page_title: Irish Americans
section_title: Women
hierarchical_section_title: Irish Americans / Social history in the United States / Religion and society / Women
caption_attribution_description: An illustration depicting a large Vampire bat hovering over a prostrate woman. The words 'National League' can be seen on the inside of the wings of the bat.
context_page_description: Irish Americans are Americans who have full or partial ancestry from Ireland. About 33 million Americans — 10.1% of the total population — identified as being Irish in the 2017 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. This compares with a population of 6.5 million people on the island of Ireland.
context_section_description: The Irish people were the first of many to immigrate to the U.S. in mass waves, including large groups of single young women between the ages of 16 and 24. Up until this point, free women who settled in the colonies mostly came after their husbands had already made the journey and could afford their trip, or were brought over to be married to an eligible colonist who paid for their journey. Many Irish fled their home country to escape unemployment and starvation during the Great Irish Famine. The richest of the Irish resettled in England, where their skilled work was greatly accepted, but lower class Irish and women could find little work in Western Europe, leading them to cross the Atlantic in search of greater financial opportunities.
  Some Irish women resorted to prostitution in large cities such as Boston and New York City. They were often arrested for intoxication, public lewdness, and petty larceny.  Most of the single Irish women preferred service labor as a form of income. These women made a higher wage than most by serving the middle and high-class in their own homes as nannies, cooks and cleaners. The wages for domestic service were higher than that of factory workers and they lived in the attics of upscale mansions. By 1870, forty percent of Irish women worked as domestic servants in New York City, making them over fifty percent of the service industry at the time.
  Prejudices ran deep in the north and could be seen in newspaper cartoons depicting Irish men as hot-headed, violent drunkards. The initial backlash the Irish received in America lead to their self-imposed seclusion, making assimilation into society a long and painful process.
caption: Irish Lass depiction in 1885.
exif: {"Image Copyright": "Public Domain, from the British Library's collections, 2013"}