Webinar: Women in Science and Medicine - Saint Brigid’s Day 2021
Event 04 February 2021
On 2 February 2021, the Embassy of Ireland to Belgium hosted a special St Brigid’s Day Webinar celebrating Irish and Belgian #VisibleWomen in science and medicine.
Dr Antonia Hart led an open and engaging panel discussion on Irish and Belgian women in science, medicine and leadership, both past and present, with particular focus on hidden narratives and lesser-known figures. The esteemed panel shared their personal experiences as women in varying fields of science and their thoughts on inclusion, accessibility and participation in the sciences.
The webinar was book-ended by performances of poetry by Jessica Traynor and original music commissioned for the event by singer-songwriter Katie Maye.
Making Visible the Invisible
By Dr Antonia Hart
One of the things #VisibleWomen2020 champions is making visible those women whose stories have never been told. Close to my heart are those nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women in business, who have had little or no share in recent reassessments of women’s historical role in Ireland. There’s endless pleasure to be had, too, in exploring similarities with their entrepreneurial Belgian sisters, as creative, as hardworking, as tenacious.
The official record, in Ireland, can hide the truth of such women’s stories. The census recorded Kathleen Daly as having no occupation at a time when we know from her letters to her future husband, Tom Clarke, that she was running a hugely successful dressmaking business in Limerick. Someone struck through the space allowed for ‘Occupation’ for Mary Andrews although she was running a shop in Terenure and, in the words of her son Todd Andrews, ‘made enough to provide a rent-free ho