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The Forgotten Cumann na mBan: Irish Republican Women in the post-1969 Period
The Forgotten Cumann na mBan: Irish Republican Women in the post-1969 Period
Dieter ReinischRelated Papers
2016 •
Sisters of the Revolution: Eva Gore-Booth and Countess Markievicz. At the centre of the decade of centenaries is the commemoration of the Easter Rising which the Irish government are describing as a ‘seminal event’ in our country’s history. This talk examines the often radical campaigns and activities of the Gore-Booth sisters up to the time of the 1916 Rising. This examination provides evidence of how women’s contributions helped shape modern Ireland. While women’s participation in Irish politics remains below the European average, the legacy of Markievicz and Gore-Booth is now held as a central inspiration for change. By tracking the use of commemorations in Irish history we will gain an insight into the changing position of women in Ireland and establish how women’s contributions were in effect written out of history books, until recently.
Palgrave and Springer
The Irish Women's Movement: From Revolution to Devolution2002 •
Detailed monograph charting the development of Irish feminism and the women’s movement throughout the course of the 20th century. Chapters on the Council for the Status of Women, the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, Irishwomen United, Contraception, and Abortion.
This paper will examine how the activists of the military organisation, Cumann na mBan, the female wing of the mainly male Provisional Republican Movement, remember their political and military involvement during the war in Northern Ireland. The presented paper is part of a study on the military and political role of women’s organisations in national liberation movements and the changing role of women in these movements as a result of acts of war on the basis of the Northern Irish conflict. I will outline how the female activists in the Provisional Republican Movement remember their time during the Northern Irish Troubles. In the years 2009 to 2011, the author interviewed nearly thirty female members of the Republican Movement and its female wing Cumann na mBan. The previously unpublished research is the first study of the republican female organization in the period mentioned. To collect the data, qualitative expert interviews were carried out on the female members of the Republican Movement, these interviews are semi-structured with narrative sequences. The structure of the interviews was based on archive material which was presented for interpretation to the interviewees. Twenty-five years after the last major split in the Republican movement and the nearly twenty years after the beginning of the Peace Process, I will examine how women see their activities during the war in the 1970s and 1980s.What was life like being at the same time a mother, daughter, sister, wife and member of a secret, illegal, military movement?
This Thesis examines the concurrence of nationalism with feminism in Ireland during the revolutionary period, 1900—1923. Many authors wish to draw a strict dichotomy between women who became suffragists and women who became nationalists, but it will be shown that such lines became blurred during this period as more suffragists joined the nationalists and more nationalists gained interest in the suffrage movement. I will also show that women’s involvement in the nationalist struggle was necessary for their inclusion in politics during the first quarter of the Twentieth century, as suffragists alone would never have made an imprint upon the rapidly militarizing society in Ireland during this time. Cumann na mBan and Inghinidhe na hÉireann will be the primary focuses of this work because they used their respective places within the nationalist movement to blur gender roles and to argue for women’s rights. Some historians praise the suffragists while painting nationalist women as puppets of the male nationalist organizations; however, women in the nationalist movement were able to make more of an impact on the men than suffragists due to their relationship with male revolutionaries. While many historians have noted that Cumann na mBan was started because the Irish Volunteers did not want to include women in their council, few have noted how the women of Cumann used their unique position to increase the visibility of Irish women in the struggle for independence and created a formidable public persona that set them apart as women and revolutionaries. Cumann na mBan and Inghinidhe na hÉireann both used their voices to demand women’s inclusion in politics and public life. Their constant references to the women of ancient Ireland often stated that if they wanted to remain true to their ancient Irish roots, they must include women as equal citizens and give them equal rights. However, it was only when women in Cumann na mBan took part in the risings and military activities that most of the nationalist men began to see them on more equal terms. With women taking the same risks as the men, logic dictated that keeping women out of politics was hypocritical. In fact, Constance Markievicz became the first woman to be elected to Parliament because of her role in Cumann na mBan and her nationalist activities. The greatest achievement of women’s activism in Ireland was their place in the 1922 Constitution, which included women on equal terms. However, women’s autonomy and equality met with staunch criticism from the church. Catholic anti-feminism was at its height following the Civil War in 1923. Many nationalist men who had praised the women of Cumann na mBan in previous years blamed them for the Civil War. The fact that women had sided almost unanimously with the anti-treaty forces damaged their political reputation in the Free State. As had happened in Post-WWII America, men began seeing women’s activism as dangerous and unnatural; they now attempted to reposition women within the home. While during the revolutionary period, the women had come to demand their equality and had made great steps towards achieving it; the anti-feminist backlash of the 1920s and 30s would result in laws that limited women’s activities outside the home. Though women kept the right to vote and to hold office, the 1937 Constitution made it illegal for married women to work outside the home and by emphasizing women’s roles as wives and mothers, undermined women’s equality.
Oona Frawley (Ed.), Women and the Decade of Commemorations. Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Women's Diasporic Remembrance of the Irish Revolution - SAIKEN, Jan2021 •
The substantial displacement of people following the Irish revolution (1916–1923), particularly of women, has little place in the state-sanctioned commemorative history of the period. This migration poses a number of problems for the ‘social remembrance’ (Beiner) of the revolution. How does a community remember when it no longer exists in the geographic place of origin? Drawing on an array of disparate narratives, including letters, memoirs, and fictional self-representation, this chapter aims to recuperate a number of the counter-memories of female revolutionary émigrées in order to consider the spaces available to women for coming to terms with the past within diasporic communities. Furthermore, it explores how these memories of revolution can oscillate between nostalgic and anti-nostalgic remembrance and how less conventional forms of testimony often offer more complex readings of women’s diasporic remembrance than first-person narrative.
National Library of Ireland magazine article announcing the Research Guide to Women in Irish History.
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