Women, War Work and the State in Ireland, 1914-1918

Women's work in Ireland was recorded and celebrated where it contributed directly to the British war effort, especially in munitions production, but it lead to less innovation than elsewhere in Britain because the absence of conscription meant that women replacing men was rarer and less controversial. There were substantial continuities in industrial cities such as Dublin and Belfast, where women were working in food, linen and tobacco and the changes were in engineering and armaments making and only the latter were recorded politically at the time and later with an eye to general questions about the nation's contribution to the war. Women's Trade Union organisations continued to grow as it had just before the war. But photographs and the public record focused on munitions.