How can researching the lives of older women in Ireland help us to understand the long-term impact of gender inequality across the life course? by Helena Gallagher

Degree programme: Social Policy and Sociology

Year of study: Second Year

Introduction

Researching the lives of older women in Ireland has brought us to a better understanding of how women’s experience of gender inequality began, what institutions allowed and encouraged it, and how it continues to affect them as they grow older. Calasanti et al (2006, p. 13) point to the neglect of older women in literature and the neglect from feminist scholars: ‘feminist scholars have given little attention to either old women or aging’ highlighting how older women have not been prioritised within the understanding of feminism. A striking example of this is highlighted by Cruikshank (2009, p 188) as she notes that ‘geron’ as part of ‘gerontology’ comes from the Greek word ‘old man’, and therefore gerontology is based on old men. Countering this, Cruikshank (2009) proposes ‘gerastology’, the study of older women from a feminist perspective. Therefore, this essay will reflect the importance of gerastology as I will examine how different powerful elements in society, one being Irish culture and the influence of the Catholic Church, have had a long-lasting impact on women in Ireland. Older women in Ireland have witnessed and experienced major societal changes, such as the Magdalene Laundries (Williams, 2022), Mother and Baby Homes (Gallen, 2022), and the Marriage Bar (Foley, 2022), and therefore, it is vital for our understanding of gender inequality in Ireland that we investigate the life experiences of older women.

Irish Culture, Religion, and the Construction of Gender Inequality

Firstly, to understand the importance of researching older Irish women, it is essential to explore the control Irish culture has on women in Irish society. Factors such as the relationship between the church and state are integral to understanding the impact of gender inequality on women as they grow older. In fact, a significant part of Irish culture is founded upon and has its roots in the relationship between church and state: just as Foley (2022) connects ‘patriarchal government and religious hierarchy’. This pairing is not a coincidence: the weaving of Catholic social values into the workings of society was easily and unquestionably motioned by the Catholic Church as the church played a significant role in the lives of Irish people. Not only acting as a ‘defining element of Irish national identity’, but the Catholic Church also acted as a welfare system until the Social Welfare Act was established in 1952 (JCFJ, 2021; ISB, n.d.). Therefore, the Catholic Church acted as a ruling body until the first Dáil was started in 1919 (gov.ie, 2023). Thus, it is unsurprising that the Irish Government shared many values with the church. For example, the similarities between church and state principles are reflected in the 1931 Papal Encyclical, ‘Quadragesimo Anno’, who supported the ‘single living wage’ which outlined that ‘the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family’ which reaffirmed the patriarchal ideologies already at play in society (Foley, 2022). In 1937, then, the Irish Constitution was established which included Article 41.2: ‘the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved’ and continues to elaborate that mothers shall not neglect their role within the home for their own economic pursuit (Visser, 2018, p. 4).  The Irish Constitution represented the standpoint of Irish people and Irish culture at the time: it was crafted in an oppressive period for women, and therefore, the law reflects the societal views and agreements at that time. Fischer (2016) highlights this as she questions: ‘how has women’s virtue become entangled in ideas of nationhood and national identity’ (p. 821). Therefore, this begins to illustrate how Irish culture socio-economically disadvantages women as it blurs the lines between, the institutions of church and state. Furthermore, understanding that women were facing oppression from both church and state means that these issues and experiences can be better prevented for women in the future and across their life-course.

The Marriage Bar and Women’s Lifelong Economic Disadvantage

In Ireland, a Marriage Bar was created by the government in 1924, created to disadvantage, and specifically deter married women from working. In other words, from 1924 until 1973, when the bar was ceased, during this time Irish women were forced into being housewives. Again, the hand-in-hand relationship of church and state was reflected with the Marriage Bar and the support given from Catholic organisations such as the Sacred Heart Messenger and their 1943 pamphlet that wrote ‘For those of you who marry, your job (but not your work) will, or should, end on your wedding day’ (Foley, 2022). This statement by the religious organisation came almost 20 years after the Marriage Bar had begun, showcasing that the strong discouragement of women from work was an established norm and expectation in society. After power was transferred from Britain to Ireland, the Minister for Finance initiated a ban preventing women working in the civil service after they got married – another, example of the disadvantage’s women had opposed onto them. The Minister, Ernest Blythe, ensured that married women who worked in the civil service would receive a pay decrease compared to single men, married men, and single women (Foley, 2022). The Conditions of Employment Act 1936 outlined, for example, that an employer must not employ more women than men. This further proves that this norm was concrete and was spilling into different institutions in Irish society (ISB, n.d.). This legislation was particularly limiting towards women, and extensively so: the ban applied to both private and public, manual and non-manual jobs, and especially to women in clerical and skilled jobs who had gained higher-education qualifications (Foley, 2022). Therefore, this meant that women were consequently forced into housewifery – we can see this in Kennedy’s Housewife of the Year competition, which ran in Ireland from 1969 until 1995 (IFI, 2024).

