By the early 2000s, women in Ireland were arguably freer than any past generation to shape their sexual lives amidst the social freedoms of a globalised society. The Salley Gardens presents reflections from seventy-three heterosexual young women on growing up, forming sexual relationships and some becoming mothers in the last years of the «Celtic Tiger». The authors explore their hope and despair about what it means to be a woman, to use their agency, within the inescapable tensions of newly wealthy Ireland. Their efforts to build their sexual lives are complex and the significant problems they encountered remain unresolved.

Women’s search for agency is woven into our complex history and continues to reverberate. The bewildering juxtapositions young women faced fifteen years ago have intensified in the present. Then and now, we face conflicts with social expectations of our lives as sexual women, caring women, partners, wives, and mothers.

Turning our older history in Ireland towards an exuberant resistance enables us to illuminate the limitations of the female identities imposed by contemporary Ireland. The Salley Gardens helps us rethink what we mean by agency and resistance, revaluing women’s actions as we endeavour to value our own lives.

Jo Murphy-Lawless is a sociologist and Research Fellow in the Centre for Health Evaluation, Methodology Research and Evidence Synthesis, NUI Galway and a member of the Elephant Collective. She has a lifelong commitment to establishing reproductive justice and to eradicating social and economic inequalities.

Laury Oaks is Professor and Chair of the Department of Feminist Studies and affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Department of Anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on sexual and reproductive politics. Laury was introduced to Jo while doing research in Dublin on the X Case in summer 1992, and they have sustained a dynamic connection across the miles and decades.