Irish women have not reached full equality yet despite massive strides in recent years, an expert says.
According to UCD Gender Studies Director Dr Mary McAuliffe, Irish society as a whole still have work to do "but we're getting there". She told Dublin Live: "Women's lives in Ireland, say, six or seven decades ago would've been very constricted by both society and expectations of society that women's place was in the home."
This, she said, was even written into the Constitution in articles 41.1 and 41.2 which stated that a woman's life in the home was very important and that all women should be married, mothers and domestic. There were things like the marriage bar, which prevented women from taking certain jobs, particularly in the civil or public service once they got married. Most women were expected either to work very briefly when they were single, or to not work outside the home at all.