Long-Term Economic Consequences in Later Life

Yet, it must be emphasised that the marriage ban continued to impact women in later life. For example, one significant aspect is financial security: Bourke (1990) writes that ‘single women frequently transferred their shares to their husband after marriage’, and with the law ensuring that they had no financial autonomy, women in Ireland were left financially unstable. This crucially affects them in later life as they will unlikely qualify for a pension; Foley (2022) found that in 2011, up to 57,000 women in Ireland did not qualify for a full state pension due to being victims of the marriage bar. Additionally, as well as being financially burdened, women carry the same responsibilities from their adult stages of life to the older stages: for example, women are more likely to be unpaid caregivers when they are older for their grandchildren, parents or non-relatives (ONS, 2019). Furthermore, if Irish women were to suffer from bereavement or domestic violence, they would be left financially unstable with no pension and no personal savings to support themselves with.

Why Researching Older Women Matters

Therefore, while Clear (1997) argues that claims of women being oppressed and subordinated under patriarchal authority are selective ‘over-simplifications’, evidently women were affected during the marriage bar and throughout their life thereafter. Hence, more research into the lives of older women in Ireland is essential to understanding their lifelong struggle. With the rise of traditionalism and ‘trad wives’ on online platforms (Zahay, 2022), awareness of these experiences and their effects can help prevent our society from developing backwards and retreating back to these norms.

Ageing, Gender, and the Double Standard of Ageing

Carney (2017) has quoted Harper (2016, cited in Carney, 2017, p. 243) as she claims that ‘gender relations can and do shape demographic trends’: not only is this apparent in the unpaid caring roles forementioned, but also in terms of the standards placed upon women. Just as Carney and Nash (2020, p.198) explain that ‘generations are connected to time and social structure’, Jen et al (2020, p.764) find after interviewing women in qualitative research that many women wondered ‘what ‘might have been’’ had participants aged in a different time period.  Across the different age demographics, women’s appearance is picked a part, but more specifically, as they age, women suffer from the ‘double standard of ageing’ which ‘denounces women with a special severity’ (Sontag, 1972, p. 8). This intersectional concept links to what Calasanti et al (2006, p. 15) refer to as they coin the term ‘successful ageing’: ‘successful ageing assumes a ‘feminine’ aspect in the ideal that the good, elderly woman be healthy, slim, discreetly sexy, and independent’.

As women grow older, there is less pressure from the ‘gaze of youth’ and the ‘male gaze’ which in turn means ‘women grow invisible as sexual beings through the aging process’ (Calasanti et al, 2006, p.21). This is strongly supported by Cruikshank (2009) as she outlines that aging is socially constructed through being medicalized, stereotyped and stripped of class and ethnicity, for example. In fact, Calasanti (2006, p. 14) writes that through this double standard in the ageing process, women endure a ‘humiliating process of gradual sexual disqualification’; this can be traced back to the sexualisation of women’s bodies (Davis, 2018) and potentially how for decades in Ireland, women’s main role in the family and in society was to be sexually active and have children. It could also be traced back to the norms and values ‘formulated by powerful forces’ such as the Irish Catholic Church as Meehan (2023) finds. Therefore, this illustrates the life-long impact gender inequality has on women in Ireland, and how it affects women throughout all stages of their lives.

