Women and Public Policy in Ireland: A Documentary History, 1922-1997

This book concentrates on Ireland’s public policies, cases and laws on women after 1922. It examines the policies in place before 1972 and the extensive changes heralded by the 1972 Report of the Commission on the Status of Women: equal pay, employment and social welfare. In the 1980s and 1990s the debate shifted from the formal equality of women to issues of equity, fairness, opportunity and participation, as emphasized by the Report of the Second Commission on the Status of Women (1993). The constitutional issues of divorce and abortion as well as the changes in family law, violence, education, health, and political and economic opportunity are tracked through government reports up to 1997.