A Woman’s Place is the story of women’s life in the home, which for many involved dependency. The Irish Revolution promised equality. However what many women experienced was containment. Their home was where their father lived, or their husband, or with a religious order. If a woman didn’t marry and became pregnant she could be placed in a mother and baby home or a Magdalene Laundry or an asylum. Or she could emigrate and find a home elsewhere. Why would a new country founded on a vision of equality create laws that benefitted men in the home but not women? Was the aim to preserve the physical State at all costs, even if that meant denying women full citizenship and the breaking of Proclamation promises?
A Woman’s Work is the story of women’s quest for social and economic freedom in Ireland over the 100 years since the vote. It tells the story of women who protested the marriage and promotion bars in the workplace, women who fought against laws giving husbands the sole right to the family home and women’s lack of independent social welfare entitlements, housing and pensions. It also charts the struggle women experience having their voices heard in the Dail and on juries. Despite the vote’s promise of freedom, women’s work outside the home was seen as contrary to the needs of the new Irish State. A Woman’s Work will look at how laws and historical attitudes to women’s economic independence created a culture that is still, in some cases, continuing today.
