This superbly incisive, comprehensive history of the Irish womens movement from the 1860s to the twenty-first century appearing for the first time in paperback shows how a network of constituent organizations and individuals was transformed into an engine of social change. While feminism is a major intellectual and political tradition in Ireland, it has been misrepresented and misunderstood in mainstream Irish studies. This survey of key historical and contemporary perspectives redresses that imbalance. It demonstrates how the womens movement fundamentally challenged established interpretations of the way in which modern Irish society has evolved over time, creating new theoretical directions in Irish studies.