Women In Ireland Research Articles

Religion and Diasporic Dwelling: Algerian Muslim Women in Ireland

This article will look at the different conceptions of ‘home’ as narrated by Algerian Muslim women living in Ireland. It explores the dynamic processes of their self-identification(s) and their different forms of (re)creation of diasporic home(s) influenced by their religious, cultural, social and economic environment. I will use Thomas A. Tweed’s notion of ‘crossing and dwelling’ to analyse these essentialized identity constructions that become manifest in Tweed’s four ‘chronotopes’: the gendered body, the domestic home, the imagined homeland and the transnational and global cosmos. The conscious or unconscious negotiations and implications for belonging to a specific identity or community that can be observed among Algerian women in Ireland will be examined, together with the different pre- and post-migratory social, political and religious factors that influence such negotiations. This ethnographic study is the first of its kind and fills a gap in the study of Muslim migrants in Europe.

Women of Ireland, from economic prosperity to austere times: who cares?

Economic prosperity during the Celtic Tiger stimulated the development of the job market, and drew migrants to Ireland especially from EU countries. Relationships between Irishwomen and female migrants in employment sectors reflected new social tensions and inequalities, both in the public and in the private spheres.

Dietary assessment of older and more educated pregnant women in Ireland during their third trimester

Dietary assessment of older and more educated pregnant women in Ireland during their third trimester

Perpetual loss and pervasive grief

Abstract The impact on daughters of the death of their mother in childhood has been little researched. This article reports a qualitative study of the experiences of women in Ireland who were bereaved of their mother in early life, and the lifelong impact of this loss. The death of their mothers had a profound impact throughout these women's childhoods and adult lives. The women described the silence surrounding the death, their hunger for information about their mother, their coping strategies, their yearning for a mother figure, particularly in adolescence and when they married and gave birth themselves, and the effects on their own parenting capacity. A strong theme was their wish to speak publicly about their experiences, in the hope that they could help other women bereaved of a mother in childhood, and inform and enlighten those in a position to make a difference to bereaved children's lives.

Introduction

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Margaret H. McFadden (1999) The Golden Cables of Sympathy: the transatlantic sources of nineteenth century feminism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky). Additional informationNotes on contributorsKrassimira DaskalovaKrassimira Daskalova is Associate Professor of Modern European Cultural History at St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. She is the author, editor and co-editor of fourteen volumes (in English, German and Bulgarian); author of articles, book chapters and essays in the history of the book and reading, and women's and gender history published in Bulgarian, English, German, French, Russian, Romanian and Serbian; and co-editor and book review editor of ASPASIA. The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History (www.berghahnbooks.com/journals/asp) and a past President of the International Federation for Research in Women's/Gender History (www.ifrwh.com). Email: krasi@sclg.uni-sofia.bgMary O'DowdMary O'Dowd is Professor of Gender History in the School of History and Anthropology, Queen's University Belfast. She is the author of A History of Women in Ireland, 1500–1800 (2005) and one of the editors of Field Anthology of Irish Writing, vols 4–5 (2002). She was president of the International Federation for Research in Women's History, 2000–2005. She is currently co-director of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project on the history of marriage in Ireland.Daniela KolevaDaniela Koleva is Associate Professor at St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. She teaches theory of culture and oral history at the Department for History and Theory of Culture. Her research interests are in the field of oral history and biographical research, memory, anthropology of socialism and gender studies. Her publications include a monograph on the socialist ‘normal biography’ and a number of articles in international journals and collective volumes in English, German and French.

Women’s Accounts of Heterosexual Experiences in the Context of Menopause

ABSTRACT A number of biomedical models of female sexuality have emerged during the past few decades, and these have been challenged by feminist theorists who have tended to focus on the influence of contextual issues that mediate women's sexual experiences. In this article, a qualitative analysis of accounts relating to heterosexual experiences obtained from 25 menopausal women in Ireland through in-depth interviews is presented and considered in light of existing theoretical perspectives on sexuality. The average age of women in the sample was 54.2 years, and a diverse range of socioeconomic backgrounds was represented. We found that in describing their contemporary sexual experiences, contextual issues were brought heavily to bear as participants drew on discourses of personal history and biography, including previous relationships, to explain their current sexual experiences. However, a few women foregrounded physiological and biological reasons associated with hormonal changes to explain alterations in their sexual relationship, although overall, these were featured to a far lesser extent compared with their prominent position in biomedical menopause literature. A dominant feature of data was the influence of the discourse of the male sex drive, and many women explained their lesser interest in sexual activity compared with that of their partner in terms of men's nature. The findings suggested that for participants, anxiety around sexuality was socially produced either through the expectation to satisfy a partner, or by dominant discourses that defined sexual engagement as “healthy” and sexual apathy as “unhealthy.”

