The second most popular category appears to be writings on emigration. The Twenty-first Conference of Irish Historical Science, held in Queens University, Belfast in May 1993, was devoted entirely to papers on women's history. Coming late to the field of women's history, historians of women in Ireland have dwelt little on the early idea of woman as victim, a theme to be found in much of the early publications on women in the 1970s. Rather the idea of women as active agents of their own fates, and those of others, has been most influential. In this issue of the Women's History Review , we, as editors, have brought together a range of articles dealing with the experiences of Irish women from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
Themes range around religion, politics and the state.
Religion, of course, has played a significant role in the history of Ireland. In the eighteenth century religious affiliation defined, or was deemed to imply, a particular political allegiance. Catholicism was suspect but the weakening of legislative prohibitions on Catholic participation in economic and public life paved the way for a Catholic revival. As Rosemary Raughter shows, one of the ways in which women influenced the Catholic revival was through the development of their philanthropic work. In a period when the Catholic church was attempting to rebuild itself women made use of a diminished hierarchical authority to extend their entrance into public life.