The Second World War and Irish Women

Depositors:
* Dr. Mary Muldowney

Description:
This oral history examines the experiences of a group of Irish women during the Second World War. Twenty-seven women drawn from a range of social classes and urban and rural backgrounds were interviewed. Some of the women worked in Belfast and others in Dublin (a city at war and a city that was neutral) while others chose to take up war work in Britain. The interviews address number of questions about the impact of the war on the economic and social status of women in Irish society. The issues raised in the interviews include the link between family income and education and access to employment opportunities; pay and conditions for women in a variety of workplaces, including war industry in Britain; examination of the impact that wartime conditions had on women’s domestic responsibilities and women’s health, with particular reference to maternity and childbirth. 
Status:
Archived and available for re-use.
If you are interested in using this dataset, please return the Data Access Request Form and return it to us at IQDA, T14 John Hume Building, NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare.
Related publications
Mary Muldowney "The Second World War and Irish Women. An Oral History". Irish Academic Press. 2007
Mary Muldowney "Woman in wartime. The Mass-Observation Diary of Moya Woodside” in O’Halloran, Clare (Ed.). Public and Private Worlds in Women’s Writing, The Irish Review, Issue 42, August 2010,
Mary Muldowney “’We were conscious of the sort of people we mixed with.’: Class, social attitudes and the shaping of the family in mid twentieth century Ireland.” in History of the Family, 13, (4), 2008, pp. 402 - 415.

Mary Muldowney “‘New Opportunities for Irish Women’. Employment in Britain during the Second World War” in University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 2006, pp. 1-18.
Mary Muldowney “Women Workers in Belfast and Dublin during the Second World War” in Hayes, A. and Urquhart, Diane (Eds.), Irish Women’s History. Irish Academic Press, 2004, pp. 168-186.
Mary Muldowney "'Just the way things were’. Recollections of women workers in Dublin and Belfast 1939-45” in UCD History Review, Vol. 13, UCD History Society, Dublin, 2002, pp.12-21.
Mary Muldowney "A World of its own’: recollections of women workers in Guinness’s Brewery in the 1940s" in Saothar Vol. 23, 1998, pp. 103-117.
 
Reviews
Women’s History Magazine (2008) 59 p36
Saothar (2007) 32 p.103-104
20th Century British History (2008) 19: 2 p 243-6