Prevalence of physical activity among healthy pregnant women in Ireland

[1] Sivin I, Stern J. Health during prolonged use of levonorgestrel 20 micrograms/d and the copper TCu 380Ag intrauterine contraceptive devices: a multicenter study. International Committee for Contraception Research (ICCR). Fertil Steril 1994;61(1): 70–7. [2] Rotas MA, Haberman S, Levgur M. Cesarean scar ectopic pregnancies: etiology, diagnosis, and management. Obstet Gynecol 2006;107(6):1373–81. [3] Richardson S. Ectopic pregnancy in a Mirena user. Br J Fam Plann 1998;23(4):141. [4] Taskin S, Taskin EA, Ciftci TT. Heterotopic cesarean scar pregnancy: how should it be managed? Obstet Gynecol Surv 2009;64(10):690–5.

What models of maternity care do pregnant women in ireland want?

ObjectiveThe introduction of new models of care in the Irish maternity services has been recommended by both advocacy groups and strategic reports. The purpose of this study was to seek...

P35 Irish pre-hospital delay times in acute coronary syndrome: an on-going dilemma

Purpose: This study measured baseline pre-hospital delay times among patients diagnosed with acute coronary syndrome in Ireland and compared them with baseline equivalents recorded five years previously by O’Donnell (2006). Pre-hospital delay time was interpreted as the time from acute symptom onset until arrival at the emergency department.Background: A significant number of deaths and substantial disability could be prevented if patients sought earlier treatment for symptoms of acute coronary syndrome. Researchers have reported European pre-hospital delay times between 2.0 hours and 3 hours 56 minutes. Irish median prehospital delay times of 3.1 and 1.8 hours for women and men respectively were reported by O’Donnell et al (2006). The revelation that there was an excessively long pre-hospital delay time by women in Ireland received much media coverage at that time.Methods: Data were collected for this cross-sectional study from patients who were admitted to an emergency department with an ACS event and diagnosed with a myocardial infarction (N = 936). They were recruited from 5 Major Teaching Hospitals in Dublin. Ethical approval was granted. The Response to Symptoms Questionnaire was used to ascertain the information. Data were analysed using SPSSv18. The delay time data was significantly skewed and was therefore log transformed for analysis. Results: Sample profile: Age: 62.59±11.91; Gender: 26%. Female; Diagnosis: 44% STEMI; 56% NSTEMI. The overall median delay time was 2.57 hours. A hierarchical multiple regression model was used to examine the effect of age, gender and diagnosis on delay time. The variance explained by the total model was significant: F(3,392) = −2.896, p = 0.046. By diagnosis, median delay times were 2.08 and 3.0 hours for STEMI and NSTEMI respectively. This was the only variable found to be statistically significant (beta=0.092, p = 0.005). By gender, median delay times were 2.5 hours (male) and 3.0 hours (female).Conclusion: Pre-hospital delay time in ACS has been highlighted for decades as a major international problem. Decreasing the time to treatment for patients with acute myocardial infarction is a life-saving goal. Yet, despite the extensive media coverage given to O’Donnell’s findings in 2006, pre-hospital delay times in Ireland have remained virtually unchanged among women and increased among men. This underscores the need for behaviour-altering approaches to the reduction of pre-hospital delay. This may take the form of targeted public education or educational interventions aimed at reducing pre-hospital delay.

