Celebrating #IWD2022
This year, for International Women’s Day, we choose to #BreaktheBias and barriers that women face by remembering inspirational women who forged their own paths. Celebrate with us at our museum, or stay home and journey through the lives of these extraordinary women; learn more about our in-person and virtual workshops and enjoy the exciting online educational resources available that celebrate Irish women around the globe.
Inspiring Stories
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.
Watch and Learn
We are collecting videos about extraordinary Irish women on our YouTube Playlist. Click here to visit.
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.
Maureen O’Hara: ‘An Irishwoman has guts and stands up for what she believes in’
The story of the late actor who grew up in Ranelagh, Co Dublin and would become an icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
The Waterford 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.
The life of the 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.
HERSTORY – Ireland’s EPIC Women Podcast
This weekly podcast was launched alongside HERSTORY Ireland’s Epic Women, the 6 part TV series on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player in Spring 2020, in collaboration with Underground Films, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, Herstory Ireland and RTÉ. Mixed and produced by Cassie at Tall Tales, and presented by Dr Angela Byrne; Herstory Score composed by Scott Maher and Oisín Murray. Find the full podcast series here.