In this unique book, Irish women who stayed living on the island, who did not emigrate, describe their lives and perspectives on a dramatically changed social context from the 1990s to 2023.
Located in different places on the island, the women from various social backgrounds describe their lives and perspectives on the changes they have witnessed in their society – the rise and fall of the economy, major inward migration, unparalleled advances in legislation enabling divorce, abortion and marriage equality.
Written for a general audience by author and social researcher Íde B. O’Carroll, the book seeks to help readers understand how women were agents of change whose lives were also shaped by social change. We hear their voices through O’Carroll’s carefully crafted profiles based on interviews she conducted with each woman thirty years apart.
The author provides an analysis of the wider social, economic and political shifts that contributed to dramatic social change including women’s increased participation in the labour force, in education, in community-based organisations and in campaigns for change.
This new book is the latest in a set documenting and analysing Irish women’s experiences from the 1920s to the 2020s. In the first, Models for Movers, women who emigrated in the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s, describe life in Ireland compared to the lives they made in America. In Irish Transatlantics, 1980-2015, the focus is on migrants’ experiences of return to Ireland and transnational migration.
With this third book, a unique longitudinal study based on interviews conducted thirty years apart, women who stayed, who did not emigrate from Ireland describe their lives and their perspectives on their changing social context.
Íde B. O’Carroll is a social researcher, author and former teacher who worked for many years on social change issues in Ireland, Europe and America. She has been affiliated with Women’s Studies, Trinity College Dublin (1991-1999), Ireland House, NYU (2013-2017), Public Policy and Sociology at UMass-Amherst (2012-2013 and 2018-2023).
Íde will launch Thirty Years of Change Through Women’s Eyes Ireland, 1993-2023 at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin at 6pm on October 30th.
Imprint: Attic Press Ltd.