“It's Not Like a Job Now; It's Part of Me”: Exploring African Women's Experiences in the Irish Childcare Sector

A small-scale qualitative research study was recently carried out in the West of Ireland to explore the experiences of African childminders who had established new childcare services. The intention of the study was to explore the issues, concerns and challenges of this group of providers given their unique position as recently settled, ethnic minority women in Ireland. Twelve women were interviewed as part of this study, all of whom had arrived with considerable educational and employment experiences from their home countries in West Africa. The research illustrates a number of key processes and characteristics within this sub-sector of childminding. It reveals that, in terms of pathways to work, these women had struggled to find employment in their new communities such that childcare provided a viable route that the women pursued with enthusiasm and commitment. Most had developed their services in a largely unintentional way to begin with. Having made a conscious decision to set up their services, this group appeared to demonstrate a strong determination to succeed by seeking out formal support, through advice and training, in order to enhance their services and adhere to professional regulations. They also encountered the need to proactively develop strategies that would overcome perceived barriers and broaden their appeal. While the women placed much emphasis on providing a high-quality service and adopting a professional approach, the group claimed to offer broader support and encouragement to parents in practical and emotional ways. In discussing the relationship the participants had with the families, the childminders felt that they provided a range of supportive services to the families with whom they worked. In documenting the reported experience and perspectives of these childminders, this research seeks to add to our understanding of what we conclude is a valuable yet potentially marginalised sector of childcare provision.

Dietary patterns among pregnant women in Ireland

Dietary patterns among pregnant women in Ireland

Politics, Patriotism, and Women in Ireland, Britain and Colonial America, c.1700–1780

Politics, Patriotism, and Women in Ireland, Britain and Colonial America, c.1700–1780

Coping with Crisis: Social Supports and Constraints Afforded to Ethnic Minority Women in Ireland

Times of economic crisis are difficult for everyone, but are perhaps most difficult for immigrants, because as jobs are lost and social supports are stripped away, immigrants are amongst the first groups to be targeted. A commonly observed accompaniment of economic crisis is increased ethnocentrism as the majority group seeks to protect its threatened interests. Social identity thus marks ethnic minorities and immigrants as targets of prejudice and discrimination, but it is also an important source of social support, which becomes all the more valuable during tough economic times. Using Deaux’s tripolar (2006) model of the immigrant experience as our framework, we conducted two studies to examine the ways in which African and Asian immigrant women in Ireland negotiate social identities in the context of economic crisis, social exclusion, and racial discrimination. The results indicate that Asian and African immigrant women in Ireland experience moderate levels of social exclusion and marginalization, and that asylum seekers experiences are more extreme than those who have achieved residency. Importantly, the experience of social exclusion and marginalization predicts psychiatric symptoms and lower global well-being. These results are discussed in relation to social psychological theory and social policy.

Dominican Education in Ireland, 1820–1930 (review)

Reviewed by: Dominican Education in Ireland, 1820–1930 Maria Luddy Dominican Education in Ireland, 1820–1930. By Maire M. Kealy, O.P. (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press. 2007. Pp. xx, 236. $32.50 paperback. ISBN 978-0-716-52889-0.) The primary focus of this book is the contribution that women of the Dominican Order made to education in Ireland in the period between 1820 and 1930. The author provides a good context in which this contribution is explored, and in the introduction we are given a clear idea of the “Dominican ethos in education.” There is a short survey of the history of Dominican women in Ireland between 1124 and 1820, and a historiographical section on issues relating to women’s education in Ireland in the nineteenth century. Following this introductory context the author then, in a clear and accessible fashion, details the evolution of Dominican education in Ireland at primary, secondary, and higher levels. Kealy provides a wealth of information on the development of education in Ireland in the nineteenth century. The newly emerging congregations of female religious from the late-eighteenth century conducted boarding schools for the upper classes, with attached free schools for the poor. The lower middle class benefited from the introduction of pay “day schools.” Before the introduction of the National School system of education in Ireland in 1832 there were at least thirty convent schools around the country. It was through their work as educators that nuns played a profound part in socializing the Irish population into formal Catholicism, particularly in the period after the Great Famine. The Dominican sisters, while catering to some extent to the poor, were primarily educators of the Irish Catholic middle class. The sisters utilized the opportunities provided by government for their pupils and took advantage, eventually, of the intermediate examination system to advance the interests of their students. The nuns also played a significant role in advancing university education for Irish women. The Dominican College in Dublin’s Eccles Street was the first establishment in Ireland to make university education possible, through the Royal University system, for Catholic women. With all the emphasis on education Kealy also provides the reader with an account of the ways in which the Dominican community itself evolved in Ireland over the period. We are told of the amalgamation of various communities, the disputes that occurred between the Sisters and some bishops, their dealings with officials from the department of education. There is an excellent account of the formation and work of the Conference of Convent Secondary Schools of Ireland (CCSS). Using a wide variety of sources, including the extensive archives of the Dominicans and a number of oral histories, this work celebrates the trials and tribulations of the Dominican involvement in education at all levels in Irish society. It adds considerably to the growing [End Page 596] literature on female religious and the education of girls and young women in nineteenth-and twentieth-century Ireland. Maria Luddy University of Warwick Copyright © 2010 The Catholic University of America Press

