Doctor Joanna McMinn
Nationality: United Kingdom
Year: 1995
Subject Area: Arts and Humanities
My PhD research on the impact of women’s community education on social change in Ireland found that such education has been a response to problems of isolation, economic dependency, low self esteem and powerlessness experienced by individual women in low income and marginalised communities. I concluded that changes are necessary at a structural level for women’s lives to be transformed. Following my graduation in 2001, I was appointed Director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI). This has provided me with the opportunity to pursue the conclusions of my research, and support the Affiliate organisations of the NWCI (who represent up to 500,000 individual women) to make the links between the individual, localised experience of inequality and its structural causes. My work involves representing women’s concerns through lobbying government and also mobilising the women’s sector, to achieve equality in the affective (caring), political, social, economic and cultural spheres.