Housewife of the Year

[8] Some winners parlayed their success in further celebrity and business success, most notably the 1990 winner, Margaret Browne (1954/55–2010; Killeagh, County Cork), who ran Ballymakeigh Country House and later the Green Barn Lifestyle Store Garden Centre and Restaurant, wrote a cookbook (Through My Kitchen Window) and regularly appeared on Derek Mooney's radio show.

The Housewife of the Year contest attracted controversy from its inception; a 1968 Irish Times editorial said: "Is this then what the nation at present deems the fittest reward for women?

[35] Similarly, in 1979, politician Síle de Valera said "a woman whose chooses to stay at home should not feel undervalued or pressurised into thinking that she is less intelligent or less valuable to the community.

"[36] In 1986, the Federated Workers' Union of Ireland, representing many RTÉ staff, criticised the show, saying "costly variety productions such as person/nurse/housewife of the year, etc.

"[37] Dave Mulhall of The Irish Times said that the competition's "only reason for existence lies in the promoter's wish to advertise his products," and it was thus inappropriate for a public service broadcaster.

"[39] After its cancellation, the Housewife of the Year was often cited as an example of an old, pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland, where women's horizons were limited; an "icon of down-home naffness" as Pat Stacey called it in the Irish Independent.

[40][41] Fintan Walsh wrote on Irish "beauty pageants" such as the Rose of Tralee and Housewife of the Year, coining the term “homelysexuality” to describe “a domesticated, marketable, and commercially profitable sexual accent, paradoxically devoid of eroticism” and arguing that “the Irish pageant has regulated the production of a female sexual accent in particular, emptied of depth, eroticism, or even what might be understood as subjectivity.”[42] In 2018, Patrick Freyne described it as "women with the wits to run CERN or perform brain surgery instead demonstrated how to bake a casserole while being patronised by a man in a nice suit.