No Country for Women: Two part Documentary by Anne Roper.....RTE Please bring it back
Part 1 of the documentary: Preview and Part 2 of the documentary: Preview [RTE on Facebook]
No Country for Women: 100 Years of Irish Women's Lives a two-part documentary produced by Anne Roper 2018 [RTE article by Anne Roper] broadcast June 2018 on RTE 1
The Irish Times, The Women's Podcast, Ep 226 'No Country for Women': 100 Years of Irish Women's Lives, interview with Anne Roper and historian Dr Mary McAuliffe, who acted as consultant and contributor to the documentary, speak to Bernice Harrison.
A two part documentary charting the lives of Irish women over the last century begins on RTÉ One on Tuesday (19 June) at 9.35pm. 'No Country For Women' travels through time, seeking historical answers in the journeys of a number of Irish women today, women whose lives and those of their mothers and grandmothers collided with discriminatory legislation. With contributions from the likes of former president Mary Robinson, journalist Justine McCarthy and trade union activist Mags O’Brien, this documentary pores over the history of women in Ireland, examining the long-term legacy of a century of government, legal and religious control over women’s lives. In this podcast, producer Anne Roper and historian Dr Mary McAuliffe, who acted as consultant and contributor to the documentary, speak to Bernice Harrison about No Country For Women, the process of making it and what they hope it will achieve.
20 June 2018 Irish Times article by Peter Crawley on Part 1 of the documentary
21 June 2018 Irish Independent, Pat Stacey: No Country for Women 5* review: 'Public service broadcasting at its finest, as well as riveting, harrowing TV'
...This is an epic achievement of which Roper and RTE should be proud. It’s public service broadcasting at its finest, as well as a riveting, harrowing piece of television.
The starting point of the long, sordid story that is the treatment of women in this country, was how the lofty, supposedly egalitarian ideals of the 1916 Rising soured under the Free State into what one historian here called “a fake republic” — “a democratic theocracy”, deeply mired in the misogyny, hypocrisy and moral cowardice of its dual architects, Eamon de Valera and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid.
Their shadows loom over everything that has unfolded since: the clerical abuse; the Magdalene laundries; the stolen children and illegal adoptions; the innocent women incarcerated, sometimes for a lifetime, in asylums or mother and baby homes. ...
25 June 2018 RTE Brainstorm .... No Country for Women: "Margaret Skinnider was never one to stand back from a fight" by Dr Mary McAuliffe, University College Dublin
Why were women absent from Irish juries for 50 years? by Conor Hanly, University of Galway, 8 Mar 2025
... The Court declared the gender provision of the 1927 Act to be unconstitutional, holding that the model of jury trial contemplated by the present Constitution required that juries be drawn from panels that were broadly representative of society. The Oireachtas responded with a new Juries Act in 1976 – still in force – under which men and women have an equal liability to serve on juries. When it comes to jury service, it took independent Ireland 50 years to put women back in the position they had occupied in 1919, notwithstanding the fine words of the 1916 Proclamation.
