The Gendered Geographies of the New Woman and the Dublin Tramcar: the ‘Jolly Flapper’ Incident' Authors: Locating the Irish Flapper: Manchester University Press

At the turn of the twentieth century, Dublin’s tram system became a highly visible stage on which the figure of the “New Woman” was debated, policed, and reimagined. Trams created a new kind of urban space: public yet intimate, mobile yet enclosed, bringing men and women into unfamiliar proximity and forcing fresh negotiations over behaviour, respectability, and gender norms. Although women played little role in designing or managing tramway infrastructure, their everyday presence within it subtly but persistently challenged male claims to public space. By moving, observing, and being observed, women occupied these carriages in ways that blended traditional expectations with emerging forms of independence. Drawing on scholarship on gender and public transport, alongside work that treat infrastructure as a social and political assemblage, this paper reconsiders the Dublin tram as a site of modernity after Irish independence. It argues that the tram was not simply a means of transport but a contested social arena. The visibility and mobility of New Women made the tram a space of scrutiny and anxiety, while also marking it as a locus of everyday resistance.