Though the rate of emigration from independent Ireland did not reach the heights seen in the late nineteenth century, the new state nonetheless witnessed a persistently high rate of emigration. In this illuminating new study of women's emigration to Britain, Jennifer Redmond shows how leaving Ireland and being an emigrant were framed in highly gendered terms, and in ways which impacted on women in particularly punitive ways. While both female and male emigrants were caught in the circular illogicality of successive governments condemning emigration but failing to do anything to stop it, women in particular bore the brunt of disapproval about their decisions to leave Ireland. At its heart, therefore, this is a book about Irish women's agency and an analysis of the forces which sought to subvert, censure and question it.

The history of Irish emigration is a very well-developed field which has produced a number of distinguished studies. Many of these have considered women's emigration in a variety of contexts and periods, but this is the first to focus exclusively on women migrants to Britain in the first decades of independence. The novelty of such an approach is worth highlighting for it underlines the fact that many studies of emigration have and continue to be de facto studies of men's emigration. This might be more understandable if male and female experiences were quite or even broadly similar. But as Redmond persuasively argues, they were in fact ‘substantively different’, and an analysis of those differences complicates and enriches our understanding of all emigration in the early years of independence. The balance achieved in the book between analysis of specific women's experiences and general experiences is one of its many strengths.

Redmond concludes that women emigrated to Britain for broadly the same reasons as men and largely in search of stable and well-paid employment. Other factors such as marriage prospects or career progression were also relevant at times, but much less so than the desire to attain financial stability through work. The ongoing emigration of high numbers of Irish citizens was considered to be regrettable, not least because it suggested that independence had failed to improve the country's economic situation. For men, however, emigration was at least seen as economically rational, while women were subjected to a ‘repetitive narrative’ which accused them of leaving for trivial or selfish reasons. These included a desire to marry, the refusal to enter domestic service at home or the pursuit of a more exciting social life. Despite the fact that emigrant Irish women were reliable remittance senders whose labour no doubt kept families and communities afloat, they were ‘denied the legitimacy of being economic actors’. This helps to explain why politicians and policy makers often suggested that restrictions should be placed on women's emigration, while firmly rejecting any such restrictions on men.

Redmond argues convincingly that such polarised discourses were pervasive and shaped the experiences of emigre women themselves. They also reflected a number of fierce social and political debates which pulsated through Irish society in this period. These included the rights and obligations of women as workers and citizens and, ideally, as mothers, as well as discussions about the inter-connectedness of morality, nationality and religiosity. In this context female economic emigrants became ‘problematic Irish girls’ whose departure was linked with three key concerns which were not applied to their male counterparts: illegitimate pregnancy (as a reason for or as a consequence of emigration); the desire for marriage in Britain, thus depriving Ireland of much-needed wives and mothers; and ‘leakage’, the fear that emigres would abandon – wholly or in part – their religion. There was little to no evidence that any of these concerns were more compelling than the desire to make a living, but they emerged as dominant discourses which characterised Irish women as simultaneously vulnerable and brazen, in need of protection from themselves as much as from outside forces. These were well-worn themes which had earlier emerged in tandem with periods of perceived moral decline such as the First World War. As Redmond shows, their recurrence and ability to adapt to new circumstances is in itself revealing and worthy of further research.

The question of why women continued to leave Ireland is vital and Redmond approaches it from a number of angles. She acknowledges that some historians have, for example, emphasised women's autonomy by framing their decisions to leave as expressions of ‘independence and empowerment’. This is understandable and – from a feminist perspective – powerful, but Redmond cautions against ascribing modern motivations to women who probably would not have recognised them. Her own analysis is no less feminist for its insistence on nuance, and the painstaking development of a narrative based on the accumulation of thousands of records and accounts. Her democratic approach to a variety of sources and her willingness to read with and against the grain reflects her commitment to the centring of women and their experiences. Their centrality is what makes the book so persuasive.

Moving histories is clearly and compellingly written. It is based on a wide variety of sources and engages expertly with the existing historiography. There are, as ever, instances where the analysis might have gone further or in different directions. Although it is not the main focus of this book, I would have liked, for example, more discussion about how the presence of thousands of Irish women shaped the British economy and ideas about women's work. While I admire the author's analysis of the various societies which ‘assisted’ Irish women emigres, often in co-operation with the Irish churches, they appear as slightly one-dimensional villains. Though obviously objectionable at times, they nonetheless represented a long tradition of social purity activism which existed to combat the sexual double standard. Their feminist impulses are complex and sometimes contradictory, but worth exploring.

This book should find a place on every bibliography of twentieth-century Irish history for its central themes suggest a revision in the way we think about emigration, a fundamental fact of modern Irish life. But it probably will not because it is a book about women. Worse perhaps, it is not primarily concerned with the national question or the formation of the state. This combination does not tend to do well in Irish historiography. No doubt it will feature in specialist courses and sections of courses about women, and so it should. But the point of very good women's history – of which this book is an example – is to challenge broader narratives, sometimes in quite fundamental ways. Ireland's national story has proved to be remarkably resistant to the inclusion of women as subjects and agents, let alone to the more fundamental challenge of questioning the gendered nature of male experience in the past as the default universal experience. Moving histories shows, brilliantly at times, how this aim remains urgent.