If you want to see how women’s lives have changed, just flick through a woman’s magazine from the 1960s. Back then says Barbara Scully they obsessed with housework whereas now Irish women are sold glamour, creative careers and charmed lifestyles.

A Fine Gael TD’s attempt in the 1960s to reconstitute the role of the State in society may have failed, but it later influenced major policy changes, writes Ciara Meehan.