Editor's note:
As part of International Women’s Day and National College of Ireland’s 75th anniversary, this two-part series reflects on how access to education for women has evolved in Ireland and the role NCI has played in that journey since its foundation in 1951.
Part One looks back at the social, cultural, and educational landscape of the mid-20th century, exploring how pathways to education for women were shaped, restricted, and gradually expanded over time. Part Two will examine where we are now, the work still underway, and what access and leadership look like today.
As National College of Ireland marks its 75th anniversary, it offers a timely moment to reflect on how access to education has changed since 1951, particularly for women, at a time when higher education was far from the norm.
This International Women’s Day, NCI’s PR & Events Executive, Kate O’Brien looks back at how social attitudes and structural barriers shaped women’s educational opportunities, and how the College played a role in gradually widening access.
NCI's beginnings: A workers’ college
National College of Ireland was founded in 1951. At the time, post-World War II, there was a desire in Ireland to improve social conditions, and the College was established with the intention to provide education linked to work, society, and real lives.
It is important to understand social attitudes at the time. Ireland was shaped by ideals that championed self-sufficiency and was significantly influenced by Catholic social teaching. Reflecting this context, the College was originally known as the Catholic Workers’ College, with a mission to support workers through education grounded in social justice and ethical values. For many Irish people entering the workforce in the 1950s, formal education had ended at national school level and the College aimed to bridge this gap.
Access to education in the 1950s: Understanding the Irish landscape
In 1950s Ireland, economic hardship was a battle to be overcome; wages were low, prices were high, and emigration was common. Secondary schools were fee-paying, which resulted in many people not going to school beyond primary level.
In 1950, 47,000 students attended secondary school, but not everyone completed all schooling years. While girls and boys had educational equality at this level, girls did not have access to the same range of subjects as boys.
Only 4,500 pupils sat the Leaving Certificate that year and fewer than 8,000 attended university in Ireland. A quarter of that number were women.
NCI from the 50s to the 60s
The ten years between 1950 and 1960 saw significant societal changes take place that intrinsically impacted women and their lives, one example being The Marriage Bar, which was lifted in 1957. The Marriage Bar required women in certain professions to leave their roles once they got married and was a policy that actively excluded women from the workplace. Notably, it was only lifted for women in primary school teaching in 1957 as a response to a teacher shortage. Women in other sectors continued to be affected until The Marriage Bar was lifted entirely in 1973.
Policies like The Marriage Bar made gender-based discrimination acceptable by law. Societally, it reinforced the idea that once girls grew up and pursued relationships, their place was in the home.
Access has always been a cornerstone of NCI’s aims. Looking back, we can see that women were always present in the College’s history. The book National College of Ireland: Past, Present, Future by Mark Duncan, Eoin Kinsella, and Paul Rouse highlights statistics that show the significant participation of women in the 1950s, before gender balance was common in many institutions.
Women’s attendance at college classes was striking. In the academic year of 1956/57, most students were men, but 66 of the 303 trade union students were women, for the time, this was remarkable.
By the end of the decade, the College was firmly established as part of the Dublin educational landscape and by 1960, the majority of students were mature men and women. In the academic year of 1965/66, enrolment on the trade union course included 485 men and 317 women, showing that women’s participation continued to grow alongside the overall student population.
In just nine years, we can see the gap between male and female participation narrowed steadily. Maintaining those numbers and expanding access so that more people could benefit from education continued to be both the challenge and the goal of the College.
