The history of sexuality in Ireland remains relatively understudied when compared with the more well-worn paths of political and military history, but that is not to say that it has never been considered. Now, in the fourth installment of the 'Irish perspectives' collaboration between Pen and Sword and History Ireland, a range of experts explore Irish history from the perspective of the broad concept of sexuality, in both theory and practice.

From the legalities that defined gender roles in the middle ages and early modern periods, to women’s role in political life and civil society, Gender and Sexuality in Ireland provides a comprehensive overview of the nation's understanding and relationship with sexuality and patriarchy. Population change, prostitution, incarceration, infanticide, abortion and homophobia are all considered alongside attempts to impose - and ignore - Catholic morality in independent Ireland.

Struggles for women’s rights and reproductive rights, the culture wars of the 1980s, and Irish people simply trying to have good sex lives, the essays gathered here cast light on aspects of Ireland's past that are often overlooked in more mainstream narratives of Irish history.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter One ‘History women and history men’: The politics of women’s history
• Chapter Two Marriage in medieval Ireland
• Chapter Three Career wives or wicked stepmothers? Marriage and divorce in the Pale
• Chapter Four Women and patriotism in eighteenth-century Ireland
• Chapter Five ‘Better without the ladies’: The Royal Irish Academy and the admission of women members
• Chapter Six ‘Women of the pave’: Prostitution in Ireland
• Chapter Seven A sexual revolution in the west of Ireland? Workhouses and illegitimacy in post-Famine Ireland
• Chapter Eight ‘Most vicious and refractory girls’: The reformatories at Ballinasloe and Monaghan
• Chapter Nine Casement’s ‘Black diaries’: Closed books reopened
• Chapter Ten Roger Casement and the history question
• Chapter Eleven Dancing, depravity and all that jazz: The Public Dance Halls Act of 1935
• Chapter Twelve Internal tamponage, hockey parturition and mixed athletics
• Chapter Thirteen ‘No worse and no better: Irishwomen and backstreet abortions
• Chapter Fourteen ‘Sisters sentenced to death: Infanticide in independent Ireland
• Chapter Fifteen ‘Unrelenting deference’? Official resistance to Catholic moral panic in the mid-twentieth century
• Chapter Sixteen Ask Angela: Reappraising the Irish ‘sexual repression’ narrative
• Chapter Seventeen ‘Spreading VD all over Connacht’: Reproductive rights and wrongs in 1970s Galway
• Chapter Eighteen Recollections of the Irish women’s liberation movement
• Chapter Nineteen Breaking the silence on abortion: The 1983 referendum campaign
• Further reading