Women in Agriculture
In rural Ireland, many women generated an income form some form of agricultural work. Bridie Dunne generated an income from home based farm work, which largely involved poultry keeping, rearing cows and pigs and subsequently selling them at fair days. Maura Duffy and her husband discontinued working in a family run chip shop in 1960, but she had a plan to enable her generate a home based income. She explained as follows:
And I could have gone back to work [to Tait's clothing factory in Limerick] after my baby was born but I had no one to mind her. Because as I told you, my mother wasn’t well…. But when I gave up the chipper [take away restaurant] in 1960, I had only 6 girls and 2 boys. We had time on our hands…. I couldn’t stay idle. So I made him [husband] get enough together to get a chicken hatch and I bought chickens. I sold eggs for one and three. I baked, I done a lot of things and reared two pigs.
Mary Taaffe, who worked as a poultry instructress, provides a very insightful account of the significance of home-based activity, which generated an income for many women living in rural Ireland at the time
That was the only money they had... And most of them educated their children with their poultry money. It was very important - financially it was a very important industry for them… a woman would keep these turkey cocks. They charged half a crown for every service that came along ... even if they’d only got twelve chickens, which seems nothing now, these twelve chickens would lay eggs and … they could sell them…. And that was actual money they could get into their hands… They could improve things in their houses…. They got in cookers and certain things. The poultry money helped to do all that. You had many instances in Ireland of course where men were notoriously mean and the only money they [their wives] had was what they earned [poultry money].
Bridie spoke about how the money helped her and her family:
And when they’d be getting confirmation and communion, I always had a pig or a calf, an animal to sell… another time there was one of them getting confirmation and I sold a heifer… and the price of her dressed every one of us in the house and we had lovely style.
Agricultural Training For Women
Sr. Paul who was professed in 1942 went to Drishane in 1939 to learn the skills involved in poultry management, dairying and cooking. She subsequently became the farm manager in Drishane convent where many farmers’ daughters took courses in farm management. As Sr. Paul explained they were anxious:
… to start poultry breeding themselves, because 't was very popular at that time… we got over specially from England, somebody who was trained in jam making to show it to the farmers’ daughters… They were going home to help out on the farm. And they got a very good general knowledge of everything.
Mary Taaffe went to a Domestic Economy School in Dundrum and then she received a scholarship to attend the Munster Institute. While at Dundrum she learned cookery, laundry, needlework, dairying… and in the Munster Institute she spent time working in the kitchen, in the dairy, in the laundry and managing the poultry. Eileen Dolan, a scholarship recipient also completed her training in the Munster Institute. In Mary’s view, the regime in the Munster Institute was very strict and any infringement of the rules could mean expulsion. Eileen remembered that You’d be chastised if you weren’t in for your supper. Mary qualified as a poultry instructress in 1945 and Eileen qualified as a butter maker and she went to work at Coachford Creamery. Later she took up cheese making and butter making positions in Newmarket Creamery in Co. Cork and in a number of creameries in Co. Limerick.
Life As A Farm Manager in Drishane Convent
Sr. Paul described a typical morning as the farm manager:
I got up in the morning at half past six…. And before I went to the chapel, I had one little round up in the yard to see would I hear any men around and if I heard them in the distance, that was enough they were there. And I went down and I said my prayers and I had mass. And at eight o’clock I came out and came up to the farmyard and met the men who had come in to start their day’s work and we discussed what was going to happen during the day…. They’d say well the turnips need to be thinned … or ‘tis getting fine now, we might start to cut the hay. I left it to them… I would be actively involved in that I would know exactly where everything was and what everyone was doing.
Life as a Poultry Instructress
The Limerick County Committee of Agriculture appointed Mary Taaffe on a temporary basis. She was sent to work in various parts of County Limerick. Much of Mary’s work involved responding to written enquiries from farming women about aspects of poultry keeping. Often she cycled out to the farming women to meet with them, particularly when their poultry was diseased. She organised and gave poultry keeping classes for farmers wives. She saw herself as a kind of confidante of women in farming, often becoming very involved in all aspects of their lives. Mary was aware that some farming men resented the visits of the poultry instructresses because they feared their wives were becoming too independent. Compared to other women workers at the time, Mary thought poultry instructresses were relatively well paid.
Life as A Farming Woman
Bridie loved her life as a home based farming woman. As she stated:
I farmed all my life after getting married and all up to about three years ago and I miss my cattle and I got wonderful prizes for them and I used to love the cows calving… and baling the hay and all that sort of thing…. It was a gorgeous sight to see the chickens coming out of the egg and the turkeys… and the geese… I made a lot of money out of fowl… people would come for their chicks and turkeys and ducks and everything to me… I loved it, I was happy out, experimenting away.
Struggles for Better Pay
Poultry instructresses were accorded lower status than their male counterparts who were agricultural and horticultural advisers. As Mary remarked: Everything they would have done was much more important, you know it was a man’s world. They were better paid and though poultry instructresses fought for parity of pay with their male counterparts and though their fight was supported by the ITGWU, they were unsuccessful in their demand. Eileen remembered that the men working in the creameries were always paid more than the women. She attending meetings of the Cheese Makers Association and she recalled after one meeting asking the Creamery Manager for a raise of five shillings. Her demand was unsuccessful as she said herself He nearly ate the head off me and he threatened to close the place down. When she and her husband attempted to join the ITGWU when working at one particular cheese factory in the early 1960s, they were dismissed immediately. That marked the end of Eileen’s working days outside the home.
Combining Agricultural Work With Family
Bridie Dunne explained that home based agricultural work, allowed her to take care of her children and her mother in law and was necessary to make ends meet and to keep the children going to school and some of them on to secondary school. However combining work outside the home in the agricultural sector as a widow rearing a family was very demanding as revealed by Mary Taaffe. When Mary Taaffe’s youngest son was ten weeks old her husband died unexpectedly and she had no choice but to return to work as a temporary poultry technician
I tried to get back the job then. Only then they didn’t want to know you. Oh there’s no way did they want to know you.
Mary believed that it was her status as a widow with children, which militated against her obtaining a permanent position in her field and this was the security she needed at the time. Instead she was compelled to accept temporary positions in different parts of the country, at a huge personal cost both to herself and her family. Finding only temporary positions in different places presented her with extraordinary difficulties as a woman heading a household on her own:
I got a job then as a temporary poultry technician, which was going around testing these birds. It didn’t suit at all because you see I had three small children. I was working in Limerick and Kerry and where did you think they sent me? To Donegal you know. It was… I shouldn’t have gone…. I should have done something about it…. My children were with various members of our family at that stage…. Anyway in the mean time through contact, through again a colleague, she said to me there’s a job in a factory in Kanturk and it would suit you beautifully. They had a hatchery there. I took that job... I was rearing, rearing a family and working at that particular time was no joke. I applied then to get a permanent job, lots of them. I got one that would be interviewed and out again, whereas I just think the words ‘widow’ ‘children’ out you know… I moved around so often… and most places I went to, I had to move twice because I used to pick the first housing I got. You know, when men are transferred they generally go some place and the wife stays put, until they’ve got a house. That wasn’t so in my case… we were in various houses. Would you believe I sent my three children to boarding school on a single woman’s salary? I did because, you know, it was easier on them I think.