Emotional Ambiguity: Japanese Migrant Women in Mixed Families and their Life Transition

Through the narratives of Japanese migrant women in Ireland, this paper focuses on their perceptions of ‘home’ and their emotional processes in the context of their life transition. In order to explore the interactive and relational nature of their emotional processes, three questions are examined. How do migrant women manage their emotions in the process of constructing motherhood as their main social identity? How do their emotional orientations complement or conflict other emotion rules? In changing social and familial settings, how are their feelings navigated? The narratives of two Japanese mothers illustrate their contradictory, inconsistent and ambiguous emotional experiences which are created through physical mobility and transnational family relationships. Through changing social roles, obligations and expectations, they participate in different ‘feeling rules’ to frame the lived experiences in which their relationships with their new country and home place are renewed. Through changing their life course, they also experience ‘emotional resonance’ or ‘dissonance’ with others, which affects their sense of belonging/non-belonging in different places. The context of motherhood provides examples of such dynamics of multiple, interdependent processes in which subjectivities and feelings emerge.

Gender and the Postcolonial Archive

Gender and the Postcolonial Archive Karen Steele (bio) Molly O'Hagan Hardy's article aptly notes the opportunities and perils attendant upon archival triage. As she observes, ideology is actively at work when archivists appraise what gets bought or sold, what is precious or ephemeral, what is catalogued and stored for others to study, and what is discarded, rejected, lost, or forgotten. The dogged impenetrability of Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh's Sinn Féin notebook at the Harry Ransom Center (HRC) serves as a potent example of the challenges for critics invested in uncovering women's political agency during Ireland's revolutionary years (1916-1923). Literary historians like Hardy, who discover and analyze marginalized voices, untold stories, and forgotten artifacts, can never comfortably assume that the taxonomies of the postcolonial archive will remain static and stable, accessible and usable. In my attempts to unearth the buried stories of Irish nationalist women, I am often confronted by the fact that the postcolonial archive turns out to be both capacious and wily. Because so many of the documents stored and shelved are resistant [End Page 55] to library catalogues and scholarly consolidation, they seem to materialize serendipitously and disappear unpredictably. As I was thinking about the archival mystery of Nic Shuibhlaigh's notebook, I was also nightly rereading to my youngest son the last installment of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, . . . and the Deathly Hallows (2007). I was struck, in so doing, by how much the postcolonial archive resembles Hogwarts's Room of Requirement, a vast, unplottable area on the third floor of this venerable school for witches and wizards. As Harry discovers, the Room of Requirement only materializes for Hogwarts students and staff who are truly in need. For those with an urgent "requirement," an aged, sturdy door unbolts to a room of cathedral-like proportions, though it can contract or expand, reveal treasures or hide secrets, depending upon its occupant's needs. Hogwarts students and professors, it turns out, use the room for both noble and dubious, ideological and practical purposes: to train subversive students in banned knowledge, to stash evidence of alcoholism or theft, to obscure the real source of one's academic brilliance, or to provide a private lavatory when one is desperate for relief. So too, the postcolonial archive proves to be tensile and compressive; within its elastic walls, we can discover objects capable of altering our knowledge about the past and providing new tools to confront the present. The postcolonial archive, of course, has never settled in any one location. Just as the manuscripts and letters of canonical writers such as W. B. Yeats or Lady Gregory are scattered in Ireland, Great Britain, and the United States, so too, the correspondences, manuscripts, and papers of radical Irish women are housed in well-known and hidden locations. To trace the textual history of nationalist women such as Máire Nic Shuibhlaigh, Maeve Cavanagh, or Constance Markievicz, one must access both rarified locations—the National Library of Ireland, the National Archives, the British Library, the Public Records Office, or the HRC—and small, specialized, or forgotten repositories, such as the Bureau of Military History, the myriad nationalist periodicals now available on microfilm, or online databases such as ProQuest. For those lacking resources to travel across continents or oceans, the postcolonial archive has repeatedly answered its researchers' "requirement" through the republication of primary source materials. Barbara Harlow [End Page 56] and Mia Carter's indispensable Archives of Empire, for example, reprints a broad array of documentary evidence of Britain's imperial project during the long nineteenth century, in locations as far flung as India and Egypt. As the editors note, this postcolonial archive documents and organizes for its readers "the richness of the substantial critical resources and the substantive grounds for the critique of imperialism" (2003, xxii). For those interested in Irish nationalist women, excellent primary materials can be found in Margaret Ward's In their Own Voice (1995), Maria Luddy's Women in Ireland 1800-1918 (1995), the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, volumes 3 and 4 (Bourke et al. 2002), or my Maud Gonne's Irish Nationalist Writings (2004). Each of these sources provides...

