I have no idea who they are but I am exceptionally intrigued by this group of people and especially their view on women.
From their interviews they do not sound oppressive but their actions are....radical to say the least.
Lavish spending, child brides, gigantic breast implants, children dressed like...well who knows what we'd define that as!?
I want to learn so much about this culture but information seems so limited and outdated.
Please check out the links below (the first is an example of a Irish Traveler wedding and the second is a commentary on what is seeming to be an American(?) Irish Traveller)
http://www.travellersrest.org/Controversy990603.htm
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Travellers, as a general rule, are a very tightly-knit and closed society. Any information obtained is potentially out of date, and from what little I know of them, they are very clan-based. Even information we do get is only valid for the clan it was about.
Lavish spending, child brides, gigantic breast implants, children dressed like...well who knows what we'd define that as!?
That's radical? Have you ever been to Texas?
The Travellers are also seriously discriminated against in Ireland (and probably elsewhere too), so it might be tough to find relatively unbiased information on them. They were a bit outside my area of research, unfortunately, so I don't know much about them myself. There is a Wikipedia article that doesn't seem too horrible. There's also this site about the Irish Traveller community in Britain: http://www.irishtraveller.org.uk/
I looked around on Amazon.com and found a bunch of academic books, too. I'll give you the links to the two I found that are specifically about women. Just keep in mind that I don't know these authors and haven't read the books so I can't personally vouch for their quality.
http://www.amazon.com/Nan-Life-Irish-Travelling-Woman/dp/0881336025/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255822753&sr=8-2
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Traveller-Women-brutal-intersections/dp/3639143914/ref=sr_1_42?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255822827&sr=8-42