woman, the union activist and Easter Rising participant Rosie Hackett.
Trinity College only recently named its first building after a woman in 2024, the Irish poet Eavan Boland even though the college was founded by a woman, Queen Elizabeth I. This renaming of the library was requested by students as the library was previously named after George Berkely who supported slavery and kept slaves himself. The students voted for the female poet after the college asked for suggestions. This signifies how institutions have not advanced in accurately depicting history as it was when it comes to gender diversity. Many institutions were founded by men and still consist of an undynamic gendered workforce. As presented by Berkley, many of the men who are heavily portrayed around Dublin city had concerning beliefs and lifestyles such as owning slaves which is often glossed over when women who have cleaner historical records are not portrayed at all further exposing the gendered discrimination of how history is portrayed.
There is a clear lack of representation in Dublin City of Irish women who played a large role in our history. Street names and bridge names are rarely changed but what can be easily introduced is statues that accurately represent the significant role Irish women played that is being erased by our city from its overuse of male historical figures, many of which have several buildings, statues and bridges named after them. Many historical women could be represented such as Kathleen Clarke who was Dublin’s first female Lord Mayor, or Helen Sophia Chenevix a Dublin born woman who helped found the Irish suffragette’s movement. The introduction of these female historical figures would serve to represent and acknowledge women that overcame sexist societal expectations which would be far more impactful in addressing sexualization of women than spending council funding on protecting and restoring a fictional character.