This book provides an overview of Irish gender history from the end of the Great Famine in 1852 until the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922. It builds on the work that scholars of women's history pioneered and brings together internationally regarded experts to offer a synthesis of the current historiography and existing debates within the field. The authors place emphasis on highlighting new and exciting sources, methodologies, and suggested areas for future research. They address a variety of critical themes such as the family, reproduction and sexuality, the medical and prison systems, masculinities and femininities, institutions, charity, the missions, migration, 'elite women', and the involvement of women in the Irish nationalist/revolutionary period. Envisioned to be both thematic and chronological, the book provides insight into the comparative, transnational, and connected histories of Ireland, India, and the British empire.

Preface: Women in Ireland, Introduction, Section 1: Culture, Family and Society, 1. Gender and the Irish Family, 1852-1922, 2. Gender and Migration: The Irish Experience, 1850-1922, 3. Gender and the Ascendancy: The Families Who Owned, and Lost, the Island of Ireland, 1852-1922, 4. Doing Good? Irish Women, Catholicism and Charity, 1852-1922, 5. Gender and the Irish Language in Post-Famine Ireland, Section 2: Health, Welfare and Institutionalisation, 6. Gender, Medicine and the State in Ireland, 1852-1922, 7. 'A Fat, Pompous Old Woman, Ignorant, and Illiterate': Popular Midwifery in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, 8. Gender, Folklore and Magical Healing in Ireland, 1852-1922, 9. Gender and Insanity in Ireland, 1800-1923, 10. Institutionalisation and Gender: From the Foundling Hospitals to the Mother and Baby Homes, Section 3: Sex and Sexuality, 11. Crime, Punishment and Gender, 12. Women, Sexuality and Reproduction, 1850-1922, 13. The Emergence of Irish Masculinity Studies, 14. Homosexuality and Lesbianism in Irish Newspapers, 1861-1922, Section 4: Politics and Revolution, 15. Women's Educational Activism and Higher Education in Ireland, 1850-1912, 16. 'The Peeress and the Peasant': Popular Mobilisation and the Ulster Women's Unionist Council, 1911-21, 17. 'A Voice in the Affairs of the Nation': Irish Women and Nationalism 1872-1922, 18. 'A Political Nonentity with Infants, Criminals, and Lunatics': First Wave Feminism in Ireland 1872-1922, 19. Margaret Elizabeth Cousinsand Transnationalism: An Irish Suffragist as an Anti-Colonial Feminist in Colonial India, 20. Female Revolutionaries and Political Violence in India and Ireland, 1919-39