Women & Feminism
This section with relate to the role of women in Ireland's history and those who battled for their equality.
Speech written by Countess Markievicz in 1909. "The first step on the road to freedom is to realise ourselves as Irishwomen - not as Irish or merely as women, but as Irishwomen doubly enslaved and with a double battle to fight."
A searchable database containing descriptions of over 14,000 collections and sources held in over 420 public and private repositories in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland relating to the history of women in Ireland from the earliest times to the present.
Peig Sayers (1873–1958) was an Irish author and seanachaà born in Dunquin (Dún Chaoin), County Kerry, Ireland. Seán Ó Súilleabháin, the former archivist for the Irish Folklore Commission, described her as "one of the greatest woman storytellers of recent times".
Founded in 1989, the aim of the WHAI is to promote research into the history of women in Ireland. The WHAI sponsors an annual conference and circulates regular news bulletins to members about upcoming publications, conferences, seminars and other events related to the field of women’s history.
The following records of young girls sent to Australia between October, 1848 and August, 1850, are taken from Irish Famine Orphans in Australia by Valda Strauss, published 1993 in Volume 11 of the Mallow Field Club Journal.
"Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1944. Her father was a diplomat and her mother was an expressionist painter. At the age of six, Boland and her family relocated to London, where she first encountered anti-Irish sentiment. She later returned to Dublin for school, and she received her B.A. from Trinity College in 1966. She was also educated in London and New York."
The National Traveller Women's Forum (NTWF) is the national network of Traveller women and Traveller women's organisations from throughout Ireland.
The programme builds on a long-established tradition of Women's Studies at NUIG.
Irish women and children were prisoners on the convict ship the John Calvin. They had been sentenced to seven years transportation and imprisonment in Australia in 1848.
The Rose of Tralee International Festival is one of Ireland's largest and longest running festivals, celebrating 50 years in 2009.
Grace Eveleen Gifford was born March 4, 1888 at her family home in Rathmines, an affluent Dublin suburb.
The Federation aims to encourage and promote research in all aspects of women's and gender history at the international level.
IWF members worldwide are women of significant and diverse achievement who come together across national and international boundaries to share knowledge, experience and ideas, and to provide a network of support.
ICA members meet in local groups across the country, almost 700 Guilds each of which offers a varied programmes of activity including trips and visits, crafts and art, interesting speakers, competitions and a whole lot more.
Gender & History is now established as the major international journal for research and writing on the history of femininity and masculinity and of gender relations.
This website was created by a collective of postgraduate students researching and/or passionate about the history of feminism.
H-Women is free and open to everyone with a mature and abiding interest in the history of women, especially scholars, teachers and librarians.
The Journal of Women's History is the first journal devoted exclusively to the international field of women's history.
In 1973 a group of feminists, chaired by Hilda Tweedy of the Irish Countrywomen's Association, set up the Council for the Status of Women, with the goal of gaining equality for women.
Emerging as a challenge to academia in the late 1960s, gender studies is now a well-established interdisciplinary field of study, which examines issues of power and gender relations in society.
The Centre for Women's Studies was established in Trinity College in July, 1988
Sli Na mBan is the result of a video and internet documentary project which began in Ireland in 1998 and featured interviews with Irish women activists.
She was a female-warrior and a sorceress from Ireland who lived in Scotland with other Druidesses.
Discovering Women in Irish History is a programme designed to make the history of women in Ireland more accessible, interesting and attractive to Transition Year and other Senior Cycle students in post primary schools in Ireland.
Emigration has been a feature of Irish life for the last two centuries. Much has been written on the topic, but until the last decade this has focused on either men, or alternatively has examined emigrant groups as one homogenous unit, regardless of the gender make up of the group.
Here are links to more than 900 women's/gender/feminist studies programs, departments, and research centers around the world that have web sites.
For anyone with a passion for researching, writing, reading and sharing women’s history.
The HEA Women in Irish Society Project is based on a collaborative relationship between the Departments of English, Sociology, and Applied Social Studies at NUI Cork. The three interactive research projects seek to illuminate the transformation of women's lives in Irish society over time and place, through literary, sociological and applied social research.
Irish historian, author, broadcaster, script writer, historical and picture researcher and exhibition curator Sinéad McCoole is currently working on a book on the widows of the men executed in the 1916 Rising, the working title is Easter Widows.
The following is an extract from Professor Brendan Kennelly's introduction to a book of which he was an editor. The Book is 'Ireland's Women. Writings Past and Present', dedicated to President Mary Robinson.
The first step on the road to freedom is to realise ourselves as Irishwomen - not as Irish or merely as women, but as Irishwomen doubly enslaved and with a double battle to fight.
Mary Eva Kelly was born in Headford, County Galway about the year 1825, and was little more than a child when she began to write verse. She was educated at home by her mother and a governess.
How did the Dublin citizen of the 18th century made his or her debut in this city of ours?
At the height of World War 1 over 375,000 letters were being processed a day and 12.5 million letters left the British home depot every week. During the First World War letters to and from the front served an extremely important purpose. Letters were one of the sole comforts a soldier at the front could count on and their replies reassured those waiting at home that their loved ones were safe and well. Marie Martin and her family were no exception.