That is fantastic. My mother told me that the laundry in Dublin had a back to front Swastica (it is a very old symbol) in the twenties when she was growing up there.

In my opinion, men who seek positions of power fear the intelligence and abilities of women. These men need to keep women subservient in order to maintain their authority. To share equal power would show up their inadequacies and make them look weak in the eyes of those they are empowered to serve. Religion has a history of using women's sexuality as a means to do this.

In this instance and others like it, the bonus is financial. (Slavery)

Of course non of those women were the daughters of upper class people, like Supreme Court members for example. There is very much a class element in it all as well. Not just misogyny, but class war as well.

Yes…it was shocking how they treated these young women…a lot of them just teenagers, The Irish State colluded with the Catholic Church and in effect they were one and the same as all Irish laws were approved by the church…that’s the consequence of not having separation of church and state. When the Irish public became aware of both the extent of the abuses by the nuns in the Magdalen Laundries and the pedophilia practiced on children by the parish priests and teachers it really loosened the church’s hold over Ireland. In the last 10 or 15 years it’s unbelievable how much things have changed in Ireland, the church basically lost all moral authority and now Ireland has passed some really progressive laws with respect of divorce, same sex marriage and reform of abortion laws. The country which has a large demographic of young, well-educated, and now fairly secular people is really a very attractive destination for many international countries to set up their EU headquarters, and consequently it has a very high standard of living and high GDP.