Menopause Narratives: The Interplay of Women’s Embodied Experiences With Biomedical Discourses

Conventional approaches to menopause tend to contrast the biomedical position on menopause with women's actual experiences of it. Rather than focusing primarily on the tensions between these perspectives (biomedical vs. lay), our emphasis here is on the impact of biomedicine in shaping participants' perceptions of their status as menopausal. Based on interview data gathered from 39 women in Ireland, we argue that the cultural authority of biomedicine shaped participants' experiences of the body and how they constituted their health identity. We assert that, ironically, this was particularly the case among those who most strongly contested biomedical definitions of their situation. In addition, biomedical practitioners' definitions had a strong normalizing power in how the body was experienced. We conclude by noting that our analysis problematizes the notion of privileging "women's experiences" as advocated by some feminist perspectives. The heavy influence of biomedical discourses in shaping participants' embodied experiences demonstrates the pervasive impact of prevailing discourses on women's experiences.

Women in Ireland drink the most alcohol in pregnancy

In a Dublin study involving 43 818 Irish women, 7.9% of pregnant women were found to drink nine or ten units of alcohol per week, showing a lack of awareness of the dangerous effects of alcohol on the unborn baby.

Women in Ireland drink the most alcohol in pregnancy

In a Dublin study involving 43 818 Irish women, 7.9% of pregnant women were found to drink nine or ten units of alcohol per week, showing a lack of awareness of the dangerous effects of alcohol on the unborn baby.

The prevalence and determinants of breast-feeding initiation and duration in a sample of women in Ireland

To assess breast-feeding initiation and prevalence from birth to 6 months in a sample of mothers in Dublin, and to determine the factors associated with breast-feeding initiation and 'any' breast-feeding at 6 weeks in a sample of Irish-national mothers. This prospective cross-sectional study involved the recruitment of women during the antenatal period, with subsequent follow-up of mothers who delivered healthy, term singleton infants, at 6 weeks and 6 months postpartum. Participants were recruited from antenatal clinics in the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital, Dublin. In all, 401 Irish-national and forty-nine non-Irish-national mothers met the criteria for inclusion in the present study. Breast-feeding initiation rates of the Irish-national and non-Irish-nationals were 47% and 79.6%, respectively. Factors that were significantly (P = 0.000) associated with both breast-feeding initiation and 'any' breast-feeding at 6 weeks included mothers who were >or=35 years, educated to third level, reported positive postnatal encouragement to breast-feed from their partners and had a positive antenatal intention to breast-feed. The maternal negative perception that breast-feeding is an embarrassing way to feed an infant was demonstrated as a major barrier to initiation. Breast-feeding initiation and prevalence rates of the Irish-national population remain low and lag considerably behind national and international targets. Inclusion of the partner in breast-feeding promotional initiatives during the antenatal period may be crucial to increase breast-feeding rates in Ireland. Public health campaigns that focus on increasing the social acceptability of breast-feeding may prove effective in addressing this cultural barrier.