CELEBRATING IWD 2024
INSPIRING INCLUSION: MEET MARGARET COUSINS
This year, for International Women’s Day, we choose to #InspireInclusion for women everywhere by remembering the long and spirited advocacy of Ireland’s own, Margaret Cousins.
Margaret’s life story has taught all of us – man or woman – the undeniable need to stand up for one another, to challenge injustice, and to strive for a more equitable world.
After representing Ireland at the ‘Parliament of Women’ in London in 1910, raising awareness for women’s rights on an international stage, and using activism to incite social reform, she moved to India and became the first non-Indian member of the Indian Women’s University at Poona in 1916.
Born in Boyle, County Roscommon, Margaret made it her mission to challenge injustice and unite women to stand up for their rights.
1908 – Co-founded the Irish Women’s Franchise League, organizing numerous suffrage rallies to advocate for equality.
1927 – Founded the All India Womens Conference in order to improve educational efforts for women and children.
1941 – Published her third book, ‘Indian Womanhood Today,’ detailing the challenges faced by Indian women, and their participation in the Indian Independence Movement.
REBELS & REVOLUTIONARIES TOUR
Sunday, 10th March – 2pm
Relive the stories of Ireland’s greatest innovators, explorers, and athletes in our special tour ‘Rebels & Revolutionaries.’
Hear how exceptional women from the Irish Diaspora like Cynthia Longfield, Fanny Durack, and Eva Gore Booth represented their homeland and changed the fields of fashion, science, and politics forever.
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY GIFTS
Continue the legacies of extraordinary Irish women by repping original designs from local Irish artists.
STORIES OF TRAILBLAZING WOMEN
Cynthia Longfield
The international dragonfly expert and intrepid explorer also known as ‘Madame Dragonfly’.
Annie Besant
Trade unionist, socialist, Indian nationalist leader and one of the first women to endorse birth control.
Fanny Durack
Irish-Australian record-breaking swimmer who won the first women’s Olympic swimming medal.
Dr. Isabel Mitchell
The Ulster missionary doctor who devoted her career to saving the lives of countless Machurian women.
Eileen Gray
Irish architect and designer from Co. Wexford who would later become a pioneer of modern design.
Eva Gore Booth
The sister of Constance Markievicz who became an icon of suffrage, nationalism and LGBTQ+ defiance.
EXTRAORDINARY IRISH WOMEN
As part of our weekly supplement with the Irish Times Abroad, we have explored the lives of many extraordinary Irish emigrants throughout history. From the pioneering Irishwomen who made exciting space discoveries to the world’s first female stockbroker, learn about the women who overcame barriers and blazed a trail for generations to come.
‘An Irishwoman has guts and stands up for what she believes in’
Maureen O’Hara grew up in Ranelagh, Co Dublin and would become an icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
The woman who put Ireland on the international fashion map
Sybil Connolly dressed some of the world’s most glamorous women from Jackie Kennedy to Elizabeth Taylor.
The Irishwoman who was the world’s first female stockbroker
Dubliner Oonah Keogh overcame number of barriers that her male contemporaries never had to deal with.
The story of Irish astronomer Rose O’Halloran
The Tipperary woman, who emigrated to the US, is credited as being the first to see a giant sunspot emerge on the sun’s limb.
Kay McNulty, the Irish ‘mother of computer programming’
While raising seven children, she continued, uncredited, to programme computers her husband developed.
Irishwoman who was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame
Black rights pioneer, Margaret Murray Washington, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant sharecropper.