Women in 20th century Ireland

Women in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland

Early decades

Women as second-class citizen
  • Women => second-class citizen
  • Could not vote in general elections
  • Education was limited
  • Expected to marry and have children
  • Depended on husband   * Husband => breadwinner

Women at work

Married women

  • Married women usually had to give up their jobs

  • Better off women => did not work and supervised servants and children

  • Poorer women => had to work to support families   * House cleaners   * Street traders   * Factory work => earned less than men for doing the same work

Women in rural areas
  • Women did outdoor work and house work   * Milking cows   * Feeding poultry   * Selling eggs
Single women
  • Domestic servants: maids
  • 1911 => 1 in 3 working women was a servant
  • Many young women emigrated for better wages, city life and freedom
No changes for women
  • After Ireland got it’s independence in 1922, the situation for women in the south stayed nearly the same until the 1960s
  • Women had unskilled and low-paying jobs
  • Many young women emigrated
More women at work => 1960s
  • More women went to work outside the home
  • Married women kept their jobs
  • Women started office jobs, teaching and nursing
  • Women used birth control to have smaller families
  • Many women still had part-time jobs

Women in education

  • In the early 20th century => women role in education =>limited
  • Changes started occurring:   * More women were continuing school   * 10% of colleges were women
  • In the late 20th century:   * Numbers of men and women in college were equal   * Women could get better professions because of education

Women and Politics

Votes for women

  • At the beginning of the 20th century women could vote or be elected to parliament
  • Some women campaigned to get votes => franchise or suffrage
  • Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington => founded Irish Women’s Franchise League in 1908
  • Redmond and Carson => unionists => opposed votes for women
  • Ulster unionists committed themselves to giving votes to women if they set up a Provisional Government

Women during WWI

  • Women took men’s jobs while men were out at war
  • Irish women over the age of 30 got the vote in 1918 because of the role of women during WWI

Women in the Independence movement

  • Cumann na mBan => assist in arming and equipping a body of Irishmen for the defence of Ireland
  • Countess Markievics   * Active member in the Irish Citizen Army and Sinn FĂ©in   * Member of Cumann na mBan   * Sentenced to death during the 1916 rising => was not executed because she was a woman   * First woman to be elected to parliament in 1918 => refused to take her seat because she was a Sinn FĂ©in TD => abstained

A conservative society

Women over the age of 21 got the vote in 1922

  • Men thought a woman’s place was in the home
  • Divorce and contraception were banned
  • Marriage bar brought in in 1932 => women had to give up jobs when they got married

Turning point => 1960s onwards

  • Girls had greater access to education
  • Ideas from abroad influenced life in Ireland => America
  • Growing economy => more job opportunities
  • Ireland joined UN in 1955 and the EEC in 1973 => forced to bring in laws that eliminated inequality
  • Employment Equality Act 1977
Irish Women’s Liberation Movement => IWLM

  • Inspired by America

  • Founded in Dublin in 1970

  • Chains or change => 1971

  • Appeared on the Late Late Show

  • Contraceptive train to Belfast

Women in the politics

In the South
  • More women became involved in politics => women became government ministers
  • Mary Harney => first woman leader of a modern Irish political party
  • Mary Robinson => first female president => 1990
  • Mary McAleese succeeded Robinson

Problems at the end of the 20th century

  • Women were still exploited in advertising
  • Still a pay gap
  • Still a gap in numbers of males and females in management positions

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