Join us for a dynamic conversation between Rosita Sweetman and her son, Luke.
Rosita Sweetman is a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement and the bestselling author of five books: On Our Knees (1972), Fathers Come First (1974), On Our Backs (1979), Feminism Backwards (2020), and her recent memoir Girl With a Fork in a World of Soup (2025).
A passionate advocate for women’s rights, Rosita emerged as a powerful voice in 1970s Ireland: an Ireland dominated by the Catholic Church, where sex education, contraception, and divorce were forbidden, and marriage was considered a woman’s highest calling. Marriage often meant the loss of legal identity, economic independence, and personal freedom.
Rosita became lost within an abusive marriage, only reconnecting with her feminist self after the birth of her children. Encouraged by her daughter, she began writing the story of that experience, which became Feminism Backwards. She later went deeper, telling the full story of abuse, survival, and resilience in Girl With a Fork in a World of Soup.
Rosita was honoured to be invited by Mercier Press to write the introduction to T. P. O’Mahony’s Forbidden Ireland, a powerful reclamation of a time when women’s rights barely existed. It stands as another vital contribution to the growing documentation of Ireland’s emergence from the dark ages.
Don’t let anyone fool you into believing they were the “good old days”. They were not.
Venceremos!