The Politics of Gender in the Irish Free State, 1922–1937

Abstract

This article analyses the construction of gender roles in the independent Irish Free State of the 1920s and 1930s. It focuses on the discrepancy between the fluid nature of gender roles in the revolutionary period and the very rigid traditional gender roles that emerged in the post-revolutionary period. During the revolutionary period, there were the alternative gender roles of the male rebel hero and the female citizen/comrade-in-arms. After the revolution, the traditional gender roles of male as paterfamilias and woman as homemaker returned in a rather rigid and uncompromising manner. While the Irish example follows the general experience documented in women's history of the opening of gender roles during periods of turmoil and then their closing up again, this article will explore the particular circumstances that allowed the retraction and contraction of gender roles in so complete and absolute a manner in the Ireland of the 1920s and 1930s.