Women will always have to fight for their space . . . that is the law of nature. By being an underhand feminist, " says the 38-year-old Wexford-born artist, "I mean you have to play it tough and clever, you have to be firm and feminine."

Wicklow-based artist Lucy Doyle (47) agrees. "Women are now equal to men but [art] is a male-dominated world. Women have to battle to do as well as their male contemporaries.

There are hardly any women in the art history books. So even though women are equal, any chink in the armour like that will be used against them; it's very competitive. Men can charge more for their work, " says the painter. "Women are definitely taken advantage of. They have to produce work, which is just as good as men's, the same work, for a lesser price. . . It's an insidious way of keeping women down."

But, she says, women are rising to the challenge. "Women artists are really tough. A force to be reckoned with."

"Women artists need to be really independent and strong, " says Katie Holten (32), an Irish artist based in New York.

"Confidence is fine in men but in women it's not seen as normal or natural, " she says.

"Women are taught to be deferential and modest, " says Aine Phillips, performance artist and head of sculpture at Burren College of Art, Co Clare. But Phillips has seen vast changes since she was a student at the NCAD 20 years ago. "It was a different scene then. As students in the '80s we saw ourselves as very radical in the art world.

Ireland was still very oppressive . . . there was no contraception, no condoms, you couldn't talk anything. We were very much on the cusp. Change had happened in the US and Europe but in Ireland it hadn't. It was a very male environment. There was only the one female art lecturer at the time."

But for more recent NCAD graduates gender is less of an issue, according to Lola Rayne Booth (24).

"For my generation it's a struggle, yes.

But it's also a struggle for men, " says the artist and joint director of Monster Truck Gallery in Dublin, which has been running Attack of the 50ft Women, a season of international female artists, all this month. "I think it's more about whether you're a good artist. Art has become more acceptable for girls, especially now there is less emphasis on painting. You have conceptual art, video art, sculpture . . . less oppressive art that doesn't have the weight of history behind it."

One woman who knows all about the weight of history is Dublin painter Deborah Donnelly. "Art is so old and painters have always been men, " says the 30-year-old mother of two, whose paintings you may recognise from Rhodes7 restaurant.

"The museums are full of male art. . . Most of the galleries are run by men, and older men. It's a boys' club and it's really hard to get into. . . And then there's Aosdana, which has very few women as members."

Aosdana was set up by the Arts Council in 1981 to honour Irish artists. Membership, which is by peer nomination and election, is limited to 250 living artists. Despite a poor representation of women across other areas of the arts, 34 of the 72 current members in its visual arts section are women, including Alice Maher and Dorothy Cross. However, this is one of the few areas of the visual arts where women achieve equal representation. Although there are three times as many women as men studying art on a full-time basis in this country, a mere 2% of artists on display at the National Gallery are female. In the Irish Museum of Modern Art the figure is around 25%. While acknowledging these inequities, Paula Naughton (25), a Dublin artist who has just completed a masters in St Martin's College in London, thinks it's "all about confidence, something which men often exude naturally".

Deborah Donnelly and her mother Claire O'Farrell (59) are both represented by the Bad Art Gallery in Dublin, which is run by Donnelly's sister Denise. "Guys are so confident. Sometimes guys will come into the gallery and tell you about their work and you think it's going to be great, " says Donnelly, "but then you see it and it's so disappointing."

"Men have always been the breadwinners so they're more likely to take on the art as their job, " says O'Farrell. But compared with when she was a young mother, things have certainly improved. "I was surrounded by all this sexist stuff. There was no way you could get your children minded just to paint! I had three children and my mother would say, "You'll mess up those children's lives with that bloody art."

"Art is a method of communication, " says Phillips, "a language with its own lexicon.

And the structure of that language is created by men over many centuries. The advent of feminism into art changed art completely. Women's art tends to be very personal, " she says, "dealing with their own personal experience . . . sexual identity, pregnancy, abortion." This is something Booth thinks may be a disadvantage in some respects.

"The emotion of women's art can be a bit too close to the bone for some people, too sentimental."

Whatever the reason for the poor representation of women in certain areas of the art world, most agree that things are changing. "It will take time for our voices to be heard, " says Phillips.