Through an analysis of this legislation, which restricted women’s political and economic rights, and the gender ideology it revealed, this book looks at how the promise of the revolution was thwarted and denied. In so doing, it examines the roles of women and women’s organizations in this journey from equality to inequality and how women’s citizenship was conceptualized.

The triumph of conservatism was the result of a myriad of circumstances, the treaty that ended the Anglo-Irish War, the Civil War, and the influence of the Catholic church. Perhaps most significant was the persistence of patriarchy, which ensured the temporary success of a Catholic church-controlled, male dominated, traditional society in which women’s quest for unfettered citizenship and a free and equal role in the public sphere was hindered and obstructed.

From this unfinished revolution, however, emerged a vibrant twentieth-century feminist movement that contributed to an evolving, liberal democratic state.