Carefree Masculinities in Ireland: gender conservativism and neo-liberalism

The gender order in Irish society has undergone considerable changes since the 1970s. Women have made significant gains within the labor market and at all educational levels, achieved greater control over issues of sexual and reproductive health, gained greater equality within families, and generally improved their position in social, cultural, and economic life (Galligan 1998, 28; Kennedy 2001; O’sullivan 2007; Barry 2008). These changes occurred, however, against the backdrop of a deeply conservative and patriarchal society that has resisted gender equality (Bacik 2004). Significant gender disparities of resources, status, and power leave much of the public sphere male dominated (O’Connor 2000; Ferguson 2001; Barry 2008; Baker et al. 2009; Central Statistics Office 2010). Inequalities in caring are especially entrenched. Among European societies, along with Italy, Ireland has taken a particularly conservative stance toward caring by foreclosing it as private family responsibility that rests with women (Daly and Rake 2003). Women are defined in the Irish Constitution as caregivers (Bunreach Na hÉireann 1937, articles 40.1, 41.2.1, and 41.2.2), and men’s domination of the public sphere reflects the fact that women, by and large, undertake primary caring responsibilities (Lynch and Lyons 2008). As a private affair, the work of informal familial caregivers has been mostly invisible, with care work receiving low status and few resources (Cullen, Delaney, and Duff 2004).