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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.

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.