The emergence of a "new right" in Irish society - so striking after the Budget - may make some women feel they are going backwards. Even more so, on reading two Galway-based historians' accounts of women's activity in public life earlier this century.
Mary Clancy, who is pursuing a doctorate at Trinity College, Dublin, doesn't want to draw too many conclusions at this stage. However, from her studies to date on the role of women in local government between 1896 and 1925, many female candidates made an indelible mark.
Sarah Henrietta Persse, Lady Sophia Grattan-Bellew, Monica McDonagh, Edith Drury, Eibhlin Costello, Edith Young . . . these are just some of the names she has come across. While Persse and Grattan-Bellew belonged to a particular Protestant and unionist constituency, others did not share that background.
Interestingly, with the exception of the suffragist Edith Young, who was president of the Connacht Women's Franchise League, most of the women elected at local level after 1920 were associated with Sinn Fein.
The introduction of two measures at the end of the last century, under pressure from suffragists, enabled women to enter local politics, says Ms Clancy. These measures were the Women's Poor Law Guardians Act, 1896, and the relevant sections of the Local Government Act, 1898.
The revolutionary impact of this franchise has been overlooked in the focus on awarding females a vote at parliamentary level two decades later.
Although some 120 of the 159 poor law unions throughout the country did not initially return females, Galway did. From 1905 to 1925, some 13 women were elected. Once returned, many of these women were very able performers, she notes. "They regularly attended meetings, moved motions, were elected to sub-committees and to positions of power. As the provisions of the act facilitated the election of women, so too, more informally, did the structure of the system in practice. Meetings were so poorly attended that those present had a disproportionate level of influence." When it came to charges of corruption, bribery and patronage, which surfaced from time to time, it appears that women were "above board"; even though it was difficult for anyone, male or female, to escape contact, given the family and friendship networks that tended to dominate local administration, she notes.
Ms Clancy's work, which was the subject of a lecture at a seminar on local government hosted by Galway County Council and NUI Galway earlier this year, complements a study undertaken by Maureen Langan-Egan, just published in paperback.
Entitled Galway Women in the Nineteenth Century, the book examines how women coped with endemic poverty, unemployment, emigration and famine, and describes a society in transition.
She charts how the lot of women generally fell from 1815 to 1900, and how marriage was the only real badge of status.
Among the very poor, the position of the unmarried mother was the most difficult, she says. Whereas the general attitude of society towards them was one of scorn and derision, no such stigma was attached to the unmarried father.
In examining some of the many reasons for women's impaired position in Irish society during this period, she notes that the churches have received much of the blame. However, "even without church influence, the Irish fiercely believed in a world where gender differences gave order, balance and rationality to human relations", she writes.
"The attitudes of the churches merely reinforced the current views of the Irish on society, rather than initiated this point of view."
Galway Women in the Nineteenth Century by Maureen Langan-Egan is published by Four Courts Press at £14.95.