ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore Irish Catholic women’s involvement in charitable and philanthropic work. As one of the most viable and visible routes to the public sphere for women in the period in question, this is an area of gender history already rich with historiography, yet ripe for further research. Building on pioneering work by Catríona Clear, Maria Luddy, Jacinta Prunty and others, the chapter will explore how nuns, and to a lesser extent lay Catholic women, forged a role for themselves in providing welfare services, becoming, in effect, the vital foundation of the shadow Catholic state under the union.
It will illuminate several key issues, including how women negotiated gender dynamics in funding this work, the remarkable replication of Irish nuns’ charitable work across the Irish world and in missionary contexts, and the persistent paradox that what empowered the women who were “doing good” frequently involved the disempowerment of women who were deemed as “being bad”. The chapter will also point towards resources available for further research in the area.
