The Nursing Profession and the Marriage Bar

This book explores Ireland's Marriage Bar, examining its impact on women's lives and the predominantly feminised nursing profession. What is less known and explored is the women nurses' work experiences or how the world outside the ward affected the nurse and the nursing profession at moments in time.

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This book explores Ireland's Marriage Bar, examining its impact on women's lives and the predominantly feminised nursing profession. Information on the history of nursing and the evolution of the nursing profession tends to focus on critical events or key persons who shaped the profession. What is less known and explored is the women nurses' work experiences or how the world outside the ward affected the nurse and the nursing profession at moments in time. This book takes one of these moments in time, the period of the Marriage Bar, and examines the women nurses' lives and the nursing profession during this period of Ireland's history. It does so by adopting a historical perspective and a lived experience perspective of women who had to negotiate this practice. Fifty years on from the Bar removal, as remnants of this time in Ireland's history remain, legislative and constitutional change are required to right the wrongs of the past.