Partition, women, and social policy, 1921-1939

Abstract

This thesis analyses how the partition of Ireland affected state social intervention into women?s lives in the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. It begins its study with the opening of Stormont, the northern parliament, in 1921 and concludes in 1939 when welfare provision changed drastically with preparations for war. Using legislation as the basis of the investigation, this thesis explores selected welfare provisions directed towards women in each state and the process through which each state attempted to implement resulting schemes. This thesis argues that a paternalistic conservatism was at the core of social policy concerning women north and south of the new border. Consequently, there were many similarities rather than differences in Free State and Northern Irish legislation, particularly due to the influence of British social policy. These similarities were in part a consequence of a post-partition civil service network between Britain and the two new states. In Northern Ireland, social policy was largely determined by the step-by-step policy, as well as debates about Northern Irish morality. In the Free State this wider trend of conservatism presented itself in many forms, including adherence to Catholic social and moral teaching, as well as the adoption of legislation from other areas of the Anglo-speaking world. This leads to another main claim of the thesis: it challenges the traditionally held idea that social policy in the Free State was rooted in Catholic social and moral teaching. In turn, this finding dispels ideas of Irish exceptionalism in social policy. While it is undeniable that the church and Catholic ideology played a large role in the formation of social policy in this period, this can be seen to be part of a wider conservatism that existed at this time. Such a study is essential to understand larger influences on Irish social policy relating to women. Further, this work addresses the gap in knowledge about women, devolution, and social policy in Northern Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s. The thesis? innovative approach of considering the partition of Ireland outside of the traditional lens of unionism, nationalism, and republicanism, offers unique insight into the effect of partition on the lives of women. Topics to be examined in this thesis are: support for unmarried mothers and their children, state schemes for widows, divorce legislation, and the marriage bar. These policies were selected because each reflects gendered categorisations of women and what responsibility the state felt towards these specific, often working-class, women. It will be seen that legislators and the wider public carried specific assumptions about the morality and the place of these women in society. This allows for an interrogation of these ideals, how they translated into law, and what similarities and differences existed in the new Irish states. The significance of state actions will be contextualised with reference to the work of civil society groups including the Belfast Women?s Advisory Council, St Vincent de Paul Society, the Irish Mothers? Pensions Society and others.