Mary Cullen and Maria Luddy (eds)
Female Activists: Irish Women and Change, 1900–1960
ISBN: 9781851322350
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Charts the lives and work of women who were significant figures in Irish political life in the twentieth century. Many of these women cut their activist teeth in the suffrage campaign and went on to play an important role on the national and international political stage. These biographical studies recount the lives and work of trade unionists, Louie Bennett, Helena Molony and Mary Galway, and political activists, Kathleen Lynn, Rosamond Jacob, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Margaret Cousins. These women campaigned on numerous significant issues, from suffrage to pacifism, republicanism, trade unionist, socialism and health reform. In addition, Jacob was a novelist and historian, Molony an Abbey Theatre actor, and Lynn a pioneer in pediatric medicine. Many were viewed as ‘radical’ in a society that was deeply conservative. This collection adds considerably to our view of women’s place in twentieth-century Ireland.