ABSTRACT
The secondary education system is also part of the focus of the article by Catriona Delaney. Delaney’s notes, the ‘strength and durability of the rural idyll’ in Ireland was gendered, and it served to limit the female sphere. Unsurprisingly, Irish vocational education ‘was organised and delivered in a way that was in keeping with a wider gendered ideology’. Clarke’s article challenges the views expressed in anthropological studies of rural Ireland that have depicted rural women as dissatisfied with their lives, yet unable to contest the gendered restrictions under which they lived. Clarke posits that, through a detailed study of the participation of rural women in vocational education, it is possible to see that they did, in fact, push against boundaries.
