'Cork Afterlives: Single Women and the New Irish State'
DCU’s Dr Leeann Lane’s exhibition, Cork Afterlives: Single Women and the New Irish State, is now open at the Boole Library, UCC. Funded by Research Ireland, the exhibition is located on Q Floor and runs until September.
Focusing on women from Cork city and county who took part in the revolutionary period and did not marry, the exhibition explores their later lives in the new Irish state. Many experienced poverty, ill‑health, economic dependence and loneliness, made more acute by a patriarchal system that prioritised marriage and motherhood as women’s primary social role.
In a state built around the male breadwinner wage and unequal pay, unmarried women, especially those without access to secure employment or social insurance, were left vulnerable to hardship and reliance on family or charity. Cork Afterlives brings these often‑overlooked lives into view.