A review of 'The Second World War and Irish Women: An Oral History by Mary Muldowney'

Abstract

This book, based on interviews with twenty-seven Dublin and Belfast-born women, explores the Irish female experience during World War II. Combining personal testimonies with the evidence of contemporary newspapers, official publications, mass observation records and privately held ephemera, it discusses the changes initiated and/or accelerated by the war, as well as the more hidden experiences of 'ordinary women' in two states with contrasting experiences of the conflict, i.e. Northern Ireland and the neutral southern state. The study emphasises that, despite the undoubtedly contrasting official attitudes to the war, the general experience in the two states was in some ways remarkably similar. Both northern and southern governments were tardy in the development of welfare legislation and the provision of housing, both were under prepared for the practical problems of wartime, and citizens (especially women) in both jurisdictions reacted in similar ways to both change and continuity. At times, indeed, the remembered experience seems so similar that the reader has to check back in order to remember whose testimony is being discussed, and about which community and jurisdiction.