The Role of Women in the Economy of the West of Ireland, 1891-1923

The role of women in the rural economy in the West of Ireland altered dramatically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.¹ Joanna Bourke's important 1993 study, Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland 1890 - 1891, argues that Victorian reform agencies—specifically, the Congested Districts Board (CDB), the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society founded in 1894, and later, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction founded in 1899—intentionally displaced the role of women in the rural economy by removing female labor from the fields and relegating it to employment in the home.² However, Bourke's contention that the CDB was guilty of imposing an enforced housewifery on the women of the West fails to consider other powerful forces at work in Irish society; it would be more accurate to state that the CDB's major role in effecting a shift in women's economic roles was that it enhanced already existing mechanisms of paid female employment.

Rural life in Ireland presented two distinct economic zones in the later half of the nineteenth century. The West was submerged in varying degrees of relative and absolute poverty, while the East enjoyed the spoils of better land, better transport, and better market facilities.² Philanthropists highlighted the plight of the uneconomic regions to Westminster and to Dublin Castle, which provided an impetus for Arthur Balfour, chief secretary at the time, to visit the West of Ireland in the winter of 1890. Witnessing the level of poverty firsthand he realized that the land acts offered no concessions to the rural poor on uneconomic holdings. Balfour devised an ameliorative measure to deal with the so-called congested districts. As a result, the Congested Districts Board of Ireland was established in 1891 under the auspices of the 1891 Land Purchase Ireland Act. Its basic purpose was to raise living standards in the West of Ireland. The act, which was a component of the policy of Constructive Unionism, met with little opposition in Westminster in part because it coincided with the fall of Parnell. Contrary to popular belief, the poorest areas were not overpopulated. In fact, the density of population in the congested districts was only 89 persons per square mile, which was considerably lower than the Irish average of 134.³ The test for congestion was when the ratio between the rateable valuation and the population gave a sum of less than £1 10 shillings. Using statistics from the 1881 census, the board found that a total of 349,516 people were living in areas considered congested. This incorporated 3,608,569 statute acres, valued at £556,141 collectively, with an average valuation of £1 0s 3d per head.⁴

Balfour, as an ex officio board member, suggested that the board undertake an investigation of the proposed districts to act as a baseline from which progress could be measured.⁵ He insisted that the survey should include returns of family income and expenditure. Six inspectors were employed to undertake the investigation and their subsequent reports—officially known as the baseline reports—provide a unique insight into the social and economic conditions in the eighty-four designated congested districts.

The average sample budgets of each baseline report indicate the gender division of labor and show that women were more industrious than men in times of hardship (see appendix for "Headings of inquiry"). Cash income came from migrant earnings, the sale of pigs, sheep, wool, cattle (to a lesser extent), and corn, all of which involved seasonal employment and were no doubt carried out by men and women alike. Aside from the annual sale of animals or migrant earnings, most households derived a cash income from female-dominated, cottage-based industry. Butter churning and poultry rearing were traditionally female enterprises and by 1890, spinning, weaving, sewing, and embroidery employed women...