Ireland experienced a period of major political and social change between 1957 and 1977 which included the redefinition of the role and status of women and the creation of a new public policy paradigm. By 1977 the main features of this public policy paradigm were in place in the form of an ‘equality contract’. The ‘equality contract’ granted formal legal equality to married women in family law and procedural equality to all women in relation to employment. This replaced the hirarchically based system of family law and gender based discrimination that had dominated Irish public life in the 1950s. This thesis examines these changes in the Irish state’s gender regime, describing them as a product of a strong internal dynamic for change which interacted with external influences. Ireland, although it had a comparatively low level of economic development and industrialisation, experienced the impulse for change on gender issues at the same time as this was experienced in other democratic European states. In this context the Irish legislative state and its public policy output is described as being underpinned by views on gender, which are not static, but are renegotiated over time and form part of its political culture.