Congress Paper Abstract

Determinants and correlates of Attitudes held by Irish Catholic and Protestant women towards the Irish Constitution and Knowledge of personal/legal rights?

FLORENCE CRAVEN, CENTRE FOR GENDER/WOMEN’S STUDIES, TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN.

This paper is drawn from my PhD which analyses similarities and differences in the socio-political and religious attitudes of modern Catholic and Protestant (Church of Ireland) women in the Republic of Ireland.

My work is new in that it studies the attitudes of women who are stratified according to religious affiliation. Irish sociological and feminist scholarship has produced diverse work concerning many facets of Irish women’s lives but little research has specifically focused on the attitudes of Irish Protestant and Catholic women.

Qualitative and quantitative questionnaires were used to study the social and religious attitudes of respondents living in 12 different counties throughout the Republic of Ireland. Respondent attitudes were measured by influential variables such as religious tradition (Catholic/Protestant), age (21-70 years) and location (rural or urban).

Factor analysis was used to produce 12 different factor groupings. Themes contained in these groups include attitudes to:

• Church influence in moral issues
• The role of the churches/religion in the lives of women
• Abortion
• Religiosity
• Membership of minority and majority religions
• The role of women in Irish society
• Women clergy

The effects of age, religion and location on the 12 factors were then examined by means of analysis of variance, the results of which will form part of my conference presentation.

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