Covering over 400 years of history, this book explores the working experiences of Irish women, covering business, education, medicine, prison, and child care, among other broad topics. The mostly Irish scholars contributing to this collection offer articles such as a case study of women in business

At the heart of this book is an exploration of how women negotiated their identities as workers and the very real challenges of accessing and remaining in the workplace in a sociocultural context that encouraged home-based marriage and motherhood as primary roles for women. The obstacles women encountered in relation to employment in terms of limited access to education, restricted employment opportunities and profound gender discrimination are revealed. So too are the ways in which women resisted, challenged and negotiated the limited roles prescribed during these decades. --Book Jacket.

The first general survey of the history of women in early modern Ireland. Based on an impressive range of source material, it presents the results of original research into women’s lives and experiences in Ireland from 1500 to 1800. This was a time of considerable change in Ireland as English colonisation, religious reform and urbanisation transformed society on the island. Gaelic society based on dynastic lordships and Brehon Law gave way to an anglicised and centralised form of government and an English legal system.

This is the first book-length study of the impact of the Great War on women's everyday lives in Ireland, focussing on the years of the war and its immediate aftermath. Fionnuala Walsh demonstrates how Irish women threw themselves into the war effort, mobilising in various different forms, such as nursing wounded soldiers, preparing hospital supplies and parcels of comforts, undertaking auxiliary military roles in port areas or behind the lines, and producing weapons of war. However, the war's impact was also felt beyond direct mobilisation, affecting women's household management, family relations, standard of living, and work conditions and opportunities. Drawing on extensive research in archives in Ireland and Britain, Walsh brings women's wartime experience out of the historical shadow and examines welfare and domestic life, bereavement, social morality, employment, war service, politicisation, and demobilisation to challenge ideas of emancipation and reflect upon the significant impact of the Great War on Irish society.

At the turn of the twentieth century women played a key role in debates about the nature of the Irish nation. Examining women's participation in nationalist and rural reform groups, this book is an important contribution to our understanding of Irish identity in the prelude to revolution and how it was shaped by women.