This essay investigates the systemic gender inequalities exposed by the 2015 #WakingTheFeminists movement, which emerged in response to the Abbey Theatre’s male‑dominated Waking the Nation programme. Using intersectional feminist criticism, it analyses how Irish literary and theatre traditions have repeatedly marginalised and “forgotten” women’s writing, embedding patriarchal authority through institutional gatekeeping, canon formation, and cultural narratives shaped by oedipal and nationalist structures. Combining insights from Irish Studies, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and political economy, the essay highlights how the exclusion of women’s creative labour intersects with epistemic and ontological violence, harassment cultures, and reproductive inequities. Positioned within a comparative framework, it traces connections between #WakingTheFeminists and other feminist interventions that have exposed sexual violence and misogyny across creative sectors, underscoring shared strategies of testimony, resistance, and cultural critique. Emphasising the ethical stakes of feminist cultural analysis and the centrality of the care economy to creative labour, the essay contributes to cross‑disciplinary debates on gender, culture, and power. It concludes by advocating for sustained feminist activism, intersectional awareness, and the active engagement of men and allies in dismantling patriarchal structures through systemic, ethically grounded, collaborative and fundamentally collectivist transformations.