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Talking to women about the differences between their own lives and those of their mothers or daughters, two main themes emerge. The first is the enormous change in living standards over just one generation, and how women’s day-to-day work has been transformed by hot water, electricity and modern housing. The second theme concerns a change in women’s perceptions of themselves; a noticeable shift towards a stronger sense of identity, towards women actively choosing their way of life rather than simply accepting a predestined role. As one woman put it, her teenage daughter is ‘what I wish women would be and what I should have been at her age — an independent individual’. Another woman, Tracy, reflects on her mother’s life, saying that her mother would never have considered the idea of looking at herself and asking if she had what she wanted in life: Sometimes I feel like saying to her, ‘Are you happy? Are you really doing what you want?’ She would probably say ‘yes’, but I don’t think the idea of questioning it would have been a part of how she approached things. It’s possibly religion — her life has been guided very strongly by it so the need to ask questions was never there.

The past twenty-five years have been a period of rapid change for women in Ireland. As Irish society has industrialised and urbanised, and as traditional values and ways have been challenged and questioned, every aspect of women’s lives has been subject to scrutiny and change. Previous chapters have outlined the main developments. We have seen how women’s roles in the countryside were transformed by the decline in farming as a way of life and its replacement by an urban-based culture. As housing improved and living standards rose, the worst aspects of poverty were alleviated but an increase in material possessions meant more housework for women at home. The farmer’s wife became a housewife, and women’s lives in the countryside became more like those in the towns. Another effect of the economic changes in rural areas was the replacement of arranged marriages with modern marriage, based on a love-relationship. Also, family size began to fall, so that the average number of years women spent as full-time mothers decreased steadily. One result of this, coupled with the growth of new industries, was that the number of married women going out to work tripled between the early 1960s and 1980. Women no longer had to leave their jobs on marriage, and the advent of maternity leave made it possible for some women to combine a job with motherhood, though there were still many problems about doing this, especially while the children were small.

It is not easy to write about women and work in the 1980s. The themes of equal pay, equal opportunities and women’s rights at work are so well-worn they are almost cliches. Surely we have heard that before? Didn’t women get equality years ago? What more do they want? The unfortunate truth is that although women workers did win significant advances in the 1970s, these advances were limited, and are now being undermined by the economic recession of the early 1980s. Women have equality on paper, not in practice.

The headline in the Irish Times read as follows: ‘Contraceptive Campaign Set Up’. The date was not, as one might expect, in the mid-1960s, but in March 1984.1 Contraception is still a live issue in Ireland. In spite of the changes of the 1970s, the pill and other forms of artificial birth control are not readily available to everyone who wants them. Unlike most other European countries, in which campaigns for birth control started up to sixty years ago, it is only in the past fifteen years that contraception has been discussed openly in Ireland. Before that time it was a taboo subject, part of the misty area of sexuality which was private, unspeakable, tinged with sin.

‘People ask me how I can be a feminist and a Roman Catholic. While I recognise it would appear to be a contradiction, it is not a contradiction for me.’ Sr Maria has been a nun for twenty-five years and is in no doubt about where she stands: I see myself as a woman of the twentieth century, also as a woman who happens to be a Christian. I like to think I am in tune with life around me. As sisters I think we have a great desire to be accepted as women who are struggling to find our own identity within the Church, just as other women are struggling to find their own identity in society. The Church is certainly one of the last bastions of sexism in the world, but things are beginning to happen that are good.

In arranged marriages the relationship between husband and wife was the least important part of the partnership. Marriage was primarily an economic contract which served the needs of farmers and fitted in with the political ideology of the self-sufficient state based on family units. After a match was made, people hoped the marriage would ‘take’. If it did not, the couple had little choice but to stay together anyway. For better or for worse, the permanence of marriage was part of the contract. Women were expected to accept their husbands whether they loved or battered them, whether they treated them well or drank the family into poverty.

Josie, Maeve and Joan are in their second year in a convent secondary school. The reputation of the school is generally good, and local people believe that it provides a sound academic education for its pupils. But how sex-stereotyped are the teachers’ expectations of the girls? How broadly-based is the curriculum? Does the school equip girls for living and working in the 1980s? Even a superficial glance reveals some worrying features. Pupils must choose in their first term between domestic science and science, so a proportion of girls go right through secondary education without having studied any science at all. Technical and mechanical subjects are not available. No computing skills are taught, except for an introductory course in Leaving-Certificate year. A significant proportion of the staff hold old-fashioned views about the appropriate jobs and roles for women in society. The school is probably fairly typical, providing the kind of education thought to be suitable for girls.

The system of marriage and family life which had dominated the post-famine countryside was transformed by changes in the rural economy. Rural life changed significantly as a result of the decline in traditional farming throughout the 1940s and 1950s and the policies of economic development initiated by the government in the early 1960s. When Damien Hannon and Louise Katsiaouni interviewed 400 farming families in the 1970s they found a great mixture of family ‘styles’. One household might consist of a traditionally patriarchal family in which the father made all the decisions and was never seen cooking or putting the children to bed. Next door might be a farm of the same size where the husband and wife had a mutually supportive relationship and made decisions together. Overall they found that only one in three families conformed to the traditional model of the rural family. Between a quarter and a third of the families had a more ‘modern’ pattern of joint decision-making, some sharing of household and child-care tasks and a more open emotional relationship. The remaining families showed a variety of intermediate patterns. A particularly interesting finding of the study was a large variation in the wives’ satisfaction with their husband’s role. The results were a big ‘thumbs down’ to traditional marriage. Half the wives in this situation were dissatisfied, compared with only one in eight of the ‘modern’ wives.1

The women’s movement has, from the start, campaigned for every woman’s right to define her own sexuality and make choices about her own body. A woman’s sexuality is part of her self. She cannot accept herself fully, cannot feel positive and loving and confident in herself, unless she accepts her body and feels in control of it. One essential aspect of this is fertility control