Bodily Autonomy, Institutional Control, and Women’s Experiences

This also hints at women’s lack of bodily autonomy which spans across different categories: how their bodies are perceived and commented on, their right to abortion and contraception and their lack of freedom to leave institutions such as Mother and Baby Homes. These genres reflect the deep-rooted gender inequality which is active in different institutions in society: hence more research is needed to better understand the struggle of women in Ireland and to prevent women of this generation and generations in the future experiencing the same oppression and inequality. Within the duration of the Housewife of the Year Competition, some women spoke of the issues and impacts associated with the Mother and Baby Homes, for example, such as Ena Howell, who was born in one of the homes (The Journal, 2024). Additionally, the Housewife of the Year Competition captured the turning point in Irish society when the conversation began regarding women’s freedom and autonomy, which was often instrumented by the presenter of the nationally televised programme, Gay Byrne, who was known to mention taboo topics such as contraception and divorce on his programme, ‘The Late Late Show’ (Houghton-Boyle, 2024). Throughout the competition, other major societal issues were referenced: the Magdalene Laundries and the Mother and Baby Homes, as Foucault notes (2001, p. 35, cited in Fischer, 2016), this was the era of ‘the great confinement’.

These institutions were an environment for psychological and sometimes physical abuse (Williams, 2022), and out of the institutions that were investigated, about 9,000 children died overall (Gallen, 2022). As well as this, just as Fischer (2016) notes, the Magdalene Laundries helped maintain gender role norms: while at this point, England was beginning to recognise women had an economic potential, in Ireland, women’s worth was measured by the amount and quality of unpaid labour she provided in the home as a wife and mother. Gallen (2022, pp.114-115) concludes that these institutions were ‘profound, widespread and systemic’ and demands for a ‘comprehensive and transitional justice approach’ to support survivors and to help them heal from their past.

Women’s Labour and the Transformation of Ireland’s Domestic Economy

As part of our understanding of women’s experience of long-term gender inequality in Ireland, it is also essential to include the effect the industrialisation of food, agriculture and the professionalisation of cookery had on the transformation of the domestic economy and with it, the continued oppression of women. Historically, women were heavily involved in Ireland’s economy, as the main labour force behind the dairy industry (Bourke, 1990): for example, in the 19^th century, dairy work was women-dominated, but because of sexist views on a governmental, societal level as forementioned, such as the Irish Constitution, by the end of World War One, the agriculture and dairy industry was taken over by men and started to become industrialised. For instance, the milking sector historically was done manually by women, until men replaced women in the industry and established large-scale creameries (Bourke, 1990). Worth (2022) notes, while healthcare was becoming a universal right in post-war UK, Ireland was backtracking and pushing women out of work: an equally important right. After managerial positions were filled by men, women started to be pushed out of employment in the dairy industry: through the industrialisation of creameries, the replacement of women in a originally matriarchal industry of milking, policies ensuring women received less decent working hours, and changes to the female-work schemes to eliminate dairy industry work and focus on housewifery and training to be ‘skilled farm-wives’, women had no other choice but to become housewives (Bourke, 1990).

 Duggan (1987) notes that in ‘in 1955, the official publication of the ICMSA had addressed women as serious and important contributors to rural life’, which was certainly the case since they were behind the production lines of Ireland’s dairy products, acting as the backbone of Ireland’s domestic economy. Yet, by 1870, the ICMSA ‘treated women as unproductive, passive contributors’ (p. 66), writing as though it was women’s choice to be pushed out of work.

Therefore, after the dairy industry became male-dominated, ‘women were to be trained as skilled farmwives’ (Bourke, 1990, p. 159), which only further cemented gender roles and gender norms in Irish society. Similarly, Kane (1973, cited in Duggan, 1987, p. 56) notes ‘men will have no part in women’s work: masculinity is defined not by what a man does as much as by what he does nit, and the tabooed area includes the whole range of women’s work’. This clearly deepens the divide between women and their roles and position in society from men and allowed them to be further ostracised.

Pressure from norms such as how ‘the success of the farm depended on the housekeeping skills of farm women’ (Bourke, 1990, p. 162) helped ensure Irish women either emigrated or found themselves working as housewives. Furthermore, women’s role in Ireland’s domestic economy changed from being active contributors to passive consumers through the coercive actions of the government and wider Irish society.

Conclusion

the research into women’s inequality across their life course is essential to the understanding of feminism, and therefore, its application so that gender inequality can be prevented. This essay has explored the impact of inequality on women and their financial security, their social status and their bodily autonomy, which, if changed on a societal and individual level, could change the long-term impact of gender inequality for women across all stages of their life-course.

References List

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Sontag, S. (1972) ‘The Double Standard of Ageing by Susan Sontag’, pp.29-38. Accessed on 07/04/2025                                               

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