Women in Ireland 1900-2000

The 20th century was a time of extraordinary change for the women of Ireland. It began with a ferment of agitation for women’s rights and continued with the struggle for Home Rule, with women engaged on both sides during the Easter Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War. Remarkable women emerged from the maelstrom: Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Maud Gonne and Constance Markievicz. The eruption of civil conflict in the British-ruled North in 1969 again divided women among themselves, with Bernadette Devlin, Mariead Corrigan and Monica McWilliams representing different strands of the struggle. The new constitutional arrangements that emerged in the 1920s imposed constraints on women’s lives that would be constantly challenged in the decades that followed. Two world wars brought both privations and opportunities, but by the 1970s women’s rights were once more on the agenda in an unstoppable wave of feminism. Soon issues like equal pay, parliamentary representation, birth control, divorce, abortion, decent housing and domestic violence were being hotly debated and the old patriarchal systems of church and state began to lose their grip. By the century’s end the elections of Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese as Presidents of Ireland reflected the extent of the gender transformation which had taken place. Scholarly and passionate, this comprehensive survey is a celebration of the complexity and richness of Irish women’s experience and their role in shaping Ireland’s recent past.