WOMEN OF THE ITINERANT CLASS - GENDER AND ANTI-TRAVELER RACISM IN IRELAND

This paper examines the articulation of racism and gender in Ireland t hrough an analysis of elite Traveller-related discourses and practices in the period preceding the implementation of a settlement program in the mid-1960s. During this period, elites expressed concern about the vulnerability of non-Traveller women to a masculinised Traveller popu lation. By the 1940s and 1950s protection of non-Traveller women was b eing invoked as grounds for exclusionary anti-Traveller actions. The a rticulation of anti-Traveller discourses with an ideology of female do mesticity obscured the existence of Traveller women. Traveller women h owever emerged as targets of efforts al domestication in early settlem ent policy and practice. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.