Does the Border make the difference

Introduction The gendered nature of Irish Society, North and South, is very much a taken for granted reality. Connell (1987) has argued that although we think of gender as a property of individuals, it is necessary to go beyond this and to see the social landscape as being more or less ‘gendered’ in the sense that its practises and structures are more or less mapped by gender. He suggested that gender divisions were a fundamental feature of the capitalist system (‘arguably as fundamental as class divisions’) and that ‘capitalism is run by and mainly to the advantage of men’ (Connell, 1987:104).