Private troubles, public issues: The Irish sociological imagination

In contemporary Irish Society there is considerable uneasiness about both the existence of and threats to the ‘patriarchal dividend’ (O’Connell, 1995a: 82). It is suggested that this wider social and cultural context, characterised by male dominance of key institutions, militates against the identification of gender related private troubles as public issues. Burawoy’s (2005) focus on the public aspect of each of the four types of sociology he identifies (viz., policy, critical, public and professional sociology) is used as a framework to explore the recent contribution made by sociologists in Ireland to the identification of gender as such a public issue. The article concludes that, by not explicitly focusing on it their contribution as agenda setters has been more limited than it might otherwise have been.