Determinants of attitudes held by Irish catholic and protestant women towards gender roles, maternal employment and social perceptions of women in Irish society

Abstract

This paper is drawn from my doctoral thesis, which analyses similarities and differences in the social and religious attitudes of modern Catholic and Protestant (Church of Ireland) women in the Republic of Ireland. My work is new in that it studies the attitudes of a female sample that is stratified according to religious tradition (Catholic/Protestant). The sample is also stratified by age (21–46/47–70 years) and location (rural/urban). Irish sociological and feminist scholarship has produced diverse work concerning many facets of Irish women's lives, but little research has specifically focused on the attitudes of Irish Protestant and Catholic women as distinct groups. Qualitative and quantitative questionnaires were used to study the social and religious attitudes of respondents living in 12 counties throughout the Republic of Ireland. Twelve distinct attitudinal factors emerged from factor analysis. Themes contained in these factors included: 1. •Perception's of social attitudes to women in Irish society 2. •Attitudes to Article 41.2.1/2 of the 1937 Constitution1 3. •Attitudes to maternal employment 4. •Perception of the role of the Catholic/Protestant churches in women's lives 5. •Religiosity 6. •Attitudes to majority Catholic/minority Protestant status 7. •Attitudes toward women clergy 8. •Attitudes to moral issues (divorce and abortion) 9. •Attitudes to Church influence in moral issues The emergence of these factors are a significant contribution to sociological and feminist research because they have not previously been specifically researched from the perspective of Catholic and Protestant women. The effects of religion, age and location on the 12 factors were then examined by means of analysis of variance, which identified those variables having significant main effects and interaction effects on respondent attitudes. Results emerging from percentage distributions and analysis of variance are presented for respondent attitudes to gender roles, maternal employment and perceptions of social attitudes towards women in Irish society.