A new agenda for women’s and gender history in Ireland

Writing in 1992, Margaret MacCurtain, Mary O’Dowd and Maria Luddy condemned ‘mainstream’ Irish historiography’s characterisation of women’s history as ‘an interesting footnote but not a major challenge to accepted analyses’.[1] In seeking to dispel this view, they set out ‘An agenda for women’s history in Ireland’, in which they implored scholars to publish ‘research on all aspects of Irish women in the past’ so that in the ‘long term the history of Irish women will pose a major challenge to mainstream Irish history’.[2] Thirty years on from the publication of the ‘Agenda’ in Irish Historical Studies in May 1992, it is clear that MacCurtain, O’Dowd and Luddy’s rallying call was not ignored. It both precipitated a new wave of scholarship and inspired the unprecedented development of women’s and gender history in Ireland. Since 1992, the number of scholars working on women’s and gender history has increased significantly, and this cohort is continuing to grow.

The publication of this special issue, entitled ‘A new agenda for Irish women’s and gender history’, seeks to recognise the significant impact of the 1992 ‘Agenda’ on Irish scholarship. The articles that form the special issue demonstrate the wide-reaching and multifaceted legacy of the ‘Agenda’, while simultaneously identifying possibilities for new avenues of research, for interdisciplinary collaboration and for the interrogation of existing narratives.

Adhering largely to the temporal parameters of the original ‘Agenda’ (1500-1900), but expanding this to incorporate the twentieth century, the articles address a diverse arrange of topics and themes: women and the law in medieval Ireland (Sparky Booker); network analysis and literary history (Evan Bourke and Marie-Louise Coolahan); histories of childhood, education, work and sexuality (Clodagh Tait and Leanne Calvert); conventual life and women religious (Deirdre Raftery); violence, migration, poverty and crime (Elaine Farrell, Leanne McCormick and Jennifer Redmond). All contributors to the special issue are women’s and gender scholars who began their academic careers after the publication of the ‘Agenda’. This demonstrates the generational legacy of the ‘Agenda’, reflecting not only its immediate impact, but its ongoing influence on scholars and scholarship.

Ultimately, we hope that this special issue will serve as a new agenda for women’s and gender history in Ireland that will inspire future generations of scholars to engage in what has become an ambitious and flourishing field of historical enquiry. In recognition of her unique and indelible contribution to the field of Irish women’s and gender scholarship, the special issue concludes with a tribute to the ground-breaking historian ‘extraordinaire’, Margaret MacCurtain, by Mary O’Dowd.

Introduction: a new agenda for women’s and gender history in Ireland


[1] Margaret MacCurtain, Mary O’Dowd and Maria Luddy, ‘An agenda for women’s history in Ireland, 1500-1900’, Irish Historical Studies, xxviii, no. 109 1992), p. 2.

[2] Ibid., p. 6.

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