No Country for Women

No Country for Women is a new landmark television two part documentary series on RTÉ One which explores Irish women’s lives since achieving the vote 100 years ago. In the 100th anniversary year of women’s suffrage, these documentaries travel through time, seeking historical answers in the journeys of a number of Irish women today, women whose lives and those of their mothers and grandmothers collided with discriminatory legislation that made Ireland effectively, No Country For Women. In 1918, Irish women voted for the first time. Yet the question remains how much has changed for women in the century between? No Country for Women asks why, in an Ireland that fought so hard for independence, did half the population’s voices so often go unheard? And what is the long-term legacy of a century of government, legal and religious control over women’s lives? If the greatest revolution of the 20th century was women’s, just how and where does Ireland fit into that revolution as we forge into the 21st century? How do sexual violence, health, adoption, work discrimination, housing and institutional scandals fit into that history? Can it be argued that for much of its first 100 years, Ireland was in fact, No Country For Women…