In Ireland, the rationale for, and long duration of, the marriage bar in employment stemmed from the widely held belief that women, once married, belonged in the home. The marriage bar, legislated for in the public sector but simultaneously practised in the private sector, affected thousands of women in Ireland. Drawing on twenty-one oral history interviews and supplemental narratives by email, this article demonstrates the deeply flawed assumption that motherhood was incompatible with paid employment. Before the marriage bar was officially revoked in 1958 at primary school level, and 1973 in the wider public sector in Ireland, women negotiated to retain their jobs on lesser terms and conditions, switched careers where the bar was not rigorously applied or found entrepreneurial ways to make money. While no experience of working motherhood was identical, many participants noted that the wage of one breadwinner often failed to cover a family's needs. For some, the impetus to work outside the home stemmed not just from economic necessity but from personal desire. For others, it allowed them to retain their sense of self cultivated before motherhood; for all, fulfilling the duties of motherhood was ever present in the cultural discourses of the time.
Redmond et al. (Wed,) studied this question.