The Politics of Gender in the Irish Free State, 1922–1937

Abstract

This article analyses the construction of gender roles in the independent Irish Free State of the 1920s and 1930s. It focuses on the discrepancy between the fluid nature of gender roles in the revolutionary period and the very rigid traditional gender roles that emerged in the post-revolutionary period. During the revolutionary period, there were the alternative gender roles of the male rebel hero and the female citizen/comrade-in-arms. After the revolution, the traditional gender roles of male as paterfamilias and woman as homemaker returned in a rather rigid and uncompromising manner. While the Irish example follows the general experience documented in women's history of the opening of gender roles during periods of turmoil and then their closing up again, this article will explore the particular circumstances that allowed the retraction and contraction of gender roles in so complete and absolute a manner in the Ireland of the 1920s and 1930s.

Notes

Bean na hÉireann, vol. 1, no. 9, July 1909.

Bean na hÉireann, Editorial, vol. 1, no. 3, January 1909.

Bean na hÉireann, vol. 1, no. 3, January 1909.

The most well-known expression of this view is by John Dillon of the Irish Parliamentary Party who was said to have proclaimed that the granting of suffrage to women would signal the downfall of western civilization. Margaret Ward (1997) Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (Cork: Attic Press), p. 49.

Quoted in Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, p. 58. This was part of an exchange between Hanna and the women of Inghinidhe na hÉireann as to the views of Sinn Fein. See, for example, Bean na hÉireann, vol. 1, nos 14 and 15 for a reply to Hanna's arguments.

Anne Marreco (1967) The Rebel Countess (Philadelphia, Chilton Books), p. 113.

The Fianna Handbook, issued by the Central Council of Na Fianna Éireann for the Boy Scouts of Ireland, 1914, Introduction, p. 8. National Library of Ireland, A2729.

Ibid., p. 13.

Ibid., p. 14.

Marreco, The Rebel Countess, pp. 117–118.

Quoted in Dermot Ferriter (2004) The Transformation of Ireland, 1900–2000 (London: Profile Books), p. 176. Ferriter agrees with my interpretation when he calls Hanna Sheehy Skeffington's observation ‘strikingly accurate’.

Ibid., p. 269.

Joseph A. Kestner (1995) Masculinities in Victorian Painting (Aldershot: Scolar Press), p. 141.

Annie M. P. Smithson (reissued 1968) The Walk of a Queen (Cork: Mercier Press), p. 6.

John P. McCarthy (2006) Kevin O'Higgins: builder of the Irish State (Dublin, Irish Academic Press), p. 108.

The government introduced a series of measures which deprived women of political and economic rights: the Juries Acts of 1924 and 1927; the Civil Service (Amendment) Act of 1925; and the 1935 Conditions of Employment Act. For a fuller discussion of these acts, see Maryann M. Valiulis (1995) Gender, Power and Identity in the Irish Free State, Journal of Women's History, 6(4)/7(1), pp. 117–136; Maryann M. Valiulis (1995) Neither Feminist nor Flapper: the ecclesiastical construction of the ideal Irish woman, in Mary O'Dowd & Sabine Wichert (Eds) Chattel, Servant or Citizen: women's status in church, state and society (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University of Belfast); Maryann M. Valiulis (1992) Defining Their Role in the New State: Irishwomen's protest against the Juries Act of 1927, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 18(1), pp. 43–60.

Quoted in McCarthy, Kevin O'Higgins, p. 86.

Ibid., p. 92.

See W. F. Mandel (1983) The Gaelic Athletic Association and Popular Culture, 1884–1924, in O. MacDonagh, W. F. Mandle, P. Travers (Eds) Irish Culture and Nationalism, 1750–1950 (London: Macmillan), p. 53.

Rev. R. S. Devane, S.J. (1924) The Unmarried Mother—Some Legal Aspects of the Problem, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, January, pp. 55–68.

Among those who dissented were feminists, liberals, single mothers, lesbians, to name but a few groups who refused to accept the strict traditional model.

The Fianna Handbook.

Letter to Archbishop Edward Byrne from Joseph A. Glynne, B.L. Kt. (Chairman) et al. (n.d.) Correspondence of Archbishop Byrne and the Formation of the Boy Scouts, Archbishop Byrnes' Papers, Dublin Diocesan Archives.

Ibid.

Ibid.

The Irish Press, 27 June 1932.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maryann Gialanella Valiulis

Dr Maryann Gialanella Valiulis is Director of the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. Trained as a historian, she is the author of numerous works in both traditional and women's history, concentrating on the independence period in modern Irish history. She is completing a book on gender relations in independent Ireland entitled ‘Refashioning the Nation with Virtue: gender politics in the Irish Free State, 1922–1937’. Dr Valiulis was President of the Women's History Association, Ireland, 2007–2011.