The "drastic" impact of two historical events - the Famine and the birth of the Republic - on the status of Irish women was the theme of International Women's Day celebrations in Moygownagh, Co Mayo, last night. Ms Florence Craven, a research student at Trinity College, Dublin, told the Women of the North-West organisation that spinning and tillage-farming before 1841 had enabled women to earn some income, but those activities diminished after the Famine.
When the potato failed, women were compelled to devote more time to household hygiene and the preparation of alternative diets, she said. At the same time, the Catholic Church was becoming more dominant, promoting the cult of the Virgin Mary as the patriarchal idea of the submissive woman, she said, which influenced the education of girls.
In spite of this, women became more politically assertive again in the early part of this century.
The second setback was de Valera's Constitution, which left women in no doubt about their appointed position as home-makers and mothers, she said. The efforts of Cumann na mBan to advance the nationalist cause were forgotten and the Constitution was to have enduring repercussions for women in terms of the social attitudes towards them.